“God’s truth” is not a final attainment, but an ever-increasing illumination; it is the secret inward reality; the cause, the meaning, the relation of everything; it is that spiritual realization of conscious life in God towards which the human soul ever evolves throughout eternity.

God’s truth … is a gradual unfolding of the soul’s hidden capacities, accompanied by new and ever enlarging conceptions of the Infinite Originator, with an ever-increasing sense of rest and security in the Soul of the Universe.

(Jesus) emphatically avoided limiting to His single Personality the immanent divine nature which was so conspicuously, so perfectly manifested in Himself. He claimed it for humanity as a whole. He made it clear that He was humanity at its climax, and He taught that what He was all men could be, and were ultimately predestined to be, for that His nature, His spirit, the divine sonship so transcendantly uniquely embodied in Him, was potential and dormant in every man, and that, when awakened, yielded to, co-operated with, it would energise within all … the ideal humanity in each one, until each in his turn attained unto the “measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” This I understand to be … the truth that Jesus is the manifestor of the humanity in God and the divinity in man.

(That truth) is yours in trust for others. … The sanctification of others by your truth is effected by being rather than doing. …Every member of the (human) race who quietly lives the higher life, though he does not possess much, and cannot do much, by just being pure in his life, sweet in his temper, devout in his spirit, self-controlled in his actions, frequent in prayer, slow to anger and of great kindness, contributes to create that atmosphere of godliness which re-animates, uplifts, inspires the human race. It is God’s eternal counsel that the mass of moral evil in the world shall be transformed by the secret, silent, almost unobserved power of good.

Be good and you will do good.
Live the truth and you will sanctify by the truth.

 – Basil Wilberforce, D.D.
Archdeacon of Westminster; Chaplain to the House of Commons
from “God’s Truth,” Preface to
Sanctification by the Truth: Sermons Preached for the Most Part in Westminster Abbey, 1906.