Eternal reality

“ Like clouds they shape themselves and go.” On the other hand, we learn that, in its ultimate essence and reality, everything is persistent and eternal; that it is the form alone that changes, while the substance endures. ”

“ To be conscious of life is to know that you are living now; to be conscious of eternal life is to know that you are living in eternity now, and that to live in eternity is to be eternal. To develop the consciousness of eternal life it is only necessary to grow daily in the spiritual life. Seek to understand the reality of your own divine being, and you will not only develop that spiritual discernment that knows the immortal existence of your own soul, but you will also develop that discernment that knows the present continued existence of all souls. ”

“ On the other hand if we have in this world realized the true principle of the Worship of the Eternal Source from which all conditioned life flows out--an inner communing with the Great Reality--we have already passed beyond that consciousness of life which is limited by Time and Space ”

“ 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. ”

“ And thus advance is made to the further determination that the Spirit’s consciousness of self is an eternal, absolute moment in that eternal life in which it is lifted up far above time, above this abstraction of change, and above the reality of change, above dualism, when it is taken up into the unity and reconciliation which is presupposed as originally present in the object of consciousness. ”

“ 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 high, Godlike purpose—the life whose breath it is,—can that die?—the meek trust in Goodness Infinite,—can that perish? No.—This is that building of the soul which nothing can dissolve, that house eternal, that eternity's wide tempests cannot move. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And the end to which all these lives are moving, of every flower that blooms, of every bird that sings, is also the central principle of the entire evolution of the universe—the embodied Word of God. For the purpose of the whole is nothing other than the incarnation of the divine, the participation of the created in the eternal life of the uncreated, of which the God-man is the perfect revelation.... If God be indeed the end of all existence, he must needs fill all things with his being. ”

“ It occurs as an eternal experience of this my whole striving. Every struggle, every tear, every misery, every failure, and repentance, and every rising again, every strenuous pursuit, every glimpse of God’s truth, — all these are not mere incidents of the search for that which is beyond. They are all events in the life; they too are part of the fulfilment. In eternity all this is seen, and hereby, — even in and through these temporal failures, I win, in God’s presence and by virtue of His fulfilment, the goal of life, which is the whole of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And if the soul of humanity is eternal, if the human collective consciousness is eternal, if there is a Consciousness of the Universe, and if this Consciousness is eternal, why must our own individual consciousness—yours, reader, mine—be not eternal? ”

“ What dogma intrudes amongst them to blind and blight and make our hearts ache? They are alive and eternal—as all that is true must be eternal. They were waiting—hidden in human hearts—left for a man to discover, not for a God to invent. Who cares for the old dead theories that explained rainbows and precious stones, and the colour of a summer-clad heath and the strength of the solid earth? We have the things themselves. ”

“ But eternity itself is beyond all time. Reach out of time and touch it, with the help of its reflection in you. And you will turn from time to holiness, as surely as the reflection of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt aside. Reflect the peace of Heaven here, and bring this world to Heaven. For the reflection of truth draws everyone to truth, and as they enter into it they leave all reflections behind.
In Heaven reality is shared and not reflected. By sharing its reflection here, its truth becomes the only perception the Son of God accepts. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ 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? ”

“ That truth which he here acknowledges is truth in all worlds in the whole universe; that existence,—that inquiry,—that life which he has here begun may be developed in infinity, and attain its object; and released from earth we may find new light, yes the Eternal light, with adoration, indeed, but without being astonished by it—without being confounded by it ”

“ 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” ”

“ Two and two always will make four. But by a peculiar accident we have hitched on to one tense the whole body of eternal truth. Why did we hitch the eternal to the present rather than to the past or to the future? Because anything that we really grasp now, as truth or as joy or as beauty, anything that we really comprehend, can be eternally ours. ”

“ 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." ”

“ The lustre of the present hour is always borrowed from the background of possibilities it goes with. Let our common experiences be enveloped in an eternal moral order; let our suffering have an immortal significance; let Heaven smile upon the earth, and deities pay their visits; let faith and hope be the atmosphere which man breathes in;—and his days pass by with zest; they stir with prospects, they thrill with remoter values. ”

“ Can mortal man tell? Not unless he is inspired by the Almighty, and understands eternal things. The origin of all things is in eternity. Like a cloud passing across a clear sky—like a bird that suddenly flits across our path—like a pure gushing stream from a hidden fountain, that soon sinks in some mountain chasm, so, apparently, life flashes into this mortal existence, and passes away. 7:173.
Intelligence is given unto us to improve upon. ”

“ What god are you praying to, we ask in dismay, when you lift up your hands and your eyes, or turn to east or west, or kneel or lie? Is there any god in the wastes of infinity, in a sunstar, a swarm of worlds, who is not in that miraculous soul of yours? Is there aught anywhere greater than a son of God? Is a stone, a star, a heaven studded with infinite glories, a greater place than your eternal soul? Then look within you. Speak with yourself, commune with your own heart, summon up the irresistible energies of your nature and nothing shall be impossible to you. ”

“ But the Christian revelation not only shed a sudden splendor upon the awful futurity, but brought its revelations to bear upon the minds of men, with all the pressure and intensity of palpable facts. The long slumbering sentiment of immortal hope—a sentiment natural to the human constitution, and chief among its passions—instead of being deluded, as heretofore, by dreams, was thoroughly aroused by the hand and voice of reality; and human nature exhibited a new development of the higher faculties. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ I believe you to be the eternal being. I see you void of beginning, middle, or end—of infinite power, of unnumbered arms, and having the sun and the moon for eyes, and having a mouth like a blazing fire and heating the universe with your radiance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not only do spiritual affections become languid and require to be freshened with new life, but even the very ideas and impressions of a spiritual and eternal world wax dim upon the soul through the lapse of time, and the influence of the world and something extraordinary is required to renew these—some fresh testimony that there is a God and an eternity. ”

“ Thou art eternal, without beginning or end. Thou embracest, in one point of indivisible eternity, all duration and difference of times. With thee there is no time but that most perfect Now, which answers equally to all time. Thou art to thyself the adequate and most perfect measure of eternity.
4. Because thy excellence, then, is so great, O Lord, as I most firmly believe, I now adore and worship thee with my whole heart, with the greatest humility and reverence ”

“ In the Christian revelation, on the other hand, the eternal life is so placed in the most intimate connection with the life and character in this world as to cast its reflex lights and shadows on all earthly scenes and experiences. ”

“ The discovery of the eternal Word to the lapsed world, even before he was manifested in the flesh: The light shineth in darkness. Light is self-evidencing, and will make itself known; this light, whence the light of men comes, hath shone, and doth shine. [1.] The eternal Word, as God, shines in the darkness of natural conscience. ”

“ At any point of time, he may still resolve to resist the influx of eternal life, and continue in the sphere of death: but eternity surrounds time, and infolds it; and in eternity God's purposes will be realized, and every knee bow, of things in heaven, and in earth, and under the earth. Universal harmony must prevail at last. ”

“ And yet—so wide and various are the issues of life—there is a solemnity as profound in a quite different lot. For if we are moving among eternal emotions we should have time to bear witness that they are eternal. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Therefore believe and love, and hold fast to the conviction that the forces of life are divine and eternal, and their laws written [Pg 217] in the reason and consciences of men, and that death is only a transition from our world to another of greater beauty and perfection. ”