The man who is content to pass along with an aimless existence;
or, only seeking daily supplies for daily needs, never looking hopefully into
the future, and never seeking to excel, does injustice to his higher nature, and
grovels on a plane but little elevated above the demands of animal existence.
No aim can so call out all the powers of the human mind,
and soul--as the aim after God-likeness. For what is godliness? Is it not
God-likeness? a seeking to be like God? Yet the question at once arises, How
can man be like God? God is infinite; man is finite. God fills
immensity; man stands on a few feet of a little world. God inhabits
eternity; man has his breath in his nostrils, flourishing like the grass today,
and tomorrow cut down and withered.
Yet with all this disparity, the Bible exhorts us to set the
Lord always before us, and to grow up into His likeness. What may be termed the
physical attributes of God, those which pertain to Him as Maker of all
things, Ruler over suns and systems, the Upholder of the universe; these, man
can neither comprehend nor copy, they are beyond his reach, and of them it is,
that the Bible asks, "Who by searching can find out God?"
It is God's moral qualities that we are to copy and
emulate. These are revealed to us in His holy Word; and though these, like the
other attributes of God, are infinite, yet they are held up before us as
patterns for us to admire and copy.
[William Bacon Stevens]
✞✞✞
1 Timothy 4:7 ... But refuse profane and old wives' fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness.
1 Corinthians 2:16 ... For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? but we have the mind of Christ.
2 Peter 3:18 ... But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen. ❤
