Faith, Spirituality and Religion

We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’

Thus God and nature linked the gen’ral frame,

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind

As some to church repair,

Nature, and Nature’s laws lay hid in night.

And so with the objects of knowledge: these derive from the Good not only their power of being known, but their very being and reality; and Goodness is not the same thing as being, but even beyond being, surpassing it in dignity and power.

Is that which is holy loved by the gods because it is holy, or is it holy because it is loved by the gods?

FIRE . God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace.

‘God is or he is not.’ But to which side shall we incline? … Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate the two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that he is.

Old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn mornings … these are not only fragments, but characteristic fragments, of the English scene.

A God-intoxicated man. of Spinoza

God is dead: but considering the state the species Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.

We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.

Cor ad cor loquitur.

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,

Praise to the Holiest in the height,

May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.

Firmly I believe and truly

She [the Catholic Church] holds that it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin.

If I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink—to the Pope, if you please—still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.

Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.

Two and two only supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator.

Is not this house as nigh heaven as my own?