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 so… - John Campbell Shairp

[I]t 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."

Were it not well then to begin with the substance, to learn to apprehend the reality of that kingdom which is all around us now, whether we recognize it or not—to take our aims and endeavors into it that they may be made part of it, however small—to surrender ourselves to it, that our lives may do something towards its advancement, and that so we may become fellow-workers, however humble, with all the wise and good who have gone before us, and with Him who made them what they were?

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