Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Thy face, Lord, will I seek



When the Creator saith, “Seek ye my face,” it is the natural duty of the creature to reply, “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.” And the more is this so, because our Creator renews our obligations hourly, by exercising his sustaining power, and maintaining our existence. In a certain sense we are “created” every day, because the creature would go back to its native nothingness, our bodies would return to the dust, and our spirits would expire, if it were not for a continued action of divine omnipotence, by which we are retained in being. Being, therefore, every day, dependent upon the Preserver of men, it is but an every-day obligation that when God saith, “Seek ye my face,” the daily debtor should cheerfully reply, “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.”

If any should say that this is not a duty on such grounds, I would reply that the commands of God are always so good, and so reasonable, that it must be the duty of man to obey them. If it were possible for the Most High to command anything unrighteous, or unreasonable, the question of his claims might be raised; but since what the word of God commands is always most to our interest, at once the wisest and the best thing that we could possibly do, it becomes the duty of a rational and an intelligent being to follow the wise, loving, and tender counsels of the great God; and when his heavenly Father bids him seek his face, he should readily answer, “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.”

From a sermon entitled "The Echo." Image by topher76 under Creative Commons License.

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