Christian Quotations of the Day
for March, 2002

March 1, 2002

Feast of David, Bishop of Menevia, Patron of Wales, c.601
Beginning a short series on the Bible:

         Arguments for the existence of God are very restricted; some of them are more restricted and limited than others. They do not prove beyond all question the existence of the God of the Bible. Furthermore, it must be remembered that man's mind, his thinking process, has been affected by his fall into sin. This means that there are definite limitations to God's revelation in nature. The problem is not in the revelation but in the receiver of the revelation.
         ... Robert P. Lightner, The God of the Bible

March 2, 2002

Feast of Chad, Abbot of Lastingham, Bishop of Lichfield, Missionary, 672
Continuing a short series on the Bible:
Come, Holy Ghost, for moved by thee
The prophets wrote and spoke;
Unlock the truth, thyself the key,
Unseal the sacred book.
         ... Charles Wesley

March 3, 2002

Continuing a short series on the Bible:

         Our starting point is Scripture, which we accept as God's unique and trustworthy revelation. Yet, in seeking with loyalty to conserve this truth from God, we attribute no infallibility to our own evangelical traditions. We desire, rather, to re-examine them radically -- that is to say, with a thoroughness which digs down even to their roots. If we seem to the reader to be always sure about the truthfulness of Scripture but sometimes less than sure in our understanding of how to apply it to complex contemporary questions, then he has accurately grasped our mood.
         ... John R. W. Stott, "Obeying Christ in a Changing World"

March 4, 2002

Commemoration of Felix, Bishop, Apostle to the East Angles, 647
Continuing a short series on the Bible:

         God the Father is the giver of Holy Scripture; God the Son is the theme of Holy Scripture; and God the Spirit is the author, authenticator, and interpreter of Holy Scripture.
         ... J. I. Packer

March 5, 2002

Continuing a short series on the Bible:

         A man who is well-grounded in the testimonies of the Scripture is the bulwark of the Church.
         ... St. Jerome

March 6, 2002

Continuing a short series on the Bible:

         Scripture nowhere condemns the acquisition of knowledge. It is the wisdom of this world, not its knowledge, that is foolishness with God... The history of philosophy is a story of contradictory, discarded hypotheses... Many of them have failed to avail themselves of that which would unravel every knot and solve every problem, namely, the revelation of God in Christ as given in the Holy Scriptures.
         ... Harry A. Ironside

March 7, 2002

Feast of Perpetua, Felicity & their Companions, Martyrs at Carthage, 203
Concluding a short series on the Bible:

         The popular craving [for an English Bible] could not be stifled, and the sixteenth century saw the pioneering works of Tyndale and Coverdale; then, two years after Coverdale, the real "authorized version" appeared in 1537, when a mysterious translator called "Thomas Matthew" had his works not only dedicated to but licensed by Henry VIII. In the long run, what put the Bible into the hands of the common people was the influence exerted on public opinion and authority by the reformation of the church.
         ... James Moffatt

March 8, 2002

Commemoration of Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy, Priest, Poet, 1929

         He that hath seen Christ has seen the Father, and Christ not only died, but conquered death and rose again. God the Father is suffering, striving, crucified, but unconquerable. We see His triumph now in Nature's glory, and we hear Him calling to us to join Him in the task of conquering the evils which arise from the necessities of creation. He calls us to combat floods and famine and pestilence and disease. He hates them, and wills with us to overcome them, and they shall be overcome. The Doctor, the Pioneer, the Scientist, are workers with God like the Priest. All good work is God's work, and all good workers do God's will. They are labouring to make a world.
         ... G. A. Studdert Kennedy, The Hardest Part

March 9, 2002


         Resolution is no strange and extraordinary thing; it is one of the most common acts that belong to us as we are men. But we do not ordinarily apply it to the best purposes. It is not so ordinary for men to resolve to be good as to resolve to be rich and great, not so common for men to resolve against sin as to resolve against poverty and suffering. It is not so usual for men to resolve to keep a good conscience as to keep a good place.
         ... John Tillotson

March 10, 2002


         If... you are ever tempted to think that we modern Western Europeans cannot really be so very bad because we are, comparatively speaking, humane--if, in other words, you think God might be content with us on that ground--ask yourself whether you think God ought to have been content with the cruelty of past ages because they excelled in courage or chastity. You will see at once that this is an impossibility. From considering how the cruelty of our ancestors looks to us, you may get some inkling of how our softness, worldliness, and timidity would have looked to them, and hence how both must look to God.
         ... C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

March 11, 2002


         Since the life of Christ is every way most bitter to nature and the Self and the Me (for in the true life of Christ, the Self and the Me and nature must be forsaken and lost and die altogether), therefore in each of us, nature hath a deep horror of it.
         ... Theologia Germanica

March 12, 2002


         Grant that I may never rack a Scripture simile beyond the true intent thereof, lest, instead of sucking milk, I squeeze blood out of it.
         ... Thomas Fuller

March 13, 2002


         God has not cared that we should anywhere have assurance of His very words; and that not merely, perhaps, because of the tendency in His children to word-worship, false logic, and corruption of the truth, but because He would not have them oppressed by words, seeing that words, being human, and therefore but partially capable, could not absolutely contain or express what the Lord meant, and that even He must depend for being understood upon the spirit of His disciple. Seeing that it could not give life, the letter should not be throned with power to kill.
         ... George Macdonald, "The Knowing of the Son"

March 14, 2002


         Each of these foregoing states has its time, its variety of workings, its trials, temptations, and purifications, which can only be known by experience in the passage through them. The one only and infallible way to go safely through all the difficulties, trials, temptations, dryness, or opposition of our own evil tempers is this: It is to expect nothing from ourselves, to trust to nothing in ourselves, but in everything to expect and depend upon God for relief. Keep fast hold of this thread, and then let your way be what it will -- darkness, temptation, or the rebellion of nature -- you will be led through it all, to an union with God: for nothing hurts us in any state but an expectation of some thing in it and from it, which we should only expect from God. (Continued tomorrow)
         ... William Law, Christian Perfection

March 15, 2002


         We are looking for our own virtue, our own piety, our own goodness, and so live on and in our own poverty and weakness -- today pleased and comforted with the seeming firmness and strength of our own pious tempers and fancying ourselves to be somewhat. Tomorrow, fallen into our own mire, we are dejected, but not humbled; we grieve, but it is only the grief of pride at the seeing our perfection not to be such as we had vainly imagined. And thus it will be, till the whole turn of our minds be so changed that we as fully see and know our inability to have any goodness of our own as to have a life of our own.
         ... William Law, Christian Perfection

March 16, 2002


         We have observed that in at least two cases the sayings of our Lord imply an appeal behind the Law of Moses to the order of creation. While, therefore, the Law of Moses is from one aspect the first stage of revelation, leading up to the Law of Christ, in another aspect it is a temporary expedient on the way from the Law of Nature to the Law of Christ, serving certain limited purposes, which fulfilled, it may be set aside, leaving mankind in Christ confronted by the original law of his creation.
         ... C. H. Dodd, New Testament Studies

March 17, 2002

Feast of Patrick, Bishop of Armagh, Missionary, Patron of Ireland, c.460

         For the Scriptures, . . . the existence of God is both a historical truth (God acted into history), and an existential truth (God reveals himself to every soul). His existence is both objectively and subjectively evident. It is necessary logically because our assumption of order, design, and rationality rests upon it. It is necessary morally because there is no explanation for the shape of morality apart from it. It is necessary emotionally because the human experience requires an immediate and ultimate environment. It is necessary personally because the exhaustion of all material possibilities still cannot give satisfaction to the heart. The deepest proof for God's existence, apart from history, is just life itself. God has created man in his image, and men cannot elude the implications of this fact. Everywhere their identity pursues them. Ultimately, there is no escape.
         ... Clark H. Pinnock, Set Forth Your Case

March 18, 2002


         The demand that the Atonement shall be exhibited in vital relation to a new life in which sin is overcome... is entirely legitimate, and it touches a weak point in the traditional Protestant doctrine. Dr. (Thomas) Chalmers tells us that he was brought up -- such was the effect of the current orthodoxy upon him -- in a certain distrust of good works. Some were certainly wanted, but not as being themselves salvation, only, as he puts it, as tokens of justification. It was a distinct stage in his religious progress when he realized that true justification sanctifies, and that the soul can and ought to abandon itself spontaneously and joyfully to do the good that it delights in. The modern mind assumes what Dr. Chalmers painfully discovered. An atonement that does not regenerate, it truly holds, is not an atonement in which men can be asked to believe
         ... James Denney, The Atonement and the Modern Mind

March 19, 2002

Feast of Joseph of Nazareth
O Lord our God,
         Who has called us to serve You,
In the midst of the world's affairs,
         When we stumble, hold us;
When we fall, lift us up;
         When we are hard pressed with evil, deliver us;
When we turn from what is good, turn us back;
         And bring us at last to Your glory.
         ... St. Alcuin

March 20, 2002

Feast of Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne, Missionary, 687

         The humblest and the most unseen activity in the world can be the true worship of God. Work and worship literally become one. Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever; and man carries out that function when he does what God sent him into the world to do. Work well done rises like a hymn of praise to God. This means that the doctor on his rounds, the scientist in his laboratory, the teacher in his classroom, the musician at his music, the artist at his canvas, the shop assistant at his counter, the typist at her typewriter, the housewife in her kitchen -- all who are doing the work of the world as it should be done are joining in a great act of worship.
         ... William Barclay, The Revelation of John, vol. 1

March 21, 2002


         We [must not] underestimate the enormity of the claim [made by the Jews]. Again and again in the Pentateuch, the psalms, the prophets, and the subsequent writings which derive from them, the claim is made that the creator of the entire universe has chosen to live uniquely on a small ridge called Mount Zion, near the eastern edge of the Judean hill-country. The sheer absurdity of this claim, from the standpoint of any other worldview (not least that of Enlightenment philosophy), is staggering. The fact that Assyria, Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Egypt again, Syria and now Rome had made explicit mockery of the idea did not shake this conviction, but only intensified it. This was what Jewish monotheism looked like on the ground.
         ... N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God
[Thanks to Ann Cogdell at ann@cogdell.org]

March 22, 2002


         It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"; for faith consists in the knowledge of God and Christ, not in reverence for the Church.
         ... John Calvin

March 23, 2002


         No man safely goeth abroad who loveth not to rest at home. No man safely talketh but he who loveth to hold his peace. No man safely ruleth but he who loveth to be subject. No man safely commandeth but he who loveth to obey.
         ... Thomas à Kempis, Of the Imitation of Christ

March 24, 2002

Palm Sunday
Feast of Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, Martyr, 1980
Commemoration of Paul Couturier, Priest, Ecumenist, 1953

         In this state of things I saw no remedy but faith and patience. The passage of Scripture which subdued and controlled my mind was this, "The servant of the Lord must not strive." It was painful indeed to see the church, with the exception of the aisles, almost forsaken; but I thought that if God would only give a double blessing to the congregation that did attend, there would on the whole be as much good done as if the congregation were doubled and the blessing limited to only half the amount. This comforted me many, many times, when, without such a reflection, I should have sunk under my burden.
         ... Charles Simeon

March 25, 2002

Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary

         As out of Jesus' affliction came a new sense of God's love and a new basis for love between men, so out of our affliction we may grasp the splendor of God's love and how to love one another. Thus the consummation of the two commandments was on Golgotha; and the Cross is, at once, their image and their fulfillment.
         ... Malcolm Muggeridge

March 26, 2002

Feast of Harriet Monsell of Clewer, Religious, 1883

         There is no situation so chaotic that God cannot from that situation create something that is surpassingly good. He did it at the creation. He did it at the cross. He is doing it today.
         ... Bishop Handley Moule

March 27, 2002


         Modern attempts to get away from the sheer historical facts of the Resurrection are, at best, based on a total misunderstanding. The whole Bible proclaims the need for, and the achievement of, a salvation that will remake creation, and it is just such a salvation, at once supernatural and historical, that was won on Easter Day. If the Resurrection narratives are [merely] a subtle way of convincing us that God still loves us, or that there is a life beyond death, they must be reckoned among the oddest and most ill-conceived stories ever written.
         ... Michael Sadgrove & Tom Wright

March 28, 2002

Maundy Thursday

         Jesus invites His saints
         To meet around His board;
Here pardon'd rebels sit and hold
         Communion with their Lord.

         For food He give His flesh,
         He bids us drink His blood;
Amazing favor! matchless grace
         Of our descending God!

         This holy bread and wine
         Maintains our fainting breath,
By union with our living Lord
         And interest in His death.

         Let all our powers be join'd
         His glorious name to raise;
Pleasure and love fill every mind,
         And every voice be praise.
         ... Isaac Watts, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, vol. III, n. 2

March 29, 2002

Good Friday
Commemoration of Jack Winslow, Missionary, Evangelist, 1974

         Who was it that set up the Cross? Not fiends incarnate, but plain flesh and blood like us; quite ordinary men, decent and kindly souls enough, some of whom, no doubt, went to their homes that day from Calvary and took their children on their knees and loved them very genuinely. Only, they were a bit old fashioned in the make-up of their minds, had grown stiff and inelastic in their thinking, inhospitable to new notions -- surely a very minor sin at worst -- and some feared for their vested interests; and one, poor Pilate, had lost his temper with these impossible Jews in days gone by, and had received a curt warning from Rome that there must be no further bloodshed in Jerusalem, and here was a new trouble at the very worst of times in the whole year, with fanatics in tens of thousands come up for the Feast; and one wanted to save the world by quick-running machinery, and so put Christ into a situation where He could no longer dilly-dally but must do something vivid, dramatic, revolutionary. And the people? No need for us to bother being there at the decision between Jesus and Barabbas. We had the lined streets cheering for Him yesterday. And we have relatives to see, and messages from neighbours to deliver to their kindred. He will be all right; we needn't worry to be there. Such simple and plebian sins -- minds grown a trifle out of date, a little selfishness, some temper and its consequences, a bit of worldly wisdom, and an indifference that did nothing at all -- these brought about the shame of mankind, and the tragedy of history, and the blot upon our annals that will not rub out. And they are all of them within your heart and mine.
         ... A. J. Gossip, Experience Worketh Hope

March 30, 2002

Holy Saturday

         If I ask to be delivered from trial rather than for deliverance out of it, to the praise of His glory; if I forget that the way of the Cross leads to the Cross and not to a bank of flowers; if I regulate my life on these lines, or even unconsciously my thinking, so that I am surprised when the way is rough and think it strange, "Think it not strange, Count it all joy," then I know nothing of Calvary love.
         ... Amy Carmichael

March 31, 2002

Easter
Commemoration of John Donne, Priest, Poet, 1631

         God, who is Almighty, Alpha and Omega, First and Last, that God is also Love it self; and therefore this Love is Alpha and Omega, First and Last too. Consider Christ's proceeding with Peter in the ship, in the storm: First he suffered him to be in some danger in the storm, but then he visits him with that strong assurance, "Be not afraid, It is I": any testimony of his presence rectifies all. This puts Peter into that spiritual confidence and courage, "Lord bid me come to thee"; he hath a desire to be with Christ, but yet stays his bidding: he puts not himself into an unnecessary danger, without commandment: Christ bids him, and Peter comes: but yet, though Christ were in his sight, and even in the actual exercise of his love to him, so soon as he saw a gust, a storm, "He was afraid"; and Christ lets him fear, and lets him sink, and lets him cry, but he directs his fear and his cry to the right end: "Lord, save me"; and thereupon he stretched forth his hand and saved him...
         God puts his children into good ways, and he directs and protects them in those ways; for this is the constancy and perseverence of the love of Jesus Christ to us, as he is called in this text (Matt. 21:44), a stone.
         ... John Donne, Sermon preached to the nobility [1619]

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