“The city defeated him. It refused to be bent into shape; it stayed a willful, sprawling, sinful place. It even told him as much. When he walked through the gutted wreck of old Saint Paul's, he tripped and fell over a piece of rubble -- a tombstone. When he got to his feet and dusted himself down he saw that it read, in Latin, 'Resurgam' -- 'I Will Rise Again.”

“A fortuneteller at a magicians' convention in Atlantic City once told him that when he fell in love it would be forever, and he laughed at the notion, but now he sees that reading was completely on target.”

“It surprised him that he was remembering all this. Maybe it was the walking. Maybe you saw even more than the land when you got out of the car and used your feet.”

“Before I go," he said, and paused -- "I may kiss her?"It was remembered afterwards that when he bent down and touched her face with his lips, he murmured some words. The child, who was nearest to him, told them afterwards, and told her grandchildren when she was a handsome old lady, that she heard him say, "A life you love.”

“He saw an evening when he sat slumped across his desk in that office. It was late and his staff had left; so he could lie there alone, unwitnessed. He was tired. It was as if he had run a race against his own body, and all the exhaustion of years, which he refused to acknowledge, had caught him at once and flattened him against the desk top. He felt nothing, except the desire not to move. He did not have the strength to feel--not even to suffer. He had burned everything there was to burn within him; he had scattered so many sparks to start so many things--and he wondered whether someone could give him now the spark he needed, now when he felt unable ever to rise again. He asked himself who had started him and kept him going. Then he raised his head. Slowly, with the greatest effort of his life, he made his body rise until he was able to sit upright with only one hand pressed to the desk and a trembling arm to support him. He never asked that question again.”

“Jesus is a descendant of David, the beloved of God. Jesus is the only begotten Son of God who was born into this world and died and rose again. Saint John calls him the Word and the Light. When he died, he did so as atonement for our sins, and when he rose, he did so to defeat the power and curse of death and hell on this once-holy world. Do you believe in him?”