Even now, so close is heaven to us, that any one of us
might enter into heaven this moment, without stirring from his seat.
One real cry from the depths of your heart--"Father, forgive thy
sinful child!"--one real feeling of your own worthlessness, and
weakness, and emptiness, and of God's righteousness, and love, and
mercy, ready for you--and you are in heaven there and then, as near
the feet of the blessed Lord Jesus, as Mary Magdalen was, when she
tried to clasp them in the garden. I am serious, my friends; I am
not given to talk fine figures of poetry; I am talking sober,
straightforward, literal truth. And the Lord sits at God's right
hand too? you believe that? Then how far off is God?--for as far off
as God is, so far off is the Lord Jesus, and no farther. What says
St. Paul? That "God is not far off from any one of us--for in Him we
live, and move, and have our being" . . . IN Him . . . . How far off
is that? And is not God everywhere, if indeed we can say that He is
any where? Then the Lord Jesus, who is at God's right hand, is
everywhere also--here, now, with us this day. One would have thought
that there was no need to prove that by argument, considering that
His own blessed lips told us: "Lo, I am with you, even to the end of
the world;" and again: "Wheresoever two or three are gathered
together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
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