A dependent being or a revolted one, perhaps a revolted dependent one, is elevated by its wants, not by its powers. Its powers may develop it, but cannot elevate it. But if I have a want, which is not power, and there is that which meets my want outside myself, I become acquainted with it. I appreciate it, not by power, but by dependence on the quality by which my want is supplied. Hunger is not power; but it enjoys and appropriates food which gives power. Weakness is not power: but if my languid body leans on kindly and supporting strength, my felt weakness-makes me know what strength is. But I learn more by it. I learn the kindness, patience, goodness, readiness, help, and perseverance in helping, which sustain me. I have the experience of independent strength, adapted, suited to my weakness. I know its capacity to sustain what is beyond itself, which is not my power elevating itself in internal development-self-filling power. There is love.
Now this relationship of wants to that which supplies them in another is the link between my nature and all the qualities of the nature I lean on, and which supplies these wants. I know its qualities by the way it meets my not having them-my want of power. It is a moral link too. I know love by it, and all the unfolding of goodness: self-power never does. The exaltation of what is human in itself is the positive loss of what is divine; that is, infinite positive loss. There is immense moral depth in the apostle’s word: “When I am weak, then am I strong.” And the more I have of God, and the more absolutely it is so, the more I gain. All is appropriated, but self is destroyed. It is not that I cease to exist, or to enjoy. It is not a Buddhist or stoical pantheistic absorption into God. I am always the conscious I forever; yet an I which does not think of I, but of God in whom its delight is. It is a wonderful perfection-an absolute delight in what is perfect, but in what is perfect out of ourselves; so that self is morally annihilated, though it always is there personally to enjoy. This is partly now in the form of thirst, though there be enjoyment-hereafter, for those who have it, perfect enjoyment face to face.