Dear brethren, the underlying truth is this--God is the only food of a
man's soul. You pick up the skeleton of a bird upon a moor; and if you
know anything about osteology--the science of bones--you will see, in
the very make of its breast-bone and its wing-bones, the declaration
that its destiny was to soar into the blue. You pick up the skeleton of
a fish lying on the beach, and you will see in its very form and
characteristics that its destiny is to expatiate in the depths of the
sea. And, written on you, as distinctly as flight on the bird, or
swimming on the fish, is this, that you are meant, by your very make,
to soar up into the heights of the glory of God, and to plunge deep
into the abysses of His infinite love and wisdom. Man is made for God.
'Whose image and superscription hath it?' said Christ. The coin belongs
to the king whose head and titles are displayed upon it; and on your
heart, friend, though a usurper has tried to recoin the piece, and put
his own foul image on the top of the original one, is stamped deep that
you belong to the King of kings, to God Himself.
For what does our heart want? A perfect, changeless, all-powerful love.
And what does our mind want? Reliable, guiding, inexhaustible, and yet
accessible truth. And what does our will want? Commandments which have
an authoritative ring in their very utterance, and which will serve for
infallible guides for our lives. And what do our weak, sinful natures
want? Something that shall free our consciences, and shall deliver us
from the burden of our transgressions, and shall calm our fears, and
shall quicken and warrant our lofty hopes. And what do men whose
destiny is to live for ever want but something that shall go with them
through all changes of condition, and, like a light in the midst of the
darkest tunnel, shall burn in the passage between this and the other
world, and shall never be taken away from them? We want a Person to be
everything to us. No accumulation of things will satisfy a man. And we
want all our treasures to be in one Person, and we need that that
Person shall live as long as we live, and as long as we need shall be
sufficient to supply us. And all this is only the spelling in many
letters of the one name--God. That is what we want, that, and nothing
less.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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