The worst attitude of all would be the professional attitude which regards children in the lump as a sort of raw material which we have to handle.
Total war is the most humane in the long run.
Those who would most scornfully repudiate Christianity as a mere “opiate of the people” have a contempt for the rich, that is, for all mankind except the poor.
Unless thought is valid we have no reason to believe in the real universe.
A universe whose only claim to be believed in rests on the validity of inference must not start telling us the inference is invalid.
We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed.
Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine.
Man must endure his going hence.
Unless Christianity is wholly false, the perception of ourselves which we have in moments of shame must be the only true one...
If you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?
I wish they would remember that the charge to Peter was “Feed my sheep”, not “Try experiments on my rats”, or even “Teach my performing dogs new tricks”.
The only way to drive out bad culture is to create good culture. We need to recognize that artistic talent is a gift from the Lord – and that developing those talents is the only way to create good culture.
A man may have to die for our country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.
A man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales resistance.
If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is, ‘I am.’ To know God is to know that our obedience is due to Him.
If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about.
Jesus was either a Liar, a Lunatic, or Lord.
To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable in you.
In justifying cruelty to animals we put ourselves also on the animal level. We choose the jungle and must abide by our choice.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says.