To draw nigh to God pre-supposes an acquaintance with him, and reconciliation to him through the blood of the atonement. The natural estrangement of the heart from God is very appropriately expressed by the metaphor of distance between objects. Hence Paul says to the Ephesians, in reference to their former pagan state, "But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ." In order to put the soul in a condition in which it can draw nigh to God, the native enmity of the heart must be slain—repentance must place a broad and deep separation between that soul and its sins, and it must take refuge by faith in that blood of sprinkling under whose covert alone the miserable sinner can approach a holy God and not be consumed.

”