To Estimate Spiritual Qualities
You cannot put inward peace under a microscope. You cannot weigh a prayer. You cannot measure moral certainty. —Edwin Lewis (1931)
425.1 Light & Life
Divine Leading
The religion of the spirit leaves you free to follow truth whithersoever it may take you. —Ernest Fremont Tittle (1928)
Superb Inner Peace
Two inferior forms of hardihood have often appeared. One of them is Stoicism, the refusal to be crushed, the sense of an inner dignity which enables me to stand on my own feet, no matter what happens. A second or milder aspect is the habit of looking on the bright side. In everything one side … Read more
Loyalty to Christ
A great many of the educated youth of [the United States and Canada] … find it difficult to understand how a Church founded by Christ can show such feeble loyalty to the principles of truth, the way of life and the spirit of love to which His life was dedicated. Their very loyalty to the … Read more
Faith and Belief
A belief becomes a faith when it shapes the way of one’s living, when it determines what one shall live for. It is not a faith merely when it is accepted as true. A proposition accepted as true is a mere belief. The conviction or certainty is not what makes it faith. It is the … Read more
Bearing Witness
True religion exists only so far as “the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” … It is not a special group of propositions but a special kind of insight and of trust. —John Baillie (1928)
Fine Tuning the Charge
In a recent classroom discussion, one student defined prayer as a charging of the battery of the soul through contact with the Infinite God. This figure has in it much of truth, but the class put it in second place when another student contributed his definition. “Prayer,” he said, “is a tuning-in of the radio … Read more
The Idea
“… The power of an idea lies, not in its certainty but in its vividness and in the number of people who believe in it …” —Sumner and Keller, quoting Lippert (1927)
Why?
Why is it a sign of philosophical ineptitude to “humanize” God but a sign of philosophical superiority to “mechanize” him? —Edwin Lewis (1931)
Finding Continuity
Religious states of mind contrast with those which are scientific or simply practical or moral in this respect, that whereas the scientific and moral are attempts at mastery over the not-self, to bring the objective material within the categories of the understanding or to bend it to the purpose of the will, in religion the … Read more