I think that most
Christians would be better pleased if the Lord did not inquire into their
personal affairs too closely. They want Him to save them, to keep them
happy, and to take them off to heaven at last, but not to be too inquisitive
about their conduct or services.
... A.
W. Tozer
It is fatally easy
to think of Christianity as something to be discussed and not as something
to be experienced. It is certainly important to have an intellectual grasp
of the orb of Christian truth; but it is still more important to have a
vital, living experience of the power of Jesus Christ. When a man undergoes
treatment from a doctor, he does not need to know the way in which the
drug works on his body in order to be cured. There is a sense in which
Christianity is like that. At the heart of Christianity there is a mystery,
but it is not the mystery of intellectual appreciation; it the mystery
of redemption.
... William
Barclay, The Gospel of John
(Vol.1)
All that which
our blessed Saviour wrought in his mortal body, he did it for our example
and instruction, to the end that, following his steps, according to our
poor ability, we might without offense pass over this present life.
... Gregory
the Great
I have seen and
read somewhat of the writings of learned men concerning the state of future
glory; some of them are filled with excellent notions of truth, and elegancy
of speech, whereby they cannot but much affect the minds of those who duly
consider what they say. But -- I know not well whence it comes to pass
-- the things spoken do not abide nor incorporate in our minds. They please
and refresh for a little while, like a shower of rain in a dry season,
that soaketh not unto the roots of things; the power of them doth not enter
into us. Is it not from hence, that their notions of future things are
not educed out of the experience which we have of the beginnings of them
in this world? Yea, the soul is disturbed, not edified, in all contemplations
of future glory, where things are proposed to it whereof in this life it
hath neither foretaste, sense, experience, nor evidence. No man ought to
look for anything in heaven, but what one way or other he hath some experience
of in this life.
... John
Owen, The Glory of Christ
My own idea, for
what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not now either arising from
the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment
or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening towards active
assistance, is simply bad.
... C.
S. Lewis
Undoubtedly, messengers
had often to be sent with letters round the congregations of the province.
In the earlier stages of Church development, probably, these messengers
were volunteers, discharging a duty which among the pagans was almost entirely
performed by slaves: just as Luke and Aristarchus, when they travelled
with St. Paul to Rome, must have voluntarily passed as his servants --
i.e., as slaves -- in order to be admitted to the convoy. In such cases,
it is apparent how much this sense of duty ennobled labour and raised the
social standing of the labourer, who was now a volunteer, taking himself
like a slave in the service of the Church. In this there is already involved
the germ of a general emancipation of slaves and the substitution of free
for slave labour.
... Sir
William M. Ramsay
Who seeks for heaven alone to save his soul
May keep the path, but will not reach the goal;
While he who walks in love may wander far,
Yet God will bring him where the blessed are.
... Henry Van Dyke
They, therefore,
who are hasty in their devotions and think a little will do, are strangers
both to the nature of devotion and the nature of man; they do not know
that they are to learn to pray, and that prayer is to be learnt as they
learn other things, by frequency, constancy, and perseverance.
... William
Law
Is it unfair to
suggest that, in some of us at least, [Christianity] hasn't fully worked
so far simply because, at the pinch, at the decisive moment, we don't want
it to work or ourselves to be lifted up above the failings and disloyalties
we find so alluring, but rather to be enabled to continue them without
the ugly consequences of so doing, to have the inexorable laws of life
bent aside in our favour, so that we can squeeze through and escape, without
reaping what we have sown; because, as we misunderstand it, the whole point
of the good news our Lord brings is the (to us) gladsome announcement that
God is happily much more morally indifferent than our consciences had thought,
and is not going to make a fuss about our sins and such-like trivial peccadilloes,
but will surely let us off -- because, in fact, we have not grasped that
the core and essence of the Gospel... is its tremendous and glorious revelation
of how deadly is God's hatred of sin, so that He cannot stand having it
in the same universe as Himself, and will go any length, and will pay any
price, and will make any sacrifice, to master and abolish it, is set upon
so doing in our hearts, thank God, as elsewhere.
... A.
J. Gossip, Experience Worketh
Hope
God has promised
forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your
procrastination.
... St.
Augustine
There have always
been two kinds of Christianity -- man's and Christ's. Does anyone today
remember how the emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion?
It is said that he had a vision -- saw a cross in the sky with the inscription,
"In this sign shalt thou conquer." He accepted the new faith promptly,
because he thought it would defeat his enemies for him. That is man's Christianity,
a means to earthly triumph. And in our present crisis we are appealing
to it to defeat the Russians for us. We hear of the life-and-death struggle
between Christianity and Communism, the necessity of "keeping God alive
as a social force" -- as if our Lord could not survive a Soviet victory!
It is a poor sort of faith that imagines Christ defeated by anything men
can do.
... Joy
Davidman, Smoke on the Mountain
... Also see comments
on this book in Bookworms
We religious leaders
need to look very much more deeply. We can so easily have talks with people,
and they can say we have helped, write us grateful letters, even stand
steady for a time till the juice we have put into them runs out; but, we
may have brought them no hunger for God -- because that hunger is no ache
in our own heart -- nor brought them anywhere near to the end of self.
... The Notebooks
of Florence Allshorn
Not for that we
would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed
up in life. These are words by which the slanderers of the nature, of the
body, the impeachers of our flesh, are completely overthrown... We do not
wish to cast aside the body, but corruption: not the flesh, but death.
The body is one thing, corruption another; the body is one thing, death
another... What is foreign to us is not the body but corruptibility.
... St.
John Chrysostom
If we ever are
to attain to true Divine Peace, and be completely united to God, all that
is not absolutely necessary, either bodily or spiritually, must be cast
off; everything that could interpose itself to an unlawful extent between
us and Him, and lead us astray: for He alone will be Lord in our hearts,
and none other; for Divine Love can admit of no rival.
... Johannes
Tauler, The Inner Way
It may seem absurd
to some that all desires by which man is by nature affected are so completely
condemned -- although they have been bestowed by God himself, the author
of nature. To this I reply that we do not condemn those inclinations which
God so engraved upon the character of man at his first creation, that they
were eradicable only with humanity itself; but only those bold and unbridled
impulses which contend against God's control.
... John
Calvin
As St. Cyprian
well said, we may judge how ready He is to give us those good things which
He Himself solicits us to ask of Him. Let us pray then with faith, and
not lose the fruits of our prayers by a wavering uncertainty which, as
St. James testifies, hinders the success of them. The same apostle advises
us to pray when we are in trouble because thereby we should find consolation;
yet we are so wretched that this heavenly employment is often a burden
instead of a comfort to us. The lukewarmness of our prayers is the source
of all our other infidelities.
... François
Fénelon, Meditations
That earth and
that heaven, which spent God himself, Almighty God, six days in finishing,
Moses sets up in a few syllables, in one line: In the beginning God created
heaven and earth. If a Livie or a Guicciardine, or such extensive and voluminous
authors had had this story in hand, God must have made another world, to
have made them a library to hold their books, of the making of this world.
Into what wire would they have drawn out this earth! Into what leaf-gold
would they have beat out these heavens! It may assist our conjecture herein,
to consider, that amongst those men, who proceed with a sober modesty and
limitation in their writing, & make a conscience not to clog the world
with unnecessary books, yet the volumes which are written by them, upon
the beginning of Genesis, are scarce less than infinite. God did no more
but say, Let this & this be done; and Moses doth no more but say, that
upon God's saying it was done. God required not Nature to help him to do
it; Moses required not Reason to help him believe.
... John
Donne, XXVIII in Fifty Sermons
Take care that
all your offerings be free, and of your own, that has cost you something;
so that ye may not offer of that which is another man's, or that which
ye are entrusted withal, and not your own.
... George
Fox
The peculiarity
of ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous. It is often the one
blot on an otherwise noble character. You know men who are all but perfect,
and women who would be entirely perfect, but for an easily ruffled, quick-tempered,
or "touchy" disposition. This compatibility of ill temper with high moral
character is one of the strangest and saddest problems of ethics... No
form of vice -- not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself
-- does more to unChristianize society than evil temper. For embittering
life, for breaking up communities, for destroying the most sacred relationships,
for devastating homes, for withering up men and women, for taking the bloom
off of childhood -- in short, for sheer, gratuitous misery-producing power
-- this influence stands alone.
... Henry
Drummond, The Greatest Thing in
the World
The characteristic
of our modern Christianity, which correlates it with all apostolic times,
is the substitution of loyalty to a person in place of belief in doctrines,
as the essence and test of Christian life. This is the simplicity and unity
by which the Gospel can become effective.
... Phillips
Brooks
There is no longer
any room in the world for a merely external form of Christianity, based
upon custom. The world is entering upon a period of catastrophe and crisis
when we are being forced to take sides, and in which a higher and more
intense spiritual life will be demanded of Christians.
... Alexander
Berdyaev
If I mistake, He
will forgive me. I do not fear Him: I only fear lest, able to see and write
these things, I should fail of witnessing and myself be, after all, a castaway
-- no king but a talker: no disciple of Jesus, ready to go with Him to
the death, but an arguer about the truth.
... George
Macdonald
They cast their nets in Galilee, just off the hills of brown;
Such happy, simple fisherfolk, before the Lord came down.
Contented, peaceful fishermen, before they ever knew
The peace of God that filled their hearts brimful, and broke them too.Young John who trimmed the flapping sail, homeless in Patmos died.
Peter, who hauled the teeming net, head-down was crucified.
The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod;
Yet, brothers, pray for but one thing -- the marvelous peace of God.
... William Alexander Percy
When a man really
gives up trying to make something out of himself -- a saint, or a converted
sinner, or a churchman, a righteous or unrighteous man, ... when in the
fullness of tasks, questions, success or ill-hap, experiences and perplexities,
a man throws himself into the arms of God... then he wakes with Christ
in Gethsemane. That is faith, and it is thus that he becomes a man and
Christian.
... Dietrich
Bonhoeffer
We have been so
desperately anxious to secure a moral gymnasium in which the righteous
rich could exercise their souls -- not by selling all and giving to the
poor, but by giving away what they do not really want -- that we have failed
to remember the effect of their patronage upon the poor. The strong have
reserved to themselves the blessing of giving without receiving. The amount
that is given away in charity in a single year in this country [U.K.],
or in direct relief -- which is the name by which we hide our shame of
charity -- is positively staggering. And yet people are not fed, and by
that means never will be. By Charity alone can the world be saved, but
this is not charity. It tends to obscure rather than to realise the Brotherhood
of Man, it is -- and thank God we increasingly feel it to be -- a put-off,
a refusal of the way of the Cross. It is not Christianity; it is an excuse
for not being Christian. More and more the quality of our modern mercy
becomes exceedingly strained. It does not drop as the gentle dew from heaven,
but is screwed from the pockets of shamefaced people, uncomfortably conscious
of the poverty-stricken places beneath. It is twice cursed: it curseth
him that gives and him that takes, and is meanest in the mightiest, because
they feel it least.
... G.
A. Studdert Kennedy, The Wicket Gate
Compilation Copyright, 1996-2008, by Robert McAnally Adams,
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