Commemoration of Mary Slessor, Missionary in West Africa, 1915 All love in general hath an assimilating efficacy; it casts read more

Commemoration of Mary Slessor, Missionary in West Africa, 1915 All love in general hath an assimilating efficacy; it casts the mind into the mould of the thing beloved... Every approach unto God by ardent love and delight is transfiguring.

Commemoration of Cecile Isherwood, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, Grahamstown, South Africa, 1906 The Church has no read more

Commemoration of Cecile Isherwood, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, Grahamstown, South Africa, 1906 The Church has no mission of its own. All we can have by ourselves is a club or a debating society; and our only hope, left to ourselves, is to win as many members for our own club and away from other clubs as we can. And whatever this is, it is not Mission. Mission belongs to God. The Mission was His from the beginning; it is His; it will always be His. He has His purposes from the foundation of the world, and the means to fulfill them; and the only part the Church has in this is obedience -- a share in the eternal and life-giving obedience of the Son of God... And the most terrible judgment on the Church comes when God leaves us to our own devices because He is tired of waiting for our obedience -- leaves us to be the domestic chaplains to a comfortable secular world -- and goes Himself into the wilderness of human need and injustice and pain. This judgment does come on churches and nations, when they forget that God is in command, that He does the choosing.

To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom; and he that increaseth his riches, increaseth his cares; but read more

To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom; and he that increaseth his riches, increaseth his cares; but a contented mind is a hidden treasure, and trouble findeth it not.

Feast of Philip & James, Apostles Recently, some Christians have recognized the existing state of the church as sinful, read more

Feast of Philip & James, Apostles Recently, some Christians have recognized the existing state of the church as sinful, or, at least, as faulty and mistaken. They are trying to save the Christians out of this labyrinth by reuniting the divided churches, by forming an alliance of churches, or by trying to form an ecumenical church. For all that, it seems very difficult to obtain the desired result, because all the present churches are still standing on the principles of the Reformation, unable to rid themselves of the sectarian spirit inherited from Catholicism. So the number of denominations and sects shows no sign of decreasing, and all efforts to unite the churches seem likely to end only in the formation of yet other sects and denominations. Yet the center of Christianity is neither institution nor organization. Nor is it even the Bible itself, as the Reformers made it, for the Eklesia existed before the formation of the New Testament canon. Christians were in fellowship with God and one another, centering their faith in Christ, long before there was any accepted New Testament. There is only one center of Christianity -- spiritual fellowship with God through Jesus Christ.

Commemoration of Amy Carmichael, Founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship, 1951 Joy is not gush: joy is not jolliness. read more

Commemoration of Amy Carmichael, Founder of the Dohnavur Fellowship, 1951 Joy is not gush: joy is not jolliness. Joy is simply perfect acquiescence in God's will, because the soul delights itself in God himself... rejoice in the will of God, and in nothing else. Bow down your heads and your hearts before God, and let the will, the blessed will of God, be done.

Concluding a short series on prayer We Christians too often substitute prayer for playing the game. Prayer is read more

Concluding a short series on prayer We Christians too often substitute prayer for playing the game. Prayer is good; but when used as a substitute for obedience, it is nothing but a blatant hypocrisy, a despicable Pharisaism... To your knees, man! and to your Bible! Decide at once! Don't hedge! Time flies! Cease your insults to God, quit consulting flesh and blood. Stop your lame, lying, and cowardly excuses. Enlist!

This concern for the rights and liberties and welfare of the backward peoples is rooted in the Christian ethic of read more

This concern for the rights and liberties and welfare of the backward peoples is rooted in the Christian ethic of justice and of the duty to help and protect the weak, upon the Christian valuation of man as of spiritual dignity and worth, as made for freedom, as a potential child of God. These principles have no validity unless the Christian view of man be true.

Palm Sunday In the person of Christ, the formidable law of God, which by itself appalls us by its read more

Palm Sunday In the person of Christ, the formidable law of God, which by itself appalls us by its vast comprehensiveness and truth, and makes us hide ourselves from its dread sanctity, is brought down into the life of a brother, ... and we see it illustrated and ratified in human action, we see righteousness that makes us feel more bitterly our sin, that makes us look more disparagingly upon our own efforts, yet leaves in us a longing to be like Him, as if we ought to be as He is.

[The] doctrine of progress sustained our fathers in the carrying of capitalistic democratic culture to most parts of the globe. read more

[The] doctrine of progress sustained our fathers in the carrying of capitalistic democratic culture to most parts of the globe. Its core was the conviction that in thus extending the range of western liberal culture and developing its assumptions, they were in effect establishing on earth that which would grow into the kingdom of God. Some put it sharply but un-Biblically: "building the Kingdom". That whole view exists today only as debris, for it has foundered on the rocks, not so much of human sin, as of the contradictions and complexities of the very western culture which was the substance of its belief.