November 10

“Partial views grow perilous, not when they are held firmly, but when they are held as if they were universal.
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“Since the value of words must change with widened or contracted thought, no formula expressed in words can be exhaustive.
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“Words which at one time sum up earlier experience become at another time centres, as it were, round which new and foreign thoughts crystallise.
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“To claim completeness for our opinions is to abandon the encouragement of progress; and on the other hand, difficulties frankly met reveal new paths of truth.”

Bishop WESTCOTT

November 9

“In spiritual Truth, whatever we know is infinitely precious, and we are bound at all costs to uphold the convictions which are borne in upon us.
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“At the same time, we are not bound by any equal obligation to force them upon others.”

Bishop WESTCOTT

“It is well for anyone to argue against opinions which he thinks false, to examine the grounds upon which they profess to rest, to endeavour to convert those who hold them to a different way of thinking. But all this in no way justifies the attempt to persuade anyone to go against their conscience as long as their conscience remains unconvinced. To convince someone that their conscientious convictions are not true is quite a different thing from persuading that person to disobey them while they still thinks them true. The fact is, that true Christian society and true Christian friendship cannot exist on any other basis than that of respecting each other’s consciences.”

Bishop TEMPLE

November 8

“The more readily we admit the possibility of our own cherished convictions being mixed with error, the more vital and helpful whatever is right in them will become; and no error is so conclusively fatal as the idea that God will not allow us to err, though he has allowed all others to do so. . . .
“In every nation, they that fear God and work righteousness are accepted of Him. See that you understand what that righteousness means, and set hand to it stoutly; you will always measure your neighbour’s creed kindly in proportion to the substantial fruits of your own.”

RUSKIN

“We are quite right in regarding with suspicion, and in narrowly questioning and examining, all new-fangled views, whether social or religious. And yet there should be a readiness in us, though not to abandon for one moment the old truth, yet to recognise any new form in which it may be presented. . . . Truth is many-sided like a cube; and we should never be so tenacious of the aspect of it which is familiar to us, as not to be ready to come round and view it under another’s aspect.”

GOULBURN

November 7

“It is true that the wickedness of persecuting people on account of their religious opinions is not now practised or defended in this country, but we have still amongst us some evils arising out of the same source – the mistaking of a false unity of form and opinion for the union of spirit and faith. There are many persons, for instance, in our own Church, who dwell much more on the differences of form and opinion which exist between them and good dissenters, than on the unity of spirit between all those who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. It is certainly natural and proper that one should feel more closely united towards those whose principles, and feelings, and opinions are quite like our own; if, indeed, such a marvellous agreement is anywhere to be found; and, therefore, one may feel more closely drawn towards a very good and enlightened dissenter. But the evil is that many persons feel more friendly disposed, I do not say to absolutely wicked, but to careless and unspiritual Churchmen, than to zealous and holy dissenters; and this is to undo Christ’s work, to put an earthly and unimportant bond of union in the place of that union of goodness and holiness which was to bind men to one another in Him and in His Father.”

Dr ARNOLD

“When a particular belief is fruitful in nobleness of character, we need trouble ourselves very little with scientific demonstrations that it is false.”

FROUDE

November 6

“I have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest – I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it. It is surely better to pardon too much than to condemn too much.”

GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans]

“It seems to me a waste of time which we can ill afford, and a sort of ‘quarrel by the way’ which our Christian vow of enmity against moral evil makes utterly unreasonable, when Christians suspend their great business, and loosen the bond of their union with each other, by venting useless regrets and complaints against one another’s errors, instead of labouring to lessen one another’s sins.
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I have one great principle that I never lose sight of; to insist strongly on the difference between Christian and non-Christian, and to sink into nothing the difference between Christian and Christian.”

Dr ARNOLD