"All around the circle of human doubt and despair, where men and women are going out to enlighten and uplift and comfort and strengthen their fellow-men under the perplexities and burdens of life, we hear the cry for a gospel which shall be divine, and therefore sovereign and unquestionable and sure and victorious. All through the noblest aspirations and efforts and hopes of our Age of Doubt, we feel the longing, and we hear the demand, for a new inspiration of Christian faith."
Henry Van Dyke, as quoted in "The Friendly Year", a collection of Van Dyke's writing edited by George Sidney Webster, in 1909.
Art: Nicodemus visiting Jesus by night, painted by Henry Ossawa Tanner. Nicodemus was one of those in power who secretly came to Jesus, and, with Joseph of Aramathea, assisted in our Lord's proper burial. I love Tanner's beautiful paintings. I don't think anyone painted Christian Biblical scenes with the sense of concrete spirituality that Tanner achieved.
Henry Van Dyke and Henry Ossawa Tanner both played roles of ministry in World War I, drawn to serve by their passionate faith, and both were deeply affected by that Great War for Civilization.
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