us to look to Him, to draw nigh to Him, follow after Him, come unto Him, etc. And is it to be understood from this, as really teaching that some people are nearer to God than others as to space, or according to the natural idea? Or that, to look unto Him we must turn our natural faces to some particular point of the compass?—or to follow Him or come unto Him, our bodies must pass through a portion of space? This is what it appears to teach—what it actually does teach if its words must be interpreted in their merely natural sense.
But every one sees that such a literal interpretation would be most absurd. Every one knows that, to be far from the Lord, is to be far from Him spiritually—distance from Him being difference in state, remoteness from that state of pure and unselfish love in which He is, and which is Himself. And to look unto Him, is to look with the understanding, or the mind's eye, to those divine-human qualities revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. To follow Him, or draw nigh unto Him, is not to pass through any natural space, but to pass from a low, carnal, selfish state; to one more internal, pure and unselfish—more like that of the Lord Himself. We follow Him when we obey his precepts—deny self—engage in spiritual conflict with the hells within us, as He did while glorifying the assumed human. And we thus approach nearer to Him by becoming spiritually more like Him—receiving more of his own divine-human life into our hearts. So, too, when the angels are said to descend from heaven to men, we are not to understand that they come down through space, but that they descend to men's states with heavenly gifts suited to their wants and their
