Chapter 35 - Page 2

that I may believe it with my whole heart. God grant that you may believe it with your whole hearts likewise, and not merely with your intellects and brains.

But, it may be said, though God be not glorious and admirable for selfish force, which it were blasphemous to attribute to Him, He is still admirable for His power. Though He be not glorious for craft, He is still glorious for His wisdom. I deny both. I deny that power is any object of admiration, unless it be used well for good ends. To admire power for its own sake is one of those errors, which has been well called Titanolatry, the worship of giants. Neither is wisdom an object of admiration, unless it be used for good ends. To worship it for its own sake is a common error enough--the idolatry of Intellect. But it is none the less an error, and a grievous one. God's power and wisdom are glorious only in as far as they are used (as they are utterly) for good ends; only, in plain words, as far as God is (as He is perfectly) good. And the true glory of God is that God is good. So says the Scripture; and so I bid you all remember, for it is a truth which you and I and all mankind are perpetually ready to forget.

Let me but ask you one question as a test whether or not I am right. If the Supreme Being used His power, as the Roman Caesar used his; if He used His wisdom as the Greek sophist used his, would He be glorious then and worthy of admiration? The old heathen AEschylus answered that question for mankind long ago on the Athenian stage. I should be ashamed to answer it again in a Christian pulpit. And when I say GOOD, I mean good, even as man can be, and ought to be, and is, more or less, good. The theory that because God's morality is absolute, it may, therefore, be different from man's morality, in KIND as well as in DEGREE, is equally contrary to the letter and to the spirit of Scripture. Man, according to Scripture, is made in God's moral image and likeness, and however fallen and degraded that image may be, still the ultimate standard of right and wrong is the same in God and in man. How else dare Abraham ask of God, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" How else has God's command to the old Jews any meaning, "Be ye holy, for I am holy?" How else have all the passages in the Psalms, Prophets, Evangelists, Apostles, which speak of God's justice, mercy, faithfulness, any honest or practical meaning to human beings? How else can they be aught but a mockery, a delusion, and a snare to the tens of thousands who have found in them hope and trust, that God would deliver them and the world from evil? What means the command to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect? What mean the words that we partake of a divine nature? How else is the command to love God anything but an arbitrary and impossible demand,--demanding love, which every writer of fiction tells you, and tells you truly, cannot be compelled--can only go forth toward a being