Faith & Spirit Quote by Ernest Holmes

Holmes lands a piece of metaphysical theology in the language of plumbing, and that’s precisely why it sticks. “Outlet” and “inlet” are not poetic flourishes; they’re directional, bodily, practical. They smuggle a whole worldview into a pair of everyday nouns: divinity isn’t locked in a distant heaven or rationed out by an institution. It moves. It circulates. And the human being is the conduit.

The intent is democratic and disciplinary at once. Democratic, because everyone gets the same wiring; no priestly caste is required to access the current. Disciplinary, because an “outlet” implies responsibility. If God is expressed through you, your behavior isn’t merely personal preference; it’s the quality of transmission. Holmes is telling his audience: stop treating spirituality as a private mood and start treating it as an active force you’re accountable to conduct.

The subtext is classic New Thought: God as immanent Mind or Principle, not a capricious person; prayer as alignment rather than petition; “receiving” as openness and “giving” as expression. The inlet/outlet pairing refuses the one-way model of religion (humans beg, God dispenses). Instead it proposes a feedback loop: we take in inspiration, courage, clarity, then we discharge it as action, healing, creativity, ethics. Block the inlet with cynicism or fear and the outlet sputters; clog the outlet with passivity and the inlet becomes spiritual hoarding.

Context matters. Holmes, writing in early 20th-century America, is speaking to a culture enthralled by self-improvement and newly modern systems. His metaphor borrows the confidence of infrastructure: divinity as something you can connect to, not just believe in.