God the Invisible King eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 140 pages of information about God the Invisible King.

God the Invisible King eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 140 pages of information about God the Invisible King.
any more; God himself and no delegate is to be represented wherever men buy or sell, on our letters and our receipts, a perpetual witness, a perpetual reminder.  There is no act altogether without significance, no power so humble that it may not be used for or against God, no life but can orient itself to him.  To realise God in one’s heart is to be filled with the desire to serve him, and the way of his service is neither to pull up one’s life by the roots nor to continue it in all its essentials unchanged, but to turn it about, to turn everything that there is in it round into his way.

The outward duty of those who serve God must vary greatly with the abilities they possess and the positions in which they find themselves, but for all there are certain fundamental duties; a constant attempt to be utterly truthful with oneself, a constant sedulousness to keep oneself fit and bright for God’s service, and to increase one’s knowledge and powers, and a hidden persistent watchfulness of one’s baser motives, a watch against fear and indolence, against vanity, against greed and lust, against envy, malice, and uncharitableness.  To have found God truly does in itself make God’s service one’s essential motive, but these evils lurk in the shadows, in the lassitudes and unwary moments.  No one escapes them altogether, there is no need for tragic moods on account of imperfections.  We can no more serve God without blunders and set-backs than we can win battles without losing men.  But the less of such loss the better.  The servant of God must keep his mind as wide and sound and his motives as clean as he can, just as an operating surgeon must keep his nerves and muscles as fit and his hands as clean as he can.  Neither may righteously evade exercise and regular washing—­of mind as of hands.  An incessant watchfulness of one’s self and one’s thoughts and the soundness of one’s thoughts; cleanliness, clearness, a wariness against indolence and prejudice, careful truth, habitual frankness, fitness and steadfast work; these are the daily fundamental duties that every one who truly comes to God will, as a matter of course, set before himself.

5.  The increasing kingdom

Now of the more intimate and personal life of the believer it will be more convenient to write a little later.  Let us for the present pursue the idea of this world-kingdom of God, to whose establishment he calls us.  This kingdom is to be a peaceful and co-ordinated activity of all mankind upon certain divine ends.  These, we conceive, are first, the maintenance of the racial life; secondly, the exploration of the external being of nature as it is and as it has been, that is to say history and science; thirdly, that exploration of inherent human possibility which is art; fourthly, that clarification of thought and knowledge which is philosophy; and finally, the progressive enlargement and development of the racial life under these lights, so that God may work through a continually

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Project Gutenberg
God the Invisible King from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.