God is not in any place, my friends. God is a Spirit. The
heaven and the heaven of heavens could not contain Him if He wanted a
place to be in, as, glory be to His name, He does not. If He is near
us or far from us, it is not that He is near or far from our bodies,
as the Queen might be nearer to us in London than in Scotland, which
is most people's notion of God's nearness. He is near, not our
bodies, but our spirits, our souls, our hearts, our thoughts--as it
is written, "The kingdom of God is WITHIN you." Do not fancy that
when the cholera was in India, God was nearer India than He was to
England, and that as the cholera crawled nearer and nearer, God came
nearer and nearer too; and that now the cholera is gone away
somewhere or other, God is gone away somewhere or other too, to leave
us to our own inventions. God forbid a thousand times! As St. Paul
says: "He is not far from any one of us." "In Him we live and move
and have our being," cholera or none. Do you think Christ, the King
of the earth, is gone away either--that while things go on rightly,
and governments, and clergy, and people do right, Christ is there
then, filling them all with His Spirit and guiding them all to their
duty; but that when evil times come, and rulers are idle, and clergy
dumb dogs, and the rich tyrannous, and the poor profligate, and men
are crying for work and cannot get it, and every man's hand is
against his fellow, and no one knows what to do or think; and on
earth is distress of nations with perplexity, men's hearts failing
them for fear, and for dread of those things which are coming on the
earth--do you think that in such times as those, Christ is the least
farther off from us than He was at the best of times?--The least
farther off from us now than He was from the apostles at the first
Whitsuntide? God forbid!--God forbid a thousand times! He has
promised Himself, He that is faithful and true, He that will never
deny Himself, though men deny Him, and say He is not here, because
their eyes are blinded with love of the world, and covetousness and
bigotry, and dread lest He, their Master, should come and find them
beating the men-servants and maid-servants, and eating and drinking
with the drunken in the high places of the earth, and saying: "Tush!
God hath forgotten it"--ay, though men have forgotten Him thus, and--
worse than thus, yet He hath said it--"Lo, I am with you alway, even
unto the end of the world.
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