end to year's end, and never look up to the sky except to see whether
they must take their umbrellas with them or not? And so all the
magnificence and beauty of the daily heavens, and the nightly gemming of
the empty places with perpetually burning stars, are lost to them! So,
God is blazing there in front of us, but unless we set ourselves to it,
we shall never see Him. You have to look, by a conscious effort, over
and away from the things that are 'seen and temporal' if you want to see
the things that are 'unseen and eternal.'

But if you disturb the whole tenor of your being by agitations and
distractions and petty cares, or if you defile it by sensual and fleshly
lusts, and animal propensities gratified, and poor, miserable, worldly
ambitions and longings filling up your souls, then God can no more be
visible before your face than the blessed sun can mirror himself in a
storm-tossed sea or in a muddy puddle. The heart must be pure, and the
heart must be still, and the mind must be detached from earth, and glued
to Heaven, and the glasses of the telescope must be sedulously cleansed
from dust, if we are to be blessed with the vision of God continuously
before our face.

Then note, still further, that if thus we have made God present with us,
by realising the fact of His presence, when He comes, He comes with His
hands full. 'I have set the Lord always before me,' says the Psalmist.
And then he goes on to say, 'Because He is at my right hand.' Not only
in front of you, then, David, to be looked at, but at your side! What
for? What do we summon some one to come and stand beside us for? In
order that from his presence there may come help and succour and courage
and confidence. And so God comes to the right hand of the man who
honestly endeavours through all the confusions and bustles of life to
realise His sweet and calming presence. Where He comes He comes to help;