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.

The Contention and Disorder of the World

There cannot be discordance between man's moral nature and God's providence, without great contention and disorder in the world. And in point of fact, the world is in the greatest confusion and strife, because the ordainment of God is not corresponded to by the wishes of the creature. With scarcely an exception, there is something left of that life of nature which produces divergence and conflict. Every one has his choice. To be a merchant, a prince, a commander of armies, a man of pleasure, a man of science, a mechanic, a farmer, a soldier, a teacher of youth, such are some of the preferences they evince. The object at which they aim is not always, and perhaps not generally, wrong. The fault consists in unwillingness to harmonize with the decisions of a higher power. All wish to decide for themselves; all estimate the good or the evil on the small scale of their own personality and interests; all have their choice. Who among them, in the mournful degeneracy of our fallen race, wishes to follow, or thinks beforehand of following, the choice of Providence?

The world is a map of situations, inscribed with lines of demarcation, diversified everywhere with discriminative colors, which indicate opportunity, adaptation, want, fulfillment, duty. In one place the poor are to be aided; in another place the ignorant are to be instructed; in another the sick are to be consoled and watched over. In one place is the demarcation of endurance; in another is the arena of action; in another is the platform of authority and eloquence. But who, in beholding any one of these various demarcations and the duties it suggests, goes to God and asks: — Am I the man whom eternal wisdom has selected for this mission? Resigning my own will, I lay myself upon the altar of sacrifice, not to be what I might choose to be, but to be what God may choose to have me to be. Send me, if thou wilt; but let me not go, or have a thought of going, without thine own authority.

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

On Right Being

To think, to feel, to act, to BE,
This is life's mighty mystery;
But BEING is the secret spring,
From which the rest their birth-right bring.

The central source, hid deep within,
With Being all our acts begin;
And thought, and sentiment as well,
Within the folds of Being dwell.

'Tis thus the life-power of the soul,
And hath o'er all its acts control;
And as there's truth or falsehood there,
There's truth or falsehood everywhere.

So let the BEING, made divine,
With central truth and glory shine;
And then the stamp and seal of heaven
To feeling, thought, and act are given.

 

— Christ in the Soul (1872) XXXI.

Providence and Peace

If the law of Providence were strictly fulfilled, it is obvious that order would at once exist throughout the world. The reign of harmony, which poets have dreamed and prophets have predicted, would from that moment commence. Every man would not only be in his place, but, what is more, he would be contented with his place. It would not be the order of tyranny, but the order of benevolent wisdom. It would not be the harmony of force, but the harmony resulting from a common faith in a common Father.

The first development, under the strict fulfillment of the law of Providence, would be order and harmony of position. And this would be attended with harmony of feeling. As each one would be in his place, so each would be satisfied with his place, without being more satisfied with his own place than with that of his neighbor. In looking at the great frame-work of society, all would recognize the necessity of the parts to the completion and symmetry of the whole. As each would have his place, with no rebellion of the foot against the hand, nor of the hand against the head; so there would be no feelings of distrust and envy. How could there be rivalries, how could there be distrust or envy, when each, in being contented with the divine arrangements, would of course be satisfied with that position which those arrangements had assigned him? The fact of the divine choice, especially when taken in connection with the imperfections of human wisdom, would far more than counterbalance all incidental evils; so much so, that want and sneering, attended with God's choice and favor, would be regarded as infinitely preferable to riches and pleasure without them.

The cessation of personal and social rivalries would involve that of nations; or, at least, the same divine law, which operated to secure the one, would not fail to bring about the other. Persons and neighborhoods would be at peace. Nations would be at peace also. There is a locality, a rank, a duty of nations, as well as of individuals. If each would take the position, and fully the duty, which the law of Providence indicates to them, national rivalries would cease, because the occasions of such rivalries would no longer exist; and the God of the individual man, and of the domestic hearth, and of social institutions and unions, would be the God of empires. The law of Providence, harmonizing the relations of states, as it does those of individuals and small communities, would constitute a family of nations, and war would be known no longer.

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

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.