God was his present companion and friend. When Jacob saw the ladder
reaching to heaven, and angels ascending and descending on it, he said,
"Surely, the Lord is in this place." And when Moses drew near to see
the burning bush, a voice from its flame demanded the removal of the
sandals from his feet, for the ground on which he stood was holy
ground.

God impressed Israel with the awfulness of His presence as a Lawgiver,
whom the nations were to honor, by His voice from Mount Sinai which
"shook the earth." The glorious manifestation of God's presence at the
tabernacle, in the midst of the camp of Israel, impressed them with the
fact that the God of their fathers was with them; that He was in their
midst; that He had not forgotten His covenant; and that He would be
with them to sustain them in every emergency till the end. With all
this, they often forgot God and went astray. What would they have done
without it?

In the person of Jesus, God perfected the divine purpose of bringing
Himself into a realized nearness to the human family. He clothed
Himself in our humanity, and became one with us. We are thus enabled to
look upon Him, to contemplate Him, not as a great, self-existing
Spirit, incomprehensible and awful, but as a _man_. Jesus was a man;
and "in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." He is God
manifest in flesh. And as God is thus manifest, would He have us
apprehend Him. Just, therefore, as we can appreciate the nearness of
Jesus as a loving and sympathizing kinsman, may we appreciate the
nearness of His Father and our God.

It is evident that men need a God to whom they can get sensibly near.
There is no profit in the worship of a God of abstractions. There is in
it no food for the soul. What is there to satisfy the languishing soul
in a prayer to the "Great Unknown and Unknowable"? They that come to
God must believe that He _is_. And that "is" is a personal divine
being, into whose arms we may cast our helpless selves, and on whose
bosom we may pillow our weary head; instead of a great, bewildering,
incomprehensible abstraction, "without body, parts, or passions."

We are brought into a sacred nearness with God in the life of Jesus.
From His bed in the manger to His rest in a borrowed grave, we have a
life of abject poverty. He was the friend and companion of the poor.
The world is full of poverty, and ever will be. But the poorest of
every age and country find a companion and friend, of li