The scandal of
the Bible does not lie so much in its claim to record the Word of God,
as in its insistence that the Word of God is to be heard in a particular
historical happening, in a particular locality -- and only there. To put
it in a provocative manner: the Bible is theology. It is historical theology.
It can reveal its meaning only to those who regard it as the Word of God,
and are able to preserve a strict confidence in the universal significance
of particular historical occasions.
... E.
S. Hoskyns, We Are the Pharisees
Devotional poetry...
has to do with devotedness, with trust merged into faith, with love's steadfastness.
It finds men's worthwhileness deep laid in relationship to God's worthwhileness,
and this devotion is expressed in communication. It finds this world precious
insofar as it... symbolizes God's love and therefore it runs counter to
our national sin of distrust in God. (And yet, how can we trust Him without
knowing and living unto Him and loving Him?)
... Samuel
Bradley
Wherever riches
have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion.
Therefore I do not see how it is possible in the nature of things for any
revival of religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce
both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as
riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its
branches.
... John
Wesley
He who forgives
not is not forgiven, and the prayer of the Pharisee is as the weary beating
of the surf of hell, while the cry of a soul out of its fire sets the heart-strings
of Love trembling.
... George
Macdonald, Sir Gibbie
My father had never
lost his temper with us, never beaten us, but we had for him that feeling
often described as fear, which is something quite different and far deeper
than alarm. It was that sense which, without irreverence, I have thought
to find expressed by the great evangelists when they speak of the fear
of God. One does not fear God because He is terrible, but because He is
literally the soul of goodness and truth, because to do Him wrong is to
do wrong to some mysterious part of oneself, and one does not know exactly
what the consequences may be.
... Joyce
Cary, Except the Lord
Instead of allowing
yourself to be unhappy, just let your love grow as God wants it to grow.
Seek goodness in others. Love more persons more -- love them more impersonally,
more unselfishly, without thought of return. The return, never fear, will
take care of itself.
... Henry
Drummond
We, and all things,
exist in God's lnfinitude now; our individuality begins with it; our personality
grows strong because of it; and we know, if we know anything, that while
the more we approach the good the more we please God, at the same time
the more we approach the good the more nobly distinctive, the more beautifully
individual do our characters become.
... Lily
Dougall, The Undiscovered Country
We have forgotten
that evil is infectious, as infectious as small-pox; and we do not perceive
that if we allow whole departments of our life to become purely secular,
and to create and maintain moral or immoral standards on their own, in
time the whole of life is bound to become corrupt.
... G.
A. Studdert Kennedy, The Wicket Gate
If we are to live
unto God at any time, or in any place, we are to live unto Him at all times
and all places. If we are to use anything as the gift of God, we are to
use everything as His gift.
... William
Law
The smallest things
become great when God requires them of us; they are small only in themselves;
they are always great when they are done for God, and when they serve to
unite us with Him eternally.
... François
Fénelon
Expressions of
sharp and even violent criticism of religion and the church have been welcomed,
for they usually imply sincerity of thought. If caustic criticism of religious
institutions and practices is irreligious, then Amos, Isaiah, and Jesus
were very irreligious men. In fact, that is exactly what many of their
contemporaries took them to be.
... Halford
E. Luccock & Frances Brentano
I do not believe
anyone ever yet humbly, genuinely, thoroughly gave himself to Christ without
some other finding Christ through him.
... Phillips
Brooks
The power and attraction
Jesus Christ exercises over men never comes from him alone, but from him
as Son of the Father. It comes from him in his Sonship in a double way,
as man living to God and as God living with men. Belief in him and loyalty
to his cause involve men in the double movement, from world to God and
from God to world. Even when theologies fail to do justice to this fact,
Christians living with Christ in their cultures are aware of it. For they
are forever being challenged to abandon all things for the sake of God;
and forever being sent back into the world to teach and practice all the
things that have been commanded them.
... H.
Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture
Don't imagine that
if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call "humble"
nowadays: he won't be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who's always telling
you that, of course, he's nobody. Probably all you'll think about him is
that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in
what you said to him. If you do dislike him, it will be because you feel
a bit envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He won't be
thinking about himself at all. There I must stop. If anyone would like
to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first
step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least,
nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you're not conceited,
it means you are very conceited indeed.
... C.
S. Lewis, Christian Behavior
If [it] yields
to the drift of the age and surrenders its hold of the awful but glorious
individualism of the Christian salvation,... the Church itself will not
be much enriched by an accession of panic-stricken fugitives from a Personal
God. And many unhappy young people are discovering now that Church membership
is not the equivalent of being reconciled to God, and a kind of Confirmation
is not a substitute for Conversion.
... William
Russell Maltby
We are apt to overlook
the hand and heart of God in our afflictions, and to consider them as mere
accidents, and unavoidable evils. This view makes them absolute and positive
evils, which admit of no remedy or relief. If we view our troubles and
trials aside from the divine design and agency in them, we cannot be comforted.
... Nathaniel
Emmons
It is generally
true that all that is required to make men unmindful of what they owe God
for any blessing is that they should receive that blessing often and regularly.
... Richard
Whately
Man does not live
for himself alone in this mortal body, in order to work on its account,
but also for all men on earth; nay, he lives only for others, and not for
himself. For it is to this end that he brings his own body into subjection,
that he may be able to serve others more sincerely and more freely... Thus
it is impossible that he should take his ease in this life, and not work
for the good of his neighbors, since he must needs speak, act, and converse
among men, just as Christ... had His conversation among men... It is the
part of a Christian to take care of his own body for the very purpose that
by its soundness and wellbeing he may be enabled to labor... for the aid
of those who are in want, that thus the stronger member may serve the weaker
member, and we may be children of God, and busy for one another, bearing
one another's burdens, and so fulfilling the law of Christ.
... Martin
Luther
It is the custom
of unbelievers to speak as if the air of Palestine were then surcharged
with belief in the supernatural, miracles were everywhere. Thus they would
explain away the significance of the popular belief that our Lord wrought
signs and wonders. But in so doing they set themselves a worse problem
than they evade. If miracles were so very common, it would be as easy to
believe that Jesus wrought them as that He worked at His father's bench,
but also it would be as inconclusive.
And how then are we
to explain the astonishment which all the evangelists so constantly record?
On any conceivable theory, these writers shared the beliefs of that age,
and so did the readers who accepted their assurance that all were amazed,
and that His report "went out straightway everywhere into all the region
of Galilee." These are emphatic words, and both the author and his readers
must have considered a miracle to be more surprising than modern critics
believe they did. Yet we do not read of any one was converted by this miracle.
All were amazed, but wonder is not self-surrender. They were content to
let their excitement die out -- as every violent emotion must -- without
any change of life, any permanent devotion to the new Teacher and His doctrine.
... G.
A. Chadwick, Gospel of St. Mark
Rational conviction,
even when it can be had, is very different from commitment... Commitment
to Christ is a matter for the entire person, not for his mind alone; and
intellectual conviction (if, indeed, it can be had at all without the whole
person being involved) is not the whole business. But the whole business,
precisely because it concerns the whole person, can never be achieved in
defiance of the intellect. Reason, though not the whole, is part of personal
response.
... C.
F. D. Moule, The Phenomenon of
the New Testament
The primary cause
of the [denominational] divisions is the institutionalism and organisationalism
of the churches, which, without vivifying the life of the believers in
them, smothers or drives it out of the ekklesia, and makes [the
churches] merely dead institutions. Christians who really have life in
Christ cannot exist within such a corpse and will at last have to come
out of it. But in almost all cases, those who have come out of dead institutions
want to have in their place another institution or other rituals and ceremonies,
only repeating the same error. Instead of turning to Christ Himself as
their center, they again seek to find fellowship and spiritual security
on the very same basis that failed, not realizing that it is the institution
that is killing, instead of producing, life in Christ. [Continued tomorrow]
... Kokichi
Kurosaki, One Body in Christ
Even the Bible
itself is interpreted and understood in various ways, and so always becomes
the center of sectarianism. Just in the same way, dogmas and creeds cannot
bring Christian unity, because human minds are not so uniformly created
that they can unite in a single dogma or creed. Even our understanding
of Christ Himself cannot be the basis of unity, because He is too big to
be understood by any one person or group, and therefore our limited understandings
do not always coincide. One emphasizes this point about Christ, another
that; and this again becomes the cause of divisions. If we will only take
our fellowship with Christ as the center of Christian faith, all Christians
will realize their oneness... All our fellowship, however varied, is with
the same Lord, and the same Saviour is our one Head.
... Kokichi
Kurosaki, One Body in Christ
Whoever hath an
interest in any one promise hath an interest in them all, and in the fountain-love
from whence they flow. He to whom any drop of their sweetness floweth may
follow it up into the spring. Were we wise, each taste of mercy would lead
us to the ocean of love. Have we any hold on a promise? We may get upon
it, and it will bring us to the main, Christ Himself and the Spirit, and
so into the bosom of the Father. It is our folly to abide upon a little,
which is given us merely to make us press for more.
... John
Owen
Every moment and
every situation challenges us to action and to obedience. We have literally
no time to sit down and ask ourselves whether so-and-so is our neighbor
or not. We must get into action and obey -- we must behave like a neighbor
to him. But perhaps this shocks you. Perhaps you still think you ought
to think out beforehand and know what you ought to do. To that, there is
only one answer. You can only know and think about it by actually doing
it. It is no use asking questions; for it is only through obedience that
you come to learn the truth.
... Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
Even the most traditional
theologian will be anxious to point out that the classical images which
have been used, with more or less success, to depict different aspects
of the Redemption -- the winning of a battle, the liberation of captives,
the payment of a fine or debt, the curing of a disease, and so on -- are
not to be interpreted literally, any more than, when we say that the eternal
Word "came down from Heaven", we are describing a process of spatial translation.
For here we are dealing with processes and events which, by the nature
of the case, cannot be precisely described in everyday language...
The matter is quite
different with such a statement as that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary;
for, whatever aspects of the Incarnation outstrip the descriptive power
of ordinary language, this at least is plainly statable in it. It means
that Jesus was conceived in his mother's womb without previous sexual intercourse
on her part with any male human being, and this is a straightforward statement
which is either true or false. To say that the birth... of Jesus Christ
cannot simply be thought of as a biological event, and to add that this
is [not] what the Virgin Birth means, is a plain misuse of language; and
no amount of talk about the appealing character of the "Christmas myth"
can validly gloss this over.
... E.
L. Mascall, The Secularization
of Christianity
When the eyes of
the soul looking out meet the eyes of God looking in, heaven has begun
right here on this earth.
... A.
W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
To put it shortly,
the Church forgets that Christianity is not an attitude of mind, but a
type of life: a man's spirit is not known by his opinion, but by his action
and general conduct.
... William
Temple
During the last
year or so, I have come to appreciate the "worldliness" of Christianity
as never before. The Christian is not a homo religiosus but a man,
pure and simple, just as Jesus became man... It is only by living completely
in this world that one learns to believe. One must abandon every attempt
to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, a converted sinner,
a churchman, a righteous man, or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy
one... This is what I mean by worldliness -- taking life in one's stride,
with all its duties and problems, its successes and failures, its experiences
and helplessness... How can success make us arrogant or failure lead us
astray, when we participate in the sufferings of God by living in this
world?
... Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from
Prison
No creature can
be a child of God but because the goodness of God is in it; nor can it
have any union or communion with the goodness of the Deity till its life
is the Spirit of Love. This is the one only band of union betwixt God and
the creature... Here the necessity is absolute; nothing will do instead
of this will; all contrivances of holiness, all forms of religious piety,
signify nothing without this will to all goodness. For as the will to all
goodness is the whole nature of God, so it must be the whole nature of
every service of religion that can be acceptable to him.
... William
Law, The Spirit of Love
If there were a
righteousness which a man could have of his own, then we should have to
concern ourselves with the question of how it can be imparted to him. But
there is not. The idea of a righteousness of one's own is the quintessence
of sin.
... Lesslie
Newbigin
I throw myself
down in my chamber, and I call in and invite God and His Angels thither;
and when they are there, I neglect God and His Angels for the noise of
a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.
... John
Donne
Compilation Copyright, 1996-2008, by Robert McAnally Adams,
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