Human souls in this world are like blind men, groping in the darkness, trying to find some hand to lead them, some path to take them home. We are without God in this world, like
“An infant crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.”
Without the gospel we cannot find God. At the same time, He is not far from any one of us. There is a story of a returning prodigal seeking his father’s house and unable to find it, wandering wearily along the highway and at last in his faintness falling down on the threshold of a cottage which was his own father’s house. Inside sat the father and mother for whose love he was so hungering; yet he knew it not. So near to every one of us in our need and craving is our heavenly Father.