Has it not been so in our notions of God? What has the history of
theology been for near one thousand eight hundred years? Has it not
been a gradual justification of God, a gradual vindication of His
character from those dark and horrid notions of the Deity which were
borrowed from the Pagans, and from the Jewish Rabbis? a gradual
return to the perfect good news of a good God, which was preached by
St. John and by St. Paul?--In one word, a gradual manifestation of
God; and a gradual discovery that when God is manifested, behold,
God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all?

That progress, alas! is not yet perfect. We still see through a
glass darkly, and we are still too apt to impute to God Himself the
darkness of those very hearts of ours in which He is so dimly
mirrored. And there are men still, even in Protestant England, who
love darkness rather than light, and teach men that God is dark, and
in Him are only scattered spots of light, and those visible only to
a favoured few; men who, whether from ignorance, or covetousness, or
lust of power, preach such a deity as the old Pharisees worshipped,
when they crucified the Lord of Glory, and offer to deliver men,
forsooth, out of the hands of this dreadful phantom of their own
dark imaginations.

Let them be. Let the dead bury their dead, and let us follow
Christ. Believe indeed that He is the likeness of God's glory, and
the express image of God's person, and you will be safe from the
dark dreams with which they ensnare diseased and superstitious
consciences. Let them be. Light is stronger than darkness; Love
stronger than cruelty. Perfect God stronger than fallen man; and
the day shall come when all shall be light in the Lord; when all
mankind shall know God, from the least unto the greatest, and