Chapter XXX.

Showing How God Manifests Himself To The Loving Soul, As The Supreme Beauty.

O Lord my God, thou art very great: thou art clothed with honor and majesty; who coverest thyself with light as with a garment.—Ps. 104:1, 2.

As nothing is more lovely to a loving soul than Christ, and no good higher or more precious than God himself; so there is also nothing more beautiful in the sight of such a one than God. That soul looks upon God as the highest beauty, with which nothing in heaven and earth is to be compared; so that all the holy angels cannot sufficiently praise to all eternity this beauty of God. If all the holy angels in their lustre, and all the elect in their glory, were put together, it would nevertheless appear, that all their beauty and splendor proceed from God, who is the eternal glory and beauty; and that they are derived from the everlasting, infinite light and brightness. For as God is all good, and the highest good, so He is also all beauty, ornament, and glory.

2. And when a man beholds in spirit the glory of God, he forgets all the creatures, nay, the beauty of all the angels also; and mourns over nothing so much, as that he has offended this great Good with his wickedness, and this infinite eternal beauty and brightness with his impurity.

3. But because the Son of God, the brightness of his glory (Heb. 1:3), is become man, He hath made men partakers of his divine nature, and of his comeliness (2 Pet. 1:4), so that all who are in Christ by faith, are comely and glorious before God. Ps. 16:3. He remembers our defects and filthiness no more; for although his eyes see, yet the brightness of his glory, and the love of Christ cover them. Eph. 5:27.

4. The wise heathen Plato, considering the beauty of the creatures, of the luminaries, of the firmament, of the flowers in the fields, of the metals and animals, has by his reason drawn the conclusion, that God must of necessity be an eternal Being, beautiful above all things, because the beauty of all the creatures must be comprehended or concentrated in Him. But we say from the word of God, and the holy Evangelist St. John: “It doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know, that when He shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2); that we then, being perfectly renewed after the likeness of God, shall really be an image, like unto God, through which his beauty, brightness, and glory will shine; but out of Jesus Christ our Lord, in the highest brightness and beauty of all. For in him is all fulness; 263 and so it has pleased the Father that “in him should all fulness dwell” (Col. 1:19); and that “in him should be gathered together in one all things, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth” (Eph. 1:10); which no finite creature can comprehend.

5. Therefore angels and men shall admire the brightness and beauty of Christ, especially the chosen children of God, “whose vile bodies shall be fashioned like unto his glorious body.” Phil. 3:21. And this is what Daniel says, “They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever.” Dan. 12:3. And as the 104th Psalm, ver. 2, says of God, “Thou coverest thyself with light,” so our covering or garment will also be nothing else but light and brightness.