nce of goodness to appropriation: He
has helped me: He gives Himself to me; and from that again to love and
trust, for He has always been the same: "my father," not my ancestors in
general, but he whom I knew best and remember most tenderly, found Him
the same Helper. And then love prompts to some return. My goodness
extendeth not to Him, yet my voice can honour Him; I will praise Him, I
will exalt His name. Now, this is the very spirit of evangelical
obedience, the life-blood of the new dispensation racing in the veins of
the old.

Where praise and exaltation are a spontaneous instinct, there is loyal
service and every good work, not rendered by a hireling but a child. Had
He not said, "Israel is My son"?

From exultant gratitude and trust, what is next to spring? That which is
reproachfully called anthropomorphism, something which indeed easily
degenerates into unworthy notions of a God limited by such restraints or
warped by such passions as our own, yet which is after all a great
advance towards true and holy thoughts of Him Who made man after His
image and in His likeness.

Human affection cannot go forth to God without believing that like
affection meets and responds to it. If He is indeed the best and purest,
we must think of Him as sharing all that is best and purest in our
souls, all that we owe to His inspiring Spirit.

"So through the thunder comes a human voice,
Saying 'O heart I made, a heart beats here.'"

If ever any religion was sternly jealous of the Divine prerogatives,
profoundly conscious of the incommunicable dignity of the Lord our God
Who is one Lord, it was the Jewish religion. Yet when Jesus was charged
with making Himself God, He could appeal to the doctrine of their own
Scripture--that the judges of the people exercised so divine a function,
and could claim such divine support, that God Himself spoke through
them, and found representatives in them. "Is it not written in your law,
I said Ye are gods?" (John x. 34). Not in vain did He appeal to such
scriptures--and there are many such--to vindicate His doctrine. For man
is never lifted above himself, but God in the same degree stoops towards
us, and identifies Himself with us and our concerns. Who then shall
limit His condescension? What ground in reason or revelation can be
taken up for denying that it may be perfect, that it may develop into a
permanent union of God with the creature whom He inspired with His own
breath? It is by