“God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting.”
Part IV.
The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 202
American poet 1807–1882Related quotes
“God sifted a whole nation that he might send choice grain over into this wilderness.”
Election Sermon at Boston, April 29, 1669. Compare: "God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting", Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Courtship of Miles Standish, iv.
“The Kingdom of God is freedom and the absence of such power… the Kingdom of God is anarchy.”
Slavery and Freedom (1939), p. 147
Context: There is absolute truth in anarchism and it is to be seen in its attitude to the sovereignty of the state and to every form of state absolutism. … The religious truth of anarchism consists in this, that power over man is bound up with sin and evil, that a state of perfection is a state where there is no power of man over man, that is to say, anarchy. The Kingdom of God is freedom and the absence of such power... the Kingdom of God is anarchy.
“We are the earth his word must sow like wheat
And, if it finds no earth, it cannot grow.”
Innkeeper's wife
A Child is Born (1942)
Context: We are the earth his word must sow like wheat
And, if it finds no earth, it cannot grow.
We are his earth, the mortal and the dying,
Led by no star — the sullen and the slut,
The thief, the selfish man, the barren woman,
Who have betrayed him once and will betray him,
Forget his words, be great a moment's space
Under the strokes of chance,
And then sink back into our small affairs.
And yet, unless we go, his message fails.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 490.
Source: The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church
