To be near unto God - pagina 381

again to the world, in the life of which the rest Such is the existence of of the day is spent. him who out of every twenty-four hours of the day spends eight in bed, more than fifteen in the world, and altogether scarcely half an hour with God. He has often tried to retire half an hour for prayer and sacred meditation, but life is too busy, it rushes on relentlessly, and even in moments of seclusion thoughts wander too far afield for serious concentration on holy things. And under the spell of disappointment the effort is all too readily abandoned. Continuous, unbroken, unceasing fellowship with God does not depend upon thought, and can not be reached by the will, but springs of itself from the inner motion of the heart. If the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, as we believe, so that God dwells in us, God's nearness to us and our nearness to him takes place of itself, whether we think of it or not. God, the Holy Ghost, does not come into the heart, presently to leave it again. There is indwelling. There is a coming once, in order to abide with us forever. And even when we do not pray, or know not how to pray as we ought, God, the Holy Ghost, prays in us with unutterable groanings. The mother keeps watch by the bedside of her new-born babe, even though the babe has no sense of it whatever. Hence the question only is, whether the inner disposition of the heart attains gradually that sanctification, that opening up to Divine things, whereby we begin to feel and to perceive what goes on in the secret chambers of our heart. At first we live outside of the heart, and isolated, it floats as a drop of oil on the waters of life. 377

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