Why does He make our hearts so strangely still,
Why stands He forth so stately and so tall?
Because He has no self to serve, no will
That does not seek the welfare of the All.
... Edwin Markham
The labors of the
farm do not seem strange to the farmer; the storm at sea is not unexpected
by the sailor; sweat causes no wonder to the hired laborer; and so to those
who have chosen to live the life of piety the afflictions of this world
are not unforeseen. Nay, to each of the aforesaid is joined a labor that
is appropriate and well known to those who share it -- a labor that is
not chosen for its own sake, but for the enjoyment of expected blessings.
For hopes, which hold and weld together man's entire life, give consolation
for the hardships which fall to the lot of each of these.
... St.
Basil the Great
Two movements merge
in the real act of communion. First, the creature's profound sense of need,
of incompleteness: its steadfast desire... Next, a humble and loving acceptance
of God's answer to that prayer of desire, however startling, disappointing,
and unappetizing it may be.
... Evelyn
Underhill
Scripture will
ultimately suffice for a saving knowledge of God only when its certainty
is founded upon the inward persuasion of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, these
human testimonies which exist to confirm it will not be vain if, as secondary
aids to our feebleness, they follow that chief and highest testimony. But
those who wish to prove to unbelievers that Scripture is the Word of God
are acting foolishly, for only by faith can this be known.
... John
Calvin
We find not in
the Gospel, that Christ hath anywhere provided for the uniformity of churches,
but only for their unity.
... Roger
Williams
Do you think you
love your children better than He who made them? Is not your love what
it is because He put it into your heart first? Have you not often been
cross with them? Sometimes unjust to them? Whence came the returning love
that rose from unknown depths in your being, and swept away the anger and
the injustice? You did not create that love. Probably you were not good
enough to send for it by prayer. But it came. God sent it. He makes you
love your children.
... George
Macdonald, Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood
Jesus has also
been accused of being ineffective, in a political sense, and of having
done little to right social injustices. But it is clear from the Sermon
on the Mount that he was deeply concerned that his disciples should be
both the "salt" and the "light" of secular society; he endorsed the authority
of those Old Testament prophets who vehemently rebuked social injustice;
and he consistently identified himself with the poor and weak, with social
outcasts and those who were regarded as morally disreputable... It is true
that he did not lead a rebellion against Rome, seek to free slaves, or
introduce a social revolution. He had come for a particular purpose, which
was far more important than any of these things -- and from that purpose
nothing could or did deflect him.
... J.
N. D. Anderson, Christianity:
the Witness of History
[Christ] was primarily
concerned to change men as men rather than the political regime under which
they lived; to transform their attitude rather than their circumstances;
to treat the sickness of their hearts rather than the problems of their
environment. But he laid down in a single pregnant sentence man's duty
both to God and to the State when he said: "Render to Caesar the things
that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's"; and it is certainly
not his fault that the Christian church has been so slow, down the centuries,
in applying to one after another of the world's social evils the principle
he emphasized so strong that we must love our neighbours as ourselves.
... J.
N. D. Anderson, Christianity:
the Witness of History
Every time the
words "contrition" or "humility" drop from the lips of a prophet or psalmist,
Christianity appears.
... Matthew
Arnold
The overwhelming
recognition of human sin controls the Old Testament and the New Testament
alike, and no understanding of our Lord's words and actions is possible
if we persist in denying it.
... Sir
Edwyn Hoskyns
Give me an open ear, O God, that I may hear Thy voice
calling me to high endeavor.
Give me an open mind, O God, a mind ready to receive and to welcome
such new light of knowledge as it is Thy will to reveal to me.
Give me open eyes, O God, eyes quick to discover
Thine indwelling in the world which Thou hast made.
Give me open hands, O God, hands ready to share with all who are in want
the blessings with which Thou hast enriched my life.
... John Baillie
God's unchangeableness
is the very foundation of desire and hope and activity in things religious
as in things natural. The uniformity of nature's operations in the one,
and the constancy of God's promises in the other, give aim and certainty
to events.
... Edward
Irving
Idolatry is... all manner of devotion in those
that would serve God without Christ the Mediator, his Word and command. In popedom it was held a work of
the greatest sanctity for the monks to sit in their cells and meditate of God, and of his wonderful works;
to be kindled with zeal, kneeling on their knees, praying, and having their imaginary contemplations of
celestial objects, with such supposed devotion, that they wept for joy. In these their conceits, they
banished all desires and thoughts of women, and what else is temporal and evanescent. They seemed to
meditate only on God, and his wonderful works. Yet all these seeming holy actions of devotion, which
the wit and wisdom of man holds to be angelical sanctity, are nothing else but works of the flesh.
All manner of religion, where people serve God without his Word and command, is simply idolatry, and
the more holy and spiritual such a religion seems, the more hurtful and venomous it is; for it leads
people away from the faith of Christ, and makes them rely and depend upon their own strength, works,
and righteousness.
... Martin Luther,
Table Talk
Let all our employment be to know GOD;
the more one knows Him, the more one desires to know Him. And as knowledge is commonly the measure
of love, the deeper and more extensive our knowledge shall be, the greater will be our love;
and if our love of GOD were great we should love Him equally in pains and pleasures.
... Brother Lawrence,
The Practice of the Presence of God
When the will abandons
what is above itself and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil -- not
because that is evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself
is wicked. Therefore it is not an inferior thing which has made the will
evil, but it is itself which has become so by wickedly and inordinately
desiring an inferior thing.
... St.
Augustine, The City of God
The great unity
which true science seeks is found only by beginning with our knowledge
of God, and coming down from Him along the stream of causation to every
fact and event that affects us.
.... Howard
Crosby
Any such distinction
between disreputable and respectable sins... Jesus Christ absolutely refuses
to allow. In His eyes avarice, pride, refusal to forgive, hypocrisy, are
at least as bad as fornication or adultery or violence.
... Charles
Gore, Christ and Society
We preach Jesus
Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.
... motto of the Dohnavur
Fellowship
No man can look
with undivided vision at God and at the world of reality so long as God
and the world are torn asunder. Try as he may, he can only let his eyes
wander distractedly from one to the other. But there is a place at which
God and the cosmic reality are reconciled, a place at which God and man
have become one. That and that alone is what enables man to set his eyes
upon God and the world at the same time. This place does not lie somewhere
out beyond reality in the realm of ideas. It lies in the midst of history
as a divine miracle. It lies in Jesus Christ, the reconciler of the world.
... Dietrich
Bonhoeffer
It is of no use
to say that Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels, is not historical, and
that we know not how much of what is admirable has been super-added by
the tradition of his followers. Who among his disciples or among their
proselytes was capable of inventing the sayings of Jesus or of imagining
the life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen
of Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies
were of a totally different sort; still less the early Christian writers,
in whom nothing is more evident than that the good which was in them was
all derived, as they always professed that it was derived, from the higher
source.
... John
Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Religion
A Christian man
is most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most
dutiful servant of all, and subject to everyone.
... Martin
Luther
The "great commitment"
is so much easier than the ordinary, everyday one--and can all too easily
shut our hearts to the latter. A willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice
can be associated with, and even produce, a great hardness of heart.
... Dag
Hammarskjöld
If the true revelation
of God is in Christ, the Bible is not properly a revelation, but the History
of a Revelation. This is not only a Fact but a necessity, for a Person
cannot be revealed in a Book, but must find revelation, if at all, in a
Person.
... Phillips
Brooks, The Law of Growth
Our business is
to love what God would have us do. He wills our vocation as it is: let
us love that, and not trifle away our time in hankering after other people's
vocation.
... François
de Sales
The life of faith
does not earn eternal life: it is eternal life. And Christ is its vehicle.
... William
Temple
The Christian Mission
is what the New Testament calls a 'mystery'. It is what St. Paul calls
the mystery -- a secret hidden within God even before the creation
of the world, but now made known to men and women of faith, whereby all
nations are to be gathered up and presented to God through Jesus Christ.
This gathering up takes place in the Church, the mystical Body of Christ.
The mystery has been unfolded according to a divine plan; prepared by the
vocation of the Jewish people; and substantially realized by the mission
of the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, who by His Ascension introduced human
nature for all eternity into the sphere of the life of the Divine Trinity:
and this plan is to be accomplished among the various peoples of the world,
during the time between Pentecost and the Second Coming. [Continued]
... David
M. Paton, Christian Missions and
the Judgment of God
The Christian Mission
is thus anchored in dogma, is a result of what ordinary Christians believe.
It is God's plan, God's activity; but because God became man and took up
manhood into Himself, it is God's will embodied in active obedience on
the part of the Christian individual, the Christian group within the Church,
and the Christian Church as a whole -- we are all involved in it, all of
us, in our various callings.
... David
M. Paton, Christian Missions and
the Judgment of God
This Christian
claim [of universal validity] is naturally offensive to the adherents of
every other religious system. It is almost as offensive to modern man,
brought up in the atmosphere of relativism, in which tolerance is regarded
almost as the highest of the virtues. But we must not suppose that this
claim to universal validity is something that can quietly be removed from
the Gospel without changing it into something entirely different from what
it is... Jesus' life, his method, and his message do not make sense, unless
they are interpreted in the light of his own conviction that he was in
fact the final and decisive word of God to men... For the human sickness
there is one specific remedy, and this is it. There is no other.
... Stephen
Neill, Christian Faith and Other
Faiths
If we once accept
the doctrine of the Incarnation, we must surely be very cautious in suggesting
that any circumstance in the culture of first-century Palestine was a hampering
or distorting influence upon His teaching. Do we suppose that the scene
of God's earthly life was selected at random? -- that some other scene
would have served better?
... C.
S. Lewis, The World's Last Night
Oh, Brethren, it
is sickening work to think of your cushioned seats, your chants, your anthems,
your choirs, your organs, your gowns, and your bands, and I know not what
besides, all made to be instruments of religious luxury, if not of pious
dissipation, while ye need far more to be stirred up and incited to holy
ardor for the propagation of the truth as it is in Jesus.
... Charles
Haddon Spurgeon
Much of today's
Christianity is almost completely earthbound, and the words of Jesus about
what follows this life are scarcely studied at all. This, I believe, is
partly due to man's enormous technical successes, which make him feel master
of the human situation. But it is also partly due to our scholars and experts.
By the time they have finished with their dissection of the New Testament
and with their explaining away as "myth" all that they find disquieting
or unacceptable to the modern mind, the Christian way of life is little
more than humanism with a slight tinge of religion.
... J.
B. Phillips, Ring of Truth
Compilation Copyright, 1996-2008, by Robert McAnally Adams,
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