We must get closer to God. It is pressing and urgent. It is the whole purpose of our lives. We are never close enough. Our whole life's main endeavor must be a continuous drawing closer to Him. His Word is the great bridge across the chasm, the golden pathway through the vast wilderness. We get closer to Him by study and meditation and prayer and love and holiness -- not little dabs lost in the endless busy-ness of other things, but as a total dedication that overshadows everything, and gives direction and color to everything we do: a fixed and constant purpose in life to which all else takes a proper secondary position. Let us realize the immensity of this call to divinity and eternity -- brief, crawling worm that man is. If it does not totally seize and transform us, we are not of the people of God, but a mere incidental part of the passing background for the development of the people of God. Orthodoxy, with its bloated views of human worth and "natural immortality," may well expect painless, effortless salvation: and automatic passing on to a naturally-destined higher state. But those who have been enlightened to man's utter perishing and mortal insignificance should know much better than this

[next]