B. H. Roberts

“ He looks out into space in the stillness of night, and sees the deep vault of heaven inlaid with suns, the centers, doubtless of planetary systems, all moving in exact order and harmony, in such regularity that he cannot doubt that Intelligence brought them into being, and now sustains and directs the forces that preserve them. Thus the heavens declare the existence of God as well as His glory. This thought is in harmony with the tradition of his fathers, and he recognizes the identity between the Intelligence that he knows must control the universe, and the God of whom his fathers testify. ”

“ Buddhism has no God; it has not even the confused and vague notion of a Universal Spirit in which the human soul, according to the orthodox doctrine of Brahmanism, and the Sankhya philosophy, may be absorbed. Nor does it admit nature, in the proper sense of the word, and it ignores that profound division between spirit and matter which forms the system and glory of Kapila. It confounds man with all that surrounds him, all the while preaching to him the laws of virtue. Buddhism, therefore cannot unite the human soul, which it does not even mention, with a God, whom it ignores ”

“ Truth is native to the spirit of man, when unrestrained by man's perverse will—when he has not reached the point where he chooses darkness rather than light because his deeds are evil—then Truth is native to the spirit of man and will, when unrestrained, intuitively rise to meet it as flame leaps toward its kindred flame and unites with it. And it is because the spirit of man refuses to live true to this quality of his spirit that he comes under condemnation when rejecting the truth. ”

“ Thus the tradition of the patriarchs was, in time, degraded, by some branches of their posterity, to mythology—a muddy, troubled pool, which like a mirror shattered into a thousand fragments, reflects while it distorts into fantastic shapes the objects on its banks. Still, under all the rubbish of human invention may be found the leading idea—God's existence; and that fact alone, however mis-shapen it may be, proves how firmly fixed in the human mind is the tradition of the fathers ”

“ Being and Not Being, Being and Becoming, are, as in the days of Plato, the watchwords which will be rung in our ears; to which we may shut our ears if we please, but which will encounter us when we least expect them." (Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy—Maurice—Vol. II, pp. 655-6) .
"God" for Schelling, says Elmendorf, "is the absolute indifference of contraries; the unity of being and thought, of subject and object, of ideal and real; this is the potentiality of the actual from which the two opposites differentiate themselves without losing their unity in the absolute." ”

“ I know of no more beautiful or complete illustration of such a perfect revelation than that great revelation with which the dispensation of the fulness of times began, when God the Father and Jesus the Christ, stood revealed in the presence of Joseph Smith, when every veil was removed, and the glory of God extended throughout the forest in which the Prophet had prayed; when he heard the Father speak to him as one friend speaks to another, saying:
"Joseph, this is My beloved Son; hear him." ”

“ The primary doctrine of the esoteric religion undoubtedly was the real essential Unity of the Divine Nature. The sacred texts taught that there was a single Being, 'The sole producer of all things both in heaven and earth, Himself not produced of any'—'the only true, living God, self-originated'—'who exists from the beginning'—'who has made all things, but has not Himself been made.' This 'Being' seems never to have been represented by any material, even symbolical, form. ”

“ A great diversity of religious opinions has prevailed in the world, and different forms of ceremonies have been and still are observed. The religious notions and practices of mankind early diverged from one another,—the 'sons of men' were soon distinguished from 'the sons of God,' the impious from the holy,—and notwithstanding the purgation of the world by a flood, and the subsequent re-establishment of one common faith no sooner did the earth begin to be peopled again, than a diversity of religions took place, each nation and tribe embracing some peculiarity of its own. ”

“ It is no more a marvel that we should have a God-head or great Presiding Council for our earth than that we should have a sun for it; and our having a great Presiding Council or God-head for our earth or our world-system would no more be in conflict with like grand councils for other worlds and world-systems than our sun would conflict, disrupt or injure other suns of other world-systems, since all are of the same nature, and act under the universal reign of law that preserves the harmony and nicely balanced forces and processes of the universe. ”

“ The audience grow restive, for they are tortured as well as the speaker, and if he were malicious and had time to think about it, he might find some alleviation in that. No one can help him. At length, in sheer desperation, he does what he ought to have done long before—simply stops and sits down—perhaps hurling some swelling morsel of common-place, as a parting volley, at the audience—bathed in sweat, and feeling that he is disgraced forever! If he is very weak or foolish, he resolves never to speak again without having every word written out before him ”

“ How, then, can it be but that the world, which is but a name for the aggregate of all that we know, has a cause to which it is indebted for its existence?
"The fact of experience, however, when correctly expressed, turns out to be, not that everything which we know derives its existence from a cause, but only every event or change. There is in nature a permanent element, and also a changeable; the changes are always the effects of previous changes; the permanent existences, so far as we know, are not effects at all. ”

“ Such Pantheism as this is the purest Monism—that is, the one-substance theory of existence; and is spoken of by some of our philosophers as the purest Theism—that is, faith in one God. Indeed, Pantheism, in this aspect of it, is looked upon as a sort of exaggerated Theism; for it regards "God" as the only substance, of which the material universe and man are but ever-changing manifestations. It is the form of Pantheism which identifies mind and matter, the finite and infinite, making them but manifestations of one universal being ”

“ The finger of a man can hide them in their remoteness. Their vast distances from one another have dwindled into nothing. They and their movements have lost all individuality; the innumerable suns of which they are composed blend all their collected light into one pale milky glow."
"Thus extending our view from the earth to the solar system, from the solar system to the expanse of the group of stars to which we belong, we behold a series of gigantic nebula creations rising up one after another, and forming greater and greater colonies of worlds. ”

“ And so in every inhabited world, and in every system of worlds, a God presides. Deity in his own right and person, and by virtue of the essence of him; and also by virtue of his being the sign and symbol of the Collectivity of the Divine Intelligences of the universe. Having access to all the councils of the Gods, each individual Deity becomes a partaker of the collective knowledge, wisdom, honor, power, majesty, and glory of the Body Divine—in a word, the embodiment of the Spirit of the Gods whose influence permeates the universe. ”

“ If that is the case, let no one dream that he can help out our weakness by speaking of a divine communication—a revelation from above. We have nothing which can receive such a communication; nothing which can turn it to any account. The voice may speak, there is no ear which can take it in. But Kant does not leave us in this utter desolation of heart and hope. No results can follow from trying to speculate with those ideas of the reason. They will only turn round and round upon us; we can never get them outside of us to act upon us. ”

“ Herbert Spencer remarks, "We are no more able to form a circumscribed idea of cause, than of space or time; and we are consequently obliged to think of the cause which transcends the limits of our thought as positive though indefinite. Just in the same manner that on conceiving any bounded space there arrives a nascent consciousness of space outside the bounds; so, when we think of any definite cause, there arises a nascent consciousness of a cause behind it; and in the one case as in the other, this nascent consciousness is in substance like that which suggests it, though without form." ”

“ He is the Reality. Wooden idols are not real; He is real. He made us at first, sustains us yet; we and all things are but the shadow of Him; a transitory garment veiling the Eternal Splendor. 'Allah Akbar, God is Great;' and then also 'Islam,' that we must submit to God. That our whole strength lies in resigned submission to Him, whatsoever He do to us. For this world, and for the other! The thing He sends to us, were it death and worse than death, shall be good, shall be best; we resign ourselves to God." (Hero Worship, Lecture II) . ”

“ The earth rolls upon her wings, and the sun giveth his light by day, and the moon giveth her light by night, and the stars also give their light, as they roll upon their wings in their glory, in the midst of the power of God. ”

“ When Jesus looked around and saw none but the woman, He said to her, "Woman, where are thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?" "No man, Lord," she said. Then Jesus said: "Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more." That is how God deals with sinners. It is written that God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, and that is true, he cannot; but how about the sinner? Why, He may look upon the sinner with infinite compassion. While sin must always be hateful, yet will He help and love the sinner, if he will but go his way and sin no more. ”

“ Leaving, then, dogmatists and skeptics to conduct these controversies, and to arrive at any results they can—being convinced inwardly that they will arrive at no result, that each can say just enough to make the conclusions of the other untenable—he falls back upon this moral law, this law for free creatures. Once admitting that, he can, nay, he must, recognize all nature as subject to the same Righteous Being; he must contemplate the world as a moral world, the universe as designed for a good end. ”

“ But Jesus heeded not the word of the servant. He had heard Jairus' cry of faith, and responsive to that faith-cry, he made His way to the home of the ruler, put out those who were unbelieving, and taking the maid by the hand, gave her back to the gladness of life, into the arms of the joyous father. The faith of that rich man was as great as the faith of any we meet with in all the ministry of the Lord. So, wealth is not necessarily a hindrance to faith. God is as close to the faithful rich as to the faithful poor, and as ready to grant them his mercy, according to their faith. ”