Theologians From Germany

"This is understood by none but the Children of Christ, who have known it by Experience. When Christ the Corner-stone stirreth himself in the extinguished Image of Man, in his hearty Conversion and Repentance, then Virgin Sophia appeareth in the Stirring of the Spirit of Christ in the extinguished Image, in her Virgin's Attire before the Soul; at which the Soul is so amazed and astonished in its Uncleanness, that all its Sins immediately awake in it, and it trembleth before her; for then the Judgement passeth upon the Sins of the Soul, so that it even goeth back in its Unworthiness, being ashamed in the Presence of its fair Love, and entereth into itself, feeling and acknowledging itself utterly unworthy to receive such a Jewel. This is understood by those who are of our Tribe, and have tasted of this Heavenly Gift, and by none else. But the noble Sophia draweth near in the Essence of the Soul, and kisseth it in friendly Manner, and tinctureth its dark Fire with her Rays of Love, and shineth through it with her bright and powerful Influence. Penetrated with the strong Sense and Feeling of which, the Soul skippeth in its Body for great Joy, and in the Strength of this Virgin Love exulteth, and praiseth the great God for his blessed Gift of Grace."

"A real true Christian hath no controversy or contention with anybody; for, in the resignation in Christ, he dieth from all controversy and strife; he asketh no more after the way to God, but wholly surrenders himself to the mother, namely, unto the spirit of Christ; and whatsoever it doth with him it is all one to him; be it prosperity or adversity in this world — life or death — it is all alike unto him; no adversity or calamity reacheth the new man, but only the old man of this world. With the same the world may do what it pleaseth: it belongeth unto the world; but the new man belongeth to God."

"I must tell you, sir, that yesterday the pharisaical devil was let loose, cursed me and my little book, and condemned the book to the fire. He charged me with shocking vices; with being a scorner of both Church and Sacraments, and with getting drunk daily on brandy, wine, and beer; all of which is untrue; while he himself is a drunken man."

"Theological condemnation of others, which breaks off fellowship in either judgment or contempt, is impermissible."

"Become a fertile ground for the divine birth. Cherish this deep silence within, nourish it thumb|right|Cherish this deep silence within, nourish it frequently frequently."

"May God help us to prepare a dwelling place for this noble birth, so that we may all attain spiritual motherhood"

"One man can spin, another can make shoes, and all these are gifts of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, if I were not a priest, I should esteem it a great gift that I was able to make shoes, and I would try to make them so well as to be a pattern to all"

"The soul has a hidden abyss, untouched by time and space, which is far superior to anything that gives life and movement to the body. Into this noble and wondrous ground, this secret realm, there descends that bliss of which we have spoken. Here the soul has its eternal abode. Here a man becomes so still and essential, so single-minded and withdrawn, so raised up in purity, and more and more removed from all things. . . . This state of the soul cannot be compared to what it has been before, for now it is granted to share in the divine life thumb|right|The soul has a hidden abyss, untouched by time and space...Here the soul has its eternal abode itself."

"If Meister Eckhart’s teachings are highly abstract, intellectual and speculative, Tauler’s are much closer to ordinary Christian life and its devotions are easier to absorb and follow, although he retains much of Eckhart’s thought and terminology and shows a genuine understanding of his master’s message...Tauler never wrote in Latin, the universal language of medieval scholars. While he possessed a healthy suspicion of mere book learning, he nevertheless had a deep grasp of theological truths and, in about 1325, was ordained a Dominican priest. He soon became famous as a spiritual director, especially of nuns, and acquired a tremendous reputation as a popular preacher. His popularity probably also had much to do with his many travels. He even visited Groenendaal, outside Brussels, to meet Jan van Ruusbroec. During the Black Death of 1348 he devoted himself to the care of the sick, which further increased his popularity and reputation...Tauler is so closely associated with Strasbourg, where he died and is buried, that he is sometimes called “Johannes Tauler of Strasbourg.” His popularity meant that numerous works were later attributed to him, but few are genuine. He left eighty-four sermons in German, recorded by his listeners, most likely written down by nuns. But the clarity and form of these texts makes one think that he revised or at least approved their final version. These Sermons were first printed in 1498 and then translated into Latin in 1548. They found their widest diffusion in this Latin form and became known as far as Spain. Luther read Tauler’s German Sermons and greatly admired “such sterling theology, equal to that of the ancients.” But this referred mainly to Tauler’s spiritual advice on practical matters, whereas Luther mistrusted his essentially mystical teaching. Like Eckhart, Tauler emphasized the indwelling of God in the human soul without stressing the identity of creature and creator to the same degree. Tauler has more room for the role of grace and for the place of the Holy Spirit in mystical union. Yet his deeply mystical theology is, like Eckhart’s, based on “the uncreated ground of the soul” present in all human beings, the soul’s insatiable hunger for God, and the need for passivity so that God can work in the soul. This work can be a form of suffering, however, a teaching whereby he already anticipates the later “dark night of the soul” in St John of the Cross."

"The difference between Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler was later summarized by contrasting Eckhart as a Lehrmeister, a “master of thinking,” with Tauler as a Lebemeister, or a “master of living.”...Yet Tauler follows Eckhart in describing God in negative terms. The way to God is for Tauler the via negativa of the desert fathers and of Dionysius, finding God in withdrawal and the wilderness. At the same time he also possesses a strongly affirmative spirituality, as when he says that works of love are more acceptable to God than even contemplation, that spiritual enjoyment is food for the soul, which should be taken only to support us in our active work. Thus his mystical teaching is eminently practical, translating experience into action. The down-to-earth, commonsense humility of this Dominican mystic is well expressed in the often quoted words: “One man can spin, another can make shoes, and all these are gifts of the Holy Spirit I tell you, if I were not a priest, I should esteem it a great gift that I was able to make shoes, and I would try to make them so well as to be a pattern to all.”"

"Among all the medieval mystics, the Rhineland mystics are perhaps the ones best known today. They are widely accessible and cited more frequently than any others. Their message has a directness and freshness of expression that communicates itself across the centuries...Initially one might expect that all mystics from the Rhine region would be counted as Rhineland mystics...But the term “Rhineland mystics” is customarily used in a more restricted sense. It refers only to the mystics of the fourteenth century who lived in Germany and the Low Countries. It applies particularly to a group of several men—Meister Eckhart, Henry Suso, Johannes Tauler and Jan van Ruusbroec...The most daring and original of the Rhenish mystics was Meister Eckhart, whose disciples were Johannes Tauler and Henry Suso. These three Germans all belonged to the Dominican order. Suso is seen as the most intimate and personal mystic, Tauler was known as an inspiring preacher, whereas the Flemish mystic Jan van Ruusbroec was probably the most profound. These men, deeply involved in the theological debates of their own age, describe the deepest levels of inward experience where God is known in the inner recesses of the human soul, a most intimate presence that is also a transcendence. Their message addresses us so directly because it relates to a search for what is most essential to religion, its deepest, most inward dimension, and it emphasizes a real indwelling of ourselves in God and of God in us. The mysticism of the Rhineland is known in German as Wesensmystik, a mysticism of being or essence."

"It is something like fire working on wood; the heat draws out all the moisture, the greenness and the heaviness. It grows warm, begins to glow, becomes more like the fire itself. As the wood slowly takes on the likeness of fire, the dissimilarity between the two grows less until finally, in a rapid movement, the fire takes from the wood its own substance; the wood becomes fire and loses at the same time its separateness and inequality, since it has become fire. No longer merely like fire, it has become one substance with the fire. Likeness is lost in union."

"This food of love draws the soul above distinction or difference, beyond resemblance to divine unity. This is what happens to the transfigured spirit. When the divine heat of love has drawn out all the moisture, heaviness, unfitness, then this holy food plunges such a one into the life of God. As Our Lord himself said to St Augustine, "I am the food of the strong: believe and feast on me. You will not change me into yourself; rather you will be changed into me"."

"God is pure Being, a waste of calm seclusion…much nearer than anything is to itself in the depth of the heart, but He is hidden from all our senses. He is far above every outward thing and every thought, and is found only where thou hidest thyself in the secret place of thy heart, in the quiet solitude where no word is spoken, where is neither creature nor image nor fancy. This is the quiet Desert of the Godhead, the Divine Darkness—dark from His own surpassing brightness, as the shining of the sun is darkness to weak eyes, for in the presence of its brightness our eyes are like the eyes of the swallow in the bright thumb|right|This is the quiet Desert of the Godhead, the Divine Darkness—dark from His own surpassing brightness, as the shining of the sun is darkness to weak eyes, for in the presence of its brightness our eyes are like the eyes of the swallow in the bright sunlight sunlight."

"How can reason possibly grasp that immensity beyond all being where the precious food of the Eucharist is, in some marvellous way, made one with us, drawing us wholly to itself and changing us into itself? It is a union more intimate than any that the human mind can conceive, totally unlike any other change, a union more compatible than a tiny drop of water losing itself in the wine-vat and becoming one with the wine, or that of the rays of the sun made one with the sun's splendour; or the soul with the body, the two together making one person, one being. In this union the soul is lifted above the infirmity of its natural state, its own insufficiency, and there it is purified, transfigured and raised above its own powers, its human operations, its very self. Both being and activities are penetrated through and through by God, formed and transformed in a divine manner, the soul's new birth is accomplished in truth, and the spirit, losing all its native incompatibility, flows into divine union."

"Children, to be truly in this stage is the deepest ground of genuine humility and annihilation. This, in truth, cannot be grasped by the senses. For here he receives the most thumb|right|If we had here with us a human being in his primal nobility, pure as Adam in paradise...his simple nature unadorned — that person would be so luminous and pure, so ravishing and richly favoured by God that no one would be able to comprehend his purity nor with his reason conceive of it profound insight possible into his nothingness. Here he sinks as deep as it is possible into the ground of humility; the deeper, the higher, because here high and deep are one and the same...In this state one achieves true unity of prayer spoken of in the epistle that truly brings it about that a person becomes one with God"

"The mystery of our union with God affected by the Eucharist, is a union more intimate than the human mind can conceive."

"It is impossible for us in words to describe the ineffable dignity of the soul, and we cannot in any way comprehend it. If we had here with us a human being in his primal nobility, pure as Adam in paradise in his natural state apart from grace, his simple nature unadorned — that person would be so luminous and pure, so ravishing and richly favoured by God that no one would be able to comprehend his purity nor with his reason conceive of it."

"Tauler presents the Christian tradition in its purest form."

"Even then take heart! The Lord is certainly nearby. Hold fast to the support of the true living faith. Things will be fine. But it is unbelievable to the poor soul in its tortured state that this unbearable darkness could ever turn into light."

"When our Lord has prepared a person in this unbearable state of misery - for this prepares him much better than all the spiritual practices that all people might be able to accomplish - then our Lord comes and leads him to the third stage. In this stage the Lord removes the cloak from his eyes and reveals the truth to him. Bright sunshine appears and lifts him right out of all his misery. It seems to this person just as though the Lord had raised him from the dead. In this stage the Lord leads a person out of himself into himself. He makes him forget all his former loneliness and heals all his wounds. God thumb|right|How can reason possibly grasp that immensity beyond all being where the precious food of the Eucharist is made one with us, drawing us wholly to itself and changing us into itself?...This food of love draws the soul above distinction or difference, beyond resemblance to divine unity draws the person out of his human mode into a divine mode, out of all misery into divine security. Here a person becomes so divinized that everything he is and does God does and is in him. And he is lifted up so far above his natural state that he becomes through Grace what God in his essence is by nature. In this state a person feels and is aware that he has lost himself and does not at all feel himself or is he aware of himself. He is aware of nothing but one simple Being."

"John Tauler teaches that the normal response to receiving communion should be contemplation. Such a total gift of self on Christ's part requires a corresponding gift of self on our part, and such a union should result in the highest contemplation, all things being equal, which they usually aren't. In our first passage he talks about levels of conversion, a relatively superficial level and a profound level, and this may help us understand why we are not all mystics, even though we go to communion"

"In the first stage, that of jubilatio, a person becomes intensely aware of the dear signs of his love that god has marvelously given us in the heavens and on earth, how marvelously much good he has done for us and all creatures, how everything blossoms, sprouts forth, and is filled with God, and how unimaginable the generosity of God has inundated all creatures with his great gifts and how God has gone searching for him, showered him with gifts, carried him, advised him, waited for him, cared for him...and to what inexpressible nearness he has invited him, and how the most Holy God has expectantly awaited him eternally so that he might be filled with joy forever. And when a person experiences this fully through loving insight, thumb|right|The Lord leads a person out of himself into himself there is born in him great genuine joy. The person who perceives these things with genuine love is so flooded with an interior joy that his frail body cannot contain this joy and erupts in its own way...And in this way our Lord showers him with great sweetness and gives him inwardly an embrace and palpable union. Thus does God lure, pull and yank a person, first of all out of himself, and then out of all dissimilarity to himself..."

"When shall we find an know this birth of God within us? Only when we concentrate all our faculties within us and direct them all towards God. Then he will be born in us and make himself our very own. He will give himself to us as our own, more completely ours than anything we have ever called our own."

"The second stage is like this: When God has drawn a person so far away from all things, and he is no longer a child and he has been strengthened with the comfort of sweetness. Then indeed one gives him coarse rye bread. He has become a man and has reached maturity. Solid, strong food is what is good and useful for a grown man. He thumb|right|Here a person becomes so divinized that everything he is and does, God does and is in him shouldn't be given milk and soft bread any longer, and such is withheld from him. He is then led on a terribly wild path, very gloomy and forsaken. And on this path God takes back from him everything that he had ever given him. Then and there the person is left so completely to himself that he loses all notion of God and gets into such a distressful state that he cannot remember whether things had ever gone right for him, so as not to know any more if he were ever on the right path, whether he has a God or not, nor does he know if God does or does not exist, or if he is alive or dead and whether he is the same person; and he suffers such incredible pain that this whole wide world is too confining for him. A very strange sorrow comes over him that makes him think that the whole world in its expanse oppresses him. He neither has any feeling for nor knowledge of God, and he has no liking for any other things and even all the rest seems repugnant to him, so that it seems that he is a prisoners between two walls. It seems to him that he is suspended between two walls with a sword in back of him and a sharp spear in front. What does he do then? He can go neither forward nor back. He can only sit down and say, "Hail, bitterer bitterness, full of grace!" If there could be hell in this life, this would seem to be more than hell - to be bereft of loving and the good thing loved. Anything that one might say to such a person would console him about as much as a stone. And he could stand even less hearing about thumb|right|He is lifted up so far above his natural state that he becomes through Grace what God in his essence is by nature. In this state a person feels and is aware that he has lost himself and does not at all feel himself or is he aware of himself. He is aware of nothing but one simple Being creatures. The more the sense of and feel for God stood formerly in the foreground, the greater and more unendurable are the bitterness and misery of this abandonment."

"If one would a thumb|right|It is impossible for us in words to describe the ineffable dignity of the soul and we cannot in any way comprehend it prepare an empty place in the depths of the soul there can be no doubt that God must fill it at once. If there were a void on earth the heaven would fall to fill it…."

"So you must be silent. Then God will be born in you, utter his word in you and you shall hear it; but be very sure that if you speak the word will have to be silent. If you go out, he will most surely come in; as much as you go out for him He will come in to you; no more, no less…."

"When the spirit looks within, to the Spirit of God, from the ground of the heart, where man, empty and bare of all works, seeks God only, far above all thoughts, works and reason, it is truly a thorough conversion, which will ever be met with a corresponding reward, and God will be with him. Another conversion may take place in an ordinary external way, whenever man turns to God, thinking wholly and entirely of Him, and of nothing else but of God for Himself and in Himself. But the first turning is in an inner, undefined, unknown presence, in an immaterial entrance of the created spirit into the uncreated Spirit of God. If a man could only once in his life thus turn to God, it would be well for him. Those thumb|He draws them so mysteriously unto Himself and His own blessedness; their spirits are so lovingly attracted, while they are at the same time so filled and transfused with the Godhead, that they lose all their diversity in the Unity of the Godhead men whose God is so powerful, and Who has been so faithful to them in all their distress, will be answered by God with Himself. He draws them so mysteriously unto Himself and His own blessedness; their spirits are so lovingly attracted, while they are at the same time so filled and transfused with the Godhead, that they lose all their diversity in the Unity of the Godhead. These are they to whom God makes their work here on earth a delight; so that they have a real foretaste of that which they will enjoy forever. These are they on whom the Holy Christian Church rests; and, if they did not form part of Christianity, Christianity could no longer exist; for their mere existence, what they are, is infinitely worthier and more useful than all the doings of the world. These are they of whom our Lord has said: “He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of Mine eye.” Therefore, take heed that ye do them no wrong. May God help us."

"It is certain that if God is to be born in the soul it must turn back to eternity…. It must turn in toward itself with all is might, must recall itself, and concentrate all its faculties within itself, the lowest as well as the highest. All its dissipated powers must be gathered up into one, because unity is thumb|right|It is certain that if God is to be born in the soul it must turn back to eternity strength."

"Next the soul must go out. It must travel away from itself, above itself…. There must be nothing left in us but a pure intention towards God; no will to be or become or obtain anything for ourselves. We must exist only to make a place for God, the highest innermost place, where He may do His work; there, when we are no longer putting ourselves in His way, He thumb|right|Unity is strength can he born in us."

"Now we intend to talk about thumb|right|The transformation to a divine-like existence, into a unity of the created spirit with the very being of the spirit of God - this one can call a conversion to an essentially higher plane the three stages that a person can be at - the lowest, the middle, or the highest. The first stage of an interior virtuous life that leads one directly to close proximity to God happens when a person turns to the marvelous works and signs of inexpressible gifts and effusions of the hidden goodness of God. Out of this is born a state of soul called jubilatio. The second stage is poverty of spirit and a strange abandonment by God that leaves the spirit tortured and naked. The third stage is the transformation to a divine-like existence, into a unity of the created spirit with the very being of the spirit of God. This one can call a conversion to an essentially higher plane. And one cannot imagine that those who right reach this stage could ever fall away from God."

"Miracle is simply the religious name for event. Every event, even the most natural and usual, becomes a miracle, as soon as the religious view of it can be the dominant. To me all is miracle."

"In religion the primary element is a feeling of dependence, a fact which Schleiermacher recognized long before the later studies in anthropology and ethnography, founded on the observation of primitive conditions, had led to the same conclusion. It is only at a higher stage of culture that the second and essentially ethical element love of God enters into religious feeling. In the place of the evil spirits of the primitive peoples came the two-faced now kind, now angry creations of the more complicated mythologies, until, finally, the God of love, as the giver of eternal happiness, is reverenced, whether this be hoped for from Jehovah, as a blessing on earth; from Allah, as a physical blessing in Paradise; from Christ, as eternal bliss in heaven; or as the Nirvana of the Buddhists. In sexual desire, love, the expectation of unbounded happiness is the primary element. The feeling of dependence is of secondary development. The nucleus of this feeling exists in both parties, but it may remain undeveloped in one. As a rule, owing to her passive part in procreation and social conditions, it is more pronounced in woman; but exceptionally this is true of men having minds that approach the feminine type."

"Moreover, in Christ's second discourse, the mode in which the mention of Jonas is understood in Matthew, verse 40, is wholly unsuited to the context and to the application which even there is made of it; and if we do not take this for a later interpolation, for which no adequate inducement suggests itself, it must be considered as an erroneous comment of the reporter, which he has mixed up with Christ’s own words, of course without being conscious of it, a thing which might easily happen when his recollection had become dim and confused. In addition to the signs already adduced of Matthew’s reporter having been so circumstanced comes the fact, that he omits the little incident related in Luke, which intervenes between Christ’s two discourses, namely, the admiring ejaculation of a woman in the crowd and the reply to it."

"Between the beginning of our existence and our present life and aims there lies a time in which lust was the prevailing power; in which it conceived and brought forth sin. If we are honest, we can say that there is a period on which we look back only with the feeling that we appear to ourselves to have become since then different men. That which was then our innermost I and Self has now become something far off and strange to us; and the law of divine appointment, which has now through the grace of God become the law of our life, which we love and obey, was then far off and strange. We were only aware of it as an external force, impeding the free course of our life, just as now the separate stirrings of the flesh and of sin are a force which we do not ascribe to our real life. Thus, then, it is true that one life has ceased and another has begun. But the beginning of the new life is the new birth; and this holds good universally, If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; the old is passed away, behold all is become new."

"But the imparting of religion is not to be sought in books, like that of intellectual conceptions and scientific knowledge. The pure impression of the original product is too far destroyed in this medium, which, in the same way that dark-colored objects absorb the greatest proportion of the rays of light, swallows up everything belonging to the pious emotions of the heart, which cannot be embraced in the insufficient symbols from which it is intended again to proceed. Nay, in the written communications of religious feeling, everything needs a double and triple representation; for that which originally represented, must be represented in its turn; and yet the effect on the whole man, in its complete unity, can only be imperfectly set forth by continued and varied reflections. It is only when religion is driven out from the society of the living, that it must conceal its manifold life under the dead letter. Neither can this intercourse of heart with heart, on the deepest feelings of humanity, be carried on in common conversation."

"Jämmerlich ist freilich jene praktische Philosophie der Franzosen und Engländer, von denen man meint, sie wüßten so gut, was der Mensch sei, unerachtet sie nicht darüber spekulierten, was er sein solle."

"Oh, that we had our eyes more and more steadily fixt on the risen Savior! Oh, that we could ever be learning more and more from Him to breathe out blessing, as He did when He imparted His Spirit to the disciples! Oh, that we were more and more learning like Him to encourage the foolish and slow of heart to joyful faith in the divine promises, to active obedience to the divine will of their Lord and Master, to the glad enjoyment and use of all the heavenly treasures that He has thrown open to us! Oh, that we were ever speaking more effectively to all connected with us, of the kingdom of God and of our inheritance in it, so that they might see why it was necessary for Christ to suffer, but also into what glory He has gone! These are our desires, and they are not vain desires."

"Him pervaded the Cosmic Spirit, the Infinity was his beginning and his end, the Universe his only and everlasting love. In holy innocence and deep humility he beheld himself mirrored in the eternal world, and perceived how himself was its most amiable mirror. Full of religion was he and full of Holy Spirit. Wherefore he stands there, alone and unequalled a master of his art, but sublime above the profane rabble, a peerless beacon forever."

"The mythology of the New Testament, also, is not to be questioned with respect to the content of its objectifying representations but with respect to the understanding of existence that expresses itself in them."

"Christian life is not realized in developing the personality or in shaping human community and somehow changing the world but in turning away from the world and becoming free of it."

"Myth does not want to be interpreted in cosmological terms but in anthropological terms—or, better, in existentialist terms."

"Can the Christian proclamation today expect men and women to acknowledge the mythical world picture as true? To do so would be both pointless and impossible. It would be pointless because there is nothing specifically Christian about the mythical world picture, which is simply the world picture of a time now past which was not yet formed by scientific thinking. It would be impossible because no one can appropriate a world picture by sheer resolve, since it is already given with one’s historical situation."

"It is impossible to repristinate a past world picture by sheer resolve, especially a mythical world picture, now that all of our thinking is irrevocably formed by science. A blind acceptance of New Testament mythology would be simply arbitrariness; to make such acceptance a demand of faith would be to reduce faith to a work."

"Contemporary Christian proclamation is faced with the question whether, when it demands faith from men and women, it expects them to acknowledge this mythical world picture from the past. If this is impossible, it has to face the question whether the New Testament proclamation has a truth that is independent of the mythical world picture, in which case it would be the task of theology to demythologize the Christian proclamation."

"But what is meant by “flesh” (σάρξ)? It is not what is corporal or sensual but rather the whole sphere of what is visible, available, disposable, and measurable, and as such the sphere of what is transient. This sphere becomes a power over us insofar as we make it the foundation of our lives by living “according to it,” that is, by succumbing to the temptation to live out of what is visible and disposable instead of out of what is invisible and nondisposable—regardless of whether we give ourselves to the alluring possibilities of such a life imprudently and with desire or whether we lead our lives reflectively and with calculation on the basis of our own accomplishments, “the works of the law.” “Flesh” embraces not only material things but also all of our creating and accomplishing insofar as it is concerned with achieving something demonstrable such as fulfilling the demands of the law (Gal. 3:3); to “flesh” belongs every achieved quality and every advantage that we can have within the sphere of what can be seen and disposed of (Phil. 3:4ff.)."

"Freedom from the world is, in principle, not asceticism, but rather a distance from the world for which all participation in things worldly takes place in the attitude of “as if not.” (1 Cor. 7:29-31)"

"I have been young, but now am old. I have spent a whole life-time in battling against infidelity with the weapons of apologetic science; but I have become ever more and more convinced that the way to the heart does not lie through the head; and that the only way to the conversion of the head lies through a converted heart which already tastes the living fruits of the gospel."

"The grave is a very small hillock, but we can see farther from it, when standing on it, than from the highest mountain in all the world."

"The reason why we find so many dark places in the Bible is, for the most part, because there are so many dark places in our hearts."