What men stand most in need of, is the
knowledge of God. They know, to be sure, by dint of reading, that history gives
an account of a certain series of miracles and marked providences; they have
reflected seriously on the corruption and instability of worldly things; they
are even, perhaps, convinced that the reformation of their lives on certain
principles of morality is desirable in order to their salvation; but the whole
of the edifice is destitute of foundation; this pious and Christian exterior
possesses no soul. The living principle which animates every true believer,
God, the all and in all, the author and the sovereign of all, is wanting. He
is, in all things, infinite—in wisdom power and love,—and what wonder, if
everything that comes from his hand should partake of the same infinite
character and set at nought the efforts of human reason. When He works, his
ways and his thoughts are declared by the prophet to be as far above our ways
and our thoughts as the heavens are above the earth (Isaiah iv. 9). He makes no
effort when He would execute what He has decreed; for to Him all things are
equally easy; He speaks and causes the heavens and the earth to be created out
of nothing, with as little difficulty as he causes water to descend or a stone
to fall to the ground. His power is co-extensive with his will; when He wills,
the thing is already accomplished. When the Scriptures represent Him as
speaking in the creation of the world, it is not to be understood as signifying
that it was necessary that the word of command should issue from Him, in order
that the universe he was about to create should hear and obey his will; that word
was simple and interior, neither more nor less than the thought which he
conceived of what He was about to do and the will to do it. The thought was
fertile, and without being rendered exterior, begat from Him as the fountain of
all life, the sum of the things that are. His mercy, too, is but his pure will;
He loved us before the creation of the world; He saw and knew us, and prepared
his blessings for us; He loved and chose us from all Eternity. Every new
blessing we receive is derived from this Eternal origin; He forms no new will
respecting us; it is not He that changes, but we. When we are righteous and
good, we are conformable to his will and agreeable to Him; when we depart from
well doing and cease to be good, we cease to be conformable to Him and to
please Him. This is the immutable standard which the changeable creature is
continually approaching and leaving. His justice against the wicked and his
love towards the righteous are the same thing; it is the same quality that
unites Him to everything that is good, and is incompatible with everything that
is evil. Mercy is the goodness of God, beholding our wickedness and striving to
make us good; perceived by us in time, it has its source in the eternal love of
God for his creature. From Him alone proceeds true goodness; alas! for that
presumptuous soul that seeks it in itself! It is God’s love towards us that
gives us everything; but the richest of his gifts is that we may love Him with
that love which is his due. When He is able by his love to produce that love in
us, He reigns within; He constitutes there our life, our peace, our happiness,
and we then already begin to taste that blissful existence which He enjoys. His
love towards us is stamped with his own character of infinity: it is not like
ours, bounded and constrained; when He loves, all the measures of his love are
infinite. He comes down from Heaven to earth to seek the creature of clay whom
he loves; He becomes creature and clay with him; He gives him his flesh to eat.
These are the prodigies of Divine love in which the Infinite outstrips all the
affection we can manifest. He loves like a God, with a love utterly
incomprehensible. It is the height of folly to seek to measure infinite love by
human wisdom. Far from losing any element of its greatness in these excesses,
He impresses upon his love the stamp of his own grandeur, while He manifests a
delight in us bounded only by the infinite. O! how great and lovely is He in
his mysteries! But we want eyes to see them, and have no desire to behold God
in everything.
