To be near unto God - pagina 151

We

tion. are attacked. And everything real to us that on awakening in fright, it

difficult

to believe that the burglar

seems so

who

we

find threat-

ened our life does not stand by our bed. This impression of reality in what is imagined is still stronger and much more acute in a vision. One can almost say that visions are dreams which one dreams not in sleep upon the bed, but by day, while one is fully awake. And though this vision-life is far more common in the East than it is with us, yet it is a mistake to suppose that it does not exist among us. Meanwhile an appearance far excels in clearness and reality both

dream and vision. That we feel so little at home in this realm is only explained from the fact that science can not tell anything about these spiritua,! operations. It lacks sufficient, certain data for observation, and has not been able thus far to enter this mysterious domain. Before this world of real workings, it stands helpless. This encourages unbelieving science proudly to deny the reality of it, while believing science, confessing its inability to grasp it, gratefully accepts what has been revealed regarding it in Scripture. should be on our guard therefore lest we say that in connection with our knowledge of God the imaginative life has no message for us. The intellectual man who asserts this, contradicts Scripture all too boldly. The second commandment certainly binds us; that is to say, it forbids us to make an image of God, even in our

We

imagination. The imaginative life may operate in behalf of the knowledge of God, when God quickens it in us; as in the case of Isaiah's vision of his call, or in the appearances to Abraham. 147

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