Poems & Quotes
1 Samuel 3–5
Harden Not Your Heart
There is a time, I know not when,
A place, I know not where,
Which marks the destiny of men
To heaven or despair.
There is a line by us not seen
Which crosses every path,
The hidden boundary between
God's patience and His wrath.
To cross that limit is to die,
To die, as if by stealth.
It may not pale the beaming eye,
Nor quench the glowing health.
The conscience may be still at ease,
The spirits light and gay;
That which is pleasing still may please,
And care be thrust away.
But on that forehead God hath set
Indelibly a mark,
By man unseen, for man as yet
Is blind and in the dark.
And still the doomed man's path below
May bloom like Eden bloomed.
He did not, does not, will not know,
Nor feel that he is doomed.
He feels, he sees that all is well,
His every fear is calmed.
He lives, he dies, he wakes in hell,
Not only doomed, but damned.
Oh, where is that mysterious bourn,
By which each path is crossed,
Beyond which God himself hath sworn
That he who goes is lost?
How long may men go on in sin?
How long will God forbear?
Where does hope end, and where begin
The confines of despair?
One answer from those skies is sent,
"Ye who from God depart,
While it is called today, repent,
And harden not your heart."
–Author unknown
1 Samuel 6:1–8:22
"Romans 8:28 is a soft pillow for a tired heart."
–Dr. R.A. Torrey
1 Samuel 11:1–12:25 and 1 Samuel 16, 17
"One with God is a majority."
–Martin Luther
1 Samuel 15
"What I try to do is to hold a mirror to nature, and I do not find knights in shining armor riding up to castles to deliver Lady Guinevere from the tower in the castle. I hold the mirror up to nature."
–William Thackeray, when asked why he didn't have great heroes or heroines in his novels
"I do not know what the heart of a villain is. I only know the heart of a righteous man."
–Count de Maistre
"Every man knows that of himself that he dare not tell his closest friend."
–Johann W. von Goethe
1 Samuel 27, 28
"In spite of the large amount of fraud, fake, deceit, and thought-reading, conscious or unconscious, that the investigator of psychic research has to contend with, there remains a nucleus of genuine matter that cannot be explained with our present knowledge except by accepting the hypothesis that human personalities exist through death, and that certain persons have the power and gift of contacting them. Churches have nothing to fear from genuine psychic phenomena."
–The Guardian, publication of the Church of England, 1947
The Witch of Endor
The road to Endor is easy to tread
for mother or yearning wife.
There it is sure we shall meet our dead
as they were even in life.
Earth has not dreamed of the blessing in store
for the desolate hearts on the road to Endor.
Whispers shall comfort us out of the dark
hand of God that we know.
Visions and voices look and hark
shall prove that our tale is true.
And to those that have passed to the further shore
may be hailed at a price on the road to Endor.
Oh, the road ot Endor is the oldest road
and the craziest road of all.
Straight it runs to the witches abode
as it did in the days of Saul.
And nothing has changed of the sorrow in store,
for such as go down to the road to Endor.
–Rudyard Kipling
2 Samuel 21–23
"I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers and it was not there. In the fertile fields and the boundless prairies and it was not there. In her rich mines and her vast world commerce and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness, did I understand the secrets of her genius and power. America is great because she is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."
–Attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville