III.

MAN'S HIGHEST RELATIONS.

EVERY ONE NEAR TO GOD.

Do not spend your energies in trying to like going to church and to enjoy sermons, but in trying to fear God; to think, to govern, to restrain yourself. I will tell you my experience. I know that the things which make good so very hard to me are the lusts of the flesh, and a love of things seen and apparent, and a great carelessness about things unseen and real; that is, especially, God. I might name many more, but these will do. Now I say that to me religion consists; firstly, in subduing these passions, and learning to look upward as a man, not to follow my natural tendency and grow downward as a beast; this is not easy Fred, believe me; the only ease I take, the only ease I recommend to you, is to reject whatever pokes itself between me and these great objects, either professing to be objects in themselves, in which case they lie, or to be means by which I may attain my object. Oakfield.

Remember, then, Philothea, to make every day sundry retreats in the solitary closet of thy heart, whilst thou art outwardly busied in temporal affairs and conversations. This mental solitude cannot be hindered by the Company of such as are about thee; for they are not about thy heart but about thy Body; so that thy heart remaineth all alone in the presence of God alone. Withdraw then thy Spirit often into thy heart; where, sequestered from all men, thou may'st, heart to heart, treat the business of thy Soul with God. De Sales.

"I must walk with God. In some way or other, whatever be my character or profession, I must acquire the holy habit of connecting every thing that passes in my house and affairs, with God." This is the language of a real Christian.

The Christian wants to know no new thing, but to have his heart elevated more above the world by secluding himself from it as much as his duties will allow, that religion may effect this its great end by bringing its sublime hopes and prospects into more steady action on the mind.

But I am restrained from dogmatizing on the subject of religious retirement by reflecting on the sort of religion which seems in fact best suited to human nature itself; and especially to human nature harassed, worried, loaded, and urged as it is in a great city.

I am restrained also by another consideration. Difference of character seems to stamp a holy variety on the

operation of religious principle. Some men live in a spirit of prayer, who are scarcely able to fix themselves steadily to the solemn act of prayer. Cecil.

God is manifested in his Providences; and those who are the subjects of pure love, are continually brought into contact, and into union with him, in connection with his providences. God is there, and those who meet him at all, must meet him there. And we meet him there by recognizing him there; and by recognizing him there in a proper temper of mind. And this pure love is always ready and delighted to do.

The providences of God may even be said to be the food, the nourishment, on which the inward experience feeds itself and lives. Thomas C. Upham.

The true place of God, when we speak of God's place anywhere out of the heart, is in his Providences. He holds his kingdom in the heart, and he reigns there, in connection with his providences. These divine providences are in themselves, and emphatically so, the time of times and the place of places for devotion. I feared nothing; that is to say, I feared nothing, considered in its ultimate results and relations, because my strong faith placed God at the head of all perplexities and all Oftentimes I suffered much. But interiorly, in the centre of the soul, if I may so express it, there was divine and supreme peace. The lower soul, or the soul considered in its connection with the objects im

events.

mediately around it, might at times be troubled and afflicted; but the higher or central soul, or the soul considered in its relation to God and the divine will, was entirely calm, trustful, and happy.

God showed me that it is not actions, in themselves considered, which please him, but the inward spirit with which they are done; and especially the constant ready obedience to every discovery of his will, even in the minutest things, and with such a suppleness or flexibility of mind as not to adhere to anything, but to turn and move in any and every direction where he shall call. This disposition of mind, so exceedingly valuable, God was pleased to give me. My soul seemed to me to be like a leaf or a feather, which the wind moves in any way that it pleases. Mme. Guyon.

Few are the souls that give themselves up faithfully to God in the order of his providence, as it is developed moment by moment. They have too much of a will of their own, their desires run out too strongly in various directions, to accept readily and fully that daily bread, whatever it may be, which God's providence now presents. Sometimes persons get out of the position of the present moment, which I may properly call the divine moment, by their too earnest desires to do good. And going out of the present moment, they may be said in a certain sense to go out of God, whose habitation in time, considered relatively to the human perception, is not in the past which is gone, nor in the future which does not

exist, but in the divine Now. Around this heaven constructed centre, all commands and all promises, and all effusions of grace, and all the helping visits of unseen angels cluster together. He who does not correctly estimate the present moment, in the calmness of inward recollection, will be likely to find himself out of God's order, and thus fall into sin. Through a false estimate in one direction, his desires and purposes may fall below the line of duty; and by a false estimate in another direction, taking into view relations and interests which are not appropriate to the present time, the same desires and purposes may become so intense, so exaggerated, so wayward, that sin there also lies at the door. If men rightly knew and appreciated this secret, harmonizing with whatever is, viewed in its divine relations, no voice of murmur would be heard in the heart, and no cloud of rebellion would darken on their brow.

Upham's Life of Madame Guyon.

The grace of the present time, be it more or less, will not answer the claims of any future time. Our feelings, in order to be right feelings, must correspond to the facts and events of the present hour, the present moment. But every succeeding moment, bearing on its bosom new events and new facts, has a character of its own; and it demands a new life, a new experience corresponding to it. In order, therefore, to live as a holy person ought to live, we must regard the claims of the smallest periods of time, as they pass before us; and must act in accordance with