Spirit

“ For to all utterances of divine inspiration, our Lord's words apply, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." ”

“ This divine spark, derived from the source of universal life, is the spirit, the active and mysterious and incomprehensible element of our being, which baffles all our explanations, and without which we are nothing. ”

“ But, long before the elaboration of this concept of the ruthless Thing, and of its blind Force, Our Lord had, by His Life and Teaching, brought to man, with abidingly unforgettable, divine depth and vividness, the sense of Spirit and Personality, with its liberty and interiority, its far-looking wisdom and its regenerating, creative power of love. ”

“ Yet, with a remarkable fusion of sustained thought and of poetic imagination, he does convey the idea of “the Being that is in the clouds and air,” the soul that penetrates all things, the spirit, the mystical essence, the divine knowledge that, as far as he was concerned, lies behind all nature. ”

“ This is the hour when the Wordsworthian spirit, refined, conscientious, aspiring, beauty and duty loving, sees through the splendor of the lucent, saffron sky, heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending. ”

“ God, Nature, Spirit, Passion––Passion, Spirit, Nature, God––in some such panorama would I paint the life of a highly developed being. Any of these elements lacking, and the life is wanting, defective, impure. ”

“ Thy spirit come to thee again for wisdom, energy, and lire, That thou mayst long behold the sun! 5. O Fathers, may the Heavenly Folk give us our spirit once again, That we may be with those who live. 6. ”

“ Lift up and enlighten our hearts and minds to a higher perception of all that is noble, all that is true, all that is merciful. Awaken our dull senses to the full knowledge of light in Thee, and may all that is said and done be with the guiding of Thy Holy Spirit. ”

“ The worlds of spirit and of soul are co-eternal with the Absolute, the inevitable and unceasing expressions of its creative activity. The utterly transcendent Perfect manifests as Mind or Spirit (Nous) ; and this is the world of being. ”

“ Are we spirits clad in material vestments which death will shortly relieve us of? And shall we then consciously enter the spirit-world as living, conscious, intelligent men and women-spirits in human form? ”

“ Paradoxes of my friend B—— H——. Yes, certainly the spirit rules in us and we in it; and is eternal, and the same which rules through all worlds; but that which we call our human soul, we frame to ourselves here. ”

“ The part of man which is not body I will call the Spirit; under that term including all the faculties not sensual. Let me, for convenience' sake, distribute these faculties of the human spirit into four classes: the intellectual,—including the aesthetic,—moral, affectional, and religious. Let Mind be the name of the intellectual faculty, — including the threefold mental powers, reason, imagination, and understanding; Conscience shall be the short name for the moral, Heart for the affectional, and Soul for the religious faculties. ”

“ That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in all ages and countries, embodies it in his language, as the Father. ”

“ But if we look behind to the spirit and sense and not at the local name and temporal institution, we see that here too the sense is deep and true and the spirit philosophical, spiritual and universal. ”

“ This spirit may be defined as a kind of cultivated sensuality, ardently enamoured of the beautiful in the world of sense, while fully devoted to intellectual truth, and at the same time always conscious of the nothingness of things, the instant pressure of death, the treacherousness of mortal delights. ”

“ Yet, we may faintly shadow those ecstatic raptures, if we remember that every faculty of the mind, each affection of the spirit, will then be fully and forever occupied in fulfilling its highest destinies—Love, Knowledge, Use. ”

“ Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul;
Not with the mean and vulgar works of Man,—
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature; purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such discipline
Both pain and fear,—until we recognise
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. ”

“ The spirit, the agent to connect the soul with God—the body, the medium of the soul’s manifestation or materialization in this world, and the instrument for its use and enjoyment. The mind, seated in the spirit, was intended, under the influence of the spirit, to be the governor and regulator of the soul—enabling the soul rightly to use its appetite and legitimately to satisfy its passions. ”

“ What, but God?
Inspiring God! who, boundless spirit all
And unremitting energy, pervades,
Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole. ”

“ It is more than mere feeling or emotion; it is not blind, but rational, and above deception, having its ground in our moral and religious nature. It extends to the whole person, to body, mind, and spirit, to the character as well as to the face and form. ”

“ And first, God has intrusted us with our soul, an immortal spirit, made in the image of God, together with all the powers and faculties thereof, understanding, imagination, memory; will, and a train of affections, either included in it, or closely dependent upon it; love and hatred, joy and sorrow, respecting present good and evil; desire and aversion, hope and fear, respecting that which is to come. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In accordance with the popular point of view which, as I have said, is shared by great philosophers, a distinction is made between the spirit considered as will and the spirit regarded as intellect, or as consciousness, or as thought, or whatever term may be used to indicate the becoming aware of this spiritual activity. ”

“ Thro’ the operation of his Spirit, they humble more and more, and abase the soul before God. They calm and meeken our turbulent spirit, tame the fierceness of our nature, soften our obstinacy and self-will, crucify us to the world ”

“ Let us worship the spirit in spirit, standing on spirit. Let the foundation be spirit, the middle spirit, the culmination spirit. ”

“ The effect which these visions produce in the soul is that of quiet, illumination, joy like that of glory, sweetness, purity and love, humility and inclination or elevation of the spirit in God; sometimes more so, at other times less; with sometimes more of one thing, at other times more of another, according to the spirit wherein they are received and according as God wills. ”

“ Of the substantial use examples are the spirit, which is wholly in the whole body of man, or that spirit which is in the whole extent of the life of the earth, by whose life we live and in which we have our being, or, above this [Pg 230] substantial nature or individual soul, that of the universe, and supreme above all, the mind of minds, God, one spirit completely filling all things. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let the spirit reign predominant over the flesh, and bring into subjection the whole man, every feeling and every desire of his heart, and let him be devoted wholly, body and spirit, to the end for which he has been created. ”

“ Because we look to the body for pleasure, we find pain. For Life, we find death; for Truth, we find error; and for Spirit, its opposite, called matter. Now reverse this action. Look away from the body, into Truth and Love, the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and immortality. ”

“ Nothing, then, would be more shortsighted than to try and keep the soul from a deep, ample, recollective movement, from feeding upon and relishing, from as it were stretching itself out and bathing in, spiritual air and sunshine, in a rapt admiration, in a deep experience of the greatness, the beauty, the truth, and the goodness of the World, of Life, of God. ”

“ The spiritualist errs when he pronounces upon the nature of spirit, as it lies beyond his ken, naming it, in essence, immortal, divine. Unity there somehow is in this universe. There are no breaks if we could read aright. ”

“ The intelligence associated with the emotional life reaching upward through worship and wisdom to the spirit level.
3. Spirit. The divine spirit that indwells the mind of man—the Thought Adjuster. This immortal spirit is prepersonal—not a personality, though destined to become a part of the personality of the surviving mortal creature.
4. Soul. The soul of man is an experiential acquirement. As a mortal creature chooses "do the will of the Father in heaven," so the indwelling spirit becomes the father of a new reality in human experience. ”

“ —The Accusing Spirit, which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath, blush'd as he gave it in;—and the Recording Angel, as he wrote it down, dropp'd a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever. ”

“ And yet for those in these days who can "look through the vayle or shell within which the Eternal Spirit works its Wonders," the visible things of the world prove to be "a glasse wherein the similitude of spirituall things are represented" and "the Minde of man is a most clear and undeceiving glasse wherein we may perceive the motions and activities of that Work-Master, the Spirit who hath created everything in the world." ”

“ They recognized man as a trinity, the three elements of which are "body, soul, and spirit." The soul, in their system of philosophy, corresponds to the objective mind, and the spirit to the subjective mind. ”

“ Other poets have written of Wisdom overshadowing man and speaking through his lips, or a Will working within the human will, but I think in this poetry we find for the first time the revelation of the Spirit as the weaver of beauty. ”

“ Into his spiritual sight will come the Principles of the divine Life, and as he approaches them, their incomparable beauty and majestic symmetry will astonish his vision, and gladden his heart with a gladness hitherto unknown. ”

“ It is to them alone that the message for them can be given.
The transcendent brightness and spiritual beauty of that assemblage of spirits—from guardian spirits of relatives and friends to the wisest and most advanced that one could see, are beyond my power of language to express. ”

“ Let your feelings be governed and controlled by the principles of eternal life, as should the children of God, delighting in truth and righteousness. Let the wicked say what they please, for their breath is in their nostrils, and all their glory is like the grass and the flower of the grass that passeth away. ”

“ This influence of individual subjects will be all the greater, of course, the nearer and more intimately they are united with the true centre of the universal spiritual life, the spirit of spirits, about which the universe gravitates, whether with or without the conscious will of the individual. ”

“ Five they are, and they comprehend all; first prayer, then temperance, alms, poverty, patience. These, performed with longing desire and set purpose, are words of the soul spoken by the Lord and heard by the heart. The Lord works, and then the Spirit speaks without sound, and the heart performs in outward manifestation, in proportion as it desires.
9. And as these virtues contain all virtues, so they are productive of each other. If the first is wanting, there is an end of all. ”

“ Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you. ”

“ The graces and comforts of the Spirit are communicated to the soul by the enlightening of the understanding. ”

“ To it is rightly given the name of spiritualism, because its character in fact is that of subordinating the senses to the spirit, and tending, by all the means that reason acknowledges, to elevate and ennoble man. ”

“ Spirit, that ruleth man's life to its ending,
Chance, Fortune, Fate, answer my summoning now;
The storm o'er the face of the night is descending,—
Fair moon, the dark clouds hide thy silvery brow.
Let these bring thy answer, and tell me if sadness
For ever man's penance and portion must be;
Doth the morning come forth from a birthplace of gladness?
Is there peace, is there rest, in thine empire or thee? ”

“ In making a rapid survey of this analysis, I must refer back to what was said of the attributes of the spirit,—that the spirit is in that it becomes, that it becomes in so far as it acquires self-consciousness, that its being therefore is consciousness in the act of being acquired. ”