If Comparative Theology has taught us anything, it has taught us that there is a common fund of truth in all religions, derived from a revelation that was neither confined to one nation, nor miraculous in the usual sense of that word, and that even minute coincidences between the doctrines, nay, between the external accessories of various religions, need not be accounted for at once by disguised borrowings, but can be explained by other and more natural causes.
Gifford Lectures, II.
Can there be anything higher and better than truth? Is any kind of religion possible without an unquestioning trust in truth? No one knows what it is to believe who has not learnt to believe in truth, for the sake of truth, and for the sake of truth only.
Gifford Lectures, III.
It may be quite right to guard against dangers, whether real or imaginary, so long as it is possible. But when it is no longer possible, the right thing is to face an enemy bravely. Very often the enemy will turn out a friend in disguise. We cannot be far wrong, if we are only quite honest, but if we are once not quite honest over a few things, we shall soon become dishonest over many things. In teaching on religion, even on Natural religion, we must look neither right nor left, but look all facts straight in the face, to see whether they are facts or not, and, if they are facts, to find out what they mean.
Gifford Lectures, III.
Some people say that they can derive no help, no comfort, from what they call spiritual only. Spiritual only—think what that only would mean, if it could have any meaning at all. We might as well say of light that it is light only, and that what we want is the shadow which we can grasp. So long as we know the shadow only, and not the light that throws it, the shadow only is real, and not the light. But when we have once turned our head and seen the light, the light only is real and substantial, and not the shadow.
Gifford Lectures, III.
We find in the Upanishads, what has occupied the thoughts of man at all times, what occupies them now and will occupy them for ever—a search after truth, a desire to discover the Eternal that underlies the Ephemeral, a longing to find in the human heart the assurance of a future life, and an attempt to reunite the bond which once held the human and the divine together, the true atonement between God and man.