Here, we have the same process applied to that idea of Omnipresence as was applied in the former clause to the idea of Eternity.  That thought, so hard to grasp with vividness, and not altogether a glad one to a sinful soul, is all softened and glorified, as some solemn Alpine cliff of bare rock is when the tender morning light glows on it, when it is thought of as the Omnipresence of Love.  ’Thou, God, seest me,’ may be a stern word, if the God who sees be but a mighty Maker or a righteous Judge.  As reasonably might we expect a prisoner in his solitary cell to be glad when he thinks that the jailer’s eye is on him from some unseen spy-hole in the wall, as expect any thought of God but one to make a man read that grand one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm with joy:  ’If I ascend into heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there.’  So may a man say shudderingly to himself, and tremble as he asks in vain, ‘Whither shall I flee from Thy Presence?’ But how different it all is when we can cast over the marble whiteness of that solemn thought the warm hue of life, and change the form of our words into this of our text:  ’Nor height, nor depth, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.’

In that great ocean of the divine love we live and move and have our being, floating in it like some sea flower which spreads its filmy beauty and waves its long tresses in the depths of mid-ocean.  The sound of its waters is ever in our ears, and above, beneath, around us, its mighty currents run evermore.  We need not cower before the fixed gaze of some stony god, looking on us unmoved like those Egyptian deities that sit pitiless with idle hands on their laps, and wide-open lidless eyes gazing out across the sands.  We need not fear the Omnipresence of Love, nor the Omniscience which knows us altogether, and loves us even as it knows.  Rather we shall be glad that we are ever in His Presence, and desire, as the height of all felicity and the power for all goodness, to walk all the day long in the light of His countenance, till the day come when we shall receive the crown of our perfecting in that we shall be ‘ever with the Lord.’

The recognition of this triumphant sovereignty of love over all these real and supposed antagonists makes us, too, lords over them, and delivers us from the temptations which some of them present us to separate ourselves from the love of God.  They all become our servants and helpers, uniting us to that love.  So we are set free from the dread of death and from the distractions incident to life.  So we are delivered from superstitious dread of an unseen world, and from craven fear of men.  So we are emancipated from absorption in the present and from careful thought for the future.  So we are at home everywhere, and every corner of the universe is to us one of the many mansions of our Father’s house.  ’All things are yours, ... and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.’

I do not forget the closing words of this great text.  I have not ventured to include them in our present subject, because they would have introduced another wide region of thought to be laid down on our already too narrow canvas.