GLORY OF GOD. In numerous passages of Scrip- ture it is said that God has done certain acts for His own glory (e. g. Isa. xiii), that man should glorfy God (1 Sam. vi, 5 ; 1 Cor. vi, 20 ; x, 31, etc.). But how can man "glorify" the Supreme Being, who is «iso- lutely glorious in holiness and perfection ? To this question infidels answer that it is "absurd to suppose that God is a 'vain' being; tliat so insignificant a creature as man can bring to God an}' kind of pleasure or satisfaction ; or that God would demand from man a fictitious 'glor}'' which he does not require, and by which he could not feel flattered without exhibit- ing weakness, and consequently imperfection." All this argument is based on the misconception of a word. It is in the nature of an intellectual and free being, like God, to act in view of a certain aim and motive. But God can have no higher aim, no object more wor- tiiy of himself, than to exert his perfections, his power, his wisdom, and especially his benevolence. Hence the creation of beings endowed with sense, intellect, and freedom, and susceptible of feeling afiection, es- teem, thankfulness, and obedience. God willed, as saj's St. Augustine, the existence of beings to whom lie could manifest his love. Hence, also, God has estal- lished phj'sical and moral laws, and made the happi- ness of reasonable beings to depend from their submis- sion to these. President Edwards treats this point with profound insight. " It is," he says, "a thing in- finitely good in itself that God's glory should be known b}' a glorious society of created beings. And that I there should be in them an increasing knowledge of God to all eternity, is an existence, a reality infinitely 'worthy to be, and worthy to be valued and regarded I by him to whom it belongs to order that to be which, of all things possible, is the fittest and best. If exist- i ence is more worthy than defect and nonentity, and if ! any created existence is in itself worthy to be, then ' knowledge or understanding is a tiling worthy to be; ' and if any knowledge, then the most excellent sort of j knowledge, viz. that of God and his glorj'. The ex- j istence of the created universe consists as much in it as in any tiling ; yea, this knowledge is one of the highest, most real, and substantial parts of all created existence, most remote from nonentity and defect. As there is an infinite fulness of all possil)le good in God, a fulness of every pei-fection, of all excellenc}' and beaut}', and of infinite happiness, and as this fulness is capable of communication or emanation ad extra, so it seems a thing amiable and vahialile in itself that it should be communicated or flow forth, that this in- finite fountain of good should send fortli abundant streams, that this intinite fountain of light should, dif- fusing its excellent fulness, jiour forth light all around ^and as this is in itself excellent, so a disposition to this, in the Divine Being, must 1 e looked upon as a perfection or an excellent disposition, such an emana- tion of good is, in some sense, a multiplication of it ; so far as the communication or external stream may be looked upon as any thing besides the fountain, so far it may be looked upon as an increase of good. And if the fulness of good that is in the fountain is in itself excellent and worthy to exist, then the emanation, or that which is as it were an increase, repetition, or multiplication of it, is excellent and worthy to exist. Thus it is fit, since there is an infinite fountain of light
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and knowledge, that this light should shine forth in beams of communicated knowledge and understand- in" ; and as there is an infinite fountain of holiness, moral excellence, and beauty, so it should flow out in communicated holiness. And as there is an infinite fulness of joy and happiness, so these should have an emanation, and become a fountain flowing out in abun- dant streams, as beams from the sun. From this view it appears in another way to be a thing in itself valua- ble tliat there should be such things as the knowledge of God's glory in otlier beings, and a high esteem of it, love to it, and delight and complacence in it ; this ap- pears, I sa}', in another way, viz. as these things are but the emanations of God's own knowledge, holiness, and joy. Thus it appears reasonable to suppose that it was what "God had respect to as an ultimate end of his creating the world, to communicate of his own in- finite fulness of good; or, rather, it was his last end, that there might be a glorious and abundant emana- tion of his infinite fulness of good nl e.rtra, or without himself; and the disposition to communicate himself, or difi^use liis own fulness, which we must conceive of as being originallj^ in God as a perfection of his nature, was what moved him to create the world" (p. 219). . . . . " God and the creature, in this aff^iir of the ema- nation of the divine fulnass, are not properly set in op- position, or made the opposite parts of a disjunction. Nor ought God's glorv and the creature's good to be epoken of as if they ware properly and entirely dis- tinct. This supposeth that God's having respect to his glory, and the communication of good to his creat- ures, are things altogether different ; that God's com- municating his fulness for himself, and his doing it for them, are things standing in a proper disjunction and opposition ; whereas, if we were capalde of having more full and perfect views of God and divine things, which are so much above us, it is probable it would appear very clear to us that the matter is quite other- wise, and that these things, instead of appearing en- tirely distinct, are implied one in the other — that God, in seeking his glory, therein seeks the good of his creatures. Because the emanation of his glory (which he seeks and delights in, as he delights in himself and his own eternal glorv) implies the communicated ex- cellency and happiness of his creatures. And in com- municating his fulness for them, lie does it for himself; because their good, which he seeks, is so much in union and communion with himself. God is their good. Their excellency and happiness is nothing but the emanation and expression of God's glorj'. God, in seeking their glory and happiness, seeks himself, and in seeking himself, i. e. himself diffused and ex- pressed (which he delights in, as he delights in his own beauty and fulness), he seeks their glory and happi- ness" (^Dissertation on the End cfGod in Creation, § 2,