Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: I have come to see that I do not limit my mind simply enough to prayer that I always want to do something myself in it, wherein I do very wrong and wish most definitely to cut off and separate my mind from all that, and to hold it with all my strength, as much as I can, to the sole regard and simple unity. By allowing the fear of being ineffectual to enter into the state of prayer, and by wishing to accomplish something myself, I spoilt it all.
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Continuing a short series about the early church: As to the Emperor and the charge of high treason read more
Continuing a short series about the early church: As to the Emperor and the charge of high treason against us, Caesar's safety lies not in hands soldered on. We invoke the true God for the Emperor. Even if he persecute us, we are bidden to pray for them that persecute us, as you can read in our books, which are not hidden, which you often get hold of. We pray for him because the Empire lies between us and the end of the world. We count the Caesars to be God's vice-regents and swear by their safety (not by their genius, as required). As for loyalty, Caesar really is more ours than yours; for it was our God who set him up. It is for his own good, that we refuse to call the Emperor God; Father of his Country is a better title. No Christian has ever made a plot against a Caesar; the famous conspirators and assassins were heathen, one and all. Piety, religion, faith are our best offering of loyalty.
Many man's scruples lie almost wholly about obedience to authority and compliance with indifferent customs, but very seldom about the read more
Many man's scruples lie almost wholly about obedience to authority and compliance with indifferent customs, but very seldom about the dangers of disobedience and unpeaceableness and rending in pieces the Church of Christ by needless separations and endless divisions.
Commemoration of James Hannington, Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, Martyr in Uganda, 1885 We come to Jesus Christ: and read more
Commemoration of James Hannington, Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, Martyr in Uganda, 1885 We come to Jesus Christ: and He does for us what He promised; and the thing works out. To our amazement, it works out. And then we settle down. We have had our own first-hand and irrefutable experience. But, instead of opening the windows to the glory of the sunshine so evidently there, instead of being incited to a hugeness of faith by what Christ has already done for us, we can't believe that there can be anything more, or that even He can work, for us, anything better. That first foretaste satisfies us. And so we camp for life out on the confines of the Kingdom, and never press on to inherit what is there and meant for us.
To believe Christ's cross to be a friend, as he himself is a friend, is also a special act of read more
To believe Christ's cross to be a friend, as he himself is a friend, is also a special act of faith.
Justification is withdrawn from works, not that no good works may be done, or that what is done may be read more
Justification is withdrawn from works, not that no good works may be done, or that what is done may be denied to be good, but that we may not rely upon them, glory in them, or ascribe salvation to them.
Do you so love the truth and the right that you welcome, or at least submit willingly to, the idea read more
Do you so love the truth and the right that you welcome, or at least submit willingly to, the idea of an exposure of what in you is yet unknown to yourself -- an exposure that may redound to the glory of the truth by making you ashamed and humbled?... Are you willing to be made glad that you were wrong when you thought others were wrong?... We may trust God with our past as heartily as with our future. It will not hurt us so long as we do not try to hide things, so long as we are ready to bow our heads in hearty shame where it is fit that we should be ashamed. For to be ashamed is a holy and blessed thing. Shame is a thing to shame only those who want to appear, not those who want to be. Shame is to shame those who want to pass their examination, not those who would get into the heart of things... To be humbly ashamed is to be plunged in the cleansing bath of truth.
Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, read more
Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until he be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so will he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death.
THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE We are very shy nowadays of even mentioning Heaven. We are read more
THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE We are very shy nowadays of even mentioning Heaven. We are afraid of the jeer about "pie in the sky", and of being told that we are trying to "escape" from the duty of making a happy world here and now, into dreams of a better world elsewhere. But either there is "pie in the sky" or there is not. If there is not, then Christianity is false, for this doctrine is woven into its whole fabric. If there is, then this doctrine, like any other, must be faced, whether it is useful at political meetings or no.
Commemoration of Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, 1099 Apart from God every activity is merely a passing whiff of read more
Commemoration of Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, 1099 Apart from God every activity is merely a passing whiff of insignificance.
