though he would gladly have lived and died doing nothing but fixing
his soul's eye steadily on the glory of God's goodness, had to come
down from the mount likewise, and work, and preach, and teach, and
wear himself out in daily drudgery for that God whom he learnt to
serve, even when he could not adore Him in the press of business, and
the bustle of a rotten and dying world.

But see, my dear friends, and consider it well--Before a man can come
to that state of mind, or anything like it, he must have begun by
loving goodness wherever he saw it; and have settled in his heart
that to be good, and therefore to do good, is the most beautiful
thing in the world. So he will begin by loving his brother whom he
has seen, and by taking delight in good people, and in all honest,
true, loving, merciful, generous words and actions, and in those who
say and do them. And so he will be fit to love God, whom he has not
seen, when he finds out (as God grant that you may all find out) that
all goodness of which we can conceive, and far, far more, is gathered
together in God, and flows out from him eternally over his whole
creation, by that Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the
Son, and is the Lord and Giver of life, and therefore of goodness.
For goodness is nothing else, if you will receive it, but the eternal
life of God, which he has lived, and lives now, and will live for
evermore, God blessed for ever. Amen.

So, my dear friends, it will not be so difficult for you to love God,
if you will only begin by loving goodness, which is God's likeness,
and the inspiration of God's Holy Spirit. For you will be like a man
who has long admired a beautiful picture of some one whom he does not
know, and at last meets the person for whom the picture was meant--
and behold the living face is a thousand times more fair and noble