Faith, Spirituality and Religion

I hold it true, whate’er befall;

 

While the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.

 

Either this man [Jesus] was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

 

To arrive at the truth in all things, we ought always to be ready to believe that what seems to us white is black if the hierarchical Church so defines it.

 

Preach the gospel all the time—if necessary, use words.

 

I am known in parts of the world by people who have never heard of Jesus Christ.

 

Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don’t make it of wood, you must make it of words.

Earth reserves no blessing / For the unblessed of Heaven!

It is well that the stately synagogue should lift its walls by the side of the aspiring cathedral, a perpetual reminder that there are many mansions in Father’s earthly house as well as in the heavenly ones.

The great end of being is to harmonize man with the order of things, and the church has been a good pitch-pipe, and may be so still.

The great philosophers are poets who believe in the reality of their poems.

Beware of the community in which blasphemy does not exist: underneath, atheism runs rampant.

Intuition attracts those who wish to be spiritual without any bother, because it promises a heaven where the intuitions of others can be ignored.

We are always making God our accomplice, that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benedictions for any victorious enormity.

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible.

Wilt Thou not take the doubt of Thy children whom the time commands to try all things in the place of the unquestioning faith of earlier generations?

Under all that we think, lives all we believe, like the ultimate veil of our spirits.

I take as my guide the hope of a saint in crucial things, unity - in important things, diversity - in all things, generosity.

Her eyes are homes of silent prayers.

If thou should never see my face again, Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of.

Love is faith, and one faith leads to another.

A belief is not true because it is useful.

I was not born to be free. I was born to adore and to obey.

We may not be able to get certainty, but we can get probability, and half a loaf is better than no bread.