And so it seems to me that our need to-day is to recapture our sense of the Holiness of God and to learn afresh to. fear Him. There was a time, not so long ago, when men feared God. They feared Him because they thought of Him as an all-seeing God, a God who saw how they failed to obey, Him and who, in anger, would punish them, But we are not afraid of an angry God now. We do not believe that the God, who was revealed by Jesus, is a God, who is capable of venting his anger on us. God is no longer a tyrant, He is rather a Father, a God-of Love, who is willing to forgive.
But the love of God is real love, and not that sentimental caricature of love that we sometimes seem to imagine it to be. If we really understand the love of God, we shall learn to fear His' love much more than we should ever fear His anger, It is a comparatively simple thing to face the anger of a man. By being angry, he has broken down his own defences. We know what to expect, and it is soon over. But to face a friend, who loves us, and whom we have wronged is a far more fearful thing. To his presence and feel our shame is a far greater punishment, than ever the anger of man can inflict, The Beatifie Vision Our Roman Catholic friends be lieve in what they call the Beatific Vision. They believe that immedi= ately after death the soul passes into the presence of Christ, That we see Him in all His. sin and purity, and that having seen, We cannot bear the vision. To stand before Him and realize alt the love that we have wronged, all the purity that we have failed td attain, and all the holiness that we have failed even to understand, more than we can bear, We cane not stand in that presence, And yet we would give everything to bbe worthy to be there. Our Heaven, our all, is centred in that present but in' our shame we cannot stay there. And thus the soul is will ing to go through an eternity of Jy Purgatory to purify itself and be worthy to live in that presence.
We may not hold the same views about the Life after death, but every time we pray we come into the presence of God. We stand in the presence of Him who is all pur all Holy. We stand before the who so loved, that He gave His life for us, and can we stand there une ashamed? Can we possibly pray, unless we come as the pentient publican, and not daring to lift our exes to Heaven, smite on our breast and say God be merciful to me inner?"
This is the vision vision of thie Holiness of God. Tt will make us ashamed; it will make us fear; but, it will make us new creatures, for we shall never again be satisfied with ourselves, nothing will be comparable with the glory of being worthy to stand in the pre. sence of the Almighty.
Life will have a new meaning we shall be born again, and all our being' will be filled with a sense of the Holiness of God. Our pride will be gone, we shall never again think We are' worthy to be called the children of God, but knowing that fe has claimed us as His own, humbly rededicate our lives to Him, and press forward to the of our high calling of God in Jesus Christi"
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.