Acting Without God

The decisions of the conscience are  always based upon perceptions and acts of the judgment; consequently he who acts from mere desire, without any intervention and helps of the judgment, necessarily acts without the approbation of conscience; and may be said, therefore, in the moral sense of the terms, to act without God.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CXXVI.

Prayer and Sin

No person can pray earnestly, that the impenitent may be freed from their sins, while he himself knowingly cherishes sin.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CXXV.

A Fixed Determination to Belong to God

We often speak of desiring or wishing to be the Lord's; but there is not much ground for supposing that there is any considerable degree of sincerity or strength in such desires, if they stop short of a fixed determination or resolve to be his.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CXXIV.

The New Birth

BE BORN AGAIN,
With birth-right from above;
Thy selfish nature slain;
Be born of LOVE.

'Tis life from heaven,
Descending in thy soul;—
'Tis Love's new nature given,
Which makes thee whole.

Oh, do not rest,
Till that bright hour shall come,
Which smites thy selfishness
With final doom.

And, in its place,
Brings forth the life, new-born
Of truth, and love, and peace,
Bright as the morn.

— Christ in the Soul (1872) XXX.

Let God Answer

When wicked men thy patience try,
With haughty words and threats and blows,
Let God, and not thyself, reply;
Thy wants the Father knows.

'Tis He, with kindly presence near,
Thy words and feelings shall inspire;
Thy foes shall tremble when they hear
Lips touch'd by heaven's own fire.

The strength of human argument
And human wit, shall fail to reach
The mighty power, the great intent,
Of God's interior speech.

LEAVE ALL WITH GOD and, in the hour
Of greatest feebleness and need,
Behold the triumph of His power;
TO GOD ALONE TAKE HEED.

— Christ in the Soul (1872) XXIX.

Turning From God

What is it to turn from God? 

In the earlier stages of experience, we are apt (and perhaps it is difficult to do otherwise) to assign to God a form and locality. The term from, in its original meaning, involves the idea of place; and regarding God as having form and locality, we easily adjust the expression to our conceptions, and speak with a degree of propriety, relatively to our view of things, of turning our thoughts and feelings from God. But when, in a more advanced state of experience, the idea of a local God expands itself into the idea of God  “un-local" and infinite, not only associating himself with all things as an attendant, but existing in all things as a living spirit; — what is meant by turning from God then?

In the experience of a truly sanctified mind, to turn from God, in one important sense at least, is to be out of harmony with his providences. For God, in being expanded, as it were, from the local and the finite to the un-local and infinite, can be found, as a God developing himself within the sphere of human knowledge, only in those things, acts and events, which constitute providences. To be out of harmony with these things, acts, and events, which God in his providence has seen fit to array around us, — that is to say, not to meet them in a humble, believing, and thankful spirit, — is to turn from God. And, on the other hand, to see in them the developments of God's presence, and of the divine will, and to accept that will with all the appropriate dispositions, is to turn in the opposite direction, and to be in union with him.

The man who is thus united with God in his providences, not only sees God in everything else, but he has God in himself. His soul is the "temple of the Holy Ghost." The God inward, or perhaps we should say the purified soul in the likeness of God, corresponds to the God outward. God manifests himself in his providences, sometimes in sending joy and sometimes in sending sorrow — and the life of Jesus in the heart, the God in miniature, if we may so express it, corresponds, with entire facility and perfection of movement, to the God that is manifested in the events and things around. And thus it is easy to understand, looking at the subject in these various points of view, and especially when we consider that God in his providences is the exact counterpart of God reestablished in the sanctified human heart, how man may be said, in the language of Scripture, "to walk" with his Maker, and that harmony with Providence is union with the Divinity.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 6, Chapter 8.

God is Present in All Events

Every event which takes place in God's providential government may be said to be God to us; — that is to say, not merely to remind us of God as coldly beholding the event at a  distance, but to bring God with it, and to manifest him in a very especial manner. I am aware that it is a common saying, and one which is generally assented to, that God is present in all events. The man of the world will assert this; — the disbelievers in the Bible will sometimes assert it. But it is hardly necessary to say, that they have not the faith which enables them to realize that which they assert. The mere declaration of his presence is a very different thing from a practical conviction, a realizing sense, of his presence. If God, in the events of his providence, afflicts me with sickness, or if he permits my neighbor to defame me, God, it is true, is not the sickness, and is not the defamation; but he is in the sickness and in the defamation, in such a sense that we are to think of him and receive him as a present God, and present probably for the specific purpose of trying our faith and patience. The event, painful as it is, and criminal as it is under some circumstances, is nevertheless a manifestation of God; and not of a God absent, but of a God present. And happy is the man that can receive this.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 6, Chapter 8.