Divine origin

“ A Divine Incarnation, the birth of a Man-God, was the common faith of humanity,—the great dogma that under forms, more or less mysterious, appears in the oldest modes of worship, and may be traced in the most ancient traditions. ”

“ According to the Christian revelation, God is a Trinity; that is, the Divine Essence exists in Three Persons, perfectly equal in nature and dignity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father only. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You can know essential Divinity only as the soul of Christ—something entirely beyond and above your grasp. But in Christ, and through his life and speech and works, in that Humanity which was made Divine and now fills heaven and earth and all things, God becomes something which we can know of, think of, live for, love! ”

“ 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. ”

“ When Old and New Testaments say, ‘Be ye holy, for I am holy, I make holy,’ they point to God’s Holiness as the first, both the reason and the source of ours. We ought first to discover what holiness in God is. When we read at creation of God’s sanctifying the Sabbath day, we have to do, not with a thought or word of Moses as to what God had done, but with a Divine revelation of a Power in God greater and more wonderful than creation, the Power which is later on revealed as the deepest mystery of the Divine Being. ”

“ The foundation of all religion being laid in our relation to God as our Creator, it was fit that that book of divine revelations, which was intended to be the guide, support, and rule, of religion in the world, should begin, as it does, with a plain and full account of the creation of the world—in answer to that first inquiry of a good conscience, Where is God my Maker? ”

“ How much more reasonable is it to conceive the Divine Essence to subsist in a plurality of persons, and thus to conceive, consistently, of the eternal, immense, and immutable activity and happiness of the Divine Being? ”

“ Instead of ascribing to the god all the attributes of beauty, goodness, and strength at once, instead of associating in one all the gods, or all the sympathic forces and figures of Nature, a new divine form was created for each attribute. ”

“ The Founder of the new religion, the Being who had brought upon earth a divine light, was he God, was he man, was he of an intermediate nature, and, though superior to all other created beings, yet himself created? ”

“ And who, I well know, have, more than statues or temples, been taken care of by the gods. See, however, that the gods, knowing the body of these to
...the earth; statues resemble life, and on this account they are similar to animals. Prayers imitate that which is intellectual; but characters, superior ineffable powers. Herbs and stones resemble matter; and animals which are sacrificed, the irrational life of our souls. But, from all these, nothing happens to the gods beyond what they already possess; for what accession can be made to a divine nature? ”

“ The external divine are miracles and prophecy; the external human are the historical proof as to the authenticity and genuineness of the literature which contains the narrative of the miracles and the prophecy. The internal divine are sought in the accordance of the materials of the Revelation, the character of Christ, the scheme of Redemption, &c. with the moral sense of man, and with the expectations which we should form antecedently of the contents of a revelation; the internal human, in the critical evidence of undesigned coincidence. ”

“ This Logos, the Word of God, says he, is superior to all the world, and more ancient; being the productor of all that was produced. The eternal Word of the everlasting God is the sure and fixed foundation upon which all things depend.”
Creation is moreover ascribed to the Holy Spirit. That the Holy Spirit has a personality distinct from that of the Father, and also that of the Son, and a real and proper Divinity, is a doctrine of Divine revelation. In his personal capacity, he is not the Father, nor the Son. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The most familiar conception of the Deity was that of a Creator, and creation was held to mean the grand six-day drama of calling the universe into existence; while this transcendent display of power had always been devoutly held as alike the exemplification and the proof of the Divine attributes. ”

“ O thou who dost believe in the Spirit of Christ, in the Kingdom of God!
The body is composed, in truth, of corporeal elements and every composition is necessarily subject to decomposition; but the spirit is an essence, simple, pure, spiritual, eternal, perpetual and divine. He who seeketh Christ from the point of view of His body hath, in truth, debased Him and hath gone astray from Him; but he who seeketh Christ from the point of view of His Spirit will grow from day to day in joy, attraction, zeal, proximity, perception and vision. ”

“ It was God's intention to let His earthly creation be a reflection of the divine perfections, of the supernatural, of divinity, so that man might perceive the supernatural through created things, and thus more readily understand it. ”

“ 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 vitality which animates the mortal frame, the Breath of Life of the Hebrew Genesis, the Hindu Philosophers in general held, perishes with it; but the Soul is divine, an emanation of the Spirit of God, but not a portion of that Spirit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These are the possessions of the soul, some of which it acquireth naturally, and some by Divine Grace; now those which it acquireth naturally are they which the Creator sowed in its nature at the beginning of its creation, and those which it acquireth by Divine Grace are they which are bestowed upon it by the baptism in Christ. ”

“ Our scientific interpretation of the ever-changing universe at last rests on ethical theistic faith, and the Christian revelation of divine love is responded to by the divine inspiration of God in Man, in the form of the spiritual Common Sense. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Their characters and functions reflect the ideals of their worshipers, and all ritualistic and other usages and all doctrines concerning the relations between gods and men and, in general, all ideas concerning the physical and moral constitution of the world attach themselves perforce to 441the divine embodiments of these ideals. Thus, in one sense, the history of the gods is the history of religion. From the earliest times up to the present the efforts of men have been directed toward defining the divine Powers that have been supposed to stand behind all phenomena. ”

“ All scripture is of divine inspiration. But why so? Because holy men of old, spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Now the above collect, as well as Christ and his apostles, oblige us in like manner to hold, that all holiness is by divine inspiration, and that therefore there could have been no holy men of old, or in any latter times, but solely for this reason, because they LIVED, as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. ”

“ But the whole group of them forms a combination which, as such, is religious, for it seems to flow from the sense of the divine as from its psychological centre. Whoever possesses strongly this sense comes naturally to think that the smallest details of this world derive infinite significance from their relation to an unseen divine order. ”

“ One more hymn to show how the belief in and the worship of these physical gods, the actors behind the phenomena of nature, could grow naturally into a belief in and a worship of moral powers, endowed with all the qualities essential to divine beings. ”

“ This Word is the Divine Truth, the form of the Divine Good, always existent, corresponding, in the projection of God—the Divine Good—into nature to the plane of the Inmost in man. This Divine Truth, having as its inmost or soul the Divine Good, and in actual fact identical with it as form and substance are always one, clothed itself with a temporarily limited soul-form and fleshly body. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Holy Spirit is within thee as the power of Christ and His life. Secretly, silently, but mightily, if thou wilt look to the Father for His working, will He strengthen the faith that thou art in Christ, and that the Divine life, which thus encircles thee on every side, will enter in and take possession of thee. Study and pray to believe and realize that it is in Christ as the Holy One of God, in Christ in whom the Holiness of God is prepared for thee as a holy nature and holy living, that thou art, and that thou mayest abide. ”

“ That the story of the Divine Conception, that is the conception by a woman of a child without a human father, and by means of a miraculous act on the part of Deity, is one found among the traditions, legends and beliefs of many heathen and pagan nations. Nearly all of the old Oriental religions, antedating Christianity by many centuries, contain stories of this kind concerning their gods, prophets and great leaders. ”

“ Here permit us to say that we believe Christianity to be not only of human origin, but of natural origin also; I that is, a natural outgrowth, like other systems, of the religious elements of the human mind—a hypothesis which accounts most beautifully for the numerous human imperfections now visible in nearly every line of its teachings. ”

“ But generally the influence of the divine or divinised being is more directly exercised, as in oracles, dreams, invisible touches, or actual theophanies, or appearances of the gods to the adoring patient. ”

“ As none but the third Person in the Godhead is ever so much as once in the Scriptures called the Spirit of God; so the Holy Spirit’s agency in the work of creation evinces his distinct personality, and is a confirmation of his proper Divinity. A cause must be equal to the effect it produces: but no finite spirit could be a joint, concurring, efficient cause in the work of the creation: therefore the Holy Spirit is God. ”

“ But thanks to certain indiscreet revelations on the topography of divine religions, to certain compromising confessions as to the duration of eternal punishment, and more than all, by their triumphant fatuity, we divine, we almost can see the supernumerary angel under the terrestrial veil of these young Christians. ”

“ His Resurrection, His Ascension,—all these thoughts were woven into one magnificent picture, wherein creation was viewed as the embodiment of the Divine ideas, and therefore the revelation of the Divine character; manifesting its Maker with increasing clearness at each successive stage in the great scale of being, till in the fulness of time He Himself became man, and thereby lifted human nature, and with it the material universe to which man is so intimately linked ”