restraint, encouragement, reverence. However, this influence is not
immediately from our senses, but from that knowledge. Thus suppose
a person neither to see nor hear another, not to know by any of his
senses, but yet certainly to know, that another was with him; this
knowledge might, and in many cases would, have one or more of the
effects before mentioned. It is therefore not only reasonable, but
also natural, to be affected with a presence, though it be not the
object of our senses; whether it be, or be not, is merely an
accidental circumstance, which needs not come into consideration:
it is the certainty that he is with us, and we with him, which hath
the influence. We consider persons then as present, not only when
they are within reach of our senses, but also when we are assured by
any other means that they are within such a nearness; nay, if they
are not, we can recall them to our mind, and be moved towards them
as present; and must He, who is so much more intimately with us,
that IN HIM WE LIVE AND MOVE AND HAVE OUR BEING, be thought too
distant to be the object of our affections? We own and feel the
force of amiable and worthy qualities in our fellow creatures; and
can we be insensible to the contemplation of perfect goodness? Do
we reverence the shadows of greatness here below, are we solicitous
about honour and esteem and the opinion of the world, and shall we
not feel the same with respect to Him whose are wisdom and power in
the original, who IS THE GOD OF JUDGMENT BY WHOM ACTIONS ARE
WEIGHED? Thus love, reverence, desire of esteem, every faculty,
every affection, tends towards and is employed about its respective
object in common cases: and must the exercise of them be suspended
with regard to Him alone who is an object, an infinitely more than
adequate object, to our most exalted faculties; Him, OF WHOM, AND
THROUGH WHOM, AND TO WHOM ARE ALL THINGS?