The human soul stretches out naturally toward God just as a
plant does toward the sun. The Psalter — a book of the pre-Christian era —
gives witness with total potency about the natural, inherent character of this
propensity.
"My soul thirsts for You;
my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water":
without You, a spiritual thirst tortures me.
"My soul longs for You
like a thirsty land."
"My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the
courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.
"Thou didst hide Thy face, and I was
troubled."
"I will love You, O Lord, my strength. The
Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom
I will trust; my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold."
"One thing I have desired of the Lord, that
will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple."
Yearning for God, the need to pray to Him and the
search for the path toward unity with God, has always belonged to the better
part of humanity. But this yearning has never been expressed with more force
than in Christianity, which has produced an innumerable multitude of the most chaste, bright and highly spiritual people, wholly
dedicated to God and who joyfully sacrificed everything earthly for the
heavenly. In this lies the psychological affirmation of the truth of our
religion’s substance, the witness to the truth of the Christian faith.
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