Those who are in communion with God live, those who are not are dead.
Topics: God, Life Source: Natural Law, Death, p. 158.
I say that man believes in a God, who feels himself in the presence of a Power which is not himself, and is immeasurably above himself, a Power in the contemplation of which he is absorbed, in the knowledge of which he finds safety and happiness.
God is not confined to the outermost circle of environment, He lives and moves and has His being in the whole. Those who only seek Him in the further zone can only find a part. The Christian who knows not God in Nature, who does not, that is to say, correspond with the whole environment, most certainly is partially dead.
Topics: God, Creation Source: Natural Law, Death, p. 163.
What is the Spiritual Environment? It is God. Without this, therefore, there is no life, no thought, no energy, nothing---"without Me ye can do nothing."
Topics: God Source: Natural Law, Environment, p. 265.
The Life of the senses, high and low, may perfect itself in Nature. Even the Life of thought may find a large complement in surrounding things. But the higher thought, and the conscience, and the religious Life, can only perfect themselves in God.
So cultivate the soul that all its powers will open out to God, and in beholding God be drawn away from sin.
Topics: Godliness Source: Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 118.
If God is adding to our spiritual stature, unfolding the new nature within us, it is a mistake to keep twitching at the petals with our coarse fingers. We must seek to let the Creative Hand alone. "It is God which giveth the increase."
Topics: Godliness Source: Natural Law, Growth, p. 137.
What makes a man a good artist, a good sculptor, a good musician? Practice... What makes a man a good man? Practice. Nothing else. There is nothing capricious about religion. We do not get the soul in different ways, under different laws, from those in which we get the body and the mind.
Topics: Godliness Source: The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 40.
It is a wonderful thing that here and there in this hard, uncharitable world, there should still be left a few rare souls who think no evil.
Topics: Good and Evil Source: Greatest Thing in the World.
The distinctions drawn between men are commonly based on the outward appearance of goodness or badness, on the ground of moral beauty or moral deformity--is this classification scientific? Or is there a deeper distinction between the Christian and the not-a-Christian as fundamental as that between the organic and the inorganic?
Violent efforts to grow are right in earnestness, but wholly wrong in principle. There is but one principle of growth both for the natural and spiritual, for animal and plant, for body and soul. For all growth is an organic thing. And the principle of growing in grace is once more this, "Consider the lilies how they grow."
Topics: Grace Source: Natural Law, Growth, p. 125.
Growth in grace is sometimes described as a strange, mystical, and unintelligible process. It is mystical, but neither strange nor unintelligible. It proceeds according to Natural Law, and the leading factor in sanctification is Influence of Environment.
Topics: Grace Source: Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 242.
Those who are in communion with God live, those who are not are dead.