Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/146

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CHRISTIANITY.

Give us more and more of real Christianity, and we shall need less of its evidences.


Act upon the supposition that Christ is a Divine Teacher, and you will soon have a demonstration of its truth.


I desire no other evidence of the truth of Christianity than the Lord's Prayer.


Read a work on the "Evidences of Christianity," and it may become highly probable that Christianity, etc., are true. This is an opinion. Feel God. Do His will, till the Absolute Imperative within you speaks as with a living voice, "Thou shalt, and thou shalt not;" and then you do not think, you know that there is a God.


Christians are continually tempted to do what all controversy solicits them to do; namely, to argue; as if their business was to establish, in the light of the understanding, certain conclusions to which every rational person must assent. But this is to put the main point, the attractive action of God Himself, out of the question. If the end of God be what we hold it to be, to bring human souls to Himself, then the means He actually employs must be living and spiritual. They are likely to be infinitely various and subtle; but they will deal principally with the conscience and the affections.


The real difficulty with thousands in the present day is not that Christianity has been found wanting, but that it has never been seriously tried.