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Psalm 25:15:
15Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.
In the Te Deum the Church of God sings: "To thee all angels cry aloud. ... To thee Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry: Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Sabeoth. Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory."
Continually, without ceasing, without pauses in between, always the never ending ascent of the hymn of praise from the angelic choirs unto God.
This unbroken, this constant unchanging and fixed permanency of things, is the peculiar characteristic of the mode of existence of the world before God's Throne. In the Father's house above there is no time, but there is eternity, and, therefore, there is no waste of life in a night, there is no transition of the morning into midday, but it remains an eternal morning. There is no standing still and beginning again. No stopping and then again a resuming. There is no intermezzo there of rest or of relaxation. It is all one life, forever springing up and returning unto itself, without the wasting of power and, therefore, without need of change. There is no development any more; and, therefore, transition from condition into condition is unthinkable.
There is no diminution, neither discontinuance, in the fullness of that blessedness which eternally flows and streams forth; and, therefore, the word continually in the Te Deum expresses so admirably and tangibly the characteristic of the super-earthly, of what is consecrated to God, of the Kingdom of heaven.
And now it may indeed sound paradoxical to us, when the Apostle admonishes us to: "Pray without ceasing," or to, "rejoice evermore," and when the Psalmist declares: "I set the Lord always before me" (Psalm 16:8); "Nevertheless I am continually with thee" (Psalm 73:23); or again, "Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord" (Psalm 25:15). In connection with this "continuous" note of the higher life, he who is no stranger to the hidden walk with God feels the holy significance of this continuousness, this going on without ceasing at all times.
For consider well, that sometimes "continually" means: "now and then!" A nurse in the hospital continually makes the round of her patients. But this is not the meaning here. When the Psalmist sings, "Mine eyes are continually toward the Lord," the meaning in Hebrew is not "now and then" but "always and without ceasing."
It means to say: the eye of my soul is never directed away from my God but is always toward my Father Who is in heaven.
It means that in your hidden walk with God you do not draw God down into the temporal, but you let God draw you up into the eternal.
Hidden fellowship with God is enjoyment in advance of what is heavenly in its essence.
It is no musical instrument from which you entice the music for a moment in order presently to shut off the combinations again, but an organ that plays of itself, and which merely waits for your ear to catch the sound of its heavenly harmonies.
And now do not say that prayer without ceasing, that to feel always blessed in God, always to hold him before your eyes, always to look toward Him, and continually to fix your eye upon Him, is simply impossible, because from the nature of the case your human life, your environment, your professional or business cares plainly forbid it.
Taken in this sense, both David and Paul well knew that our life is no endless devotion and the world no monastic cell.
But neither the Apostle nor the Psalmist meant it in this way.
Surely there are moments when in some secluded spot, alone with God, we fall on our knees and do nothing but pray. There are moments when we purposely seek solitude and meditatively, or in perplexity, sit down, that we might lose ourselves in thinking on God. There are moments when we shake ourselves free from everything that belongs to this life in order to busy ourselves solely with the things of the hidden life.
And it must be acknowledged that for him who first begins, this is, mostly, the only form in which he can imagine prayer, his fellowship with God and his looking unto God, to be possible.
The life of such a one is, then, still divided in two parts. One life broadly extending itself without God in the world and by the side of this, an exceedingly limited life with God and outside of the world.
He then has truly grasped something of the kingdom of heaven, but the life of the world is still his real life, and as an oasis in the desert of this worldly life, off and on, come moments which he devotes to God.
And so long as this state of things continues, there is of course no mention yet of praying without ceasing, of rejoicing at all times, and of a continuous abiding with God.
There is, then, as yet no indwelling with God, but a dwelling in the world, in order, now and then, to go out from this world and for a brief moment to seek God. He then prays briefly. Momentarily he thinks on God. Presently it is over. Then the closed eyes open again to the world, and in the life of this world, he spends the rest of the day.
Such is the existence of one who, of the four and twenty hours of each day and night, spends perhaps eight in bed, more than fifteen in the world, and, taken altogether, no half hour yet with God.
And by such as he, it has frequently been tried to withdraw themselves, now and then, a half hour longer in solitude, and lose themselves in holy meditation, but life is so busy, it rushes on and on so restlessly, and all too often, in these moments of self-isolation, the distraction of their thoughts is too great for them to be able, through the power of their will, to pull themselves back to what is holy.
And, disappointed, they are then so easily inclined to give it up.
No, this steady, this uninterrupted, this ceaseless continuance of fellowship with God, does not depend upon our thinking, and can not be reached by our will, but must of itself spring up from the inner motion of the heart.
You believe that you are a temple of the Holy Ghost, hence that God dwells in you, and that thus God's being near to you and your being near to God takes place of itself, independently of the fact whether you think of it or forget it.
God the Holy Ghost does not come into your heart to stay but a moment, and presently to leave it again.
There is an indwelling. There is a coming once for all in order to abide with you forever. And even when you do not pray, or know not how to pray as you ought, this God prays in you with groanings that are unutterable. Even as the mother continues to keep watch by the bedside of her newborn babe, though the babe has no sense of it whatever.
The only question, therefore, is whether the inner disposition of your heart gradually attains that sanctification, that opening up to Divine things, whereby you begin to feel and to become aware of what takes place in your own heart within.
First you live outside of your heart, and your heart floats in isolation, as a drop of oil on the waters of your life. But gradually there comes an awakening. You begin to live somewhat more with and in your own heart. And when you enter sufficiently deeply into your own heart, then you there find God the Holy Ghost who takes compassion on you.
This now of itself brings you to a life in two phases. On one side a life toward what is without, and on the other side a life toward what is within. Though at first these two are strange to one another, gradually there is a mutual approach until they mingle themselves and permeate each other through and through. And finally you reach the point where the life from within glows and shines through the whole of your outward existence, and where inwardly, we do not say the clearly conscious fellowship, but yet that which is felt with the tentacles of your soul, goes on more and more uninterruptedly.
First this is holy mysticism. Nothing more.
But it does not stop with this.
Of itself the eye of your soul begins to discover more and more clearly the reality that your God not only dwells within your heart, but that also, in the outward life around you He is the everywhere present, the all-directing, the Almighty and the all-providing Worker.
So you begin to discover a God Who in everything, by everything and through everything presses upon you.
The note which rises from the depth of your heart receives its echo from the entire life in which you fulfill your calling. That which formerly distracted you in life and threw you back upon yourself, now begins with wondrous enticement to draw you ever more toward your God. And not by the process of reasoning, not with outspoken thought, but, in the immediate perception of the life of the soul itself, God begins both inwardly and outwardly, almost endlessly, to unveil your eye to His Majesty.
Sin interrupts this again. That is true. But also hatred of your own sin never wakes up in your heart more strongly than when it throws its discord again into the accord of the psalm of your life.
And to break with sin, in order to lose yourself in worship and blessed fellowship, then becomes of itself the rising impulse of your heart.
* * * * * * *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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