Commemoration of Ini Kopuria, Founder of the Melanesian Brotherhood, 1945 He said to Judas when he betrayed Him: read more

Commemoration of Ini Kopuria, Founder of the Melanesian Brotherhood, 1945 He said to Judas when he betrayed Him: "Friend, wherefore art thou come?" Just as if He had said: "Thou hatest me, and art mine enemy, yet I love thee, and am thy friend." ... As though God in human nature were saying: "I am pure, simple goodness, and therefore I cannot will or desire or rejoice in, or do or give anything but goodness. If I am to reward thee for thy evil and wickedness, I must do it with goodness, for I am and have nothing else." ... Theologia Germanica June 7, 2002 Some will not believe in miracles because the laws of nature work uniformly. But their uniformity is undisturbed by human operations; the will of man wields, without cancelling, these mighty forces which surround us: and why may not the will of God do the same?

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to read more

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note - torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on read more

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder the source of which is beyond all reason.

Concluding a series on God and the human condition: Those old Greek gods are not just poetry and legend. read more

Concluding a series on God and the human condition: Those old Greek gods are not just poetry and legend. In them the Ancients personified living realities -- intelligence, beauty, love, or lust, which are still at work in our hearts, and which fashion our persons. The language they speak is that of image and myth, which touches the person much more directly than the explicit language of science and the intellectual dialectic of the modern world. It is also the language of the Bible, of the parables of Christ, which the rationalist of today finds it so difficult to understand, of the Word of God which demands of us not a discussion but a personal decision.

Verily, we know not what an evil it is to indulge ourselves, and to make an idol of our will... read more

Verily, we know not what an evil it is to indulge ourselves, and to make an idol of our will... Once I would make much ado, if I saw not the world carved and set in order to my liking; now I am silent, when I see God... is fattening and feeding the children of perdition. I pray God, I may never find my will again.

Commemoration of John & Henry Venn, Priests, Evangelical Divines, 1813, 1873 When I trouble myself over a trifle, read more

Commemoration of John & Henry Venn, Priests, Evangelical Divines, 1813, 1873 When I trouble myself over a trifle, even a trifle confessed -- the loss of some little article, say -- spurring my memory, and hunting the house, not from immediate need, but from dislike of loss; when a book has been borrowed of me and is not returned, and I have forgotten the borrower; and fret over the missing volume, ... is it not time that I lost a few things, when I care for them so unreasonably? This losing of things is the mercy of God: it comes to teach us to let them go. Or have I forgotten a thought that came to me, which seemed of the truth? I keep trying and trying to call it back, feeling a poor man until that thought be recovered -- to be far more lost, perhaps, in a notebook into which I shall never look again to find it! I forget that it is live things that God cares about.

Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: Every true prayer has its background and its foreground. The foreground of prayer read more

Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: Every true prayer has its background and its foreground. The foreground of prayer is the intense, immediate desire for a certain blessing which seems to be absolutely necessary for the soul to have; the background of prayer is the quiet, earnest desire that the will of God, whatever it may be, should be done. What a picture is the perfect prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane! In front burns the strong desire to escape death and to live; but behind there stands, calm and strong, the craving of the whole life for the doing of the will of God... Leave out the foreground, let there be no expression of the will of him who prays, and there is left a pure submission which is almost fatalism. Leave out the background, let there be no acceptance of the will of God, and the prayer is only an expression of self-will, a petulant claiming of the uncorrected choice of him who prays. Only when the two are there together, the special desire resting on the universal submission, the universal submission opening into the special desire, is the picture perfect and the prayer complete.

Feast of Matthias the Apostle I shall not value his prayers at all, be he never so earnest read more

Feast of Matthias the Apostle I shall not value his prayers at all, be he never so earnest and frequent in them, who gives not alms according to his ability.

Feast of Lucy, Martyr at Syracuse, 304 Commemoration of Samuel Johnson, Writer, Moralist, 1784 Almighty and most merciful read more

Feast of Lucy, Martyr at Syracuse, 304 Commemoration of Samuel Johnson, Writer, Moralist, 1784 Almighty and most merciful Father, I again appear in Thy presence the wretched misspender of another year which Thy mercy has allowed me. O Lord let me not sink into total depravity, look down upon me, and rescue me at last from the captivity of sin. Impart to me good resolutions, and give me strength and perseverance to perform them. Take not from me Thy Holy Spirit, but grant that I may redeem the time lost, and that by temperance and diligence, by sincere repentance and faithful obedience I may finally attain everlasting happiness, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.