“A great man lays upon posterity the duty of understanding him.”
“From his agonies and exultations he emerged with a great charity towards men, and something nobler than humanism. The world with all its suffering and sinning mortals was God’s world, which He had created and redeemed, and he looked upon it with a patient kindness. Of such a creed as his, and of such a temperament, quietism could not be the fruit. He must be up and doing, for he was called upon to assist in the building of the City of God….A man all his days must be busy making his soul, and forcing the world to conform to the heavenly will.”—John Buchan, Oliver Cromwell
“Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.”
“I do not know in advance what love of others means on the basis of the general idea of love that grows out of my human desires—all this may rather be hatred and an insidious kind of selfishness in the eyes of Christ. What love is, only Christ tells us in his Word.”
“For the mature Christian, every Scripture reading will be “too long” even the shortest one. What does this mean? The Scripture is a whole and every word, every sentence possesses such multiple relationships with the whole that it is impossible always to keep the whole in view while listening to details. It becomes apparent, therefore, that the whole of the Scriptures (and hence every passage in it as well) far surpasses our understanding.”
