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Rh or enjoyment ought to be able to rob of its wonder. There is in it more than we convey by the term "communion with God." That admits of relativity, there are degrees in it, but this figure depicts the thing in its highest and deepest possibility, as flowing from the divine desire so to take us into the immediate, intimate circle of his own life and blessedness, as to make all its resources serve our delight, a river of pleasures from his right hand. It might almost seem as if there were here a reversal of the process of religion itself, inasmuch as God appears putting Himself at the service of man, and that with the absolute generosity born of supreme love. This relation into which it pleases God to receive Israel with Himself has in it a sublime abandon; it knows neither restraint nor reserve. Using human language one might say that God enters into this heart and soul and mind and strength. Since God thus gives Himself to his people for fruition, and his resources are infinite, there is no possibility of their ever craving more or seeking more of Him than it is good for them to receive. To deprive religion of this, by putting it upon the barren basis of pure disinterestedness, is not merely a pretense to be wiser than God; it is also an act of robbing God of His own joy through refusing the joy into which He has, as it were, resolved Himself for us. So far from being a matter of gloom and depression, religion in its true concept is an exultant state, the supreme feast and sabbath of the soul.

Of course, in saying this, we do not forget that such religion in its absoluteness can be for a