God of this world

“ And when we have attained to this point in our course of thought, the first leading fact of God’s revelation meets us. Here it is: “There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker and Preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” ”

“ Having declared the One God, then the partial soul, fulfilled of the darkness only, proceeds to establish this God on earth, to devour and obliterate all else.
Rising from the darkness of consummation in the flesh, with the woman, it seeks to establish its kingdom over all the world. It strides forth, the lord, the master, strong for mastery. ”

“ In distinction from the four classes of Powers just mentioned, a true god is a supernatural being with distinct anthropomorphic personality, with a proper name or a distinctive title, exercising authority over a certain land or people or over a department of nature or a class of phenomena, dwelling generally in a sanctuary on the earth, or in the sky, or in the other world, and in general sympathetic with men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ though some of them hold it to exist in the shape of a personal god or gods, while others are satisfied to conceive it as a stream of ideal tendency embedded in the eternal structure of the world. ”

“ for, indeed, God made the world just as much for me as for any one else. ”

“ It is very remarkable that this opinion of God Almighty's presence in heaven, whether discovered by the light of nature, or by a general tradition from our first parents, prevails among all the nations of the world, whatsoever different notions they entertain of the Godhead. ”

“ The power of God is the worship He inspires. That religion is strong which in its ritual and its modes of thought evokes an apprehension 269of the commanding vision. The worship of God is not a rule of safety—it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable. ”

“ The essential thing in religion is making the heart pure; the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, but only the pure in heart can see the King. While we think of the world, it is only the world for us; but let us come to it with the feeling that the world is God, and we shall have God. ”

“ All the divinities of all religions are the exact indicators of the spiritual status of their worshippers, and as the peoples unfold higher spirituality they will oblige their gods to keep pace with them. So will it continue to be and in some coming age Earth's peoples will have so evolved as to recognize but one God—the Infinite, All Pervading Spirit, in whom all things live, move and have their being. ”

“ And God is meant to be the home of our souls. Christ came into the world to bring us back to God, and unless we take Christ for what God intended we should, our religion will always be a divided one. ”

“ There is one God, eternal, infinite, all-wise, perfect in goodness, the creator of the universe. Hence all the gods and idols of the heathen are vanity and a lie.—"There is one God the Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." ”

“ Thus says the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: 'I dwell in the high and holy place; also with him who is of a contrite heart and a humble spirit!' None can hide himself from our God, for he fills heaven and earth. Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How, then, can the power of giving eternal life be attributed to any of those gods whose own images and sacred rites convict them of being most like to the fabulous gods, which are most openly reprobated, in forms, ages, sex, characteristics, marriages, generations, rites ”

“ 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? ”

“ The divinity that I am questing is not you who are afraid of doubt. That divinity is like the day, like the sun, and shines without extinguishing other lights. The god I seek is the god who would say to me: ‘Wanderer, give me your torch, you no longer need it, for I am the source of all light. ”

“ Youthful stranger, it is very simple on your part to imagine that there is but one God. For the gods are countless. They dwell in the woods, the mountains, and the streams. There are even gods so intimate that they do not disdain a place by the hearths of pious men. Others, again, take up their station in the stables and byres, and so the race of the gods fills the whole universe. ”

“ Whether, for the sake of the life which is to be after death, we ought to worship, not the one God, who made all creatures spiritual and corporeal, but those many gods who, as some of these philosophers hold, were made by that one God, and placed by Him in their respective sublime spheres, and are therefore considered more excellent and more noble than all the others? ”

“ We might say that the light of the sun, or the rain, or the cooling winds, are among the divinest gifts to mankind. So any good impulse in the hearts of men, and every noble deed, is a divine gift ordained or given from God, our Heavenly Father. Why restrict His divine gifts or ordinances to two mere ceremonies, and not include all that is good? The universe is alive with God. The thing that is natural is none the less divine and worthy of our love and reverence. Every scientific fact, or we might say, everything good, all is of divine origin. ”

“ As personalities, now or in the successive universe experiences of the eternal future, no matter if you achieve the attainment of God the Sevenfold, comprehend God the Supreme, find God the Ultimate, or attempt to grasp the concept of God the Absolute, you will discover to your eternal satisfaction that in the consummation of each adventure you have, on new experiential levels, rediscovered the eternal God—the Paradise Father of all universe personalities. ”

“ And even when single deities are invoked, it is not difficult to see that, in the mind of the poet, each one of the names is meant to express the highest conception of deity of which the human mind was then capable. The god of the sky is called Father and Mother and Friend; he is the Creator, the Upholder of the Universe; he rewards virtue and punishes sin; he listens to the prayers of those who love him.
But granting all this, we may well understand why an attempt to claim for these books a divine origin, and thus to make them an artificial foundation for a new religion, failed. ”

“ In regard to the last, the thousand varied forms which we every day behold, and the thousand beautiful and minute grades by which matter is led from the simple clod to the most perfect of our conceptions, proves evidently the will of the Deity to vary and employ all that which is within the immensity of his power. To admit that there is a God, is to admit that there is a spirit. ”

“ Has doubt taken away from the glory of the universe? Rather, as the result of the work of these myriad investigators, whose one aim and end was truth, at last we have a universe worthy to be the home of an infinite God, a universe that matches our thought of the Divine, a universe that thrills and lifts us, fills us with reverence, and bends us to our knees in the attitude of worship. ”

“ I could not but think of that old formula for an anthropomorphic Deity—'the Brocken-spectre of the human spirit projected on the mists of the Non-ego.' Even like those cloud-phantoms are the gods made in the image of man, who have been worshipped through successive ages of the world, gods dowered with like passions to those of the races who have crouched before them, gods cruel and malignant and lustful, jealous and noble and just, radiant or gloomy, the counterparts of men upon a vast and shadowy scale. ”

“ Deity thus becomes the transcendental, even the infinite, goal of universal and eternal attainment.
Universal beauty is the recognition of the reflection of the Isle of Paradise in the material creation, while eternal truth is the special ministry of the Paradise Sons who not only bestow themselves upon the mortal races but even pour out their Spirit of Truth upon all peoples. Divine goodness is more fully shown forth in the loving ministry of the manifold personalities of the Infinite Spirit. But love, the sum total of these three qualities, is man's perception of God as his spirit Father. ”

“ That this soul, purified by asceticism, might be reunited to the great spirit of the universe from which it had originally emanated, was the hopeless aim and dream of these theosophists,--not the control of passions and appetites, which God commands, but their eradication; not the worship of a Creator who made the heaven and the earth, but a vague worship of the creation itself. ”

“ secondarily, a body of beliefs, tenets, and dogmas, then, strictly speaking, there is but one Religion in the world, for there is but one God; ”

“ And this is just why the God of worship claims all allegiance or none.
The gods of primitive men may have been no more than shadows of themselves; the living God is the divine light whose interruptions constitute the creation shadows of all space. ”

“ The true Lord is without origin,
Profound, invisible, and unchangeable;
With power and capacity to perfect and transform,
He raised up the earth and established the heavens.
Divided in nature, he entered the world,
To save and to help without bounds ”

“ 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. ”

“ So that His revealed or written Word and His Word in Nature alike descend from Him, and lead up to Him, who is the inmost and animating soul of both; not a mere undefined pervading influence, but a Divine Personal God,—an infinitely glorious Divine Man, the great Archetype, of which man was created the finite image. ”

“ I know that, while the great God is absolute, eternal, and infinite, he is also good, divine, and gracious. I know the truth of the great declarations: "God is spirit" and "God is love," and these two attributes are most completely revealed to the universe in the Eternal Son. ”

“ The will creatures of universe upon universe have embarked upon the long, long Paradise journey, the fascinating struggle of the eternal adventure of attaining God the Father. The transcendent goal of the children of time is to find the eternal God, to comprehend the divine nature, to recognize the Universal Father. God-knowing creatures have only one supreme ambition, just one consuming desire, and that is to become, as they are in their spheres, like him as he is in his Paradise perfection of personality and in his universal sphere of righteous supremacy. ”

“ 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? ”

“ In the eternal future, God the Supreme will be actualized—creatively expressed and spiritually portrayed—in the spiritualized mind, the immortal soul, of ascendant man, even as the Universal Father was so revealed in the earth life of Jesus. ”

“ The great God of this universe, creator of heaven and earth and everything therein—God, who sprinkled the heavens with teeming millions of bright sparkling worlds, which we behold by night, and made these bodies of ours that are so wonderfully and fearfully constructed—God, who has all power and wisdom, and who is characterized by love, mercy, and tenderness—God, the everlasting God, hath spoken. God, the Holy and Living God of all the universe, hath condescended to speak unto us who are mere worms of the dust. ”

“ These three divinities are primarily manifested by the Supreme Being as power-personality synthesis. They are variously shown forth by God the Sevenfold in seven differing associations of divine meanings and values on seven ascending levels.
To finite man truth, beauty, and goodness embrace the full revelation of divinity reality. As this love-comprehension of Deity finds spiritual expression in the lives of God-knowing mortals, there are yielded the fruits of divinity: intellectual peace, social progress, moral satisfaction, spiritual joy, and cosmic wisdom. ”

“ None is good but God," to that sublime consciousness of achieved divinity which led him to exclaim, "Which one of you convicts me of sin?" And this progressing ascent from the human to the divine was an exclusively mortal achievement. And when he had thus attained divinity, he was still the same human Jesus, the Son of Man as well as the Son of God. ”