(b) God's glory is the end intrinsically most valuable. The good of creatures is of insignificant importance compared with this. Wisdom dictates that the greater interest should have precedence of the less. Because God can choose no greater end, he must choose for his end himself. But this is to choose his holiness, and his glory in the manifestation of that holiness.
Is. 40:15, 16—“Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance”—like the drop that falls unobserved from the bucket, like the fine dust of the scales which the tradesman takes no notice of in weighing, so are all the combined millions of earth and heaven before God. He created, and he can in an instant destroy. The universe is but a drop of dew upon the fringe of his garment. It is more important that God should be glorified than that the universe should be happy. As we read in Heb. 6:13—“since he could swear by none greater, he sware by himself”—so here we may say: Because he could choose no greater end in creating, he chose himself. But to swear by himself is to swear by his holiness (Ps. 89:35). We infer that to find his end in himself is to find that end in his holiness. See Martineau on Malebranche, in Types, 177.
The stick or the stone does not exist for itself, but for some consciousness. The soul of man exists in part for itself. But it is conscious that in a more important sense it exists for God. “Modern thought,” it is said, “worships and serves the creature more than the Creator; indeed, the chief end of the Creator seems to be to glorify man and to enjoy him forever.” So the small boy said his Catechism: “Man's chief end is to glorify God and to annoy him forever.” Prof. Clifford: “The kingdom of God is obsolete; the kingdom of man has now come.” All this is the insanity of sin. Per contra, see Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 329, 330—“Two things are plain in Edwards's doctrine: first, that God cannot love anything other than himself: he is so great, so preponderating an amount of being, that what is left is hardly worth considering; secondly, so far as God has any love for the creature, it is because he is himself diffused therein: the fulness of his own essence has overflowed into an outer world, and that which he loves in created beings is his essence imparted to them.” But we would add that Edwards does not say they are themselves of the essence of God; see his Works, 2:210, 211.
(c) His own glory is the only end which consists with God's independence and sovereignty. Every being is dependent upon whomsoever or whatsoever he makes his ultimate end. If anything in the creature is the last end of God, God is dependent upon the creature. But since God is dependent only on himself, he must find in himself his end.
To create is not to increase his blessedness, but only to reveal it. There is no need or deficiency which creation supplies. The creatures who derive all from him can add nothing to him. All our worship is only the rendering back to him of that which is his own. He notices us only for his own sake and not because our little rivulets of praise add anything to the ocean-like fulness of his joy. For his own sake, and not because of our misery or our prayers, he redeems and exalts us. To make our pleasure and welfare his ultimate end would be to abdicate his throne. He creates, therefore, only for his own sake and for the sake of his glory. To this reasoning the London Spectator replies: “The glory of God is the splendor of a manifestation, not the intrinsic splendor manifested. The splendor of a manifestation, however, consists in the effect of the manifestation on those to whom it is given. Precisely because the manifestation of God's goodness can be useful to us and cannot be useful to him, must its manifestation be intended for our sake and not for his sake. 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 upon [pg 400]us.” In this last clause we find the acknowledgment of weakness in the theory that God's supreme end is the good of his creatures. God does gain the fulfilment of his plan, the doing of his will, the manifestation of himself. The great painter loves his picture less than he loves his ideal. He paints in order to express himself. God loves each soul which he creates, but he loves yet more the expression of his own perfections in it. And this self-expression is his end. Robert Browning, Paracelsus, 54—“God is the perfect Poet, Who in creation acts his own conceptions.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:357, 358; Shairp, Province of Poetry, 11, 12.
God's love makes him a self-expressing being. Self-expression is an inborn impulse in his creatures. All genius partakes of this characteristic of God. Sin substitutes concealment for outflow, and stops this self-communication which would make the good of each the good of all. Yet even sin cannot completely prevent it. The wicked man is impelled to confess. By natural law the secrets of all hearts will be made manifest at the judgment. Regeneration restores the freedom and joy of self-manifestation. Christianity and confession of Christ are inseparable. The preacher is simply a Christian further advanced in this divine privilege. We need utterance. Prayer is the most complete self-expression, and God's presence is the only land of perfectly free speech.
The great poet comes nearest, in the realm of secular things, to realizing this privilege of the Christian. No great poet ever wrote his best work for money, or for fame, or even for the sake of doing good. Hawthorne was half-humorous and only partially sincere, when he said he would never have written a page except for pay. The hope of pay may have set his pen a-going, but only love for his work could have made that work what it is. Motley more truly declared that it was all up with a writer when he began to consider the money he was to receive. But Hawthorne needed the money to live on, while Motley had a rich father and uncle to back him. The great writer certainly absorbs himself in his work. With him necessity and freedom combine. He sings as the bird sings, without dogmatic intent. Yet he is great in proportion as he is moral and religious at heart. “Arma virumque cano” is the only first person singular in the Æneid in which the author himself speaks, yet the whole Æneid is a revelation of Virgil. So we know little of Shakespeare's life, but much of Shakespeare's genius.
Nothing is added to the tree when it blossoms and bears fruit; it only reveals its own inner nature. But we must distinguish in man his true nature from his false nature. Not his private peculiarities, but that in him which is permanent and universal, is the real treasure upon which the great poet draws. Longfellow: “He is the greatest artist then, Whether of pencil or of pen, Who follows nature. Never man, as artist or as artizan, Pursuing his own fantasies, Can touch the human heart or please, Or satisfy our nobler needs.” Tennyson, after observing the subaqueous life of a brook, exclaimed: “What an imagination God has!” Caird, Philos. Religion, 245—“The world of finite intelligences, though distinct from God, is still in its ideal nature one with him. That which God creates, and by which he reveals the hidden treasures of his wisdom and love, is still not foreign to his own infinite life, but one with it. In the knowledge of the minds that know him, in the self-surrender of the hearts that love him, it is no paradox to affirm that he knows and loves himself.”
(d) His own glory is an end which comprehends and secures, as a subordinate end, every interest of the universe. The interests of the universe are bound up in the interests of God. There is no holiness or happiness for creatures except as God is absolute sovereign, and is recognized as such. It is therefore not selfishness, but benevolence, for God to make his own glory the supreme object of creation. Glory is not vain-glory, and in expressing his ideal, that is, in expressing himself, in his creation, he communicates to his creatures the utmost possible good.
This self-expression is not selfishness but benevolence. As the true poet forgets himself in his work, so God does not manifest himself for the sake of what he can make by it. Self-manifestation is an end in itself. But God's self-manifestation comprises all good to his creatures. We are bound to love ourselves and our own interests just in proportion to the value of those interests. The monarch of a realm or the general of an army must be careful of his life, because the sacrifice of it may involve the loss of thousands of lives of soldiers or subjects. So God is the heart of the great system. Only by being tributary to the heart can the members be supplied with streams of [pg 401]holiness and happiness. And so for only one Being in the universe is it safe to live for himself. Man should not live for himself, because there is a higher end. But there is no higher end for God. “Only one being in the universe is excepted from the duty of subordination. Man must be subject to the ‘higher powers’ (Rom. 13:1). But there are no higher powers to God.” See Park, Discourses, 181-209.