Harry Emerson Fosdick Quotes

       Harry Emerson Fosdick
       1878-1969
      
       Harry Emerson Fosdick was an American clergyman. He was born in Buffalo, New York. He graduated from Colgate University in 1900, and Union Theological Seminary in 1904. While attending Colgate University he joined the Delta Upsilon Fraternity. He was ordained a Baptist minister in 1903 at the Madison Avenue Baptist Church at 31st Street. Fosdick was the most prominent liberal Baptist minister of the early 20th Century. Although a Baptist, he was Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church on West Twelfth Street and then at the historic, interdenominational Riverside Church (the congregation moved from the then-named Park Avenue Baptist Church, now the Central Presbyterian Church) in New York City.
      
       Fosdick became a central figure in the conflict between fundamentalist and liberal forces within American Protestantism in the 1920s and 1930s. He saw the history of Christianity as one of development, progress, and gradual change. To the fundamentalists, this was rank apostasy, and the battle lines were drawn.
      
       Fosdick was an outspoken opponent of racism and injustice. Fosdick's sermons won him wide recognition, as did his radio addresses which were nationally broadcast. He authored numerous books, and many of his sermon collections are still in print. He is also the author of the hymn, "God of Grace and God of Glory"

Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what we make out of what they do to us.     Topics: Achievement Picture yourself vividly as winning, and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success.     Topics: Achievement The world is moving so fast these days that the one who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.     Topics: Achievement Life asks not merely what you can do; it asks how much can you endure and not be spoiled.     Topics: Adversity, Life, Endurance Consider how impossible nobility of character would be if our goodness were untried innocence instead of victorious virtue.     Topics: Character, Virtue, Victory Our power is not so much in us as through us.     Topics: Character, Power Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.     Topics: Christians, Change, Endurance To keep the Golden Rule we must put ourselves in other people's places, but to do that consists in and depends upon picturing ourselves in their places.     Topics: Compassion All altruism springs from putting yourself in the other person's place.     Topics: Compassion The real war is inward of which the outer action is but the echo and reverberation.     Topics: Conscience He who cannot rest, cannot work; he who cannot let go, cannot hold on; he who cannot find footing, cannot go forward.     Topics: Contentment, Work, Rest God has put within our lives meanings and possibilities that quite outrun the limits of mortality.     Topics: Eternity