It is a great moment in a man’s life when he ascertains that he does not know God. The next step is to ascertain that one ought to know God. After this a man may still go knocking at many wrong doors; but let us hope that he will at length reach the right door, even the Bible, and conclusively set himself to seek God therein.

If we want to know what it is to seek diligently, we need no dictionary; we need only look around us; in every community there are men who seem to have assigned themselves this particular task of exhibiting in their own persons, what diligence is. It is true they are not seeking God; but having seen with what consecration they seek their object, we shall be at no loss to know what it is diligently to seek God.

Is it that the Lord conceals himself from us? That he has shut himself in from our gaze, like an oriental king, within many enclosures; and stationed cherubim with fiery swords at every gate, to make it impossible for us to approach him? Nay, not so. Whatever difficulties there are have not been interposed by him, but by us. So far as God is concerned there is a clear course before us. No man that ever lived in the world enjoyed better opportunities of finding God than I that write, or you that read this meditation.

He must be sought with an undivided heart. He must be the supreme object of search. To many he is but one object of search out of many. They go out into the world seeking various things, and bring home in their bag a hundred spoils of earth, with one or two words of God at the bottom; what wonder if these words are stifled by the company they are found in. In fact the words themselves flee away at the first opportunity; they will not stay to breathe that fetid atmosphere. A man that diligently seeks God, has renounced the search of other things; to this one port he hies him crowding all canvass, watching all that favors, all that opposes; knowing that the provision on board will suffice only so far as to that port. To neglect the least gale that blows, to lose the least current, to be overburdened with cargo in the least degree, may involve the destruction of all. The commander of such a vessel thinks of the port and of the means of reaching it, while he eats, while he drinks, while he talks, while he sleeps even; his eye continually wanders from his chart to his compass, thence to his sails, thence to the sky, thence to the sea, thence to his men, thence to his chart again.