1. Scripture is very full of the idea of the nearness of God to
His creation, the Old Testament is alive with that inspiration,
for there is hardly a chapter or verse that does not insist upon
that truth. Naturally the New Testament, teaching so tenderly the
Fatherhood of God, is even more explicit and more beautiful in its
references to this intimate relationship. To the Athenians, St.
Paul can develop no other point than this, and he finds in moving
accents an eloquent appeal voiced by the touching dedication of an
altar to the _Unknown God_. Now this notion of God's nearness to
His world depends for its full appreciation on the central
doctrine of creation. He has made the world, in consequence it is
impressed with His personality; the more vigorous the artificer--
the more vigorous that he is in character, will and personality,
the more is his work stamped with his individuality; hence, the
tremendous personality of God must be everywhere traceable in the
things He has made.
2. When we say God is everywhere, we mean that He is in all things
because He made all things. Not only does the whole world lie
outstretched before His eye and is governed by His power, but He
Himself lurks at the heart of everything. By Him things have come
into existence, and so wholly is that existence of theirs His
gift, that were He to withdraw His support they would sink back
into nothingness. It is a perpetual remark about man's works that
they outlast him. Organizations we have toiled to establish
outgrow our fostering care, perhaps grow tired of our interference
and long to be free of our regulations. Wordsworth tells how a
monk in Spain, pointing to the pictures on the walls of the
monastery, which remained while the generations looking at them
passed away, judged: "We are the shadows, they the substance." But
the relationship established by creation is of a far greater
dependence, so that nothing God has made can exist without His
support. Out of human acts it is only music that bears some
resemblance to this, for when the voice is silent there is no
longer any song.
3. God, then, is within all creation, because He is its cause. He
is within every stone and leaf and child. Nothing, with life or
without, evil or good, can fail to contain Him as the source of
its energy, its power, its existence; He is "the soul's soul." Not
only, therefore, must I train myself to see with reverence that
everything contains Him, but I must especially realize His
intimacy and relationship to myself. Religion, indeed, in practice
is little else than my personal expression of that relationship. I
have in my prayers, in my troubles, in my temptations, to turn to
God, not without but within, not to some one above me or beneath
supporting me, but right at the core of my being. I can trace up
to its source every power of my soul, my intelligence, my will, my
love, my anger, my fear, and I shall find Him there. Nothing but
opens its doors to Him as innermost in its shrine. Wholly is God
everywhere, not as some immense being that with its hugeness fills
the world, but as something that is within every creature He has
made.