Come Love, come Lord, and that long day
For which I languish, come away.
When this dry soul those eyes shall see
And drink the unseal'd source of Thee,
When glory's sun faith's shades shall chase,
Then for Thy veil give me Thy face.
         ... Richard Crashaw

         Our thoughtful observer who is outside the Churches has done a good deal of thinking on his own. The discoveries of modern physical and biological science, of astronomy, and of psychology, have profoundly influenced his conception of the "size" of God. If there be a Mind behind the immense complexities of the phenomena that man can observe, then it is that of a Being tremendous in His power and wisdom: it is emphatically not that of a little god. It is perfectly conceivable that such a Being has a moral purpose which is being worked out on the stage of this small planet. It is even possible to believe that such a God deliberately reduced Himself to the stature of humanity in order to visit the earth in Person, as all Christians affirm.
         ... J. B. Phillips, Your God is Too Small

         Men love to trust God (as they profess) for what they have in their hands, in possession, or what lies in an easy view; place their desires afar off, carry their accomplishment behind the clouds out of their sight, interpose difficulties and perplexities -- their hearts are instantly sick. They cannot wait for God; they do not trust Him, nor ever did. Would you have the presence of God with you? Learn to wait quietly for the salvation you expect from Him.
         ... John Owen
 
 

         We must not encourage in ourselves or others any tendency to work up a subjective state which, if we succeeded, we should describe as "faith", with the idea that this will somehow ensure the granting of our prayer. We have probably all done this as children. But the state of mind which desperate desire working on a strong imagination can manufacture is not faith in the Christian sense. It is a feat of psychological gymnastics.
         ... C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm

         What is it to serve God and to do His will? Nothing else than to show mercy to our neighbor. For it is our neighbor who needs our service; God in heaven needs it not.
         ... Martin Luther
 
 

         God meets me everywhere, or I never meet Him. If I think I meet Him only in Bible and Sacrament, and in the Christian fellowship, then I do not know who it is I meet.
         ... M. A. C. Warren
 
 

         The abstract metaphysical monotheism, the constant emphasis laid on God's unity and infinite and incomprehensible essence, could not give light to the mind or peace to the heart... How human is the God of the Old Testament -- the God who appears, speaks, guides, who loves and is loved, even as the Man of the New Testament, Christ Jesus, is divine! This difference between the idea of an absolute and infinite God and the God of Scripture is, after all, that which separates the true believer and Christian from the natural man.
         ... Adolph Saphir, Christ and Israel
 
 

         Wealth and riches, that is, an estate above what sufficeth our real occasions and necessities, is in no other sense a 'blessing' than as it is an opportunity put into our hands, by the providence of God, of doing more good.
         ... John Tillotson
 
 

         Thou wilt never be spiritually minded and godly unless thou art silent concerning other men's matters and take full heed to thyself.
         ... Thomas à Kempis
 
 

         The mark of modern unbelieving man as a whole is that he has felt astonishingly much at home in his earthly surroundings. He has taken a cheerful view of the prospects of the race and of the future of human history, staying his soul upon the promise of further "evolution" of the human individual, the continuous upward progress of civilization, or perhaps the confident expectation of a completely revolutionized order of society -- a communist Utopia beyond the class struggle or something else of that same general kind. Where such hopes remain unchastened by the cold touch of reality, there is little prospect of the Christian Gospel recommending itself to men's minds, and any wordy defense of it is likely to be quite useless.
         ... John Baillie, Invitation to Pilgrimage
 
 

         The interior journey of the soul from the wilds of sin into the enjoyed presence of God is beautiful. Ransomed men need no longer pause in fear to the Holy of Holies. God wills that we should push on into His presence and live our whole life there.
         ... A. W. Tozer
 
 

         Missionary zeal does not grow out of intellectual beliefs, nor out of theological arguments, but out of love. If I do not love a person I am not moved to help him by proofs that he is in need; if I do love him, I wait for no proof of a special need to urge me to help him. Knowledge of Christ is so rich a treasure that the spirit of love must necessarily desire to impart it. The mere assurance that others have it not is sufficient proof of their need. This spirit of love throws aside intellectual arguments that they can do very well without it. But if this spirit is not present, a man is easily persuaded that to impart a knowledge of Christianity (for it is noteworthy that such men always speak of Christianity rather than of Christ) is not necessary -- nay, is superfluous expense of energy which might be better used in other ways.
         ... Roland Allen, Pentecost and the World
         ... Also see comments on this book in Bookworms
 
 

         I dislike the frequent use of the word virtue, instead of righteousness, in the pulpit; in prayer or preaching before a Christian community, it sounds too much like pagan philosophy.
         ... Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection
 
 

         Life is not long enough for a religion of inferences; we shall never have done beginning, if we determine to begin with proof. We shall ever be laying our foundations; we shall turn theology into evidences, and divines into textuaries... Life is for action. If we insist on proofs for everything, we shall never come to action: to act you must assume, and that assumption is faith.
         ... John Henry Newman
 
 

I thirst, but not as once I did,
The vain delights of earth to share;
Thy wounds, Emmanuel, all forbid
That I should seek my pleasures there.

 It was the sight of Thy dear cross
First weaned my soul from earthly things;
And taught me to esteem as dross
The mirth of fools, and pomp of kings.

 I want that grace that springs from Thee,
That quickens all things where it flows;
And makes a wretched thorn like me
Bloom as the myrtle or the rose.

 Dear fountain of delight unknown!
No longer sink beneath the brim,
But overflow, and pour me down
A living and life-giving stream!

 For sure, if all the plants that share
The notice of Thy Father's eye,
None proves less grateful to His care,
Or yields Him meaner fruit than I.
         ... William Cowper

         I can see no intellectual objection to the statement that God's power is not limited by anything outside His own creative purpose: in that sense He is omnipotent, but it is even impossible for Him to exercise that power in certain ways without thereby ceasing to be our Father. In that sense God is not omnipotent: He is limited by His own nature, by His perfect goodness and mercy; for the omnipotence of God means nothing apart from His Fatherly love. In particular, this limitation of the power of God is to be found in the measure of freedom which, as His children, we enjoy. God shares His power with us so that, for a time at least, if we so determine, we can break His laws and frustrate His plans, but also so that we can give to Him, if we choose, the free allegiance of our hearts and minds, and become children at His Family Table, drawn together by the compulsion of His love, and not the exercise of His might.
         ... Donald O. Soper, Popular Fallacies
 
 

         It is not in the power of the devil to do so much harm, as God can do good; nay, we may be bold to say, it is not in the will, not in the desire of the devil to do so much harm, as God would do good.
         ... John Donne
 
 

         That appearance on earth as an individual is the crisis in the history both of Christ Himself and of the humanity He saves and leads. The ministry of Jesus, therefore, culminating in His death, is essential to Paul's whole thought. If in certain aspects of his theology it is the death that bulks most largely -- because it seemed to him to be the purest and most moving expression of what the whole life meant -- he is quite aware that the ethical impulse given by the example and teaching of Jesus is of the very stuff of the Christian life. He alludes to the Gospel story but sparingly, but those who study his teaching most closely become aware that he is himself acting and speaking all through under the impulse of the life and teaching of Jesus. If he refuses to "know Christ after the flesh," it means that he will not risk a harking back to the temporary conditions of the Galilean ministry when the Spirit of Christ is clearly leading out into new fields. The issues of that ministry have been gathered up in the new experience of "Christ in me", and that experience gives a living Christ, who leads ever onward those who will adventure with Him, and not a prophet of the past, whose words might pass into a dead tradition.
         ... C. Harold Dodd, The Meaning of Paul for Today
 
 

Eternal Lord, how faint and small
Our greatest, strongest thoughts must seem
To Thee, who overseest all,
And leads us through Life's shallow stream.

 How tangled are our straightest ways;
How dimly flares our brightest star;
How earthbound is our highest praise
To Thee, who sees us as we are.

 Our feet are slow where Thine are fast;
Thy kiss of grace meets lips of stone;
And we admit Thy love at last
To hearts that have none of their own.
         ... Robert MacColl Adams

         If Christ and His work and His sacrifice do not result in Christlikeness in you and me, then for us it is quite valueless, and has entirely failed; and, insofar as you and I are concerned, Christ was thrown away in vain. How, then, is it with you and me? Be very sure that upon Calvary it was no strange, immoral favouritism that came into operation, whereby because of some beliefs that remain mere dead letters, that produce no change whatever in their characters, some people living the same kind of life as others and following the same selfish interests and ends as they, are given a destiny entirely different. That is the vainest of vain dreams. Rather is this the supreme revelation of a new way of living life; and only those who -- blunderingly, it may be, yet honestly -- seek to adopt and imitate it can be counted really Christian folk.
         ... A. J. Gossip, The Galilean Accent
 
 

         The kingdom of heaven is not come even when God's will is our law; it is fully come when God's will is our will.
         ... George Macdonald
 
 

         We have peace with God by the righteousness of Christ, and peace of conscience by the fruits of righteousness in ourselves.
         ... Thomas Manton
 
 

         Wherever the missionary character of the doctrine of election is forgotten; wherever it is forgotten that we are chosen in order to be sent; wherever the minds of believers are concerned more to probe backwards from their election into the reasons for it in the secret counsel of God, than to press forward from their election to the purpose of it, ... that they should be Christ's ambassadors and witnesses to the ends of the earth, wherever men think that the purpose of election is their own salvation rather than the salvation of the world: then God's people have betrayed their trust.
         ... Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God
 
 

         The grand reason why the miraclous gifts were so soon withdrawn was not only that faith and holiness were well-nigh lost, but that dry, formal, orthodox men began then to ridicule whatever gifts they had not themselves and to cry them all [down] as evil madness or imposture.
         ... John Wesley
 
 

         If you here stop and ask yourselves why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor through inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.
         ... William Law
 
 

         You can also offer your prayers, obedience, and endurance of dryness to Our Lord, for the good of other souls, and then you have practiced intercession. Never mind if it all seems for the time very second-hand. The less you get out of it, the nearer it approaches to being something worth offering; and the humiliation of not being able to feel as devout as we want to be, is excellent for most of us. Use vocal prayer... very slowly, trying to realize the meaning with which it is charged and remember that... you are only a unit in the Chorus of the Church, so that the others will make good the shortcomings you cannot help.
         ... Evelyn Underhill
 
 

         Therefore Adam could have stood if he wished, seeing that he fell solely by his own will. But it was because his will was capable of being bent to one side or the other, and was not given the constancy to persevere, that he fell so easily. Yet his choice of good and evil was free.
         ... John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion
 
 

         Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart has turned to stone.
         ... Thomas Merton
 
 

         [If] there be any difference among professed believers as to the sense of Scripture, it is their duty to tolerate such difference in each other, until God shall have revealed the truth to all.
         ... John Milton
 
 

         Groups that require little of their membership count for little outside of their membership. Real spiritual capacity requires at least as much concentration and training as learning to play a musical instrument. Nobody has ever drifted into a genuine Christian experience.
         ... William T. Ham
 
 

         The Spirit is Love expressed towards man as redeeming love, and the Spirit is truth, and the Spirit is the Holy Spirit. Redemption is inconceivable without truth and holiness. But the mere fact that the Holy Spirit's first recorded action in the gospels is an expression of redeeming love should cause us to suspect a teaching which represents His work as primarily, if not solely, the sanctification of our own souls to the practical exclusion of His activity in us towards others. It is important to teach of Him as the Spirit of holiness; it is also important to teach of Him as the Spirit which in us labours for the salvation of men everywhere.
         ... Roland Allen, Pentecost and the World
         ... Also see comments on this book in Bookworms

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