return unto my place :" this is a good description of that which we call spiritual desertion. God, properly speaking, is in every place ; " he filleth all in all :" but yet, as to the mani- festation of his presence, he is more particularly in heaven : " He is the High and Lofty One who inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy ; and he dwells in the high and holy place." " Heaven is his throne ; and he humbleth himself when he beholdeth the things that are on earth." It is " the habitation of his holiness ;" so that if, either for purposes of judgment or of mercy, he vouchsafe to visit the earth, he leaves, as it were, his proper place, and comes down to us. When he noticed the iniquity of Sodom and Gomorrah, he said, " I will go down now and see whether they have done according to the cry which is come up unto me :" and, when he was about to punish the Jews, the prophet said, " Behold, the Lord cometh out of Ids place, to punish the inhabitants of the landa." So when the Church prayed to him for the manifestations of his power, they said, " O that thou wouldest rend the heavens, and come downb !" Thus, in the New Testament, he is fre- quently said to come and dwell in his people. Thus, when he visits us, he comes out of his place ; and, when he withdraws those visits, he " goes, and returns to his place." Not that he is really capable of moving from one place to another, because he is alike in every place ; but, with respect to the manifesta- tions of his presence, the communications of his grace, the supports of his arm, and the consolations of his Spirit, he may be truly said to move : for neither the presence nor removal of any thing can be more perceptible to the body, than the loss or acquisition of these things is to the soul. The way in which God withdraws himself from the soul, may be very fitly illus- trated by the manner in which he forsook the Jews of old. The Shechinah, or bright cloud, was the symbol of the Divine presence ; and that rested upon the ark between the cherubims. But when God was incensed against his people for their abomi- nations, he gave them various warnings of his determination to forsake them, unless they should repent : he made his prophet therefore to see in a vision, what indeed all Israel, in the time of Moses, had seen with their bodily eyes, — his gradual depar- ture. We have the account in the 9th, 10th, and 11th chapters of Ezekiel, to some verses of which we will refer you. In ix. 3, God is represented as taking his first step towards his departure ; "And the glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub whereupon he was, to the threshold of the house :" in x. 1 8, he removed still farther ; " Then the glory of the Lord departed from off the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubims," which were at that time,
a Isai. xxvi. 21. b Isai. lxiv. 1.