Where would the good news be if John said, “God is light, but you cannot see his light; you cannot tell, you have no notion, what light is; what God means by light, is not what you mean by light; what God calls light may be horrible darkness to you...

"...[John] gives us in one sentence the gospel according to Jesus Christ himself..."

You know what Christ requires of you is right: do it. If you do not do what you know of the truth, I do not wonder that you seek it intellectually, for that kind of search may well be, as Milton represents it, a solace even to the fallen angels...

I write for those for whom such teaching as the doctrine of substitution has folded in a cloud through which they cannot see the stars of heaven, so that some of them even doubt if there be any stars of heaven...

Some of the best of men have held the theories I stigmatize, men I have loved and honored, some heartily and humbly—but because of what they were, not because of what they thought; and they were what they were in virtue of their obedient faith, not of their opinion...

The weakness and unbelief of men has led them to think of God as bound to punish for the sake of punishing, as an offset to their sin; they could not believe in clear forgiveness; that did not seem divine; it needed itself to be justified; so they invented for its justification a horrible injustice...

Truth is indeed too good for men to believe; unable to believe in the forgivingness of their father in heaven, they invented a way to be forgiven that should not demand of him so much...

I would save my fellows from having what notion of God is possible to them blotted out by a lie...

If there be no satisfaction to justice in the mere punishment of the wrong-doer, what shall we say of the notion of satisfying justice by causing one to suffer who is not the wrong-doer?

The salvation of Christ is salvation from the smallest tendency or leaning to sin. It is a deliverance into the pure air of God’s ways of thinking and feeling...