The world has not been in existence from eternity nor could it have been according to the present dispensation and ordering of things.

This subsistence, or manner of being of God is his one essence so far as it has personal properties.

The goodness of a thing created is the perfection of its fitness for the use which it serves. Now that use is either particular or universal.

Sanctification is the real change in man from the sordidness of sin to the purity of God's image.

The first act of religion, therefore, concerns those things which are communicated to us from God. The other concerns those things which we yield to God.

Everyone who understands the nature of God rightly necessarily knows that God is to be believed and hoped in, that he is to be loved and called upon, and to be heard in all things.

Therefore, the church is not absolutely necessary as an object of faith, not even for us today, for then Abraham and the other prophets would not have given assent to those things which were revealed to them from God without any intervening help of the church.

Nothing exists from eternity but God, and God is not the matter or a part of any creature, but only the maker.

The starting point of sanctification is the filthiness, corruption, or stain of sin.

Sanctification is not to be understood here as a separation from ordinary use or consecration to some special use, although this meaning is often present in Scripture, sometimes referring to outward and sometimes to inward or effectual separation.

The relative property of the Son is to be begotten, that is, so to proceed from the Father as to be a participant of the same essence and perfectly carry on the Father's nature.

Participation in the blessings of the union with Christ comes when the faithful have all the things needed to live well and blessedly to God.

The good pleasure of God is an act of the divine will freely and effectively determining all things.

In contentment and joy are found the height and perfection of all love towards our neighbor.

Faith is the virtue by which, clinging-to the faithfulness of God, we lean upon him, so that we may obtain what he gives to us.

The world has not been in existence from eternity nor could it have been according to the present dispensation and ordering of things.

The ordinary ministry is that which receives all of its direction from the will of God revealed in the Scriptures and from those means which God has appointed in the church for its continual edification.

The efficiency of God may be understood as either creation or providence.

The will of God is eternal because He does not begin to will what He did not will before, nor cease to will what He willed before.

Hence the end of the world should be awaited with all longing by all believers.

The will of God is single and totally one in Him.

The attributes of God tell us what He is and who He is.

Active creation is conceived as a transitive action in which there is always presupposed an object about which the agent is concerned; it is virtually but not formally transitive because it makes, not presupposes, an object.

An idea in man is first impressed upon him and afterwards expressed in things, but in God it is only expressed, not impressed, because it does not come from anywhere else.

From faith, hope, and love, the virtues of religion referring to God, there arises a double act which bears on the spiritual communion exercised between God and us; the hearing of the word and prayer.

Although the whole man partakes of this grace, it is first and most appropriately in the soul and later progresses to the body, inasmuch as the body of the man is capable of the same obedience to the will of God as the soul.

Hearing the word is the devout receiving of the will of God.

For this is our most perfect duty and yet least known to us by nature: Whatever we conceive or will should be joined with the good of our neighbor.

In the exercise of God's efficiency, the decree of God comes first. This manner of working is the most perfect of all and notably agrees with the divine nature.

From faith hope and love the virtues of religion referring to God there arises a double act which bears on the spiritual communion exercised between God and us the hearing of the word and prayer.

To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour.

Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.

We don't have an eternity to realize our dreams, only the time we are here.

The future and eternity are two entirely different things.

A hundredth of a second here, a hundredth of a second there - even if you put them end to end, they still only add up to one, two, perhaps three seconds, snatched from eternity.

I was born in 1961. Now I think the 16 years that elapsed between 1961 and the end of the wars is nothing. To a child growing up it felt like an eternity, an entirely different world.

War is eternity jammed into frantic minutes that will fill a lifetime with dreams and nightmares.

Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity.

Life is the fire that burns and the sun that gives light. Life is the wind and the rain and the thunder in the sky. Life is matter and is earth, what is and what is not, and what beyond is in Eternity.

To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour.

The realm of immediate or personal knowledge is a narrow circle in which these bodies move; the realm of knowledge derived through faith is as wide as the universe, and old as eternity.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell, where his influence stops.

Beauty is a precious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well.

God exists in eternity. The only point where eternity meets time is in the present. The present is the only time there is.

Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

Time is but the shadow of the world upon the background of Eternity.

Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.

But it is the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.