Think on These
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"I look upon all the world as my parish; thus far, I mean, that in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden duty, to declare to all who are willing to hear the glad tidings of salvation." --John Wesley.
"If a man is indifferent, or pusillanimous, or impure, or false, the appeal of Christ may be lost upon him, for nobility requires the noble for its recognition. And whatever augments the sum and vitality of a man's being, making him a bigger man with a grander range, tends to make other elements of truth self-evident to him, so that his power of vision grows. - -William Macgregor, in Christian Freedom.
"The caddis-fly leaves his tube behind, and soars into the upper air; the creature abandons its barnacle existence on the rock, and swims at large in the sea. It is when we die to custom that we rise into the true life of humanity; it is when we abandon all prejudice of our own superiority, and become convinced of our entire indefensibleness that the world opens with comrade faces in all directions." --Edward Carpenter, in Civilization.
"People fancy that our activities are purely a matter of choice, that out of the store of new ideas we catch at one, and are willing to speak, and work, and fight, and suffer for it, just as a scholar may single out a particular classic and spend his life commenting upon it. But that is not so; we do not lay hold of an idea, the idea lays hold of us, and enslaves us, and flogs us out into the arena where, like gladiators pressed into the service, we do battle for it... We are not lords, we are the servants of the word... Amos said, I am no prophet or a prophet's son, but the Lord took me from the sheepfold and bade me go and prophesy. Luther said, Here stand I, I can do no other: God help me! And Robespierre said, I am a mere slave of freedom." - -Heine, in Der Salon.