"This human experience, ~ is that all so clear that he who runs may read? Is there no difficulty, ~ nothing to conflict with our thought of the universal love? ....No; if we are honest, and take life as it really is, we are bound to see its difficulties and its problems upon every hand; we are bound to cry with Plato for that divine, that surer word, which shall carry us across this sea of difficulty. And more than that; in our heart of hearts we know it; deep down there is a craving which cannot be quenched, which we cannot extinguish,--a craving for a personal: knowledge of God, a groping in the darkness with hands of prayer feeling for Him we love, that through all this tangle of difficulty that surrounds us he reach down to us the divine hand, that we may grasp like children,--we may be lifted up out of that which threatens to overwhelm us, to feel and know the love of it. It is not a question of creeds; it is not a question of theology, of orthodoxy or heterodoxy; it is a question of reality of healing; in a word, of knowing that God is love,--to be so conscious of our relationship with him that it can sustain us, no matter what we think, or believe. Such a relationship presses right down below words into the very centre of our being, and tides us over and bears us on and lifts us above all the trials and drag and friction of our every-day life. There is not a man, there is not a woman, that in his or her heart of hearts has not known that longing to know God."
More at ~ http://www.qhpress.org/quakerpages/qhoa/rowntree.htm
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilhelm_Rowntree
More at ~ http://www.qhpress.org/quakerpages/qhoa/rowntree.htm
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilhelm_Rowntree
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