The progress of the liberation of the divine source in people is inexorably leading to a transformation of the existing order and an establishment of a different one.
The longer I live, the more work lies before me. We live in an important time. Never before did so much work await the people. Our age is the age of revolution, in the best sense of this word—not material, but moral revolution. The highest idea of social order and human perfection is being developed. We will not live long enough to see the harvest, but it is a great happiness to sow with faith.
— Channing
Listen to the deep dissatisfaction with the current form of Christianity that is spreading in society, expressed in grumbling, bitterness and sorrow. Everyone thirsts for the advent of the kingdom of God. And it is approaching.
A purer Christianity is slowly but gradually replacing that which bears its name.
— Channing
Just as dryness (the absence of dampness) depends on two causes in nature that are contrary to one another: very cold temperatures (winter frost) and very hot temperatures (summer heat), so too decisiveness of character (the absence of hesitation) is conditioned in the human being by two causes that are contrary to one another: a purely pagan human consciousness on the one hand, and a purely Christian one on the other.
And, just as one finds more dampness rather than dryness than ever in springtime, i.e. in the period of transition between winter and summer, so too one finds the least decisiveness of character in the human being undergoing his transition from paganism to Christianity, who experiences more hesitation than ever with respect to what he should do and how he should act.
The only people who do not feel the joy of springtime or of the transition from paganism to Christianity are those who do not understand what causes this time and this state. The people who understand that the dampness of springtime and human indecisiveness are caused by a transitory state in nature and in the human being, namely the turn of the sun towards summer in the former case and an increase in the understanding of life in the latter, will not only not feel sad at the dampness and the indecisiveness they are observing, but will be happy to see both the former and the latter as signs of the coming summer in nature and the kingdom of God in humankind.
— Fyodor Strakhov
In our time of the common religious consciousness of the brotherhood of humankind, true science must show the means of applying this consciousness to life, and art must translate this consciousness into feeling.
The further away the goal, the more necessary it is to press forward. Neither rushing, nor resting.
— Mazzini
I see before me a people in the livery of slavery and political lawlessness, a people in tatters, hungry, exhausted, forced to pick up the crumbs thrown to it insultingly from the luxurious feast of the rich, or I see it thrashing around in a rush of menacing rebellion, intoxicated by animal rage and savage joy, and I remember that these brutalized faces bear upon them the mark of God and share the same purpose with us. Then I look to the future, and before me I see a people rising in all its glory, like brothers of faith, united by common ties of equality and love; I see the people of the future, not corrupted by luxury, not brutalized by poverty, permeated by a consciousness of their human dignity. And, seeing this, my heart tightens painfully for the present and flutters joyfully for the future.
— Mazzini
“Do not let your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me,” i.e. believe in the divinity of your nature, which Christ has revealed to you. The consciousness of this divinity cannot but be accepted by the human being and therefore cannot but be realized.
