Feast of George Herbert, Priest, Poet, 1633 Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life : Such a Way, as gives read more

Feast of George Herbert, Priest, Poet, 1633 Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life : Such a Way, as gives us breath : Such a Truth, as ends all strife : And such a Life as killeth death. Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength : Such a Light, as shows a feast : Such a Feast, as mends in length : Such a Strength, as makes his guest. Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart : Such a Joy, as none can move : Such a Love, as none can part : Such a Heart, as joyes in love.

God is present by Love alone. By Love alone He is great and glorious. By Love alone He liveth and read more

God is present by Love alone. By Love alone He is great and glorious. By Love alone He liveth and feeleth in other persons. By Love alone He enjoyeth all the creatures, by Love alone He is pleasing to Himself, by Love alone He is rich and blessed. The Soul is shrivelled up and buried in a grave that does not love. But that which does love wisely and truly is the joy and end of all the world, the King of Heaven, and the Friend of God.

Pride calls me to the window, gluttony to the table, wantonness to the bed, laziness to the chimney-corner; ambition commands read more

Pride calls me to the window, gluttony to the table, wantonness to the bed, laziness to the chimney-corner; ambition commands me to go upstairs, and covetousness to come down. Vices, I see, are as well contrary to themselves as to virtue. Free me, Lord, from this distracted case; fetch me from being sin's servant to be Thine, whose "service is perfect freedom," for Thou art but one, and ever the same.

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.

Faith is that which, knowing the Lord's will, goes and does it; or, not knowing it, stands and waits, content read more

Faith is that which, knowing the Lord's will, goes and does it; or, not knowing it, stands and waits, content in ignorance as in knowledge, because God wills -- neither pressing into the hidden future, nor careless of the knowledge which opens the path of action.

OUR SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEACHERS Often, though not always, they work in inadequate buildings, with limited budgets, with insufficient backing from read more

OUR SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEACHERS Often, though not always, they work in inadequate buildings, with limited budgets, with insufficient backing from church officers, with indifferent support from parents, and at times even under a minister who cares for none of these things. Usually the workers themselves have had insufficient training for the job they are asked to perform. And always they work in a secularized culture, in the midst of spiritual illiteracy, where the most commonplace terms in the Bible and the most elemental ideas concerning the Kingdom of God sound strange even to otherwise well-educated adults.

Commemoration of Caroline Chisholm, Social Reformer, 1877 I can see no intellectual objection to the statement that God's power read more

Commemoration of Caroline Chisholm, Social Reformer, 1877 I can see no intellectual objection to the statement that God's power is not limited by anything outside His own creative purpose: in that sense He is omnipotent, but it is even impossible for Him to exercise that power in certain ways without thereby ceasing to be our Father. In that sense God is not omnipotent: He is limited by His own nature, by His perfect goodness and mercy; for the omnipotence of God means nothing apart from His Fatherly love. In particular, this limitation of the power of God is to be found in the measure of freedom which, as His children, we enjoy. God shares His power with us so that, for a time at least, if we so determine, we can break His laws and frustrate His plans, but also so that we can give to Him, if we choose, the free allegiance of our hearts and minds, and become children at His Family Table, drawn together by the compulsion of His love, and not the exercise of His might.

Beautiful sanctuaries, paved parking lots, and new liturgies will do very little for people who sit in worship with their read more

Beautiful sanctuaries, paved parking lots, and new liturgies will do very little for people who sit in worship with their fingers crossed and do not really believe the faith which is expounded. Often the layman dismisses what the preacher says as something irrelevant to his situation and generation. When he joins a group where he is no longer afraid to be frank, the supposedly faithful member often admits that he has never really accepted what he thinks he has heard. He has, for example, grave reservations about the idea of creation. Did not the world evolve of itself? Do we really need the hypothesis of Infinite Purpose to make sense of the physical, biological, and psychological development? These questions seldom come to the surface when the Church provides merely a one-way preaching. There is little chance of renewal if all that we have is the arrangement by which one speaks and the others listen. One trouble with this conventional system is that the speaker never knows what the unanswered questions are, or what reservations remain in the layman's mentality.

Now it is not good for the Christian's health
To hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian read more

Now it is not good for the Christian's health
To hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles,
And it weareth the Christian down.
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased--
And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here
Who tried to hustle the East."