Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world

Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world

Morning has broken like the first morning, Blackbird has spoken like the first bird. Praise for the singing! Praise for read more

Morning has broken like the first morning, Blackbird has spoken like the first bird. Praise for the singing! Praise for the morning! Praise for them, springing fresh from the Word! Sweet the new rain's fall sunlit from heaven, Like the first dewfall on the first grass. Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden, Spring in completeness where His feet pass. Mine is the sunlight! Mine is the morning Born of the one light Eden saw play! Praise with elation, praise every morning, God's re-creation of the new day!

Commemoration of Gilbert of Sempringham, Founder of the Gilbertine Order, 1189 Christ became ever more and more painfully convinced read more

Commemoration of Gilbert of Sempringham, Founder of the Gilbertine Order, 1189 Christ became ever more and more painfully convinced that men did not know God. They can't, He said, or they could not live as they are doing. Some of them are so anxious and worried, with all God's care and strength and love to lean against! They cannot know of it, and be so fidgety and nervous as they are. Some of them are afraid. Their consciences have drawn so grim a picture of Him that fearfully they shrink out of His presence, wish there were not God! Frightened of God, with His free and full and eager forgiveness, with His incredible generosity, with His compassionate heart that nobody can sour into illwill, do what he may. And even the best of them are not quite sure. Their faith at most is but a timorous hope, and a trembling perhaps; no more. Often in the Synagogue He had watched them sobbing out their penitential psalms and begging God to turn from anger and be gracious toward them... And it amazed Christ. Look at His sun, He cries, how it streams down in all its midday fullness on the most unworthy, and at the rain, how it falls healingly upon the fields of the least grateful, and how He keeps thrusting His benefits and blessings into the most soiled hands, loading the most impossible people with His kindnesses. If only I could make them see God as He really is: if only they could realize that He is their Father, that what their own child is to them, that, and far more, each of them is to Him.

Poor souls are apt to think that all those whom they read of or hear of to be gone to read more

Poor souls are apt to think that all those whom they read of or hear of to be gone to heaven, went thither because they were so good and so holy... Yet not one of them, not any man that is now in heaven (Jesus Christ alone excepted), did ever come thither any other way but by forgiveness of sins. And that will also bring us higher, though we come short of many of them in holiness and grace...

O Lorenzo,
If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife,
Become a Christian and thy loving read more

O Lorenzo,
If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife,
Become a Christian and thy loving wife!

Commemoration of Samuel & Henrietta Barnett, Social Reformers, 1913 & 1936 Religion is the possibility of the removal of read more

Commemoration of Samuel & Henrietta Barnett, Social Reformers, 1913 & 1936 Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone.

Feast of Benedict of Nursia, Father of Western Monasticism, c.550 It might help us in our thinking if we read more

Feast of Benedict of Nursia, Father of Western Monasticism, c.550 It might help us in our thinking if we drew a distinction between preaching, which the New Testament talks about as a continuing activity in society at large, and sermonising, which we have made into a special activity in the church premises... A great many people sermonising in our churches today would be better off and of greater service if they absolved themselves from the bondage and disciplines of the pulpit and came down among their congregations, teaching informally on sounder educational principles. After all, the vital matter in the ministry of the Word is not that a clergyman delivers himself of a discourse but that the people to whom he ministers end up being taught something. The tragedy is that the professional clergy have been trained to sermonise and they seem overwhelmed with fears and a sense of insecurity when they contemplate other methods. A further problem, of course, is that most of our churches contain a significant number of people who become emotionally disturbed at any departure from what they have always done in the past. To them, the sermon is part of their Christianity -- even if it bores them stiff!

Maundy Thursday We usually think of Jesus in the upper room as calmly and patiently preparing his disciples read more

Maundy Thursday We usually think of Jesus in the upper room as calmly and patiently preparing his disciples for their coming crisis; only in the garden are we shown his deep anguish over what lies ahead for himself. But if this verse ("'They hated me without a cause." Ps. 69:4) occurred to Jesus as describing his enemies, surely he was also identifying with the rest of [Psalm 69] with its vivid description of overwhelming troubles and importune cries to God for deliverance. What in the upper room was still under the surface was openly expressed in the garden.

Feast of Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, 461 Perhaps there cannot be a better way of judging of read more

Feast of Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, 461 Perhaps there cannot be a better way of judging of what manner of spirit we are of, than to see whether the actions of our life are such as we may safely commend them to God in our prayers.