To be near unto God - pagina 612

all sorts of persons on earth, and has endowed with powers to appreciate the glories of nature, and has imparted all sorts of inclinations and callings to us, which go out after visible things. The Stylist who withdraws his eyes from all earthly things, so that- with nothing about him but air he might seek after God, evades the struggle and becomes unnatural. The holy art of the child of God is to possess things that are seen and handled in such a way, that he can truly say, that nothing on earth pleases him but God. This only means to say, that he only regards all visible

to it

things as things which are of God, and exist for the sake of God, and must serve God. Thus his pleasure in God embraces and includes all these other things. But in such a way that they are only considered insofar as they are subjected to God, and as they reveal his Divine power.

Whether

in

deed and

in truth this

is

the case

with us, becomes evident only in dying. For then all these things fall away from us, and God alone remains. It has been tried to transfer earthly desires into heaven, by picturing all sorts of other persons and means of enjoyment there by the side of God. Mohammedans go farthest in this. But among Christians not a few regard heaven first of all in connection with their own dead, that there they might resume with them the former life. Thus even in heaven they imagine This a whole world again by the side of God. confuses the spirits. For he alone who in dying expects nothing in heaven but God, shall also find in the Fatherhouse, through and under God, that But this shall have no other holy fellowship. 604

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