19th-century Theologian Quotes

John Henry Newman

Karl Barth

Brigham Young

William Booth

Edwin Abbott Abbott

Rudolf Otto

Samson Raphael Hirsch

The search for truth is not a trade by which a man can support himself; for a priest it is a supreme peril.

The policy is obliteration, openly acknowledged. This is not a justifiable act of war.

Of the saturation bombing of Berlin

George Bell (bishop)

The New Testament preaches a Christ who was dead and is alive, not a Christ who was alive and is dead.

The Holy Spirit of God dwelling in us, knowing our wants better than we, Himself pleads in our prayers, raising us to higher and holier desires than we can express in words, which can only find utterance in sighings and aspirations.

People complain that our generation has no philosophers. They are wrong. They now sit in another faculty. Their names are Max Planck and Albert Einstein.

Adolf von Harnack

God does not love that which is already in itself worthy of love, but on the contrary, that which in itself has no worth acquires worth just by becoming the object of God's love. Agape has nothing to do with the kind of love that depends on the recognition of a valuable quality in its object. Agape does not recognize value, but creates it. Agape loves, and imparts value by loving. The man who is loved by God has no value in himself; what gives him value is precisely the fact that God loves him. Agape is a value-creating principle.

Match me such marvel, save in Eastern clime,—
A rose-red city—half as old as Time!

The law of the harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny.

George Boardman the Younger

If within us we find nothing over us we succumb to what is around us.

If you are under the dominion of sin, you are yet an utter stranger to the salvation of God.

Catherine Booth

It is in vain for us to devise schemes by which competition can be put out of civilized life. Competition is the condition of life.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel.

John Mason Neale

I held apostolic succession fully, and the channels of grace to be there only.

John Nelson Darby

For the son of man shall come in the glory of His Father, with His angels; and then shall He reward every man according to his works.

Alexander Balmain Bruce

Good cookery is not an extravagance but an economy, and many a tasty dish is made by our Continental friends out of materials which would be discarded indignantly by the poorest tramp in Whitechapel.

The grave is a very small hillock, but we can see farther from it, when standing on it, than from the highest mountain in all the world.

Friedrich Tholuck

Our earthly possessions will indeed perish in the final wreck of all things; but let the ship perish, let all we have sink in the deep, if we may come "safe to land." From these storms and billows — these dangerous seas — these tempestuous voyages — may we all be brought at last, safe to heaven.

Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle.

The life-boat may have a tasteful bend and beautiful decoration, but these are not the qualities for which I prize it; it was my salvation from the howling sea! So the interest which a regenerate soul takes in the Bible, is founded on a personal application to the heart of the saving truth which it contains.

James Waddel Alexander

As I pass it, I feel as if I saw a dear old mother, sweet in her weakness, trembling at the approach of her dissolution, but not appealing to me against the inevitable, rather endeavouring to reassure me by her patience, and pointing to a hopeful future.

Thomas Edward Brown

The benefit of the King's Coronation depends under God upon … the faith, prayer and self-dedication of the King himself … We hope that he is aware of this need. Some of us wish that he gave more positive signs of such awareness.

The very fact of a Christian being here, and not in Heaven, is a proof that some work awaits him.

William Arnot (preacher)

Logic is like sitting on the bank of a river and deducing its contents from a fish caught in its waters.

Edgar Young Mullins

So long as we stand "under the Law", we cannot perceive this hidden unity of all the commandments. It is part of legalism that the will of God must appear to it as a multiplicity of commandments. In actual fact, it is one and indivisible; God wants nothing else except love because He Himself is love.

The Son of God, prompted by the same infinite love, laid aside his divine glory and mode of existence, emptied himself exchanged the form of God for the form of a servant, humbled himself and became obedient, even unto the death of the cross.