It is perhaps true that the God of truth cannot love the unlovely in the same way as he loves the lovely. The one he loves for what he is and what he has begun to be. The other he loves because he sorely needs love—as sorely as the other, and must begin to grow lovely one day. Nor dare we forget that the celestial human thing is in itself lovely as made by God, and pitiably lovely as spoiled by man. That is the Christ-thing which is the root of every man, created in his image—that which, when he enters the men, he possesses. The true earthly father must always love those children more who are obedient and loving—but he will not neglect one bad one for twenty good ones. “There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine that need no repentance.”

The Frankses were on the down-going side of the hill Difficulty, and down they must go, unable to help themselves. They had found a cheaper lodging, but entered it with misgiving. Their income had been very moderate since their arrival in London, and their expenses greater than in the country. Also Franks was beginning to feel or to fancy his strength and elasticity not quite what they had been.

The first suspicion of the approach of old age and the beginning of that weakness whose end is sure, may well be a startling one. The man has begun to be a nobody in the world’s race—is henceforth himself but the course of the race between age and death—a race in which the victor is known before the start. Life with its self-discipline withdraws itself more to the inside. The man has now to trust and yield constantly. He is coming to know the fact that he was never his own strength, had never the smallest power in himself at his strongest. He is learning to lay hold of the true strength, to make it his by laying hold of it. He is coming to trust in the unchangeable thing at the root of all his strength. Strength has ever to be made perfect in weakness, and old age is one of the weaknesses in which it is perfected.