Glorification

It is generally agreed that Bishop N. D. Pendleton's most outstanding contribution to the thought of the Church is to be found in his studies of the Divine Human. Certainly his work in this field of doctrinal endeavor marks a distinct advance in the understanding of what the Writings teach concerning the glorification. It is, therefore, with the hope that the Church will continue to benefit from his labors that we present a collect of his most important considerations on this subject.

In the organization of this volume we have attempted to arrange the material in a sequence which will provide continuity of thought. Bear in mind that Bishop Pendleton never anticipated the publication of this work. With certain exceptions, the sermons and papers which comprise the volume were not written in series. Hence we have disregarded the date of composition and have arranged the material according to subject matter. However, it is our belief that this arrangement presents and orderly and comprehensive study of the glorification.

We realize that this book is not complete. In view of the subject under consideration we should have included those earlier papers entitled "Messianic Prophecies," "The Divine Human: Organic and Visible," and "Humanizing the Divine."  In that these have been published in the recent memorial volume, Selected Papers and Addresses, we have excluded them here.  We merely wish to suggest to the more thorough student that these earlier papers should serve as a general introduction to the more detailed considerations of this volume. [editor: select above article for review.]

It is of interest to note that this publication consists of twenty-nine sermons and two papers. Of these, nineteen have been published in New Church journals and twelve have been taken from the original manuscripts. Also, we wish to call the reader's attention to the fact that Bishop Pendleton seldom gave a title to a sermon. In the case of the unpublished manuscripts it was necessary to supply the titles, and in a few instances we changed the title found in the journal in which a sermon had been published.