Tuesday, March 5, 2013

God’s Love

The good do not and ought not to absorb God’s love. For the evil have within them equal capacities of goodness. In all men lies, however hidden, an infinitely precious germ of love and holiness waiting to be quickened. And to the All-seeing eye this is never lost. It calls forth unutterable love. Yes! God loves the most evil. We in our conceited purity may withdraw from them, may think it pollution to touch them may say, ‘Stand off.’ But God says to His outcast child, ‘Come near.’

— William Ellery Channing (1780-1842)

God Whispering to the Soul

Now, believe me, God hides some ideal in every soul. At some time in our life we feel a trembling, fearful longing to do some good thing. Life finds its noblest spring of excellence in this hidden impulse to do our best. There is a time when we are not content to be such merchants or doctors or lawyers as we see on the dead level or below it. … Here is God,—God standing silently at the door all day long,—God whispering to the soul, that to be pure and true is to succeed in life, and whatever we get short of that will burn up like stubble, though the whole world try to save it.

— Robert Collyer (1823-1912)

From The Sinews of Peace

What then is the over-all strategic concept which we should inscribe today? It is nothing less than the safety and welfare, the freedom and progress, of all the homes and families of all the men and women in all the lands. ...

To give security to these countless homes, they must be shielded from the two giant marauders, war and tyranny. We all know the frightful disturbances in which the ordinary family is plunged when the curse of war swoops down upon the bread-winner and those for whom he works and contrives. The awful ruin of Europe, with all its vanished glories, and of large parts of Asia glares us in the eyes. When the designs of wicked men or the aggressive urge of mighty States dissolve over large areas the frame of civilised society, humble folk are confronted with difficulties with which they cannot cope. For them all is distorted, all is broken, even ground to pulp.

… Our supreme task and duty is to guard the homes of the common people from the horrors and miseries of another war. We are all agreed on that.

— Sir Winston Churchill (delivered March 5, 1946)

Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)