“On the other hand, He who cultivates the field of the Spirit, shall of that Spirit reap life everlasting… We are too apt to think of final happiness as something quite distinct from that holy frame of feeling and thought to which the gospel, as “the ministration of the Spirit,” forms the human soul, while […]
…for the very essence of anxious care is the imagining that we are wiser than God, and the thrusting upon ourselves into his place to do for Him that which he has undertaken to do for us. We attempt to think of that which we fancy He will forget; we labor to take upon ourselves
So far is the doctrine of the certainty of grace from being the mother of security and the midwife of licentiousness, that there is no greater incentive to true piety than a vivid sense of the love of God and of his benefits. This so powerfully lays hold of and inflames the mind that is
In that way Christianity came into the world, being served by witnesses who were willing absolutely to suffer everything for their faith, and actually had to suffer, to sacrifice life and blood for the truth. Søren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon “Christendom”, p 271.
To this the answer may be made: It is the divine justice precisely which in its frightful severity permits things to go on thus. It is present, all eyes, but it hides itself; precisely for the sake of being able to reveal itself wholly for what it is, it would not reveal itself prematurely; whereas
