Bismarck's motto: “Ohne Kaiser, kein Reich”—“Without an emperor, there can be no empire”—applies to God, as Von Moltke's motto: “Erst wägen, dann wagen”—“First weigh, then dare”—applies to man. Edwards, Works, 2:215—“Selfishness is no otherwise vicious or unbecoming than as one is less than a multitude. The public weal is of greater value than his particular interest. It is fit and suitable that God should value himself infinitely more than his creatures.” Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:3—“The single and peculiar life is bound With all the strength and armor of the mind To keep itself from noyance; but much more That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests The lives of many. The cease of majesty Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw What's near it with it: it is a massy wheel Fixed on the summit of the highest mount, To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things Are mortis'd and adjoined; which, when it falls, Each small annexment, petty consequence, Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone did the king sigh, But with a general groan.”
(e) God's glory is the end which in a right moral system is proposed to creatures. This must therefore be the end which he in whose image they are made proposes to himself. He who constitutes the centre and end of all his creatures must find his centre and end in himself. This principle of moral philosophy, and the conclusion drawn from it, are both explicitly and implicitly taught in Scripture.
The beginning of all religion is the choosing of God's end as our end—the giving up of our preference of happiness, and the entrance upon a life devoted to God. That happiness is not the ground of moral obligation, is plain from the fact that there is no happiness in seeking happiness. That the holiness of God is the ground of moral obligation, is plain from the fact that the search after holiness is not only successful in itself, but brings happiness also in its train. Archbishop Leighton, Works, 695—“It is a wonderful instance of wisdom and goodness that God has so connected his own glory with our happiness, that we cannot properly intend the one, but that the other must follow as a matter of course, and our own felicity is at last resolved into his eternal glory.” That God will certainly secure the end for which he created, his own glory, and that his end is our end, is the true source of comfort in affliction, of strength in labor, of encouragement in prayer. See Psalm 25:11—“For thy name's sake.... Pardon mine iniquity, for it is great”; 115:1—“Not unto us, O Jehovah, not unto us, But unto thy name give glory”; Mat. 6:33—“Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you”; 1 Cor. 10:31—“Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God”; 1 Pet. 2:9—“ye are an elect race ... that ye may show forth the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light”; 4:11—speaking, ministering, “that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, whose is the glory and the dominion for ever and ever. Amen.” On the whole subject, see Edwards, Works, 2:193-257; Janet, Final Causes, 443-455; Princeton Theol. Essays, 2:15-32; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 358-362.
It is a duty to make the most of ourselves, but only for God's sake. Jer. 45:5—“seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not!” But it is nowhere forbidden us to seek great things for God. Rather we are to “desire earnestly the greater gifts” (1 Cor. 12:31). Self-realization as well as self-expression is native to humanity. Kant: “Man, and with him every rational creature, is an end in himself.” But this seeking of his own good is to be subordinated to the higher motive of God's glory. The difference between the regenerate and the unregenerate may consist wholly in motive. The latter lives for self, the former for God. Illustrate by the young man in Yale College who began to learn his lessons for God instead of for self, leaving his salvation in Christ's hands. God requires self-renunciation, taking up the cross, and following Christ, because the first need of the sinner is to change his centre. To be self-centered is to be a savage. The struggle for the life of others is better. But there is something higher still. Life has dignity according to the worth of the object we install in place of self. Follow Christ, make God the center of your life,—so shall you achieve the best; see Colestock, Changing Viewpoint, 113-123.
George A. Gordon, The New Epoch for Faith, 11-13—“The ultimate view of the universe is the religious view. Its worth is ultimately worth for the supreme Being. Here is the note of permanent value in Edwards's great essay on The End of Creation. The final value of creation is its value for God.... Men are men in and through society—here is the truth which Aristotle teaches—but Aristotle fails to see that society attains its end only in and through God.” Hovey, Studies, 65—“To manifest the glory or perfection of God is therefore the chief end of our existence. To live in such a manner that his life is reflected in ours; that his character shall reappear, at least faintly, in ours; that his holiness and love shall be recognized and declared by us, is to do that for which we are made. And so, in requiring us to glorify himself, God simply requires us to do what is absolutely right, and what is at the same time indispensable to our highest welfare. Any lower aim could not have been placed before us, without making us content with a character unlike that of the First Good and the First Fair.” See statement and criticism of Edwards's view in Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 227-238.
VI. Relation of the Doctrine of Creation to other Doctrines.
1. To the holiness and benevolence of God.
Creation, as the work of God, manifests of necessity God's moral attributes. But the existence of physical and moral evil in the universe appears, at first sight, to impugn these attributes, and to contradict the Scripture declaration that the work of God's hand was “very good” (Gen. 1:31). This difficulty may be in great part removed by considering that: