like light condensed; like glory which may be felt. You see indeed no
form or shape; and yet your whole souls perceive with intuitive
clearness and certainty, the immediate, awe-inspiring presence of
Jehovah. You see no countenance; and yet you feel as if a countenance of
awful majesty, in which all the perfections of divinity are shown forth,
were beaming upon you wherever you turn. You see no eye; and yet a
piercing, heart-searching eye, an eye of omniscient purity, every glance
of which goes through your souls like a flash of lightning, seems to
look upon you from every point of surrounding space. You feel as if
enveloped in an atmosphere, or plunged in an ocean of existence,
intelligence, perfection and glory; an ocean of which your laboring
minds can take in only a drop; an ocean, the depth of which you cannot
fathom, and the breadth of which you can never fully explore. But while
you feel utterly unable to comprehend this infinite Being, your views of
him, so far as they extend, are perfectly clear and distinct. You have
the most vivid perceptions, the most deeply graven impressions, of an
infinite, eternal, spotless mind; in which the image of all things,
past, present and to come, are most harmoniously seen, arranged in the
most perfect order, and defined with the nicest accuracy; of a mind,
which wills with infinite ease, but whose volitions are attended by a
power omnipotent and irresistible, and which sows worlds, suns and
systems through the fields of space with far more facility, than the
husbandman scatters his seed upon the earth; of a mind, whence have
flowed all the streams, which ever watered any part of the universe with
life, intelligence, holiness, or happiness, and which is still fully
overflowing and inexhaustible. You perceive also, with equal clearness
and certainty, that this infinite, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient,
all-wise, all-creating mind is perfectly and essentially holy, a pure
flame of holiness; and that, as such, he regards sin with unutterable,
irreconcilable detestation and abhorrence. With a voice, which
reverberates through the wide expanse of his dominions, you hear him
saying, as the Sovereign and Legislator of the universe, Be ye holy; for
I, the Lord your God, am holy. And you see his throne surrounded, you
see heaven filled by those only, who perfectly obey this command. You
see thousands of thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand of
angels and archangels, pure, exalted, glorious intelligences, who
reflect his perfect image, burn like flames of fire with zeal for his
glory, and seem to be so many concentrations of wisdom, knowledge,
holiness and love; a fit retinue for the thrice holy Lord of hosts,
whose holiness and all-filling glory they unceasingly proclaim.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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