But that is paint, mere matter, the
visible symbol of some unseen thing. What is that unseen thing? It
is that of all unseen things the most radiant, the most beautiful,
the most Divine, and that is CHARACTER. On earth, in Heaven,
there is nothing so great, so glorious as this. The word has many
meanings; in ethics it can have but one. Glory is character, and
nothing less, and it can be nothing more. The earth is "full of
the glory of the Lord," because it is full of His character. The
"Beauty of the Lord" is character. "The Glory of the Only
Begotten" is character, the character which is "fullness of grace
and truth." And when God told His people HIS NAME, He simply gave
them His character, His character which was Himself: "And the Lord
proclaimed the name for the Lord...the Lord, the Lord God, merciful
and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth."
Glory then is not something intangible, or ghostly, or transcendental.
If it were this, how could Paul ask men to reflect it? Stripped
of its physical enswathement it is Beauty, moral and spiritual
Beauty, Beauty infinitely real, infinitely exalted, yet infinitely
near and infinitely communicable.
With this explanation read over the sentence once more in
paraphrase: We all reflecting as a mirror the character of Christ
are transformed into the same Image from character to character--from
a poor character to a better one, from a better one to a little
better still, from that to one still more complete, until by slow
degrees the Perfect Image is attained.
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