It is better, safer, truer language to speak of individual depravity than of universal depravity. By individual depravity, I mean my own. I find it out in myself; or, rather, He who searcheth me and trieth my ways, finds it out in me. That sense of depravity implies the recognition of a law from which I have broken loose, of a Divine image which my character has not resembled. It is the law and the order which are universal. It is this character of Christ which is the true human character. It is easy enough to own to a general depravity; under cover of it, you and I would escape.
         ... F. D. Maurice, Lincoln's Inn Sermons
 
 

         We have no cause to be ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; but the Gospel of Christ may justly be ashamed of us.
         ... John Tillotson

         There is a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who love Thee for Thine own sake, whose joy Thou Thyself art. And this is the happy life, to rejoice to Thee, of Thee, for Thee; this it is, and there is no other.
         ... The Confessions of St. Augustine
 
 

         The merit of persons is to be no rule of our charity; but we are to do acts of kindness to those that least of all deserve it.
         ... William Law
 
 

         The desire for certitude is natural enough and explains the human tendency to mistake faith for certainty. This is not a specially religious mistake. We think of supernaturalism when faith is mentioned, but the naturalistic description of the world also operates on assumptions that require a faith as robust as does the most soaring mysticism. The usual efforts to skirt faith beg all the questions there are. A psychiatrist, for instance, who points out to you that you believe in God the Father because you need a father, or that you became a missionary to expiate your guilt feelings, may be quite correct, but he has not touched on the prior question as to whether there is, in fact, a cosmic father figure who is the archetype of all other fathers, or whether there is an evangel worth spending your life promulgating.
         ... Thomas Howard, Christ the Tiger
 
 

Now hath my life across a stormy sea
         Like a frail bark reached that wide port where all
         Are bidden, ere the final reckoning fall
Of good and evil for eternity.
Now know I well how that fond phantasy
         Which made my soul the worshipper and thrall
         Of earthly art, is vain; how criminal
Is that which all men seek unwillingly.
Those amorous thoughts which were so lightly dressed,
         What are they when the double death is nigh?
         The one I know for sure, the other dread.
Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest
         My soul that turns to His great love on high,
         Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread.
         ... Michelangelo Buonarrotti, trans. J. A. Symonds

         It was on the last night of His life, when His enemies were all around Him, that He spoke to His disciples of the joy that no man taketh away. Read again the story of His Passion: Jesus is seen throughout as calm, quiet, and confident. His last word is, "Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit". Someone may say, "Yes, but He knew that He was going to rise from the dead." But have we not the same promise for ourselves? [Continued tomorrow]
         ... Stephen Neill, The Christian Character

         The ordinary group of worshipping Christians, as the preacher sees them from the pulpit, does not look like a collection of very joyful people, in fact, they look on the whole rather sad, tired, depressed people. It is certain that such people will never win the world for Christ... It is no use trying to pretend: we may speak of joy and preach about it: but, unless we really have the joy of Christ in our hearts and manifest it, our words will carry no conviction to our hearers.
         ... Stephen Neill, The Christian Character
 
 

         What do I mean by "interpret in a religious sense"? In my view, that means to speak on the one hand metaphysically, and on the other individualistically. Neither of these is relevant to the Bible message or to the man of today. Is it not true to say that individualistic concern for personal salvation has almost completely left us all? Are we not really under the impression that there are more important things than bothering about such a matter? (Perhaps not more important than the matter itself, but more than bothering about it). I know it sounds pretty monstrous to say that. But is it not, at bottom, even Biblical?... It is not with the next world that we are concerned, but with this world as created and preserved and set subject to laws and atoned for and made new. What is above the world is, in the Gospel, intended to exist for this world -- I mean that not in the anthropocentric sense of liberal, pietistic, ethical theology, but in the Bible sense of the creation and of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
         ... Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prisoner for God
 
 

         Our Blessed Lord hath recommended His love to us as the pattern and the example of our love to one another. As, therefore, He is continually making intercession for us all, so ought we to intercede and pray for one another. "A new commandment," saith He, "I give unto you, that ye love one another, as I have loved you. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another." The newness of this precept did not consist in this, that men were commanded to love one another for this was an old precept, both of the law of Moses and of nature. But it was new in this respect, that it was to initiate a new and, till then, unheard-of example of love; it was to love one another as Christ had loved us. And if men are to know that we are disciples of Christ, by thus loving one another according to His new example of love, then it is certain that if we are void of this love we make it as plainly known unto men that we are none of His disciples.
         ... William Law
 
 

Sing, men and angels, sing, for God our Life and King
Has given us light and spring and morning breaking
Now may man's soul arise as kinsman to the skies,
And God unseals his eyes to an awaking.

 Sing, creatures, sing; the dust that lives by lure and lust
Is kindled by the thrust of life undying;
This hope our Master bare has made all fortunes fair,
And man can on and dare, his death defying.

 After the winter snows a wind of healing blows,
And thorns put forth a rose, and lilies cheer us;
Life's everlasting spring has robbed death of his sting,
Henceforth a cry can bring our Master near us.
         ... John Masefield
 
 

Because upon the first glad Easter day
The stone that sealed His tomb was rolled away,
So, through the deepening shadows of death's night,
Men see an open door ... beyond it, light.
         ... Ida Norton Munson
 
 

         In darkness there is no choice. It is light that enables us to see the differences between things; and it is Christ who gives us light.
         ... Mrs. C. T. Whitemell
 
 

         Few things are more striking than the change which has taken place during my own lifetime in the attitude of the intelligentsia towards the spokesmen of Christian opinion. When I was a child, bishops expressed doubts about the Resurrection, and were called courageous. When I was a girl, G. K. Chesterton professed belief in the Resurrection, and was called whimsical. When I was at college, thoughtful people expressed belief in the Resurrection "in a spiritual sense", and were called advanced; (any other kind of belief was called obsolete, and its professors were held to be simpleminded). When I was middle-aged, a number of lay persons, including some poets and writers of popular fiction, put forward rational arguments for the Resurrection, and were called courageous. Today, any lay apologist for Christianity... whose works are sold and read, is liable to be abused in no uncertain terms as a mountebank, a reactionary, a tool of the Inquisition, a spiritual snob, an intellectual bully, an escapist, an obstructionist, a psychopathic introvert, an insensitive extrovert, and an enemy of society. The charges are not always mutually compatible, but the common animus behind them is unmistakable, and its name is fear. Writers who attack these domineering Christians are called courageous.
         ... Dorothy L. Sayers
 
 

         General wisdom is not a threat to the gospel, because everything good traces to God. God is merciful and kind; he bestows truth, as well as rain and sunshine, upon the just and the unjust. Christ is the "true light that enlightens every man". This bestowal should inspire feelings of joy, not resentment, in the heart of a Christian. Aristotle said many wise things about logic, Confucius many wise things about morals. When a Christian attacks general wisdom in the name of the gospel, the natural man will attack the gospel in the name of general wisdom.
         ... E. J. Carnell, The Case for Orthodox Theology
 
 

         Every Christian, by virtue of membership in the Church, has a vocation to share in the ministry of Christ to the world which has been entrusted to the Church. The vocation is answered in the home and office and factory and field. There it is that the People of God bears its witness to the vocation of the People of God, a people with a people's diversity and complex vitality, a people comprising a multiplicity of cultures and histories and colours and tongues, a people and not a collection of individuals, a people bound together in allegiance to one King and in obedience to one purpose.
         ... F. C. Synge
 
 

         It is to be feared lest our long quarrels about the manner of His presence cause the matter of His absence, for our want of charity to receive Him.
         ... Thomas Fuller, Good Thoughts in Bad Times
 
 

         Impersonal realities do indeed exercise over me some kinds of constraint, as does the wind when it constrains me to battle against it or the rain when it compels me to take shelter. But the constraint of which I have been speaking is of a wholly different kind; it is a constraint to be pure-minded and loyal-hearted, to be kind and true and tender, and to love my neighbour as myself. And what could possibly be meant by saying that any reality of an impersonal kind could exercise over me such a constraint as that? I have never been able to see that it could mean anything at all. I have never been able to see how any being that is not a person could possess a moral and spiritual claim over me.
         ... John Baillie, Invitation to Pilgrimage
 
 

         Faith knows nothing of external guarantees -- that is, of course, faith as an original experience of the life of the Spirit. It is only in the secondary esoteric sphere of the religious life that we find guarantees and a general attempt to compel faith. To demand guarantees and proofs of faith is to fail to understand its very nature by denying the free, heroic act which it inspires. In really authentic and original religious experience, to the existence of which the history of the human spirit bears abundant witness, faith springs up without the aid of guarantees and compelling proofs, without any external coercion or the use of authority.
         ... Nicholas Berdyeev, Freedom and the Spirit
 
 

         Now we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
         ... John Calvin

Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you:
         you are gentle with us as a mother with her children;
Often you weep over our sins and our pride:
         tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgement.
You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds:
         in sickness you nurse us,
         and with pure milk you feed us.
Jesus, by your dying we are born to new life:
         by your anguish and labour we come forth in joy.
Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness:
         through your gentleness we find comfort in fear.
Your warmth gives life to the dead:
         your touch makes sinners righteous.
Lord Jesus, in your mercy heal us:
         in your love and tenderness remake us.
In your compassion bring grace and forgiveness:
         for the beauty of heaven may your love prepare us.
         ... Anselm of Canterbury

         That perfect devoting ourselves to God, from which devotion has its name, requires that we should not only do the will of God, but also that we should do it with love. "He loveth a cheerful giver," and without the heart no obedience is acceptable to Him.
         ... François Fénèlon

         Faith is not the holding of correct doctrines, but personal fellowship with the Living God... What is offered to man's apprehension in any specific revelation is not truth concerning God but the Living God Himself.
         ... William Temple

         The Church has always found it easier to fulfill her priestly than her prophetic role. The temptation to institutionalism is always with us, and who will profess himself guiltless? We reduce Christianity to the service of an institution, the Church, for this enables us to be active in what is fondly called "the work of the Lord," while at the same time failing to grapple with the fundamental problem for all Christians, that of winning our generation for Christ. In our little circle of like-minded people we condemn outsiders because they do not come in. Perhaps we even make half-hearted attempts to get them to come in. And then we snuggle down again in the warmth of our fellowship, comforted that we have done all that might reasonably be expected of men in our situation. Fortified with this consolation we concentrate on keeping the institution, the Church, running as it should.
         ... Leon Morris
 
 

         Let a man set his heart only on doing the will of God and he is instantly free... If we understand our first and sole duty to consist of loving God supremely and loving everyone, even our enemies, for God's dear sake, then we can enjoy spiritual tranquilly under every circumstance.
         ... A. W. Tozer
 
 

         It is for us, in whom the Christian Church is at this moment partially embodied, to declare that Christianity, that the Christian faith can do that for the world which the world needs. You say, "What can I do?" You can furnish one Christian life. You can furnish a life so faithful to every duty, so ready for every service, so determined not to commit every sin, that the great Christian Church shall be the stronger for your living in it, and the problem of the world be answered, and a certain great peace come into this poor, perplexed phase of our humanity as it sees that new revelation of what Christianity is. ... Phillips Brooks, The Law of Growth
 
 

At morn I plucked a rose and give it Thee,
A rose of joy and happy love and peace,
         A rose with scarce a thorn:
         But in the chillness of a second morn
My rose bush drooped, and all its gay increase
Was but one thorn that wounded me.

 I plucked the thorn and offered it to Thee,
And for my thorn Thou gavest love and peace,
         Not joy this mortal morn:
         If Thou hast given much treasure for a thorn,
Wilt Thou not give me for my rose increase
Of gladness, and all sweets to me?

 My thorny rose, my love and pain, to Thee
I offer, and I set my heart in peace,
         And rest upon my thorn:
         For verily I think to-morrow morn
Shall bring me Paradise, my gift's increase,
Yea, give Thy very Self to me.
         ... Christina Rossetti
 
 

         The missionary goes out to men of other faiths and of no faith, not to argue, not to make comparisons, never to claim a superior knowledge or revelation, but to tell of a glorious deed, of the New Creation that has occurred and of the New Being that has appeared and into which men may enter. This is testimony, the apostolic testimony, and this, with the energy of love, is the missionary motive. The insistent task of missionary education and responsibility is to engender this motive throughout the Church, a task that can only be accomplished as men are confronted anew with the message of the Bible and with its supreme and central story, the story of the cross.
         ... Douglas Webster, Local Church and World Mission
 
 

         It seems to me to be the best proof of an evangelical disposition, that persons are not angry when reproached, and have a Christian charity for those that ill deserve it.
         ... The Colloquies of Erasmus
 
 

         What keeps most men in "Christian" countries from being heretics in this sense is that they do not publicly avow their disbelief: it is in better taste to be casual about lost beliefs, and a note of wistfulness generally ensures forgiveness. Obstinacy is rare. Millions do not even know that they deny essential Christian doctrines: they have never bothered to find out what the essential doctrines are. In extenuation they may plead that the evasiveness and the multiplicity of churches create a difficulty; but to be deterred by this when one's eternal destiny is said to be at stake bespeaks a glaring lack of seriousness.
         ... Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic

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