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November 13th, 1918.
Received by:James Padgett.
Washington D.C.
I am here, St. Stephen.
Let me write a few words tonight as I am one of the spirits whom
your wife wrote of last night would come tonight with the desire
to write.
My subject is: "What is the meaning of the Divine Nature which
the soul of man partakes of, upon the transformation of that soul
by the inflowing and possession of the Divine Love?"
This, as you may perceive, will be somewhat difficult to explain,
and principally because men have no very definite conception of
what is comprehended by the term "Divine." They, of course, associate
this word with God, and to them God is a being whose nature and
qualities are above their finite conceptions, and as a result of
their thoughts, is that which is over and above everything that
is called or supposed to be understood as natural. To some, God
is a being of personality, and to others, a kind of nebulous existence
included in and composing all the various manifestations which are
transcendently above what they conceive to be the merely natural
or human.
I will not attempt to discuss who or what God is, except as to
one of His qualities or attributes, and that the greatest - for
you must know that all the qualities of God are not of equal greatness
or degree of importance in the workings of His essence of substance.
All, of course, partake of His Divine Being, but, as you might say,
there is a difference in the workings and scope of their operations.
You have been told that the Divine is that which has in it, to
a sufficient degree, the very Substance and Essence of God, Himself;
and this is true, for Divinity belongs to God alone, and can be
possessed by others, spirits or mortals, only when He has transfused
into or bestowed upon the souls of men a portion of this Divinity,
and to the extent thereof made them a part of Himself. There is
nothing in all His universe that is Divine or partakes of the Divine
except that which is of the soul, for all else is of the material,
and this even when it has the form or appearance of the spiritual.
And even the soul, as created, is not Divine and cannot become such,
until it is transformed into the Divine by the transfusion into
it of that which, in its very substance, is Divine. Many souls in
the spirit world, although pure and in exact harmony with their
created condition, are not Divine and never will become such, and
this only because these souls will not desire and seek to become
Divine in the only way provided by the Father.
It is a mistake for men to believe that because God has created
this or that object or thing, it is necessarily Divine, for His
creations are no more a part of Himself than are the creations of
men a part of themselves; and thus you will see that in all God's
creation there is nothing Divine except what has been privileged
by His grace to partake of His Divinity. And hence the stars and
worlds and trees and animals and rocks and man himself, as created,
are not Divine.
Men have claimed that in man there is a spark of the Divine - a
part as they say of the "Oversoul" - and that it needs only the
proper development to make the soul of man wholly Divine. And this
theory is based upon the idea that this development can be accomplished
by the exercise of the mind or the moral qualities guided by the
conscience, which they assert, is of itself Divine; especially when
dominated by reason, which has been so often worshiped by philosophers
and others (to whom the mind is supreme) as Divine. And they have
attempted to differentiate man and the lower animals, and attributed
to the former the qualities of Divinity, because he is endowed with
reason and the lower animals are not; and have substituted degrees
in the order and objects of creation, in the place of differentiation
between the Divine and non-divine.
God is wholly Divine and every part and attribute of Him is Divine,
and while they are parts of the whole, yet they may be separated
in their workings and bestowals; and the man or soul that is the
recipient of the bestowal of one of these qualities or attributes
is not necessarily the recipient of the others. Omnipotence and
omniscience are those attributes of God's Divinity which He never
bestows upon the souls of men or spirits, and as to them He is the
exclusive possessor, although in all His attributes there are powers
and knowledge, and they accompany the bestowal of all attributes
of which they are parts; and one of these Divine attributes may
be bestowed upon man, and yet man not become Deity. There is and
can be only one God, although He may give of His Essence and very
Substance, so that a man can become as He is in that Essence and
Substance, to the extent that it is bestowed.
As regards man and his salvation and happiness, the greatest of
God's qualities or attributes is His Divine Love, which is the only
one that can bring the souls of men into a oneness and nature with
the Father, and which has in it the quality of immortality. This
Love has a transforming power and can make that which is of a quality
foreign to and different from itself, of the same essence as itself;
and more than this, can eliminate from that thing those constituents
which naturally and necessarily are its components, without injuring
or destroying the thing itself.
Well we must stop here. I will finish later.
I am St. Stephen
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