GENESIS sets out all the ways of God, but does not touch the question of cleansing a conscience, nor a people called to be in connection with God in His house.
Exodus treats the relationship of a people with God, and of the cleansing of the conscience, in order to their being in it, and being able to be with Him.
It is evident that the affections, and whole condition of the people of God, must depend on their relationship with God, and the manner of their association with Him. Now in the case of the Patriarchs and, though differently, under the law, God was manifested down here on earth, and though they of course could say, "God is in heaven," and, as persecuted, had only there to look, yet their proper legitimate condition and. sphere of affections was associated with these blessed visits of Jehovah to the Patriarchs, or His presence in the cloud, and the Shechinah of Glory. So will it again be in other circumstances in the millennial day—the sphere and place of their affections will (though there be higher) have an earthly center and object.
But after the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God, there was no longer any—the object of it had moved up there—the Son of God—and was hid, "our lives are hid with Christ in God"; so that the affections and whole condition of the Church is wholly connected with what is heavenly—as to the Center and Object, it is hid in its life there. The Holy Ghost is come down, but it is as the power of bringing up, and centering its affections there; this evidently gives a peculiar and most special place to the saints now, in their relationship to God—their whole condition as regards Him.
NOTE.—Some people's affections take their value from the object on which they are set—some make their own, in the strength that is in them, the self-devotedness they exhibit. But I suspect that there is defect in both, and that the meeting of both—save, of course, divine affections in God—would have proved the inefficacy of either.