RELIGIOn quotes
When religion is made a science there is nothing more intricate; when it is made a duty, there is nothing more easy. If we make religion our business, God will make it our blessedness.
Those who make religion to consist in the contempt of this world and its enjoyments, are under a very fatal and dangerous mistake. As life is the gift of heaven, it is religion to enjoy it. He, therefore, who can be happy in himself, and who contributes all in his power toward the happiness of others, answers most effectually the ends of his creation, is an honor to his nature, and a pattern to mankind.
The moral virtues, without religion, are but cold, lifeless, and insipid; it is only religion which opens the mind to great conceptions, fills it with the most sublime ideas, and warns the soul with more than sensual pleasures.
True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind; admit of all true pleasures, and even procure for us the highest.
Spiritual anarchy is not likely to work either for the happiness of the individual or for the welfare of society.
There never was law, or sect, or opinion did so magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth.
If I did not feel . . . and hope that someday—perhaps millions of years hence—the Kingdom of God would overspread the whole world . . . then I would give my office over this morning to anyone who would take it.
Religion is equally the basis of private virtue and public faith; of the happiness of the individual and the prosperity of the nation.
If it were only the exercise of the body, the moving of the lips, the bending of the knee, men would as commonly step to heaven as they go to visit a friend: but to separate our thoughts and affections from the world, to draw forth all our graces, and engage each in its proper object, and to hold them to it till the work prospers in our hands, this, this is the difficulty.
It is one thing to take God and heaven for your portion, as believers do, and another thing to be desirous of it as a reserve, when you can keep the world no longer. It is one thing to submit to heaven, as a lesser evil than hell; and another thing to desire it as a greater good than earth. It is one thing to lay up treasures and hopes in heaven, and seek it first; and another thing to be contented with it in our necessity, and to seek the world before it, and give God what the flesh can spare. Thus differeth the religion of serious Christians and of carnal, worldly hypocrites.
If family religion were duly attended to and properly discharged, I think the preaching of the Word would not be the common instrument of conversion.
Many would like religion as a sort of lightning rod to their houses, to ward off, by and by, the bolts of divine wrath.
Every condition of life has its perils and its advantages; and the office of religion is, not to change that in which Providence has placed us, but to strengthen and sanctify our hearts that we may resist the temptations, and improve the opportunities of blessings presented to us.
Religion—a daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.—Impiety—your irreverence toward my deity.
All the principles which religion teaches, and all the habits which it forms, are favorable to strength of mind. It will be found that whatever purifies, also fortifies the heart.
The best perfection of a religious man is to do common things in a perfect manner.
While men believe in the possibilities of children being religious, they are largely failing to make them so, because they are offering them not a child's but a man's religion—men's forms of truth and men's forms of experience.
What a lovely bridge between old age and childhood is religion! How instinctively the world begins with prayer and worship on entering life, and how instinctively, on quitting life, the old man turns back to prayer and worship, putting himself again side by side with the little child.
Culture of intellect, without religion in the heart, is only civilized barbarism and disguised animalism.
The body of all true religion consists in obedience to the will of God, in a confidence in his declaration, and an imitation of his perfections.
The writers against religion, while they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
We know, and, what is better, we feel inwardly, that religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort.
True religion is the foundation of society, the basis on which all true civil government rests, and from which power derives its authority, laws their efficacy, and both their sanction. If it is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable or lasting.
Never trust anybody not of sound religion, for he that is false to God can never be true to man.
By living according to the rules of religion a man becomes the wisest, the best, and the happiest creature that he is capable of being.—Honesty, industry, the employing of time well, a constant sobriety, an undefiled purity, with continual serenity, are the best preservatives, too, of life and health.
It is only religion, the great bond of love and duty to God that makes any existence valuable or even tolerable.
The noblest charities, the best fruits of learning, the richest discoveries, the best institutions of law and justice, every greatest thing the world has seen, represents, more or less directly, the fruitfulness and creativeness of religion.
An everyday religion—one that loves the duties of our common walk; one that makes an honest man; one that accomplishes an intellectual and moral growth in the subject; one that works in all weather, and improves all opportunities, will best and most healthily promote the growth of a church and the power of the Gospel.
Indisputably the believers in the gospel have a great advantage over all others, for this simple reason, that, if true, they will have their reward hereafter; and if there be no hereafter, they can but be with the infidel in his eternal sleep, having had the assistance of an exalted hope through life, without subsequent disappointment.
Whatever definitions men have given of religion, I find none so accurately descriptive of it as this: that it is such a belief of the Bible as maintains a living influence on the heart and life.
The submergence of self in the pursuit of an ideal, the readiness to spend oneself without measure, prodigally, almost ecstatically, for something intuitively apprehended as great and noble, spend oneself knowing not why—some of us like to believe that this is what religion means.
Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky, but the stars are there, and will reappear.
Independent of its connection with human destiny hereafter, I believe the fate of a republican government is indissolubly bound up with the fate of the Christian religion, and that a people who reject its only faith will find themselves the slaves of their own evil passions or of arbitrary power.
The joy of religion is an exorcist to the mind; it expels the demons of carnal mirth and madness.
There is something in religion, when rightly apprehended, that is masculine and grand. It removes those little desires which are "the constant hectic of a fool."
The religion of a sinner stands on two pillars; namely, what Christ did for us in the flesh, and what he performs in us by his Spirit. Most errors arise from an attempt to separate these two.
A man who puts aside his religion because he is going into society, is like one taking off his shoes because he is about to walk upon thorns.
Recollection is the life of religion. The Christian wants to know no new thing, but to have his heart elevated more above the world by secluding himself from it as much as his duties will allow, that religion may effect its great end by bringing its sublime hopes and prospects into more steady action on the mind.
I extend the circle of religion very widely.—Many men fear and love God, and have a sincere desire to serve him, whose views of religious truth are very imperfect, and in some points utterly false.—But may not many such persons have a state of heart acceptable before God?
If it be the characteristic of a worldly man that he desecrates what is holy, it should be of the Christian to consecrate what is secular, and to recognize a present and presiding divinity in all things.
It was religion, which, by teaching men their near relation to God, awakened in them the consciousness of their importance as individuals. It was the struggle for religious rights, which opened their eyes to all their rights. It was resistance to religious usurpation which led men to withstand political oppression. It was religious discussion which roused the minds of all classes to free and vigorous thought. It was religion which armed the martyr and patriot in England against arbitrary power; which braced the spirits of our fathers against the perils of the ocean and wilderness, and sent them to found here the freest and most equal state on earth.
Religion, if it be true, is central truth; and all knowledge which is not gathered round it, and quickened and illuminated by it, is hardly worthy the name.
If you are not right toward God, you can never be so toward man; and this is forever true, whether wits and rakes allow it or not.
The sum and substance of the preparation needed for a coming eternity is that you believe what the Bible tells you, and do what the Bible bids you.
Too many persons seem to use their religion as a diver does his bell, to venture down into the depths of worldliness with safety, and there grope for pearls, with just so much of heaven's air as will keep them from suffocating, and no more; and some, alas! as at times is the case with the diver, are suffocated in the experiment.
It is no good reason for a man's religion that he was born and brought up in it; for then a Turk would have as much reason to be a Turk as a Christian a Christian.
You have no security for a man who has no religious principle.
Depend upon it religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will alone gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will, alone.
I have known what the enjoyments and advantages of this life are, and what the more refined pleasures which learning and intellectual power can bestow; and with all the experience that more than threescore years can give, I, now, on the eve of my departure, declare to you that health is a great blessing,—competence, obtained by honorable industry, a great blessing,—and a great blessing it is to have kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives; but that the greatest of all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be indeed a Christian.
If a man is not rising upward to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downward to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.
Very religious people always shock slightly religious people by their blasphemous attitude to religion; and it was precisely for blasphemy that Jesus was crucified.
Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it.
Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.
God is for men and religion for women.
The faith that only reaches to the head will never sanctify the heart. Knowledge, without experience, will no more sanctify, than painted fire will burn, or the sight of water cleanse. It may do good to others, as the knowledge of Noah's carpenters was useful to him, while they perished in the flood.
See how powerful religion is: it commands the heart, it commands the vitals. Morality comes with a pruning-knife, and cuts off all sproutings, all wild luxuriances; but religion lays the axe to the root of the tree. Morality looks that the skin of the apple be fair; but religion searcheth to the very core.
Let your religion be seen. Lamps do not talk, but they do shine. A lighthouse sounds no drum, it beats no gong; yet, far over the waters, its friendly light is seen by the mariner.
Religion's home is in the conscience.—Its watchword is the word "ought."—Its highest joy is in doing God's will.
If I could choose what of all things would be at the same time the most delightful and useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing; for this makes life a discipline of goodness; creates new hopes when all earthly ones vanish; throws over the decay of existence the most gorgeous of all lights; awakens life even in death; makes even torture and shame the ladder of ascent to paradise; and far above all combinations of earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions of the future, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and the skeptic view only gloom, decay, annihilation, and despair.
Faith was once almost universally thought to be acceptance of a definite body of intellectual propositions, acceptance being based upon authority—preferably that of revelation from on high. ... Of late there has developed another conception of faith. This is suggested by the words of an American thinker: "Faith is tendency toward action." According to such a view, faith is the matrix of formulated creeds and the inspiration of endeavor. . . . Faith in its newer sense signifies that experience itself is the sole ultimate authority.
The future of religion is connected with the possibility of developing a faith in the possibilities of human experience and human relationships that will create a vital sense of the solidarity of human interests and inspire action to make that sense a reality.
Religion, in its purity, is not so much a pursuit as a temper; or rather it is a temper, leading to the pursuit of all that is high and holy. Its foundation is faith; its action, works; its temper, holiness; its aim, obedience to God in improvement of self and benevolence to men.
The religion of the gospel has power, immense power, over mankind; direct and indirect, positive and negative, restraining and aggressive. Civilization, law, order, morality, the family, all that elevates woman, or blesses society, or gives peace to the nations, all these are the fruits of Christianity, the full power of which, even for this world, could never be appreciated till it should be taken away.
True religion extends alike to the intellect and the heart. Intellect is in vain if it leads not to emotion, and emotion is vain if not enlightened by intellect; and both are vain if not guided by truth and leading to duty.
The religions we count false, may, for a time, have had their use; being, in their origin, faint, though misunderstood echoes of an early divine revelation, and also as Emerson says. "affirmations of the conscience, correcting the evil customs of their times."
What we need in religion, is not new light, but new sight; not new paths, but new strength to walk in the old ones; not new duties, but new strength from on high to fulfill those that are plain before us.
Unless we place our religion and our treasure in the same thing religion will always be sacrificed.
Theloss of popular respect for religion is the dry rot of social institutions. The idea of God as the Creator and Father of all mankind is in the moral world, what gravitation is in the natural; it holds all together and causes them to revolve around a common center. Take this away, and men drop apart; there is no such thing as collective humanity, but only separate molecules, with no more cohesion than so many grains of sand.
Religious contention is the devil's harvest.
There need not be in religion, or music, or art, or love, or goodness, anything that is against reason; but never while the sun shines will we get great religion, or music, or art, or love, or goodness, without going beyond reason.
If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it!
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, is the best the world ever saw or is likely to see.
If we think of religion only as a means of escaping what we call the wrath to come, we shall not escape it; we are under the burden of death, if we care only for ourselves.
Place not thy amendment only in increasing thy devotion, but in bettering thy life. It is the damning hypocrisy of this age that it slights all good morality, and spends its zeal in matters of ceremony, and a form of godliness without the power of it.
Measure not men by Sundays, without regarding what they do all the week after.
I the Christian religion is one that diffuses among the people a pure, benevolent, and universal system of ethics, adapted to every condition of life, and recommended as the will and reason of the Supreme Deity, and enforced by sanctions of eternal punishment.
Nothing can be hostile to religion which is agreeable to justice.
True religion teaches us to reverence what is under us, to recognize humility, poverty, wretchedness, suffering, and death, as things divine.
Religion does what philosophy could never do.—It shows the equal dealings of heaven to the happy and the unhappy, and levels all human enjoyments to nearly the same standard.—It offers to both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal hopes to aspire after it.
If we were to be hired to religion, it is able to outbid the corrupted world with all it can offer us, being so much richer of the two in everything where reason is admitted to be a judge of the value.
Religion is the final centre of repose; the goal to which all things tend; apart from which man is a shadow, his very existence a riddle, and the stupendous scenes of nature which surround him as unmeaning as the leaves which the sibyl scattered in the wind.
No priest craft can longer make man content with misery here in the hope of compensation hereafter.
Religion presents few difficulties to the humble; many to the proud; insuperable ones to the vain.
Religion is the answer to that cry of reason which nothing can silence; that aspiration of the soul which no created thing can meet; of that want of the heart which all creation cannot supply.
Nothing exposes religion more to the reproach of its enemies than the worldliness and hard-heartedness of its professors.
The flower of youth never appears more beautiful than when it bends toward the sun of righteousness.
I have now disposed of all my property to my family.—There is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian religion.—If they had that, and I had not given them one shilling, they would have been rich, and if they had not that, and I had given them all the world, they would be poor.
I would give nothing for that man's religion, whose very dog and cat are not the better for it.
Religion is not a dogma, not an emotion, but a service.—Our redemption is not of the head alone, nor of the heart alone, but preeminently of the life, as the only infallible criterion of what we really are.—Not belief, not emotion, but obedience is the test.—Mere belief would make religion a mere theology. Mere emotion would make it a mere excitement.—While the true divine of it is a life, begotten of grace in the depths of the human soul, subduing to Christ all the powers of the heart and life, and incarnating itself in patient, steady, sturdy service—doing the will of God.
The external part of religion is doubtless of little value in comparison with the internal; and so is the cask in comparison with the wine contained in it; but if the cask be staved in, the wine must perish.
When men cease to be faithful to God, he who expects to find them so to each other will be much disappointed.
A religion that never suffices to govern a man will never suffice to save him.—That which does not distinguish him from a sinful world, will never distinguish him from a perishing world.
The religion of Christ reaches and changes the heart, which no other religion does.
Formal religion was organized for slaves: it offered them consolation which earth did not provide.
Christianity is a spiritual dynamic which has very little to do with the mechanism of social life.
Such as men themselves are, such will God appear to them to be; and such as God appears to them to be, such will they show themselves in their dealings with their fellow men.
Many people think they have religion when they are troubled with dyspepsia.
From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word, but in the night of death hope sees a star and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.
There are but two religions,—Christianity and paganism, the worship of God and idolatry. A third between these is not possible. Where idolatry ends, there Christianity begins; and where idolatry begins, there Christianity ends.
A life that will bear the inspection of men and of God is the only certificate of true religion.
No creed is final. Such a creed as mine must grow and change as knowledge grows and changes.
It has been said that true religion will make a man a more thorough gentleman than all the courts in Europe, And it is true that you may see simple laboring men as thorough gentlemen as any duke, simply because they have learned to fear God; and, fearing him, to restrain themselves, which is the very root and essence of all good breeding.
What I want is, not to possess religion, but to have a religion that shall possess me.
My principles in respect of religious interest are two,—one is, that the Church shall not meddle with politics, and the government shall not meddle with religion.
All the naturalistic religions are founded upon the assumption that nature—which "never did betray the heart that loved her"—is discoverable and ready to serve as an infallible guide.
I have lived long enough to know what I did not at one time believe—that no society can be upheld in happiness and honor without the sentiment of religion.
All belief that does not render us more happy, more free, more loving, more active, more calm, is, I fear, an erroneous and superstitious belief.
It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.
Over all the movements of life religion scatters her favors, but reserves the choicest, her divine blessing, for the last hour.
A ritual religion is generally light and gay, not serious in its spirit; all religions being so, which cast responsibility into outward observances.
Christianity is the good man's text; his life is the illustration. How admirable is that religion, which, while it seems to have in view only the felicity of another world, is at the same time the highest happiness of this.
It will cost something to be religious: it will cost more to be not so.
Religion would not have enemies, if it were not an enemy to their vices.
I conceive the essential task of religion to be "to develop the consciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind."
The pious man and the atheist always talk of religion; the one of what he loves, and the other of what he fears.
All religions die of one disease, that of being found out.
Religion is the best armor in the world, but the worst cloak.
When I was young, I was sure of many things; now there are only two things of which I am sure: one is that I am a miserable sinner; and the other, that Christ is an all-sufficient Savior.—He is well taught who learns these two lessons.
The religion of some people is constrained, like the cold bath when used, not for pleasure, but from necessity for health, into which one goes with reluctance, and is glad when able to get out.—But religion to the true believer is like water to a fish; it is his element; he lives in it, and could not live out of it.
No sciences are better attested than the religion of the Bible.
It usually takes as many generations to make a religious convert as to make a gentleman.
We live in the midst of blessings till we are utterly insensible to their greatness, and of the source from whence they flow. We speak of our civilization, our arts, our freedom, our laws, and forget entirely how large a share is due to Christianity. Blot Christianity out of the page of man's history, and what would his laws have been—what his civilization? Christianity is mixed up with our very being and our daily life; there is not a familiar object around us which does not wear a different aspect because the light of Christian love is on it—not a law which does not owe its truth and gentleness to Christianity—not a custom which cannot be traced, in all its holy healthful parts, to the gospel.
Should a man happen to err in supposing the Christian religion to be true, he could not be a loser by the mistake. But how irreparable is his loss, and how inexpressible his danger, who should err in supposing it to be false.
If we subject everything to reason, our religion will have nothing mysterious or supernatural; if we violate the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous.
All humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout souls are everywhere of one religion, and when death has taken off the mask, they will know one another, though the divers liveries they wear make them strangers.
Religion is the fear and love of God; its demonstration is good works; and faith is the root of both, for without faith we cannot please God; nor can we fear and love what we do not believe.
The only impregnable citadel of virtue is religion; for there is no bulwark of mere morality, which some temptation may not overtop or undermine and destroy.
It was an admirable and true saying of Plutarch, "That a city may as well be built in the air, as a commonwealth or kingdom be either constituted or preserved without the support of religion."
The great comprehensive truths, written in letters of living light on every page of our history, are these: Human happiness has no perfect security but freedom; freedom, none but virtue; virtue, none but knowledge; and neither freedom nor virtue has any vigor or immortal hope except in the principles of the Christian faith, and in the sanctions of the Christian religion.
Creeds grow so thick along the way their boughs hide God.
Love God, and he will dwell with you. Obey God, and he will reveal to you the truth of his deepest teachings.
Philosophy can do nothing which religion cannot do better than she; and religion can do a great many other things which philosophy cannot do at all.
Anything that makes religion a second object makes it no object.—He who offers to God a second place offers him no place.
If your whole life is guided by religion, the hearts of others may be touched by this mute language, and may open to the reception of that spirit which dwells in you.
Reason is the triumph of the intellect, faith of the heart; and whether the one or the other shall best illumine the dark mysteries of our being, they only are to be despaired of who care not to explore.
It is a great dishonor to religion to imagine that it is an enemy to mirth and cheerfulness, and a severe exacter of pensive looks and solemn faces.
There are those to whom a sense of religion has come in storm and tempest; there are those whom it has summoned amid scenes of revelry and idle vanity; there are those, too, who have heard its "still small voice" amid rural leisure and placid retirement. But perhaps the knowledge which causeth not to err is most frequently impressed upon the mind during the season of affliction.
I have taken much pains to know everything that is esteemed worth knowing amongst men; but with all my reading, nothing now remains to comfort me at the close of this life but this passage of St. Paul: "It is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners." To this I cleave, and herein do I find rest.
What I mean by a religious person is one who conceives himself or herself to be the instrument of some purpose in the universe which is a high purpose, and is the motive power of evolution—that is, of a continual ascent in organization and power and life, and extension of life.
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
Religion, cultivated to the absolute neglect of science, would produce a reign of superstition, tyranny, and barbarism like that which covered Europe in the dark ages of the church. Science, cultivated to the utter neglect of religion, would produce a reign of infidelity, impiety, and sensuality. The two interests united, correct and perfect each other.
Religion is so far from barring men any innocent pleasure, or comfort of human life, that it purifies the pleasures of it, and renders them more grateful and generous; and besides this, it brings mighty pleasures of its own, those of a glorious hope, a serene mind, a calm and undisturbed conscience, which do far outrelish the most studied and artificial luxuries.
He that is a good man is three-quarters of his way toward the being a good Christian, wheresoever he lives, or whatsoever he is called.
No man's religion ever survives his morals.
The contemplation of the Divine Being, and the exercise of virtue, are in their nature so far from excluding all gladness of heart, that they are perpetual sources of it. In a word, the true spirit of religion cheers as well as composes the soul. It banishes, indeed, all levity of behavior, all vicious and dissolute mirth, but in exchange fills the mind with a perpetual serenity, uninterrupted cheerfulness, and a habitual inclination to please others as well as to be pleased in itself.
The head truly enlightened will presently have a wonderful influence in purifying the heart; and the heart really affected with goodness, will much conduce to the directing of the head.
The word of God proves the truth of religion; the corruption of man, its necessity; government, its advantages.
Religion consists not so much in joyous feelings as in constant devotedness to God, and laying ourselves out for the good of others.
Take away God and religion, and men live to no purpose, without proposing any worthy and considerable end of life to themselves.
Whether religion be true or false, it must be necessarily granted to be the only wise principle and safe hypothesis for a man to live and die by.
None but God can satisfy the longings of the immortal soul; as the heart was made for him, he only can fill it.
The race of men, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity.
The task and triumph of religion is to make men and nations true and just and upright in all their dealings, and to bring all law as well as all conduct into subjection and conformity to the law of God.
Inward religion, without the outward show of it, is like a tree without fruit, useless; and the outward show of religion, without inward sincerity, is like a tree without heart, lifeless.
Religion finds the love of happiness and the principles of duty separated in us; and its mission—its masterpiece is, to reunite them.
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supporters.—A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity.
Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion: The one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason, in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to; and well has it been said, that if there had been no God, mankind would have been obliged to imagine one.
Political and professional fame cannot last forever, but a conscience void of offence before God and man is an inheritance for eternity. Religion, therefore, is a necessary, an indispensable element in any great human character. There is no living without it. Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to his throne. If that tie is sundered or broken, he floats away a worthless atom in the universe, its proper attractions all gone, its destiny thwarted, and its whole future nothing but darkness, desolation and death. A man with no sense of religious duty is he whom the Scriptures describes in so terse but terrific a manner, as “living without hope and without God in the world.” Such a man is out of his proper being, out of the circle of all his duties, out of the circle of all his happiness, and away, far, far away from the purposes of his creation.
If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, and the people do not become religious, I do not know what is to become of us as a nation.
Religion is the first thing and the last thing, and until a man has found God and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to no end.
If our religion is not true, we are bound to change it; if it is true, we are bound to propagate it.
The heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true; it not only deserved no faith, but it demanded none.—The very pretension to truth, the very demand of faith, were characteristic distinctions of Christianity.
I would rather think of my religion as a gamble than to think of it as an insurance premium.
The Christian is the highest style of man.
Know that without star or angel for their guide, they who worship God shall find him.—Humble love, and not proud reason keeps the door of heaven.—Love finds admission where proud science fails.
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