To be near unto God - pagina 173

in his child, that he has his throne in the inmost recess of the child's soul, and thus has fellowship with him, not from afar, but in the sanctuary of his own person. There God worketh upon us by day and by night, even when we are He is our Sculptor, who* not conscious of it. carves in us the image of himself, and makes us more and more to resemble his own Being. Thus he transforms us, and also the willing in us. It is God who worketh in us, not only our emotions, but also our willing, by transforming "the self

that wills."

When we understand it this way, it is plain that there is a constant holy entering in of God's will into our will, thanks to this purifying and refining and transposing of our inmost selves. This work goes on in us mostly unobserved and unperceived, so tenderly and gently does God's hand direct the task. But not always just like this. Sometimes the sculptor must forcibly strike off a piece from the marble, so that it crashes and sphnters as it falls. These are our times of violent inward struggles, when everything within us quakes with the reverberations of moral shocks. But whether it be gentle or whether it be violent, And the it is ever the process of sculpturing. sculptor works not after a model that stands before him, but is himself the model. He forms us after his own image. This Divine labor in the realm of our will brings us ever into closer resemblance to the image of God. And to be more and more transformed after the image of God only means that God's will ever more deeply enters into om- will, which in turn means an ever better understand169

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