With God in the World: A Series of PapersBrent, Charles Henry
Religion
With God in the World: A Series of Papers
Brent, Charles Henry
Christianity
And the life of prayer works in a circle. The devotions of the morning
give tone to those which come at noon and night, while the night prayers
in turn determine the quality of the morrow's. Men usually wake in the
temper of mind in which they went to sleep. It is all-important to gain
a clear vision of God as the last conscious act before going to rest.
The founder of French socialism was awakened every morning by a valet
who said: "Remember, Monsieur le Comte, that you have great things to
do." But it is not men who aspire only or chiefly in the morning that
achieve great things, but rather those who aspire at night. What is of
nature in the morning is of grace at night. The vision that comes easily
at the beginning of the unused stretch of a new day is harder to see
when disappointment and failure have clouded the eye of hope; but it
means more. The men who attain the highlands of the spiritual life never
"sleep with the wings of aspiration furled."
Of course God is always with us, always looking at us with searching
yet loving scrutiny. It would be impossible for us to be more completely
in His presence than we are; for in Him "we live, and move, and have our
being." But for the most part our lives are spent without much conscious
recognition of the fact. He will be no more present at the last day when
we stand before His throne than He is now. The only difference will be
that then we shall see Him as He sees us; we shall be so wholly absorbed
by that consciousness that there will be room for no other consideration
as, God grant, there will be no other desire. But before that moment
comes men must practise looking into His face by faith so that it will
not be unfamiliar as the face of a stranger when the last veil is swept
aside.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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