To be near unto God - pagina 590

what criticism this demands at and what duty this lays upon them.

selves

their hands,

They maintain

their stand. They do this by grace that is within, and by the spiritual impulse that operates in them. Though they should have to die for Jesus, they can not forsake his Cross. With ties that can not be loosed the Cross lies bound on their heart. They feel

the

themselves as in an oasis, around which as far as can see grins the grey spiritual barrenness of the desert. In this oasis they rejoice. There they drink from the fountain of life and enjoy the bread, and shade of palm trees. They make their children enjoy it with them. They give thanks, they glory, they jubilate. But nothing in them makes them boast of it. God Almighty has brought them to this oasis. Not because of any good there was in them. They know themselves in no particular better than anyone else. Each day, rather, they dress again the bleeding wound of their own heart. It is grace and nothing but grace. Grace, which in its entirety, never was anything but grace. , e.ve

But the desert, round about this oasis, still concerns them. The sand waves from it fly upward.

The hot wind

travels ihrough

it.

And

they

who

this desert, are they not in many instances their fellow countr5-men3 not infrequently of their own family? Sometimes their own friends. And apart from this, what talent, what civic virtue, what noble sense glistens among

wander

in

these wanderers. Much that is low, much that is that is rough, it is true. Such are the masses, but all are not such. And praj'er in

common, much

586

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