glorious skies. Ask of yourself of any habit that belongs to your
own personal life, and bring it face to face with Jesus Christ and see
if it is not judged. A judgment day that is far away, that is off in the
dim distance when this world is done--it shall come, no doubt. I know
none of us can know much with regard to it, except that it is sure. But
the judgment day that is here now is Christ; the judgment day that is
right close to your life and rebukes you, if you will let Him rebuke you
every time you sin, the judgment day that is here and praises you and
bids you be of good courage, when you do a thing that men disown and
despise, is Christ. Therefore it is no figure of speech, it is no mere
ecstasy of the imagination of the preacher, when we say that in the
midst of these streets of ours, more real than the men that walk in
them, more real than the sidewalks that are under our feet, and the
buildings that tower over us, there walks an unseen presence. An unseen
presence? Yes. Are you and I going to be such creatures of our senses
that we shall not believe that there are powers that touch us that we
cannot see? Am I going to be so bound down to these poor fingers and to
these poor eyes that I shall know myself in no larger connection with
the great, unseen world? I will not. No great man, no manly man, has
ever allowed such a limitation of himself. There is the unseen presence
in the midst of our life, and he who will feel it may feel it, and that
unseen presence speaks to him continually. It knows every one of us. It
knows the rich man and knows what his wealth has made of him. It knows
whether it has made him selfish. Shall I say it? He, the Christ, the
present Christ, knows whether the rich man's riches have made him
selfish and base and mean, covetous and poor and little-souled, or
whether he has been glad to rise to the greatness of his privilege, and
be the very utterance of the beneficence of God upon the earth. He knows
the poor man and his struggles, he knows the poor man and his
self-respect. He speaks to the poor man's soul, who has been kept poor
because he will not enter into the baser methods and motives of our
modern life, and is despised, and says to him, "Be of good courage, for
I know what you are." He speaks to the poor in distress and poverty. He
speaks to the wretched in their disappointment and their pain. He is
their comforter. He knows every sin. He knows every sorrow of our life.
He goes, unse