21 quotes
We have a moral obligation to be interesting, for our gospel is loaded with life-and-death interest for people.
To the faith that "God is love" and that love is the power that can save the world, many give the jaunty answer "What nonsense!"
The words "God is love" have this deep meaning: that everything that is against love is ultimately doomed and damned.
Keeping Life Out of Confusion (1938)
There is the liability of accepting prematurely an artificial horizon for our own character and personality, of losing the horizon of the possible person we might be.
Marching Off the Map: And Other Sermons (1952)
In fact, that is exactly what many of their contemporaries took them to be.
The Questing Spirit: Religion in the Literature of Our Time (1947)
There is far-reaching appropriateness in the fact that the world's immortal baby story, that of Bethlehem, should be a story of turning things upside down — for that is a baby's chief business.
Fares, Please! (1915)
The Christian message is not an exhortation — "try hard to be good." Good advice, but there is no saving gospel in that.
Marching Off the Map: And Other Sermons (1952)
I believe in comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.
When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled "made in Germany"; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, "Americanism."
Keeping Life Out of Confusion (1938)
Expressions of sharp and even violent criticism of religion and the church have been welcomed, for they usually imply sincerity of thought.
The Questing Spirit: Religion in the Literature of Our Time (1947)
Contrast Pilate with the prisoner before him, Jesus. Pilate was deeply concerned with position and power. Jesus cared for none of these things. Which was the richer in all that makes a great personality and true success in life?
The central core of truth is that Christmas turns everything upside down, the upside of heaven come down to earth. The Christmas story puts a new value on every man.
Whoops! It's Christmas (1959)
Christmas is a story about a baby, and that is a baby's chief business, turning things upside down.
Whoops! It's Christmas (1959)
Warning the students against an over-concern for money, or position, or glory, he said: "Some day you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.
We ought to recognize that uncertainty of mind is not all a bad thing. It is a sign that your mind is still alive, still sensitive.
Keeping Life Out of Confusion (1938)
Christmas turns things last end foremost. The people whom the world arranges last in its procession — the weary, the poor, the foolish, the lame, the halt, the blind — these are the ones who come at the very head of the column in the consideration of the Little Child who leads.
Fares, Please! (1915)
The aim of preaching is not the elucidation of a subject, but the transformation of a person … Our task is … the sharing of intense faith and experience.
Christmas is good news in a world of bad news. This was so on the first Christmas and on Christmas 1959 … Christmas brings hope to a dark world.
Whoops! It's Christmas (1959)
There is a major disaster when a person allows some success to become a stopping place rather than a way station on to a larger goal. It often happens that an early success is a greater moral hazard than an early failure.
Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia (1962)
Christmas turns everything upside down. This is the central truth of the incarnation — "Immanuel, God with us." The upside of heaven come down to earth. "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, . . . full of grace and truth." Men miss the entire meaning of Jesus when they see in him the highest upreach of man; he is God reaching down and making common cause with man's struggle. The meaning of Christmas puts down the mighty things in men's minds from their seats — place, riches, talents — and exalts the things of low degree — humility, simplicity, and trust.
Fares, Please! (1915)