Spirit (religious concept)

“ They tell us that they have arrived at an unshakable conviction, not based on inference but on immediate experience, that God is a spirit with whom the human spirit can hold intercourse; that in him meet all that they can imagine of goodness, truth, and beauty; that they can see his footprints everywhere in nature, and feel his presence within them as the very life of their life, so that in proportion as they come to themselves they come to him. ”

“ But in all that pertains to the emotional, the devotional, and especially to the moral side of religion, we are far behind them. The animating spirit of life, under the predominating influence of the religious sentiment, was, as we have seen, a conscientious endeavor to live, in all ways, a life of purity, of virtue, and of implicit obedience to the highest dictates of truth, according to the understanding of truth which then prevailed. ”

“ This thoroughly 'pragmatic' view of religion has usually been taken as a matter of course by common men. They have interpolated divine miracles into the field of nature, they have built a heaven out beyond the grave. It is only transcendentalist metaphysicians who think that, without adding any concrete details to Nature, or subtracting any, but by simply calling it the expression of absolute spirit, you make it more divine just as it stands. I believe the pragmatic way of taking religion to be the deeper way. ”

“ You come here, and you think that we are busy and active, but only live your religion, and you will feel the power, spirit, and fulness thereof, as you have never felt it previous to this. What I mean by the spirit is the Spirit of God, the Holy Ghost, which you can feel from the crown of your heads to the soles of your feet. ”

“ It is a Call from Love to Love, that It be but Itself. The Holy Spirit is His gift, by which the quietness of Heaven is restored to God's beloved Son. Would you refuse to take the function of completing God, when all He wills is that you be complete? ”

“ We own no principle of spiritual light, life or holiness, inherent by nature in the mind or heart of man. We believe in no principle of spiritual light, life or holiness, but the influence of the Holy Spirit of God, bestowed on mankind, in various measures and degrees, through Jesus Christ our Lord. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They who knew that God is a spirit, and that they who worship Him must worship him in spirit and in truth, feel that His attributes are too awful to permit any ideas connected with Deity to be brought into contact with the exhibition of human passions. ”

“ Give all to accept the Spirit of His life on earth, delight in the will of God, as the spirit of their life. May those who have never yet fully accepted this be brought to do it, and in faith of the power of the new life to say, I accept the will of God as my only law. May the Spirit of holiness be the spirit of their lives! ”

“ I will not speak of those really poor mortals, whom you also will hardly call blessed or think specially well fitted for their heavenly kingdom: of those who, under the forms of the Christian faith, practise the grossest idolatry, the merest image worship. But how do even the most enlightened, the most intellectual, who take the scriptural words 'God is a spirit' in the most solemn sense, imagine this spirit? In their holy zeal, they ascribe to it every quality that seems worthy of honor and love in themselves or others. ”

“ By the Holy Spirit is meant the living and immanent Deity at work in the consciousness and experience of mankind,—the guider of human history, the comforter of human sorrow, the revealer of truth, the inspirer of faith and hope and love, the producer of life and joy and beauty, the sustainer and enricher of existence, the Impersonation of the Grace of God. ”

“ But two Holy Spirits there cannot be; for holiness, which is wisdom, justice, and love, is one and indivisible; and as the Athanasian Creed tells us, and as our highest reason ought to tell us, there is but one Holy Spirit, who must be at once a spirit of wisdom and a spirit of love. ”

“ No doubt, all such feelings, so far as they go, are the work of God's Spirit: whatever is good and right in our minds towards God, that proceeds not from the spirit of the world, but from the Spirit of God. ”

“ The Spiritual thus appears as itself already the Divine, and the Spirit as the exclusive, characteristic property of God, something which is foreign to man, apart from his Christian renovation and elevation to a higher form of existence. Only with the entrance of faith and its consequences into the mind and will of man, does this transcendent Spirit become an immanent principle: “through His Spirit dwelling in you.” ”

“ And learn too that holiness in both aspects comes from the operation and indwelling in our spirits of a divine Spirit, who draws away our love from self to fix it on Him, which changes our blindness into sight, and makes us by degrees like Himself, 'holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.' The Spirit of the Lord is the energy which produces all righteousness and purity in human spirits. ”

“ If our thoughts, wills, and affections, need only be now and then holy and good, then, indeed, the Spirit of God need only now and then govern us. But if our thoughts and affections are to be always holy, then the holy Spirit of God is to be always operating within us. ”

“ And the spiritual men are not called so because there is no flesh in them, but because the Spirit in them has obtained dominance, and when you meet them and have intercourse with them, you feel that the Spirit of God has sanctified them. Ah, let us beware lest the blessing God gives us in our work deceive us and lead us to think that because he has blessed us, we must be spiritual men. God may give us gifts that we use, and yet our lives may not be wholly in the power of the Holy Ghost. ”

“ By the Spirit of God, is meant the third subsistence in the Divine essence, distinguished from the person of the Father, and that of the Son; he is called a Spirit, to signify his spiritual and immaterial nature, as well as to express his mighty agency ”

“ The Divine Spirit is universal and infinite. It is the mother-soul of the universe, with eternal power and sweetness and beauty, and glory, shining down upon all men, stimulating them to be nobler, to go up higher. ”

“ The primitive meaning of the word Spirit is air or breath. Some of its meanings in scripture are wind; the living soul in man and animals; the mind, or man's intelligent part and also its various faculties and powers; an intelligent spirit, simple, superior to man's, not allied to matter; it is applied to angels good and evil; and also to God, as we read, "God is a spirit." It means also the divine power, given to Christ, by which he wrought miracles and fulfilled God's purposes on the earth, as Matt. ”

“ He it is that strives with men by way of a kind of inherent knowledge, testifying to them of salvation's waters flowing free, and that they should forsake sin and plunge therein. By the Holy Spirit is God's way of manifesting himself to men, convicting them of sin, righteousness, and judgment. ”

“ And hence it is that amongst ungodly, worldly men, the impression and saying are so prevalent, that religion is melancholy. While the heart continues at enmity with God, all outward conformity to the will and worship of God can be nothing better than vexation,—harassing and fretting to the spirit and drawing forth the exclamation, What a weariness is it! ”

“ But if the morality, goodness, holiness be in you what it was in Christ, without measure—a spirit, even the spirit of God—a spirit within you, possessing you, and working on you, and in you—then that which seems most petty and unimportant will often be most important, the test of the soundness of your heart, of the reality of your feelings. ”

“ The Spirit of our religion is to be the spirit of our lives, the constant principle of all our tempers and inclinations, which is to render us reasonable, and wise and holy in all our progress through the world. ”

“ God being a Spirit, and man being a spirit, whatever man knows or feels of God, may, not figuratively, but with the strictest truth, be called the Holy Spirit within him. “If ye then being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him.”—Luke, xi. ”

“ We realize that we have not lost his Holy Spirit; and if we continue to encourage it, it will be in us a spirit of life, light, intelligence, and truth,—in fact, a spirit springing up unto everlasting life. ”

“ The work of the Holy Spirit seems to be that of completing, bringing to perfection. We can understand this only by remembering that our Christian knowledge and love are brought to their consummation by the Holy Spirit, and that he is also the principle of our natural self-consciousness, uniting subject and object in a subject-object. ”

“ But he unites himself with the mind of a saint, takes him for his temple, actuates and influences him as a new, supernatural principle of life and action. There is this difference, that the Spirit of God, in acting in the soul of a godly man, exerts and communicates himself there in his own proper nature. ”

“ For, even as the devil can do this, since he is spirit, even so likewise can the spiritual man, according to the words of the Apostle, who says: Spiritualis autem judicat omnia. [12] ‘He that is spiritual judgeth all things.’ And again he says: Spiritus enim omnia scrutatur, etiam profunda Dei. [13] ‘The spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.’ Wherefore, although spiritual persons cannot by nature know thoughts, or things that are in the minds of others, [14] they may well interpret them through supernatural enlightenment or by signs. ”

“ And what is well to be noted, every one, however high in human literature, is but this very natural man, and can only have the goodness of a carnal religion, till as empty of all, as a new-born child, the Spirit of God becomes the inspirer and doer of all that he wills, does, and aims at, in his whole course of religion. ”

“ Thus we have a view, and one that is entirely verifiable from the experience of mankind and the statements of the Bible, of man as body, mind, and spirit; the mind and spirit constituting the soul which endures forever because it is capable of becoming fashioned into the moral image and likeness of God. ”

“ It is difficult to express the emotions which are roused by such an exhibition of man's religious instinct, enlightened simply by God's revelation of himself in the natural world and in the nature of man. ”

“ A spirit exists in all things, and no body is so small but contains a part of the divine substance within itself by which it is animated.” The words God and religion have been so long associated with superstition and priestcraft that many liberal thinkers have a repugnance to both. ”

“ Wherefore prove that man by his life and works, who says that he hath the Holy Spirit. And believe the Spirit which comes from God, and has power as such. But believe not the earthly and empty spirit, which is from the devil, in whom there is no faith nor virtue. ”

“ But though spirit signifies a being of higher rank than body or matter, yet the word is too low to express the essence of God, any otherwise than analogically, or metaphorically. He is infinitely more excellent than the highest created spirits, being eternal, and immutable. ”

“ I want the divine spirit to lead me deeply into all truths, for the knowledge and purity of God’s people’s minds and consciences, and to follow after righteousness in every sense—peace and joy as the happy consequence. ”

“ It is this, the indwelling of God through the Spirit, that alone can explain and enable us to appropriate the wonderful promises given to prayer. God gives the Spirit as a Spirit of Supplication, too, to maintain His Divine life within us as a life out of which prayer ever rises upward.
Without the Holy Spirit no man can call Jesus Lord, or cry, Abba, Father; no man can worship in spirit and truth, or pray without ceasing. ”

“ And the reason is plain, it is because by these holy tempers, which are the workings of his spirit within us, we seek the God of life where he is, we call upon him with his own voice, we draw near to him by his own spirit; for nothing can breathe forth faith and hope, but that Spirit which is of God, and which therefore through flesh and blood thus presses towards him, and readily unites with him. ”

“ May the Lord restore you to truth, or open the eyes of your hearers to see your errors, and your base design in propagating them. But from the Scriptures of truth I am about to prove that the adorable Spirit is something more than a mere breath or an emanation; and that the ever-blessed Spirit is a person God blessed for evermore—and be it at your peril to contradict it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is conscience, with its steel-like temper, which is at the same time evangelic and personal. It is respect for truth—the instinctive taste for what is moral and religious. All these are what I call the divine: it is not God. It is the glorious ray of the sun, but it is not that resplendent disk. Where, then, is the elevation of the soul to the living God? "My soul has thirsted for the strong and living God ”