To be near unto God - pagina 613

has so seldom attained unto this passion, this consuming longing after God. It is your holy exaltation, a

solemn

seal

upon your human

nobility,

that your nature has so been created that such may be the case and can be. It is at the same time a deep humiliation that this nobility of higher origin so rarely exhibits itself in the fullBut it is also a stimulus ness of its strength. which leaves you no rest, which makes you turn in upon yourself and think, and which, under these changing perceptions, makes the thirst after the living God to be felt, and as soon as it is felt, makes its quenching to be experienced in 0, such a blessed way, because God draws near unto your soul.

panteth my soul after Thee, God. soul thirsteth for God, for the living God." That 'iiving" also is here an image of nature. There is stagnant water, which is dead, and becomes marshy and poisonous, and is unfit to refresh man and animal. The hart therefore panteth not merely after water, but after the waterbrooks, i. e. after the fresh, murmuring, flowing water that lives. *'And thus," says the Psalmist, "panteth my soul, yea thirsts my soul after the living God." Not merely after a confession of God, not merely after a representation of God, not merely after a reminder of God, not even after a Divine majesty, which far removed from the soul stands before it as a God in words or in phrases, but after God himself, after God in his holy outpouring of power and grace, after God who lives, after God who in his life inclines him-

"So

My

self

toward you, who with his

life

pervades you,

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