Divine likeness

“ This remains—not tongues, nor gifts of healing, nor any other of these miraculous and extraordinary and external powers—but the continual operation of a divine influence, moulding men into its own likeness.
Christianity is intensely ethical, and it sets forth, as the ultimate result of all its machinery, changing men into the likeness of God. ”

“ They are made excellent by a communication of God’s excellency: God puts his own beauty, i.e., his beautiful likeness, upon their souls: they are made partakers of the divine nature, or moral image of God, 2 Pet. i. 4. They are holy by being made partakers of God’s holiness, Heb. xii. 10. The saints are beautiful and blessed by a communication of God’s holiness and joy, as the moon and planets are bright by the sun’s light. The saint hath spiritual joy and pleasure by a kind of effusion of God on the soul. In these things the redeemed have communion with God ”

“ We acknowledge and adore one supreme and infinite God. We acknowledge His Son, one Christ; the Holy Ghost or divine Comforter; and man in God's image and likeness. ”

“ Wherefore it pleaseth Him that we seek Him and worship through means, understanding that He is the Goodness of all.
For the Goodness of God is the highest prayer, and it cometh down to the lowest part of our need. It quickeneth our soul and bringeth it on life, and maketh it for to waxen in grace and virtue. It is nearest in nature; and readiest in grace: for it is the same grace that the soul seeketh, and ever shall seek till we know verily that He hath us all in Himself enclosed.
For He hath no despite of that He hath made, nor hath He any disdain to serve us at the simplest office that to our body belongeth in nature, for love of the soul that He hath made to His own likeness. ”

“ Is there, and can there be, a perpetuity in mortal charms without the recognition or the supposition of a moral beauty connected with them, which alone is pure and imperishable, and which alone creates the sacred ecstasy that revels in the enjoyment of what is divine, or what is supposed to be divine, not in man, but in the conceptions of man,—the ever-blazing glories of goodness or of truth which the excited soul doth see in the eyes and expression of the adored image? It is these archetypes of divinity, real or fancied, which give to love all that is enduring. ”

“ What we adore in our Lord's person is His lowliness and humility, mingled with a certain divine and grand simplicity of character. So are all His words, plain and simple; spoken evidently without passionate gesture, and in no loud or clamorous tone. Simple, because all that is divine is simple; all else is human pride and sensuality. ”

“ As such the Divine will manifests itself in two modes—in its pure love as Goodness, in its holy harmony as Righteousness. These two do not exist separately, but permeate each other in reciprocal immanence, just as God in His Holiness is love, and in His love is holiness. In goodness the Divine love shows itself as the pleasure in well-being. ”

“ Holiness and lovingness—it is of deep importance that these words should be inseparably linked in our minds, as their reality in our lives. We have seen, in the study of the holiness of God, how love is the element in which it dwells and works, drawing to itself and making like itself all that it can get possession of. Of the fire of Divine holiness love is the beautiful flame, reaching out to communicate itself and assimilate to itself all it can lay hold of. ”

“ And first, if we would love God, let us consider the excellency of his nature, and his love and kindness towards us. It is little we know of the divine perfections; and yet that little may fill our souls with admiration and love. If it be the understanding that directs the affections, certainly the excellencies of the divine nature (the traces whereof we cannot but discover in every thing we behold) should not fail to engage our hearts. ”

“ The contrast between the divine and human natures is needed to throw personality into relief. Take away the human nature, and that contrast disappears, and with it goes the distinction between divine person and divine nature. Then, instead of a transcendent personality in whose portrait divine and human features are distinctly limned, we have a blur. ”

“ But the love with which I lay hold of Him is like the love with which He lays hold on me; and righteousness and purity, howsoever different may be their accompaniments in an Infinite and uncreated Nature from what they have in our limited and bounded and progressive being, in essence are one. So, 'Be ye holy, for I am holy'; 'Walk in the light as He is in the light,' is the law available for all conduct; and the highest divine perfections, if I may speak of pre-eminence among them, are the imitable ones, whereby He becomes our Example and our Pattern. ”

“ I know, says he, that I did not make myself love God, by which he means a feeling of love; and this he takes to be true holiness, which has been wrought in his heart by the power of God. “Love is the fulfilling of the law; but love to God is not shed abroad in our hearts by the law, but by the Holy Ghost.” ”

“ Honor in men, honesty in women, moved his admiration because they are comely. The splendor of the stars, the loveliness of earth, raised him in thought to the supreme source of beauty. Whatever the genius of man brings to perfection of grace, he called divine, realizing for the first time the piety that finds God in the human spirit. ”

“ So that His revealed or written Word and His Word in Nature alike descend from Him, and lead up to Him, who is the inmost and animating soul of both; not a mere undefined pervading influence, but a Divine Personal God,—an infinitely glorious Divine Man, the great Archetype, of which man was created the finite image. ”

“ So in Eph. i. 4, ‘That we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love.’ But specially in that remarkable passage: ‘The Lord make you to increase and abound in love toward one another, and toward all men, to the end He may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness.’ The holiness and the blamelessness, the positive hidden Divine life-principle, and the external and human life-practice—both are to find their strength, by which we are to be established in them, in our abounding and ever-flowing love. ”

“ When a man becomes of such a character, in every work that he does there is Divine worship; for he then looks to the Divine [Being] in everything, venerates Him, loves Him, and accordingly worships Him. ”

“ Your countenance is just reflecting a little of the glory of the skies. And so, when with the spiritual eye we see the beauty of Christ, we begin to be somewhat like Him. When His moral glory is flashed upon us, it transforms us more or less into His likeness. Beholding, though only in a glass, the glory of the Lord, we are changed into His heavenly likeness, from day to day. ”

“ It proceeds from ALL-PERFECT LOVE, that absolute, independent, unerringly wise, holy love, which distinguishes the Divine from all inferior natures, and which, transfused into the natural sentiment of human benevolence, superinduces the highest order of goodness. ”

“ The attributes of his Divine nature are shown forth in love, mercy, kindness, truth and justice, one and all being expressions of his higher nature. Every good habit, every noble quality belongs to man’s spiritual nature, whereas all his imperfections and sinful actions are born of his material nature. If a man’s Divine nature dominates his human nature, we have a saint. ”

“ The next question, scarcely inferior to that of the Divine Character in its practical importance, is that of the Divine Personality. Does God exist as a Divine Person, or only as a formless and universally diffused essence? And is He to be thought of and adored as one Person, or more than one? ”

“ And, beholding in many souls the traits of the divine beauty, and separating in each soul that which is divine from the taint which it has contracted in the world, the lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls. ”

“ And so, when my text talks about making us all, if we will, partakers of a Divine nature, what it means, mainly, is this—that into every human spirit there may pass a seed of Divine life which will unfold itself there in all purity of holiness, in all tenderness and gentleness of love. 'God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.' Partakers we shall be in the measure in which by our faith we have drawn from Him the pure and the hearty love of whatever things are fair and noble; the measure in which we love righteousness and hate iniquity. ”

“ In which part has man the likeness of God in him? In the soul, not in the body. The soul of man has in its nature a likeness to the Holy Trinity; for it has in it three things, these are memory, and understanding, and will. ”

“ Again he speaks of the divine love and divine light which he says are one, indivisibly one. The Lord is love, and love may be considered as comprehending all His power and all His wisdom; but goodness is the most proper term that we can apply. ”

“ Holiness is thus so far from being in opposition to the Divine love that it is its essential feature or norm, and the actual contents of love. In holiness there is combined the Divine self-existence as a perfection of life, and the Divine self-exertion in the realizing a Godlike perfection of life in the world. Holiness as an attribute of the Divine Being is His pure and inviolably self-contained personality in its absolute perfection. ”

“ Hence, the doctrine which makes true virtue or moral goodness consist in the spontaneous and irresistible feelings of the heart, “stands in direct and palpable opposition to the authority of God's word.”
Feeling is one thing; obedience is another. This counterfeit virtue or moral goodness, which begins and terminates in feeling, is far more common than true virtue or holiness. Who can reflect, for instance, on the infinite goodness of God, without an emotion or feeling of love? ”

“ This puts a great honour upon practical religion, that it is the imitating of God. We must be holy as God is holy, merciful as he is merciful, perfect as he is perfect. But there is no one attribute of God more recommended to our imitation than that of his goodness. Be you imitators of God, or resemble him, in every grace, and especially in his love, and in his pardoning goodness. God is love; and those that dwell in love dwell in God and God in them. ”

“ One who will have that degree of love, which is duty love to God and man, even though reaching the utmost fulness of the measure of Divine Justice (1,000 cubits) , will be as it were, only up to the ankles in the stream. He who attains the fulness of the Divine standard as to love for God, for His glorious character, will be in the stream to his knees. ”

“ As the inconceivable glories of the world to come, are explained to us by the honors and pleasures of this life; so the nature of God, by a gracious condescension to our weakness, is signified to us by a likeness to our own. By human members being ascribed to God, are implied the moral excellencies of his spiritual nature, or rather his operations, which are more sensible to us than his invisible nature. His eyes are emblems of his knowledge, wisdom, omniscience, and providence. ”

“ There is no notion here of any partaking of these great though secondary attributes of the Divine mind which to many men are the most Godlike parts of His nature. But what my text mainly means is, you may, if you like, become 'holy as God is holy.' You may become loving as God is loving, and with a breath of His own life breathed into your hearts. The central Divinity in the Divine, if I may so say, is the amalgam of holiness and love. That is God; the rest is what belongs to God. God has power; God is love. ”

“ The first sense of having discovered the Divine Man must have been one of delight,—the greatest, keenest delight which they had ever experienced. Then this Divine Man points upwards to a truth in which He Himself is believing and resting. ”

“ It is important also, to observe in what way the divine love and wisdom are received in the formation of heaven.—To receive those divine things which make heaven, is to receive the Lord himself as divine goodness and truth, as divine goodness into the affections of the heart, and as divine truth into the light of the understanding. But it is impossible to think of and love the Lord under any other form than that of a Divine Man. ”

“ Seek not, even from Him, holiness in yourself; let self be abased, and be content that the Holiness is His. As His presence fills your heart, as His Holiness and Glory are your one desire, as His holy Will and Love are your delight,—as the Holy One becomes all in all to you,—you will be holy with the holiness He loves to see. And as, to the end, you see nothing to admire in self, and only Beauty in Him, you will know that He has laid of His glory on you ”

“ The question is not whether the scheme of salvation is merely reconcilable with divine love and justice, but how it constitutes the grand proof and manifestation of these attributes, and in general, of the perfections of God. In it he undertakes to shew himself worthy of love, and thus to win our love to himself. ”

“ It yet lives, and is, from under His own hand, above, around, beneath us; and by it we may understand that holy mystery—how God is Love, and Love is God-like. And we feel, and know, that never again to us from out the shade of the years, can ministers of grace or glad ideals come, except through such sweet enchantment. ”

“ Once, in an age, God sends to some of us a friend who loves in us, not a false imagining, an unreal character, but, looking through all the rubbish of our imperfections, loves in us the divine ideal of our nature,—loves, not the man that we are, but the angel that we may be. ”