The Necessity of the Dispensation of the Spirit

The object, therefore, of Christ's coming into the world, was to place men essentially in the condition in which they were before the Fall. Not only to secure their forgiveness, but to make them holy; not only to make them holy, but to make them so, in the only way in which Adam or any other being was ever made holy, viz. by means of the living and constant operation of God in the soul.

Hence the necessity of the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. Hence the various directions, which are given in the Scriptures not to grieve, and not to quench the Holy Spirit. Hence the declaration, that Christians are the temple of the Holy Ghost. And accordingly it is a great truth, though but imperfectly understood and estimated, that he, who, moves and acts in religious things without the attendant operation and grace of the Holy Ghost, cannot be spiritually wise, and is not in the way to be spiritually benefited.

— edited from The Interior or Hidden Life (2nd Edition, 1844) Part 3, Chapter 1.

Fall, Redemption, and the Physical Creation

When man, as the head of creation, fell into sin, it may be said, with a great degree of truth, that the physical creation fell with him. There are connections and sympathies between man and the outward or physical world, which are not well understood, and are not likely to be well understood, in the present state of things. Certain it is, however, that in a world destined to be the home of holy and happy beings, the outward will correspond to the inward, the objective to the subjective, the home to the inhabitant. It is not in the nature of God, who delights in the beautiful as well as in the good, to surround a holy being with barrenness and deformity, and to compel him to take up his abode among thorns and thistles. The world was and must have been beautiful as the happy souls that dwell in it. Originally the earth was everywhere clothed with its green and pure carpet;  fruits suitable to the support of its holy inhabitants, hung from the branches of richly laden trees, and flowers sprang up at their feet. "Out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight,  and that is good for food."