Here, again, is the word of the Lord: "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me." Psalm 139:23, 24. That is the word given to us for today and for all time. Another word goes right along with it: "0 Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising...and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me." Another translation has it: "Thou has compassed me all around; and holdest thine hand over me." Verses 1-5. That is a fact. He has compassed us all around, and his hand is over us. Whether we accept it or not, is another matter; but that is the fact with every man in all this wide world. That is how it is that all things an naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

Then when it is a fact that he has searched us, and known us, and does search out and know us all the time, why not accept it as a fact, and have the benefit of it? Why not present to him the word, "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts"? What for?— "And see if there be any wicked way in me." 0, that sets me before his face; for his glorious eyes of light to look upon me, and to shine through me, as the fire, searching out if there be any wicked way in me! And having searched it out, and being a consuming fire, he consumes it all away, and leads me in the way everlasting.

So, then, the sure way to escape the flaming fire of that great day is to welcome that flaming fire this day. Therefore, I say again, Let it never escape from your thought that "our God is a consuming fire;" and that the sure way to escape from that consuming fire in that great day whenthere will be no chance to change, and no time to choose, is to choosetoday the blessed change that is wrought, by welcoming freely, gladly, into the life, our God, who is a consuming fire.

I remember the word that was spoken to Moses. As Moses had come nearer and nearer to God, he said at last: "I beseech thee, show me thy glory." That is exactly what appears in the coming great day that is at hand: he comes "in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." His glory covers the heavens in that day, and the earth is filled with his praise. In that day he is "wrapped in a blaze of boundless glory," "and every eye shall see him." But who shall endure it? That is the question; and the answer is: Only those who have prayed, and now pray, that Christian prayer, "I beseech thee, show me thy glory."