TIS the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek
In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be
A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,
Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like this hand
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee!
See the Christ stand!”
Robert Browning

IF for every rebuke that we utter of men’s vices we put forth a claim upon their hearts; if for every assertion of God’s demands from them we could substitute a display of His kindness to them; if side by side with every warning of death we could exhibit proofs and promises of immortality; if, in fine, instead of assuming the being of an awful Deity—which men, though they cannot and dare not deny, are always unwilling, sometimes unable to conceive—we were to show them a near, visible, inevitable, but all beneficent Deity, whose presence makes the earth itself a heaven, I think there would be fewer deaf people sitting in the market-place.
John Ruskin

THIS great truth, that God’s paternal love extends even to the worthless, is the strength of the good man from the beginning of his conflicts with evil to the end. He despairs of none. He commits all to the love of the Universal Father. To him God is not the God of the good only, but also of the evil.
William E. Channing