PRACTISING THE PRESENCE OF GOD Near, so very near to God, For in the person of His Son I am as near as He. PAGET, Hymn. Chapter XX PRACTISING THE PRESENCE OF GOD WE In which Attention is directed to the most difficult of Arts E are hearing much nowadays about "the practise of the presence of God." The phrase is not new. It appears to have originated with one Nicholas of Lorraine, who, about two hundred years ago, wrote a little book entitled, "The Practise of the Presence." It was an epoch-making book, and this is the more remarkable since its author was no philosopher, nor even a moderately learned man, but a mere pastry-cook in one of the mansions of his time. He was, however, a mystic, who dreamed dreams and saw visions to some effect. He knew what it was, even as he stood among the rattling pans and kettles of that kitchen in Lorraine, to live as if his life were hidden with Christ in God. But words are nothing. What is the secret of the presence? As for God, in these days everybody believes in some sort of a God, but whether or not that belief is true to what some consider its root-meaning, by-lifian-i.e., something to live by-that is another matter. There are some people who believe in an impersonal power, which they call God. They define it, and "it" is the proper pronoun to use in this connection, as Law, Life, a "Something not ourselves that makes for Righteousness," or the All-pervading Force of the Universe. But to the average man there is no practical advantage in being held in the resistless grip of a machine that has no eyes to see, no heart to pity, and no hands to help; and there would be a grim touch of humor in the suggestion that anybody should "practise the presence" of it. There are others who talk about an "unknowable" God. Personal He may be, tho as agnostics they are unable to say so. In any case He is afar off. The Greeks sought Him vainly, set up a Pantheon of idols along the way, and ended their quest by erecting an altar "To an unknown God." But this again is practically nothing to us, no more than is the atmosphere of Mars. There may be such a thing, but we are not definitely sure, and in any event we can not breathe it. There are others, still, who believe in an intermittent God; that is, one who manifests Himself in spasmodic acts of Providence. If they are in trouble, they cry to Him and He interposes, as He did in behalf of Joshua and his army in the Valley of Aijalon. It is safe to say that, after their great deliverance on that occasion, the victors raised the anthem, "Our father's God, to Thee, to Thee we sing," and perhaps inscribed upon their coins the legend, "In God we trust," and possibly when piping times of peace returned, the legend was forgotten and the song died out. The Greek dramatists were wont to say, "See that no god is called into 'your tragedy unless there be necessity for it." The average man is inclined to reason in the same way: "Ordinarily I can manage my own affairs; it is only when my foothold fails that I need to pray, 'Lord, save, I perish.' But as for constantly practising the presence, I see no need of it.” But he who has learned this secret never lets it go. The presence is to him an abiding presence. The holding of two interviews with God each day is but the smallest part of it. To offer a prayer as one sets out along the day's untraversed paths and another at nightfall as he commits himself to the unknown land of darkness is a confession of never having learned it. Two prayers a day! And what of the interim? If God is present at all, He is present not only now and then, in answer to an importunate cry for help, nor merely at stated seasons of worship in the closet and sanctuary, but night and day, summer and winter, year in and year out. As Jesus said, "Lo, I am with you always." And this presence is also a conscious presence. The man who hides in the great secret is aware of his environment as really as if he were sheltered beneath the curtains of the King's tent. Can one then be always mindful of God? Surely. He may be absorbed in a thousand vexing cares, and still have, deep down in his subconsciousness the feeling, "God is with me. Is not the man who goes forth in the morning to his customary toil mindful all day long of the good wife who stood in the doorway to give him Godspeed and who will be there again at evening to greet him? Her life is so interwoven with his being that the sense of her constantly nerves his heart and strengthens his arm. He need not be continually murmuring her |