To be near unto God - pagina 300

exile,

they prayed with their faces toward Zion.

As an

after effect of this habit we still find in countries, that people do not pray at home, but in churches. Such churches are open all day, and in the solemn stillness of such stately edifices one kneels down, unobserved and unknown, in the expectation that in these impressive places the presence of the Lord will make itself felt more

many

effectively.

This

is

unquestionably a

great

privilege

for

crowded cities. He who has a room at home, where he can lock the door, in order to be alone with God, has no need of it. But the great masses of people are not so fortuthose

who

live in

At home they are almost never alone, it is almost never quiet, and seclusion which is so helpful to prayer, can almost never be found. Apart also from this difl&culty, it must not be nate.

that in Israel God himself had appointed such an oracle of his holiness, and had directed the souls of the faithful toward it. It was a means of cultivating real prayer. It everytime reminded the godly Jew that in order to pray he must first look to God with the eye of the soul, and that before prayer, connection must be made between the soul and God. To pray without first finding God, and knowing that one speaks to him, is really a caricature of prayer. If we would pray we should know, that at that very moment God attends to the voice of our prayer; that he inclines his ear to our prayer; and that he listens to the voice of our supplication. And this spiritual perception can not be awake in the soul, unless, before prayer, we consciously place ourselves in the Divine Presence. forgotten,

296

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