THE GLORY OF GOD.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—The thoughtful and suggestive remarks on the above subject in your current number call for a word or two of explana- tion, not on the general question with which the article in the Month that you are criticising deals, but on the special phrase that is the object of your writer's courteous animadversion.
The words to which I allude are as follows :—" To do all things ' to the glory of God' is, in some respects, a very unintelligible phrase, and in other respects suggests ideas of God of the despotic and unmoral kind. So far as righteousness and love constitute the glory of God, the habit of insisting on the glory of God as something totally distinct from the glory of righteous- ness and the glory of love, is puzzling and unfruitful. So far as something else entirely beyond our finite capacities may con- stitute that glory, it remains a riddle, at which it is of no great use for us to attempt to guess. Hence we have always felt the greatest possible suspicion of the phrase, as a bewildering one, at best unprofitable for us, and possibly at least rather meta- phorical and Oriental, than moral or spiritual in its origin• And we feel satisfied that even this Catholic writer, who, as we quite admit, has something definite and ennobling in his mind, does not escape this danger of an unmoral and Oriental use of the phrase."
He then proceeds to quote a passage, in which I say that we desire the honour and glory of our friends in proportion to our love to them. This he questions, and asserts that " we desire God's honour and glory rather for the sake of man than of God."
I might shelter myself behind the authority of St. Paul, and One greater than St. Paul, in defence of the phrase," Doing all to the glory of God," but I fear lest I should be reminded that they were both of them " Orientals." The expression, therefore, shall stand on its own merits, and I think I need only define and explain it, to dissipate your able writer's misty and vague (not to say Oriental) conception of it, and to show how, under the clear light of Catholic theology, the duty of seeking in all things the honour and glory of God for God's sake, is a primary notion of all Christian living.
The glory of God is twofold, int r sic and extrinsic. The former is infinite, unapproachable, unassailable by man, ad- mitting neither increase nor diminution, so that no act of any created being can add aught to it, or diminish aught from it. Yet your writer seems to think that I committed myself to the absurdity of supposing that the acts of a finite being can pro- mote or hinder it.
The extrinsic glory of God is that external manifestation of the divine attributes which accompanies every work of God.
This manifestation is necessarily finite and limited, inasmuch as it is something outside of God, and varies in proportion to the excellence of the work produced. " The heavens declare the glory of God ;" the sentient world proclaims it in a higher order ; but rational beings, as bearing beyond and before all the rest of creation the image and likeness of God, are its best and noblest work. And since the noblest manifestation of this noblest work of God consists in those supernatural acts of virtue which are the best imitation that earth can show of the infinite goodness of God, it follows that these acts tend to his (extrinsic) glory far more than aught else can do. The Alpine sunset has a beauty which fades away into nothing, compared with the smallest act of charity done for the love of God. The duty of being virtuous is, therefore, identical with acting to the glory of God ; and it seems to me neither " unmoral " nor " Oriental " to set before oneself the noble and ennobling motive of a longing desire to manifest in our feeble fashion the perfections of our God, He ever acting in us, and through us, and with us, so that to him belongs all the glory of our acts done for him. What greater privilege can accrue to a creature than this ? Surely, such a motive is not a "bewildering" or " unprofitable " one. Your writer also seems to think that Catholic theologians make a real distinction between the glory of God, on the one hand, and the glory of righteousness and the glory of love, on the other. If so, he attributes to them a very puerile ignorance. God is identical with each and all of his attributes. God is righteousness. God is love. God is justice. But when we seek the glory of " God," there is added to the impersonal attribute the personal character, which gives a motive to the virtuous action. Ordinary men cannot centre the energy of their devotion round an abstraction. A handful of cultivated men may fancy that they do so for a time, but what power has the vague phantom of " humanity," or even the impersonal though real conception of " righteousness " or " holiness," to at- tract the mass of sinning and suffering men and women P Very different is the case when it is a Personal God who calls for our love and service, our Creator, friend, king, benefactor, Master, Redeemer, lover, Lord. What becomes of all these titles to our affection, when we contemplate the mere abstrac- tion ? Is it, therefore, unintelligible and unmoral to put before ourselves the glory of God as the best motive of human action ?
I can scarcely understand, Sir, how any one can so reverse the position of God and man as to imagine that "we desire God's honour and glory for the sake of man rather than for the sake of God." I should be wronging the Eastern intellect, if I called such a conception Oriental. If I called it " unmoral," it would be because I wish to leave in the form which your writer has given it a word which has commonly a different prefix. 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. "That end is supreme among the rest which all other ends subserve," and man's glory would, according to your writer, therefore be supreme above the divine glory of the Eternal God.
One word as to another curious misconception. Your writer says that we do not desire the honour and glory of our friends in proportion to our love for them. I hope you will forgive me for saying that there underlies this objection, the same con- fusion of ideas which is involved in Mr. Mill's argument that because a man's desire for a thousand a year or a place in the Treasury does not argue his destiny for one or the other, therefore, man's desire for happiness does not prove that happi- ness is his proper destiny. For as Mill identifies the desire for the means (wealth) with the desire for the end (happiness), so your writer identifies our desire for the honour and glory of our friends in the eyes of men (the means), with our desire for their honour and glory in the sight of God (the end). Surely we desire this latter for them in proportion to our unselfish love, but not the former, since (if we are wise) we desire it for them only in a secondary degree, and as an evidence, often fallacious, of their possessing the latter. The fondest mother, unless she share the folly of the Roman matron,-
" Da formam pnero, da maltos, Jupiter, annos !
Hoc optat, modico pueris, majore puellis, M urmure,"
will not wish unreservedly for her children earthly honour and glory. But she will pour out all the yearnings of her maternal heart in earnest aspirations for their true honour and glory, which consists in likeness to their God. The one she rightly fears for those she loves, but how can she fear the latter P—I
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