Moses was favored with another remarkable and interesting manifestation of the Divine Being; for perceiving God’s merciful condescension in answer to his prayers offered up for his people, he persevered in the holy exercise, and even asked him for a manifestation of his glory: “Show me,” said he, “I beseech thee, thy glory,” or, according to the original, “make me see it.” He could not mean an open view of the unclouded majesty of God, but only such a display of the Divine glory as a mortal is capable of beholding. God answered, “I will make all my _goodness_ to pass before thee:” intimating, that his _goodness_ is his glory, and that he could not bear the infinite splendor of his holiness and justice. _Goodness_ is the true and genuine character of God, and the glory of all his other perfections, and by it they are all rendered engaging. Without this they would be terrible: for wisdom without goodness degenerates into insidious cunning; and power without it is the character of a tyrant. Were God destitute of this amiable perfection, he would have such a defect in his nature, as infinite perfection itself, in every other attribute, could not sufficiently compensate. All nations have acknowledged this perfection of the Divine Being. Plato calls him the ιδεα του αγαθου, the idea or essence of goodness. In the three principles of the Platonic Trinity--το αγαθον _goodness_, νους _intelligence_, and ψυχη _vitality_.--The first place is assigned to the το αγαθον _goodness_, which the Platonists conceive to be like an immense and most pure light, continually diffusing and communicating its invigorating beams. To this the Platonist Boctius alludes, in that celebrated description of God, where he calls him _Fons Boni Lucidus_, the lucid fountain of goodness.--There is an ancient cabalistical table, supposed to be borrowed from the Pythagoreans, which represents, in a visible scheme, the order of the Divine perfections: wherein it is observable that _goodness_ presides over, and gives laws and measures to all the other attributes of God. Philo says, God is the name of _goodness_; and our English word, adds a late author, seems to be a contraction of the word _good_; or, however, is the same with the German _Got_, or _Godt_, which came, as is thought, from the Arabic word _Gada_, of the same signification. So that the German and the English name of the Supreme Being, in common use, is taken from the attribute of his _goodness_. “The word itself is pure Anglo-saxon,” says Dr. Adam Clarke, “and, among our ancestors, signified not only the Divine Being, now commonly designated by the word, but also _good_; as in their apprehension it appears, that _God_ and _Good_ were correlative terms; and when they thought or spoke of him, they were ever led from the word itself to consider him as THE GOOD BEING a fountain of infinite benevolence and beneficence towards his creatures.” The word GOD, expressed in the old Saxon, is _bona res_, a good thing.