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Matthew 6:9:
9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
True knowledge of God is not the product of mental discipline.
Also the knowledge of God only becomes real, when it finds its starting-point in what your soul inwardly discerns and experiences. Everything here must go out from a contact, which you know took place personally between you and God. There is no knowledge of light possible for one who was born blind. And likewise no true knowledge of God is possible for you, as long as you do not perceive the existence of God within yourself, there discover it, and truly feel it by the operations that go out from God. Not, of course, by your sense of touch, but by spiritual, immediate perception, so that, not on the ground of reasoning and not from what others tell you, but immediately from your own self you know that God is, and that God is great.
This is what our fathers steadily held to the fore in the heroic struggle for the faith which they went through. And how could this be otherwise with men, who in the midst of oppression and distress, each day in worship before the stupendous Majesty of the Lord, felt their soul give way within them, and who, therefore, insisted so strongly on the fact, that God Himself had imprinted in man the sense of God (sensus divinitatis), and that this sense of God contained the seed of all religion (semen religionis).
But when persecution ceased and peaceful conditions prevailed again, this spiritual, real background of all true knowledge of God was wantonly forsaken, and far too much place was given to intellectual abstractions.
Thus abstract knowledge—knowledge drawn away from the true God—superseded that knowledge which is eternal life. And the necessary result of this was that book-learning supplanted true piety and that the life of the Church became weak.
The Church stood not alone, in this. The retreat from reality to the paper world of abstract inventions of the mind, became evident in every department of the higher life. Even art, and with it, poetry, became at length infected with this evil virus. Forms, words, phrases, and rhymes took the place of golden speech which wells up from the fountain of life itself.
And then there came, as could not be otherwise, the equally one-sided reaction against it. This brought nothing but emotions, simple impressions, pure sensations, ever changing opinions. And as necessary result of this there was beclouding of the consciousness, obscurity of the inner perceptions, confusion in thought and chaos in language.
Such was the case in poetry and literature, and not otherwise in religion. Here too there was nothing but perceptions, sensations, impressions, which with unbelievers led to a falling away into pantheism, and made believers lose themselves in sickly mysticism.
For let it be well understood, that in every sphere, including that of religion, all this is dominated by mighty currents in all of human life.
Things are only good, when the workings of the emotions and of the mind unite in proper equipoise and in pure harmony.
But this sin will not tolerate. It continually breaks the equipoise, it banishes harmony. And then comes, first, a time when the intellect kills the feeling, and from this period another arises, in which the feeling dooms the intellect to silence. And in the face of all this it ever remains the sacred calling of the preacher to form just estimates of every abuse, and to zealously urge the restoration of equipoise and of pure harmony.
In this series of meditations on the knowledge of God, the working of the hidden fellowship has been exhibited, therefore, from every side. What the imagination, what inspiration, what the working of the will, what love, what the impression which we receive from nature, from man, and finally from Christ, contribute to the true knowledge of God, has duly been considered.
First, the reality of God's hidden walk had to be made palpable, and this was done the more readily, because our age has a leaning in this direction. Wherefore, this urging of the reality of inner motions agrees with the popular notion of our times. Also in the realm of religion, barren trifling with ideas has at length repelled the common mind. Men crave what can be felt and handled and immediately enjoyed, and can sweetly affect our entire personality.
But yet it would be an unpardonable fault, which would soon avenge itself, if men were to rest content with this. Scripture does not allow it. The church protests against this, and every child of God asks for more.
In Scripture the significance of the Name of the Lord is great and far-reaching, and the very Name calls us away from the current of feeling up to higher and clearer consciousness.
The feeling is a gift of God, but, as a feature of God's Image in us, the consciousness far excels the feeling. The feeling can do no more than furnish the material, which the consciousness thinks through, orders and transposes into clearness of form. Even the plant is sensitive, the feeling in an animal is sometimes exceedingly fine, but what neither animal nor plant received, is this glorious capacity of the higher consciousness, which enables man to take up the universe within himself, to see through it, to estimate things in their significance, to appreciate and to mirror them in his own thought.
This consciousness makes man a king, for in this consciousness he acts and rules.
The consciousness has all sorts of forms. A form for art, another form for the moral, and still another form for the religious life. But of all these forms it is always the consciousness first in which man finds himself back again, becomes capable of mighty action, and lifts himself up to the spheres of the eternal Word.
Therefore all one-sided absorption in mysticism has always ended in degradation, and the sacred summons must ever and again go out from the Church of Christ, to exalt the sacred treasure of our religion to the height of our consciousness.
Mysticism, without more, is darkness, chaos, blackness of night. In our consciousness is the light.
In behalf of the knowledge of God this light is first lighted by the Name of the Lord.
This you perceive yourself at once, when on your knees before the Eternal, you first address Him with the universal term of God, and then proceed to call Him Abba, Father.
He who quietly, with emphasis and intention addresses God, calls Him by the Father-name, and whispers, "My dear Father," perceives at once, that in this Name a world of thought flows from his heart, and how thereby from His lofty height God comes nearer to the soul.
A name is that by means of which I address someone, and I can address only him whom I know. So the name is immediately connected with the knowledge of the person. The name is the brief summary in a single word of what presents itself to me in the person. And though our human names are impoverished, so that they no longer express anything, yet we look differently upon the man whom we hear addressed by name than upon the stranger who passes us in the street.
And this can be applied to our God in a far higher sense, in so much as the Name of the Lord is the expression itself of His Being. Call Him by the covenant name of Jehovah; as a child, call him Our Father. Or address Him by the full name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and always in this Name the Being is expressed. You have not invented this Name. God has given it to Himself and has revealed it unto you. And in the Name a summary knowledge of God comes to you which brings God closer to you, carries Him into your consciousness, and explains him to you.
Without the Name of the Eternal Being, religion and idolatry merge into one another; then everything terminates in a dark religious perception; then the ocean of pantheism presents itself to you; and the personal knowledge of the personal God is ever more and more lost.
But with the Name of the Lord there comes distinction; the antithesis enters in between false and true religion; you come to stand personally before the personal God, and you know with whom you have to do.
Of course, provided you do not allow this Name to be lost in an empty sound. For this is what sin does. The Our Father may be said in a mechanical way, without any thought of the Father Himself, or of what this Father-name implies. It is the curse of habit which by continuous repetition, dulls the spiritual consciousness, so that there is hasty, thoughtless and senseless use of sacred sounds. And this goes on until, in a serious moment, you turn in upon yourself, and now with hushed reverence you repeat these selfsame holy names, putting your soul into them, and you become surprised at the riches that glisten in them.
And when you come to this, then the Name of the Lord is a torch ignited in your consciousness, and from the darkness of the emotions, gradually and of itself, the hidden Being of your God looms up before you with ever increasing clearness. Then you stand as a person before God, His Name always explains as much of His being as at that moment your heart needs.
But then our thinking consciousness can not and must not rest content with the mere stammering of that Name. Then the Name becomes the occasion for thinking out what that Name implies, and of clarifying God to our consciousness, as far as the scope of our consciousness allows.
Not every one can do this equally well. The capacity of the consciousness to absorb, is very limited with one, and with another wonderfully great. And, really, we never succeed farther than that each one enters into the knowledge of God, according to the measure of his consciousness.
But what must never be allowed, is, that as we enter according to the measure of our consciousness into the things of the world and into all the departments of science, we should neglect to do the same with respect to the Name of the Lord.
God's name must be hallowed.
And all indifference to the Name of the Lord is irreconcilably opposed to this hallowing of the Name of our God.
* * * * * * *This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."
The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit
Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.
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