The religion of the spirit leaves you free to follow truth whithersoever it may take you. —Ernest Fremont Tittle (1928)

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 is brighter than another. Let me turn my face in that direction. Before Jesus revealed the strength available through the fatherhood of God, these palliatives had value. But they are superficial and do not touch the sources of inner peace as do the words of Jesus.  —George Herbert Palmer (1930)

A discouraged and downcast fellow, struggling with obstacles and fighting with failures, will often deliberately attribute all his misfortune and difficulties to some trifling mistake in his youth, or to some insignificant blunder or minor transgression in later life.
There recently came into our clinic a young man whose life was a perfect failure; he had contemplated suicide, but a friend urged him to come and see us. After an hour’s talk he was ready to go to work and he has continued to make rapid progress and satisfactory improvement…. In times of trouble and harassment, let us swell out our chests, breathe deeply, and face these trifling difficulties like men.  —William S. Sadler, M.D. (1914)

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 Christ of the Gospels often makes it difficult for them to be enthusiastically loyal to the Church which bears His name. —Rufus M. Jones (1932)

[I]n life there are so many factors involved that mathematical enumeration is the smallest and often the least important element involved. No illustration is more apt than the time-worn example of the logics, wherein it is presumed that if one man could dig a well in ten days, ten men could dig it in one. The mathematics is, of course, perfect, but worthless as overlooking the fact that ten men would, in that kind of a task, be in each other’s way.  —Ralph Tyler Flewelling (1926)

It has been said that modern civilization could not have been built upon any such foundation as the words of Jesus. That may be true. Quite imaginably it is also true that what could be built upon his words would be a better thing than modern civilization is. —W. R. Bowie (1928)

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 way it controls the living of the believer.  —Henry Nelson Wieman (1935)