If I wake in the night I am still with Him. I have liberty to pour out my awed thoughts to Him in still and fearless reverence, and my gentle thoughts in prayer, and my gladsome thoughts in songs of the Spirit.
If I wish it when I travel, I travel in Divine society; when I walk in the midst of trouble He revives me; when I droop in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death, He comforts me; when I am engaged in no defined acts of devotion when not a voice is whispered nor a look reflected, “tender thoughts within me burn to feel a friend is nigh.” When I go into the solitudes of nature, I feel around me a thinking, silent life, and “all the air” is love. “Surely God is in the place.”
I hear His voice in the song of the winds, and in the chime of the waters. The earth rocks to His tread in the tempest; at His smile the wilderness breaks forth into singing.
When I return to my home, He who made the desert rejoice, makes the solitary place glad.
I can find Him anywhere, at all times, and find Him as my friend: in the workshop, in the loft all hung with cobwebs, behind the screen of the shaded lane. I can find Him a holy of holies; and solitude of spirit, where I can find no solitude of place, is often to me, “none other than the house of God, and the gate of heaven.”