Walter Brown Murray

“ Why read into every passage of Scripture a confirmation of that doctrine which has taken away from men the sense of need to keep the Lord's commandments and by destroying that sense of need, destroyed the effectiveness of Christianity in actually changing men? Let us fancy men saying, "Why change our lives when we have no need, when salvation is a free gift simply by believing a dogma, when all we can do is only evil has no effect in saving us?" ”

“ Ought one not to expect that marriage shall begin with a flourish and end as a fiasco? Is it not the fact that the beginning of marriage is apt to be about all there is to it so far as happiness is concerned? Can one reasonably expect the honeymoon to continue very long? Is your high ideal of marriage anything more than a tame friendship after the honeymoon is past? ”

“ I do not believe in the wedding ceremony that makes a woman promise to obey her husband, and if I were a woman I would never so promise. It is obsolete and it is being taken out of the modern wedding ceremony.
None of us believes in that old-fashioned idea of marriage any longer. We do not believe that wives should be obedient to their husbands. We do not believe in domination of the wife, and certainly not of the husband. Each must be free. Obviously the only way people can get along in marriage is by loving each other enough to be willing to pull together in double harness. ”

“ You know perfectly well that there never was 'a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins.' You know perfectly well that in the whole history of the world there never was a sinner plunged "beneath that flood.' to 'lose his guilty stains.' You realize as I speak that the song you love is only a simile. You realize that the truth which flowed from Jesus is as a fountain in which men may bathe.—as they obey that truth, and they are cleansed from their sins as they obey. ”

“ Man rests upon matter, has his roots in it, and draws his physical sustenance from it, like a plant, but his soul reaches up through the realm of the spiritual plane by plane to the Divine, from which it draws its entire life. ”

“ Now let me state here with all the emphasis possible,—single-blessedness is better for both men and women alike than the hells into which some marriages plunge one. A wrong choice in marriage is not easily rectified, not even by divorce.
Marriage is ideally the happiest relationship in the world, in every way the most satisfying, enchantingly beautiful. It is heaven on earth when it is ideal. It is supreme over all others in the sense that it is the fountain from which all other relationships proceed. ”

“ They are like men who shut themselves up in houses and never see the sun. They do, indeed, perceive the sunlight as it enters their homes through the doors and windows. They feel the warmth of spring and summer and the cold of autumn and winter; but they only imagine the source from which the phenomena of light and heat and all consequent activity proceed. How can men who have never looked up at the heavens and beheld the roseate hues of dawn, the splendor of noonday, and the glories of the sunset know correctly of the world in which they live? ”

“ Thus men must come to seek the welfare and happiness of all others rather than their own by service to them from the love of God in their hearts. This joy in service must become the delight of lives. It is the love of sharing, which makes the joy of heaven.
The neighbor who we are to love is not necessarily the person of another but his eternal good, that which brings lasting happiness to him, the life of orderly and useful living which is the life of Jesus in his soul. We cannot love the disagreeable and evil qualities in another, but we can love his reform, the giving up of his evil. ”

“ I cannot fancy myself saying to a pure young soul like that, Enter into a trial marriage, or a companionate one, if you like to call it that; practice birth control until you find out whether you want to live permanently with your husband; but always keep in mind that you can dissolve your marriage at any time by mutual consent. An honest study of yourself and your sweetheart and of marriage itself is not at all necessary; for, after living together awhile you can separate and try it out with someone else. Enjoy life. ”

“ Critics have disposed of him and his claims often enough to have eliminated any other man from human interest; but somehow he is not eliminated. When the mists of their criticism, like the smoke of a fireworks display, has drifted away, we still behold him looming up above the plain, dominating the landscape like some lofty mountain peak which lifts our thoughts to heaven even as it lifts itself in eternal beauty to the sky. Even in his remoteness he is accessible; even in his sublimity he is not cold. Supremely above us, he is intensely human. ”

“ Thus we can love that which is truly and sincerely and permanently good for all men. And we should seek that good at all times and everywhere.
Oneness with all others should be a goal in life, be they white or black, red, brown, or yellow, whether they be of our own nationality or race or creed. We are to think of them as children of God and strive for the eternally good in them as we strive for our own. ”

“ All barriers would be swept away if marriage were only a matter of trial and easy divorce, and we can easily imagine a time when men and women would be as free as dogs to mate with whatever dog of the other sex that came around.
How about monogamic marriage, marriage with one only? What is the nature of the instinct of love when it awakens in the human heart? I do not now refer to strong sex desire, but to that holy instinct of true love which puts a woman upon a pedestal and makes her an object of reverence? Does not love desire marriage only with the beloved? ”

“ Let us assume, for the sake of the argument, that it is the very truth itself; that I wrote with the eloquence of an angel, adduced the most convincing arguments, proved my case perfectly for most men—there would still be many who would criticize and find fault and reject, for the possession of the truth may involve sacrifice of cherished opinions.
There are men who love reasonings about the truth; they delight in scientific processes of thought, but they have somehow lost sight of the object of their thought, truth itself, and the common sense that ought to characterize the search. ”

“ It is perfectly true that we are saved by faith in the Son of God, but that mans that we are saved as we come into the realization or perception of Jesus as God come forth to view, and accept His help to live the Christ-like life, thus are saved by our co-operation,—our free choice of the good and the rejection of the evil.—which mans our coming into the new life of God in the soul. That is the faith in the Son of God. We are not as sticks and stones, unable to choose the good and reject the evil ”

“ We do not like to change either our thoughts or our manner of life. We like the old ways. Like old shoes, they are more comfortable. We would probably declare, if asked, that we want to know the truth, but we are pretty well satisfied that we already know it. So if we chance to find that a knowledge of the truth involves a giving up or a laying down, a renunciation, a sacrifice of something that we have learned to love because we have had it in our possession a very long time, we may decide that the new thing is not the truth because it is not so comfortable as the old view. ”

“ I am trying to save you from unhappiness, trying to take the gamble out of marriage for you. It cannot be done wholly, but one can avoid a lot of trouble by trying to see his girl as others see her, and especially in her adaption to him.
Love makes us blind. We see the other one as we want them to be. We marry our ideal. We invest them with virtues that exist only in our mind. ”

“ But each separate step in the program of creation was a separate and distinct act of creation. The creation of the vegetable kingdom, with its innumerable species, was at every step a new act of creative activity, as was the creation of the animal kingdom. And man was as distinctive a creation as anything that preceded him, for, as we have seen, there was created in him that which had not existed in vegetable or animal, the plane of the spiritual, with its inmost receptacle of God to enable him to become the moral image and likeness of his Creator. ”