- “Across the centuries, no experience has been more universal and helpful in the sense of someone caring for us, near enough to be called upon, responsive enough to understand. He is real and he is personal and should be idealized but also realized. We must not only possess the idea of God but we should be possessed by it. Men do not believe in God because they have proved Him. Rather they try endlessly to prove Him because they can’t help believing in Him.” (Hugh B. Brown, “God is the Gardener,” May 31, 1968, 10)