Divine Predestination
Octavius Winslow
1808-1878
“For whom he did foreknow,
he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son,
that he might be the first born among many brethren”—Romans
8:29.
Guided by the latter clause of the preceding verse, we were led to advert to the settled purpose and plan of God as it related to the conversion of His people. The passage under present consideration carries forward the same argument another step, and shows that the doctrine thus clearly enunciated is not a crude and speculative dogma of the schools, which some suppose, but is a truth of distinct revelation, divine in its origin, experimental in its nature, and sanctifying and comforting in its effects. Let us, then, divesting our minds of all prejudice, address ourselves to its consideration, in prayerful reliance upon the teaching of the Spirit, and with the earnest simplicity of children desiring to come to a knowledge of the truth, and to stand complete in all the will of God.
“Whom he did foreknow.” In this place the word “foreknow”
assumes a particular and explicit meaning. In its wider and more general
application it must be regarded as referring not simply to the divine
prescience, but more especially to the divine prearrangement. For God
to foreknow is, in the strict meaning of the phrase, for God to foreordain.
There are no guesses, conjectures, or contingencies with God as to the
future. Not only does He know all, but He has fixed, appointed, and ordered
“all things after the counsel of his own will.” In this view
there exists not a creature, and there transpires not an event, which
was not as real and palpable to the divine mind from eternity as it is
at the present moment. Indeed, it would seem that there were no future
with God. An eternal Being, there can be nothing prospective in His looking
on all things. There must be an eternity of perception, and constitution,
and presence; and the mightiest feature of His character—that which
conveys to a finite mind the most vivid conception of His grandeur and
greatness—is the simultaneousness of all succession, variety, and
events to His eye. “He is of one mind; and who can turn him?”
But the word “foreknow,” as it occurs in the text, adds to this
yet another, a more definite, and, to the saints, a more precious signification.
The foreknowledge here spoken of, it will be observed, is limited to a
particular class of persons who are said to be “conformed to the
image of God’s Son.” Now this cannot, with truth, be predicated
of all creatures. The term, therefore, assumes a particular and impressive
signification. It includes the everlasting love of God to, and His most
free choice of, His people, to be His special and peculiar treasure. We
find some examples of this—“God hath not cast away his people
which he foreknew” (Rom. 11:2). Here the word is expressive of the
two ideas of love and choice. Again, “Who verily was foreordained
(Greek, foreknown) before the foundation of the world” (1 Pet. 1:20).
“Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge
of God” (Acts 2:23). Clearly, then, we are justified in interpreting
the phrase as expressive of God’s special choice of, and His intelligent
love to, His church—His own peculiar people. It is a foreknowledge
of choice, of love, of eternal grace and faithfulness.
“He also did predestinate.” This word admits of but one natural
signification. Predestination, in its lowest sense, is understood to mean
the exclusive agency of God in producing every event. But it includes
more than this: it takes in God’s pre-determinate appointment and
fore-arrangement of a thing beforehand, according to His divine and supreme
will. The Greek is so rendered—“For to do whatsoever thy hand
and thy counsel determined before to be done” (Acts 4:28). Again,
“Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ
to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will” (Eph. 1:5).
It is here affirmed of God, that the same prearrangement and predetermination
that men in general are agreed to ascribe to Him in the government of
matter, extends equally, and with yet stronger force, to the concerns
of His moral administration. It would seem impossible to form any correct
idea of God, disassociated from the idea of predestination. As a divine
wrote, “The sole basis of predestination is the practical belief
that God is eternal and infinite in and over all. And the sole aim of
its assertion should be, as the sole legitimate effect of that assertion
is, to settle down the wavering and rebel soul from the vague, skeptical,
and superstitious inapplicabilities of chance as to this world’s
history, unto the living, overwhelming, and humbling practicality of conviction,
that, just because God sees all things, provides all things, and has power
over all things, therefore man must act as if he believed this to be true.
The first and the last conviction of every honest inquirer must be, that
God is, and is Lord over all—and the whole of Scripture bears testimony
to the fact of His infinitude.”
And yet how marvelously difficult it is to win the mind to a full, unwavering
acquiescence in a truth which, in a different application, is received
with unquestioning readiness! And what is there in the application of
this law of the divine government to the world of matter, which is not
equally reasonable and fit in its application to the world of mind? If
it is necessary and proper in the material, why should it not be equally,
or more so, in the spiritual empire? If God is allowed the full exercise
of a sovereignty in the one, why should He be excluded from an unlimited
sovereignty in the other? Surely it were even more worthy of Him that
He should prearrange, predetermine, and supremely rule in the concerns
of a world over which His more dignified and glorious empire extends,
than that in the inferior world of matter He should fix a constellation
in the heavens, guide the gyrations of a bird in the air, direct the falling
of an autumn leaf in the pathless desert, or convey the seed, borne upon
the wind, to the spot where it should fall. Surely if no fortuitous ordering
is admitted in the one case, on infinitely stronger grounds it should
be excluded from the other. Upon no other basis could divine foreknowledge
and providence take their stand than upon this. Disconnected from the
will and purpose of God there could be nothing certain as to the future,
and consequently there could be nothing certainly foreknown. And were
not providence to regulate and control persons, things, and events—every
dispensation, in fact—by the same preconstructed plan, it would follow
that God would be exposed to a thousand unforeseen contingencies, or else
that He acts ignorantly or contrary to His will.
But it is not so much our province to establish the truth of this doctrine,
and explain its reasonableness and the harmony of its relations, as to
trace its sanctifying tendency and effect. Predestination must be a divine
verity, since it stands essentially connected with our conformity to the
divine image.
“Predestinated
to be conformed to the image of his Son.” Addressing ourselves to
this deeply interesting and important branch of our subject, let us first
contemplate the believer’s model.
“The image of his Son.” No standard short of this will meet
the case. How conspicuous appears the wisdom and how glorious the goodness
of God in this—that in making us holy, the model or standard of that
holiness should be Deity itself! God would make us holy, and in doing
so He would make us like Himself.
But with what pen—dipped though it were in heaven’s brightest
hues—can we portray the image of Jesus? The perfection of our Lord
was the perfection of holiness. His Deity, essential holiness—His
humanity without sin, the impersonation of holiness, all that He was,
said, and did, was as flashes of holiness emanating from the fountain
of essential purity, and kindling their dazzling and undying radiance
around each step He trod. How lowly, too, His character! How holy the
thoughts He breathed, how pure the words He spake, how humble the spirit
He exemplified, how tender and sympathizing the outgoings of His compassion
and love to man. He is “the chief among ten thousand, the altogether
lovely.”
Such is the believer’s model. To this he is predestinated to be conformed.
And is not this predestination in its highest form? Would it seem possible
for God to have preordained us to a greater blessing, to have chosen us
to a higher distinction? In choosing us in Christ before the foundation
of the world, that we should be holy, He has advanced us to the loftiest
degree of honor and happiness to which a creature can be promoted—assimilation
to His own moral image. And this forms the highest ambition of the believer.
To transcribe those beauteous lineaments which, in such perfect harmony
and beautiful expression, blended and shone in the life of Jesus, is the
great study of all His true disciples. But in what does this conformity
consist?
The first feature is, a conformity of nature. And this is reciprocal.
The Son of God, by an act of divine power, became human; the saints of
God, by an act of sovereign grace, partake “of the divine nature,”
2 Peter 1:4 says. This harmony of nature forms the basis of all conformity.
Thus grafted into Christ, we grow up into Him in all holy resemblance.
The meekness, the holiness, the patience, the self-denial, the zeal, the
love, traceable in us—though faint and imperfect—are transfers
of Christ’s beauteous and faultless lineaments to our renewed soul.
Thus the mind that was in Him is in some measure in us. And in our moral
conflict, battling as we do with sin, Satan, and the world, we come to
know a little of fellowship with His sufferings and conformity to His
death.
We are here supplied with a test of Christian character. It is an anxious
question with many professors of Christ, “How may I arrive at a correct
conclusion that I am among the predestinated of God —that I am included
in His purpose of grace and love—that I have a saving interest in
the Lord’s salvation?” The passage under consideration supplies
the answer—conformity to the image of God’s Son. Nothing short
of this can justify the belief that we are saved. No evidence less strong
can authenticate the fact of our predestination. The determination of
God to save men is not so fixed as to save no matter what their character
may be. Christ’s work is a salvation from sin, not in sin. “According
as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we
should be holy” (Eph. 1:4). In other words, that we should be conformed
to the divine image. That we should be like Christ in His divine nature,
in the purity of His human nature, in the humility He exemplified, in
the self-denial He practiced, and in the heavenly life He lived. In a
word, in all that this expressive sentence comprehends—“conformed
to the image of his Son.”
As we grow day by day more holy, more spiritually minded, more closely
resembling Jesus, we are placing the truth of our predestination to eternal
life in a clearer, stronger light, and consequently the fact of our salvation
beyond a misgiving and a doubt. In view of this precious truth, what spiritual
heart will not breathe the prayer, “O Lord! I cannot be satisfied
merely to profess and call myself Thine. I want more of the power of vital
religion in my soul. I pant for Thine image. My deepest grief springs
from the discovery of the little real resemblance which I bear to a model
so peerless, so divine—that I exemplify so little of Thy patience
in suffering; Thy meekness in opposition; Thy forgiving spirit in injury;
Thy gentleness in reproving; Thy firmness in temptation; Thy singleness
of eye in all that I do. Oh, transfer Thyself wholly to me. What were
this world, yea, what were heaven itself, without Thee? A universe of
creatures, the fondest, the holiest, could not be Thy substitute to my
yearning, longing soul, O Lord! Come, and occupy Thine own place in my
heart. Awaken it to Thy love. Sweep Thou its chords with Thy gentle hand,
and it shall breathe sweet music to Thy dear name.
I love Thee, Savior, for my soul craves joy!
I want Thee, without hope I cannot live!
I look for Thee; my nature pants to give
Its every power a rapture and employ;
And there are things which I would fain destroy
Within my bosom; things that make me grieve;
Sin, and her child, Distrust, that often weave
About my spirit darkness and annoy:
And none but Thou canst these dissolve in light;
And so I long for Thee, as those who stay
In the deep waters long for dawning day!
Nor would I only have my being bright,
But peaceful, too; so ask Thee if I might
My head on Thy dear bosom lean alway.
—Townshend
“That he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” The Son
of God sustains to us the relation of the Elder Brother. He is emphatically
the “Firstborn.” In another place we read, “Forasmuch then
as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also likewise took
part of the same.” He is the “Brother born for adversity.”
Our relation to Him as our Brother is evidenced by our conformity to Him
as our model. We have no valid claim to relationship which springs not
from a resemblance to His image. The features may be indistinctly visible,
yet one line of holiness, one true lineament, drawn upon the heart by
the Holy Ghost, proves our fraternal relationship to Him, the “Firstborn.”
And how large the brotherhood—“many brethren!” What the
relative proportion of the church is to the world—how many will be
saved—is a question speculative and profitless. But this we know,
the number will be vast, countless. The one family of God is composed
of “many brethren.” They are not all of the same judgment in
all matters, but they are all of the same spirit. The unity of the family
of God is not ecclesiastical, nor geographical; it is spiritual and essential.
It is the “unity of the Spirit.” Begotten of one Father, in
the nature of the Elder Brother, and through the regenerating grace of
the one Spirit, all the saints of God constitute one church, one family,
one brotherhood—essentially and indivisibly one. Nor is this relationship
difficult to recognize.
Consider an illustration: Two brethren in the Lord of widely different
sections of the church, and of much dissonance of sentiment on some points
of truth, meet and converse together. With the Word of God in hand, each
is surprised that the other does not read it as he reads it and interpret
it as he interprets it. But they drop the points of difference and take
up the points of agreement. They speak of Christ—the Christ who loves
them both, and whom they both love. They talk of the one Master whom they
serve; of their common labors, infirmities, trials, temptations, discouragements,
failures, and successes. They talk of the heaven where they are journeying;
of their Father’s house, in which they will dwell together forever.
They kneel in prayer; they cast themselves before the cross; the oil of
gladness anoints them; their hearts are broken, their spirits are humbled,
their souls are blended; they rise and feel more deeply and more strongly
than ever that they both belong to the same family, are both of the “many
brethren,” of whom the Son of God is the “Firstborn,” the
Elder Brother. Oh, blessed unity! What perfect harmony of creed, what
strict conformity of ritual, what sameness of denominational relation,
is for a moment to be compared with this? Have you, my reader, this evidence
that you belong to the “many brethren?”
It is our purpose to conclude by briefly showing how encouraging the doctrine
of predestination is to the soul in sincere and earnest seeking of Christ,
and by tracing some of the peculiar blessings which flow from it to the
saints of God. There is a class of individuals, unhappily a large one,
over whose spiritual feelings the doctrine of divine predestination would
seem to have cast a deep and settled gloom. We refer to those who are
apt to regard this truth with deep antipathy, if not with absolute horror,
as constituting, in their view, one of the most formidable and insurmountable
obstacles to their salvation. But the validity of this objection we by
no means admit. There can be nothing in the Bible adverse to the salvation
of a sinner. The doctrine of predestination is a revealed doctrine of
the Bible; therefore, predestination cannot be opposed to the salvation
of the sinner. So far from this being true, we don’t hesitate most
strongly and emphatically to affirm that we know of no doctrine of God’s
Word more replete with encouragement to the awakened, sin-burdened, Christ-seeking
soul than this.
What stronger evidence can we have of our election of God than the Spirit’s
work in the heart? Are you really in earnest for the salvation of your
soul? Do you feel the plague of sin? Are you sensible of the condemnation
of the law? Do you come under the denomination of the “weary and
heavy laden?” If so, then the fact that you are a subject of divine
drawings—that you have a felt conviction of your sinfulness—and
that you are seeking for a place of refuge, affords the strongest ground
for believing that you are one of those whom God has predestinated to
eternal life. The very work thus begun is the Spirit’s first outline
of the divine image upon your soul—that very image to which the saints
are predestinated to be conformed.
But while we thus vindicate this doctrine as being inimical to the salvation
of the anxious soul, we must, with all distinctness and earnestness declare
that in this stage of your Christian course, you have primarily and mainly
to do with another and a different doctrine. We refer to the doctrine
of the atonement. If you could look into the book of the divine decrees,
and read your name inscribed upon its pages, it would not impart the joy
and peace which one believing view of Christ crucified will convey. It
is not essential to your salvation that you believe in election; but it
is essential to your salvation that you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
In your case, as an individual debating the momentous question, “how
a sinner may be justified before God,” your first business is with
Christ, and Christ exclusively. You are to feel that you are a lost sinner,
not that you are an elect saint. The doctrine which meets the present
phase of your spiritual condition is not the doctrine of predestination,
but the doctrine of an atoning Savior. The truth to which you are to give
the first consideration, and the most simple and unquestioning credence
is, that “Christ died for the ungodly,” that He came into the
world to save sinners, that He came to call, not the righteous, but sinners
to repentance, that in all respects, in the great business of our salvation,
He stands before us in the relation of a Savior, while we stand before
Him in the character of a sinner.
The mental conflict into which you have been brought touching this doctrine,
is but a subtle and dexterous stroke of the enemy to divert your thoughts
from Christ. Your soul is at this moment in what may be termed a transitional
state. A crisis in your history has been reached. How momentous the result!
Shall we portray your present feelings? You are sensible of your sinfulness,
are oppressed by its guilt, and are in dread of its condemnation. You
have no peace of mind, no joy of heart, no hope of heaven. Life with you
has lost its charm, society its attractions, and pleasure its sweetness.
A sombre hue paints every object, and insipidity marks every engagement.
Whence this marvellous revolution, this essential and wondrous change?
We answer, it is the Spirit of God moving upon your soul. And what truth,
do you think, meets the case? Predestination? Election? Oh, no! These
are hidden links in the great chain of your salvation, upon which in your
present state, you are not called to lay your hand in grasping that chain.
But there are other and intermediate links, visible, near, and within
your reach. Take hold of them, and you are saved: “This is a faithful
saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners.” “God so loved the world, that he gave
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
but have everlasting life.” “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son
cleanseth us from all sin.” “Come unto me, all ye that labour
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” “Him that cometh
unto me I will in no wise cast out.” “Whosoever will, let him
take of the water of life freely.” “Being justified freely by
his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” “Ho,
every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.” “In whom we
have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according
to the riches of his grace.” “By grace are ye saved, through
faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” “Wherefore
he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him.”
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”
Grasp, in simple faith, each or any one of these golden links, and from
that moment for you there is no condemnation. But what is the real difficulty?
It is not predestination. Travel into the inmost recesses of your heart
and ascertain. May there not be some defect in your actual conviction
of sin? Were you thoroughly convinced of your lost and ruined condition
as a sinner, would you cavil and demur at any one revealed doctrine of
Scripture? Would this, of all doctrines, prove a real stumbling block
in your way? Would the question of election give you a moment’s serious
thought? Would it interpose a true and valid objection to your coming
to Christ to be saved by Him? Suppose, to illustrate the idea, you were
roused from sleep in the dead hour of night by the approach of flames
kindling fiercely around you. One avenue of escape presented itself. Would
you pause for an instant upon its threshold to debate the question of
your predestinated safety? Would you not at once decide the question in
your favor, by an instant retreat from the devouring element, through
the only door that proffered you deliverance? Most assuredly. To a matter
so momentous as your salvation apply the same reasoning. Were it not folly,
yea, insanity itself, to hesitate for a moment to consider whether you
are predestinated to escape the wrath to come, when, if you do not escape,
that wrath will assuredly overwhelm you? One refuge alone presents itself.
One avenue only invites your escape. Let no other doctrine but faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ occupy your thoughts at this juncture of your religious
course. Diverging from this path, you will be plunged into a sea of perplexities,
you know not how inextricable, which may land you, you know not where.
For they who have
Reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute,
Have found no end in wandering mazes lost.
O let one object fix your eye and one theme fill your mind—Christ
and His salvation. Absorbed in the contemplation and study of these two
points, you may safely defer all further inquiry to another and a more
advanced stage of your Christian course. Remember that the fact of your
predestination, the certainty of your election, can only be inferred from
your conversion. We must hold you firmly to this truth. It is the subtle
and fatal reasoning of Satan, a species of atheistical fatalism, to argue,
“If I am elected I shall be saved whether I am regenerated or not.”
The path to eternal woe is paved with arguments like this. Men have cajoled
their souls with such vain excuses until they have found themselves beyond
the region of hope!
But we must rise to the fountain by pursuing the stream. Conversion and
not predestination, is the end of the chain we are to grasp. We must ascend
from ourselves to God, and not descend from God to ourselves, in settling
this great question. We must judge of God’s objective purpose of
love concerning us, by His subjective work of grace within us. One of
the martyr Reformers has wisely remarked, “We need not go about to
trouble ourselves with curious questions of the predestination of God;
but let us rather endeavor ourselves that we may be in Christ. For, when
we are in Him, then are we well: and then we may be sure that we are ordained
to everlasting life. When you find these three things in your hearts,
repentance, faith, and a desire to leave sin, then you may be sure your
names are written in the book, and you may be sure also, that you are
elected and predestinated to eternal life.” Again he observes, “If
thou art desiring to know whether thou art chosen to everlasting life,
thou mayest not begin with God, for God is too high, thou canst not comprehend
Him. Begin with Christ, and learn to know Christ, and wherefore He came;
namely, that He came to save sinners, and made Himself subject to the
law, and a fulfiller of the law, to deliver us from the wrath and danger
thereof. If thou knowest Christ, then thou mayest know further of thy
election.” And illustrating his idea by his own personal experience,
he says, “If I believe in Christ alone for salvation, I am certainly
interested in Christ; and interested in Christ I could not be, if I were
not chosen and elected of God.”
In conclusion, we earnestly entreat you to lay aside all fruitless speculations,
and to give yourself to prayer. Let reason bow to faith, and faith shut
you up to Christ, and Christ be all in all to you. Once more we solemnly
affirm that, conversion, and not predestination, is the doctrine with
which, in your present state of inquiry, you have to do. Beware that you
come not short of true conversion—a changed heart, and a renewed
mind, so that you become “a new creature in Christ Jesus.” And
if as a poor lost sinner you repair to the Savior, all vile, guilty, unworthy,
and weak as you are, He will receive you, and shelter you within the bosom
that bled on the cross, to provide an atonement and an asylum for the
very chief of sinners. Intermeddle not, therefore, with a state which
you can only ascertain to be yours by the Spirit’s work upon your
heart. “Your election will be known by your interest in Christ; and
your interest in Christ by the sanctification of the Spirit. Here is a
chain of salvation; the beginning of it is from the Father; the dispensation
of it through the Son; the application of it by the Spirit. In looking
after the comfort of election, you must look inward to the work of the
Spirit in your heart; then outward to the work of Christ on the cross;
then upward to the heart of the Father in heaven.” Oh, let your prayer
be “God be merciful to me a sinner,” until that prayer is answered
in the assurance of full pardon sealed upon your conscience by the Holy
Ghost. Thus knocking at mercy’s door, the heart of God will fly open,
and admit you to all the hidden treasures of its love.
We can but group some of the great blessings which flow from this truth
to the saints of God. The doctrine of predestination is well calculated
to confirm and strengthen the true believer in the fact and certainty
of his salvation through Christ. Feeling, as he does, the plague of his
own heart, experiencing the preciousness of the Savior, looking up through
the cross to God as his Father, exulting in a hope that maketh not ashamed,
and remembering that God the Eternal Spirit only renews those who are
chosen by God the Father, and are redeemed by God the Son, this doctrine
is found to be most comforting and confirming to his faith. The faintest
lineaments of resemblance to God, and the feeblest breathing of the Spirit
of adoption he discovers in his soul, is to him an indisputable evidence
of his predestination to divine sonship and holiness.
Another blessing accruing from the doctrine is the sweet and holy submission
into which it brings the mind under all afflictive dispensations. Each
step of his pilgrimage, and each incident of his history, the believer
sees appointed in the everlasting covenant of grace. He recognizes the
discipline of the covenant to be as much a part of the original plan as
any positive mercy that it contains. That all the hairs of his head are
numbered; that affliction cometh not out of the earth, and therefore is
not the result of accident or chance, but is in harmony with God’s
purposes of love; and, thus ordained and permitted, must work together
for good.
Not the least blessing resulting from this truth (2 Thess. 2:13) is its
tendency to promote personal godliness. The believer feels that God hath
“chosen us to salvation through sanctification and belief of the
truth;” that He hath “chosen us that we should be holy and without
blame before him in love” (Eph. 1:4); that we are “his workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained
that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). Thus the believer desires
to “give all diligence to make his calling and election sure,”
or undoubted, by walking in all the ordinances and commandments of the
Lord blameless, and standing complete in all the will of God.
And what doctrine is more emptying, humbling, and therefore sanctifying,
than this? It lays the axe at the root of all human boasting. In the light
of this truth, the most holy believer sees that there is no difference
between him and the vilest sinner that crawls the earth, but what the
mere grace of God has made. Such are some of the many blessings flowing
to the Christian from this truth. The radiance which it reflects upon
the entire history of the child of God, and the calm repose which it diffuses
over the mind in all the perplexing, painful, and mysterious events of
that history, can only be understood by those whose hearts have fully
received the doctrine of predestination. Whatever betides him—inexplicable
in its character, enshrouded in the deepest gloom, as may be the circumstance—the
believer in this truth can “stand still,” and, calmly surveying
the scene, exclaim: “This also cometh forth from the Lord of Hosts,
who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working. He who worketh
all things after the counsel of His own will hath done it, and I am satisfied
that it is well done.”
In conclusion, saints of God, have close relations and intimate dealings
with your Elder Brother. Repose in Him your confidence, yield to Him your
affections, consecrate to Him your service. He regards you with ineffable
delight. With all your interests He is identified, and with all your sorrows
He sympathizes. He may, like Joseph, at times speak roughly to His brethren,
in the trying dispensations of His providence; yet, like Joseph, He veils
beneath that apparent harshness a brother’s deep and yearning love.
Seek a closer resemblance to His image, to which, ever remember, you are
predestinated to be conformed. In order to this, study His beauty, His
precepts, His example, that with “open face, beholding as in a glass
the glory of the Lord, you may be changed into the same image, from glory
to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”