No Manifestantion of God Can Exclude the Principle of Faith.

There may, undoubtedly, in the proper sense of the terms, be what may be called a manifestation of God; that is to say, a manifestation, which has relation to God; a manifestation, which indicates the fact of his existence and some of the attributes of his character. But God himself, including the mode of his existence, as well as the fact of his existence, God, in the fullness and extent of his being, never can be manifested. This, we think, however repugnant it may be to our first thoughts, is self-evident.

Restoration to the Divine Image

"We are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." — 2 Cor. 3.18.

Upon the morning flower the dew's small drop,
So small as scarcely to arrest the eye,
Receives the rays from all of heaven's wide cope,
And images the bright and boundless sky.
And thus the heart, when 'tis renewed by grace,
Recalled from error, purified, erect,
Receives the image of Jehovah's face,
And though a drop, the Godhead doth reflect.
It hath new light, new truth, new purity,
A rectitude unknown in former time,
A love, that in its arms of charity
Encircles every land and every clime;
Submission, and in God a humble trust,
And quickened life to all that's pure and kind and just.

— The Religious Offering (1835) VIII.

The Laws of the Affections

[Consider the laws of the affections.] Everything has its nature. Of course, everything has its laws, not excepting the passion or affection of love.

The original, or first center of love, is God. From this great and divine centre, it flows out and embodies itself in other centers. Love, as it exists in God, is like the ocean. The ocean is the great center of waters.  It always retains its central position; but, at the same time, it diffuses itself everywhere; — forming other subordinate centers, in plains, and on mountain tops, in fountains and in lakes, from which issue a multitude of streams and rivulets, giving life and beauty. In like manner, the great ocean of love in the Godhead empties itself into subordinate centers, which are in harmony with itself, and which, in imitation, as it were, of the great center, and being, in fact, but continuations of the ebbings and flowings of the great central ocean, send out their waters of life to all within their sphere of movement.

The central love, then, in the sphere of human life, is in the family. From the family, where it is kept full from the great center in the Godhead, it flows out to the neighborhood, the state, and the world.  If it is full and beneficent at the source, it will be full and beneficent in its issues; and not otherwise. Truth, like beauty, always harmonizes with itself. Truth, in the centre of the affections will always secure a right or true movement. He, who is not true to his father and mother, his wife and children, his brother and sister, being false at the center, is not, and cannot be, true to his neighborhood, his nation, and mankind. How is it possible  for him to be true in his affections, when the truth of affection is not in him? And besides, if it were possible that his love, or rather the pretense of love, could be given, it would be hardly possible that it could b received. Both the state and humanity would instinctively reject an offering which is false at the core.

The Godhead is the Antetype of the Family

The Godhead itself, mysterious and unsearchable as it is, is the fore-shadowing, the antetype of the family. Man is said to be created in the divine image;  but the combined man, which constitutes the family, far more than the solitary man or woman, is the true image of God. And the reason is, "God is love.” And if he is so, then there must have been an eternal Beloved. Otherwise, he would have been the most miserable of beings. Absolute solitude is inconsistent with happiness. What could be more miserable than a being, the very essence of whose nature is love, without an object to meet and to satisfy its unalienable and mighty tendencies? And that object, to meet the ends for which it exists, must be as infinite as the love of which it is the subject.  And if it must be infinite, because nothing short of infinite would be an appropriate object of the divine affections, it must also have been eternal, because otherwise the divine affection, through countless ages, would have had no object at all. And hence, there is, and must be, innate in the Godhead, the infinitely beloved, the Chosen and Anointed of the Father, the Eternal Word, the Immanuel. But this duality of existence, which is constituted into unity by the unchangeable bond of the affections, cannot be perfectly happy except in some object possessing a like infinity of character, which may be regarded, speaking after the manner of men, as "a procession or emanation" from the two. And this re-production of itself, infinite in its nature, perfect in its love and by "an everlasting generation," constitutes and completes the adorable family of the Trinity.

Man, created in the divine image, is male and female; and these two are one. And their united existence, deriving a new power from their union, multiplies and images itself in a third, which is also a part of itself. It is man, therefore, in his threefold nature, — the father, the mother, and the child,— the beautiful trinity of the family, and yet so constituted that in man's unfallen state it would never have suggested the idea of a weakened or discordant unity, — which may be regarded as the earthly representation, the visible, though dim,  shadowing  forth of the divine personalities existing in the unity of the Godhead. The original type is in the infinite; but it is reproduced and reflected with greater or less degrees of distinctness in all orders of moral beings. 

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 7, Chapter 6.

End the War with Providence

Man is at war with Providence (there are exceptions, it is true, but not enough to reverse, or to modify essentially the assertion). "All seek their own," says the apostle, "not the things which are Jesus Christ.”

In this state of things it is obviously impossible that there should be peace or happiness. The divine harmony is broken. Man, in being by his selfishness antagonistical to God and God's arrangements, is necessarily antagonistical to his neighbor. Place is at war with place, and feeling with feeling. Judgment is arrayed against judgment, because false and conflicting judgments necessarily grow out of the soil of perverted affections. On every side are the outcries of passion, the competitions of interest, and the crush of broken hearts.

Shall it always be so? The remedy, and the only remedy, is an adherence to the law of Providence. Renounce man's wisdom, and seek that of God. Subject the human to the divine. Harmonize the imperfect thoughts and purposes of the creature with the wisdom of the Eternal Will. Let the clamors of nature cease, that the still small voice of the Godhead may speak in the soul. Go where God may lead thee.

When this shall be the general disposition, when all shall cease to seek their own, and shall begin to seek the things which are Christ's, when man's life shall be again engrafted on the Universal Life, then will the Law of Providence universally take effect, and God will reign among men.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 6, Chapter 9.

Binding Ourselves to the Will of God Binds Us to the Whole of God

Man's perceptive powers are limited. They do not correspond, in extent, with those of God; and consequently we can unite with God, in the matter of knowledge, only in a limited degree. The union with [God], in this respect, may be  perfect  as far as it goes; but it is restricted in extent. And it will be found to be the same in relation to love. We may harmonize perfectly with the divine love, in all cases where objects of love are presented to us. But the sphere of our knowledge, through which objects are presented to us, being limited, the sphere of our love also is limited. Practically, our love cannot, in its extent, be carried beyond the limit of known objects of love.

But, in the acts of the will, the Godhead, if we may be allowed the expression, so simplifies itself, that the harmony between the created and the uncreated, the human and the divine, may be perfect in extent as well as degree. God's will (we mean here, by the term, the act of his will in any given case) is a unity, combining together, as it were, and representing the whole of his knowledge, the whole of his love, the whole of his nature. As all objects may be, and are, present to it in a single glance, and compressed as it were into the eternal NOW, a single act of the will, embracing and adjusting all previous knowledge and all previous feeling, decides upon all, enacts all, establishes all. It is this act of the will, — an act extending to and consolidating everything else,— with which we are required to be united. Based upon infinite variety, in itself it is but one thing; and we are to unite with it as one. But as it  is the unity of the Godhead, embracing the infinite variety of the Godhead, we cannot unite with God in the simplicity and unity of the will, without being virtually united with him in the infinite multiplicity of his knowledge and affection.

If these views are correct, which, in binding us to the will of God, bind us to the whole of God, we not only see how much is involved in an union with the divine will, but how fearfully hazardous it is to indulge in the slightest deviation from that will when it is once ascertained. No direction is more important than that which requires us to labor and pray for harmony with God in this respect. The other unions which have been mentioned, important and indispensable as they are, may be regarded as preparatory to this. The union of the human and divine wills is the consummation of those which have gone before. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Saviour so frequently refers to this form of union. " My meat," he says, "is to do the will of him that sent me." [John 4:34; 6:38.] And again he says, "I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me." 'He that doeth the will of God," says the apostle John, "abideth forever." [First Epis. of John 2:17.]

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