THE CATHOLIC VIEW OF GOD'S "GLORY."
TN the interesting letter which we publish elsewhere, Father
Clarke appears to assume that we supposed the Scripture phraseology concerning the glory of God to be really unmean- ing, Oriental, and without moral impressiveness ; whereas, all that we said, and, of course, all that we meant, was that the ideas conveyed to us by the English phrase " glory of God " are apt to be misleading and Oriental, and to suggest rather the same class of ideas which are conveyed by the same word in such connections as " Solomon in all his glory," than the ideas really intended to be conveyed by our Lord and his apostles when they use it, as they so often do, in some much higher and more mysterious sense. We quite admit that we have found it very difficult to make out what that higher and more mysterious sense is, though we are far enough from doubting that there is such a sense. Still, Father Clarke's letter does not help us much towards the elucidation of it. The whole drift of the article in the Month, if we understand it at all, was this,—that the glory of God is so inex- pressibly and infinitely more significant and important than any happiness or unhappiness of man, that it is quite easy to explain the endless misery of man, if it can in any way be shown that the glory of God would be diminished or tarnished by supposing an end or alleviation of that misery. On this we remarked, that to our apprehension the glory of God, in the Catholic writer's sense, i.e., not the intrinsic brightness and excel- lence of his nature, but the splendour of the external manifesta- tion of it to us, is a human and not a divine, a finite and not an infinite, matter ; that, so far as we understand it, it means the victory of what is divine over our human life, the manifesta- tion of what is divine in that life, and that this is so unspeak- ably desirable as it actually is, for man's sake rather than for God's. Father Clarke himself admits that the intrinsic glory of God is a thing man can neither increase nor diminish ; but he tells us that it is the external manifestation of that in- trinsic brightness and excellence in human life, to which he refers when he speaks of man's glorifying or failing to glorify God. No doubt ; but how can this finite manifestation of God's glory be infinitely more important on the one side than the misery and sin which express the eclipse of that mani- festation are important on the other side ? Surely, if the victory of God over man is matter for the purest exultation, the victory of man over God is equally matter for the purest condolence, and condolence of exactly the same kind and significance as the exultation. The misery which Father Clarke seems to think so trifling a matter when weighed in the scales against the glory of God, is not misery merely, but the victory in the heart of man of evil over God. If the manifestation of God in man is of a significance that cannot be exaggerated on the one side, the final eclipse of that manifestation is of a significance that cannot be exaggerated on the other side. There is no room for saying that the least fragment of glory gained for God, entirely outweighs all the set-off of the misery involved in endless penalties, because whatever these imply, they must certainly imply in a very real sense the negation of all that in which the glory of God was supposed to consist, and a negation exactly as momentous, exactly as awful, on the one side, as the manifestation of infinite goodness in man is momentous and awful, on the other side. Father Clarke is very indignant with us for saying that we ought to desire, and do desire, the glory of God,—in the external sense of the manifestation, of his holi- ness,—for man's sake, not for God's, because it conveys infinite blessing to man, and adds nothing to God. Yet we cannot even understand what is meant when this is denied. Does he maintain that God manifested himself to man mainly in order that man might recognise his glory, or that he might partake of it? Not the former, surely, for that object is really gained by the recognition which evil and disobedient beings accord to him. In Goethe's Faust, even Mephistopheles recognises the glory of God, and fami- liarly patronises the good God. It is not recognition that God asks of us, but grateful submission ; and that, surely, is asked not for his sake, but for ours. We can hardly understand what is intended by saying that God manifests his glory to man, for God's sake, and not for man's. God, as the Catholic theologian admits, is in- trinsically perfect without us. If he invites us to come to him, it is that he may confer himself on us ; and that, surely, is for our sakes, and not for his. What does God gain by human praise and recognition ? What does he lose by human hatred and ignor- ance? He confers his grace not for his own sake, but for ours, and that is why it is so ungrateful in us to refuse what he offers. Maintain that it is for God's sake, not for our own, that the divine love is manifested to us, and you maintain that there was some intrinsic want in the divine nature which only man could satisfy. Perhaps the truest way of speaking would be to say that God manifests himself to us for our sakes, while we, if we are worthy of that manifestation, go to him for his sake. But stated even thus,—and this appears to be nearest the truth, —it is just as untrue as before that whatever glorification of God there may be in human virtue and bliss, is of immeasurably more importance than the denial of God's glory involved in the endless misery of human sin,—which is, as we understand it, the whole drift and outcome of Father Clarke's article. The glory of God cannot itself help to explain the endless suffering of sinful man, because that suffering does not manifest God's perfection, but on the contrary, tends to veil it. And even if it be absolutely required by the eternal justioe,—which is, of course, what all who believe it think to be true,—that is pre- cisely the mystery to be explained, and is not made any the clearer by asserting that God's glory is of immeasurably more importance than man's happiness, for God's glory, in this lower sense of 'manifested' glory, consists in man's highest happiness, and is just as much diminished by the eternal loss of that happi- ness, as human happiness itself is thereby diminished. For in this lower sense of ' manifested' glory, the very same amount which is subtracted from the immortal blessedness of man must be taken to be equally subtracted from the successful manifesta- tion of the glory of God.
However, it is not for any controversial purpose that we have returned to this subject, bat rather to comment on the emphatic use of the phrase in Scripture, which the present writer, at least, has found so much difficulty in precisely appreciating. The passage which seems to us to be the most significant, in suggest- ing the deepest and highest sense of the phrase, is that in the prayer of our Lord at the Last Supper, in which he says :—" I have glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the work which thou gayest me to do, and now, 0 Father, glorify me with thine owu self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was ;" and again of the apostles, " The glory which thou gayest me I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one." Surely, in the first of these passages the word " glorify " implies, not that any new glory was given to God which he had not before, but that the brightness which was till then veiled from men was made known to them ; while in the second, the glory which is spoken of as not only communicable from God to Christ, but equally communi- cable from Christ to his apostles, and the effect of which is to make them "one," is the overwhelming attractive-
ness of the divine nature. So, too, when St. Paul says, "Whether, therefore, ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God," it is quite obvious that his main object is to insist on the exhibition of that sweetness of the divine nature, which will not risk an injury to another man's conscience, even though the thing which might produce that injury is intrinsically innocent and right. We are disposed to believe that when the phrase "glory of God" is used in the New Testament, it is used to express the intrinsic attractiveness of divine light and beauty,—that which draws man to God, that which draws man to man in God. Bat if we are right in this suggestion, then it surely is obvious enough that what is chiefly intended by the expression is not any- thing which accrues to God from the worship of man, but something which accrues to man from the knowledge of God, and that the particular quality specially referred to is the bind- ing and harmonising charm of the divine Spirit. We do not, then, profess to understand exactly what Father Clarke means, when he says that "any withdrawal by a finite creature of the honour due to the Infinite, will be, in the eyes of him who judges aright, a far worse evil than any possible evil or misery which can befall the finite," for to our minds, this withdrawal is an evil which befalls the finite, and does not in the least affect the Infinite Being, except so far as it affects the finite, and through its effect on the finite. The withdrawal of glory from God, if that phrase were ever used in Scripture, which, as we believe, it is not, would mean, we suppose, the failure to manifest the divine love of God, on the part of some one who had the opportunity of manifesting it, and who missed that oppor- tunity; and this is not "a far worse evil than any possible evil or misery which can befall the finite," because it is an evil which befalls the finite, and no one else. It befalls that man who misses his opportunity of making God better known to others ; and it befalls those who, through his failure, fail to know God as they would otherwise have known him ; but it does not befall God at all, except through his love for man. We did not imagine, and did not, we believe, suggest, that man's glory is of any account whatever, either to himself or to God, and said nothing that could possibly be construed into meaning that " man's glory would, according to your writer, be supreme above the divine glory of the eternal 'God." Our point was simply this,—that in the sense of Father 'Clarke, the glory of God is the splendour of a manifestation, sot the intrinsic splendour manifested,—that the splendour of a manifestation consists in the effect of the manifestation on those to whom the manifestation is given,—and that this is necessarily a finite thing, overflowing a certain surface of ob- serving and grateful but finite mind, and vouchsafed in order 'to raise the sentient beings to whom it is given to a higher level. When Father Clarke says, "To desire the honour of the Infinite God for the sake of the finite creature, is placing him who is Lord of Heaven and Earth in a position of inferiority to, and dependence on, the poor, feeble things who are but as the dust before Him," he almost exactly inverts the meaning of our remark. It is precisely be- 'cause the manifestation of God's goodness can be useful to us, and cannot be useful to him, that we hold its manifestation as intended for our sake, and not for his sake ; and that, as we believe, Scripture represents it as desirable for our sake, and sot for his sake. "The heavens declare the glory of God," not for the sake of God, but for the sake of those to whom the -declaration is made. And our Lord gave his apostles the glory which God had given him, not for the sake of him who had communicated it to himself, but for the sake of those to whom he transmitted it, namely, that they might be one, " even as we are." St. Paul would hardly have enjoined on his disciples to refrain from eating food offered to idols, in order to spare the consciences of weaker brethren, and thereby to enhance ." the glory of God," if he had not conceived that by that wise reticence, Christians of hesitating minds might be spared a great shock to their old prepossessions. That, however, could not in any sense involve a new glory to God, but only a new safeguard against the stumbling of man. There seems to us no paradox at all in saying that it is precisely be- cause God is infinite, and we finite, that the glory of God,- i.e., the knowledge of God in his true brightness by men,—is so unspeakably desirable for their sakes,—not for his. We gain everything by it; he nothing, except so far as it is his own will that we should gain what he desires to bestow on us.
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