Page:The Parable of Creation.djvu/131

Rh degree of progress is good and our Lord so pronounces it. But it is good only as one step more toward perfection, and not in the sense of perfection itself. Our first religious light is good. So are our first clear conceptions of faith in God and love to Him; so are our first creeping steps under a clear intellectual life of faith and love. But the consummation and crown of it all is such an affection for good and for God, as springs from the Lord as the enthroned life, soul and centre of the being. Our desires, thoughts and acts are then saturated with the Spirit of God. We are not engulfed in the great ocean of Divinity, nor do we lose our individuality in being merged into the overwhelming glory of God, according to the Buddhist doctrine of Nirvana. On the contrary, the higher we rise in our spiritual manhood, the more distinctly individual we become. While, therefore, in coming into this much to be desired state, our personality is more and more keenly felt, our trust in, and reliance on, the Lord, and our perception of Him as our light, our life, our all, become also more and more inwardly realized.

Nor is this the ordinary doctrine of sanctification nor anything like it. The accepted theory of what is commonly called sanctification is, that the individual becomes holy. The Scripture, when interpreted in its true spirit, does not recognize that any man can ever become holy. God alone is holy. We