Created being

“ What a sublime conception and creation! What magnificent means and ends! What must be the vastness and loftiness and goodness of that Mind, which could conceive and execute this stupenduous work: which has brought into existence, and holds in existence,—which created and sustains,—all this complicated machinery of worlds, and which at the same time rules and guides by Its wisdom the affairs of the inhabitants of each and all of them, even to the minutest concern of the humblest individual! For this must be so: He who creates must also sustain and guide, or creation would be in vain ”

“ Lastly, having been created, do I desire to be re-created? “Thou art my God,” my Creator, who hast created me by Thy Word, and re-created me by Thy Word. “Teach Thou me:” for it cannot be that Thou art my God, and yet I am to be mine own master. ”

“ In all which appears the manifold wisdom of the Creator.
26. And God said. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. ”

“ The primordial causes or ideas—Goodness, Being, Life, etc., in themselves, which the Father made in the Son—are in a sense the creators of the world, for the order of all things is established according to them. God created the world, not out of nothing, nor out of something, but out of Himself. ”

“ Having created the world and all that liveth and moveth therein, He [God] ... chose to confer upon man the unique distinction and capacity to know Him and to love Him--a capacity that must needs be regarded as the generating impulse and the primary purpose underlying the whole of creation.... Upon the inmost reality of each and every created thing He hath shed the light of one of His names, and made it a recipient of the glory of one of His attributes. Upon the reality of man, however, He hath focused the radiance of all of His names and attributes, and made it a mirror of His own Self. ”

“ But the necessary inference will rather be, that every created being exists in so much the greater degree, or is so much the more excellent, the more like it is to what exists supremely, and is supremely great. ”

“ That the most glorious and exalted Creator is the Existent, the Self-Existent, the One, the Truth, the only One, Who is not susceptive of plurality in any way, Whose Essence is eternal, the Wise, the Living. Christians apply to Him, whose Essence is eternal, the name of Father, because He is the Cause and Source, and the Maker of all created beings, and pre-existent to them in Nature and Essence. ”

“ Chapter XXXI This Word itself is not the likeness of created beings, but the reality of their being, while created beings are a kind of likeness of reality. --What natures are greater and more excellent than others. ”

“ For if they themselves are created, how can we say that their good will was eternal? But if created, was it created along with themselves, or did they exist for a time without it? If along with themselves, then doubtless it was created by Him who created them, and, as soon as ever they were created, they attached themselves to Him who created them, with the love He created in them. ”

“ And what ye have called the world shall but be created by you: your reason, your likeness, your will, your love, shall it itself become! ”

“ For the more like to it anything among created beings is proved to be, the more excellent must that created being be by nature. Hence, this being, through its greater likeness, assists the investigating mind in the approach to supreme Truth; and through its more excellent created essence, teaches the more correctly what opinion the mind itself ought to form regarding the Creator. So, undoubtedly, a greater knowledge of the creative Being is attained, the more nearly the creature through which the investigation is made approaches that Being. ”

“ We realise that we are in the process of being created in the same way as are the glowing heavenly orbs which revolve in their courses,—our desires, our sufferings, all finding their proper place within the whole. ”

“ If, then, God is the Creator of all things, animate and inanimate, every creature high or low, is a manifestation of His thought, His care, His love, and all are born—created—of the same Spirit, and therefore, are akin. ”

“ Others he formed out of the earth, with life, sense, and instinct, but destitute of reason, designing them to be subservient to the necessities or conveniences of a higher order of beings. Besides these he created other beings of a middle rank, partaking of an earthly part, fashioned with infinite skill and art, of exquisite symmetry, and adorned with great external beauty; and of a spiritual part akin to angels, and but little inferior to them, being in their constitution a compound of the animal and angelic natures. ”

“ Creation Necessitates A Creator.
It is a revealed truth that God created man in His own image and likeness. God, then, is a Divine image and likeness of man—or, in other words, He is a Divine Man, and Person. ”

“ WHEN God created the universe, it was with the one object of making the creature partaker of His perfection and blessedness, and so showing forth in it the glory of His love and wisdom and power. ”

“ Good and evil, and joy and woe, and I and thou—coloured vapours did they seem to me before creative eyes. The creator wished to look away from himself,—thereupon he created the world. ”

“ Into the created can pour itself the creating will, and so redeem it!" ”

“ The idea of the Incarnation of God in human form as the final and logical fulfilment of the Creative purpose and process—the manifestation of the Creator in the created—has had for many great thinkers a very deep attraction. ”

“ Of these created objects each obtains those attributes which it had during the previous Creation; and each, indeed, obtains repeatedly the same attributes at every subsequent Creation. Determined in respect of character by either injuriousness or peacefulness, mildness or fierceness, righteousness or unrighteousness, truthfulness or untruthfulness, each creature, at every new creation, obtains that particular attribute which it had cherished before. ”

“ But seeing that it is manifestly absurd that as any created being can in no wise exceed the immeasurableness of what creates and cherishes it, so the creative and cherishing Being cannot, in anyway, exceed the sum of the things it has created ”

“ For whatever terms seem applicable to that Nature do not reveal it to me in its proper character, but rather intimate it through some likeness. For, when I think of the meanings of these terms, I more naturally conceive in my mind of what I see in created objects, than of what I conceive to transcend all human understanding. ”

“ But there is a light that goes deeper than the will, a light that lights up the darkness behind it: that light can change your will, can make it truly yours and not another’s—not the Shadow’s. Into the created can pour itself the creating will, and so redeem it!” ”

“ Nor is there a single object in nature, however minute, in which this resemblance may not be traced; for nothing exists which does not contain in itself something analogous to love and wisdom, and to their conjunction. Creation, therefore, from its highest spiritual to its lowest natural constituents, consists of a succession of forms produced from the united activity and operation of Divine love and wisdom,—forms, therefore, in which these may exist as in their created and finite receptacles. ”

“ On the tradition, "I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known, and I created the world in order to be known". ”

“ The way in which Thou hast called into being Thy creation out of non-existence preventeth all created things from recognizing Thee, and the manner in which Thou hast fashioned the creatures, with the limitations imposed upon them, proclaimeth their utter nothingness before the revelations of Thine attributes. ”

“ All truth of whatever kind has therefore its creator in the will and essence of that great God who created all things, moral and natural. Great and good men have long upheld this grand conclusion. But, alas! ”

“ That the creation of man was pre-intended by God, seems also almost proved by the numerous objects before created, capable of ministering to his use and happiness—capable of exercising his constructive and inquiring capabilities—suitable to his imagination and tastes, and his only, and which would serve no purpose of utility to the mere brutes. ”

“ As soon as man was created, everything was complete, including the upper and nether worlds, for everything is comprised in man. He unites in himself all forms.” (Sohar, iii, 48 a.) 13 Man was created with faculties and features far transcending those of the angels. ”

“ Moreover, the visible creation has another value, that of its ethical significance. Physical phenomena symbolize the conformity of humanity to its best ideal of conduct. Man may learn to regulate the lawless movements of his soul from the courses of the stars, the noblest of created gods. ”

“ The truth is, we each of us have an inborn conviction that the whole world, with everybody and everything in it, was created as a sort of necessary appendage to ourselves. ”

“ Why should not he that made all things, still have something immediately to do with the things that he has made? Where lies the great difficulty, if we own the being of a God, and that he created all things out of nothing, of allowing some immediate influence of God on the creation still? ”

“ One shall be born from small beginnings which will rapidly become vast. This will respect no created thing, rather will it, by its power, transform almost every thing from its own nature into another. ”

“ Chapter XXVIII This Spirit exists simply, and created beings are not comparable with him.
It seems to follow, then, from the preceding considerations, that the Spirit which exists in so wonderfully singular and so singularly wonderful a way of its own is in some sort unique; while other beings which seem to be comparable with it are not so.
For, by diligent attention it will be seen that that Spirit alone exists simply, and perfectly, and absolutely; while all other beings are almost non-existent, and hardly exist at all. ”

“ Religion, so far as it is genuine, is in essence the response of created personalities to the Creating Personality, God. ”

“ so call I the will of the twain to create the one that is more than those who created it. ”

“ For a time our efforts seem to create, and to adorn, and to perfect, until we forget our origin and destination, substituting self for that divine hand which alone can unite the elements of worlds as they float in gasses, equally from His mysterious laboratory, and scatter them again into thin air when the works of His hand cease to find favour in His view.
Let those who would substitute the voice of the created for that of the Creator, who shout "the people, the people," ”

“ Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods! ”

“ And what is the spiritual world, but an outbirth or derivation from the Divine Mind? Creation is, properly speaking, production,—a sending forth, as it were, by the Infinite God, of indefinitely various forms and existences from Himself. ”

“ You must have in you the thought that is creation; life’s spring, and the daring of its unconquered waters—so may you transform the world and people it with gods who know no more the hates and littleness of men. ”

“ And thus we have before our mental vision the character and attributes of the great Creator. He is wise, just, loving and powerful; and the scope of his attributes is, of necessity, immeasurably wider than that of his grandest creation. ”

“ Thus creation is the process by which the Eternal Creator works out His own image, His own ideas, in and through that which is formless, that which has no name, which is nothing but possibility,—dead earth, namely, or Matter. ”

“ What could be more reasonable than such exercise of power as we see manifested in the creation of countless worlds about us, and in the wonderful variety of earth? What could be more reasonable than the creation of man, endowed with reason and judgment, capable of appreciating his Creator's works, and judging of his skill--of his wisdom, justice, power and love? ”