They who seek religion for culture's sake are aesthetic, not religious, and will never gain that grace which religion adds to culture, because they never can have the religion.
John Campbell ShairpThere is perhaps no truer sign that a man is really advancing than that he is learning to forget himself, that he is losing the natural thoughts about self in the thought of One higher than himself, to whose guidance he can commit himself and all men.
John Campbell ShairpGreat men, great events, great epochs, it has been said, grow as we recede from them; and the rate at which they grow in the estimation of men is in some sort a measure of their greatness.
John Campbell ShairpThe ground of all religion, that which makes it possible, is the relation in which the human soul stands to God.
John Campbell ShairpWe are not called on to believe this or that doctrine which may be proposed to us till we can do so from honest conviction. But we are called on to trust--to trust ourselves to God, being sure that He will lead us right--to keep close to Him--and to trust the promises which He whispers through our conscience; this we can do, and we ought to do.
John Campbell Shairp