A Congenial Spirit...

I am considerably at a loss as to how I can thank you enough for these books (a life of Baron von Hugel and the Essays and Addresses of von Hugel)...Have you read the essays? They are better than the letters to Gwendolyn. The old man I think is the most congenial spirit I have found in English Catholic letters, with more to say, to me anyway, than Newman. -- "Habit of Being", pg 165

On Faith...

About the only way we know whether we believe or not is by what we do...Bridges once wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins and asked him to tell him how he, Bridges, could believe. He must have expected from Hopkins a long philosophical answer. Hopkins wrote back, "Give alms." He was trying to say to Bridges that God is to be experienced in Charity (in the sense of love for divine image in human beings).

If you want your faith, you have to work for it. It is a gift, but for very few is it a gift given without any demand for equal time devoted to its cultivation. For every book you read that is anti-Christian, make it your bsiness to read one that presents the other side of the picture. --"Habit of Being" pg. 476