George Henry Dole

“ We cannot judge of the moral motive in cosmic processes from a battle between wolves. We must look to the general and final result to know the meaning of the struggle for existence. Can we judge mankind to be without moral motive because of a street fight between ruffians, or competition in trade, or because one drives the crows out of his corn, or gets his bread by the sweat of his brow?
It has been well suggested that the moral motive is evident in plants and animals surrendering their substance and life in the reproduction of their kind. ”

“ That the woman is to be nourished in the wilderness, tells us that the Church, by which is meant heavenly love and faith in human ministration, will be strengthened in its obscurity and dearth until it shall grow strong and increase, preparatory to bringing mankind into a wise, loving, and holy life.
Do we not now begin to see how the Word is written in God's language clothed in man's words? Do we not see that it is possible for the Word to open up to impenetrable depths and inexpressible glory? Do we not see that it may be so written as to flash forth all truth, not vaguely, but definitely? ”

“ Whatever the law of creation is, it is one continuous whole, working in all times and in all cases alike in principle. It can not be modified by exceptions. It can not fail in one method and then adopt another. Creation in the universe is as harmonious and continuous as it is in the tree, where there unfold by successive, harmonious steps, branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits. Spencer, the clearest, strongest, and most consistent and exhaustive advocate of Evolution, perceived this, and has, about as well as can be, built up a philosophy according to it. ”

“ To enlightened reason the doctrine that the sun will burn out and the earth freeze, is as pitiable a faith as the most fanciful superstition of the savage. That man's career is ended by death is as impossible as the creation of the earth by itself. That material force could evolve the universe by natural selection is more ludicrous than the healing power of fetiches.
It is the office of revelation to address the higher faculties of intelligence and judgment and to provide spiritual facts and things that rescue from the inevitable conclusion of sensual reasonings. ”

“ It never would have been imagined that there is a God, if the Word did not teach the "I Am." Nothing other than that nature created herself would have been possible to conception, if it were not declared in the letter of the Word that "God created the heavens and the earth." We never could have had any other idea than that the creating power is the "inherent aptitude" of atoms, if it were not declared in the letter of the Word that Divine truth is the creating power. "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the hosts of them by the breath of His mouth." ”

“ For like the Lord every truth that comes to man is begotten of the Father, is conceived in virgin affection, is wrapped in the swaddling clothes of natural ideas, is laid in the manger of the memory, grows and waxes strong in the grace of God to self assertion, is crucified in temptation, is buried in the sepulchre of worldliness before it rises to reign in power and glory over our lives. ”

“ Truth and goodness are the essential nature of God, from whom they originate, together with every idea concerning them. Indeed, if the virtues had not an absolute existence in the Divine Being, they never could have been so much as thought of. The intuition by which we know that we could have no sense of cold if there were not heat, no sense of light if there were not darkness, no sense of joy if there were not sadness, no sense of harmony if there were not discord, equally assures us that we could have no knowledge of even relative virtue if there were not absolute virtue. ”

“ Law Is In The Creator.
First, is law the Creator, or First Cause? Law itself is but a mode of action, and implies something back of it that acts. It can not be said that laws create, but rather that creation is subject to law. Law is not a power, but a rule according to which power acts. Consequently law alone is not the Creator, for a mere principle is essentially nothing; that is, a principle abstracted from its subject is without substantial existence. Yet there is nothing that escapes law. It comprehends every particle of matter as well as the universe. ”

“ To those who hunger and thirst for the righteousness of its spirit, who were the mere scribes is a matter of idle and worthless curiosity; for the tests of its divinity are in the light, joy, and peace of God's presence in the universe and in the heart, revealed by the humble, reverent, prayerful living of its teachings. No one is competent to question the divinity of the Word until he has found it wanting in its self-imposed proof, "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine." ”

“ Love and wisdom are the flesh and blood of the Divine Being, from which man must receive to have life. "Except ye eat My flesh and drink My blood, ye have no life in you." The nature of that Love is that of affection—ad-ficere, to do to, to act upon. The Creator's Love is the source of all activity and power, hence the fulness of all activity is in Him. ”

“ The natural body must have bread and water from the earth to sustain it. The spirit must have bread and water from the spiritual world to sustain it. The "bread which cometh down from God out of heaven and giveth life unto the world," is love, from which alone we can have real life in our spirits. The water which the Lord gives that becomes "a well of water springing up into everlasting life," is truth from the Lord, which not only quenches the thirst for knowledge, but also like water washes from defiling evils and makes the heart pure. ”

“ The essential nature of a rock is just as unknowable as God is, yet we have the science of geology. But because the essential nature of a rock is unknown no one of sound mind questions the existence of a rock. The essential nature of land and water is unknowable, but no one doubts the existence of land and sea, or questions the laws of navigation. The essential nature of the earth is unknown, but there is absolute faith in the science of geography. The essential nature of an animal is unknowable, yet no one doubts its existence nor does the fact interfere with the science of zoology. ”

“ It is the light of the understanding. All natural sight is from the understanding. The eye can not see of itself; nor can the ear hear, the hand feel, the nose smell, or the tongue taste of themselves. ”

“ But if the cold and cruel struggle for self-existence is the energizing and inmost thing, nature's beauty is false, the song of the stars is a dirge, and the grand anthem of the universe is a rasping chord. ”

“ Nothing can pass the door either way that does not become there a fixed part of the human organization. Its abiding form, on the one hand stamping our evils upon us in perverted forms that close the door against the Spirit of God, and on the other weaving forms receptive of the holiness and love of God, says to us auspiciously, "For ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess." The uses of the Limbus show religion to be not merely a theory, but sound, wise, and righteous, daily thinking, loving, and living. ”

“ Having the starting point that the Creator is goodness and truth itself, less degrees of good and truth are not perplexing. God being essential goodness, truth is the way His goodness acts. Good as a quality is that which is after the pattern of the goodness of God. Right is that which is in harmony with creative truth. Right is the way that mankind is created to live. It is the divine order in creation. It is the way God would do and that He would have us do that we may fulfil the purpose of our creation. Wrong is the way mankind is not created to live. ”

“ Gravity is the activity of a substance having still more subtile and more universal power. Nothing eludes its grasp. Acting in matter it gives bodies forces that draw them together after the similitude of affections that draw minds together. The affection that exists between material objects, or the force with which they affect one another, is called gravity, and is the measure of weight. Though so subtile as to escape our grasp even more effectually than ether, for it is a purer substance, it is most substantial because it operates the most interiorly and primarily upon all material things. ”

“ Not to know God is not to know anything worth knowing, for the knowledge of God gives all other knowledge its value. Knowledge is permanently useful in the degree that it leads to and reveals God. For how much better is a white man with a gun than an Indian with a bow if his weapons are put only to the same selfish purpose? The superior knowledge of science and art is superior only so far as it opens the understanding to God and to the virtues that are of His Divine Humanity. ”

“ Force, which in every instance is substance in motion, or the effect of the activity of substance, has its primary origin in the vital action of the Divine Organism of the Creator. He is omnipotent, not that He can transgress His own laws or act against His own nature, but because all power in its beginning resides in Him, and there has its origin. The activity that is in Him is of so complex and high a character that every kind of force, natural or spiritual, unfolds out of it. Force in the Creator is infinite Love. ”

“ In accepting survival of the fittest as a law, it is important to know and define what the "fittest" is. What is it that nature saves? If the fittest survive, such it is her purpose to save, for surely nature's purpose is wrought out as well in securing all her designs as in the exaction of penalties for not fulfilling her laws.
We cannot understand by survival of the fittest merely the fittest to survive in the sense of the fittest to exist in and for self. If this were what it means, development would have stopped long ago. ”

“ That the Word is God is asserted in the Word. Because God reveals Himself through the Word, it is God, and the fountain-head of all enlightenment, the foundation of civilization, and the everlasting source of wisdom and love from God, the Lord. The Word ascribes its own origin to revelation, and proclaims all knowledge, even from the beginning, to have been obtained "as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets, which have been since the world began." Materialistic science has demonstrated to the truly rational man the infallible truth of this. ”

“ Now if fortune began creation, it has been by luck and chance that each step in the upward development was made; and luck, chance, and fortune are the sum of all intelligence, design, wisdom, love, and life that is or is to come. In which case the essential nature of the creative power and the supreme intelligence is luck, for the first cause must terminate in the last effect. ”

“ Let us illustrate how the forces of Love in the Creator are converted into natural forces. Suppose the case of one desiring to be at a certain place. His affections form the will to go. He loves; that is he desires to effect a bargain, to view a landscape, or to see a friend. Suppose he chooses to go by boat and oar. His desire to be at a certain place leads him to go. Desire propels the oar. Desire or love in the soul acts within the mind. The activity descends, and operates upon the fluids within the brain and nerves of the body. ”