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 ShairpThe belief in a Divine education, open to each man and to all men, takes up into itself all that is true in the end proposed by culture, supplements, and perfects it.
John Campbell ShairpCriticism is not religion, and by no process can it be substituted for it. It is not the critic's eye, but the child's heart, that most truly discerns the countenance that looks out from the pages of the gospel.
John Campbell ShairpFor with all our pretension to enlightenment, are we not now a talking, desultory, rather than a meditative generation?
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