Daily Inspiration Quote by Robert Rainy

Comfort breeds nominal faith. Rainy’s line is a cool, Presbyterian diagnosis of what happens when Christianity stops being costly: it becomes culturally convenient. He’s not romanticizing persecution so much as noting its brutal sorting mechanism. When belief comes with penalties, the uncommitted tend to drift away; when it comes with social approval, institutional belonging can masquerade as conviction.

The intent is pastoral but edged with institutional critique. Rainy is pointing at “Christians” who can “become and continue” in the church without ever having to develop the habits that devotion requires. The phrasing matters. “Neither were nor professed” implies a double absence: not only is devotion missing, it isn’t even expected. That’s an indictment of a religious culture that has lowered the bar so far that non-devotion no longer needs to hide. The sentence quietly reframes persecution as a kind of unwanted authenticity test, while comfort becomes a solvent that dilutes seriousness.

Contextually, Rainy wrote from a 19th-century Scottish scene where Protestant Christianity was deeply interwoven with public life, education, and respectability. In that world, being Christian could function less like a contested identity and more like a civic default. His worry isn’t just about individual lukewarmness; it’s about a church that confuses attendance and inheritance with spiritual vitality. The subtext reads like a warning to comfortable majorities: when faith costs nothing, it can mean almost anything.