To be near unto God - pagina 210

beyond the confines of the heart. When the child that wept, laughs again, everything is over. Because the love for her child does not spring from the depths of her soul, she does not know how to love the soul of her child, hence she does not save but spoil him. So there is a love for God with the heart, offended when the Divine honor is and which takes pleasure in tender feelings toward the Lord, but the object of it is self and not God. There is love there, but not the love that goes down deep enough to reach unto the soul. Our self is in our soul. There it stands before the face of our God. And therefore on the floor of the soul the question must be decided whether God exists for our sake, or whether we exist, solel}' and alone, for the sake of God. When we can say: As for me, the latter is the case, it is glorious. But now the second question arises: Do we consent to have it so from submission, from the sense of our own unworthiness, or from love? Would we exist for no other purpose than for the sake of God, because we can do no other? Or because we would not wish it any other way, since God is our tenderest love and our whole existence is lost in love for him.

which

is

attacked,

love will be enjoyed through express itself through the heart. The costly instrument of the heart was given us for this purpose. But he who employs this heart and plays on it in happy love, is always self in the center of the soul, in the deep underground of existence, where our person lives in the holy presence of the Triune God. If this

be

so, this

the heart, and

it

will

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