It is the grand answer of our religion, to say that, whatever happens, God remains to you. This God, moreover, is not a distant God, not merely the Maker of the heavens and the earth, but your God, the God of your inmost soul, the God of your conscience, the God whose eye sees into your hearts, and Whose hand has been with you from your childhood, to help you, to guide you, and to inspire you with all the thoughts of truth, of manliness, of faithfulness, of purity, which you have felt working in you. Whenever the outward clothing of our souls drops off from us, whether in the death of old age, or the death of sickness, or the death of the battlefield, our souls will certainly be in the immediate presence of One Supreme Reality; and that is the God with Whom, in our conscience, our souls have been in contact day by day, and night by night, throughout our lives. That is why we come to worship Him here, that is why we pray to Him day by day, and I hope hour by hour, and minute by minute. That is why we should say to Him like the Psalmist “O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.” Nothing else is of permanent and everlasting consequence to us, but our relation to Him, and our union with Him—His relation to us, and His love of us. While everything is shaking around us, while the kingdoms are moved, and lives seem thrown away as things of small value, let us remember that one great Living Being remains to all of us, to those whose lives are lost on earth, and to those who remain, and that is the Eternal God, the Giver of all truth, and righteousness and love; and the greater the strain and stress of life and death, the more may we confidently exclaim, in the tumult of the battlefield as much as in the peace of this sanctuary, “O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.”
But when and where are you to seek Him? The question has been answered in the truths of which I have reminded you. Seek Him in obedience to that Voice of His, which you hear in your consciences, seek Him in obedience to those principles of right, as against wrong, which He has implanted in you, and which His Spirit is continually reviving in you; seek Him in trying, day by day, to do His Will as He has revealed it to you in His word, especially as He has revealed it to you in the life and teaching of His Own Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Seek Him in those sacraments and ordinances of His Church which he has instituted for our comfort. If you obey our Lord Jesus Christ, and try to follow His life, His Spirit will speak to you continually in your consciences, will help you to know your duty and to do it, and you will be saying in practice what you say in words: “O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.” Our Lord has told you that if you are true hearted in trying to do this, He will forgive you your failures and weaknesses, that He has died to make atonement for them, that He will take you by the hand as you pass from this life to the next, and will be your advocate and sponsor before the face of the righteous and Almighty God. Let us bring this spirit into all we do and all we think, and we shall then be able to join in the succeeding words of this Psalm, “Have I not remembered Thee in my bed: and thought upon Thee when I was waking? Because Thou hast been my helper: therefore under the shadow of Thy wings will I rejoice. My soul hangeth upon Thee: Thy right hand hath upholden me.” May God grant us all this faith and this eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Hunt, Barnard & Co., Ltd., Printers, London and Aylesbury.
WORKS BY HENRY WACE, D.D.,
Dean of Canterbury.
SOME QUESTIONS OF THE DAY.
BIBLICAL, NATIONAL and ECCLESIASTICAL. First Series, cheaper re-issue. Demy 8vo., Cloth, Gilt, 2/- net.
SOME QUESTIONS OF THE DAY.
NATIONAL, ECCLESIASTICAL and RELIGIOUS. Second Series. Demy 8vo., Cloth, Gilt, 3/6 net.