A PocketSystem of Theology Author:John Reid Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: he uses it he cuts himself. The greatest thought in existence is God, and the soul that has lost God is lost. CHAPTER II. THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. The div... more »ine attributes belong to a nature, and that nature is pure spirit, this pure spirit having absolute simplicity, or oneness. There cannot be two Gods. One excludes a second. God is self-sufficient: his attributes are not conditioned by anything outside of him. He exists of necessity. The creation might sink into nothingness, and there would be no contradiction, but God must remain as he is. When we have a proper understanding of any single perfection of the Deity, we may logically infer other perfections from that, because there is nothing in him that is isolated. 1. The eternity of God. Eternity is stationary; time moves. God fills eternity, and lives in it. He has no past and no future—a constant present. If he lived moment by moment, as we do, he would be older at one time than at another. We cannot speak of God, however, as either old or young. He is the " I Am," the Being that Is, the King of the eternities. " From everlasting to everlasting thou art God." Ps. xc. 2. That which has no beginninghas no end. Beginningless existence is therefore divine and timeless. God is eternally conscious of all that is in his nature; he has therefore no reminiscence and no laws of association. He has no succession, because eternity is the mode of his existence; and yet, viewing him in relation to the universe, his acts appear to follow one after the other. He is thus unconditioned and self-conditioned. His eternity makes him timeless, while his perfection enables him to enter into time. Unless we are on our guard, we will make God powerless by very greatness—make him unable to do what man can do quite easily. 2. The immutability...« less