[February 8.]
The Deity is intended to be the everlasting field of the human intellect, as well as the everlasting object of the human heart, the everlasting portion of all holy and happy minds, who are destined to spend a blissful but ever active eternity in the contemplation of his glory.… He will forever remain “the unknown God.” We shall ever be conscious that we know little compared with what remains to be known of him; that our most rapturous and lofty songs fall infinitely short of his excellence. If we stretch our powers to the uttermost, we shall never exhaust his praise, never render him adequate honor, never discharge the full amount of claim which he possesses upon our veneration, obedience, and gratitude. When we have loved him with the greatest favor, our love will still be cold compared with his title to our devoted attachment. This will render him the continual source of fresh delight to all eternity. His perfection will be an abyss never to be fathomed; there will be depths in his excellence which we shall never be able to penetrate. We shall delight in losing ourselves in his infinity. An unbounded prospect will be extended before us; looking forward through the vista of interminable ages we shall find a blissful occupation for our faculties, which can never end; while those faculties will retain their vigor unimpaired, flourish in the bloom of perpetual youth, … and the full consciousness remain that the Being whom we contemplate can never be found out to perfection … that he may always add to the impression of what we know, by throwing a veil of indefinite obscurity over his character. The shades in which he will forever conceal himself will have the same tendency to excite our adoring wonder as the effulgence of his glory; the depths in which he will retire from our view, the recesses of his wisdom and power as the open paths of his manifestation. Were we capable of comprehending the Deity, devotion would not be the sublimest employment to which we can attain. In the contemplation of such a Being we are in no danger of going beyond our subject; we are conversing with an infinite object, … in the depths of whose essence and purposes we are forever lost. This will probably give all the emotions of freshness and astonishment to the raptures of beatific vision, and add a delightful zest to the devotions of eternity. This will enable the Divine Being to pour in continually fresh accessions of light; to unfold new views of his character, disclose new parts of his perfection, open new mansions of himself, in which the mind will have ample room to expatiate. Thus shall we learn, to eternity, that, so far from exhausting his infinite fullness, there still remain infinite recesses in his nature unexplored—scenes in his counsels never brought before the view of his creatures; that we know but “parts of his ways;” and that instead of exhausting our theme, we are not even approaching nearer to the comprehension of the Eternal All. It is the mysteriousness of God, the inscrutability of his essence, the shade in which he is invested, that will excite those peculiar emotions which nothing but transcendent perfection and unspeakable grandeur can inspire.—Robert Hall.[2]
[February 15.]
We need not go far to seek the materials for an acceptable offering; they lie all around us in the work of our callings, in the little calls which divine Providence daily makes to us, in the little crosses which God requires us to take up, nay, in our very recreations. The great point is to have the mind set upon seeing and seeking in all things the service of Christ and the glory of God, and, lo! every trifling incident which that mind touches, every piece of work which it handles, every dispensation to which it submits becomes a sacrifice.
“If in our daily walks our mind
Be set to hallow all we find,
New treasures still of countless price
God will provide for sacrifice.