To be near unto God - pagina 234

how God as his good shepherd goes before him in the waj', hears the sound of God's rod and staff on the ground, and is comforted thereby. All this is not for the sake of giving us a poetic, vivid view of nature. Heathen poets have done this. In nature also everything is for the sake of religion, to reveal to us in it the glorious presence of God, to bring us the fostering sense that in nature everywhere the living and almighty God is with us on every side, and to fill us with the sublime impression of his Power, Divinity and Majesty. But this is not all. This self-same living God, who in nature always envelops you and imposes his presence upon you, reveals himself altogether trained, observes

differently

whom He The

and

far

more

has appointed

richly in

as in

lord

you over

as man, nature.

revelation of his life man is so wonderthat after having said: thou shalt

fully divine,

God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind and with all thy strength. He transposes this great commandment into an altogether different one: thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, and adds to this second commandment, that it is like unto the first; that to love God in his majesty and to love God in one's neighbor is one and the selfsame commandment. To love God in God himself and to love God in man, or in one's neighbor, dififers in form and in fulfillment, but as commandment it is one. Vagrant wisdom forces the representation that from dead matter gradually the plant evolved of itself, presently from the plant of itself the animal, and finally from the animal, man. This love

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