I believe in comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.

The Christian message is not an exhortation - "try hard to be good." Good advice, but there is no saving gospel in that.

No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.

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.

We have a moral obligation to be interesting, for our gospel is loaded with life-and-death interest for people.

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. It is the danger of considering our character as something static, rather than as something emerging.

Many years ago Rudyard Kipling gave an address at McGill University in Montreal. He said one striking thing which deserves to be remembered. 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.'