And what shall be said to those who know nothing of this thirst for God,--to whom all that is here written is but as an idle tale? You may pant not for Him. You may have no spiritual thirst for Him--no longing for His presence--no aspiration after His likeness. But still He is to you, as to the believer, a LIVING God. Yes--scorner of His mercy! ignore the truth as you may, the God to whom you are responsible,--the God with whom you will yet have "to do," _that_ God LIVES! His eye is upon you--His book is open--His pen is writing--the indelible page is filling! You may see no trace of His footstep. You may hear no tones of His voice. His very mercy and forbearance may be misconstrued by you, as if it indicated on His part indifference to His word and forgetfulness of your sin. You may lull yourselves into the atheist dream, that the world is governed by blind chance and fate, that His heaven and His hell are the forged names and nullities of credulity and superstition. As you see the eternal monuments of His power and glory on rock and mountain, you may affect to see in these only the dead hieroglyphics of the past--the obsolete tool-marks of the God of primeval chaos, who welded into shape the formless mass, but having done so, left it alone. The scaffolding is removed, the Architect has gone to uprear other worlds, and abandoned the completed globe to the control of universal laws! Nay--GOD LIVES! "He is not far from any one of us." He is no Baal divinity, "asleep or taking a journey." The volume of every heart is laid open to the eye of the great Heart-searcher, and vainly do you seek to elude His scrutiny. Terrible thought! this _living_ God _against_ you! _You_ living, and content to live His enemy! rushing against the bosses of His buckler! and if you were to die, it would be in the attitude of one _fighting against God_! No longer scorn His grace or reject His warnings. He is living; but, blessed be His name, He is living and waiting to be gracious! You may be as stranded vessels on the sands of despair; but the tide of His ocean-love is able to set you floating on the waters. Repair, without delay, to His mercy-seat. Cast yourselves on His free forgiveness. Every attribute of His nature which you have now armed against you, is stretching out its hand of welcome and entreaty. Each is like a branch of the tree of life, inviting you to repose under its shadow. Each is a rill from the everlasting fountain, inviting you to drink of the unfailing stream. See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. He who unlocked that fountain is even now standing by it, and saying, as He contrasts it with all earth's polluted cisterns, "_Whosoever drinketh of_ THIS _water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life_." IV. The Taunt.