“ If this instinct is absent, the man is not normal. If this instinct is suppressed, the man's soul is injured. If he does not believe in immortality, he will believe in something far less credible. It may be continued existence in the complex-life of humanity; it may be absorption of individual personality in some Oversoul. The issue is sorrow of heart, bitterness of soul, pessimism of creed, "Pessimism is the column of black smoke proceeding from the heart in which the hope of immortality has been burned to ashes." If a man remains normal, he believes in immortality. ”

“ Whoever met the lover who became so through his intellect? Who can know what love is except by loving? The lover does not sit down and reason the matter out, and after weighing all considerations say, "Yes, I will now love." Tell him to act thus and he will laugh outright. Love it is which draws him and causes him to act. He finds himself acting as he does just because he is in love, that is all. 'Tis true that reason exercises her part. Reason may show him that his love is harmful, or on the contrary that it has the sanction of his best judgment. ”

“ We shall therefore need in our Bible reading more thoughtfulness, more study, more prayer. But the outlay of these will be repaid a hundredfold. The Bible will shine forth for us more real, more natural, more divine. Our beliefs will rest on a firm foundation. And, though there may be still things that puzzle and perplex us, we shall learn that our Christian life does not depend on the understanding of all mysteries and all knowledge, but on the humble obedience to the will of God, which for all practical purposes is clearly revealed. ”

“ Prayer is the point of contact between ourselves and that great God. Indeed, we can say more than that, for when we pray we become our true selves. We are spirits of Eternity. For a time we live upon this earth having many duties to perform, and many important offices to fulfil,—but when we pray, when we praise God, we are performing our essential work as spirits. We have dropped for the moment the outer covering of our lives, and stand forth as being what we really are,—spirits who came from God, who are doing a certain work for God here, and are to return to God. ”

“ Faith—living faith—is the elemental act within man going forth from him as a son in search for the knowledge of God as Father. It is the greatest energising force within man, for it includes within itself the other capacities within man's personality, such as his emotions and his will; and in the case of the intellect,—it embraces all that the intellect can accomplish, and then goes beyond the limit which intellect can reach. ”

“ Reason has its limitations and love goes beyond it; outstrips it like heroism. It is exactly the same with faith. If you want to know what faith is, give yourself up to its influence, let yourself go out in response to it, let it carry you along, until by experience you will come to know the power of faith and the illumination of faith and the reality of faith. Other faculties will come to your aid to assist and to guide, but they can never be a substitute for faith. The personal knowledge of God can only be reached through faith. ”

“ Man looks also within himself as part of creation and finds he has a moral sense. He makes distinctions between right and wrong; there are present to his mind ideas of justice and mercy and love,—whence came these, he enquires, for these are not material forces at all, they are intellectual and spiritual? He sees men die and infants born, and he asks whence do they come and whither are they going. He refuses to believe that this life sees the end of man for he has within himself the witness that he is spirit and not matter. ”

“ On the other hand, He would have us ever mindful that our Father, when we approach in faith and penitence, is One Whose Name is to be hallowed, Who is the Lord of heaven and earth to Whom all things are possible, Who governs all things and knows all things, even the inmost thoughts of men.
Again, the Fatherhood of God is unchanging and universal. It must be so for He is the Eternal Father, and "He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust." Nevertheless, man's power to respond to God's Fatherhood is not everywhere the same. ”

“ We are inclined to think too much of our own needs in relation to prayer. Indeed when we mention the word prayer, we begin at once to think of our needs, of what we want, and of what other people want. These are important, but these are not first; and until we understand that they take the second place in prayer, and do not constitute its chief argument, we cannot realize the real reason for Christian Prayer. The real, the first reason for prayer from the Christian point of view is to glorify God,—to praise Him for what He is, and to fall down before the greatness of His power. ”

“ This belief is created and can be maintained only by viewing life in relation to God and immortality.
Every man should therefore put the question to himself: "If I die, shall I live again?" "What kind of life am I living now? Is it life eternal, or life merely temporal? Is it a friendship with God which death can never extinguish?" Only One Life has ever won open victory over death. Only one kind of life ever can win it—that kind of life which was in Christ, which is in Christ, which He shares with all whom faith makes one with Him. ”

“ When Society talks about the "failure" of Christianity what it usually has in mind is the failure of Christian people to conform to the Christian standard of truthfulness and justice, of honesty and straight dealing, of continence and self-respect; being like other people, lovers of money and applause rather than examples of that love for their neighbour commanded in the Gospels. The human will needs supernatural strength to live Christ's system of morals. God demands that the entire personality, intellect, emotion, will, should be committed to Him in an all-embracing, loving faith. ”

“ We shall understand this best if we study the Bible teaching on sonship and brotherhood in the light of the revelation which God has given of His Fatherhood. There are in the Bible different kinds of sonship, or sonships on different levels. The fact that we are created and created in the image of our Maker constitutes sonship. He is our Father Who gives us life. "Have we not all one Father, hath not God created us?" There is, therefore, a sonship which is natural and universal, but it is not in itself complete. Its value consists in the fact that it is the ground of a higher relationship. ”

“ It comes to us full of answers to our question, Why should we pray? "When ye pray, say, Our Father, Which art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven." This surely means that God must be first in our prayers. [2] We are half way through the Lord's Prayer, we are more than half way through, before we begin to talk about our needs. Our Lord Jesus Christ has taught us that in prayer we are to think first of such things as the Father, Heaven, His Name, His Kingdom and His Will, before we say anything of the bread and our other needs. ”

“ I have been anxious to show you that the position of the Bible rests not on any miracle, or any external authority of the Church or Council, but on its appeal to the minds and consciences of men. You may doubt a miracle, you may doubt your individual instincts, you may doubt the competency of any one body of men; you cannot doubt so easily the conviction of a hundred generations. ”

“ By His Resurrection Christ has raised this yearning hope into a mighty present power brought to bear on humanity. The Christian hope of immortality, certain and rich in the possession of abundant life, gives breadth and outlook to all human efforts. It inspires duty. Brought to bear on our work, it makes effort worth while. If all we have striven to do and yet failed to do is to be perfected in the eternal morning, we can face our tasks with fresh courage. All social reconstructions that deny or neglect the Christian thought of an endless life fail here. ”

“ We cannot ignore personality in man. To do so is to awaken resentment, unrest and strife. The statesmen already quoted are clearly right. Peace and progress in the world depend on the recognition of this truth growing more and more adequate until we realize fully the brotherhood of men which is implied in God's Fatherhood. We cannot ignore Personality in God, or pass it by as a truth that belongs to childhood only. It is a vigorous intelligent faith which commands the allegiance of men. ”

“ FAITH GOES FURTHER THAN REASON IN HUMAN AFFAIRS.
There are people who feel that they can only tread where the ground is solid; where they see quite clearly what is ahead; who take no risks; who venture nothing. Yet it is utterly impossible to live so in real life. Most of the business transacted in the world is based on a system of credits; and credit is but another name for faith in personal honesty. The financial investments that are made are ventures of faith as to profits and returns. ”

“ Put yourself in their place. Picture the nations of the earth in their ignorance and depravity, with their blind gropings after God, reaching no higher than fetishes and idols, and the tales of classical mythology. Then listen wonderingly to those prophetic voices in Israel amid the surroundings of that dark old world before Romulus and Remus were suckled by the wolf:
"Jehovah, Jehovah. A God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty. ”

“ The only way to solve the problem of praying is by praying. Nothing will do instead. In spite of the difficulties, in spite of distractions, of weariness, of failure, of moods, of coldness,—we pray. Nothing will do instead. Nothing else will solve the problem. Reading books and listening to sermons on prayer will not do instead. The only way to learn to pray is to pray. The people who get things done are the people who, not having the time or the inclination often, in spite of these things,—pray.
In a word, we have to treat prayer as work, as part of our definite work as Christians. ”

“ Man is too great to be crowded within the narrow limits of seventy years. "So much to do, so little done" were among the last words of Cecil Rhodes. To develop the latent powers we possess, we have no adequate opportunity here. Deep in our souls is the quenchless desire for a fuller expression of our powers. Could God build the human soul with all its capacities for the few years of this fleeting life on earth? Not if there is rationality at the heart of the universe.
4.—This world is an insoluble moral enigma, if there is no other world to explain it. ”

“ It is in this refusal of the innermost being of a man to consent to any materialistic explanation of the phenomena of nature or of human life that faith declares itself. The judgment which insists that the only adequate explanation of the universe (as science has made it known) must be sought on the basis of the existence of a spiritual world permeating all that is seen in human life, and that behind it all as its source and origin, as its upholder and controlling power, is God—this is faith. ”

“ III. Does Science throw any light on our problem? There may not be any absolute scientific proof of a life beyond; but Science has no demonstrative evidence against it. At least it leaves the question open. Some go so far as to say that the results of modern scientific research, when fairly viewed, are favourable to the reception of the belief in immortality. A great modern physicist says: "The death of the body does not convey any assurance of the soul's death. Every physical analogy is against such a superficial notion in nature. We never see things beginning or coming to an end. ”

“ We are about to tread holy ground, therefore a reverent spirit is needful above all things else. We are about to investigate, albeit in the briefest manner, the nature and character of that Sacrament which our dying Saviour left as the bond of comradeship between His followers and Himself, and between His followers with one another, but which historically has been the occasion of more strife and discord betwixt Christian people than any other institution or fact of our holy faith ”

“ Now consider that this Bible has held its authoritative position in the face of the most violent attacks all through the centuries; that infidels have dreamed that they had overthrown it and exploded it times without number, with the result only that its power has steadily increased, so that to-day it would be almost as easy to root the sun out of the heavens as to root this Bible out of human life. ”

“ Jesus claims the sovereignty over man's whole personality. Those who call Him "Lord, Lord," must do the things He says. It is just at this point that the world tests the Christian faith. The world is practical; it demands not profession, but works. It knows that Jesus bequeathed a system of morals to His followers, especially in the Sermon on the Mount; and, while it is ignorant of the grace Jesus bestows to enable human nature to rise above itself, yet in its rough and ready way it holds faith of no value which is not shown in "fruits". ”

“ Our Christian watchwords are enough—"love in absence, trust in silence, faith in reunion."
(b) By His Life.—To the eye that can see, His life is the supreme argument for immortality. He lived such a life of fellowship with God and so near to the frontier of eternity that the glory of it shone upon and from His face. The longing for a life higher than the life of time is answered in His life. Such a life could not be holden by death. It is eternal. ”

“ We live in a busy age, and activity is nearly idolised. It is not that we must always be busy, but rather that what we do is not a mere fad or notion taken up enthusiastically and, when difficulties present themselves, then just as quickly dropped. The outcome of faith is a task done for God on behalf of others, when toil will cheerfully be borne, drudgery endured, trials met with patience, and—through evil report and good report—the work continued. ”