O Lord, as long as I am apart from you...

O Lord, as long as I am apart from you, I am self-satisfied, because I have no standard by which to measure my low stature. But when I come near to you, there for the first time I see myself. In your light I behold my darkness. In your purity I behold my corruption. My very confession of sin is the fruit of holiness.

Oh! Divine Man, let me gaze on you more and more until, in the vision of your brightness, I loathe the sight of my impurity; until, in the blaze of that glory which human eye has not seen, I fall prostrate, blinded, broken, to rise a new man in you. Amen.   -George Matheson