This seems a necessary property of that Being who is present to all
His creatures at all times. His infinite acquaintance with His
creatures is a necessary consequence of His presence. Every one is as
much within His survey at one moment as at another. We judge of men's
character by their actions, He by their motives. And His judgment is
always according to truth.
V. _The spirituality of God establishes an intimate relation between
Him and all His intelligent creatures._
Their dependence on Him is absolute; their subjection to Him constant
and incessant; but in a special manner is He the Father of spirits.
The body has a tendency to separate us from God, by the dissimilarity
of its nature; the soul unites us to Him by those principles and
faculties which are congenial to His own. To estrange ourselves from
God is to be guilty of a most enormous kind of offence: it is
forgetting our proper parent, the author of our existence. To love
him, to seek union with Him, is to return to our proper original.
VI. _The spirituality of God renders Him capable of being the
satisfying Portion, the Supreme Good, of all intelligent beings._
He is the source and spring of all happiness (Lam. iii. 24, 25; Ps.
lxxiii. 25, 26). 1. That which constitutes the felicity of the mind
must be something out of it. Whoever retires into his own mind for
happiness will be miserable. God is qualified to be the everlasting
and inexhaustible spring of happiness. 2. He who can always confer
happiness on another being must be superior to that being. To be the
source of happiness is the prerogative of God. 3. That in which the
happiness of a rational and mental creature consists, must be
congenial to the nature of that creature. 4. That which forms the
principle of our felicity must be something that is capable of
communicating itself to us. God, as He is a Spirit, is capable of
communicating Himself to the spirits of His rational creatures. These
communications will constitute the felicity of heaven. Even while
they continue on earth, it is the privilege of the faithful to enjoy
union with the Father of spirits through His Son.
IMPROVEMENT. 1. Let us raise ourselves, in contemplating the Divine
Being, above what is sensible, visible, and corporeal. 2. Since God
is a Spirit, there must be an everlasting connection established
between Him and us, on which will depend our destiny for ever. Hence
Jesus Christ has come. What movements are in your minds toward this
great object?--_Robert Hall: Works,_ vol. vi., pages 1-32.