Deity

“ How empty are our conceptions of Deity! We admit theoretically that God is good, omnipotent, Prayerful ingratitude omnipresent, infinite, and then we try to give information to this infinite Mind. We plead for unmerited pardon and for a liberal outpouring of benefactions. ”

“ Such ancient doctrines as the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the personality of the Holy Spirit, the atonement, the obligation of the Sabbath, the necessity and efficacy of prayer, the existence of the devil and the reality of future punishment, are quietly put on the shelf as useless old almanacs, or contemptuously thrown overboard as lumber! ”

“ Our ignorant and foolish race, incapable of comprehending him who is the Lord of heaven and earth, proceeding from his Father’s Deity as from the supreme fountain, ever present throughout the world, and evincing by the clearest proofs his providential care for the interests of man; have ascribed the adorable title of Deity to the sun, and moon, the heaven and the stars of heaven. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Deity is intended to be the everlasting field of the human intellect, as well as the everlasting object of the human heart, the everlasting portion of all holy and happy minds, who are destined to spend a blissful but ever active eternity in the contemplation of his glory.... ”

“ It places us, as it were in daily contact with the Deity, by our unceasing experience of his superintending love, and goodness, connects earth with heaven, and brings religion home to our business and bosoms. ”

“ When we proceed to speculate about the manner of Deity’s actings, difficulties at once meet us in every quarter, partly from our utter incapacity to comprehend and partly from the imperfections of human language to express—even were our comprehension adequate to the task—the essential qualities of Deity himself. ”

“ But hitherto the majority of Christians have not attained unity, or even concord, in their conception of the Deity. There is a God, a Christ, a Holy Ghost, and a Devil, with angels and saints, demons and damned; it takes all these to represent the popular ecclesiastical conception of the Deity ”

“ But some will say, "Has the Deity then made all men in vain?" Nay, verily, His purpose is to evolve a righteous and immortal world out of the world of mortal sinners, and to lay the foundation of this great work in their scriptural intelligence and the obedience of faith. ”

“ What were your gods but once men, first revered, then worshipped, and now their stone images deemed to be the very gods themselves? Thus the original idea—the effect, we may believe, of an early revelation—of one supreme Deity has been almost lost out of the world. ”

“ The Atonement, we conclude, must be made by a Deity, in order to be adequate; but it must be made by a Deity living a man's life—hence the incarnation of the spirit of a Deity in the person of Jesus Christ. ”

“ The plain argument for the existence of the Deity, obvious to all and carrying irresistable conviction with it, is from the evident contrivance and fitness of things for one another, which we meet with throughout all parts of the universe. ”

“ What mortal man could tell what God was, before He came among us? Would you admit the vain and trifling fables of such empty philosophers, as say that the Deity is composed of fire (calling that a Deity, to which themselves are tending) ”

“ He, treating of Deity, stated to His true disciples the doctrine regarding God; and we, discovering traces of such teaching in the Scripture narratives, take occasion from such to aid our theological conceptions, [214] hearing it declared in one passage, that “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all;” [215] and in another, “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” ”

“ Various temple officials impersonated the gods on certain occasions, and these were implored, invoked or praised as the living representative of the deity. But more frequently the animal sacred to the god was brought out and worshipped—not for himself, but for the deity he represented. ”

“ Those common natural notions which they had of God were imprinted upon their hearts by the God of nature himself, who is the Father of lights. This sense of a Deity, and a regard to that Deity, are so connate with the human nature that some think we are to distinguish men from brutes by these rather than by reason. ”

“ In all this the Supreme Deity is to be considered as the first cause; and Christ as his gift to fallen man, and as acting under that eternal and self-existent Being, compared with whom no other being is either great or good ”

“ That the essence of religion consisted in the feelings of divine love; and that it was a matter of indifference what opinions Christians entertained concerning points of faith, provided their hearts burned with the sacred flame of piety and love. (2.) That the union of the soul with Christ transforms it into the essence of the Deity. ”

“ The Deity is endowed with seven spirits: the Spirit of Wisdom, the Spirit of Understanding, the Spirit of Counsel, the Spirit of Power, the Spirit of Righteousness, the Spirit of Knowledge, and the Spirit of Divine Awfulness. ”

“ How empty are the conceptions of Deity that admit theoretically, the omnipotence and omnipresence of God, and then would inform the supreme mind, or plead for pardon that is unmerited, or for blessings poured out liberally. ”

“ If the incarnation of the Deity, should or could take place, there should be something strikingly peculiar, ay, infinitely peculiar, in his figure, size, and general appearance, in order to make him susceptible of being distinguished from the human. ”

“ Wherefore also, whilst celebrated as Unit and Triad, the Deity above all is neither Unit nor Triad, as understood by us or by any other sort of being, but, in order that we may celebrate truly. Its super-oneness, and Divine generation, by the threefold and single name of God, we name the Deity, Which is inexpressible to things that be, the Superessential. ”

“ If we retain such metaphorical language at all, it would be a more just mode of speaking to describe the Deity as the Divine artificer of the whole chain,—not to connect Him with its links;—to represent the secondary causes as combined into joint operation by His power and will,—but not to make Him one of them. ”

“ The Worship of One God
The ritual of this dead faith of another hemisphere abounds in expressions concerning the unity of the deity approaching very nearly to many of those we ourselves employ regarding God's attributes. The various classes of the priesthood were in the habit of addressing the several gods to whom they ministered as "omnipotent," "endless," "invisible," "the one god complete in perfection and unity," and "the Maker and Moulder of All." ”

“ In order, therefore, to such worship and such inspiration acting through reason, it would appear fitting that the Deity should manifest Himself especially with reference to that heavenly Exemplar, the Three Divine Persons of the One Supreme Essence already shown to have been probable. ”

“ Referring to the Deity as the great motive-power of all the universe, the author says:—
"To a reasonable mind the Divine attributes must appear, not diminished or reduced in any way, by supposing a creation by law, but infinitely exalted. It is the narrowest of all views of the Deity, and characteristic of a humble class of intellects, to suppose him acting constantly in particular ways for particular occasions. ”

“ The gods of rain were frequently propitiated, so was the goddess of maize, the mountain god, the mother of the gods, and many other divinities. The general theory of worship was the adoration of a deity, first by innumerable human sacrifices, next by the special sacrifice of a man for male gods, of a woman for each goddess. ”

“ Deity, God, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Jehovah, Holy Spirit, Saviour, Creator, Providence, Heaven, when used for God, and all words that refer directly to Deity as a name, heaven and hell in ordinary use. ”

“ Now understand us right; we do not hereby understand a Beginning of the Deity, but the Manifestation of the Deity: The Deity is herein known and manifested in Trinity; the Deity is the eternal Liberty without all Nature, viz. ”

“ These, the mutual and common distinctions, or rather the goodly progressions of the whole Deity, we will endeavour to the best of our ability to celebrate from the Names of God, which make them known in the Oracles;----first, having laid down, as we have said, that every beneficent Name of God, to whichever of the supremely Divine Persons it may be applied, is to be understood with reference to the whole Supremely Divine wholeness unreservedly. ”

“ We must therefore, from the experiential point of view, call these godless or quasi-godless creeds 'religions'; and accordingly when in our definition of religion we speak of the individual's relation to 'what he considers the divine,' we must interpret the term 'divine' very broadly, as denoting any object that is godlike, whether it be a concrete deity or not. ”

“ Idolaters attributed the name of the Deity to stones and wood, considered in their own nature, because they thought there was something divine in them. But we do not attribute the name of the Deity to the man in His human nature, but in the eternal suppositum, which by union is a suppositum of human nature, as stated above. ”

“ From this principle sprung their religious rites, the immediate object of which was a supposed race of spiritual beings or demons, whose existence could not have been imagined, without first conceiving the idea of a supreme Being, the source of all intelligence. The belief of a supreme Deity, the fountain of all the divinities which were supposed to preside over the several parts of the material world, was the true origin of all religious worship, however idolatrous, not excepting even that which consisted in paying divine honours to the memory of dead men. ”

“ The powers of this Deity, diffused throughout the universe which He has made, we worship under many names, as we are all ignorant of His true name, the name God [1] being common to all kinds of religious belief. ”

“ Philosophically, cosmically, and with reference to differential levels and locations of manifestation, you may and perforce must conceive of the functioning of plural Deities and postulate the existence of plural Trinities; but in the worshipful experience of the personal contact of every worshiping personality throughout the master universe, God is one; and that unified and personal Deity is our Paradise parent, God the Father, the bestower, conservator, and Father of all personalities from mortal man on the inhabited worlds to the Eternal Son on the central Isle of Light. ”

“ The idea of a Deity that cannot be located anywhere, that has no form or substance, or materiality, and described as a spirit! It is the best definition, to my mind, of nothing at all, like the quaint familiar phrase, "a footless stocking, without a leg." ”

“ Each puts forth similar notions and traditions concerning Gods, deities, or angels, genii, demons, or evil spirits, priests, prophets, patriarchs, prayers, sacrifices, penances, ceremonies, rituals, Messiahs, redeemers, intercessors, sin-atoning, crucified Saviors, sons of God, &c. All recognize the doctrine of atonement for sin; all, or nearly all, approximate in their modes of propitiating the favor of an offended Deity by oblations, sacrifices, and offerings of animals, men, or Gods, or sons of God. ”

“ Furthermore, it tends to emphasize these considerations and at the same time degrade the object of worship through claiming the attention of God in their behalf. The deity is conceived, not under the form of a broad and consecutive purpose, but under the form of a casual and desultory good-nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And as you worship, listen to His voice: ‘Thus saith the high and lofty One, that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.’ It is as the Spirit strengthens us mightily in the inward man, so that Christ dwells in our heart by faith, and the Father comes and makes with Him His abode in us, that we are truly holy. ”

“ Here is a supreme priest who believes God to be—what, in the name of God, does he believe God to be?—and discerns that all worship of God is a scenic phantasmagory of wax candles, organ blasts, Gregorian chants, mass-brayings, purple monsignori, wool-and-iron rumps, artistically spread out, to save the ignorant from worse.... ”

“ Yet it is from mythology, or from the still more reflective and deliberative expression of ritual, of rites and ceremonies, that the science of religion has sought to infer the nature of the gods man worships. The whole apparatus of religion, rites and ceremonies, sacrifice and altars, nature-worship and polytheism, has been investigated; the one thing overlooked has been the one thing for the sake of which all the others exist, the prayer in which man's soul rises, or seeks to rise, to God. ”