Let a man fear, above all, me, his God, and so much the gentler will he become toward my creatures and animals, on whom, on account of me, their Creator, he ought to have compassion.
But man is freer than all the animals, on account of his free-will, with which he is endowed above all other animals.
Encompass with your mercy and compassion all animals and creatures. Do not say, "this is inanimate and has no awareness." Indeed, it does; it is you yourself who have no awareness! So let existence be as it is, and be merciful towards it with the mercifulness of the Creator in the midst of His creation.
God is ever before my eyes. I realize his omnipotence and I fear His anger; but I also recognize his compassion, and His tenderness towards His creatures.
God wanted man to know him somehow through his creatures, and since no creature could fittingly reflect the infinite perfection of the Creator, he multiplied his creatures and gave a certain goodness and perfection to each of them so that from them we could judge the goodness and perfection of the Creator, who embraces infinite perfection in the perfection of his one and utterly simple essence.
Originally man was made in the image of God, but now his likeness to God is a stolen one. As the image of God man draws his life entirely from his origin in God, but the man who has become like God has forgotten how he was at his origin and has made himself his own creator and judge.
Paul taught that religions evolved because man did not honor the true God. Because of rebellion, they "exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of the corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures." One characteristic of idolatry is that it always confuses the creature with the creator.
Clearly, what God wants above all is our will which we received as a free gift from God in creation and possess as though our own. When a man trains himself to acts of virtue, it is with the help of grace from God from whom all good things come that he does this. The will is what man has as his unique possession
I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe in that He ought to be whipped from pilar to post and back again for His shameful actions toward Humanity.
The only fear I have is to fear to get out of the will of God.
Outside of the will of God, there's nothing I want, and in the will
of God there's nothing I fear, for God has sworn to keep me in
His will. If I'm out of his will that's another matter. But if I'm in His
will, He's sworn to keep me.
I cannot face my God much longer knowing that his black creatures are held separate and distinct from his white creatures in the game that has given me all that I can call my own.
Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.
So if God should place me in serious perplexity, must He not give me much guidance; in places of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trial, much strength? No fear that HIs resources will prove unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine, for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me.
In the present age, man proves his separation from his Creator by his spirit of self-sufficienc y and positive rejection of God. The present issue between God and man is one of whether man will accept God's estimate of him, abandon his hopeless self-struggle, and cast himself only on God who alone is sufficient to accomplish his needed transformation.
Once in his life, a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk.
Young man, if God gives me four years more to rule this country, I believe it will become what it ought to be-what its Divine Author intended it to be-no longer one vast plantation for breeding human beings for the purpose of lust and bondage. But it will become a new Valley of Jehoshaphat, where all the nations of the earth will assemble together under one flag, worshipping a common God, and they will celebrate the resurrection of human freedom.
We are all God's creatures-that we pray to God for mercy and justice while we continue to eat the flesh of animals that are slaughtered on our account is not consistent.