Melissa Smith

“Ispent the following day roaming through the valley. I stood beside the sources of the Arveiron, which take their rise in a glacier, that with slow pace is advancing down from the summit of the hills to barricade the valley. The abrupt sides of vast mountains were before me; the icy wall of the glacier overhung me; a few shattered pines were scattered around; and the solemn silence of this glorious presence-chamber of imperial nature was broken only by the brawling waves or the fall of some vast fragment, the thunder sound of the avalanche or the cracking, reverberated along the mountains, of the accumulated ice, which, through the silent working of immutable laws, was ever and anon rent and torn, as if it had been but a plaything in their hands. These sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation that I was capable of receiving. They elevated me from all littleness of feeling, and although they did not remove my grief, they subdued and tranquillized it. In some degree, also, they diverted my mind from the thoughts over which it had brooded for the last month. I retired to rest at night; my slumbers, as it were, waited on and ministered to by the assemblance of grand shapes which I had contemplated during the day. They congregated round me; the unstained snowy mountain-top, the glittering pinnacle, the pine woods, and ragged bare ravine, the eagle, soaring amidst the clouds—they all gathered round me and bade me be at peace.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“If we will not have inscripturated morality from God as our sociopolitical standard, we have no principle to protect us from those who wish to play god.”
― Greg L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics

“It should be evident from our study so far that Scripture speaks of only one kingdom of God. That kingdom is the historical program of God coming to overcome his enemies, to redeem his people, and to bring his lordship to bear on all areas of created reality. There is no “secular kingdom,” no kingdom ruled only by natural law and not by Scripture. All people, all institutions, all spheres of human life have a responsibility to hear God’s Word, to respond to it obediently, and to accept the renewal of God’s grace.”
― John M. Frame, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief

“The Two Kingdoms view maintains that the kingdom came in Jesus and will come again in Jesus’ return, but that it is confined to the church in the period between Jesus’ two advents. That view goes against the passages cited above. Clearly, the kingdom has in fact deeply affected human culture over the centuries: in the sciences, the arts, the treatment of orphans and widows, education, and every other area of importance to human beings.”
― John M. Frame, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief