Reader, do you know what it is thus to exult in God as a _living God_? Not to think of Him as some mysterious Essence, who, by an Almighty fiat, impressed on matter certain general laws, and, retiring into the solitude of His own being, left these to work out their own processes. But is there joy to you in the thought of God ever nigh, compassing your path and your lying down? Do you know of ONE, brighter than the brightest radiance of the visible sun, visiting your chamber with the first waking beam of the morning; an eye of infinite tenderness and compassion following you throughout the day; a hand of infinite love guiding you, shielding you from danger, and guarding you from temptation--the "Keeper of Israel," who "neither slumbers nor sleeps?"
And if gladdening it be, at all times, to hear the footsteps of this living God, more especially gladdening is it, as, with the Exile-King of Israel, in the season of trial, to think of Him and to own Him, in the midst of mysterious dealings, as One who personally loves you, and who chastises you _because_ He loves you. The world, in their cold vocabulary, in the hour of adversity, speak of _Providence_, "the wil of _Providence_," "the strokes of _Providence_." PROVIDENCE! What is that? Why dethrone a living God from the sovereignty of His own world? Why substitute a cold, death-like abstraction in place of a living One, an acting One, a controlling One, and (to as many as He loves) a rebuking One and a chastening One? Why forbid the angel of bereavement to drop from his wings the balmy fragrance, "Thy Father hath done it?" How it would take the sting from many a goading trial thus to see, as Job did, nothing but the hand of God--to see that hand behind the gleaming swords of the Sabeans, the flash of the lightning, and the wings of the whirlwind--and to say like David, on the occasion of his mournful march to these very wilds of Gilead, "_I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because_ THOU _didst it_." (Psalm xxxix. 9.)
The thought of a living God forms the happiness of Heaven. It is the joy of Angels. It forms the essence and bliss of glorified Saints. The redeemed multitude, while on earth, "_thirsted_" for the living God, but they had then only some feeble foretastes of His presence. They sipped only some tiny rills flowing from the Everlasting Fountain; now they have reached the living spring; and the long-drawn sigh of the earthly valley is answered--"When shall we come and _appear before God_?"
