In one of Edna Lyall’s novels, We Two, we have the story of Erica Raeburn. Erica is the daughter of Luke Raeburn, the sceptic; and she has been taught from infancy to despise all holy things. But as life, with its stress and struggle, goes on, she finds that she cannot satisfy her soul with denials and negations, * At last,’ Edna Lyall says, ‘ Erica’s hopelessness, her sheer desperation, drove her to cry to the Possibly Existent.’ She stood at the open
window of her little room, looking out into the summer night. Before she knew what had happened, she was praying !
‘O God,’ she cried, ‘I have no reason to think that Thou art, except that there is such fearful need of Thee. I can see no single proof in all the world that Thou art here. But af Thou art, O Father, 7f Thou art, help me to know Thee! Show me what is true!’
A few days later the answer came. Erica was at the British Museum, making some extracts, in the ordinary course of her business, from the Lrfe of Livingstone. All at once she came upon the extract from Livingstone’s Journal in which he speaks of his absolute reliance upon the text, ‘Lo, I am with you alway.’ ‘It is the word,’ says Livingstone, ‘ it is the word of a gentleman of the strictest and most sacred honour, and there’s an end of it!’ The words profoundly affected Erica. * Lo, I am with you alway!’ ‘They represented, not a Moral Principle, nor a Logical Proposition, but a Living Presence !
Exactly how it came to her, Erica never knew, nor could she put in words the story of the next few minutes. When God’s great sunrise finds us out, we have need of something higher than human speech: there are no words for it. All in a moment, the Christ who had been to her merely a noble character of ancient history became to her the most real and vital of all living realities. It was like coming into a new world ; even dingy Bloomsbury seemed beautiful. Her face was so bright, so like the face of a happy child, that more than one passer-by was startled by it, lifted for a moment from sordid cares into a purer atmosphere.1
"Heaven is my throne...Isaiah 63"
GOD'S REJECTION OF ALL MATERIAL TEMPLES. There was a time when it could be said that there was a house of God on earth. That was a time of symbols, when as yet the Church of God was in her childhood. She was being taught her A B C, reading her picture-book, for she could not as yet read the Word of God, as it were in letters. She had need to have pictures put before her, patterns of the heavenly things. Even then, the enlightened amongst the Jews knew well that God did not dwell between curtains, and that it was not possible that He could be encompassed in the most holy place within the veil It was only a symbol of His presence. But the time of symbols is now passed altogether. In that moment when the Saviour bowed His head, and said "It is finished! " the veil of the temple was rent in twain, so that the mysteries were laid open. So, one reason why God saith He dwelleth not in temples made with hands, is, because He would have us know that the symbolical worship is ended...
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