"God is stronger than their strength, more loving than their uttermost love, and in so far as they have loved and sacrificed themselves for others, they have obtained the infallible proof, that God too lives and loves and gives Himself away"
About this Quote
Power, in George A. Smith's telling, is not the clenched fist but the open hand. The line turns the usual religious boasting on its head: God isn't validated by spectacle or conquest, but by the quiet arithmetic of self-giving. "Stronger than their strength" sounds like a conventional piety clause until he pairs it with "more loving than their uttermost love", shifting the comparison from muscle to mercy. The real wager arrives in the second half, where theology gets braided to lived experience: if humans have ever truly loved and sacrificed for others, they already carry "infallible proof" that God "lives and loves."
That word "infallible" is doing aggressive work. It's an attempt to relocate certainty away from abstract doctrine and toward moral recognition. Smith is making belief less a matter of debating God's existence and more a matter of noticing what love feels like when it costs you something. The subtext is pastoral and strategic: in an era when Protestant America was awash in revivalism, denominational competition, and growing anxieties about doubt and modernity, he's offering believers a form of assurance that doesn't depend on argument or institutional authority. He also flatters the listener without cheapening them: your best acts aren't merely imitations of God; they are evidence of God.
The phrase "gives Himself away" lands as both devotional and political. It frames divinity as radical generosity, and by implication measures a community's righteousness not by creed-policing but by how willingly it spends itself on others.
That word "infallible" is doing aggressive work. It's an attempt to relocate certainty away from abstract doctrine and toward moral recognition. Smith is making belief less a matter of debating God's existence and more a matter of noticing what love feels like when it costs you something. The subtext is pastoral and strategic: in an era when Protestant America was awash in revivalism, denominational competition, and growing anxieties about doubt and modernity, he's offering believers a form of assurance that doesn't depend on argument or institutional authority. He also flatters the listener without cheapening them: your best acts aren't merely imitations of God; they are evidence of God.
The phrase "gives Himself away" lands as both devotional and political. It frames divinity as radical generosity, and by implication measures a community's righteousness not by creed-policing but by how willingly it spends itself on others.
Quote Details
| Topic | God |
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