John Campbell Shairp Quotes (1819-1885)

“The ground of all religion, that which makes it possible, is the relation in which the human soul stands to God.”

“For with all our pretension to enlightenment, are we not now a talking, desultory, rather than a meditative generation?”

“Not as men of science, not as critics, not as philosophers, but as little children, shall we enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

“From old foundations where the nation rears Her darlings, came that flower of England's youth And here in latest teens, or riper years, Stood drinking in all nobleness and truth”

“Great men, great events, great epochs, it has been said, grow as we recede from them; and the rate at which they grow in the estimate of men is in some sort a measure of their greatness.”

“We are not called on to believe this or that doctrine which may be proposed to us till we can do so from honest conviction. But we are called on to trust, — to trust ourselves to God, being sure that He will lead us right, — to keep close to Him, — and to trust the promises which He whispers through our conscience; this we can do, and we ought to do.”

“It is quite certain that, if from childhood men were to begin to follow the first intimations of conscience, honestly to obey them and carry them out into act, the power of conscience would be so strengthened and improved within them, that it would soon become, what it evidently is intended to be, "a connecting principle between the creature and the Creator."”

“So full of power, yet blithe and debonair, Rallying his friends with pleasant banter gay, Or half a-dream chaunting with jaunty air Great words of Goethe, catch of Béranger.”

“The feelings to which Scott's poetry appeals, the ideals which it sets before the imagination, if not themselves the highest types of character, are those out of which the highest characters are formed. Cardinal Newman has said, "What is Christian high-mindedness, generous self-denial, contempt of wealth, endurance of suffering, and earnest striving after perfection, but an improvement and transformation, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, of that natural character of mind which we call romantic?" To have awakened and kept alive in an artificial, and too money-loving age, "that character of mind which we call romantic," which, by transformation, can become something so much beyond itself, is, even from the severest moral point of view, no mean merit. To higher than this few poets can lay claim. But let the critics praise him, or let them blame. It matters not. His reputation will not wane, but will grow with time. Therefore we do well to make much of Walter Scott. He is the only Homer who has been vouchsafed to Scotland—I might almost say to modern Europe. He came at the latest hour, when it was possible for a great epic minstrel to be born. And the altered conditions of the world will not admit of another.”