In that great ocean of the divine love we live and move and have our
being, floating in it like some sea flower which spreads its filmy
beauty and waves its long tresses in the depths of mid-ocean. The
sound of its waters is ever in our ears, and above, beneath, around
us, its mighty currents run evermore. We need not cower before the
fixed gaze of some stony god, looking on us unmoved like those
Egyptian deities that sit pitiless with idle hands on their laps, and
wide-open lidless eyes gazing out across the sands. We need not fear
the Omnipresence of Love, nor the Omniscience which knows us
altogether, and loves us even as it knows. Rather we shall be glad
that we are ever in His Presence, and desire, as the height of all
felicity and the power for all goodness, to walk all the day long in
the light of His countenance, till the day come when we shall receive
the crown of our perfecting in that we shall be 'ever with the Lord.'
The recognition of this triumphant sovereignty of love over all these
real and supposed antagonists makes us, too, lords over them, and
delivers us from the temptations which some of them present us to
separate ourselves from the love of God. They all become our servants
and helpers, uniting us to that love. So we are set free from the
dread of death and from the distractions incident to life. So we are
delivered from superstitious dread of an unseen world, and from
craven fear of men. So we are emancipated from absorption in the
present and from careful thought for the future. So we are at home
everywhere, and every corner of the universe is to us one of the many
mansions of our Father's house. 'All things are yours, ... and ye are
Christ's; and Christ is God's.'
I do not forget the closing words of this great text. I have not
ventured to include them in our present subject, because they would
have introduced another wide region of thought to be laid down on our
already too narrow canvas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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