Top 78 Machen Quotes
#1. Do you know what made Poe great? And Machen and Lovecraft? A direct pipeline to the old subconscious. To the fears and twisted needs that swim around down there like phosphorescent fish.
Stephen King
#2. Despite the fact that Machen included the story in his collection The Angel of Mons in 1915, with a long preface refuting the truth of the story, the world preferred to believe that in fact St. George had led the bowmen of Agincourt against the Germans at Mons.
Debra N. Mancoff
#3. The very center and core of the whole Bible is the doctrine of the grace of God - the grace of God which depends not one whit upon anything that is in man, but is absolutely undeserved, resistless and sovereign. J. Gresham Machen
Justin S. Holcomb
#4. But it was dreadful to think of Henry, slowly or swiftly corrupted by his detestable father and mother, growing up with the fat slime of their abominations upon him.
Arthur Machen
#5. The strange thing about Christianity was that it adopted an entirely different method. It transformed the lives of men not by appealing to the human will, but by telling a story; not by exhortation, but by the narration of an event.
J. Gresham Machen
#6. And it is utterly true that he who cannot find wonder, mystery, awe, the sense of a new world and an undiscovered realm in the places by the Gray's Inn Road will never find these secrets elsewhere ...
Arthur Machen
#7. In many respects, my work is very enjoyable, for I seem to get on pretty well with the fellows and enjoy the work of instruction as well as my own studies.
John Gresham Machen
#8. The chief modern rival of Christianity is 'liberalism' ... at every point, the two movements are in direct opposition.
John Gresham Machen
#9. In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding; the really important things are the things about which men will fight.
J. Gresham Machen
#10. It is all nonsense, to be sure; and so much the greater nonsense inasmuch as the true interpretation of many dreams - not by any means of all dreams - moves, it may be said, in the opposite direction to the method of psycho-analysis.
Arthur Machen
#12. Here then is the pattern in my carpet, the sense of the eternal mysteries, the eternal beauty hidden beneath the crust of common and commonplace things; hidden and yet burning and glowing continually if you care to look with purged eyes.
Arthur Machen
#13. The saint endeavors to recover a gift which he has lost; the sinner tries to obtain something which was never his. In brief, he repeats the Fall.
Arthur Machen
#14. The type of religion which rejoices in the pious sound of traditional phrases, regardless of their meanings, or shrinks from "controversial" matters, will never stand amid the shocks of life.
John Gresham Machen
#15. Light may seem at times to be an impertinent intruder, but it is always beneficial in the end.
John Gresham Machen
#17. But he recognized that the illusions of the child only differed from those of the man in that they were more picturesque; belief in fairies and belief in the Stock Exchange as bestowers of happiness were equally vain, but the latter form of faith was ugly as well as inept.
Arthur Machen
#18. The Gospel does not abrogate God's law, but it makes men love it with all of their hearts.
J. Gresham Machen
#19. Certainly it does make the greatest possible difference what we think about God; the knowledge of God is the very basis of religion.
John Gresham Machen
#20. Silence is not weakness and decency is not pride
Arthur Machen
#21. The more we know of God, the more unreservedly we will trust him; the greater our progress in theology, the simpler and more child-like will be our faith
J. Gresham Machen
#22. Involuntary organizations ought to be tolerant, but voluntary organizations, so far as the fundamental purpose of their existence is concerned, must be intolerant or else cease to exist.
J. Gresham Machen
#24. The woods hung dark on the hills; above, the sky violet, specked with minute feathery clouds, white as snowflakes.
Arthur Machen
#25. I knew I had looked into the eyes of a lost soul, Austin, the man's outward form remained, but all hell was within it.
Arthur Machen
#26. If a man dreams that he has committed a sin before which the sun hid his face, it is often safe to conjecture that, in sheer forgetfulness, he wore a red tie, or brown boots with evening dress.
Arthur Machen
#28. Jesus was certainly not a mere enunciator of permanent truths, like the modern liberal preacher; on the contrary He was conscious of standing at the turning-point of the ages, when what had never been was now to come to be.
J. Gresham Machen
#29. We both wondered whether these contradictions that one can't avoid if one begins to think of time and space may not really be proofs that the whole of life is a dream, and the moon and stars bits of nightmare.
Arthur Machen
#30. Every branch of human knowledge, if traced up to its source and final principles, vanishes into mystery.
Arthur Machen
#31. There are strange things lost and forgotten in obscure corners of the newspaper.
Arthur Machen
#32. Christ died"
that is history; "Christ died for our sins"
that is doctrine. Without these two elements, joined in an absolutely indissoluble union, there is no Christianity.
J. Gresham Machen
#33. I can see little consistency in a type of Christian activity which preaches the gospel on the street corners and at the ends of earth, but neglects the children of the covenant by abandoning them to a cold and unbelieving secularism.
John Gresham Machen
#34. And let me tell you this: our higher senses are blunted. We are so drenched with material sin, that we should probably fail to recognize real wickedness if we encountered it
Arthur Machen
#35. If we give the bureaucrats our children, we may as well give them everything else.
John Gresham Machen
#37. From every point of view, therefore, the problem in question is the most serious concern of the Church. What is the relation between Christianity and modern culture; may Christianity be maintained in a scientific age?
J. Gresham Machen
#38. What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires.
J. Gresham Machen
#39. Conservative New Testament studies could also provide an intellectually satisfying alternative to German biblical criticism and to the liberal theology that accompanied it.
John Gresham Machen
#40. This then was English fiction, this was English criticism, and farce, after all, was but an ill-played tragedy.
Arthur Machen
#42. A low view of law always produces legalism; a high view of law makes a person a seeker after grace.
John Gresham Machen
#43. If all creeds are equally true, then since they are contradictory to one another, they are all equally false, or at least equally uncertain.
John Gresham Machen
#44. For, usually and fitly, the presence of an introduction is held to imply that there is something of consequence and importance to be introduced.
Arthur Machen
#45. Christianity is not engrossed by this transitory world, but measures all things by the thought of eternity.
John Gresham Machen
#46. I like it here. I like the girls, and I like the DJ's, and the cocktail waitresses, and the loud rock'n'roll (though I would happily beat everyone in Poison to death with the severed limbs of the members of Warrant).
Craig Machen
#47. In every grain of wheat there lies hidden the soul of a star.
Arthur Machen
#48. Vastly more important than all questions with regard to methods of preaching is the root question as to what it is that shall be preached.
John Gresham Machen
#49. Why should we be indignant about slanders directed against a human friend, while at the same time we are patient about the basest slanders directed against our God?
J. Gresham Machen
#50. It is usually considered good practice to examine a thing for one's self before echoing the vulgar ridicule of it.
J. Gresham Machen
#52. Strangeness which is the essence of beauty is the essence of truth, and the essence of the world. I have often felt that; when the ascent of a long hill brought me to the summit of an undiscovered height in London; and I looked down on a new land.
Arthur Machen
#53. A new and more powerful proclamation of the law is perhaps the most pressing need of the hour ... A low view of law always brings legalism into religion; a high view of law makes man a seeker after grace. Pray that the high view may prevail.
J. Gresham Machen
#54. It is often said that the divided condition of Christendom is an evil, and so it is. But the evil consists in the existence of the errors which cause the divisions and not at all in the recognition of those errors when once they exist.
J. Gresham Machen
#55. That it is not the Christianity of the New Testament which is in conflict with science, but the supposed Christianity of the modern liberal Church, and that the real city of God, and that city alone, has defences which are capable of warding off the assaults of modern unbelief. However,
J. Gresham Machen
#56. The great redemptive religion which has always been known as Christianity is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology.
John Gresham Machen
#57. What is the relation between Christianity and modern culture; may Christianity be maintained in a scientific age? It is this problem which modern liberalism attempts to solve.
John Gresham Machen
#58. God is the ruler of history. His times are well chosen The Roman Empire was an instrument in his hand. And so are the nations of the modern world.
John Gresham Machen
#59. Introductions, that is, belong to the masterpieces and classics of the world, to the great and ancient and accepted things; and I am here introducing a short, small story of my own which appeared in The Evening News about ten months ago.
Arthur Machen
#61. He loved to meditate on a land laid waste, Britain deserted by the legions, the rare pavements riven by frost, Celtic magic still brooding on the wild hills and in the black depths of the forest, the rosy marbles stained with rain, and the walls growing grey.
Arthur Machen
#62. I'm so thankful for the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it.
John Gresham Machen
#63. The church must seek to conquer not merely every man for Christ, but also the whole of man.
J. Gresham Machen
#65. I cared nothing; my point of view in that instance, as in all others like it, was, that if the paper chose to send an outsider and an ignoramus to criticise works of art - especially the works of a new and tentative and experimental school - then, on the head of the paper let the just doom fall.
Arthur Machen
#66. Now, everybody, I suppose, is aware that in recent years the silly business of divination by dreams has ceased to be a joke and has become a very serious science.
Arthur Machen
#67. The first chapters of the Bible tell us of the sin of man. The guilt of that sin had rested upon every single one of us, it guilt and its terrible results..but..it also tells us of something greater still; it tells us of the grace of the offended God.
John Gresham Machen
#68. At that point the enemies saw clear. You may accept the lofty claims of Jesus. You may take Him as very God. Or else you must reject Him as a miserable, deluded enthusiast. There is really no middle ground. Jesus refuses to be pressed into the mould of a mere religious teacher.
J. Gresham Machen
#69. Darnell had received what is called a sound commercial education, and would therefore have found very great difficulty in putting into articulate speech any thought that was worth thinking;
Arthur Machen
#70. Then you may have sheer clotted nonsense; I once chased Julius Caesar all over London to get his recipe for curried eggs.
Arthur Machen
#71. We have just begun to navigate a strange region; we must expect to encounter strange adventures, strange perils.
Arthur Machen
#72. He knew then how the dull flesh of man can be like fire
Arthur Machen
#73. It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible.
Arthur Machen
#74. According to Christian belief, man exists for the sake of God; according to the liberal church, in practice if not in theory, God exists for the sake of man.
John Gresham Machen
#75. We lead two lives, and the half of our soul is madness, and half heaven is lit by a black sun. I say I am a man, is the other that hides in me?
Arthur Machen
#76. The most important Christian Education institution is not the pulpit or the school, important as those institutions are; but it is the Christian family. And that institution has to a very large extent ceased to do its work.
John Gresham Machen
#77. Modern culture is a mighty force. It is either subservient to the gospel or else it is the deadliest enemy of the gospel
John Gresham Machen
#78. I see with greater and greater clearness that consistent Christianity is the easiest Christianity to defend.
John Gresham Machen
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