The Seventy's Course in Theology, Fifth Year: Divine Immanence and the Holy GhostRoberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Religion
The Seventy's Course in Theology, Fifth Year: Divine Immanence and the Holy Ghost
Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Latter Day Saint churches -- Doctrines
"The power of the analogy, for which we are laying the foundations, to
seize and impress the mind, will largely depend on the vividness with
which one realizes the gulf which Nature places between the living and
the dead. But those who, in contemplating Nature, have found their
attention arrested by this extraordinary dividing-line severing the
visible universe eternally into two: those who in watching the progress
of science have seen barrier after barrier disappear--barrier between
plant and plant, between animal and animal, and even between animal and
plant--but this gulf yawning more hopelessly wide with every advance
of knowledge, will be prepared to attach a significance to the Law of
Biogenesis and its analogies more profound perhaps than to any other
fact or law in Nature. If, as Pascal says, Nature is an image of grace;
if the things that are seen are in any sense the images of the unseen,
there must lie in this great gulf fixed, this most unique and startling
of all natural phenomena, a meaning of peculiar moment."
_4. The Law of Biogenesis in the Spiritual World:_ "Where now in
the Spiritual spheres shall we meet a companion phenomenon to this?
What in the Unseen shall be likened to this deep dividing-line, or
where in human experience is another barrier which never can be crossed?
"There is such a barrier. In the dim but not inadequate vision of the
Spiritual World presented in the Word of God, the first thing that
strikes the eye is a great gulf fixed. The passage from the Natural
World to the Spiritual World is hermetically sealed on the natural
side. The door from the inorganic to the organic is shut, no mineral
can open it; so the door from the natural to the spiritual is shut,
and no man can open it. This world of natural men is staked off from
the Spiritual World by barriers which have never yet been crossed from
within. No organic change, no modification of environment, no mental
energy, no moral effort, no evolution of character, no progress of
civilization can endow any single human soul with the attribute of
spiritual life. The spiritual world is guarded from the world next in
order beneath it by a law of Biogenesis--except a man be born again * *
* except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the
Kingdom of God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account