To be near unto God - pagina 387

our moral existence as man is constantly under the supervision of this selfsame God, who judges us at the bar of our own conscience, as often as we go contrary to his holy will. And from these two there arises graduallj^ the still higher sense, that "God's oversight of our spirit" bears not only an admonishing and a judicial character, but also that of faithful care, which we learn to adore in our lot in life. The soul perceives that God not merely spies our inner existence in order to estimate it, but that he is continually active in it, that he constantly cultivates it, and ceaselessly devotes his care to it. The apostle delineates this in the image of an husbandman who guards the crops that grow in the field which he has cultivated and sown. Thus our soul is as a garden of the Lord, in which his plantings germinate and bloom, which he fosters by his sun, which he waters with his dew, which he weeds and protects, and in which he causes fruit to ripen.

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Good and evil train the soul ourselves. influences affect us equally from the world of men and spirits. But the constant activity of God in the soul bears a far more significant character. Though we do not observe it, God always has access to our hearts. Even in our sleep he comes in order to operate upon our inner life. prepares in us the powers which we presently He disposes and orders in us the shall need. powers which must be applied to a given end. He is even now busy in preparing in us what is to show itself in us ten or more years after. In the inner hfe of the soul nothing escapes him; sensations, tendencies, rising feelings, everything

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