The life of those who dwell in the secret place of the Most High may be called a Hidden Life, because the animating principle, the vital or operative element, is not so much in itself as in another. It is a life grafted into another life. It is the life of the soul, incorporated into the life of Christ; and in such a way, that, while it has a distinct vitality, it has so very much in the sense, in which the branch of a tree may be said to have a distinct vitality from the root.

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Both Reason and Scripture Testify: God is Love

The religion of enlightened reason and the religion of the Bible are one; thorough and candid inquiries, enlightened by the spirit of humility and faith, will not fail to harmonize them. And hence we open the Bible, and find that wonderful expression, repeated and emphasized in its essential meaning in a variety of forms, “God is LOVE.” This great truth, upon which hinges the destiny of the universe, seems to have developed itself especially in the bosom of the apostle John. Without going through long processes of reasoning and possibly without any training in such processes, he nevertheless had the grand intuitions of the heart, and uttered affirmations, which God in the soul had taught him. Plato, the first of Grecian philosophers, could affirm that God “geometrizes,” and he uttered a truth, corresponding in depth and comprehension to this wonderful saying of the humble and loving disciple.

— edited from Absolute Religion (1873), Chapter 4.


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