Christian Quotations of the Day
for December, 2007

December 1, 2007

Commemoration of Charles de Foucauld, Hermit, Servant of the Poor, 1916

         Race highlights the fact that in our congregational life we usually do not reflect the variety of cultures. There are Asian, West Indian, and Anglo-Saxon congregations worshiping and meeting close to each other. These groups meet at work and in school, but not always in church. If the church is middle-class and intellectual in the language of the services, in the music employed, in the life-style expected of Christians, in its leadership, and in the methods of presenting the gospel, then the whole atmosphere is such as to repel those who are not middle-class and intellectual. They feel out of place and unwanted, even if they are given a friendly greeting at the door. The life of the New Testament Church was evidence of the supernatural; God was in their midst. The power of Christ was a reality. The fellowship could not be explained in simple natural terms. A church divided on social and racial lines is not evidence for the supernatural, but for the simply human and social.
         ... David Bronnert, "The Gospel and Culture" in The Changing World

December 2, 2007


         In an authority so high [as Scripture], admit but one officious lie, and there will not remain a single passage of those apparently difficult to practice or to believe, which on the same most pernicious rule may not be explained as a lie uttered by the author willfully to serve a purpose.
         ... St. Augustine

December 3, 2007

Commemoration of Francis Xavier, Apostle of the Indies, Missionary, 1552

         Every wise workman takes his tools away from the work from time to time that they may be ground and sharpened; so does the only-wise Jehovah take his ministers oftentimes away into darkness and loneliness and trouble, that he may sharpen and prepare them for harder work in his service.
         ... Robert Murray M'Cheyne

December 4, 2007

Commemoration of Nicholas Ferrar, Deacon, Founder of the Little Gidding Community, 1637

         Some men, not content with [Christ] alone, are borne hither and thither from one hope to another; even if they concern themselves chiefly with him, they nevertheless stray from the right way in turning some part of their thinking in another direction. Yet such distrust cannot creep in where men have once for all truly known the abundance of his blessings.
         ... John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion

December 5, 2007


         In deciding which passages he will accept, [the "rational skeptic"] proceeds on the a priori assumption that miracles can't happen. So he automatically writes off any Biblical account of a wondrous happening which suggests that there is an order of reality transcending the observable regularities of nature and occasionally breaking in upon them. Nor is rational skepticism content with jettisoning the Bible's miracle stories. It also dismisses other passages on the grounds that they reflect the ignorance and prejudice of a particular age, or the propaganda interests of the Church at a particular stage of its development. Its basic rule of Biblical interpretation is: "When in doubt, throw it out." And the highest scores in the game of radical reductionism are awarded to pedagogues who find the most novel and far-fetched reasons for doubting that any part of the Bible really means what it says.
         ... Louis Cassels, Your Bible

December 6, 2007

Feast of Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, c.326

         If I now want to add something of my own (i.e., inner assurances) to this faith, if this great and glorious faith is defective and saves me not till I can add my own sense and my own feeling to it at such a time or place, is not this saying in the plainest manner that faith alone cannot justify me? ... All I would say of these inward delights and enjoyments is this: they are not holiness, they are not piety, they are not perfection, but they are God's gracious allurements and calls to seek after holiness and spiritual perfection.
         ... William Law, Christian Regeneration

December 7, 2007

Feast of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, Teacher, 397

         They do greatly err who acknowledge that the flesh of man was taken on Himself by Christ, but deny that the affections of man were taken; and they contravene the purpose of the Lord Jesus Himself, since thus they take away from man what constitutes man, for man cannot be man without human affections.
         ... St. Ambrose of Milan

December 8, 2007


         True and genuine worship is when man, through his spirit attains to friendship and intimacy with God. True and genuine worship is not to come to a certain place; it is not to go through a certain ritual or liturgy; it is not even to bring certain gifts. True worship is when the spirit, the immortal and invisible part of man, speaks to and meets with God, who is immortal and invisible.
         ... William Barclay, The Gospel of John (Vol. 1)

December 9, 2007


         We love orthodoxy. It is good. It is the best. It is the clean, clear cut teaching of God's Word, the trophies won by truth in its conflict with error, the levees which faith has raised against the desolating floods of honest or reckless misbelief or unbelief; but orthodoxy, clear and hard as crystal, suspicious and militant, may be but the letter well shaped, well named, and well learned, the letter which kills. Nothing is so dead as a dead orthodoxy -- too dead to speculate, too dead to think, to study, or to pray.
         ... E. M. Bounds, Power Through Prayer

December 10, 2007

Commemoration of Thomas Merton, Monk, Spiritual Writer, 1968

         This matter of "salvation" is, when seen intuitively, a very simple thing. But when we analyze it, it turns into a complex tangle of paradoxes. We become ourselves by dying to ourselves. We gain only what we give up, and if we give up everything we gain everything. We cannot find ourselves within ourselves, but only in others; yet at the same time, before we can go out to others we must first find ourselves. We must forget ourselves in order to become truly conscious of who we are. The best way to love ourselves is to love others; yet we cannot love others unless we love ourselves, since it is written, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." But if we love ourselves in the wrong way, we become incapable of loving anybody else. And indeed when we love ourselves wrongly, we hate ourselves; if we hate ourselves we cannot help hating others. Yet there is a sense in which we must hate others and leave them in order to find God... As for this finding of God, we cannot even look for Him unless we have already found Him, and we cannot find Him unless He has first found us. We cannot begin to seek Him without a special gift of His grace; yet if we wait for grace to move us before beginning to seek Him, we will probably never begin.
         ... Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island

December 11, 2007


         In the twentieth century, the secularists, still living off the spiritual capital of Christianity, often pretended to chide Christians for having invented the term "secularist," a term which, they said, was devoid of meaning. Their leaders knew very well, however, that secularism, like any other parasite, derives its sustenance from the object on which it feeds, and so they were rather pleased when milquetoast Christians timidly offered, as a definition of secularism, "living as though God did not exist." What Christians should have called it was, rather, "a contemptibly fraudulent way of living on the cheap, by reaping the maximum fruits of Christian effort, while contributing the minimum effort of your own." When secularists accused Christians of "living in the past," the Christians ought to have retaliated by pointing out that secularists were "living off the past." By the time they got around to doing so, however, the majority of secularists had become morally incapable of seeing the point.
         ... Geddes MacGregor, From a Christian Ghetto

December 12, 2007


         Institutions can never conserve without betraying the movements from which they proceed. The institution is static, whereas its parent movement has been dynamic; it confines men within its limits, while the movement had liberated them from the bondage of institutions; it looks to the past, [although] the movement had pointed forward. Though in content the institution resembles the dynamic epoch whence it proceeded, in spirit it is like the [state] before the revolution. So the Christian church, after the early period, often seemed more closely related in attitude to the Jewish synagogue and the Roman state than to the age of Christ and his apostles; its creed was often more like a system of philosophy than like the living gospel.
         ... H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America

December 13, 2007

Feast of Lucy, Martyr at Syracuse, 304
Commemoration of Samuel Johnson, Writer, Moralist, 1784

         Almighty and most merciful Father, by Whose providence my life has been prolonged, and Who has granted me now to begin another year of probation, vouchsafe me such assistance of Thy Holy Spirit, that the continuance of my life may not add to the measure of my guilt, but that I may so repent of the days and years passed in neglect of the duties which Thou hast set before me, in vain thoughts, in sloth, and in folly, that I may apply my heart to true wisdom, by diligence redeem the time lost, and by repentance, obtain pardon, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.
         ... Samuel Johnson

December 14, 2007

Feast of John of the Cross, Mystic, Poet, Teacher, 1591

         A Christian should always remember that the value of his good works is not based on their number and excellence, but on the love of God which prompts him to do these things.
         St. John of the Cross

December 15, 2007


         Two thousand years of failure have not taught some reformers that you can't stop sin by declaring it illegal. Two thousand years have not taught them that you can't save a man's soul by force -- you can only lose your own in the attempt. Drunkenness and gambling and secularism and lechery -- various hopeful churchmen have earnestly tried to outlaw them all; and what is the result? A drunken nation, a gambling nation, a secularist nation, an adulterous nation. And, often, a ruined Church.
         ... Joy Davidman, Smoke on the Mountain

December 16, 2007


         In God, we live every commonplace as well as the most exalted moment of our being. To trust in Him when no need is pressing, when things seem going right of themselves, may be harder than when things seem going wrong.
         ... George Macdonald, "What's Mine's Mine"

December 17, 2007

Commemoration of Eglantine Jebb, Social Reformer, Founder of 'Save the Children', 1928

         What makes some theological works like sawdust to me is the way the authors can go on discussing how far certain positions are adjustable to contemporary thought, or beneficial in relation to social problems, or "have a future" before them, but never squarely ask what grounds we have for supposing them to be true accounts of any objective reality. As if we were trying to make rather than to learn. Have we no Other to reckon with?
         ... C. S. Lewis

December 18, 2007


         I was more convinced than ever that the preaching like an Apostle, without joining together those that are awakened and training them up in the ways of God, is only begetting children for the murderer. How much preaching has there been for these twenty years all over Pembrokeshire! But no regular societies, no discipline, no order or connection; and the consequence is, that nine in ten of the once-awakened are now faster asleep than ever.
         ... John Wesley's Journal

December 19, 2007


         I saw that a humble man, with the blessing of the Lord, might live on a little; and that where the heart is set on greatness, success in business did not satisfy the craving, but that commonly with an increase of wealth, the desire of wealth increased.
         ... John Woolman

December 20, 2007


         The love I bear Christ is but a faint and feeble spark, but it is an emanation from himself: He kindled it and he keeps it alive; and because it is his work, I trust many waters shall not quench it.
         ... John Newton
         [Thanks to Bill Blake at pilgrimwb@aol.com]

December 21, 2007


         Not immediately, but as the months and years passed, increasingly, from experience and thought based on extensive reading, I found the Evangelical faith in which I had been reared confirmed and deepened. Increasingly I rejoiced in the Gospel -- the amazing Good News -- that the Creator of what to us human beings is this bewildering and unimaginably vast universe, so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Everlasting life, I came to see, is not just continued existence, but a growing knowledge -- not merely intellectual but wondering through trust, love, and fellowship -- of Him who alone is truly God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. (Continued tomorrow)
         ... Kenneth Scott Latourette, Beyond the Ranges

December 22, 2007


         I was confirmed in my conviction that when all the best scholarship is taken into account we can know Christ as He was in the days of His flesh. Although I became familiar with the contemporary and recent studies of honest, competent scholars who questioned them, I was convinced that the historical evidence confirms the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Christ. Increasingly, I believed that the nearest verbal approach that we human beings can come to the great mystery is to affirm that Christ is both fully man and fully God. Although now we see Him not, yet believing, we can "rejoice with joy unspeakable" in what the Triune God has done and is doing through Him. This Good News, so rich that it is stated in a variety of ways, but always consistently, in the New Testament, is what we always imperfect children, but children [yet], are privileged -- and commanded -- to make known and to demonstrate to all mankind.
         ... Kenneth Scott Latourette, Beyond the Ranges

December 23, 2007

Welcome! all Wonders in one sight!
         Eternity shut in a span.
Summer in winter, day in night,
         Heaven in earth, and God in man.
Great little one! whose all-embracing birth
         Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heav'n to earth!
         ... Richard Crashaw

December 24, 2007

Christmas Eve
I saw a stable, low and very bare,
         A little child in a manger.
The oxen knew Him, had Him in their care,
         To men He was a stranger,
The safety of the world was lying there,
         And the world's danger.
         ... Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

December 25, 2007

CHRISTMAS DAY
ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY

This the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein the Son of Heaven's Eternal King,
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
         That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.

That glorious form, that light insufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze majesty,
Wherewith he wont at Heaven's high council-table
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity
He laid aside, and, here with us to be.
         Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

Say, Heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,
To welcome him to this his new abode,
Now while the heaven, by the Sun's team untrod,
         Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

See how from far upon the eastern road
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet!
Oh, run! present them with thy humble ode,
And lay it lowly at his blessed feet;
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,
         And join thy voice unto the Angel Quire,
From out his secret altar touched with hallowed fire.
         ... John Milton (Composed - 1629)

December 26, 2007

Feast of Stephen, Deacon, First Martyr
O little town of Bethlehem,
         How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
         The silent stars go by:
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
         The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
         Are met in thee tonight.

For Christ is born of Mary;
         And gathered all above,
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
         Their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars together
         Proclaim the holy birth;
And praises sing to God the King,
         And peace to men on earth.

How silently, how silently,
         The wondrous gift is giv'n!
So God imparts to human hearts
         The blessings of His Heav'n.
No ear may hear His coming,
         But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still,
         The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem,
         Descend to us, we pray,
Cast out our sins, and enter in,
         Be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
         The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
         Our Lord Emmanuel.
         ... Phillips Brooks

December 27, 2007

Feast of John, Apostle & Evangelist

         The Rev. David Bronnert, who was quoted in CQOD at the beginning of the month, has kindly sent me the following meditation taken from the church magazine of St. John's Church, Southall, in London, where he serves as vicar, living out, under God, the previous quotation he wrote thirty years ago. I am grateful to brother David for sending me this timely teaching so that I could present it to you.

The light shines in the darkness


         Candles are always popular for giving a warm romantic glow and this time of year they are to be seen on many different occasions. Of course a candle is easy to blow out! So much so that its flickering light was chosen by Shakespeare as a picture of the transitory nature of life. Out out brief candle!
         Darkness is a reminder of evil, for it is in the darkness that people get lost, stumble and fall. It is in the darkness that power is misused, corruption reigns and evil is done. It is easy to imagine that in the end evil will triumph and the light will disappear. Situations change. Familiar landmarks -- like this magazine! -- disappear. There is the unrelenting pressure of a vanity fair society. The candle burns down and gives a thin wisp of smoke before going out.
         But there are also the special party candles that keep bursting back into life. They are a much better picture of the light of the gospel! For though they have been numerous attempts down the centuries to extinguish the light, it has kept on bursting back into flame.
         The light of Christ keeps on shining. New ways of sharing the good news come along. New believers are attracted to his light. Sleepy Christians are re-awakened. Fresh discoveries give even more confidence in the truth of the Bible.
         The light keeps on shining in the darkness. It is a statement and a promise at the same time. It is isn't that once the light shone, but rather, that in the present it shines, and it will do so in the future as well. For the light comes from the one who is, as well as who was, and is also the one who is to come.
         ... David Bronnert

December 28, 2007

Feast of the Holy Innocents

         The most thrilling thing you can ever do is win someone to Christ. And it's contagious. Once you do it, you don't want to stop.
         ... Luis Palau

December 29, 2007

Feast of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1170

         Oh, how precious is time, and how it pains me to see it slide away, while I do so little to any good purpose. Oh, that God would make me more fruitful and spiritual.
         ... The Journal of David Brainerd
         [Thanks to Bill Blake at pilgrimwb@aol.com]

December 30, 2007

Who has not marveled at the might of kings
When voyaging down the river of dead years?
What deeds of death to still an hour of fears,
What waste of wealth to gild a moth's frail wings!
A Caesar to the breeze his banner flings,
An Alexander with his bloody spears,
A Herod heedless of his people's tears!
And Rome in ruin while Nero laughs and sings:
Ye actors of a drama, cruel and cold,
Your names are by-words in Love's temple now,
Your pomp and glory but a winding-sheet;
Then Christ came scorning regal power and gold
To wear warm blood-drops on a willing brow,
And we, in love, forever kiss His feet.
         ... John Richard Moreland

December 31, 2007

Commemoration of John Wycliffe, Reformer, 1384

         The gist of what Wycliffe has to say on every point is practically this, that where the Church and the Bible do not agree, we must prefer the Bible; that where authority and conscience appear to be rival guides, we shall be much safer in following conscience; and that where the letter and the spirit seem to be in conflict, the spirit is above the letter.
         ... Lewis Sergeant

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Curator, Christian Quotation of the Day.
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