our whole
life there._ This is to be known to us in conscious experience. It is
more than a doctrine to be held, it is a life to be enjoyed every moment
of every day.

This Flame of the Presence was the beating heart of the Levitical order.
Without it all the appointments of the tabernacle were characters of
some unknown language; they had no meaning for Israel or for us. The
greatest fact of the tabernacle was that _Jehovah was there_; a Presence
was waiting within the veil. Similarly the Presence of God is the
central fact of Christianity. At the heart of the Christian message is
God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious
awareness of His Presence. That type of Christianity which happens now
to be the vogue knows this Presence only in theory. It fails to stress
the Christian's privilege of present realization. According to its
teachings we are in the Presence of God positionally, and nothing is
said about the need to experience that Presence actually. The fiery urge
that drove men like McCheyne is wholly missing. And the present
generation of Christians measures itself by this imperfect rule. Ignoble
contentment takes the place of burning zeal. We are satisfied to rest in
our _judicial_ possessions and for the most part we bother ourselves
very little about the absence of personal experience.

Who is this within the veil who dwells in fiery manifestations? It is
none other than God Himself, "One God the Father Almighty, Maker of
heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible," and "One
Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God; begotten of His Father
before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God;
begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father," and "the
Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, Who proceedeth from the Father
and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and
glorified." Yet this holy Trinity is One God, for "we worship one God in
Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor
dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another
of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the
Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one: the glory equal
and the majesty co-eternal." So in part run the ancient creeds, and so
the inspired Word declares.

Behind the veil is God, that God after Whom the world, with strange
inconsistency, has felt, "if haply the