To be near unto God - pagina 85

serve to portray what it is "to be near unto God," to make it, as it were, visible to our eyes and perceptible to our feelings, is entirely in keeping with the order of creation. It corresponds to the divinely appointed state of things. It appeals to us as altogether natural. But this symbolism must not be taken too literally. We must be on our guard lest sickly mysticism interprets holy mysteries to us in a material

way. God is Spirit. Every effort to be in touch with him, except in a purely spiritual way, avenges itself. For it leads either to idolatry which makes an image of God from stone or precious metal, or

it

loses itself in pantheistic

mud, which intermingles

spirit and matter, and ends in sensual excesses, first defiling and then killing what spiritually began.

But however necessary it is to maintain the spirituality of our fellowship with God, it will not do to take spirituality to mean unreality. This, alas, is a common mistake and accounts for much spiritual barrenness. For then we only see what is before our eyes; nature round about us; the blue heavens above us; our body with

its

several parts; all which

we

consider

because they have form, consist of matter, are tangible and have actual existence. Apart

real,

and distinguished from

what we picture

this is to ourselves,

what we think, what we study

out in our minds, what we take as the abstract world of thought. We interpret all this to be an unreal world, the center of which is God. An infinite Being who exists merely in our thought, in our mind, in our idea, with whom there is no fellowship except along the avenue of thought. But this provides no mysticism for the heart; no 77

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