He is good to me.  Is He not good to all?  He is merciful to me.  Is not His mercy over all His works?  Nay, is he not good in Himself?  The One Good?  Must not God be The One Good, who is the cause and the fountain of all other goodness in man, in angels, in all heaven and earth?  But if so—­what a glorious Being He must be.  Not merely a powerful, not merely a wise, but a glorious, because perfect, God.  Then will he cry, as David cries in this very psalm—­“Oh that men could see that.  Oh that men could understand that.  Oh that they would do God justice; and confess His glorious Name.  Oh that He would teach them His Name, and shew them His glory, that they might be dazzled by the beauty of it, awed by the splendour of it.  Oh that He would gladden their souls by the beatific vision of Himself, till they loved Him, worshipped Him, obeyed Him, for His own sake; not for anything which they might obtain from Him, but solely because He is The perfectly Good.  Oh that God would set up Himself above the heavens, and His glory above all the earth; and that men would lift up their eyes above the earth, and above the heavens likewise, to God who made heaven and earth; and would cry—­Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power; for Thou hast made all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created; and Thy pleasure is, Peace on Earth, and Goodwill toward men.  Thou art the High and Holy One, who inhabitest eternity.  Yet Thou dwellest with him that is of a contrite spirit, to revive the heart of the feeble, and to comfort the heart of the contrite.  We adore the glory of Thy power; we adore the glory of Thy wisdom:  but most of all we adore the glory of Thy justice, the glory of Thy condescension, the glory of Thy love.”

And now, friends—­almost all friends unknown—­and alas! never to be known by me—­you who are to me as people floating down a river; while I the preacher stand upon the bank, and call, in hope that some of you may catch some word of mine, ere the great stream shall bear you out of sight—­oh catch, at least, catch this one word—­the last which I shall speak here for many months, and which sums up all which I have been trying to say to you of late.

Fix in your minds—­or rather, ask God to fix in your minds—­this one idea of an absolutely good God; good with all forms of goodness which you respect and love in man; good as you, and I, and every honest man, understand the plain word good.  Slowly you will acquire that grand and all-illuminating idea; slowly, and most imperfectly at best:  for who is mortal man that he should conceive and comprehend the goodness of the infinitely good God?  But see then whether, in the light of that one idea, all the old-fashioned Christian ideas about the relations of God to man; whether a Providence, Prayer, Inspiration, Revelation; the Incarnation, the Passion, and the final triumph, of the Son of God—­whether all these, I say, do not begin to seem to you, not merely beautiful, not merely probable; but rational, and logical, and necessary, moral consequences from the one idea of An Absolute and Eternal Goodness, the Living Parent of the Universe.