My Christian brethren, if the crowd of difficulties which stand between your souls and God succeed in keeping you away, all is lost. Right into the Presence you must force your way, with no concealment, baring the soul with all its ailments before Him, asking, not the arrest of the consequences of sin, but the cleansing of the conscience "from dead works to serve the living God," so that if you must suffer, you will suffer as a forgiven man.
Seekest thou a place at my right hand? Nay, I give thee a more wondrous dignity. "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne."
Thou wilt draw nigh!
Father—it is no dream that Thou art near—
No dream that, in my sin and misery,
I may look up to Thee,—
May hide beneath the shadow of Thy wings,
From all the restlessness of outward things,
And from my own heart's self-accusing fears—
For Thou art nigh.
O, to have the soul bathed all day long in this thought, "as the pebble in the willow brook" until the words come like the tears, because the heart is full, and we cannot help it; to feel, in the darkest hour, that there is an unseen Spectator whose eyes rest on us like morning on the flowers; and that in the severest sorrow, we can sink into a presence full of love and sympathy, deeper than ever breathed from earth or sky or loving hearts—a presence in which all fears and anxieties melt away as ice-crystals in the warm ocean. This is heaven.
