Heavenly

“ O what a joyous thing it is to have a ray of heavenly sunlight in the soul, and to hear the very voice of God as He walks in the garden of our souls in the cool of the day, saying to us, "Son, thy sins which are many, are all forgiven thee." ”

“ And in God’s word we have everything that can stir and strengthen such faith in us. Just as the heaven our natural eye can see is one great ocean of sunshine, with its light and heat, giving beauty and fruitfulness to earth, Scripture shows us God’s true heaven, filled with all spiritual blessings,—divine light and love and life, heavenly joy and peace and power, all shining down upon us. It reveals to us God waiting, delighting to bestow these blessings in answer to prayer. ”

“ I have quoted before a great sentence in which he explains his purpose, and makes excuse for his temerity. ‘The glory, doubtless, of the heavenly bodies fills us with more delight than the contemplation of these lowly things; for the sun and stars are born not, neither do they decay, but are eternal and divine. But the heavens are high and afar off, and of celestial things the knowledge that our senses give us is scanty and dim. ”

“ When rising from my knees I exclaimed, 'Old things have passed away, all things have become new.' It was like entering another world, a new state of existence. Natural objects were glorified, my spiritual vision was so clarified that I saw beauty in every material object in the universe, the woods were vocal with heavenly music ”

“ In solemn power come down!
Present with Thy heavenly host,
Thine ordinance to crown:
See a sinful worm of earth!
Bless to him the cleansing flood,
Plunge him, by a second birth,
Into the depths of God. ”

“ It has pleased the Lord therefore to open the heavens to you, that illustrating light, and thence perception, may flow into the interiors of your mind. With us in the heavens, especially in the third heaven, our heavenly delights are chiefly from conjugial love. ”

“ For the visible universe or the heaven illumined by stars so numberless, which are so many suns, is simply a means for the existence of earths with men upon them from whom the heavenly kingdom is derived. ”

“ Heaven represents harmony, and Divine Science interprets the Principle of heavenly harmony. The great Human botany. miracle, to human sense, is divine Love. One of the grand necessities of existence is to gain the true idea of what constitutes the Kingdom of Heaven in the affections of man. ”

“ Thirdly, The heavens are wonderfully stretched out to an incredible extent, and it is by his discretion that they are so, and that the motions of the heavenly bodies are directed for the benefit of this lower world. ”

“ Now ask yourselves whether you believe that the Holy Ghost ever commenced to produce a work or an effect before it was in the heart and mind of that Being we call our Heavenly Father. Do you think that the Holy Ghost ever thought of dictating that Being we call our God? ”

“ In the full revelation of the nature of heaven and hell, the wisdom and the love of God, the destiny of man and of the nature of the Heavenly Father, new motives for spiritual living are awakened, and all spiritual thirst and hunger can be satiated at living fountains of water. ”

“ It is a medium of those divine and heavenly influences, the reception of which is spiritual regeneration and eternal life. It is true, it comes to us clothed in words formed from the appearances of the external world. ”

“ On the fourth day the sun, moon, and stars were created. The sun is God's love that then is felt in power. The moon is faith derived from that love as the moon derives its light from the sun. The stars are heavenly truths. The fourth state of regeneration is when love, faith, and heavenly truths are set in the firmament of the mind to shed their heat and light down upon the earth of man's nature. ”

“ We bear the image of our earthly parents in their fallen state, but by obedience to the gospel of salvation, and the renovating influences of the Holy Ghost, and the holy resurrection, we shall put on the image of the heavenly, in beauty, glory, power and goodness. ”

“ Partakers of the heavenly calling—partakers of the means of grace, and of the Spirit of grace, that came from heaven, and by which Christians are effectually called out of darkness into marvelous light, that calling which brings down heaven into the souls of men, raises them up to a heavenly temper and conversation, and prepares them to live for ever with God in heaven. ”

“ Each heavenly word by whose hid flame
Our hard hearts shall strike fire, the same
Shall flourish on thy brows, and be
Both fire to us and flame to thee;
Whose light shall live bright in thy face
By glory, in our hearts by grace. ”

“ God's messenger sent down to thee; do thou
With courtesy receive him; rise and bow;
And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave
Permission first his heavenly feet to lave;
Then lay before him all thou hast; allow
No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow,
Or mar thy hospitality; no wave
Of mortal tumult to obliterate
The soul's marmoreal calmness: Grief should be,
Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate;
Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free;
Strong to consume small troubles; to commend
Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end. ”

“ But thou, fair Nymph, thyself survey
In this sweet offspring of a day.
That miracle of face must fail,
Thy charms are sweet, but charms are frail:
Swift as the short-lived flower they fly,
At morn they bloom, at evening die:
Though Sickness yet a while forbears,
Yet Time destroys what Sickness spares:
Now Helen lives alone in fame,
And Cleopatra's but a name:
Time must indent that heavenly brow,
And thou must be what they are now. ”

“ Above the angelic heaven there is a sun, which is pure love, of a fiery appearance like the sun of the world. From the heat proceeding from that sun angels and men derive will and love; and from its light, understanding and wisdom. All things derived from that sun are called spiritual; and all things proceeding from the world's sun are containants or receptacles of life, and are called natural. The expanse of the centre of life is called the spiritual world, which subsists from its sun; and the expanse of the centre of nature is called the natural world, which subsists from its sun. ”

“ In the spiritual world, the world of mind, there were all sweet and innocent affections, and, derived from these, all bright and elegant thoughts—beautiful and sparkling ideas, which would shine and glitter in the light of heaven, just as atmospheric coruscations, beautiful flowers, and gems, glow and sparkle in the light of the natural world. ”

“ And the term heaven, which in its natural sense refers to elevation in space, in its spiritual sense denotes elevation of state;—that exalted condition of mind and heart, that state of clear perception of whatever is beautiful and true, and of disinterested love for all that is good and right, in which the angels are. ”

“ I bind myself to-day to the virtue of heaven, in the light of sun, in the brightness of snow, in the splendour of fire, in the speed of lightning, in the swiftness of wind, in the depth of sea, in the stability of earth, in the compactness of rock. ”

“ Brood o'er our nature's night;
On our disordered spirits move,
And let there now be light.
God, through the Spirit we shall know
If thou within us shine,
And sound, with all thy saints below,
The depths of love divine. ”

“ Here, then, what a sublime view opens upon us! we will speak no more of the spiritual world—we will speak henceforth of the spiritual universe—composed of as many spiritual worlds, as there are stars and planets in the material universe. And who knows but those spiritual orbs may shine to the eyes of spirits, in distant beauty, just as the innumerable stars that spangle the sky, glitter and twinkle with their sparkling light before the sight of the rapt astronomer at his midnight vigils? ”

“ A natural heaven visible to the eyes, and a natural earth inhabited by men, are not meant by a new heaven and a new earth; but a spiritual heaven is meant, and the earth of that heaven, where angels dwell. ”

“ According to the views just presented,—to the eye of the spirit the real heaven would appear as on high, stretched far and wide, in glittering beauty, just as the natural firmament appears to us; and this idea, flowing into our minds from the spiritual world, we receive and involuntarily apply to the firmament above and around us, and call it "the heavens:"—for it does in a manner correspond to and represent the real heavens. ”

“ Thou art already dead, said the companionate angel of the three affectionate souls, and then stands the earthly globe out of which thou hast come still in darkness!" And the waves of celestial happiness flowed high over the world, while its innocent and joyful inhabitants looked upon our globe which still trembled in gloom. ”

“ The Lord appears in heaven as a sun, because He is the divine love from which all spiritual things exist, as all natural things exist by means of the sun of this world. It is that love which shines as a sun. ”

“ It is the light of heaven, which pours a flood of glory from its wide-open gates, spreading continual, meridian day, far and wide through the regions of ethereal space. Passing swiftly onward through this flood of day, the songs of heaven begin to burst upon your ears, and voices of celestial sweetness, yet loud as the sound of many waters and of mighty thunderings, are heard exclaiming, Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth! Blessing, and glory, and honor, and power, be unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever. ”

“ Look up into the vast heavens above and out over this beautiful earth and who is he that can be called a man and yet will not, yea is not compelled by a throbbing heart and admiring eyes to, burst out in words of praise. The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. ”

“ Outside this round universe of matter is the Paradise of pure spirit, the limitless abode of God, the angels, and the blest. The angels, ministers of the Lord, direct the movements of the celestial bodies, thus shaping existence here below and the characters of men. Of the earth's surface much more than half is covered by water ”

“ O Earth, how like to Heaven, if not preferred For what God, after better, worse would build? Terrestrial Heaven, danced round by other Heavens That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps, Light above light, for thee alone, as seems, In thee concentring all their precious beams Of sacred influence! As God in Heaven Is center, yet extends to all; so thou, Centring, receivest from all those orbs: in thee, Not in themselves, all their known virtue appears Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth Of creatures animate with gradual life Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in Man. ”

“ To Heaven, where beauty is accomplish'd. Earth
Is but the reproduction of one form,
Whose perfectness is heaven, and thus the mind,
[Pg 40] Unblinded by the blighting mist of sin,
Sees emblems of its everlasting hope
In Nature's loveliness. This quiet hour
When the calm'd heart cries truce unto itself,
And lays the weapons of resentment down,
And bitterness and anger, yields the bliss
That in completeness is the bliss of Heaven. ”

“ And loves still turns where the Godhead burns,
Hid in flesh from fleshly sight.
Faith sees no longer the stable floor,
The pavement of sapphire is there,
The clear light of Heaven streams out to the world,
And the angels of God are crowding the air,
And Heaven and earth, thro’ the spotless birth,
Are at peace on this night so fair. ”

“ Beyond that are two flaming heavens, angels are in them and the breaking loose of winds. I Beyond those an ice-cold heaven, bluer than any blue, seven times colder than any snow, and it is out of that comes the shining of the 1 sun. Two heavens there are above that again, bright like flame, and it is out of them shine the fiery stars that put fruitfulness in the clouds and in the sea. A high heaven, high and fiery, there is above all the rest; highest of all it is, having within it the rolling of the skies, and the labour of music, and choirs of angels. ”

“ If there be Heaven on earth it came to me that minute when he offered his life to me, but alas! this great earth of ours holds the reality of Heaven but a second and then appears more threatening than ever. ”

“ Nor leave the hearts that once were made
Fit temples for Thy grace divine:
Nor let us quench Thy sevenfold light;
But still with softest breathings stir
Our wayward souls—and lead us right,
O Holy Ghost, the Comforter! ”

“ I have seen a picture with a shaft of light reaching from earth to heaven. Up the long, white rays, dazzling in glory and transcendent in beauty, an immortal soul is ascending to the illumined heights—ascending to meet its God. ”

“ Heaven and Hell cease, therefore, to be eschatological in the true sense of the word; they become present realities, tendencies of life, ways of reacting toward the things of deepest import. Heaven, whether here or in any other world, is the condition of complete adjustment to the holy will of God; it is joy in the prevalence of His goodness; peace through harmonious correspondence with His purposes; the formation of a spirit of love, the creation of an inward nature that loves what God loves and enjoys what He enjoys. ”

“ Heaven. There is a heaven, and our Lord in the most distinct terms promises the possession of it to those who love Him. He promises that where He is, in the glory of heaven, there shall His own be also. ”

“ And ought we to be grateful for those transitory glimpses of the heavens, as for the fading splendour of the earth? But the heavens are not an idle show, hung out for the gaze of that idle dreamer Man. They are the work of the Eternal God, and He has given us power therein to read and to understand His glory. It is not our eyes only that are dazzled by the face of heaven—our souls can comprehend the laws by which that face is overspread by its celestial smiles. The dwelling-place of our spirits is already in the heavens. ”