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)

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)

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 of the soul, to catch the music and message of the eternal.” —Benjamin Willard Robinson (1930)

Vultures soar into the blue until they are invisible, mounting in a spiral, but never moving their wings. Their outspread wings, while motionless, are kept adjusted to the upper currents of air in such a way that they are lifted ever higher…. Prayer is adjusting the personality to God in such a way that God can work more potently for good than he otherwise could, as the outstretched wings of a bird enable the rising currents to carry it to higher levels.  —Henry Nelson Wieman and Regina Westcott-Wieman (1935)

Prayer is efficacious, never as a substitute for action, but as a guide and stimulus to action.  —William Kelley Wright (1922)