Christ is the Word of God. It is not in certain texts written in the New Testament, valuable as they read more

Christ is the Word of God. It is not in certain texts written in the New Testament, valuable as they are; it is not in certain words which Jesus spoke, vast as is their preciousness; it is in the Word, which Jesus is, that the great manifestation of God is made.

The conception of the Church which we tend to reproduce as the fruit of our missionary work is so much read more

The conception of the Church which we tend to reproduce as the fruit of our missionary work is so much a replica of our own, so much that of a fundamentally settled body existing for the sake of its own members rather than that of a body of strangers and pilgrims, the sign and instrument of a supernatural and universal salvation to be revealed, that our missionary advance tends to follow the lines of cultural and political expansion. and to falter when that advance stops.

When you face the perils of weariness, carelessness, and confusion, don't pray for an easier life. Pray instead to be read more

When you face the perils of weariness, carelessness, and confusion, don't pray for an easier life. Pray instead to be a stronger man or woman of God.

Feast of James the Apostle The spiritual life is a stern choice. It is not a consoling retreat from the read more

Feast of James the Apostle The spiritual life is a stern choice. It is not a consoling retreat from the difficulties of existence, but an invitation to enter fully into that difficult existence, and there apply the Charity of God, and bear the cost.

Feast of Etheldreda, Abbess of Ely, c.678 Read and read again, and do not despair of help to understand read more

Feast of Etheldreda, Abbess of Ely, c.678 Read and read again, and do not despair of help to understand the will and mind of God though you think they are fast locked up from you. Neither trouble your heads though you have not commentaries and exposition. Pray and read, read and pray; for a little from God is better than a great deal from men. Also, what is from men is uncertain, and is often lost and tumbled over by men; but what is from God is fixed as a nail in a sure place. There is nothing that so abides with us as what we receive from God; and the reason why the Christians in this day are at such a loss as to some things is that they are contented with what comes from men's mouths, without searching and kneeling before God to know of Him the truth of things. Things we receive at God's hands come to us as truths from the minting house, though old in themselves, yet new to us. Old truths are always new to us if they come with the smell of Heaven upon them.

Feast of Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, Teacher, 367 Commemoration of Kentigern (Mungo), Missionary Bishop in Strathclyde & Cumbria, 603 read more

Feast of Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, Teacher, 367 Commemoration of Kentigern (Mungo), Missionary Bishop in Strathclyde & Cumbria, 603 It is one thing to fear God as threatening, with a holy reverence, and another to be afraid of the evil threatened.

Feast of the Conversion of Paul The God of Pharisaism was like the God of the Deists, He stood read more

Feast of the Conversion of Paul The God of Pharisaism was like the God of the Deists, He stood aloof from the world He had made, and let law take its course. He did not here and now deal with sinful men. Paul lets us see how new and wonderful was the experience when God "flashed on his heart" in personal dealing with him. He had not suspected that God was like that. His theological studies had told him that God was loving and merciful; but he had thought this love and mercy were expressed once and for all in the arrangements He had made for Israel's blessedness... It was a new thing to be assured by an inward experience admitting of no further question that God loved him, and that the eternal mercy was a Father's free forgiveness of His erring child. This was the experience that Christ had brought him: he had seen the splendour of God's own love in the face of "the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." [Continued tomorrow].

Feast of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, Teacher, 373 A great many of those about me would be imprisoned under read more

Feast of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, Teacher, 373 A great many of those about me would be imprisoned under any law; in France, as here, they would be regular jail-birds. But I loved them better and better -- and still I knew how little was my love for them compared to Christ's. It is easy enough for a man to be honest and a "Good Christian" and keeper of "the moral law", when he has his own little room, his purse well filled -- when he is well shod and well fed. It is far less easy for a man who has to live from day to day, roaming from city to city, from factory to factory. It is far less easy for someone just out of jail, with nothing to wear but old down-at-the-heels shoes and a shirt in rags. All of a sudden, I understood our Lord's words: "I was in prison ... and you visited me not." All these men, lazy, outside the law, starving: these failures of all kinds -- they were dear to Christ -- they were Christ, waiting in prison for someone to lean over Him -- and if we were true Christians, we would do them every kindness.

Dear Jesus! 'tis Thy Holy Face Is here the star that guides my way; Thy countenance, so full read more

Dear Jesus! 'tis Thy Holy Face Is here the star that guides my way; Thy countenance, so full of grace, Is heaven on earth, for me, to-day. And love finds holy charms for me In Thy sweet eyes with tear-drops wet; Through mine own tears I smile at Thee, And in Thy griefs my pains forget.