66 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



ever speak of the thirst of God. We think it natural 

 for man to say to God, " Give me to drink," but we 

 imagine that God can have no thirst. Such a desire 

 would seem to us an imperfection; and we cannot 

 associate the faintest idea of want or imperfection with 

 Him. We think of His infinite self-isolation. We pic- 

 ture Him in the vast loneliness of space satisfied with 

 His own glory. The old pagan idea of the gods con- 

 tained in Lucretius 



" Who haunt 



The lucid interspace of world and world, 

 Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind, 

 Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, 

 Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, 

 Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar 

 Their sacred everlasting calm." 



This pagan idea we transfer to the living and true God. 

 We imagine that He cannot have anything correspond- 

 ing to the experiences of humanity ; that He is raised 

 infinitely above all that we can know or feel. But the 

 object of Revelation is to counteract this erroneous 

 conception ; to show to us that God has no self-love, 

 does not live for His own glory in the sense that mis- 

 taken men impute to Him. We believe that God made 

 us in His own image, that our nature is but a reflection 

 of His nature ; that there is that in the creature which 

 corresponds, though at an infinite distance, to some- 

 thing in the Creator. If this be so, then it cannot be 

 wrong of us to say that God has wants as we have, 

 which require to be satisfied, desires that need fulfil- 



