Though there is not conscious hostility in it, the root of it is a
sub-conscious sense of discordance with God and of antagonism between
His will and the man's When we are quite sure that we love another, and
that hearts beat in accord and wills go out towards the same things, we
do not need to make efforts to think of that other, but our minds turn
towards him or her as to a home, whenever released from the
holding-back force of necessary occupations. If we love God, and have
our will set to do His will, our thoughts will fly to Him, 'as doves to
their windows.'
It is fed by preoccupation of thought with other things. We have but a
certain limited amount of energy of thought or attention, and if we
waste it, as much as most of us do, on 'things seen and temporal,'
there is none left for the unseen realities and the God who is
'eternal, invisible.' It is often reinforced by theoretical
uncertainty, sometimes real, often largely unreal. But after all, the
true basis of it is, what Paul gives as its cause, 'they did not _like_
to retain God in their knowledge.'
The criminality of this indifference! It is heartlessly ungrateful.
Dogs lick the hand that feeds them; ox and ass in their dull way
recognise something almost like obligation arising from benefits and
care. No ingratitude is meaner and baser than that of which we are
guilty, if we do not requite Him 'in whose hands our breath is, and
whose are all our ways,' by even one thankful heart-throb or one word
shaped out of the breath that He gives.