Spiritual union

“ God, in spirit, pervades all material nature, and the union—if union it may be called—forms a perfect whole, and man being an epitome of all things contained in the material world, receives into his organization the spirit of each of its representative constituent parts, and consequently is endowed with all the spiritual attributes of the universe, the attributes of God! ”

“ We want to-day to do it spiritually, to direct the spiritual currents in their flow and interflow so that we have not only the external interpenetration—choosing representatives etc.—but the deeper interpenetration which shows the minds and needs and wants of all men.
We can satisfy our wants only by a genuine union and communion of all, only in the friendly outpouring of heart to heart. ”

“ But while the love of goodness and the love of truth, give rise to these more general and obvious distinctions in the heavenly state, there is still an immense number and variety of societies in each of these kingdoms, growing out of the peculiar manner in which goodness and truth are received by each spirit or association of spirits. For it is very plain that in the spiritual world, all societies, or combinations of individual spirits, must result from the free and voluntary union of those who love the same or similar things. ”

“ But infuse a christian feeling into all classes, get them to meet in the same church, to kneel at the same table, to partake in the same spiritual blessings, and then you may hope that all, whether free or emancipists, will feel themselves to be members of one another, portions of the same body, held in union of heart and soul by means of the same head; “for by One Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have been all made to drink into One Spirit.” ”

“ Widely different as the movements are which thus took place contemporaneously in these lands, we may discern in all of them alike the tendency to plant religion in the mind and heart, and to create a deeper union than the old external one, a union based on common intellectual effort and spiritual sympathy. ”

“ This knowledge is the more admirable, as it is the spring of all the felicity of the Soul, and the solid foundation of interior progress; for those Souls who tend toward God merely by the intellect, even though they should enjoy a somewhat spiritual contemplation, yet can never enter into Intimate Union, if they do not quit that path and enter this of the Inward Touch, where the whole working is in the Will. ”

“ For the natural thoughts only require to put away their enmity to the spiritual, and submit themselves to their authority, to become good and useful, and make their possessor happy. Now, how is the reconciliation of these and their union with the spiritual to be effected? They have in the first place to be starved into submission. ”

“ Make our souls dependent upon the Verses of Thy Divine Unity, our hearts cheered with the outpourings of Thy Grace, that we may unite even as the waves of one sea and become merged together as the rays of Thine effulgent Light; that our thoughts, our views, our feelings may become as one reality, manifesting the spirit of union throughout the world. ”

“ The author then goes on to describe how the three theological virtues — faith, hope and charity — must ‘void and dispose for union’ the three faculties of the soul — understanding, memory and will.
He shows how narrow is the way that leads to life and how nothing that belongs to the understanding can guide the soul to union. ”

“ In the light which is undying.
'Thus we complete the Trinity of our religion, Humanity, the World, and Space. So completed we recognise power to {243} give unity and definiteness to our thoughts, purity and warmth to our affections, scope and vigour to our activity. We recognise its powers to regulate our whole being, to give us that which it has so long been the aim of all religion to give—internal union. We recognise its power to raise us above ourselves and by intensifying the action of our unselfish instincts to bear down unto their due subordination our selfishness. ”

“ Are we safe? We are, so long as we are united and keep the commandments of God. But, brethren and sisters, this must be our strength. Our trust must be in the Lord. No one can understand for another, but it is each for himself. I know when I am right, but I cannot always tell when you feel right. When all my family are filled with the spirit of union and show a becoming deference to me as their head, I see there is a good spirit prevailing. Then I say all is peace, all is happiness, all is paradise under my roof. ”

“ I wish to find the means of uniting yourself and me—in the eyes of God, not of the law—without offending the habits and prejudices of a world, in which it may suit us hereafter to live. Yes, my friend! when you know whose are the noble hands, that are to join ours together, who is to bless and glorify God in our union—a sacred union, that will leave us worthy and free—you will say, I am sure, that never purer hands could have been laid upon us. Forgive me, friend! all this is in earnest—yes, earnest as our love, earnest as our happiness. ”

“ But if we cannot wish for an external unity such as that for which many good men plead, we have, nevertheless, constantly to strive after a deeper union of spirit in the service of our fellows, in the search after truth, in love to our Lord. ”

“ My conclusion is that, believing as we do in the Lord as our Saviour, one Holy Spirit as our Sanctifier, and one God and Father of us all, our points of union are surely strong; and if we are members of one living Church, and expect to be such for ever, we may profitably unite in some religious engagements here below.
“The world, and the things of it, occupy us much, and they are rapidly passing away; it will be well if we occasionally set apart a time for unitedly attending to the things of Eternity. ”

“ We believe that we, as a body of people, embracing all the various Quorums of this Church and kingdom, are engaged in this one great work; and hence there is a feeling of faith, union, and intensity—or power, if you please—of the Spirit of the living God, that quickens and vivifies the mind, gives energy to the body, and joy to the bosom. In this we all feel to participate. The Lord is here by his Spirit and power, and our hearts are joyful. ”

“ All earthly unions are but poor adumbrations from afar of that deep, transcendent, mysterious, but most real union, by which the Christian soul is in Christ, as the branch is in the vine, the member in the body, the planet in its atmosphere, and by which Christ is in the Christian soul as the life sap is in every twig, as the mysterious vital power is in every member. ”

“ If we would learn the lesson of those long dead schisms, we must be vigilant, correcting our judgments, improving our regulations, and cultivating that spirit of Love which is the fountain whence issue all our voluntary efforts for what is right and true: union in essential matters, liberty in everything unimportant and doubtful; Love always—one bond, one universal law, one fellowship in spirit and in truth! ”

“ That is, cut off, shut out of fellowship and intimacy. Life is union with God. Through union God's life flows into us. Union is rooted in knowledge and in sympathy, fellow-feeling, a common desire and purpose. ”

“ Today the most remarkable favour of God centereth around union and harmony among the friends; so that this unity and concord may be the cause of the promulgation of the oneness of the world of humanity, may emancipate the world from this intense darkness of enmity and rancour, and that the Sun of Truth may shine in full and perfect effulgence.
Today, all the peoples of the world are indulging in self-interest and exert the utmost effort and endeavour to promote their own material interests. They are worshipping themselves and not the divine reality, nor the world of mankind. ”

“ I ask God to make thee a sign of love, standard of agreement, means of union and harmony and spreader of peace among the people.
O maid-servant of God! Strive with all thy powers in diffusing the spirit of real union among the people, so that all who are on earth become one family, loving, united, agreed, bound by the bonds of love and united with all harmony in all things and conditions; this is the greater happiness of the human race in the world of possibilities and the cause of attaining to all hopes and reaching unto the Supreme Kingdom, after ascending unto the world of God. ”

“ Apart from yourself, the members of your body are useless, because here there is one common life forming one organic whole.
It is thus in the relation of Christ and His followers. He and they together form one whole, because one common life unites them. “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, so neither can ye.” Why can the branch bear no fruit except it abide in the vine? Because it is a vital unity that makes the tree one. And what is a vital unity between persons? It can be nothing else than a spiritual unity—a unity not of a [180] bodily kind, but inward and of the spirit. ”

“ We must needs band together then, if we would achieve a higher life; we must create for ourselves a purer atmosphere, if any rarer virtues are to flourish in our midst; we must make our own public opinion, to buoy us up in every loftier aspiration. Unions we want that will hold, not religion as a duty, but duty as a religion; union to achieve a larger morality. Three things morality demands of us as interpreted in the light of our present social conditions: greater simplicity in manners, greater purity in the passions, greater charity. ”

“ The bond of union is evidenced in this assembly today where the power of God has brought together in faith, agreement and concord those who are engaged in furthering the development of the human world. It is my hope that all mankind may become similarly united in the bond and agreement of love. Unity is the expression of the loving power of God and reflects the reality of divinity. It is resplendent in this day through the bestowals of light upon humanity. ”

“ To participate effectively in the struggle to bring material well-being to humanity, the religious spirit must find—in the Source of inspiration from which it flows—new spiritual concepts and principles relevant to an age that seeks to establish unity and justice in human affairs. ”

“ If the foregoing lectures had indeed exhausted the account of the accessible sources of religious insight, we should be hopeless of finding any religion that could satisfy at once the individual need for salvation, the social requirement that we should seek for salvation through union with our brethren, the rational demand for a coherent view of truth, and the aim of the will to conform itself to the laws of the master of life with whom we need to be united. ”

“ Is it indeed needful that the elements of our nature, spirit, soul, and body, should be rent asunder, and fed and nurtured in distinct and separate schools, until each one of us becomes almost conscious of two separate existences—the Sabbath-day life, within the church or meeting walls, and the week-day business life abroad in the world? Or shall the union be pronounced more beautiful and consonant with the laws of harmony, that carries the world into the sanctuary, and desecrates the house of God by the presence of sordid passions, crusted round the heart by daily exercise p. ”

“ I do not desire that social harmony and fraternal peace shall be purchased by the sacrifice of free personality and spiritual originality. What I require of you, my apostles, is spirit unity—and that you can experience in the joy of your united dedication to the wholehearted doing of the will of my Father in heaven. You do not have to see alike or feel alike or even think alike in order spiritually to be alike. Spiritual unity is derived from the consciousness that each of you is indwelt, and increasingly dominated, by the spirit gift of the heavenly Father. ”

“ For all the agents, as ministers of the divine, work together. The moral consciousness says to each, “If I am real, so also are these. Work with them; respect their rights; honor their freedom; join with them to build a higher and freer world than any of us now see.” In this organization of life, even here on earth, in this kindliness, this honorable conduct, this social unity, which constitutes our better life, something of the divine will is thus realized. But the problem of its complete realization is an endless one. ”

“ Opposed to this grand principle of Church unity, that finds its resting place in Heaven, its centre in Jesus, and its life in the indwelling Spirit, is the notion of an earthly external oneness, guarded by an array of articles and creeds, and canons, which seeks to manifest union in a uniformity maintained, rather than in a life enjoyed. ”

“ And a unity not of bodies alone, such as the State can boast — bodies held together by moral or even physical force and aiming at social order and temporal prosperity — but a unity of souls, and hence of bodies too, whose object is man's spiritual welfare, whose methods are to convince with truth and persuade by love, and whose high destiny it is to bring man into the everlasting possession of the all-good — of God Himself. ”

“ It is the dawn and beginning of the triumphing spirit of freedom which wills to draw all things back to one centre, one harmony, one unity, in which wild will and selfish passion and isolating pride, and all that springs from the dark fire-root are quenched, and instead the central principle of the spiritual world—Love—comes into play. ”

“ What reason has any man to suppose, that order established by a body of people, can keep them together acceptably to God, unless the bond of their union consists in the acknowledgment of the Holy Scriptures,—the attested revelation of the Spirit, as the rule of their faith and practice? ”