What They Said

“Religion is the great master-secret of all happy home-life. The spirit of Christ alone will enable us to live together in perfect peace and love. The presence of Christ in a home is a perpetual benediction. We cannot be selfish, we cannot wrangle and strive, we cannot be bitter and unkind, we cannot be irritable and unreasonable, when conscious of the presence of Christ. If only we can make Christ an abiding guest in our home, and if we can keep ourselves aware of his being with us, our household life cannot but grow wondrously sweet.”

J.R. Miller

“There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.”

G.K. Chesterton

"Man's religion is to build up the creature. God's religion is to throw the creature down in the dust of self-abasement, and to glorify Christ."

J.C. Philpot

"The many false and counterfeit appearances which we meet with, instead of proving that there is no religion in the world, not only prove that there is, but that it is extremely precious; otherwise it would not be counterfeited. No one will be at the trouble of counterfeiting, either what does not exist, or what is of no value.  No one will make false stones, or false dust, though many make false pearls and diamonds. If there were no real money, there would be no counterfeit; and so, if there were no real religion, there would be no false religion.  One cannot exist without the other any more than a shadow can exist without a substance; and he who rejects all religion, because hypocrites sometimes borrow its name and appearance, acts no less absurdly than he who throws his gold or jewels into the fire, because gold and jewels have sometimes been counterfeited."

Edward Payson

"The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other." 

Alexis de Tocqueville

"Religion today is not transforming the people; rather it is being transformed by the people.  It is not raising the moral level of society; it is descending to society’s own level and congratulating itself that it has scored a victory because society is smilingly accepting its surrender."

A.W. Tozer

"It is a fact that unless children are brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, they, and the society which they constitute or control, will go to destruction.  Consequently, when a state resolves that religious instruction shall be banished from the schools and other literary institutions, it virtually resolves on self-destruction."

Charles Hodge

"Is it not the great end of religion, and, in particular, the glory of Christianity, to extinguish the malignant passions; to curb the violence, to control the appetites, and to smooth the asperities of man; to make us compassionate and kind, and forgiving one to another; to make us good husbands, good fathers, good friends; and to render us active and useful in the discharge of the relative social and civil duties?"

William Wilberforce

"The end of all arts and sciences is the practice of them.  And as this is to be confessed in all other arts, so it cannot be decried in divinity and religion."

George Downame

(1560-1634)

"Law is in every culture religious in origin. Because law governs man and society, because it establishes and declares the meaning of justice and righteousness, law is inescapably religious, in that it establishes in practical fashion the ultimate concerns of a culture. Accordingly, a fundamental and necessary premise in any and every study of law must be, first, a recognition of this religious nature of law.

Second, it must be recognized that in any culture the source of law is the god of that society. If law has its source in man’s reason, then reason is the god of that society. If the source is an oligarchy, or in a court, senate, or ruler, then that source is god of that system. Thus, in Greek culture law was essentially a religiously humanistic concept. …..

Third, in any society, any change of law is an explicit or implicit change of religion. Nothing more clearly reveals, in fact, the religious change in a society than a legal revolution. When the legal foundations shift from Biblical law to humanism, it means that the society now draws its vitality and power from humanism, not from Christian theism.

Fourth, no disestablishment of religion as such is possible in any society. A church can be disestablished, and a particular religion can be supplanted by another, but the change is simply to another religion. Since the foundations of law are inescapably religious, no society exists without a religious foundation or without a law-system which codifies the morality of its religion.

Fifth, there can be no tolerance in a law-system for another religion. Toleration is a device used to introduce a new law-system as a prelude to a new intolerance….. "

R.J. Rushdoony

The Institutes of Biblical Law, 1973

"Let me beg you, not to rest contented with the commonplace religion that is now so prevalent."

 Adoniram Judson