To be near unto God - pagina 101

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''IMMANUEL." is quite so much of an obstacle in the communion with God as the saying of Jesus to the Samaritan woman at Sychar: "God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24). Our representations and thoughts begin with what we see and hear, smell and taste, but we have no

Nothing

way

of

hold on things that can not be seen and handled. If in spite of this

we want

to talk of

them and

imagine what they are like, we can but compare things unseen with things seen. We know that we have a soul, but no one has ever seen it. The question where in our person the soul dwells can only approximately be answered. Such is the case with the spirit-world and the souls of the departed. Good angels and bad alike are without a body. They have neither form nor appearance by which they can be observed. Whether _an angel needs space, no one knows. Whether in illness our sick-chamber can hold a thousand angels or not, no one can tell. The difficulty only lifts itself when they receive forms in which to appear to us. As pure spirits, angels are not discerned. The same

who have fallen asleep in Jesus. The dead whose bodies are in the grave continue applies to those

in a purely spiritual state, until the

coming of the Meanwhile we can form no idea regarding them. The same difficulty presents itself when we try to lift up our heart 'to God. God does not Lord.

reveal himself to us in a visible form. He is He is Spirit and the Father of

invisible because

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.

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