Quotable Quotes:

I. By: Horace Bushnell [the beginning of American Liberalism] (1802-1876)



 My own experience is that the Bible is dull when I am dull. 

Be sure that Christ is not behind you, but before, calling and drawing you on. 

O, if we could tear aside the veil, and see for but one hour what it signifies to be a soul in the power of an endless life, what a revelation would it be!

As long as we abide in Christ, our action is from Him, not from our own corrupt and broken nature.

Quotable Quotes from the book “God in Christ”: Three discourses delivered at New Haven, Cambridge, and Andover, with a preliminary dissertation on language, by Horace Bushnell

(This site will continue to be updated for further additions.)

[T]he word spirit means, originally, breath, or air in motion; that being the symbol…of a power moving unseen.

The word religion is re, back, and ligo, to bind – the conception being that man is made to be free, but bound back in terms of obligation to his Maker.

Words of thought or spirit are not only inexact in their significance, never measuring the truth or giving the precise equivalent, but they always affirm something which is false, or contrary to the truth intended.

There is no book in the world that contains so many repugnancies, or antagonistic forms of assertion, as the Bible.

Whoever wants, … really to behold and receive all truth… has [in the Bible] not only the words of Christ, the most manifold of all teachers, but he has gospels…; and then, besides, he has four, some say five, distinct writers of epistles, who follow, giving each his own view of the doctrine of salvation and the Christian life, (views so unlike or antagonistical that many have regarded them as  being quite irreconcilable) – Paul, the dialectic, commonly so called; John, the mystic; James, the moralizer; Peter, the homilectic; and perhaps a fifth in the epistle to the Hebrews, who is a Christian templar and Hebraizer.

In algebra, and geometry, the ideas themselves being absolute, the terms or names also may be; but in mental science and religion, no such exactness is possible, because our apprehensions of truth are here only proximate and relative. I see not, therefore, how the subject matter of mental science and religion can ever be included under the fixed forms of dogma.

[The Apostle] Paul undertakes no theological system, in any case. He only speaks to some actual want, to remove some error, rectify some hurtful mistake. There is nothing of the system-maker about him.

We find little…in the Scriptures, to encourage the hope of a complete and sufficient Christian dogma.

Nothing is so unsolid, many times – no figment so vacant of meaning as  that dead body of abstractions, or logical propositions, called theology; which, professing to give us the contents of God’s truth, puts us off  too generally, with the mere exuviae of reason; which extinguishes the living fires of truth to show us the figures it can draw in the ashes.

II. Henry Ward Beecher [Popular revolt against Calvinism] (1813-1887)


It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.

Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow.

A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.

The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note - torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.

III. Dwight L. Moody [the high tide of Revivalism] (1837-1899)

Faith makes all things possible... love makes all things easy.

There are many of us that are willing to do great things for the Lord, but few of us are willing to do little things.

A man ought to live so that everybody knows he is a Christian... and most of all, his family ought to know.

A good example is far better than a good precept.

A rule I have had for years is: to treat the Lord Jesus Christ as a personal friend. His is not a creed, a mere doctrine, but it is He Himself we have.

There's no better book with which to defend the Bible than the Bible itself.

God never made a promise that was too good to be true.

We talk about heaven being so far away. It is within speaking distance to those who belong there. Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people.

 If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of me.

The Bible will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible.

Church attendance is as vital to a disciple as a transfusion of rich, healthy blood to a sick man.

I know the Bible is inspired because it inspires me.

God doesn't seek for golden vessels, and does not ask for silver ones, but He must have clean ones.

Death may be the King of terrors... but Jesus is the King of kings!

IV. Washington Gladden [the development of  the “New Theology”] (1836-1918)

The substance of all realities is in this religion of Jesus Christ; but it can be real only to those who will do His will.

"A little while," and the load
Shall drop at the pilgrim's feet,
Where the steep and thorny road
Doth merge in the golden street.

V. Walter Rauschenbusch [the challenge of the Social Gospel] (1861-1918)

Christianity in its nature revolutionary.

Every generation tries to put its doctrine on a high shelf where the children cannot reach it.