MLJ on the Presence of God

Make it the central thing of your life to gaze upon God, to arrive at a knowledge of Him that will be intimate and personal, a communion with Him that will ravish your heart and cause your soul to rise up to Him. Seek His face, and go on seeking it.

Hawthorne on the Spirit

Are you a minister of the gospel or a teacher, intelligent, educated, learned in the scriptures? The life of Jesus teaches that intelligence and learning are not in themselves sufficient when it comes to making God's message meaningful to those who hear it. It is the Spirit of God within the minister that makes the word a living word... It is equally important, however, to say that God frowns on neither intelligence nor education... What he is concerned about is that spiritual work never be done solely in a natural way, only with natural endowments. Rather, he wishes by the power of the Spirit to make it possible for the follower of Jesus to exceed the real limits of their humanness and thus speak to the hearts of people with a life creating, life transforming power.