Eternal matter

“ Are there true principles? There are, and we heard a portion of them this morning in the doctrine of salvation.
If people understood true philosophy—eternal philosophy, they would understand that there is an eternity of matter. Astronomers estimate that there is between us and the nearest fixed star matter enough from which to organize millions of earths like this. There is an eternity of matter, and it is all acted upon and filled with a portion of divinity. Matter is to exist; it cannot be annihilated. Eternity is without bounds, and is filled with matter ”

“ And that the 'Eternal Cause' does thus operate upon co-eternal force and eternal matter is witnessed by the orderly universe, everywhere giving evidence of the reign of law. It is this fact of an orderly universe, whose phenomena run backward through a chain of causes that suggest a purposive Eternal Cause, back of it. This necessity for an Eternal Cause makes that cause one of the sources of man's knowledge of God. ”

“ On the other hand philosophy convinces me that the Eternal can have no shape, or attributes, or passions, such as we can conceive of. A Divine Being is open to the same objection. A Being implies a material form—something which exists. Now the Eternal cannot be anything which exists, at least not in the same sense that is attached to matter as we know it, since everything which exists must have had a beginning, and therefore cannot be eternal. ”

“ Immortality's opposite, mortality; that of which Wisdom saith, “Thou shalt surely die.”
This name represents the false supposition that Life is not eternal, but has beginning and end; that the Infinite enters the finite, Intelligence passes into non-intelligence, and Soul terminates in material sense; that the Immortal Mind results in matter, and matter in mortal mind; that the One God and Creator entered what He created, and then disappeared in the atheism of matter. ”

“ These two kinds of matter have existed from all eternity and will exist to eternity, in intimate relations. Neither produces the other, they are eternal existences—"things to act and things to be acted upon." ”

“ The effect cannot be greater than the cause. Here is an infinite universe; there must be an infinite cause; and that cause cannot be less than Infinite Eternal Intelligence. This cause, for the want of a better name, we call God. I could thus easily account for the universe thru the processes of evolution, directed by eternal, intelligent will, operating thru eternal immutable and perfect law, upon eternal and indestructible matter. ”

“ Oh, how admirable the wisdom that embraces all eternity at once, and contains within itself the whole of immensity, that draws to itself all infinity, in which alone all things possess a kind of eternal being, and eternal life, which, lastly, is without beginning and without end, and is in every respect immutable! ”

“ The practical part of our religion is that which more particularly interests me. Still my mind reflects upon life, death, eternity, knowledge, wisdom, the expansion of the soul, and the knowledge of the Gods that are, that have been, and that are to be. What shall we say? We are lost in the depth of our own thoughts. Suppose we say there was once a beginning to all things, then we must conclude there will undoubtedly be an end. Can eternity be circumscribed? If it can, there is an end of all wisdom, knowledge, power, and glory—all will sink into eternal annihilation. ”

“ And just such a survey, and just such a life, not timeless, but time-inclusive, constitute the eternal, which is real, not apart from time, and from our lives, but in, and through and above all our individual lives. The divine will wills in us and in all this world, with its endless past and its endless future, at once. The divine insight is not lifeless. It includes and surveys all life. All is temporal in its ceaseless flow and in its sequence of individual deeds. All is eternal in the unity of its meaning. ”

“ I want no silent dark eternity in which no world was; for I am a disciple of One who said, 'My Father worketh hitherto.' My sense of eternal order is no longer jarred by the sudden appearance in the universe of a dead, inane substance, foreign to God and spiritual being. ”

“ The eternity of his nature; if he is from everlasting, he will be to everlasting, and we must have recourse to this first principle, when things seen, which are temporal, are discouraging, that we have hope and help sufficient in a god that is not seen, that is eternal. "Art thou not from everlasting, and then wilt thou not make bare thy everlasting arm, in pursuance of thy everlasting counsels, to make unto thyself an everlasting name?" ”

“ That doctrine, for example, that eternity is timeless, that our 'immortality,' if we live in the eternal, is not so much future as already now and here, which we find so often expressed to-day in certain philosophic circles, finds its support in a 'hear, hear!' or an 'amen,' which floats up from that mysteriously deeper level. ”

“ No doubt God is eternal; but can my mind grasp the idea of eternity? Why should I cheat myself with meaningless words? This is what I do understand; before things were—God was; he will be when they are no more, and if all things come to an end he will still endure. ”

“ Thou canst but acknowledge Him; and if, in His mercy, He reveal to thee eternity, instead of leaving thee for endless years in gloom, in doubt, in trouble for thy future, welcome that revelation, and believe, as thou canst not but believe, for all thou canst not understand, and fall down and worship with thy soul and body that Being thou wilt never comprehend. For only God can comprehend God's nature. To grasp eternity thou must be eternal ”

“ You write primarily as a scientist (though a very human scientist) , and so you are naturally mainly occupied with the facts and conditions of what I may call our earth-life. I, on the other hand, writing as a Catholic, regard our earth-life as essentially and inseparably connected with an eternal existence which reaches out beyond the grave. I look on this life as utterly meaningless in itself, as a period which is simply and solely a means to an end—Eternity—a period of which all circumstances of pleasure and pain can only be explained and rightly used in their relation to this Eternity. ”

“ We have a prospect of the invisible things of God: we see the spiritual world, which is all round about us, and yet no more discerned by our natural faculties, than if it had no being: and we see the eternal world, piercing through the veil which hangs between time and eternity. Clouds and darkness then rest upon it no more, but we already see the glory which shall be revealed. ”

“ Our present perplexity arises from our viewing God's foreknowledge from the standpoint of human reason. We must try and rise to the higher standpoint of God's immediate intuition.—CH. VI. To understand this higher form of cognition, we must consider God's nature. God is eternal. Eternity is more than mere everlasting duration. ”

“ He is a member of a new order; he is "heavenly," a creation "not made with hands," but wrought out of the substance of the spiritual world, and furnished with the inherent capacity of eternal duration, so that "mortality is swallowed up of life." ”

“ And this Faith and Knowledge arising thus, in its fulness, at most only on occasion, and never because, of spacial and temporal signs, are conceived as a timeless, Eternal Life, and as one which is already, here and now, an actual present possession. “He who believeth in the Son, hath eternal life”; “He who heareth and believeth My word, hath eternal life”; “We know that we have passed from death unto life” ”

“ Fourth; our eternal life will be realized beyond death. "The things that are not seen are spiritual and eternal." But can we not enjoy it here? Yes; "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life;"— that is, he enjoys it faith. ”

“ Chapter XX He exists before all things and transcends all things, even the eternal things. --The eternity of God is present as a whole with him; while other things have not yet that part of their eternity which is still to be, and have no longer that part which is past. ”

“ From this unreal world lead us to the real! From darkness lead us to the light! From death guide us to immortality!
"With our hearts purged of all hate, let us worship the Eternal. Our God is the Lord of prayer; he hears the cry of his children. Let all men submit their wills to him, the Resolute. ”

“ One moment of divine consciousness, or the spiritual understanding of Life and Love, is a foretaste of eternity. This exalted view, continued and retained when the Science of Being is understood, would bridge over, with Life discerned spiritually, the interval of death; and man would be in the full consciousness of his immortality and eternal harmony, where sin, sickness, and death are unknown. Time is a mortal thought, whose divisor is the solar year. Eternity is God's measurement of Soul-filled years. ”

“ Only by losing the false sense of Soul can we gain the eternal unfolding of Life as immortality brought to light.
XX. Mind is the divine Principle, Love, and can produce nothing unlike the eternal Father-Mother, God. The one divine Mind Reality is spiritual, harmonious, immutable, immortal, divine, eternal. Nothing unspiritual can be real, harmonious, or eternal. ”

“ He marks a round ring to give an illustration of his views of eternity. You may start anywhere on that ring and undertake to find the end, and you cannot, for it has none. You may have a starting point any place on the ring, but you cannot have any stopping place, and so the Scriptures in another place, more expressly use the term, that the course of God is an eternal round, and therefore it is called eternity. But this course of God being "one eternal round," is marvelous in our eyes, and who can comprehend it? But we see, yes, we see right before us to-day, his image, man—male and female. ”

“ Eternity is that word which embraces duration without beginning and without end. And that Being whose existence comprehends eternity, is he who only hath immortality, the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God. ”

“ If we could fuse past, present, and future into a totum simul, an 'Eternal Now,' would that be eternity? This I do not believe. A full understanding of the values of our life in time would indeed give us a good picture of the eternal world; but that world itself, the abode of God and of blessed spirits, is a state higher and purer than can be fully expressed in the order of nature. The perpetuity of natural laws as they operate through endless ages is only a Platonic 'image' of eternity. That all values are perpetual is true ”

“ The deathless soul emanates from God. Is the question irreverent? May not the Eternal who started then and keeps all things moving and growing—may not He grow in perfection? May not the Omnipotent become more potent, the Omniscient wiser? ”

“ In other words, it dares to read the meaning of the universe through what is highest in man, not through what is lower, asserting that the soul is akin to the Eternal Spirit, and that by a life of righteousness its eternal quality is revealed. ”

“ It is of the very nature of thought to be eternal. No thought ever dies, or can die. All the determinations of God’s thought are eternal. The mind of God has within it all determinations of thought; those past, those present, and those to come. Some of these determinations of the divine thought have taken the form of objects in the inorganic world, some have taken the form of objects in the vegetable kingdom, and some have taken the form of objects in the animal kingdom. The determinations of thought, of which inorganic things, trees, and animals were the expressions, are all eternal. ”

“ It is hard for mankind to comprehend that principle. The philosophers of the world will concede that the elements of which you and I are composed are eternal, yet they believe that there was a time when there was no God. They cannot comprehend how it is that God can be eternal. Let me ask this congregation, Can you realise the eternity of your own existence? Can you realise that the intelligence which you receive is eternal? ”

“ Sooner or later all universe personalities begin to realize that the final quest of eternity is the endless exploration of infinity, the never-ending voyage of discovery into the absoluteness of the First Source and Center. Sooner or later we all become aware that all creature growth is proportional to Father identification. We arrive at the understanding that living the will of God is the eternal passport to the endless possibility of infinity itself. ”

“ All Things are comprehended in their Eternal Forms in the Divine body of the Saviour, the True Vine of Eternity, The Human Imagination, who appear’d to Me as Coming to Judgment among his Saints & throwing off the Temporal that the Eternal might be Establish’d. ”

“ There are two eternal facts in existence, God and the universe, the former unchangeable, the latter changeable. The world exists eternally. Where your mind cannot grasp the amount of change, you call it eternally. ”

“ As, when the Scriptures speak of the eternity of God, they declare it so as to give us a mere glimpse of that fearful peculiarity of the divine nature, that God is the fountain of being to himself, and that he is eternal, because he is the “I am;” so we are taught not to measure God’s omnipotence by the actual displays of it which we see around us. These are the manifestations of the fact, but not the measure of the attribute ”

“ But if Gods Power can make Man's Soul, as also the good and evil Spirits to last eternally without end, he may, by his Omnipotency make as well things without beginning. You will say, If Nature were Eternal, it could not be created, for the word Creation is contrary to Eternity. ”

“ That theology, therefore, which they call natural, being put aside for a moment, as it is afterwards to be discussed, we ask if any one is really content to seek a hope for eternal life from poetical, theatrical, scenic gods? Perish the thought! The true God avert so wild and sacrilegious a madness! What, is eternal life to be asked from those gods whom these things pleased, and whom these things propitiate, in which their own crimes are represented? ”