To make Christianity a private affair while banishing all privacy is to relegate it to the rainbow's end or the Greek Calends.

The human qualities of the raw materials show through. Naivety, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing Psalms) wickedness are not removed. The total result is not "the Word of God" in the sense that every passage in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God.

Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing.

Of course language is not an infallible guide, but it contains, with all its defects, a good deal of stored insight and experience.

It is by human avarice or human stupidity, not by the churlishness of nature, that we have poverty and overwork.

We 'have all we want' is a terrible saying when 'all' does not include God. We find God an interruption. As St. Augustine says somewhere, 'God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full - there's nowhere for Him to put it.'

Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron. Here is a book [The Lord of the Rings] which will break your heart."