Prayer is, paradoxically, both a gift and a conquest, a grace and a duty. Does that not mean, is it not a special case of the truth, that all duty is a gift, every call on us a blessing, and that the task we often find a burden is really a boon?

We shall come one day to a heaven where we shall gratefully know that God's great refusals were sometimes the true answers to our truest prayer.

It is not in our choice to spread the gospel or not. It is our death if we do not.

To have no loyalty is to have no dignity, and in the end, no manhood.

Prayer is never rejected so long as we do not cease to pray. The chief failure of prayer is its cessation.

Prayer is, paradoxically, both a gift and a conquest, a grace and a duty. Does that not mean, is it not a special case of the truth, that all duty is a gift, every call on us a blessing, and that the task we often find a burden is really a boon?

People complain that the religious ground is unsure who have never compelled themselves to examine it with a tithe of the care spent on a contract; but they have taken current suggestions in a dreamy and hypnotised way. They will not attend, they will not force themselves to attend, gravely to the gravest things.... they read everything in a vagrant, browsing fashion. They turn on the most serious subjects the holiday, seaside, newspaper habit of mind