The bond of the universe, the harmony of things, the negation of difference, the fact at the root of every vision, revealing that love is the only good in the world, and selfishness the one thing hateful, in the city of the loving God, is the devotion of the Son to the Father....

Let us not forget that the devotion of the Son could never have been but for the devotion of the Father, who never seeks his own glory one atom more than does the Son; who is devoted to the Son, and to all his sons and daughters, with a devotion perfect and eternal, with fathomless unselfishness. 

There is always something deeper than anything said, something through which the central reality shines more or less plainly. Light itself is but the poor outside form of a deeper, better thing, namely, life. The life is Christ...

We must be sons and daughters in our will. And we can be such only by choosing God for the father he is, and doing his will. Therein lies human bliss. The working out of this our salvation must be pain, but the eternal form of the will of God in and for us, is intensity of bliss...

Jesus rose to the height of his being, set himself down on the throne of his nature, in the act of subjecting himself to the will of the Father as his only good, the only reason of his existence...

The life of Christ is this—negatively, that he does nothing, cares for nothing for his own sake; positively, that he cares with his whole soul for the will, the pleasure of his father. Because his father is his father, therefore he will be his child.

...The love that foresees creation is itself the power to create. Neither could he be righteous—that is, fair to his creatures—but that his love created them. His perfection is his love. All his divine rights rest upon his love. Ah, he is not the great monarch! The simplest peasant loving his cow is more divine than any monarch whose monarchy is his glory. If God would not punish sin, or if he did it for anything but love, he would not be the father of Jesus Christ, the God who works as Jesus wrought.

If we could make ourselves, we should understand our creation, but to do that we must be God. Nevertheless, if I be a child of God, I must be like him, even in the matter of creative energy...

 The word creation applied to the loftiest success of human genius seems to me a mockery of humanity, itself in the process of creation...

It seems to me that any lover of the gospel can hardly have failed to feel dissatisfaction with the close of the third verse of John 1: “All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” That it is no worse than redundant can be no satisfaction to the man who would find perfection, if he may, in the words of him who was nearer the Lord than any other....