All men -- lost or saved -- are great in their significance. Having been made in the image of God, man is magnificent even in ruin. God made man to be responsible for his thoughts and his actions, and man fashions a significant history. This is true of both Christians and non-Christians, both men with the Bible and men without the Bible. Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 88

No doubt all history in the last resort must be held by Christians to be a story with a divine plot.

Nowhere is salvation conceived of as a flight from history as in Greek thought; it is always the coming of God to man in history. Man does not ascend to God; God descends to man. The Last Things (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans: 1978) 43

History is God's roaring loom.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

The man who is content to sit ignorantly by his own fireside, wrapped up in his own private affairs, and has no public eye for what is going on in the church and the world, is a miserable patriot, and a poor style Christian. Next to our Bibles and our own hearts, our Lord would have us study our own times.

What are all histories but God manifesting Himself?

History is philosophy teaching by example.

Providence is like a curious piece of arras, made up of thousands of shreds, which single we know not what to make of, but together they present us with a beautiful history.

We need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it...A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be decieved by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.

Without retrospect, no real prospect is possible.

Our twentieth century, far from being notable for scientific scepticism, is one of the most credulous eras in all history. It is not that people believe in nothing - which would be bad enough - but that they believe in anything - which is really terrible.

There is nothing new except the history you don't know.

In his own lifetime Jesus made no impact on history. This is something that I cannot but regard as a special dispensation on God's part, and, I like to think, yet another example of the ironical humour which informs so many of His purposes.