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Thoughts chiefly designed as preparative or persuasive to private devotion
Thoughts chiefly designed as preparative or persuasive to private devotion Author:John Sheppard Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: heavens cannot contain Thee." That Divine Teacher, who so often reminds us of the mercies of our " Father which is in heaven," enjoins us to pray in the solitude... more » of the closet to our " Father who seeth in secret." No Divine attribute is more readily or more necessarily admitted by us, whether we consult reason or Scripture, than this of omnipresence; but is it at the same time realised (we will not say in a degree at all proportioned to its importance), but even in an equal degree with the other perfections which we ascribe to the Deity ? From the slight impression which it frequently makes, one would infer that it cannot be so. For what thought can be calculated to strike the mind more deeply and powerfully, than that of an ever- present God ? And without a lively conviction of this truth, how greatly the force of the whole revelation concerning the Divine character is neutralised! We may acknowledge the abstract justice, purity, and compassion of Jehovah, but unless we really apprehend His omnipresence, there can be no imperative check to sin, nor any substantial confidence in devotion. If in the hour of sinful indulgence, or cold meditation, or listless worship, we could awake from our spiritual slumber, as Jacob awoke from his bodily sleep at Bethel, into the strong sense of this momentous fact,— should we not exclaim with as much awe as he did, " Surely Jehovah is in this place, and I knew it not! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!" As yet, indeed, we are not summoned into the central apartment of His palace, who is the " blessed and only Potentate :"—we are not yet in the Holy of holies, the inner court of the temple of God above :—but His palace, His temple, is the universe; the worlds are our " Father's house." We are in the ante-r...« less