ity
and fatherhood carry with them the idea of the possibility of personal
acquaintance. This is admitted, I say, in theory, but for millions of
Christians, nevertheless, God is no more real than He is to the
non-Christian. They go through life trying to love an ideal and be loyal
to a mere principle.

Over against all this cloudy vagueness stands the clear scriptural
doctrine that God can be known in personal experience. A loving
Personality dominates the Bible, walking among the trees of the garden
and breathing fragrance over every scene. Always a living Person is
present, speaking, pleading, loving, working, and manifesting Himself
whenever and wherever His people have the receptivity necessary to
receive the manifestation.

The Bible assumes as a self-evident fact that men can know God with at
least the same degree of immediacy as they know any other person or
thing that comes within the field of their experience. The same terms
are used to express the knowledge of God as are used to express
knowledge of physical things. "O _taste_ and see that the Lord is good."
"All thy garments _smell_ of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the
ivory palaces." "My sheep _hear_ my voice." "Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall _see_ God." These are but four of countless such
passages from the Word of God. And more important than any proof text is
the fact that the whole import of the Scripture is toward this belief.

What can all this mean except that we have in our hearts organs by means
of which we can know God as certainly as we know material things through
our familiar five senses? We apprehend the physical world by exercising
the faculties given us for the purpose, and we possess spiritual
faculties by means of which we can know God and the spiritual world if
we will obey the Spirit's urge and begin to use them.

That a saving work must first be done in the heart is taken for granted
here. The spiritual faculties of the unregenerate man lie asleep in his
nature, unused and for every purpose dead; that is the stroke which has
fallen upon us by sin. They may be quickened to active life again by the
operation of the Holy Spirit in regeneration; that is one of the
immeasurable benefits which come to us through Christ's atoning work on
the cross.

But the very ransomed children of God themselves: why do they know so
little of that habitual conscious communion with God which the
Scriptures seem to offer? The answer