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HPB-SB-10-61: Difference between revisions
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{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |What May Be Known Of God|10-60}} | {{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |What May Be Known Of God|10-60}} | ||
... | {{Style P-No indent|trinity in unity in the ascending order. The soul is the seat of the affectional or passional faculties, which phrenologists locate in the cerebellum, or back brain; the organs of the mind, or intellect, in the forehead; and the moral or spiritual faculties on the crown of the head. There are various degrees of openness or development in those regions, for each is like a mansion consisting of numerous apartments. The knowledge of this threefold nature of man will aid in the solution of many psychological problems, and tend to promote unity of faith.}} | ||
{{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on |10-62}} | Popular theology, admitting only of a twofold distinction of soul and body, is subject to all the errors which result from an imperfect psychology. | ||
Our statement of faith affirms Divine Sonship of the ''spirit ''of man. That is a most important distinction. Until the regions of mind and soul have been subjected, atoned, or reconciled to the Divine nature within everyone, even Son of Man, and still more Son of God. can only be given by courtesy, as being what we are essentially, and are to become consciously and manifestly. Having some idea of what the perfect man should be, I can hardly venture to call myself a man, although I feel assured I am heir to all fulness of Humanity, and of Divinity, as the yet unborn babe will become the inheritor of all his father’s possessions. | |||
Our faith in the nature and destiny of humanity need not rest on any authoritative statement; although it may be none of us could receive it otherwise, as none can learn any truth without instruction from within or without. We are most thankful that many who cannot see a truth in its own light are yet able to accept it superficially on oral or written authority. Yet when we attain to a right apprehension of God, we may know as assuredly of the ultimate destiny of every being in the universe as we know any truth whatever. | |||
As I have previously remarked, the highest manifestation of spiritual life is love. Man is in his best and most blissful state when ho has an object, or objects, of affection, whether lover, wife, or children, for whom lie would gladly give all that he has and his life to promote their happiness. This state, notwithstanding all human imperfection, is known and felt as most divine. Through capacity of loving we can ascend from the finite manifestation to the infinite source and reality. | |||
What human love in its purest and highest realisation would do if it could for its object that Omnipotent love shall do. Love would give its whole being to the beloved, desiring nothing but to be received, yet satisfied with nothing less than full reciprocation. As far as it has any reservation, so far it is deficient. | |||
We, therefore, as the offspring of the All-Father, arc heirs of the fulness of Divinity. If there be any attribute of Deity which cannot be imparted to me in perfection when I am perfect, I am so far not the offspring of God; so far God does not love me as He has given me power to love another. | |||
As His offspring we are in God, and God in us by necessity of existence. Even an architect or a sculptor, whose mental offspring is a building or a statue, has the ideal, which is the essential form of the outward work, ever in his mind more truly than the external form can be in the mind of a spectator, His conception of the form is its real being; the projection of it on paper or in marble is merely the word or expression of what is always within. If he makes a thousand such outward forms, the spirit abides in him forever. So as the offspring of God, we are eternally in Him, and He in us as necessary existences. | |||
But how, some thinking in the limited degree of sense perception may ask, can God be in all fulness in every one? If He gives all to one, what is there left for His innumerable sons and daughters in all worlds of the universe? Ah I if we could know our union with each other in Him, the question would be answered. How can the life blood from the heart give itself to every vein, artery, and minute vessel of the body? Because the body is one. Humanity is the body of God, and when any member of it, through atonement of the spirit with the outermost degree of being, realises this oneness with all others in the Father, all that the Father has is his, all power is given to Him in heaven and on earth. | |||
Such Divine fulness is not lessened but increased by every addition to the One Body; for the peculiar nature and function which constitutes individuality in each becomes the property of the whole. Each in receiving the fulness of Divinity receives also the fulness of each individual member of humanity; for God’s love and ability of imparting His whole being is also the love and power of every member of His Body. | |||
But why, if God so loves His offspring, does pain, trial, and sorrow exist?'' ''Just because He so loves them as to ordain that, through an educational experience of a few years in time, they may fully attain a conscious individuality through eternity, and enjoy the blessedness of aiding in the training and atoning of outward nature in others. If the end or ultimate destiny is admitted, who can reasonably object to the necessary experience, momentarily painful as it may be to the flesh, since everything will be forgotten in its eternally blessed results? | |||
Briefly to sum up the chief points of this inquiry: the idea of God is common to all humanity in all ages and degrees, of human progress. Like the beginnings of physical life the idea may be at first hardly perceptible even to the possessor, and still less to the observer. When first discerned it appears as an unreasoning instinct of fear, leading to efforts at propitiation of unseen powers represented in forms approaching to the human as the idea grows in clearness with advancing civilisation. While amongst nationalities in which the idea of God has attained to greater definiteness, the Semetic people have upheld the Divine unity, as, in the Jewish and Mohammedan religions, the Aryans have been more receptive of that. knowledge of the Divinely-human nature of Deity which bridges over the gulf between God and Man, between the Infinite Father and His, for a brief period, Infinite Son. This endeavour after the solution of the mystery of the union between God and man is manifested in Grecian, Indian, and Saxon human representations of the gods. The place of the ancient Egyptians has not yet been satisfactorily determined. In their religion, as gathered from papyri and monuments, although they represented Divine attributes under forms partly human and partly brutal, yet their chief god, Osiris, is always {{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on |10-62}} | |||