God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
History is a realm in which human freedom and natural necessity are curiously intermingled.
Man is both strong and weak, both free and bound, both blind and far-seeing. He stands at the juncture of nature and spirit; and is involved in both freedom and necessity.
Marxism is the modern form of Jewish prophecy.
A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.
The pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.
Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.
Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.
Cheese, wine, and a friend must be old to be good.
The fence and the boundary line are the symbols of the spirit of justice. They set the limits upon each man’s interest to prevent one from taking advantage of the other.
If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God.
History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life.
What is funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously.
The history of mankind is a perennial tragedy; for the highest ideals which the individual may project are ideals which he can never realize in social and collective terms.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen.
There is no deeper pathos in the spiritual life of man than the cruelty of righteous people. If any one idea dominates the teachings of Jesus, it is his opposition to the self-righteousness of the righteous.
When economic power desires to be left alone it uses the philosophy of laissez faire to discourage political restraint upon economic freedom. When it wants to make use of the police power of the state to subdue rebellions and discontent in the ranks of its helots, it justifies the use of political coercion and the resulting suppression of liberties by insisting that peace is more precious than freedom and that its only desire is social peace.
I wonder if anyone who needs a snappy song service can really appreciate the meaning of the cross.
Power,” said Henry Adams, “is poison”; and it is a poison which blinds the eyes of moral insight and lames the will of moral purpose. The.
The morality of the church is anachronistic. Will it ever develop a moral insight and courage sufficient to cope with the real problems of modern society? If it does it will require generations of effort and not a few martyrdoms. We ministers maintain our pride and self-respect and our sense of importance only through a vast and inclusive ignorance. If we knew the world in which we live a little better we would perish in shame or be overcome by a sense of futility.