Divine Persons

“ The next question, scarcely inferior to that of the Divine Character in its practical importance, is that of the Divine Personality. Does God exist as a Divine Person, or only as a formless and universally diffused essence? And is He to be thought of and adored as one Person, or more than one? ”

“ In the Divine holiness we have the highest and inconceivably glorious revelation of the very essence of the Divine Being; in the holiness of the saints the deepest revelation of the change by which their inmost nature is renewed into the likeness of God. ”

“ Be ye holy, as I am holy.
Most Holy God! who hast called us to be holy, we have heard Thy voice asking, What manner of persons we ought to be in all holy living and godliness? With our whole soul we answer in deep contrition and humility: Holy Father! we ought to be so different from what we have been. In faith and love, in zeal and devotion, in Christlike humility and holiness, O Father! we have not been, before Thee and the world, what we ought to be, what we could be. ”

“ Let us learn to confess that however much we may seek, now from one, then from another side, to grasp the thought, the holiness of God is something that transcends all thought, a glory not so much to be thought, as to be known, in adoration and fellowship. [p297] Scripture speaks not so much of holiness, as the Holy One. It is as we worship and fear, obey and love; it is in a life with God, that something of the mystery of His glory will be unfolded. As the Divine light shines in us and through us, will the Holy One be revealed. ”

“ From ourselves, when we take away the idea of imperfection, we can form some conception of what God is. But holiness is that which is characteristically Divine, the special contents of a Divine revelation. ”

“ Holy, the Father, God above us, High and Lifted up, whom no man hath seen or can see, whose Holiness none dare approach, but who doth Himself in His Holiness draw nigh to make holy. Holy, the Son, God with us, revealing Divine Holiness in human life, maintaining it amid the suffering of death for us, and preparing a holy life and nature for His people. Holy, the Spirit, God in us, the Power of Holiness within us, reaching out to and embracing Christ, and transforming our inner life into the union and communion of Him in whom we are holy. ”

“ I dwell in the High and Holy place, and with him who is of a contrite spirit.’ In Him was seen the affinity holiness has for all that is lost and helpless and sinful. He proved that holiness is not only the energy which in holy anger separates itself from all that is impure, but which in holy love separates to itself even what is most sinful, to save and to bless. In Him we see how the Divine Holiness is the harmony of Infinite Righteousness with Infinite Love. ”

“ So that His revealed or written Word and His Word in Nature alike descend from Him, and lead up to Him, who is the inmost and animating soul of both; not a mere undefined pervading influence, but a Divine Personal God,—an infinitely glorious Divine Man, the great Archetype, of which man was created the finite image. ”

“ By the Deity we mean—and I suppose everyone means—the all-controlling consciousness of the universe as well as the infinite, unfathomable, and unknowable abyss of being beyond. By divinity we mean the essence of the nature of the immanent God, the innermost and all-determining quality of that nature; we have already seen that according to the Christian religion the innermost quality of the divine nature is perfect love. ”

“ Consider yourself and all the fallen world, as having nothing to wish for, but by the spirit of prayer to draw into your soul this divine, meek, loving, nature of God. Consider the holy Jesus as the gift of God to your soul, to begin and finish this within you, in spite of every inward or outward enemy. ”

“ His call gives life to the dead, and holiness to those whom He has made alive. He calls us to listen as He speaks of His Holiness, and of our holiness like His. He calls us to Himself, to study, to fear, to love, to claim His Holiness. He calls us to Christ, in whom Divine Holiness became human Holiness, to see and admire, to desire and accept what is all for us. He calls us [p16] to the indwelling and the teaching of the Spirit of Holiness, to yield ourselves that He may bring home to us and breathe within us what is ours in Christ. Christian! listen to God calling thee to Holiness. ”

“ To suppose that God might make Himself more obvious, more distinctly apparent to us, than He has done, is to mistake what God is and how we can know Him. What are the highest attributes of Divinity, the most Divine characteristics of God? Are they great power, vast size, dazzling physical glory that overpowers the sense; or are they infinite goodness, holiness that cannot be tempted, love that accommodates itself to all the [11] needs of all creatures? ”

“ O Holy God! give Thou Thyself the answer to Thy question, and teach us and the world what manner of persons Thy people can be, in the day of Thy power, in the beauty of holiness. We bow our knee to Thee, O Father, that Thou wouldst grant us, according to the riches of Thy glory, to be mightily strengthened in the inner man by the Spirit of Holiness. ”

“ Holiness appears to express what is the very essence or perfection of the Divine Being Himself. None of the attributes can be predicated of all that belongs to God; but Scripture speaks of His Holy Name, His Holy Day, His Holy Habitation, His Holy Word. In the word Holy we have the nearest possible approach to a summary of all the Divine perfections, the description of what Divinity is. We speak of the other attributes as Divine perfections, but in this we have the only human expression for the Divine Perfection itself. ”

“ What dignity, what grandeur, what Divine nobility there would be in every thought, in every word, in every deed of all our life on earth, were the consciousness ever glowing in our hearts that we too came from God and are going back to God! ”

“ And as we begin to know Him in His infinite righteousness, in His fiery burning zeal against all that is sin, and His infinite self-sacrificing love to free the sinner from his sin, and to bring him to His own perfection, we shall learn to wonder at and worship this glorious God, to feel and deplore our terrible unlikeness to Him, to long and cry for some share in the Divine beauty and blessedness of this Holiness. ”

“ They will be saints whilst they are sinners; and in Christ, whilst in the spirit of the world, walking after the flesh, and not after the Spirit, by which the true children of God are led. My friends, mind the just witness and holy principle in yourselves, that you may experimentally know more of the Divine life, in which, and not in a multitude of vain repetitions, true and solid felicity eternally consists. ”

“ Have we not here a most precious lesson, leading us a step farther on in the way of holiness? To our question, How God makes holy, we have the Divine answer: Through a man whom the Divine Holiness has chosen to rest upon, and whose holiness belongs to us, as His brethren, the very members of His own body. Through a holiness which is of such efficacy, that the very sins of our holy things disappear, and we can enter the Holy Presence with the assurance of being altogether well-pleasing. ”

“ We are therefore to understand the text as containing a solemn admonition against every thing that would hinder the success of this divine agent in his gracious and renewing operations upon the soul.
The Spirit of God, the third person in the ever-adorable Trinity, is called 'holy,' because of the infinite holiness of his character, and of the work of holiness which he begins and carries on in the hearts of his people. All the moral attributes; justice, goodness and truth, are possessed by him in common with the Father and the Son, in unbounded perfection. ”

“ Let us now consider how the light of grace generally arises in the soul. God has the word of grace, which he has commanded to be preached, and by which he operates; and this word is spirit and life. John 6:63. And though God by his power and providence is everywhere present, yet his proper habitation, in which he peculiarly operates and kindles his divine light, is the soul of man. ”

“ Thus the Divine Human exists, an Essence by itself, which fills the universal heaven, and effects that those should be saved who before could not be saved. This now is the Lord, who, as to the Divine Human, alone is Man, and from whom man derives that he is man. ”

“ In apprehending one of them we have truly an intuition of a Divine attribute, of some feature of the Divine character. It is through contact, through communion with the Divine Intelligence, Love, and Will, that we know and feel and act. The Divine is the root and the law of human thought, emotion, and conduct. ”

“ When a man becomes of such a character, in every work that he does there is Divine worship; for he then looks to the Divine [Being] in everything, venerates Him, loves Him, and accordingly worships Him. ”

“ If we gather up the lessons we have found in the Word from Paradise downward, we see that the elements of holiness in us are these, each corresponding to some special aspect of God’s holiness: deep Restfulness (ch. 3) , humble Reverence (ch. 4) , entire Surrender (ch. 5) , joyful Adoration (ch. 6) , simple Obedience (ch. 7) . These all prepare for the Divine Indwelling (ch. ”

“ But this is only one side of Holiness. The fire that consumes also purifies: it makes partakers of its own beautiful Light-nature all that is capable of assimilation. So Divine Holiness not only maintains its own purity ”

“ The Son of God who is said to have been set down on the right hand of God after His resurrection was the Divine Human, or the Glorified Human, the Human made Divine, which remains forever the medium of understanding and contact through which God works on earth. ”

“ And still further,—what is divine and heavenly flows into the sincere acts of his moral life, and into the just acts of his civil life, and makes them spiritual; since the man then does them from the Divine, because for the sake of the Divine. ”

“ So I propose—arbitrarily again, if you please—to narrow our definition once more by saying that the word 'divine,' as employed therein, shall mean for us not merely the primal and enveloping and real, for that meaning if taken without restriction might well prove too broad. The divine shall mean for us only such a primal reality as the individual feels impelled to respond to solemnly and gravely, and neither by a curse nor a jest. ”

“ The first sense of having discovered the Divine Man must have been one of delight,—the greatest, keenest delight which they had ever experienced. Then this Divine Man points upwards to a truth in which He Himself is believing and resting. ”

“ In the consciousness of the utter impotence of our own wisdom or understanding to know God, our souls must in contrition, brokenness from ourselves and our power or efforts, yield to God’s Spirit, the Spirit of Holiness, to reveal God as the Holy One. ”

“ Section III But you will find that the Word of God calls gods, both the Heavenly Beings above us, and the most beloved of God, and holy men amongst us, although the Divine Hiddenness is transcendently elevated and established above all, and no created Being can. ”

“ From the Lord proceed the celestial, the spiritual, and the natural, one after the other. What proceeds from His Divine Love is called celestial, and is Divine Good; what proceeds from His Divine Wisdom is called spiritual, and is Divine Truth; the natural is from both, and is their complex in the ultimate. ”

“ The Divine, for my active life, is limited to impersonal and abstract concepts, which, as ideals, interest and determine me, but do so but faintly in comparison what a feeling of God might effect, if I had one. ”

“ Oh that the sinfulness of our nature, and all that is of self, may be so discovered to us, that it may be no longer possible to live in it! May the Light that reveals this, reveal too, how Thy Holiness is our only hope, our sure refuge, our complete deliverance. O Lord! speak into our souls the word, ‘The Holy One, your Redeemer,’ ‘Your Holy One,’ with such power by Thy Spirit, that our faith may grow into the assured confidence that we can be holy as Thou art holy. ”

“ As such the Divine will manifests itself in two modes—in its pure love as Goodness, in its holy harmony as Righteousness. These two do not exist separately, but permeate each other in reciprocal immanence, just as God in His Holiness is love, and in His love is holiness. In goodness the Divine love shows itself as the pleasure in well-being. ”

“ When his doubts and perplexities are resolved and he knows that it is the Divine which must be his law, he aims again and always at such clear and decisive know- ledge as will guide him practically to this source and this rule of his future action. How is the Divine to be distinguished among the various states of being which constitute our ordinary experience ? ”

“ Such a conception and display of the Almighty wisdom, power, and love, is indeed “full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members; and drawing up their minds to high and heavenly things: it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal salvation, to be enjoyed through Christ, and doth fervently kindle their love towards God.” ”

“ The explanation is offered that it was necessary to attribute human form, members and passions, to God, in order to make spiritual things intelligible to man; but what is the reason for ascribing the divine form to man, as in the passage just quoted? ”