“Nature is God's first missionary. Where there is no Bible there are sparkling stars. Where there are not preachers there are spring times...If a person has nothing but nature, then nature is enough to reveal something about God.”

“The church is missionary by nature because God through the Spirit calls, creates, and commissions the church to communicate to the world that the redemptive reign of God has broken into human history.”

“A person's true nature is revealed at times of the greatest adversity.”

“Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the religions.[October 2, 1910, interview in the NY Times Magazine]”

“Nothing in nature is exhausted in its first use...In God, every end is converted into a new means.”

“Naturalism is the view that the physical world is a self-contained system that works by blind, unbroken natural laws. Naturalism doesn't come right out and say there's nothing beyond nature. Rather, it says that nothing beyond nature could have any conceivable relevance to what happens in nature. Naturalism's answer to theism is not atheism but benign neglect. People are welcome to believe in God, though not a God who makes a difference in the natural order.”