The Presence #248110

AN attempt has been made in the following pages to trace the doctrine of the Divine Presence in all its manifold unfoldings along the line of the ever increasing revelation of God to the children of men. The fact of the Presence has been assumed, as has also the fact that God has never slackened his effort to make his presence known and felt. Break ing through all earthly encasements, shining more and more unto the perfect day of spiritual vision, the Presence has culminated in the Parousia of Christ, in whose glorious radiance we now stand. It is therefore, something more than the vital immanence, for which the Modernists in the Roman Catholic Church so stoutly contend. It is also a redeeming immanence; being nothing less than Christ in the heart the hope of glory, and Christ in the world the hope of the triumph of truth and of the enthronement of righteousness. Our study of the Presence, thus, not only leads up to Christ, it terminates in him. It finds in him the Omega as well as the Alpha, the self-revelation of God to men. It makes the hope and glory of the future the manifestation of his hidden presence; which is now, through the operation of the Holy Spirit, the object of Christian faith and the source of Christian experience.