To be near unto God - pagina 31

in a childlike way, and with childlike intimacy to have fellowship with him. Let it be distinctly understood that this rests on sober reality. That this is not mere semblance but actual fact, That since God created us after his image. thus, in the face of a broad difference. Divine reality is expressed in the human. And that,

when the Word became flesh, the fact that the Son of God became Man, is directly connected with our creation after God's image.

Would we undo all this, and create a distance between us and God which would exclude all personal fellowship, by putting a whole system of abstract ideas about the immensities of God the place of this heart-to-heart intimacy which can not be cultivated with God except in a human way? Let us leave this to philosophers who do not pray, and to theologians dryas-dust who are not children of their Father in heaven. But as for us, let us love God with a in

devotion which can only express itself in childwith him. Moreover, in the practice of prayer we frequently observe that experience confirms the word of the Psalmist. At one time the heavens are open to us, and as we pray, angels descend and ascend to bring our petitions to the throne of grace. While at other times our prayers are faint, our words bound back as it were upon ourselves and every door of approach to God is closed up against us. At one time there will be an immediate hearing and a direct answering, and at another time we feel ourselves imlike fellowship

mured and thrown back upon

ourselves, and it no living God to hear us. And when the turn of the tide sets in, and we perceive that the gate of heaven reopens, and

seems that there

is

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