334 A MEETING WITH GOD
may rebuke, may deter, may guide, may strengthen, may comfort, may illumine, may consecrate and subdue the feeble and wayward impulses of his own heart to God's holy will and purpose ! "
The "consciousness of an Eternal Presence" — that was the principle of his life. That made him strong; that made him sympathetic; that gave him absolute singleness of aim and simplicity of life ; that filled him with a buoyant optimism which expressed itself in constant joyousness ; that was the source of an almost unparalleled generosity which in life gave to God and the Church every gift which God gave him, and at death made his chaplains his executors, and his Diocese his residuary legatee ; that was the strength which nerved the mind to think and the hand to write in the solitary room before the hard day of public life began and after it ended ; that was the wondrous power of personality which made itself felt in Cambridge, in London, in Durham, by men of every degree. He was ever conscious of the Eternal Presence. He ever went to men from God, and the human presence was illumined by the Divine.1
3. God has ordained prayer as the means whereby we may meet with Him. " To this man will I look, and with him will I dwell, even with him who is of a humble and of a contrite spirit." The first sacrifice to bring to God is the sacrifice of a broken heart, the frank and full confession of utter sinfulness and worthlessness. And to this confession we must add the prayer that, for Christ's sake, we may be forgiven. And we must ask for the inclination and the power to forsake sin, and to live a holy life. And then it is necessary to keep up this communion with God ; to meet Him in prayer day by day ; to go to Him in prayer with every temptation, every difficulty, every sorrow, every duty, and every sin. So meeting with Him, such Divine companionship of thought, and feeling, and will, and purpose will be an infinite blessing ; it will keep us out of sin, it will render us joyful all our days, it will give us a confidence in Him which nothing can disturb. Meeting with God, and walking with God, our whole character will be ennobled ; and beholding so constantly the glory of the Lord, we shall be changed into the same image, from glory to glory, by the Spirit of the Lord.
So, meeting God in life, we need have no anxiety about meeting Him after death. Having met with Him and walked
1 Quarterly Review, Jan. 1893, p. 103.
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with Him ; having been, through repentance and faith, forgiven and justified ; having, through fellowship with His Spirit, been sanctified, having so lived on earth as to please Him, we can meet Him in the judgment with assurance and joy. "We shall meet with Him then to know Him better than we can know Him now ; we shall meet Him, so changed by a glorious resurrection as to be able to see Him ; we shall meet Him prepared for whatever service He may ordain for us in His perfected Kingdom, for we shall have so learned to serve Him here as to serve Him better hereafter. There is no other way of preparing to meet our God than this, — repentance, faith, obedience — the preparation that results from a personal knowledge of God, in a life consecrated to His service, and lived in the consciousness of His presence, and in the desire to please Him.
^[ The day following Erskine's death, Dr. John Brown, who attended him, wrote : " Our dear sweet-hearted friend is away. He died very gently last night at a quarter to ten ; laid his pathetic weary head on the pillow like a child, and his last words were, ' Lord Jesus.' " As might have been anticipated, the scene beheld at his death-bed was as heavenly as his life had been. His nephew, who was present, declared that if many loved him for his life, more would have loved him in his death. And thus, to quote Dr. Hanna's beautiful words, " few have ever passed away from among their fellows, of whom so large a number of those who knew him best, and were most competent to judge, would have said as they did of Mr. Erskine, that he was the best, the holiest man they ever knew — the man most human, yet most divine, with least of the stains of earth, with most of the spirit of heaven." 1
TI It is evident there is a genius of holiness just as there is a genius in music or in mathematics. But it is not enough to say that. When we speak of genius here, what do we mean ? At bottom it is a greater receptivity. The vision of the unseen ; the conception of a higher life that controls the lower one ; the love of the Highest and the Holiest which these souls display does not mean that the saints are in possession of treasures denied to other men. The grace of which they partake is a common grace. The spiritual power they touch is a power which is around us all, waiting for entrance. What separates them from the rest of us is a finer faculty for discerning this, a thinner barrier for the obstruction of its inflow. All they know and feel is objectively