p. 3 | Walking with God by Alexander Maclaren

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 5, 1882

Walking with God.

By Alexander Maclaren

THERE must be purity of heart if there is to be the vision of God here. If the eye be evil, the light will be intolerable and full of darkness. Muddy water gives no clear reflection, nor does a tarnished mirror flash back the sunlight, and we cannot set the Lord before our face, nor cherish the vivid consciousness of his presence, unless we keep our hearts clear from taint and our lives pure. That is an awful power which men have of forgetting God by simple indulgence in evil. They cannot hide themselves from him, but they can hide him from themselves, and while walking in a world that is all ablaze with the tokens of the present God, see none of the majesty of the glory of which heaven and earth are full.

Nor does it need any very marked indulgence in evil to come to this condition of insensibility. We have only to be indifferent, and we lose the vision. We have but to cease to desire it, and it passes. We have but to give ourselves to present cares and joys and to find our portion in this life, and we may secure almost an entire immunity from any troublesome thoughts about him. It is very easy to hustle the sense of his presence out of our minds. It is very hard to keep it in. Anything is big enough to hide out God from us, as a sixpence held close to the eye will blot the sun from the heaven for us.—A. Maclaren.