possible. A dog could
not become possessor of the Divine nature, in the sense in which my text
speaks of it. Any man, however bad, however foolish, however degraded,
abject and savage, can become a partaker of it, and yet no man has it
without something else than the fact of his humanity.

What, then, is it? No mere absorption, as extravagant mystics have
dreamed, into that Divine nature, as a drop goes back into the ocean and
is lost. There will always be 'I' and 'thou,' or else there were no
blessedness, nor worship, nor joy. We must so partake of the Divine
nature as that the bounds between the bestowing God and the partaking
man shall never be broken down. But that being presupposed, union as
close as is possible, the individuality of the giver and the receiver
being untampered with is the great hope that all Christian men and women
ought consciously to cherish.

Only mark, the beginning of the whole is the communication of a Divine
life which is manifested mainly in what we call moral likeness. Or to
put it into plain words, the teaching of my text is no dreamy teaching,
such as an eastern mystic might proclaim, of absorption into an
impersonal Divine. There is no notion here of any partaking of these
great though secondary attributes of the Divine mind which to many men
are the most Godlike parts of His nature. But what my text mainly means
is, you may, if you like, become 'holy as God is holy.' You may become
loving as God is loving, and with a breath of His own life breathed into
your hearts. The central Divinity in the Divine, if I may so say, is the
amalgam of holiness and love. That is God; the rest is what belongs to
God. God _has_ power; God _is_ love. That is the regnant attribute, the
spring that sets everything agoing. And so, when my text talks about
making us all, if we will, partakers of a Divine nature, what it means,
mainly, is this--that into every human spirit there may pass a seed of
Divine life which will unfold itself there in all purity of holiness, in
all tenderness and gentleness of love. 'God is love; and he that
dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.' Partakers we shall be
in the measure in which by our faith we have drawn from Him the pure and
the hearty love of whatever things are fair and noble; the measure in
which we love righteousness and hate iniquity.

And then remember also that this lofty purpose which is here set forth
is a purpose growingly realised in man. The Ap