The Narrative of John Smith

Religion is a vital living thing, still growing and working, and capable of endless extension and development like all other fields of thought. There were some eternal truths spoken of old, and handed down to us in a book which may truly be called holy. But there are other eternal truths yet to be revealed, and if we are to reject them because they are not to be found in those pages

All the philosophic definitions and chemical formulae that have ever been evolved cannot get over the fact that the world exists, and that whatever exists must have had a conceiver and originator.

When a man realises that he does not know everything, he is too apt to fly to the conclusion that he knows nothing. There is a strange distorted satisfaction in the exaggeration of his own ignorance, just as a sufferer from some deforming complaint comes occasionally to take a pride in his own malady, and to exhibit it with complacency.

The world is governed according to laws, but that is a very different thing from being governed by laws.

There is nothing absolutely certain except the uncertainty of all things, and nothing that we thoroughly know except our own complete want of knowledge

As long as there are two sides to a question, so long you will find staunch minorities who attach themselves to obsolete or unpopular opinions

The inane doctrine of fearing the source of all good, and of loving what we cannot comprehend, is a great stifling nightmare which has weighed us all down too long.

There is no small and there is no great in nature

“The good man differs from God in nothing but duration.”’

The fact is that our individual lives are so very short compared with the great periods over which these changes extend, that we can form very little conception of what is coming