The Greatest Thing In the World and Other AddressesDrummond, Henry
ReligionComparative
The Greatest Thing In the World and Other Addresses
Drummond, Henry
Christian life; Christianity; Love -- Religious aspects
Whence, then, these pressures, and where this Potter? The answer of
the formula is--"By reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord we
are changed." But this is not very clear. What is the "glory" of the
Lord, and how can mortal man reflect it, and how can that act as an
"impressed force" in moulding him to a nobler form? The word
"glory"--the word which has to bear the weight of holding those
"impressed forces"--is a stranger in current speech, and our first
duty is to seek out its equivalent in working English. It suggests at
first a radiance of some kind, something dazzling or glittering, some
halo such as the old masters loved to paint round the head of their
Ecce Homos. But that is paint, mere matter, the visible symbol of some
unseen thing. What is that unseen thing? It is that of all unseen
things the most radiant, the most beautiful, the most Divine, and that
is _Character_. On earth, in Heaven, there is nothing so great, so
glorious as this. The word has many meanings; in ethics it can have
but one. Glory is character, and nothing less, and it can be nothing
more. The earth is "full of the glory of the Lord," because it is full
of His character. The "Beauty of the Lord" is character. "The
effulgence of His Glory" is character. "The Glory of the Only
Begotten" is character, the character which is "fullness of grace and
truth." And when God told His people _His name_, He simply gave them
His character, His character which was Himself: "And the Lord
proclaimed the name of the Lord ... the Lord, the Lord God, merciful
and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth."
Glory then is not something intangible, or ghostly, or transcendental.
If it were this, how could Paul ask men to reflect it? Stripped of its
physical enswathement it is Beauty, moral and spiritual Beauty, Beauty
infinitely real, infinitely exalted, yet infinitely near and
infinitely communicable.
With this explanation read over the sentence once more in paraphrase:
We all reflecting as a mirror the character of Christ are transformed
into the same Image from character to character--from a poor character
to a better one, from a better one to a little better still, from that
to one still more complete, until by slow degrees the Perfect Image is
attained. Here
THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF SANCTIFICATION
is compressed into a sentence: Reflect the character of Christ, and
you will become like Christ. You will be changed, in spite of yourself
and unknown to yourself, into the same image from character to
character.
(1). All men are reflectors--that is
THE FIRST LAW
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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