ion of God_.--The Christian doctrine of God
includes not only His personality, but His spiritual perfection. All
that is highest and best in life is attributed to God. What we regard
as having supreme moral worth is eternally realised in Him. It is this
fact that prescribes man's ideal and makes it binding. 'Be ye perfect
even as your Father in heaven is perfect,' says Christ. Because of
what God is, spiritual and moral excellence takes precedence of all
other aims which can be perceived and pursued by man. Morality is the
revelation of an ideal eternally existing in the divine mind. 'The
belief in God,' it has been said, 'is the logical pre-supposition of an
objective or absolute morality.'[4] The moral law, as the norm and
goal of our life, obtains its validity and obligation for us not
because it is an arbitrarily-given command, but because it is of the
very character of God.

(2) _The Sovereignty of God_.--Not only the spiritual perfection but
the moral sovereignty of God is pre-supposed. He is the supreme
excellence on whom all things depend, and in whom they find their
ultimate explanation. The world is not merely His creation, it is the
expression of His mind. He is not related to the universe as an artist
is related to his work, but rather as a personal being to his own
mental and moral activities.[5] He is immanent in all the phenomena of
nature and movements of life and thought; and in the order and purpose
of the world His character and will are manifested. The fact that the
meaning and order of things are not imposed from without, but
constitute their inner nature, reveals not only the completeness of His
{28} sovereignty, but the purpose of it. The highest end of God, as
moral and spiritual, is fulfilled by the constitution and education of
spiritual beings like Himself, and in laying down the conditions which
are necessary for their existence and perfecting. No definition of
divine sovereignty can exclude the idea of moral freedom and the
consequences bound up with it. Hence God must not only confer the gift
of individual liberty, but respect it throughout the whole course of
His dealings with man.

(3) _The Supremacy of Love_.--This is the highest and most distinctive
feature of the divine personality. It is the sum of all the others; as
well as the special characteristic of the Fatherhood of God as revealed
by Christ. 'God is love' is the crowning statement of the Gospel and
the fulle