Walter Brown Murray

“ What can men know of this earth who have never seen the sun? So what can men know of God who have never beheld His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, the Sun of righteousness, the Dayspring from on high, God made manifest to men who are not blind? ”

“ We do not like to change either our thoughts or our manner of life. We like the old ways. Like old shoes, they are more comfortable. We would probably declare, if asked, that we want to know the truth, but we are pretty well satisfied that we already know it. So if we chance to find that a knowledge of the truth involves a giving up or a laying down, a renunciation, a sacrifice of something that we have learned to love because we have had it in our possession a very long time, we may decide that the new thing is not the truth because it is not so comfortable as the old view. ”

“ We cannot conceive of two definite Divine beings existing from eternity to eternity in the form of two creators and two rulers of the universe. Such a thought is as monstrous to the reason as it is foreign to the Bible. Nor can we conceive of two who are infinite in love, wisdom, and power, for infinity is indivisible, The moment that we speak of two infinites we are speaking of the impossible. The very quality of infinity implies that the one who possesses it is unbounded as to place, as to time, and as to quality. ”

“ Men from being apparently hardened criminals, sinners of the worst type, are changed, as by a miracle, when they look to Jesus as an ever-present, ever-living Saviour. It is one of the most positive undeniable facts of history. And it has no parallel elsewhere. The world knows no other similar saviour.
According to the repeated statements of Jehovah, whom we all admit is the one God, the Creator of the universe, no one is Saviour but Himself. If Jesus is Saviour, He is Jehovah, the one and only God of heaven and earth, the Indivisible. ”

“ In no sense Divine, but merely a good man."
"No, no, not so far with your claims," say certain others who admit a little more perhaps, and make use of the Bible, with appropriate reservations and interpretations, as the text-book of their religion. "We believe in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and also in the leadership of Jesus. We admit that, as to his character and as to his teachings, Jesus is unique, but it is impossible that a human being can be God. We admit that he is Divine, as you and I and all men are Divine, but we cannot admit that he is God." ”

“ Let us assume, for the sake of the argument, that it is the very truth itself; that I wrote with the eloquence of an angel, adduced the most convincing arguments, proved my case perfectly for most men—there would still be many who would criticize and find fault and reject, for the possession of the truth may involve sacrifice of cherished opinions.
There are men who love reasonings about the truth; they delight in scientific processes of thought, but they have somehow lost sight of the object of their thought, truth itself, and the common sense that ought to characterize the search. ”

“ This is the real, substantial and persisting form in which men live to eternity. The natural body is merely a replica of it, its temporary outer clothing, to put man into touch with the material universe in which he for a time dwells. ”

“ As no man can approach another's soul except through his body,—that is, through his outward expression in time and space,—so can no one approach the Divine soul—the Father—except through the outward expression of it in Jesus. As we know one another only through these outward expressions of our interior selves, so we can know the Father—the unseen, invisible God—only through His manifestation in Christ. Yet these two separate manifestations of body and soul are not separated in fact, only in appearance; they act as one, and are one, as our bodies and souls are one being. ”

“ If such a man really existed, as we have conceded, we will perhaps all agree that his life was of such an unusually beneficent nature that most men regard it as the most ideal life of history. I find that even Jews are proud of him as the most brilliant one of their race, and that Mohammedans give him high place in their limited galaxy of prophets; in fact, it would appear that today most men, of whatever religion, rank him either as one of the noblest in the list of the world's benefactors, or easily and incomparably first. Shall we call this another fact? ”

“ We are perfectly aware that scientific men will contest our position, insisting that both mother and father contribute equally to the offspring. We admit that they do so in a sense and yet we insist that there is a difference in their contribution. It is the father's soul-life that is perpetuated or reproduced. The mother loses her name in a human family, and her identity is merged into the family of the male. She becomes, as it were, a helper to the male to reproduce himself. ”

“ We are discussing the origin of the soul, and we have urged that, if the soul's life is from God—if, indeed, all creation is from Him, then the soul-form itself, which we have seen is man's receptacle of life, is also from Him. As man continues to be man after the death of the material body, and lives as a man forever when the material envelop has perished, it is evident that his soul is in the man form even here and now. Thus, there would seem to be an inner or spiritual body composed of spiritual substances in order to exist in and function in the spiritual world. ”

“ They are like men who shut themselves up in houses and never see the sun. They do, indeed, perceive the sunlight as it enters their homes through the doors and windows. They feel the warmth of spring and summer and the cold of autumn and winter; but they only imagine the source from which the phenomena of light and heat and all consequent activity proceed. How can men who have never looked up at the heavens and beheld the roseate hues of dawn, the splendor of noonday, and the glories of the sunset know correctly of the world in which they live? ”

“ He had to come down through intermediate planes of creation. Yet we must believe, and we have abundant warrant for so believing, both from reason and the Word of God, that God was always potentially a man in the last things of nature. Nature is but the shadowing-forth, the projection of God, into ultimate forms, and all nature reflects the man-form. Trees with their branches and tops appear to strive to realize the human figure with its arms and head. Animal life in its progress upward grows more and more distinctly into the human form. ”

“ The attempt to rewrite the Bible to conform to the theories of its critics is to destroy it. Try it for yourself, if you will, and see what remains. Jesus made the most colossal claims for himself that any sane man has ever made. The good opinion of the critics is based upon these very statements; therefore, again we say, they accept the Bible as authentic. We have, indeed, the right of private interpretation of the facts, but we cannot, as honest men, so interpret them as to destroy them or even to twist them to fit our preconceived theories. We must be fair. ”

“ The glorified humanity, the Divine Humanity, is truly justified by its results. Immanuel, God-with-us, means to us heaven on earth and heaven hereafter, for God's presence makes heaven. Let us not think again of a divided God, but remembering that "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father," let us approach to the Lord Jesus Christ as the only God of heaven and earth, our Saviour, and realize that we shall never know any other God. ”

“ And it is right and proper that we should worship and adore God in His two phases of Being and Coming-forth, and that we should join in the ascription of praises to Him who, for our sakes, came into the world in the flesh to save us from our deadly enemies of hell. For us indeed the phase of Coming-forth is absolutely essential to our salvation. For it is this phase of Coming-forth that enables us to approach the Father, or Essential Being. "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me." ”

“ If God wanted to make Himself known to men, how could He do it in any other way than by appearing before them as a limited human being? As God is in Himself, it is perfectly obvious that we cannot understand Him. We do not know what an Infinite, Uncreated, Eternal, Self-existent Being is in any comprehensible way, except that the facts of the case in connection with creation and other manifestations of a similar nature require a Supreme Being who shall be all of these things. We know, for example, that no human being, limited as we are, could possibly create one little earth ”

“ It is indeed the opening up of that spiritual plane of life, or of life on the plane of the spirit, to which we have so often referred, by means of which one becomes an angel of heaven. It is developed through unselfishness, the voluntary laying down of the selfish life, the determined following out of the commandments of Jesus, the executed resolve to love others as we love ourselves. And yet, after all, it is Divinely effected. One can no more be born by his own effort into the plane of the truly spiritual than he can be born by his own effort into the plane of the material. ”

“ Jesus sometimes spoke as if he had a consciousness perfectly at one with the Father, and then again entirely distinct from that of the Father; but we can understand how that is because we have an interior consciousness into which we come and from which we speak; and then again we are immersed, as it were, in the things of sense,—of the outward world,—and we feel our separateness from the things of the spirit. This interior consciousness becomes more and more clear in our own case as the interior life is more clearly developed and we act more definitely from it. ”

“ THERE are many earnest, honest Christians in these modern days, when naturalistic criticism is at work to destroy the very foundations of human belief, who feel that the virgin birth of Jesus was unnecessary. They ask in all sincerity, Why could not Jesus be Divine, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, and still be the son of Joseph? They urge that perhaps the Bible account was a later invention of men, and say frankly that they do not see any need of it. ”

“ But there still remains a plane of life belonging to man above even that of the conscious spiritual. We might call it the Unconscious Spiritual, but it is better perhaps to term it the Inmost, where life is received from its source. This Inmost of the soul we may look upon as the very Holy of Holies of man, where God dwells directly with him, even if not openly to his consciousness. ”

“ Let us now take up the third division which we have indicated on our diagrams as "spirit." By spirit we refer to a still higher plane of man's being, which all men refer to and yet think of variously.
We are all sure that man has a distinctly marked plane of his nature—or faculty, at least—above the merely natural or animal mind. It is known from its manifestations. The natural mind is the "carnal" mind, to which Paul refers. The spiritual plane we also know from him. "To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." ”

“ There is evidently a vegetable soul, an animal soul, and a human soul, for all outward life must have of necessity its above-nature cause, and its inward spiritual form, that causes it to take form in the outward, to grow, and to develop into the likeness of that from which it proceeded. The material world is merely the world of effects, the spiritual, the world of causes. ”

“ We do not comprehend gravitation and electricity, for example, except in their manifestations, yet because of their manifestations we acknowledge them as facts of life. I do not insist that we shall accept the impossible, as, for example, that the Infinite is divisible, or that two men are one man, or that three separate and distinct Gods are only one God, but I do insist that we shall accept the plainly demonstrated facts of life. A true science says, What are the proved facts? A false science discards the facts which it finds inconvenient. ”

“ We in our regeneration go up step by step into higher and higher planes of spiritual living; but we never commingle with God as one with Him; we never go above the highest plane of the angelic heavens into oneness or identity with God. We remain forever creatures with life derived from God, never having life in ourselves, or self-existent life. And while God mediately descends through us as we become regenerated until He manifests Himself through us even on the natural plane of living, it is not God in His fullness in us, as He dwelt in the Divine Human when that was "glorified." ”

“ And our affections and thoughts constitute the real man within our visible body. In this way it is that all men are invisible to one another, except as we can judge of their quality or affections through their expression of thought manifested in word or deed. We, indeed, live as to our sight and hearing and other senses in a material world, but yet we are not material. We are truly spiritual beings. The real man who thinks and feels is invisible in this material world, except as he is expressed outwardly through matter. ”

“ When we read of the millions who surround the throne, "saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing," shall we think of more than one God on the throne? ”

“ Great things to them are small and small things great. And of all men they are the most sure of themselves, most satisfied with their ability as seekers after truth. They know how to analyze, to examine critically, and to define scientifically. They are better satisfied with the minute study of a butterfly's wing than they are with a satisfactory theory of creation. It is indeed an endeavor and a delight with them as a side issue to weave theories of creation from the wing of a butterfly. ”