To be near unto God - pagina 362

be for this faithful Father, who is not moved to ask in despair, whether constant, inward, tender, ever-in-grace increasing piety has not become impossible for us? This question can only in part be answered in the affirmative. Sin works effects which enervate and weaken, so that even in the most godly circles true religion is most of the time at low rare moments of spiritual to the fullness of flood-tide. disheartening. God looks down upon

ebb, and only tension does it

The

result

is

in

rise

world morning by morning and evening by evening, and continues his Fatherly care over his fourteen hundred million of children of men, but only here and there does the psalm of worship and pure love arise before him from a tender, devout heart. But age upon age God continues in everlasting love to entice us by his Word, to call us and to draw us to this full, true and unshakable religion, which finds its terse expression in the supreme command that we shall cleave unto the Lord our God (Deut. 30:20). It is the image of the child at mother's breast, who literally cleaves to her, and hangs on her, fosters himself in the warmth this

of the mother-life, feeds himself at the fountain of mother's breast, and cries when he feels him-

And this supreme separated from mother. that we must depend on God, and cleave to him, protests in the name of the Triune God against all mechanical religion, and against every endeavor to reduce it to mere formalism. It does not exclude thinking on God, but declares that intellectual activity with God is not religion. It includes the confession of God, but denies the

self

command,

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