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.