Ah, my friends, we must look out and around to see what God is like. It is when we persist in turning our eyes inward, and prying curiously over our own imperfections, that we learn to make God after our own image, and fancy that our own darkness and hardness of heart are the patterns of His light and love.
God said, "Let us make man in our image." Man said, "Let us make God in our image."
God Himself—His thoughts, His will, His love, His judgments are men's home. To think His thoughts, to choose His will, to judge His judgments, and thus to know that He is in us, with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley of the shadow of death is the way home, but only thus, that as all changes have hitherto led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of God, so this greatest of all outward changes—for it is but an outward change—will surely usher us into a region where there will be fresh possibilities of drawing nigh in heart, soul, and mind to the Father of us all.
God should be the object of all our desires, the end of all our actions, the principle of all our affections, and the governing power of our whole souls.
God is the only sure foundation on which the mind can rest.
From Thee, great God: we spring, to Thee we tend,
Path, motive, guide, original, and end.
