The Power of God in Creation

"Hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel my called! I am he! I am the first; I also am the last. Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath spanned out the heavens." — Isaiah 48.12, 13.

The boundless heavens, oh Lord, are made by Thee,
And Thou hast made the stars that through them gleam,
And Thou, the silver moon with placid beam;
They all proclaim Thy power and majesty.
And Thou hast made the earth and all its fountains,
The fountains, where the wild beast slakes its throat;
The myriads of birds, with vernal note,
Cheering the forests waving on the mountains.
And thou hast made the sea and all therein,
Its cavern'd solitudes and rocky shore,
Its heaving waves and everlasting roar,
Its fishes and its huge Leviathan.
Great God! The everlasting God art Thou;
Before Thee let all hearts with humble reverence bow.

— The Religious Offering (1835) Scripture Sonnets V.

The Highest Homage

The soul in the state of true peace or rest, is the kingdom of God, because it constantly renders him the highest homage. And it does so, because its state of peace or rest is the result, and may be said to be the completion, of every other state. It is not necessary for a soul, in such a state, to make costly sacrifices, to go to distant places, or to bow in temples, as if the true homage of the heart could be rendered only or chiefly by outward acts. Wherever it is, provided it is where God in his providence requires it to be, it is itself the highest worship and homage of God. The Infinite Mind delights in it, as a soul continually offering to himself the highest reverence and praise. The state of holy peace is more than that of penitence, because, although penitence implies a sorrow for sin, it does not necessarily imply a conquest over sin. It is more than good desire, because such desires are not acceptable in the sight of God without faith attending them. It is more than faith, because it is the end, of which faith is the means or instrument. It is more than gratitude, because it includes gratitude, as a whole includes a part. It is the result, the expression, the completion of the whole. It is man, harmonizing with God. It is God, dwelling and living in man.

He, therefore, who is in true peace of spirit, is a continual worshiper. He is himself his temple, and his heart is his altar. The fire is always burning; the incense always ascends.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 8, Chapter 12.

Humanity Demands a Personal God

Humanity demands a [personal] God who can thus be recognized and worshiped. The instinct of reverence and homage, which evidently pervades the human heart, so much so that it has found its place as an attribute of humanity in all lands and all ages, requires, and cannot be satisfied with anything short of a personal God. In the view of the great masses of men, to deny the personality of God, is, to all practical purposes and results, much the same, as we have already intimated as to deny the existence of God. So that we run no hazard in saying, that a personal God is one of the great religious necessities of humanity. Religion is the interior and domestic tie, which makes the united family of the finite and the Infinite. And without a Being, who is not only supreme in his attributes, but who is approachable, and can be addressed and confided in, on the basis furnished by a deific personality, the human race is necessarily left in the condition of a bewildered and sorrowing orphanage.

And we may add that the opposite doctrine that which denies God’s personality, seems to us to be full of danger in other respects. It is not only the abnegation of religion, but of practical morality. The doctrine of impersonality, admitting that it sometimes comes before us with learned and imposing pretensions, will be found, if allowed to go unquestioned, to be attended not only with the rupture of God and man, but of man and his fellow-man. It is a doctrine which not only strikes boldly at the religious intuitions of the great heart of humanity, but is an inlet, through its want of practical power, to hostility, fraud, cruelty, and all varieties of crime. No theory of practical morals has ever been constructed on the basis of the impersonality of God, which is available against the mighty evils that continually imperil man’s social condition. The audacity of wrong and crime is not frightened by an abstraction. Nor is it much afraid of a positive principle of life, which has no self-regulated thought and volition. If it were possible for impersonality to leave us a God at all, which it is not, it would be a God with no eyes to see, and no ears to hear, and no hands to handle, and no head to think, and no heart to feel, and no will to execute; — a God, if any one should object to the material form of the expressions, with nothing which our spiritual eyes could see, or our spiritual ears could hear, or our hearts’ necessities could appeal to; — a God, in any light in which it is possible to consider him, without a voice to cheer us in our efforts to do right, and without a hand to help us against the dangers which would certainly assail and overwhelm us.

— edited from Absolute Religion (1873) Chapter 2.