"Do you think that God calls us to adore Him from a love of homage or service? Has God the passions of man for ruling? Does He have man's thirst for applause, or man's desire to have His name shouted by crowds? Could the acclamations of the universe, though concentrated into one burst of praise, give our Creator a new or brighter consciousness of His own majesty and goodness? Oh! no. He has manifested Himself to us because in the knowledge and adoration of His perfections our own intellectual and moral perfection is found.
What He desires is, not our subjection, but our excellence. He has no love of praise. He calls us as truly to honor goodness in others as in Himself, and only claims supreme honor because He transcends all others, and because He communicates to the mind which receives Him a light, strength and purity, which no other being can give. God has no love of being an Emperor. It gives Him no pleasure to have men bow before Him. It is to make us His children in the highest sense of the word, to make us more and more partakers of His own nature, it is not to multiply slaves, that He has sent His Son to make Himself known. God indeed is said to seek His own glory; but the glory of a creator consists in the glory of His works; and we may be assured that He cannot wish any recognition of Himself but that which will perfect the noblest highest work --- the immortal mind." Channing.
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