^ I cannot see for the glory of that light — there is to me just now such a light on the things of God that I cannot rightly see them. God is a glorious God — Christ is a glorious Christ — the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory is a very glorious object.^
2. But how is goodness made visible and seen at work in its highest manifestation ? Surely in love. In the great Intercessory Prayer our Lord said, " Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am ; that they may behold
^ W. M. Macgregor, Jesus Christ the Son of God, 242.
2 "Rabbi" Duncan, in Memoir of John Dtmcan, LL.D., 485.
COLOSSIANS I. 27 441
my glory, which thou hast given me." What is that glory ? " For," He added, " thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." This is the highest glory. It is to love and be loved. It is love — the love of the Father to the Son and of the Son to the Father — recognized by men, seen, wondered at, and shared in, by men like the disciples.
^ Heaven is nothing but the manifestation of the Eternal One, wherein all worketh and willeth in quiet love.^
^ God has for ages been driving the mysteries of Heaven into sentences of one syllable. He began in allegory, passed on to parable, symbol, law, prophecy, and finally put the infinite into speech that a little child can utter. The sum of all the revelation of God is — Love.^
^ The Passion does more than simply manifest the glory of Jesus. It opens to us the glory of a state, or spiritual condition, of which He is Lord by all the rights of that love with which He was glorified. We are called to this state, and we abide in it through fellowship with Him ; more, we abide in it through the grace of vocation. The glory of the Crucified becomes likewise the glory of the faithful soul. The great love which burned in Him is to burn in us; the same utter selflessness and un- worldliness must be in us as in Him. Here is, perhaps, the point where our own personal failures and personal difficulties come to mind. Jesus was glorified by the utter sacrifice of all to the supreme demand of Divine love. We are humiliated by the occasional triumphs in us of dispositions which we have not subjected to the law of Divine love. That is our sorrow ; but it should also be the concern of our souls to bring all things so completely into subjection to Christ that He may throw around us the glory of His own love. It is the glory of love in the noblest, most heroic sense. We know how often the love which stirs us in devotion is found weak in the presence of demands which would reduce self to the uttermost, or call forth our energies in work which has no visible reward. Jesus was glorified in His Passion. We are glorified as we are made one with Him in love, which is most truly human because it is most gloriously Divine.^
3. And thus, last of all, the glory which is promised to the Colossians by the indwelling of Christ is that they shall be good
^ Jacob Bellmen. 2 g^ Chadwick.
^ J. Brett, The Witness of Love, 52.
442 CHRIST IN YOU THE HOPE OF GLORY
as God is good, that their goodness shall be manifest in all men's sight, and that it shall be not merely a succession of acts of goodness but a spirit of love — such love in them, felt by them and exercised by them, as the love of the Father to the Son.
Eecognize, then, the dignity, responsibility, destiny of human life. " Glory," in the Greek doxa, the practically untranslatable word, the word that means so much, is, in this context, the perfection of poor humanity, its emergence from its dark, lustreless condition, from the imprisonment in which it is "cabin'd, cribb'd, confined," the old internal dualism gone, the lower law in the members subdued, atoned, at-one-d, to the higher. The glory of God the Father will be the emergence of humanity into the perfect freedom of the purer conditions when we shall be like the Christ, for " we shall see him as he is."
"Christ in me." Who dares to grasp the truth ? — In him alone The law shall be fulfilled, and only he Who passes from the vision of the Christ — A righteousness for him — apart from him — To share the fulness of the risen life — The revelation of the Christ within, Shall please God perfectly. 0 if the soul Be truly emptied — yielded up to Him, And He in all His fulness dwell within — A Power to serve — a Zeal to watch and pray — A Faith to claim the promises — a Love To sympathize and win — a Patience learnt In sorrows of His manhood, and a Crown Won by a Cross — if such a Life be ours As He has laid within the reach of all, No pathway is too rough for us to tread — No height beyond our reach — no task too hard To be performed — no law of His too high To be fulfilled in us. Lo ! as we die We also rise in Him and He in us!^