We imagine that to forget Him leaves us undisturbed in following aims
disapproved by Him, and we spend effort to secure that false peace by
fierce absorption in other pursuits, and impatient shaking off of all
that might wake our sleeping consciousness of Him.
But what unconscious self-murder that is, which we take such pains to
achieve! To know God is life eternal; to lose Him from our sight is to
condemn all that is best in our nature, all that is most conducive to
blessedness, tranquillity, and strenuousness in our lives, to languish
and die. Every creature separated from God is cut off from the fountain
of life, and loses the life it drew from the fountain, of whatever kind
that life is. And that in man which is most of kin with God languishes
most when so cut off. And when we have blocked Him out from our field
of vision, all that remains for us to look at suffers degradation, and
becomes phantasmal, poor, unworthy to detain, and impotent to satisfy,
our hungry vision.