Classic and contemporary excerpts.
“What Want I More?”
In the heart of London City,
’Mid the dwellings of the poor,
These bright, golden words were uttered,
“I have Christ! What want I more?”
Spoken by a lonely woman,
Dying on a garret floor,
Having not one earthly comfort—
“I have Christ! What want I more?”
—Anonymous; quoted by
Norman Vincent Peale in
My Favorite Quotations
The Word Of Who?
A phrase I wouldn’t mind expunging from any theological debate between Christians: “My Bible says that.…” As if those on the other side of the issue are committed to the New Erroneous Version. Why can’t we admit we read the same Bible, but interpret it differently?
—Don Ratzlaff in The Christian
Leader (July 17, 1990)
Living in freedom
The disciplined person is the person who can do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. The disciplined person is the person who can live in the appropriateness of the hour. The extreme ascetic and the glutton have exactly the same problem: they cannot live appropriately; they cannot do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.
The disciplined person is the free person.
—Richard J. Foster in Reasons
to Be Glad
Our Love Follows Our Pocketbook
Some say, dedicate the heart and the money will follow; but our Lord put it the other way around. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” If your treasure is dedicated, your heart will be dedicated. If it is not, it simply won’t. It is as simple as that.
—G. Timothy Johnson in
the Covenant Companion
(Sept. 1990)
Moving On
The past is a dead issue and we can’t gain any momentum moving toward tomorrow if we’re dragging the past behind us.
—Jack Hayford in Taking Hold
of Tomorrow
What Goes Around Comes Around
The scientific facts, which were supposed to contradict the Faith in the nineteenth century, are nearly all of them regarded as unscientific fictions in the twentieth century.
—G. K. Chesterton in
St. Thomas Aquinas
Marx’s Truth
When all the political foundations of religion are wiped out, when the organization and the institutional structure of the church are destroyed, then normally religious faith, the Christian faith, would have to disappear. But it is not out of the question that the Christian faith will survive anyhow. This would mean that there is a religious reality, that does not depend solely on the sociological and the institutional; and under these conditions, we would have to heed this reality, which is not in the category of traditional religion.
—Karl Marx in a letter to his
friend Max Rugge (quoted by
Jacques Ellul in Perspectives
on Our Age)
Singular Voices
Prayer and praise are the most explicit and clearest testimonies to the reality of God in a God-denying or God-indifferent world.
—Patrick D. Miller, quoted
by Martin E. Marty in
Context (Dec. 1, 1988)
Beyond Feelings
Religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery. As well can there be filial love without the fact of a father, as devotion without the fact of a Supreme Being.
—John Henry Newman in
Apologia Pro Vita Sua
The Absurdity Of Faith
In the Eucharist, we make believe in order to make ourselves believe.
—Robert Macfarlane
Real Forgiveness
Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, was reminded one day of a vicious deed that someone had done to her years before. But she acted as if she had never heard of the incident.
“Don’t you remember it?” her friend asked.
“No,” came Barton’s reply. “I distinctly remember forgetting it.”
—Luis Palau in Experiencing
God’s Forgiveness
