From Hermann Gunkel, The Influence of the Holy Spirit, (Augsburg Fortress Publishers - January 1979) at p.2-3:
When I reexamine my work now, I am struck above all by the fact that it often describes the pneumatic phenomena from the standpoint of an alien, aloof observer. It would be wiser and more appropriate first of all to interpret those phenomena just as the pneumatic himself perceived them.
But this divergence of my present opinion from my opinion at that time is no accident. The latter suited the level of my development at which I could very well regard these mysterious appearances, so removed from common sense, as an alien observer, but clearly could not be sympathetic to them as if they were my own. Now I believe I have a better and more discerning knowledge of the subject, particularly from a more thorough reading of the Old Testament prophets, and I see that these things take on life -though but from a distance – only when we are able to live the pneumatic’s inner states after him. At that time, I believed that the conviction that a person has a spirit or demon results from certain perceptions formed by the alien observer. Since he cannot explain certain phenomena in any other way he interprets them as the effect of some supernatural being. Now I see that the conviction that a spirit is speaking or acting through the pneumatic is not a later conclusion drawn by another but the direct experience of the one inspired. In this manner one senses those experiences as the effects of an alien being, of a power not the I, and wishing to dissuade the one who has had them from this conviction would be as useless as a blind person’s insisting to someone who can see that there is no sun at all because he himself does not see it. Thus, whoever happens to write on this theme in the future, or otherwise intends to form an independent judgment on it, must first somehow put himself in a position to share the feeling of the pneumatic. In any event, he should trust not me or others like me but the prophets of the Old and the pneumatics of the New Testament, that genuine, psychological events are at issue here, not phrases or superstition. Though imitation and dogma may play a great role in this area as well, though even superstition may be close at hand, none of it would exist if real events were not underlying.
From Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (1923):
You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.”
From Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Christian Perfection and Contemplation (1937):
It seems to us that the will of God bends when our prayer is heard and granted: yet is our will alone that ascends. We begin to will in time what God has willed us from all eternity.”
From J.W. von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Travels (1830):
The Bible becomes ever more beautiful the more it is understood.
From Mohandas K. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, on v. 2, ch. 77, on prayer," (1948):
“Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.”
From Mohandas K. Gandhi, Young India (Jan. 23, 1930):
Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. . . . It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
From Robert Frost, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening":
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sounds the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
From Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (W.W. Norton - 1961):
[10] [The true source of religious sentiments] [my friend writes] consists in a peculiar feeling, which he himself is never without, which he finds confirmed by many others, and which he may suppose is present in millions of people. It is a feeling which he would like to call a sensation of eternity, a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded – as it were, oceanic. This feeling, he adds is a purely subjective fact, not an article of faith; it brings with it no assurance of personal immortality, but it is the source of the religious energy which is seized upon by the various Churches and religious systems, directed by them into particular channels, and doubtless also exhausted by them. One may, he thinks, rightly call oneself religious on the ground of this oceanic feeling alone, even if one rejects every belief and every illusion. The views expressed by the friend whom I so much honour, and who himself once praised the magic illusion in a poem, caused me no small difficulty. I cannot discover this oceanic feeling in myself. It is not easy to deal scientifically with feelings. [15] In this way, then, the ego detaches itself from the external world. Or, to put it more correctly, originally the ego includes everything, later it separates off an external world from itself. Our present ego-feeling is, therefore, only a shrunken residue of a much more inclusive – indeed, an all-embracing -feeling which corresponded to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world about it. If we may assume that there are many people in whose mental life this primary ego-feeling has persisted to a greater or less degree, it would exist in them side by side with the narrower and more sharply demarcated ego-feeling of maturity, like a kind of counterpart to it. In that case, the ideational contents appropriate to it would be precisely those of limitlessness and of a bond with the universe – the same ideas with which my friend elucidated the oceanic feeling. [20] The further question then arises, what claim this feeling has to be regarded as the source of religious needs. To me the claim does not seem compelling. After all, a feeling can only be a source of energy if it is itself the expression of a strong need. The derivation of religious needs from the infant’s helplessness and the longing for the father aroused by it seems to me incontrovertible, especially since the feeling is not simply prolonged from childhood days, but is permanently sustained by fear of the superior power of fate. I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection. Thus the part played by the oceanic feeling, which might seek something like the restoration of limitless narcissism, is ousted from a place in the foreground. The origin of the religious attitude can be traced back in clear outlines as far as the feeling of infantile helplessness. There may be something behind that, but for the present it is wrapped in obscurity. I can imagine that the oceanic feeling became connected with religion later on. The oneness with the universe which constitutes its ideational content sounds like a first attempt at a religious consolation, as though it were another way of disclaiming the danger which the ego recognizes as threatening it from the external world.
From Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (written 1771-90. published 1868) at chapter 8:
(Said of the Irish itinerant preacher the Reverend Mr. Whitefield who arrived in Philadelphia in 1739): Every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of voice, was so perfectly well turned and well placed, that without being interested in the subject, one could not help being pleased with the discourse; a pleasure of much the same kind with that received from an excellent piece of music. This is an advantage itinerant preachers have over those who are stationary, as the latter can not well improve their delivery of a sermon by so many rehearsals.””