Phillips Brooks Quotes
Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.
Brooks, Phillips. Twenty Sermons. E. P. Dutton & Company, 1886, p. 330.
This quotation is often used to illustrate the "Muslim propensity to violence". However, the context of the quotation was a historical circumstance whereby Muhammad's followers were endangered by others and the fighting was of a defensive nature. However, Islam is also a religion requiring believers to spread the religion. So, if there were people or countries or tribes that resisted conversion, the religion was interpreted by many Muslims as being under attack. Therefore violence was justified. In modern times, some religious leaders saw modernism and The West as a danger to Islam and it's tradition, therefore this and other passages of the Koran are often used to justify the terrorism that became so prevalent.
Selling alcohol and running saloons were against the law then in Kansas but there was no effort to enforce it anywhere in Kansas. Carrie Nation went into saloons and literally smashed the glasses, signs, mirrors and furniture with an ax. She smashed up the largest and most elegant saloon in Kansas and as jailed for it. She told the authorities this quotation and because of the publicity her jailing had caused, when she emerged an entire statewide and area movement had begun with Carrie as the leader.
Phillips Brooks was an American Episcopal clergyman and author, long the Rector of Boston's Trinity Church and briefly Bishop of Massachusetts. He wrote the lyrics of the Christmas hymn, "O Little Town of Bethlehem".
