Acts 17:27

That they should seek the Lord.

God the chief object of search

I. In what sense is it true that God is not far from any one of us? He is nigh--

1. In the creation around us.

2. In the sense of creaturely dependence and trust.

3. In that He is the Being towards whom the soul tends.

II. Is what sense does man feel after God?

1. In every search for an object of love there is a groping after God.

2. The intense longing after human fellowship is feeling after God.

3. So there is in the instinct of acquisition.

4. In the awful necessity there is in man for worship.

III. Any certainty that man will find Him?

1. Sin has separated both man and God.

2. Man desired not to retain God in His knowledge.

3. But God wants to find man.

Witness--

(1) Incarnation.

(2) Provision for the new birth.

IV. There is necessity lain upon every soul to find God. No matter how wise and cultured, if a man does not find God, he has missed the object of existence. (B. M. Palmer, D. D.)

The search for God and its satisfaction

I. God made man to seek Him.

1. Man is by nature religious. No one ever discovered light or invented hearing; man saw because he had eyes and heard because he had ears. And religion is as natural as either, because as native and essential. Hence man gets into religion as into other natural things, spontaneously. But to get out of it he has to reason himself into a strange position. No man is an atheist by nature, only by art; and an art that has to offer to nature ceaseless resistance. The atheist does not escape from God, only finds an ideal substitute for Him.

2. Religion being thus native to man, its being is as old as his, and--

3. As universal. In his multitudinous faiths he has been blindly fulfilling the Divine decree to seek God. From this point of view the religions of the world have a most touching import; they show men belated, stumbling darkly on, impelled by his Divine homesickness. The religions of man are like voices which say “Come over and help us.”

4. The nature that demands religion responds to it. We know how bad the world has been with its religions, but what would it have been without them? In spite of their falsities they have helped man to live his little life to the measure of his capacity. It and it alone has been able to lift man up to the mountain peak of the Spirit. But if religion is the point where man touches the highest, then it is that which finds, vivifies and directs the best that is in him. It is only as the nature which has come from God returns to Him that it thinks the wisest, does the noblest and becomes the best.

II. Religion is not only natural and necessary to man, but also to peoples. When a people has the noblest conception of God its spirit is in its sublimest and most heroic mood. An English ambassador sat at the table of Frederick the Great, with infidel wits who were making sport of religion. Suddenly the talk changed to war. Said the long-silent ambassador, “England would by the help of God stand by Prussia.” “Ah!” said Frederick, “I did not know you had an ally of that name.” “So please your Majesty,” was the swift retort, “He is the only ally to whom we do not send subsidies.” There stood the truth confessed. England’s best ally is God. A sceptical age is never a great or golden age; nor an infidel people a noble or creative people. For deed, politics, letters, art, religion is a necessity. In seeking for peoples who know not God, our philosophers have to go to cannibals.

III. Since religion is so necessary, the higher and purer the religion, the greater will be its power for good. History unfolds a wonderful tale. In India a few thousand Englishmen hold empire over more than two hundred millions of men. Wealth and culture came to the Hindoos ages before they came to us, yet how with that long start do they and we now respectively stand? Why has the Hindoo declined in power as he grew in multitude, while the late-born Saxon has “widened with the process of the suns”? Because the faith of the one grew like an iron band round his spirit full of consecrated falsities, while to the other came a strong yet gentle faith which breathed into him a purer spirit and nobler aims. So while the Hindoo feels as if held in the dread bonds of fate, the Saxon knows himself a son of God, a brother of man, sent to make earth happier and holier.

IV. By what religion can man best find God and realise the end of his being. Religions may be divided into two classes.

1. Artificial or fictitious religions--those of the individual imagination or reason; “ideal substitutes for religion.” To this class belong--

(1) The Religion of Nature, that product of the eighteenth century, which, however, was neither a religion nor a thing of nature. It was simply a speculative system so named that it might better offend Christianity. It never was professed anywhere--save by its makers, who were not in a state of nature, but were cultured with the culture of the Christian centuries. This attempt to give us Christianity without Christ failed utterly.

(2) The attempt of Strauss to build on our modern physicism a faith in which the universe became the only God. But man can only love the good and trust the right, and as these are the attributes of a person, Strauss failed.

(3) The Comtist apotheosis of man. But worship implies reverence. The thinker in his study, heir of a splendid inheritance, may well feel how magnificent are the gifts of humanity; but what has humanity done for the convict or the miserable victim of lust? The religion that man needs is not one that can delight the enlightened only, but one that can save the lost.

2. Real religions--those of history and fact. These may be divided into--

(1) The national religions of the past. All round us lie the ruins of the ancient faiths of Egypt, Phoenicia, Greece, Rome. They are all dead, to revive no more: supplanted by the universal and unifying faith of Christ.

(2) Turning from the dead past to the living present we have--

(a) Confucianism: but its prudential wisdom is without the enthusiasm of humanity. Look at it as realised in the people so quick-witted, yet so stationary, and then imagine what it would be were the world an immense Chinese Empire.

(b) Brahminism--the most awful tyranny of custom and caste, to which morality is unknown, and which can deify the basest as easily as the best. Brahminism universalised could only mean man depraved, and sent wearily to wander through time in search of eternal oblivion and peace.

(c) Buddhism, numerically the mightiest religion in the world: but in spite of its admirable ethics, a religion without God or hope, radically selfish, and as impotent as selfish.

(d) Islam, whose religion does not purify the home and therefore cannot regenerate the race.

(e) Judaism, which was great only as a prophetic religion, and whose life for the past eighteen centuries has been but a reminiscence.

3. From these imperfect faiths let us turn to that which has created the civilisation and noblest moral qualities of the Western world. Study it--

(1) As regards its ideal contents. Take its conception--

(a) Of God. Such a God as that of Christianity, an eternal Father and Sovereign, infinite personalised love and righteousness, has boundless promise of good and hope for man.

(b) Of man. The Christian doctrines of man’s origin, nature, privilege and destiny are elevating and ennobling as no others are.

(2) As regards its actual achievements. Look around; you confront a civilisation that in its high, generous, and humane elements was created by Christianity; that has, to all its ignoble and pernicious elements, in Christianity a merciless foe. It has changed the sinner into a saint, freed the slave, built the hospital and created in every generation a noble army of teachers, reformers, philanthropists. Conclusion: The religion of Christ is the one religion that man needs; it has come from God that it may bring to God. Here lies the secret of its preeminence. Others have risen out of man’s search for God; this out of God’s search for man. (Principal Fairbairn.)

Religious nature, and religious character

1. The expression “feel after” has reference to what they as God’s blind offspring were doing; and “find Him,” to what God, never afar off, wants to have them do. In one the deep longings of a nature made for God and religion is recognised; in the other a satisfied state of holy discovery and rest in God.

2. That religious nature and character should be distinguished is important in view of a great religious danger. It used to be the common doctrine that sinful man had no affinity for God, had only an anti-religious nature, and that nothing could be done for or by us till a new nature was given. Now piety is regarded as a sort of natural taste, and multitudes congratulate themselves on being better Christians than there used to be, on the ground of mere natural sentiment, because better reformers, etc. Where we shall be stranded in this shallowing process is too evident. Christianity will be coming to be more and more nearly a lost fact, and a vapid and soulless naturalism will take its place.

I. What is it to have a religious nature? Nothing more nor less than to be a man, a being made for God and religion.

1. We are so made as to want God, just as a child wants father and mother. Our nature may not consciously pine after God as an orphan for its lost parents; yet God is the necessary complement of all its feelings, hopes, satisfactions and endeavours. And it hungers none the less truly that it stays aloof from Him and tries to forget Him, even as the starving madman is none the less hungry that he refuses to eat.

2. This something in the soul, which makes God its principal and first want includes nearly its natural everything. It feels the beauty of God, and has the feeling of admiration towards Him. Reason gets no satisfaction till it culminates in Him. Even fear wants to come and hide in His bosom; and guilt, withering under His frown, would only frown upon Him if He were not exactly just.

3. Nor are these things less true under the perverting effects of depravity. Human nature as created is upright; as born or propagated a corrupted or damaged nature, but however much so it has the original Divine impress upon it. The religious nature stands a temple still for God, only scarred and blackened by the brimstone fires of evil.

4. Denying therefore that human nature is less really religious because depraved, it is not to be denied that there are times and moods in which it will be exasperated by the Divine perfections--i.e., when tormented by guilt and resolved on a course which God is known to oppose. But these are only moods. The religious nature has more constant than perverse moods, and is reaching after God in a certain way of natural desire all the while.

II. What it is to have a religious character.

1. Mere natural desire, want, sentiment Godward do not make it. What does it signify that the nature is feeling after God when the life is utterly against Him? If a man has a natural sense of honour does it make him an honourable man when he betrays every trust? Even a thief may have a good sentiment of justice, and be only the more consciously guilty because of it.

2. To answer the question two things must be understood beforehand.

(1) That religious character is more than and different from natural character. It is that which lies in choice, and for which we are thus responsible.

(2) That souls are made for God. They are to know Him and be conscious of Him.

3. Assuming these points it follows that man is never in religious character till he has found God, and that he will never find Him till his whole voluntary nature abandoning its own ends goes after Him and chimes in with His principles and ends. God can have no room to spread Himself in the soul when it is hugging itself.

III. How easily, and in how many ways, the workings of the merely religious nature may be confounded with religious character.

1. The admiration of God’s beauty what is it, some will say, but love? Even the soul’s deep throbs of want--what are they but its hungerings after righteousness? And so it comes to pass that religion is the same thing as mere natural sentiment; and the feeling after God substitutes the finding God. But it will not organise a church, or raise a mission, or instigate a prayer. It is exactly the religion of Herod, who heard John gladly and then murdered him. Pilate had the same religious nature, felt the greatness of Jesus, and ended in giving Him up. Felix had the same religion, and Agrippa, and Balaam: the world is full of it--sensibility to God and truth, coupled with a practical non-reception of all.

2. It results accordingly that there are always two kinds of religion; those which are the product of the religious sentiment more or less blind, and those which look to regeneration of character. The religion of the Athenians was of the former kind, as are all idolatries. What an appalling proof of the religious nature of feeling dimly after God, imagining that He is in the sun, the moon, snakes, beetles, etc. Look on these and see how man feels after God: does he therefore find Him? And what but hills of character are these idolatries?

3. Under the guise of Christianity too we may distinguish at least two kinds of religion corrupted by infusions of the same error. One is the religion of forms, where the soul is taken by them as a matter of taste; loves to play reverence under them; the other is a religion of sentiment fed by reason: feeling after God in the beautiful in nature, delighted with Christ’s lessons of natural virtue; and praising Him as the finest of all great men.

4. Now the true gospel is that which brings regenerative power, and creates the soul anew in God’s image. Any religion that has not this is, so far, a mock religion. The test question, therefore, is--have I found God in my religion? The life of God in the soul of man--that is religious character, and beside that there is none. (H. Bushnell, D. D.)

If haply they might feel after Him and find Him.--

Feeling after God

Hassell, in his “From Pole to Pole,” quotes the following:--“A company of baptized Greenlanders,” says Mr. Crantz, “one day expressed their astonishment that they had spent their lives in a state of such complete ignorance and thoughtlessness. One of the party immediately rose up and spoke as follows: ‘It is true we were ignorant heathens, and knew nothing of God and a Redeemer; for who could have informed us of their existence before you arrived? Yet I have often thought a rajak, with the darts belonging to it, does not exist of itself, but must be made with the trouble and skill of men’s hands; and he who does not understand the use of it easily spoils it. Now the least bird is composed with greater art than the best rajak, and no man can make a bird. Man is still more exquisitely made than all other animals. Who then has made him? He comes from his parents, and they came again from their parents. But whence came the first man? He must have grown out of the earth. But why do men not grow out of the earth nowadays? And from whence do the earth, sea, sun, and stars proceed? There must necessarily be someone who has created everything, who has always existed, and can have no end. He must be inconceivably more powerful and skilful than the wisest of men. He must also be very good, because everything that He has made is so useful and necessary for us. Did I but know Him, what love and respect should I feel for Him! But who has seen or conversed with Him? None of us men. Yet there be men, too, who know something about Him. With such I would willingly converse. As soon, therefore, as I heard from you of this Great Being, I believed you immediately and willingly, having for a length of time longed after such information.’”

The parable of the climbing plants

1. The first peculiarity of the climbing plant to which Mr. Darwin calls our attention is “the slow revolution, in a larger or smaller circle, of the upper extremities in search of a support,” and when in their revolutions they are brought into contact with some firm object, they immediately press against it and so twine round it. The plant cannot stand alone, and it begins to reach out after support just as soon as it begins to grow. Do we not witness in these movements an analogy of the outreachings of the soul after God? The soul knows that it cannot thrive alone, that it needs some Power stronger than itself to cling to; and it feels after it if haply it may find it. Blindly, in the dark, the minds of men grope after this Object of their faith. It is not the heathen alone who have this experience. You know, my friend, no matter how irreligious your life may have been, that your heart is often yearning for a good you have not got; that the sense of helplessness and dependence sometimes takes strong hold of you and forces from your heart the cry: “Oh that I knew where I might find Him and lay hold upon His strength!”

2. “On another plant,” says Mr. Darwin, “three pairs of tendrils were produced at the same time by three shoots, and all happened to he differently directed. I placed the pot in a box open only on one side and obliquely facing the light; in two days all six tendrils pointed with unerring truth to the darkest corner of the box, though to do this each had to bend in a different manner.” The tendril is seeking an object to cling to, the light coming freely from one side shows that no object is there, so the tendrils turn in the other direction; support is nearest on the side where the shadow is. But how does this prefigure our spiritual relation to God? God is light; true, but clouds and darkness are the habitation of His throne. When it is said that in Him is no darkness at all, the darkness is moral; there is in Him no deceit, insincerity, hatred. His character is light, but there are many things about His nature that are dark to us. And it is precisely His transcendent greatness that our trust lays hold upon. We want a Power to cling to whose greatness we cannot compass with our thought. A God whom we could comprehend we could not fully trust. And so it is that our faith turns away from the garish light of human wisdom toward the unfathomed depths of Deity. There is another resemblance here. The darkness is a symbol of God’s infinity, of the veiling of His nature from our sight. But it is only by the help of shadows that we see. Look directly at the sun and you can see nothing. It is when your back is turned to the sun that you see most clearly. Our faith, like the tendrils, turns not only toward the darkness that hides God’s infinity, but also toward the shadow because in that something of His nature is visible. The shadow not only conceals, it also discloses. You cannot conceive of absolute deity. Your mind is dazzled when you look God in the face, just as your eyes are dazzled when you look on the sun. And men have always found it necessary to learn what God is by looking toward the shadows and the types which He has given us. The Incarnation is God in the shadow. Our faith finds something here that we can take hold of and cling to.

3. “Knowing,” says Mr. Darwin, “that the tendrils avoided the light, I gave them a glass tube blackened within, and a well blackened zinc plate; but they soon recoiled from these objects with what I can only call disgust, and straightened themselves.” Here we have not a likeness, but a contrast. Full often the tendrils of our desire fasten upon that which defiles us; and the faith that ought to bind us fast to God’s righteousness and power is entwined about some grovelling superstition or some ensnaring sin.

4. “When a tendril,” says our teacher again, “has not succeeded in clasping a support, either through its own revolving movement or that of the shoot, or by turning toward any object that intercepts the light, it bends vertically downwards and then toward its own stem, which it seizes, together with the supporting stick, if there be one.” So when our spiritual instincts that reach out naturally after God and goodness do not lay hold on their normal support, they, too, are very apt to turn downward and inward, and to lay hold upon that self which it was their true function to bind to a firm support. And when this is done the affections are apt to be turned backward upon self; the man comes to believe only in himself and to worship himself, and the character that is developed is a most unlovely product of egotism and selfishness.

5. “If the tendril seizes nothing,” says this naturalist, “it soon withers away and drops off.” It is possible thus, by simple neglect, to destroy that part of our nature by which we take hold upon God. The extinction of the faith faculty is a possible calamity, and it is the direst. How can the climbing plant cling when the tendrils have withered and dropped off? It must thenceforth grovel in the dirt and be trodden under foot of men. And how can the soul lift itself up, when all the faculties by which it takes hold on God have fallen into decay?

6. Let us hear Mr. Darwin again: “Tendrils, soon after catching a support, grow much stronger and thicker and durable, and this shows how much their internal tissues must be changed. Occasionally it is the part which is wound round a support which chiefly becomes thicker and stronger.” Is not this, also, true in the higher realm? The instincts of the soul that feel after God are wonderfully strengthened when they find Him, and take hold of His power. Faith grows by exercise.

7. “The tendril strikes some object,” Mr. Darwin proceeds, “and firmly grasps it. In the course of some hours it contracts into a spire, dragging up the stem and forming an excellent spring. All movements now cease. By growth, the tissues soon become wonderfully strong and durable.” The very character and quality of the tendrils themselves are changed as they thus fasten upon their support, and perform the function to which nature has assigned them. And so it is with these spiritual faculties of ours by which we lay hold upon God. Our trust, instead of being a tender and fragile thing, grows firm and strong and holds us fast to the throne of God with a grasp that the shocks of change cannot break nor the storms of adversity loosen.

8. Once more, “The tendrils and internodes of Ampelopsis have little or no power of revolving; the tendrils are but little sensitive to contact; their hooked extremities cannot seize their objects; they will not even clasp a stick unless in extreme need of support; but they turn from the light to the dark, and, spreading out their branches in contact with any nearly flat surface, develop discs. These adhere by the secretion of some cement to a wall or even to a polished surface. The rapid development of these adherent discs is one of the most remarkable peculiarities possessed by any tendril.” I cannot help seeing in this an analogy of that phenomenon of the spiritual life which we so often witness, by which those natures which have but little power of comprehending religious truth--of reaching round it and getting hold of it by their understanding--do yet lay hold upon it in a way of their own, and hold fast to it very firmly too. There are Christians whose faith does not seem to need the leading strings of logic or theology, but mounts right up by its own sure-footed intuition. And it is a blessed thing that those to whom the paths of philosophy are thorny, and the steeps of speculation hard to climb, may thus, by a simple and direct confidence in the Christ Himself, who is to all who receive Him the Way and the Truth and the Life, ascend to the serene and tranquil heights of virtue. (Washington Gladden, D. D.)

Though He be not far from every one of us.--

Not far from any one of us

This is the leading thought which the gospel presses home upon us in various ways.

1. In His Son Jesus Christ God has drawn near to the world.

2. The Holy Spirit’s abode in the heart of the Christian brings God near.

3. But Paul speaks of God’s presence in nature.

I. Distinguish between the revelation or God through nature and in the Scriptures.

1. The revelation in nature is the elder and more direct, that in Scripture the later and more mediate.

2. God speaks to us by nature in an inarticulate; by Scripture in an articulate voice. “Nature is very beautiful, but she is so unresponsive.”

3. Nature speaks more to our feelings and imagination. Scripture more to our understanding.

II. Note some of the tokens in nature of God.

1. Its effect upon the senses as an evidence of Divine goodness.

2. Its effect upon the emotions giving exquisite pleasure and evoking gratitude towards the unseen worker.

3. Its effect upon the imagination producing the consciousness of the presence of a mind sympathetic with our own.

4. Its effect upon the reason revealing besides God immortality, and creating a sense of sin.

III. But nature can only suggest to us those truths which we need for our peace and salvation, for their full exhibition we must turn to the bible. (E. Johnson, M. A.)

The nearness of God

God is not far from every one of us.

I. In the nature and aspirations of the soul. “We are also His offspring.” “We ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver or stone graven by art and man’s device.” The art of the sculptor may grave an exact resemblance of the human body, but cannot make a similitude of the soul. And it is in the soul that our child likeness to God is found. He who is the Father of our spirits must be Himself a spirit. And that our spirits are endowed with reason, affection and will, suggests the conception of a supreme intelligence, affection. The same is true of our moral endowments. Our sense of right and wrong (Romans 2:15) points upward to a Being of absolute truth and holiness. And so also the desires of our souls are indications of a Being in whose love we may find absolute repose, and from whose resources all our spiritual wants may be supplied. The offspring bear the likeness of the universal Father. It is His witness, His imprint and the mark of our Divine paternity; “in which He is not far from every one of us.”

II. In his essential presence. He is omnipresent in His authority and influence, as a king in all his dominions. But His presence is not only influential, it is actual. “In Him we live and move and have our being.” He is God “above all and through all and in you all.” “He fills heaven and earth.” This universal and actual presence of God is, according to Scripture, the source of His perfect knowledge. There is no doubt a sublime mystery in this conception. But I can just as readily conceive of an infinite spirit filling immensity as of a finite spirit filling my own body. Nor is there any kinship between this Divine omnipresence and Pantheism. There is a worldwide difference between saying that God is everywhere, and saying that everything is part of God. The one degrades, the other exalts Him. The one is the foundation of all idolatry; the other lies at the base of all true worship and of all true religion. Let a man realise that he can never be alone, because the Father is with him, and the sublime thought will restrain him from sin, and just in proportion as he apprehends God’s wisdom, power and love, it will fill his heart with confidence and his lips with prayer, and undergird his whole being with Divine strength.

III. In the daily workings of his providence. He has “never left Himself without a witness” to His universal presence. His sun shining alike upon the evil and the good; all the revolutions and order of the material universe, and all the mysterious influences which hold human society together, bear a perpetual testimony to the presence and goodness of God. It is true that men do not always hear this testimony, and that when they hear it they often misinterpret and pervert it. It is easy for us to attribute all these things to the operation of second causes, and even to worship the things that are seen, and it is no less easy to attribute them all to the blind operation of natural law, and to exclude all thought of an intelligent lawgiver. But after all there is in the soul of man an intuitive perception of God and longing after Him. “For He has made of one blood,” etc., i.e., He so constitutes their common nature “that they should seek the Lord,” etc. And it is to this common religious nature which feels after God that the Scriptures constantly appeal.

IV. As Our Judge. The incompleteness and the disorders of the present life all point forward to retribution beyond the grave. Conscience warns us of it. Hope aspires to it. Fear shrinks back from it. And who shall determine that destiny for us but the God in whose hands our breath is and whose are all our ways? And how near judgment is! There is but a hand breath between us and death and the tremendous realities which it will reveal to us. The Judge standeth at the door. Our character will be determined, and our condition will be fixed by God in whom we live and move and have our being.

V. Is the preaching of the gospel and in all the means of grace and salvation. Here it is that revealed religion comes in to supplement and give efficacy to the teaching of natural religion. (H. J. Van Dyke D. D.)

God’s nearness to man

In relation to this truth our race may be divided into five classes--

1. Those who enjoy His presence, like the Psalmist, who said, “When I am awake I am still with Thee.”

2. Those who are stolidly insensible of His presence, like those described by Paul in Ephesians 2:12 as being “without God and without hope in the world.”

3. Those who are in horrific dread of His presence, like those of Job 21:14. “Depart!”--this is the unceasing cry of hell.

4. Those who are in earnest search of His presence (Job 23:3). This class comprehends all earnest inquirers.

5. Those who theoretically deny His presence (Job 22:12). But these different opinions and feelings do not alter, even to the shadow of a shade, the fact that God is near. The earth sweeps her majestic course around the sun, though all the priests of Rome deny the fact of her motion. God is--

I. Locally near (Jeremiah 23:24). An absolute existent has no relation to time or place. No metaphysics can explain, no finite thought comprehend, how He can be equally present in all places at the same time; but the denial of it involves philosophical contradictions, undeifies God, and contravenes the plainest and the sublimest teachings of inspiration. Then--

1. All men should live under a constant impression of His presence.

2. All attempts at secrecy in sin are to the last degree futile and absurd.

3. Death can effect no local separation of the soul from God.

II. Relationally near. He is the nearest relation we have. He is our Sovereign, overruling all things pertaining to us and our history; our Father, our Creator, who has made every particle of our being; our Proprietor, our Life. We cannot move a muscle, breathe a breath, think a thought, feel an emotion, without Him. “In Him we live and move, and have our being.” Two truths are inferable from His relational nearness.

1. That the necessity of the Atonement cannot be satisfactorily argued, to thinking minds, on the remote relationship of God as the Governor of man.

2. That the preservation of man’s perfect freedom of moral action is very wonderful. Whilst He moves us, we are morally free in moving. The how of this is the problem with which all thoughtful ages have wrestled hard, and to this hour it remains unsolved. I feel that I am free, and no argument can destroy this feeling.

III. Sympathetically near. How close is the heart of a mother to her babel But we are nearer to the heart of God than the babe to the heart of that mother. “Can a woman forget her sucking child,” etc. There are three things that show the nearness of His heart to us.

1. His distinguishing goodness in the creation of our existence. He has given us greater capacities for happiness than He has to any other creatures of which we have any knowledge. Sensuous, intellectual, social, and religious enjoyments are ours.

2. His wonderful forbearance in the preservation of our existence. We are rebels against His government as fallen creatures, yet how He forbears (Hosea 2:8).

3. His infinite mercy in the redemption of our existence. Here is the climax of love. “God so loved the world,” etc.

Conclusion: It is true that the heart-searching God is thus near us?

1. Then our indifference is more anomalous than the conduct of him who lies down to sleep upon the bosom of a burning volcano.

2. Then how preposterous and wicked is hypocrisy.

3. Then ceremonialists, why be so particular about the rituals, the places, and the times of worship? “God is a Spirit.” (D. Thomas, D. D.)

Realising God’s nearness

We are said to be, known to be, nearer to the sun in winter than in summer. But the increased swiftness of the earth’s motion in its orbit, together with the inclination of the axis in the same, prevents the increase of heat that otherwise would be inevitable. The surface of the earth on this account is so much less time exposed to the sun’s rays, and so obliquely that the heat is diminished by the nearness. Just so, the world may be nearer to God in position, by providential advantages, opportunities, and in speculative Divine knowledge, nearer, and yet farther from God’s love, less affected by His mercy, less warmed and quickened by His light. So it may be with an individual heart. One man may really be farther from God in position than another, and yet have a summer season in his soul; while the other, though nearer in point of every advantage and opportunity, may remain in the dead of winter. The climate of the soul does not depend so much upon the nearness and abundance of the rays, if it is flying swiftly through them, and obliquely turned from them, but upon the steadiness and constancy with which they are received by a heart turned directly towards them. Looking steadily to Christ is the condition of light and life. (W. Cheever.)

God’s nearness to man: effects of the consciousness of

Two men are walking upon the same plain, and each turns his face towards the sky. The light of the sun is shining upon both, but one sees no sun, while the other sees not only light, but the face of the sun, and his eye is overpowered with its glory. What makes the difference between the two? Not that one is in darkness, and the other in light; not that one is near the sun, and the other far away; not that one has an eye differently constituted from the other; but simply that there is a thin cloud between heaven and the one, and no cloud between it and the other. The latter can not only trace evidence that there is a sun, and that he is up, but has the presence of that sun before his face, and his glory filling his eye. So two men stand in relation to the universal and all-present God. One believes, infers, intellectually knows, that He is; ay, that He is present; yet he discerns Him not: it is a matter of inference, not of consciousness; and though believing that God is, and that He is present, he sins. Another spiritually discerns, feels His presence; and he will “stand in awe, and sin not.” (W. Arthur, M. A.)