To Be Near Unto God

Purely intellectual knowledge of God is a frozen crust of ice from under which the stream has run dry.

What is it to be rich toward God? To understand this, imagine for a moment everything you call yours in the world as taken from you. Picture yourself abandoned and forgotten of all, in utter isolation alone with your own…

But 'To Be Near Unto God' in the midst of busy avocations yields its sweetest blessedness when it is cultivated in the face of sin and the world, as an oasis in the desert of life.

Though it was not right, and never can be, we understand what went on in the heart of those who sought escape from the world, in cell or hermitage, for the sake of unbroken fellowship with God. It might have been efficac…