Christian consciousness

“ The normality of religion is further shown in the instinctive turning of the soul to God, or to some higher power, in times of crisis and danger. The religious consciousness is best interrogated, not in times of mechanical routine or worldly preoccupation, but in those moments when we seem to ourselves to be most religious, in moments of clearest insight, or of deepest emotion, or of some crisis in action. ”

“ There is the human consciousness, operating with and operated upon by the impulse of Christianity. It is the great human experience from which we single out for investigation that part which is concerned with religion, and call that the religious experience. It is essential, therefore, that those general investigations of human consciousness and experience, as such, which are being carried on all about us should be reckoned with, if our Christian life and thought are not altogether to fall out of touch with advancing knowledge. ”

“ To enter into the Christ consciousness is to become conscious of the real being of the Christ, and the real being of the Christ is identical with the real being of man. To become conscious of the real being of man is to know the truth concerning man, and when we know this truth we know that man is divine because man, in his eternal nature, is identical with the nature of the Christ. When we know that we are created in the likeness of truth we know that we are truth, and we can say, when speaking from the Christ consciousness, into which we have entered, "I am the truth." ”

“ Believers can have a true spiritual consciousness of God without the possession of great capacity or attainments. Many whose natural education and intellectual opportunities have been slight have had this spiritual perception in an uncommon degree, and it always marks the spiritually ripe Christian. It is not the one whose intellectual knowledge is critical, scholarly, and profound, but he whose spiritual insight is suffused with grace, love, and fellowship. ”

“ To abide in the Christ is to actually live in the Christ consciousness, and every part of mind and soul is permeated, through and through, with the life and the power of the Christ. Your entire being is in the hands of higher power ”

“ The Christian life, in its highest form, from this amalgamation of human traits, has constructed an ideal for the soul founded on something tangible and substantial in human consciousness. When the Christian said, "O God, make me pure and noble," it has been no longer necessary to rhapsodize on a heaven concerning which he knew nothing, and to disclaim all interest in this earth. ”

“ In Christian lands the consciousness of men bears testimony to the existence of God, but it is not in such lands only that this consciousness exists and confirms belief in the Divine. In the earliest times, long before history began to be written, such a consciousness was prevalent, leading men to faith in and worship of a Being or Beings infinitely greater than themselves, present with them and presiding, though invisibly, over their destinies. ”

“ A merely metaphysical conception of the divinity of Christ in terms of substance or essence, as these are commonly thought, must, therefore, wholly fail to satisfy. We must be able to recognize and bow before the personal will of the personal God revealed in Christ, if we are really to find God through him. A strong sense of the personal, then, such as the social consciousness evinces, must see in Christ, above all, a personal revelation of a person. ”

“ Indeed, these two forces: the diffused Religiosity and more or less inchoate religion, readily discoverable, by a generous docility, more or less throughout the world of human souls, and the concentrated spirituality and concrete, thoroughly characteristic Religion, which has its culmination, after its ample preludings in the Hebrew Prophets, in the Divine-Human figure and spirit of Jesus Christ: are interdependent, in somewhat the way in which vague, widely spread Subconsciousness requires, and is required by, definite, narrowly localized Consciousness in each human mind. ”

“ Its natural functions of discernment and imperative are not set aside by the Spirit, but enlightened and re-inforced. His part must not be counted zero. "When the Spirit is come, He will convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment," John 16:8. He works through the truth, in and through men's natural faculties. While the Christian's own conscience is acting in its natural functions, it is not acting alone. It is not alone; for the Holy Spirit is there as a quickening and helping power. ”

“ If then you would know whether christianity be true, it is first of all needful that you read and ponder the Christian books. These books prove themselves. The religion of Christ is felt to be true, as you read the writings in which it is recorded. Just as the works of nature prove to the contemplative mind the being of a God, so do the books of the Christians prove the truth of their religion. ”

“ Hence it is indispensably necessary for the Christian, in every period of his life, but especially when entering on his religious course, to implore the gracious influence of the Divine Spirit, to guard him against every species of error—to lead him into all truth—and to invest the truth with that holy unction, which will render it no less a source of the highest intellectual improvement, than of the most exquisite mental enjoyment. ”

“ Is it less important that the Christian of today, called to be a witness for Christ, should be manifestly characterized by His Spirit? Should we not all be “imitators of God, as dear children,” and “walk in love as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us”? And should not the Spirit of God-likeness be carried into the smallest details of life, and not be merely reserved for special occasions? ”

“ There is not one grace of the Spirit of God, of the existence of which, in any professor of religion, Christian practice is not the most decisive evidence.... The degree in which our experience is productive of practice shows the degree in which our experience is spiritual and divine.”
Catholic writers are equally emphatic. The good dispositions which a vision, or voice, or other apparent heavenly favor leave behind them are the only marks by which we may be sure they are not possible deceptions of the tempter. ”

“ If religion is to be a reality to the social consciousness, then, there must be a real revelation of a real God in the real world, in actual human history, not an imaginary God, nor a dream God, nor a God of mystic contemplation. ”

“ So when the Christian quietly goes on his circle of duties, ever seeking, by the help of God's grace, to do the will of his Lord,—he shows to the world a living example of the power and truth of religion; he does good not for the look of the thing, but because the love of Christ constraineth him to act as conscience directs. ”

“ Should we have been wiser in our generation than they, but for the Bible? If in moral speculation we hear but little—too little—of the confession of what it owes to the Christian religion—in all the Philosophy, nevertheless, that is pure and of good report, we see that "the dayspring from on high has visited it." In all philosophic inquiry there is, perhaps, a tendency to the soul's exal [Pg 179] tation of itself—which the spirit and genius of Christianity subdues. ”

“ In endeavoring to rise from Nature to a conception of a creating and ruling spirit, different in character from what observation of Nature would lead us to imagine that spirit to be, theology has become involved in endless contradictions. The Christian idea of the Deity would seem to have been developed in the light of the sympathies which have arisen in the domestic and social life of man. ”

“ Consider the tangibility and conspicuousness of things, the intangibility and, to the senses and the mind itself, the elusive mysteries of personality, of nature, of consciousness, even of knowledge and every other manifest activity. We cannot fairly blame Christians for what has been done among them in an attempt to explain and reason about Jesus Christ. The attempt has been honest enough and successful enough to hold the allegiance of thinking men for generations. ”

“ It is false to the point of nonsense to see in "faith," in the faith in salvation through Christ, the distinguishing trait of the Christian; the only thing that is Christian is the Christian mode of existence, a life such as he led who died on the Cross.... ”

“ But the psychological experience and the theology of Christianity are only a ground-work for its essential feature, which is the conception of a relationship of the individual believer to a mystical being at once human and divine, the Risen Christ. ”

“ So also we have already become familiar with the simplicity of the message of God in Christ, and the simplicity of the faith which, {54} rooted in the consciousness of sin and need, and equally possible for all men who can share this consciousness, is required to welcome God's offer, and so be brought by Christ into living union with Him. ”

“ But the Christian raises himself above the flesh and its lusts, which disturb the faculties of knowledge as well as those of will, to the Spirit and the spiritual service of God, above the ways of darkness to the ways of light; he presses on to faith, and with faith to perfect knowledge, as one born again, who is full of the Spirit of God, in whom God dwells and prophesies, interpreting past and future without being seen or heard ”

“ As the spirit of Christ becomes one with his spirit so do his own judgements and his own love become those of God in him, and his principles are embodied in his life. All wisdom is divine, and all love, the Christian says. And, undoubtedly, men who are earnestly and disinterestedly seeking these, and discovering how in that search they penetrate into the truth and reality of moral and practical affairs of life, must find that the Christian is worth listening to, perhaps even worth watching. ”

“ When, then, by this critical process religion is traced to its real essence in the emotional consciousness of God, to which the dogmatic doctrines stand as secondary products and varied symbols, then it remains to show that between the essence of religion and that which science demands and presupposes, there exists not conflict but harmony. ”

“ Well, then, who is there to-day, within the Church or without, who understands the divine message of the fatherhood of God sufficiently to acquire such a consciousness, and to make the intensely practical application of the message to every problem of mind, or body, or environment? ”

“ The second of our three conceptions views Religion less as a doctrine to be proved or disproved through a study of the external world than as a kind of consciousness whose justification lies in its rank amongst the various inner manifestations of our human nature. ”

“ To the devotee of a certain temperament such visions occur, and it is only to be expected that in every case the vision should take the form required by the religion of the worshipper. Hence the Christian sees Christ and enters heaven ”

“ And when the nothingness of the carnal mind was made plain, men saw the reality of the truth, as revealed in the Christ, back of it all. The divine message was whispered to a human mentality. And that mentality expanded under the God-influence, until at last it gave to the sin-weary world the Christ-principle of salvation. Let us call that human mentality, for convenience, the man Jesus. ”

“ And a glance over Church history leaves one feeling that few Christians, even among careful thinkers, have had thoroughly Christian ideas of God.
A principal fault has been the method used in arriving at the thought of God. Men began with what was termed "Natural Religion." They studied the universe and inferred the sort of Deity who made and ruled it. ”

“ The consciousness of the God in whom we live, move and have our being. This, too, [by reason of Christianity] became, in believers, a more living, a more profound sentiment. They [the Christians] felt more strongly and vividly the all-pervading presence of that God who made himself to be felt by them in nature, and whose existence to the spirit is undeniable. It was to this undeniable fact of consciousness, indeed, they appealed, in endeavoring to lead the pagans away from the gods which they themselves had made to the acknowledgment of the only true God. ”

“ The whole force of the Christian religion, therefore, so far as belief in the divine personages determines the prevalent attitude of the believer, is in general exerted by the instrumentality of pure ideas, of which nothing in the individual's past experience directly serves as a model. ”

“ We will proceed to notice the second cause of men being invested with divine attributes.
2. The people must and would have an external God they could see, hear, and talk to.
All the oriental nations, as well as Christian, taught that "God was a spirit," but no nation or class of people, not even the founders of Christianity, entertained a consistent view of the doctrine. Only a few learned philosophers saw the scientific impossibility of an infinite spirit being crowded into the human form. Hence they alone were contented to "worship God in spirit and in truth." ”

“ We come now to the inquiry, What effect has faith in Christ—in his Divinity, in his teaching, and in his atonement for sin—upon the conscience of believers?
The answer is plain. In those who received Christ as possessing supreme authority as a Divine Teacher, their faith would so affect their conscience, that it would reprove for every neglect of conformity to the example of Jesus. The moment faith recognises Christ as a Divine instructor, that moment conscience recognises his instruction and his example as obligatory to be received and practised. ”

“ We own no principle of spiritual light, life or holiness, inherent by nature in the mind or heart of man. We believe in no principle of spiritual light, life or holiness, but the influence of the Holy Spirit of God, bestowed on mankind, in various measures and degrees, through Jesus Christ our Lord. ”