Feast of Edmund of the East Angles, Martyr, 870 Commemoration of Priscilla Lydia Sellon, a Restorer of the Religious Life read more

Feast of Edmund of the East Angles, Martyr, 870 Commemoration of Priscilla Lydia Sellon, a Restorer of the Religious Life in the Church of England, 1876 Living for others, commitment to God's redeeming purposes, is a means of grace. We give because of our faith, and it deepens as we give. If we permit ourselves and our people to give casually, we are really teaching contempt.

What else is the meaning of our present chaos, of humanity in sorrow, but this: that contemporary man is tried read more

What else is the meaning of our present chaos, of humanity in sorrow, but this: that contemporary man is tried before the bar of the Eternal, and found wanting? Nor can any nation survive, or re-establish lasting peace, if it rests on those foundations on which contemporary nations have been built, our own included. What are those crumbling foundations? Conceit, self-will, denial of discipline, self-expressionism, secularism, this worldliness, greed, entrenched privilege, defiance of God's desire. On base absurdities have we built. Have we now moral courage to face our common sin, or are we content to trust in one form of armed wickedness to overcome the evils of another form of the same mad folly? Merely by smashing our enemies we shall not remake the world. By Beelzebub no devils are cast out... (Continued tomorrow).

Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary Concluding a Lenten series on prayer: Prayer is read more

Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary Concluding a Lenten series on prayer: Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us. It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little. When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God's voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him.

Feast of Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down & Connor, Priest, Teacher, 1667 Commemoration of Florence Nightingale, Social Reformer, 1910 Commemoration read more

Feast of Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down & Connor, Priest, Teacher, 1667 Commemoration of Florence Nightingale, Social Reformer, 1910 Commemoration of Octavia Hill, Worker for the Poor, 1912 Avoid idleness, and fill up all the spaces of thy time with severe and useful employment: for lust easily creeps in at those emptinesses where the soul is unemployed and the body is at ease; no easy, healthful, idle person was ever chaste if he could be tempted; but of all employments, bodily labour is the most useful, and of the greatest benefit for driving away the Devil.

THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE He was too great for his disciples. And in view of what read more

THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE He was too great for his disciples. And in view of what he plainly said, is it any wonder that all who were rich and prosperous felt a horror of strange things, a swimming of their world at his teaching? Perhaps the priests and the rich men understood him better than his followers. He was dragging out all the little private reservations they had made from social service into the light of a universal religious life. He was like some terrible moral huntsman digging mankind out of the snug burrows in which they had lived hitherto. In the white blaze of this kingdom of his there was to be no property, no privilege, no pride and precedence; no motive indeed and no reward but love. Is it any wonder that men were dazzled and blinded and cried out against him? Even his disciples cried out when he would not spare them the light. Is it any wonder that the priests realized that between this man and themselves there was no choice but that he or priestcraft should perish? Is it any wonder that the Roman soldiers, confronted and amazed by something soaring over their comprehension and threatening all their disciplines, should take refuge in wild laughter, and crown him with thorns and robe him in purple and make a mock Caesar of him? For to take him seriously was to enter upon a strange and alarming life, to abandon habits, to control instincts and impulses, to essay an incredible happiness... Is it any wonder that to this day this Galilean is too much for our small hearts?

And think of the appeal Christ made to men and women! He had many, but His favourite was to their read more

And think of the appeal Christ made to men and women! He had many, but His favourite was to their chivalry and valour. Often He underlines the difficulties of discipleship, warns us what it will cost, that it means risk and loss and sacrifice, and pulling hard against fierce currents; and then He turns and looks at us, with that honouring trust of His in us that sets the blood tingling and makes the cheeks flush with pride. That, He says quietly, is why I am so sure that you will come: you are too big to keep out of it! And, indeed, in His own day, it was only daring and adventurous spirits who would risk declaring for Him, as it is only daring and adventurous spirits still who have the pluck to try to follow so original and unpopular a Master in the real living-out of life.

We should always pray with as much earnestness as those who expect everything from God; we should always act with read more

We should always pray with as much earnestness as those who expect everything from God; we should always act with as much energy as those who expect everything from themselves.

Commemoration of William Wilberforce, Social Reformer, 1833 All these several artifices, whatever they may be, to unhallow the read more

Commemoration of William Wilberforce, Social Reformer, 1833 All these several artifices, whatever they may be, to unhallow the Sunday, and to change its character (it might be almost said, to mitigate its horrors,) prove but too plainly, however we may be glad to take refuge in religion, when driven to it by the loss of every other comfort, and to retain, as it were, a reversionary interest in an asylum, which may receive us when we are forced from the transitory enjoyments of our present state; that in itself wears to us a gloomy and forbidding aspect, and not a face of consolation and joy; that the worship of God is with us a constrained, not a willing, service, which we are glad therefore to abridge, though we dare not omit it.

Feast of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teacher, Martyr, 1945 Furthermore, [the unchristian environment] is the place where we find out read more

Feast of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teacher, Martyr, 1945 Furthermore, [the unchristian environment] is the place where we find out whether the Christian's meditation has led him into the unreal, from which he awakens in terror when he returns to the workaday world, or whether it has led him into a real contact with God, from which he emerges strengthened and purified. Has it transported him for a moment into a spiritual ecstasy that vanishes when everyday life returns, or has it lodged the Word of God so securely and deeply in his heart that it holds and fortifies him, impelling him to active love, to obedience, to good works? Only the day can decide.