Feast of the Holy Innocents The most thrilling thing you can ever do is win someone to read more

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.

Feast of Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, Martyr, c.155 We may search so far, and reason so long of faith read more

Feast of Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, Martyr, c.155 We may search so far, and reason so long of faith and grace, as that we may lose not only them, but even our reason too, and sooner become mad than good. Not that we are bound to believe any thing against reason, that is, to believe, we know not why. It is but a slack opinion, it is not Belief, that is not grounded upon Reason. It is true, we have not a Demonstration; not such an Evidence as that one and two are three, to prove these to be Scriptures of God; God hath not proceeded in that manner, to drive our reason into a pound, and to force it by a peremptory necessity to accept these for Scriptures, for then, here had been no exercise of our Will, and our assent, if we could not have resisted.

Commemoration of John Wycliffe, Reformer, 1384 In order to the existence of such a ministry in the Church, read more

Commemoration of John Wycliffe, Reformer, 1384 In order to the existence of such a ministry in the Church, there is requisite an authority received from God, and consequently power and knowledge imparted from God for the exercise of such ministry; and where a man possesses these, although the bishop has not laid hands upon him according to his traditions, God has Himself appointed him.

Commemoration of Petroc, Abbot of Padstow, 6th century The man who has never had religion before, no more read more

Commemoration of Petroc, Abbot of Padstow, 6th century The man who has never had religion before, no more grows religious when he is sick, than a man who has never learned figures can count when he has need of calculation.

Feast of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teacher, Martyr, 1945 It is not experience of life but experience of the Cross that read more

Feast of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teacher, Martyr, 1945 It is not experience of life but experience of the Cross that makes one a worthy hearer of confessions. The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of men. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother, I can dare to be a sinner.

Feast of Alban, first Martyr of Britain, c.209 Continuing a short series on authenticity: There is one growing read more

Feast of Alban, first Martyr of Britain, c.209 Continuing a short series on authenticity: There is one growing persuasion of the present age which I hope this book may somewhat serve to stem -- not by any argument, but by... a healthy up stirring ... of the imagination and the conscience. In these days, when men are so gladly hearing afresh that "in Him there is no darkness at all"; that God, therefore could not have created any man if He knew that he must live in torture to all eternity; and that His hatred to evil cannot be expressed by injustice, itself the one essence of evil, -- for certainly it would be nothing less than injustice to punish infinitely what was finitely committed, no sinner being capable of understanding the abstract enormity of what he does, -- in these days has a arisen another falsehood, less, yet very perilous: thousands of half-thinkers imagine that, since it is declared with such authority that hell is not everlasting, there is then no hell at all. To such folly, I, for one, have never given enticement or shelter. I see no hope for many, no way for the divine love to reach them, save through a very ghastly hell. Men have got to repent; there is no other escape for them, and no escape from that.

I did not expect to hear that it could be, in an assembly convened for the propagation of Christian knowledge, read more

I did not expect to hear that it could be, in an assembly convened for the propagation of Christian knowledge, a question whether any nation uninstructed in religion should receive instruction; or whether that, instruction should be imparted to them by a translation of the holy-books into their own language. If obedience to the will of GOD be necessary to happiness, and knowledge of his will be necessary to obedience, I know not how he that withholds this knowledge, or delays it, can be said to love his neighbour as himself. He, that voluntarily continues ignorance, is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces; as to him that should extinguish the tapers of a light-house, might justly be imputed the calamities of shipwrecks. (Continued tomorrow) ... a letter from Samuel Johnson to William Drummond of Edinburgh, 1766 July 13, 2002 Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity; and as no man is good but as he wishes the good of others, so no man can be good in the highest degree, who wishes not to others the largest measures of the greatest good. To omit for a year, or for a day, the most efficacious method of advancing Christianity [i.e., the Bible], in compliance with any purposes that terminate this side of the grave, is a crime [the like] of which I know not that the world has yet had an example. ... a letter from Samuel Johnson to William Drummond of Edinburgh, 1766 July 14, 2002 Feast of John Keble, Priest, Poet, Tractarian, 1866 The "good" man, the man whose god is righteousness, has as his life's ambition the keeping of rules and commandments and the keeping of himself uncontaminated by the world. This sounds admirable; but, as the truth of Christ showed, the whole of such living, the whole drive and ambition, the whole edifice, is self-centered. That entire process of effort must be abandoned if a man is to give himself in love to God and his fellows. He must lose his life if he is ever going to find it.

Feast of the Naming & Circumcision of Jesus For some years now I have read through the Bible read more

Feast of the Naming & Circumcision of Jesus For some years now I have read through the Bible twice every year. If you picture the Bible to be a mighty tree and every word a little branch, I have shaken every one of these branches because I wanted to know what it was and what it meant.

The true way to be humble is not to stoop till thou art smaller than thyself, but to stand at read more

The true way to be humble is not to stoop till thou art smaller than thyself, but to stand at thy real height against some higher nature that will show thee what the real smallness of thy greatness is.