The Supremacy of Love.

Take to thyself celestial wings;
Go, where thou pleasest, mighty Love;
In thee are life's eternal springs;
Thou art the true, the heavenly Dove.

If there are hidden depths below.
If heights and pinnacles in heaven;
The heavenly heights 'tis thine to know,
To Thee the lowest depths are given.

If lines could bound Thee, life would die;
If bars could hold Thee, heaven would cease;
For heaven doth live with Love's supply;
And life goes out with Love's release.

Go, where Thou pleasest, heavenly Dove!
And angels, from their thrones of light,
In depths below and heights above.
Shall guard, but never bound thy flight.

Vanity of Life

"As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more." — Ps. 103. 15, 16.

And they are gone, the friends that once I knew;
I look in vain to find them; low and still
They coldly lie, shut out from human view,
And from the joys which erst their breasts could fill.
No more for them the rosy morn shall gleam,
Nor wild bird charm their ear at day's sweet close;
No more shall friendship soothe life's fevered dream,
And love's sweet voice allure them to repose.
But, oh, 'tis vain to murmur or bewail,
Dwells ought on earth, that long on earth shall be?
The columns of the world itself shall fail,
Its gorgeousness shall fade, its pomp shall flee.
'Tis a small thing to die, if we shall rise
In renovated bliss, unchanging in the skies.

— The Religious Offering (1835) Scripture Sonnets XXIII.

Faith is the Bond of Union with God

It is faith, more than any thing else, which constitutes the true bond of union between God and man.

If God in his supremacy is first in time and first in power, if the true and only source of existence of power to all other beings resides in himself as necessarily involved in his own infinite nature; in other words, if God is God, then all other beings and all other things, sin only excepted, are from him and by him. It becomes, then, a great problem, in what way this supremacy, without which God cannot be God, shall exist and operate in God’s moral creatures, giving them life and power, and sustaining the life and power which it gives, and yet without a violation of their moral responsibility. In other words, the question or problem is, in what way shall men, consistently with their moral identity and responsibility, enter, (as all Christians who experience the highest results of religion do enter,) into the state of entire moral union or oneness with God.

The First Day of the New Life

"Ah, how long shall I delight
In the memory of that day,"
When the shades of mental night
Sudden passed away!

Long around my darkened view
Had those lingering shadows twined;
Till the Gospel, breaking through,
Chased them from my mind.

There  was light in every thing,
Every thing was bathed in bliss;
Trees did wave, and birds did sing,
Full of happiness.

Beauty in the woods shone forth,
Beauty did the flowers display;
And my glorious Maker's worth
Beamed with matchless ray.

"Ah, how long shall I delight
In  the memory of that day,"
When  the shades of mental night
Sudden passed away.

— Religious Maxims (1846).

God Must Dwell in the Soul Before God Can be Manifest in the Life

Nothing exists, which does not have its principle of existence. And accordingly, that can never be manifested outwardly, which does not exist inwardly in its principle of existence. And hence, it is not unreasonable to say, that God must dwell in the soul, before God can be manifested in the life. And hence it is said of the Christian, who keeps the divine commandments, "my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." And again it is said, "Ye are the temples of the living God." John 14:23, 2d Cor. 6:16.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CLXXXII.

Seperating From the Temporal

The more we are disunited from the unnecessary and tangling alliances of this life, the more fully and freely will our minds be directed to the life which is to come. The more we are separated from that which is temporal, the more closely shall we be allied to that which is eternal; the more we are disunited from the creatures, the more we shall be united to the Creator.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CXXXVI.

Redemption

The great result, therefore, of the plan of redemption, when fully carried out in relation to man, is to restore him to such a position of harmony with God, that he may be said ever afterwards to live in and from God. Nothing short of this is redemption; — nothing short of this is worthy to be thought of and to be regarded as redemption.

And this great result, — a result on which depends union or separation, life or death, happiness or woe, — is made to turn upon his own free choice. It is not left to him, however, to choose a mixed or middle course. And the reason is that there is no such course. "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." There can be but one true life, and that is life from God. Our heavenly Father, dwelling in man as the Divine Teacher or Comforter, must be the whole, the true life and the whole life in us or he can be nothing. And this is a matter, which, as a moral agent, man is called upon to decide for himself; — namely, whether God, without dividing his influence with any other master or teacher, shall be his inward life, and thus be, in all coming time, the inspiration and source of all good. This choice is given him in Christ. If he accepts God, he lives. If he rejects him, he dies.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 7, Chapter 2.

The Incarnation of Life and Love

The doctrine that Love is identical with Life, brings the subject of the Essential Life within the sphere of human cognitions. It is true that Love, considered as Life, operates in all space and all time; but it is also true that it does this, without being identical with either. So that it can be said, in expressions which imperfectly convey the idea, that it is the life of space without being space, the life of time without being time; in other words, a principle and not an expansion, an elemental activity, and not an outward, material measurement.

And hence arises both the fact and the possibility of its incarnation. The Essential Life, whether called Life or Love, is individual as well as universal; dwelling in God, and dwelling more or less, in all the creatures of God who are born into his image. And since the day when Christ walked in the valley of Nazareth, and wept in the garden of Gethsemane, it can be said that the life of God dwells in the soul of man, and the problem of the Infinite, so far as its most essential element is concerned, is brought within the field of human consciousness, and is made the subject of human affirmation.

The holy man, whoever and wherever he may be, walks in life; — the same divine and essential life which dwells in the bosom of the Infinite. The life of the follower of Christ is the same in its essence with the life of Christ. There is a philosophical and substantial foundation for that wonderful but most true assertion of the apostle Paul, “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” The essential life of Christ was LOVE;—the cross of Calvary was only its necessary resultant, and its divine symbol. The cross is Love: and in that view of the interior and subjective nature of the cross, it stands as a bright and perpetual reality in the heart of every Christian.

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

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.

Love is Without Ending

The circumstances and intuitions which necessitate the affirmation, that Love is without beginning, involve also the additional affirmation, that Love is without ending, in other words, it is eternal. And as it has no beginning, and no ending, and thus covers all time; so, looking at it in another aspect, and by means of other processes of thought, such as will easily suggest themselves, we are under the necessity of affirming further that the principle under consideration is a principle without limitation; a principle surmounting the boundaries which might be supposed to stop its progress, and reaching to every place and every object within the realms of actual or possible existence. And this great principle, without beginning and without end, reaching to all objects and living in all events, universal by the same necessities which compel the fact of its eternity, is thus made to stand forth with the same attributes and the same features as the Essential Life. So that we are justified in saying that Life is Love, and Love is Life. And God, who is the embodiment of life, is the embodiment of love; and is what He is, whether He is called God or Life, because He is Love.

— edited from Absolute Religion (1873) Chapter 4.

Love Must be the Constitutive Activity of the Universe

Love, in distinction from the counterfeits of love; we mean that divine love, which “casts out fear,” and which pursues the good of its object for the sake of the good and not for the sake of reward; such love has all the marks or characteristics which have already been ascribed to the Essential Life. It was said of Essential Life that it has no beginning. The same can be said of Love. Looking at love psychologically, and in one of its most distinguishing aspects, it may be described as simply benevolent desire, or the desire of good. And like every other desire, it involves in its very nature and as a part of its nature, a tendency to activity and to practical results. It is essentially a motive power. Now take the universe as the theater of inquiry, and say whether Love, considered as a motive power, has or can have, admits, or can admit, of any active and causative power antecedent to itself. Looking at the question psychologically, it seems to us that only three suppositions are possible in the case; first, indifference, which is not life, but the negation of life; second, the desire of evil, which, if it be admitted as the primal activity, would annihilate God, and enthrone Satan; and third, the desire of good, which is only another name for Love.

Now apply this analysis to God. If God exists at all, he exists as Essential Life. As essential life, He is essential activity; and that, too, without a beginning of such activity. Forever, and as a part of his nature, He must have had in himself a motivity, a principle of action. That principle of activity, could not have been indifference; for that would be a contradiction in terms. It could not be the desire of evil, for that would constitute a satanic Infinite. On the only remaining supposition, it must have been the desire of good or love. Love therefore, is, and, from the nature of the case, must be, the constitutive activity of the universe. And being central in the infinite nature, we may say of it as we say of God, it is without beginning; and, therefore it is, and must be to that extent, the same with the Essential Life of things.

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

God is Life: God is Love.

There is something within the limits of human experience, which allies us to the great Source from which we come, and which may be appealed to in [our] inquiries. The Essential Life, in recognizing itself in its causative and sustaining form as existing in humanity, and in being thus brought in some degree within the sphere of human comprehension, and made the subject of human analysis, reveals itself as Love. So that in view of the evidences that attend it, we may venture to lay down the proposition, that Love and Life are essentially the same: a proposition so wide in its sweep and so fruitful in its consequences that, while its evidences compel the acquiescence and homage of the intellect, its tendencies and results, when rightly understood, fill the heart with joy.

God is Life: God is Love.

In being inseparable from all existences, in being the central causative principle of all existences, and in harmonizing with all existences, there is no possible motive or reason why the Divine Life should not be interested, (the relative position and responsibilities of all being taken into account,) in seeking the good, the happiness, and the perfection of all. Its motive of action cannot turn back upon itself and seek a causation prior to that which is already first, because, being infinite itself, it cannot ascend a higher height, or sound a deeper depth, than it has in its own nature. And thus standing central, and at the same time without limitation, and consequently having no power outside of itself to excite its fears, or to limit its responsibilities, what strength of thought or ingenuity of conception can suggest a motive in the Infinite Mind, which is adverse to the universal good. In other words, the Life of God, in its substance and essentiality, is, and must be, a Life of Love.

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

What is Life?

The question naturally arises in the inquiring mind what Life is? In answering this question, it is admitted that we may not be able, in consequence of its ultimate and primary position, to say what life is, in itself considered: but it will aid much in giving clearness to our conceptions, if we proceed to give concisely but distinctly some of its marks or characteristics.

1.—One of the marks or characteristics of Life, in its primary or ultimate sense, in distinction from anything of a subordinate or secondary nature which may sometimes bear that name, is, that it is without beginning. If the Life, meaning by the term what may be conveniently designated as the true or essential Life, could not be said to exist without a beginning, then it would be true, that there was a time, (namely, the time antecedent to its beginning,) when it had no existence: a doctrine, which would leave the universe for unnumbered ages without any life-giving principle. It is hardly necessary to say that this is a view which is inadmissible. And besides, if there was a time when the Essential Life did not exist, and afterwards a time when it began to exist, then, inasmuch as not having existed at first it could not have created itself, it must have been brought into being by another Life antecedent to it in existence. And if there was another principle of Life antecedent to it in existence, which was without beginning and had also by means of its higher and broader nature the power of developing existence in other forms, then that antecedent life was, and is, the Essential Life. Therefore it is reasonable to say that one of the marks or characteristics of Life, in the true and higher sense of that term, is, that it is without beginning.

The Lord's Spiritual Garden

Providence, considered as the divine arrangement of things in relation to men, is the Lord's spiritual garden. It is to the spiritual growth what the earth is to the germination and growth of material products. If it be true, that the earth is the appointed instrumentality, through which and by which the seeds of things grow up, it is not the less true, though it may be less obvious, that the arrangements of Providence, spread out in the wide and variegated surface of things and events, constitute, in like manner, the instrumentality, the receptive and productive medium, in which the seed of the spiritual life is to be planted, to germinate and perfect itself.

The analogy is not limited to the productive medium. It extends to that which is produced, and also to the manner of production. The seed, which is planted in the earth, is a dead seed. So man's soul, when it is first cast into the soil of God's providence, is a dead seed. They are both alike dead, the material seed and the seed of immortality.

But neither the ground of nature nor that of providence, into which they are first received, would of itself alone reproduce them to a new life. To the natural seed, when planted in the earth, there must be applied the rain and the sunshine before it can be decomposed, incorporated with new elements, and vivified with new life and beauty. The earth, operating in connection with these exterior helps, takes off and removes the outer coats of the seed, until it reaches the central principle, which had been encrusted and shut out from all the benign influences of the sun and atmosphere, and with its fostering care rears it up from its embryo of existence to its developed and beautiful perfection. In like manner, when the seed of man's immortal spirit is planted in the midst of God's providences, it is not till the influences of the Holy Spirit are applied, that it is decomposed, if we may so express it, by a separation of the good and evil, and the eternal element, deprived of life by reason of sin, is made alive in the spiritual regeneration.

The analogy in the two cases is a very close one. The encircling system of providential arrangements, operating in connection with the aiding energy of God's Spirit, removes coat after coat of that selfishness which had enveloped and paralyzed every faculty; and reaching at last the central element of the soul, the principle of love, which had suffered this dreadful perversion, it restores it to that life, light, and beauty, from which it had wickedly fallen.

— A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 6, Chapter 6.

One Great Consideration

Amid all the trials of life, amid the rebukes, calumnies, and persecutions of evil men, in seasons when Satan seems to triumph, there is one great consideration which ought to tranquilize and elevate the Christian mind; and that is, that God, who sees the end from the beginning, will glorify himself, and will make even the wrath of his enemies to praise him.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CVIII.

God's Life in Humanity

From God all things come. To God, as the universal originator and governor, all things are in subjection. In ascertaining what God is, we necessarily ascertain the position and responsibilities of those beings that come from God, and are dependent on him. The life of his moral creatures, so far as it is a right and true life, is a reproduction, in a finite form, of the elements of his own life. "God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him." (Genesis 1:27.) The Savior, in speaking of himself, in his incarnate state, says, "I am in the Father, and the Father in me." (John 13:11.) God, in carrying out and perfecting the great idea of a moral creation, subjects the infinity of his being to the limitations of humanity, and reproduces himself in the human soul. So that man's life may truly be described, as God's life in humanity.

Nor, in the strict sense of the terms, can any­ thing but the DIVINE LIFE, or the life of God in the soul, be called life. Those who have gone astray from God, just so far as they have lost the divine life, and have sunk into the natural life, are dead. Hence, the expressions of the apostle: — "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins." (Ephesians 2:1.) The eternal vitality, the breath from the Infinite, the life of God in the soul, ceases to be in them. And being dead, by the absence of God as an indwelling principle, they must be recreated, or born again, by his restoration. It is not enough, that provision has been made, in the death of Christ, for man's forgiveness. Forgiveness, it is true, has its appropriate work. It cancels the iniquity of the past; but this is not all that is necessary. It is not without reason, that the learned Schlegel commences his profound work on the philosophy of history by saying, that "the most important subject, and the first problem of philosophy, is the restoration in man of the lost image of God." The immortal nature must be made anew, must be re-constituted, if we may so express it, on the principle of life linked with life, of the created sustained in the uncreated, in the bonds of divine union.

— A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 1, Chapter 1.

God is the Only True Fountain of Life

But if God is the only true Fountain, those who seek any other fountains will find them "broken cisterns, that can hold no water." When moral beings, in the exercise of their moral option, choose to seek their support and life from any source separate from God himself, they necessarily die. It cannot be otherwise. Created beings, as we have already seen, are necessarily dependent on their Creator. They have no power of making that which is not already made; — no power of absolute origination. It is true they have the power of choice, but they must choose among the things that are. They must either choose God, or that which is not God. If they choose, as their source of life and of supply, that which is not God, they look for help to that which has no help in itself, for life to that which has no life in itself, much less help and life for another. They ask "for bread, and they find a stone;" they ask "for a fish, and they find a serpent." They are compelled to say, in the language of the prodigal son, my father's hired servants "have bread enough and to spare, but I perish with hunger."

Their freedom, invaluable as it is, does not give them the power of doing or of enduring impossibilities, of drinking without water, of eating without food, of receiving while they turn aside and reject the hand of the great Giver.

— A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 1, Chapter 5.

God's Life in Humanity

From God all things come. To God, as the universal originator and governor, all things are in subjection. In ascertaining what God is, we necessarily ascertain the position and responsibilities of those beings that come from God, and are dependent on him. The life of his moral creatures, so far as it is a right and true life, is a reproduction, in a finite form, of the elements of his own life. "God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him." Gen. 1:27. The Saviour, in speaking of himself, in his incarnate state, says, "I am in the Father, and the Father in me." John 13:11. God, in carrying out and perfecting the great idea of a moral creation, subjects the infinity of his being to the limitations of humanity, and reproduces himself in the human soul. So that man's life may truly be described, as God's life in humanity.

Nor, in the strict sense of the terms, can any­ thing but the DIVINE LIFE, or the life of God in the soul, be called life. Those who have gone astray from God, just so far as they have lost the divine life, and have sunk into the natural life, are dead. Hence, the expressions of the apostle: — "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins." Ephes. 2:1. The eternal vitality, the breath from the Infinite, the life of God in the soul, ceases to be in them. And being dead, by the absence of God as an indwelling principle, they must be recreated, or born again, by his restoration. It is not enough, that provision has been made, in the death of Christ, for man's forgiveness. Forgiveness, it is true, has its appropriate work. It cancels the iniquity of the past; but this is not all that is necessary. It is not without reason, that the learned Schlegel commences his profound work on the philosophy of history by saying, that "the most important subject, and the first problem of philosophy, is the restoration in man of the lost image of God." The immortal nature must be made anew, must be re-constituted, if we may so express it, on the principle of life linked with life, of the created sustained in the uncreated, in the bonds of divine union.

— A Treatise on Divine Union Part 1, Chapter 1.

Reflections on the New Year

I.
HELD in their path of glory by the hand,
That rear'd all nature's bright and wondrous frame,
That made the sky, the ocean, and the land,
And all that dwell therein, whate'er their name;
Held by that wondrous hand of might and pow'r,
The distant stars their steady course have run,
The moon hath watch'd in her aerial tower,
Along his annual round hath march'd the sun,
Until his task once more, his Zodiac race, is done.

II.
Yes! Time's unwearied course hath borne us on;
Successively the rapid seasons pass'd;
Another twelve month's space is come and gone,
And a  New  Year upon the world is cast.
Time's noiseless wheel rolls on, and; oh how fast!
'Tis like the tide that rushes to the sea;
Uncounted things are on it — at the last,
Those of the earth shall perish, cease to be,
But souls, a spark of heaven, go to eternity.

III.
The earth, still subject to its ancient curse,
Hath felt its storms, and shook with thunder's dread,
And Death, to make its bosom populous,
Hath smitten down full many a weary head.
The young, the man of scatter'd locks and gray,
All ages to the grave's cold rest have gone,
The dwelling-place of silence and decay.
There dwells the worm; the serpent feeds upon
The soulless mass deformed, and twines the skeleton bone.

IV.
The living too, whose bosoms erst did beat
With promise high and unabated joy,
How many now in gloomy sorrow sit,
And constant woes their life and hopes annoy!
How many in the course of one short year,
Who love received, and love as warmly gave,
Now shed o'er sunder'd ties the burning tear!
Alas! earth's ties are often like the wave,
That brightly clasps the shore — then breaks, and seeks its
grave.

V.
See here a mother mourning o' er her son!
How desolate her soul! And seated there,
With countenance of deeper grief, is one,
New rob'd in widow's weeds. Into thin air
And blackness terrible hath sunk their light.
Oh! Happy they, when joys terrestrial fade,
Who rest on God's right arm and changeless might.
There's nothing firm of all things that are made,
But life shall wane to death, and substance change to shade.

VI.
Yes, there's a spirit of change in all things round,
Which shows itself, as year on year goes by;
Which at the last shall sink the solid ground,
Nor spare the brighter fabric of the sky;
Both heaven and earth shall be one cemetery.
Down from their home of light the stars shall fall,
The blaze, that lights the solar pathway, die,
While clouds and flame shall wrap this earthly ball,
Its  wither'd pomp depart, and fade its glory all.

VII.
Boast not, because these things have never been,
For we shall see them, though we see not now,
When rolls through heaven the final trumpet's din,
And lightnings bind the "seventh angel's brow."
Then months and New Years shall be o' er.
Ah, how That final. trump shall rock the land and sea!
Then shall the proud, majestic mountains bow,
The islands and the continents shall flee,
The solid earth go down, and time no more shall be.

VIII.
The years of earth shall pass; but heavenly years
Shall start upon their endless destiny.
The joys of earth shall perish; but no tears
Shall dim the brightness of the joys on high.
The scenes and things below shall fade away;
The brighter scenes of heaven shall be the same,
Without a blighting touch, without decay;
And all her hosts, in one sublime acclaim,
Shall pour their transports high, and shout the Saviour's name.

— The Religious Offering (1835).