Many a man, brought up in the glib profession of some shallow form of Christianity, who comes through reading Astronomy to realize for the first time how majestically indifferent most reality is to man, and who perhaps abandons his religion on that account, may at that moment be having his first genuinely religious experience.

If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a wandering to find home, why should we not look forward to the arrival?

Reality, looked at steadily, is unbearable.

Of course God does not consider you hopeless. If He did He would not be moving you to seek Him (and He obviously is). What is going on in you at present is simply the beginning of the treatment. Continue seeking with cheerful seriousness. Unless He wanted you, you would not be wanting Him.

Love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people.

The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift.

It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost Him crucifixion.