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Beware, lastly, of imagining you shall obtain the end without using the means conducive to it. God can give the end without any means at all; but you have no reason to think He will. Therefore constantly and carefully use all those means which He has appointed to be the ordinary channels of His grace. Use every means which either reason or Scripture recommends, as conducive (through the free love of God in Christ) either to the obtaining or increasing any of the gifts of God. Thus expect a daily growth in that pure and holy religion which the world always did, and always will, call “enthusiasm;” but which, to all who are saved from real enthusiasm, from merely nominal Christianity, is “the wisdom of God, and the power of God;” the glorious image of the Most High; “righteousness and peace;” a “fountain of living water, springing up into everlasting life!”
--
Sermon 37 "The Nature of Enthusiasm".

 

John Wesley

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A man is born into the world — a real man — such a one as it has never seen; he lives a life consistently the very highest; his wisdom is the calm earnest voice of humanity; to the worldly and the commonplace so exasperating, as forcing upon them their own worthlessness — to the good so admirable that every other faculty is absorbed in wonder. The one killed him. The other said, this is too good to be a man — this is God. His calm and simple life was not startling enough for their eager imagination; acts of mercy and kindness were not enough, unless they were beyond the power of man. To cure by ordinary means the bruised body, to lift again with deep sympathy of heart the sinking sinner was not enough. He must speak with power to matter as well as mind; eject diseases and eject devils with command. The means of ordinary birth, to the oriental conception of uncleanness, were too impure for such as he, and one so holy could never dissolve in the vulgar corruption of the grave.
Yet to save his example, to give reality to his sufferings, he was a man nevertheless. In him, as philosophy came in to incorporate the first imagination, was the fulness of humanity as well as the fulness of the Godhead. And out of this strange mixture they composed a being whose life is without instruction, whose example is still nothing, whose trial is but a helpless perplexity. The noble image of the man is effaced, is destroyed. Instead of a man to love and to follow, we have a man-god to worship. From being the example of devotion, he is its object; the religion of Christ ended with his life, and left us instead but the Christian religion.

 

James Anthony Froude

 

Pagan philosophers set up reason as the sole guide of life, of wisdom and conduct; but Christian philosophy demands of us that we surrender our reason to the Holy Spirit; and this means that we no longer live for ourselves, but that Christ lives and reigns within us (Rom 12:1; Eph 4:23; Gal 2:20).

 

John Calvin

 

Somebody said [to Condell] recently, "Clearly you just don't understand what a person's faith actually means to them. For me," she said, "it's like the water of life." And I thought, what a great phrase - "the water of life", without which, of course, there can be no life. But even the water of life needs to be contained and properly managed, or it can run out of control, get into places where it doesn't belong and cause real damage. For example, if the water of your life gets together with the water of other people's lives, and they form a deluge, a rushing torrent of righteous certainty that sweeps all before it, including reason, well then it's not so much the water of life anymore, is it? It's rapidly turning into the water of death, as everything in its path is crushed - original thought, rational inquiry, free speech and their tattered remnants are strewn upon the rocks of scripture and blind dogma. What's needed here, obviously, is a dam to contain this water of death, convert it back into the water of life, and give us all a chance to switch on a lightbulb in our minds. And that's where secularism comes in. It's everybody's friend, believer and non-believer alike, which I think makes it the real water of life. At least almost as much as this stuff here - beer. Cheers. (Picks up a glass of beer and drinks from it) Mmmm! Now that's what I call the water of life. A merry Christmas to everyone, especially to all you Islamist crackpots who think celebrating Christmas is a sin. Of course it is - that's why it's fun! Peace.

 

Pat Condell

 

Every presentation of philosophy, whether oral or written, is to be taken and can only be taken in the sense of a means. Every system is only an expression or image of reason, and hence only an object of reason, an object which reason—a living power that procreates itself in new thinking beings—distinguishes from itself and posits as an object of criticism. Every system that is not recognized and appropriated as just a means, limits and warps the mind for it sets up the indirect and formal thought in the place of the direct, original and material thought.

 

Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach

 

We have now in our possession three instruments of civilization, unknown to antiquity. These are the art of printing; free representative government; and, lastly, a pure and spiritual religion, the deep fountain of generous enthusiasm, the mighty spring of bold and lofty designs, the great sanctuary of moral power.

 

Edward Everett