Divinity

“ Mention but the word divinity, and our sense of the divine is clouded. ”

“ The gods are but the several parts of nature, and they are all lost in one god, who is nature in its entirety.”
The proconsul signified his approval of the words of his brother, and speaking in a serious strain, defined the attributes of divinity.
“God is the soul of the world; this soul spreads to all parts of the universe, infusing motion and life into it. This soul, a creative flame, penetrating the inert mass of matter, gave shape to the world, governing and preserving it. Divinity, an active force, is essentially good. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But as there is an immense disparity between humanity and divinity—between a perfect man, and God manifest in the flesh—what effect did the first announcement of the divinity of Jesus Christ produce on your mind? ”

“ Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this Divinity within, by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy — by one or more or all of these — and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details. ”

“ But if a sight of Christ’s outward glory might give a rational assurance of his divinity, why may not an apprehension of his spiritual glory do so too? ”

“ But gradually, as the concept of divinity deepens in the progressive race, and the mind becomes penetrated with the consciousness of the littleness of man and of the incomparable greatness of God, the worshipper tends to become the humble petitioner and prayer {172} comes to predominate over spell. ”

“ Dost thou believe that by his temptations, p. 79the last of which was the passion of the cross, the Lord united, in his Humanity, Divine Truth to Divine Good, or Divine Wisdom to Divine Love, and so returned into his Divinity in which he was from eternity, together with, and in, his Glorified Humanity? ”

“ Believer! the God who calls you to holiness is the God of the Indwelling Life. The tabernacle typifies it, the Son reveals it, the Spirit communicates it, the eternal glory will fully manifest it. And you may experience it. It is your calling as a believer to be God’s Holy Temple. Oh, do but yield yourself to His full indwelling! seek not holiness in the first place in what you are or do; seek it in God. Seek it not even as a gift from God, seek it in God Himself, in His indwelling Presence. Worship Him in the beauty of holiness, as He dwells in the high and holy place. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And the God whom he thinks he worships is fiction and an idol; it is one who is his instrument in self-seeking, and that is a fictitious God. 'God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.' 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.' Here is the first clue to Christian worship. ”

“ My holiness remains the light of Heaven and the Love of God. Is not what is beloved of You secure? Is not the light of Heaven infinite? Is not Your Son my true Identity, when You created everything that is? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Article I—Of Faith in the Holy Trinity
There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body or parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the maker and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there are three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. ”

“ Thou, divine Son, Who didst suffer for us on the cross; thou, Holy Spirit, Who didst sanctify us in Baptism. May God, in His three divine Persons, preserve our body, purify our soul, direct our heart, and lead us to life everlasting. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whose doctrine pierced, Whose life preached, Whose miracles astonished, Whose blood atoned, and Whose death, resurrection and ascension, confirmed that blessed manifestation to be no less than the Word God manifested in the flesh for the salvation of the world, and if we now receive Him into our hearts, as the true Light, that leads in the way of life eternal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And if you will but confess that there is in you no wisdom or power for holiness, none at all, and allow Christ, ‘the Wisdom of God and the Power of God,’ by the Holy Spirit within you, to lead you on, and prove how completely, how faithfully, how mightily, He can be your sanctification, He will do it most gloriously. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But in addition to these ideas of the more concrete religious objects, religion is full of abstract objects which prove to have an equal power. God's attributes as such, his holiness, his justice, his mercy, his absoluteness, his infinity, his omniscience, his tri-unity, the various mysteries of the redemptive process, the operation of the sacraments, etc., have proved fertile wells of inspiring meditation for Christian believers. ”

“ Holy is God the Father of all Things! Holy is God, whose Will is perform'd and accomplished by his own Powers! Holy is God, that determineth to be known, and is known of his own, or those that are his! ”

“ Theology makes a distinction between common and special grace,—between those ordinary influences of the Divine Spirit which rouse the conscience, and awaken some transient aspirations after religion, and those extraordinary influences which actually renew the heart and will. ”

“ 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? ”

“ These moral perfections constitute God a proper object of religious adoration, and without which no worship would be due or could be rendered to him. The Divine Nature is the foundation of that worship which we, as rational beings, are under obligations to perform; and the revelation of the will of God, with which he has graciously favored us in the Scripture, is the constant rule of his worship. ”

“ 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. ”

“ God, and not man; God, and not the work of men's hands; the Creator of all, and not the creature of men's fancies. Thou art the God who hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, the upper and lower world, and all the creatures that are in both." Thus we Christians distinguish ourselves from the heathen, that, while they worship gods which they have made, we are worshipping the God that made us and all the world. ”

“ The Word that was in the beginning with God, one with God in essence and in attributes, in the fulness of time assumed our nature, and tabernacled and dwelt among us. Here is the union of God and man. Here is the great mystery of godliness—God manifest in the flesh. ”

“ And in these days you have to guard against the fatallest darkness of the two opposite Prides;—the Pride of Faith, which imagines that the nature of the Deity can be defined by its convictions; and the Pride of Science, which imagines that the energy of Deity can be explained by its analysis. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This light and Spirit of God is called grace, free grace, or the supernatural gift, or power of God in the soul, because it is something, that the natural powers of the soul can no more obtain. Hence it is that every stirring of the soul, every tendency of the heart towards God and goodness, is justly ascribed to the Holy Spirit, or the grace of God. ”

“ Even the lesser lights, the moon and stars, show the glory and power of the Father of lights, and furnish us with matter for praise. 5. The heavenly bodies are not only the creatures of the divine power, but subject to the divine government; God not only made them, but ordained them; and the ordinances of heaven can never be altered. But how does this come in here, to magnify God's favour to man? (1.) When we consider how the glory of God shines in the upper world, we may well wonder that he should take cognizance of such a mean creature as man ”

“ 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. ”

“ But what words can describe the immensity of the various gifts with which the Holy Ghost has endowed this sacred humanity, the first and foremost being, His unspeakable union with the Divine Word, which is the greatest of all the wonders which the power of God could make? ”

“ The Holy Spirit, or Spirit of God, both of which terms are sometimes used interchangeably with the Holy Ghost, is the influence of Deity, the light of Christ, or of Truth, which proceeds forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space, and to quicken the understanding of men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Looking unto God's great and holy plan in redeeming man, and the holiness of heaven, and God sitting on his holy throne, and Christ the Holy One at his right hand, and the holy angels shouting praises, how can you entertain a hope of ever entering that glorious land without holiness? ”