He that sees the beauty of holiness, or true moral good, sees the greatest and most important thing in the read more

He that sees the beauty of holiness, or true moral good, sees the greatest and most important thing in the world... Unless this is seen, nothing is seen that is worth seeing: for there is no other true excellence or beauty.

Feast of Luke the Evangelist He is my Altar, I His holy place; I am His guest, and He my read more

Feast of Luke the Evangelist He is my Altar, I His holy place; I am His guest, and He my living food; I'm His by penitence, He is mine by grace; I'm His by purchase, He is mine by blood; He's my supporting elm, and I His vine: Thus I my Best-beloved's am; thus He is mine.

Commemoration of Cecile Isherwood, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, Grahamstown, South Africa, 1906 Continuing a short series on read more

Commemoration of Cecile Isherwood, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, Grahamstown, South Africa, 1906 Continuing a short series on forgiveness: He who has not forgiven an enemy has not yet tasted one of the most sublime enjoyments of life.

One of the most striking parts of the Day of Atonement is that of the scapegoat. The high priest placed read more

One of the most striking parts of the Day of Atonement is that of the scapegoat. The high priest placed both his hands on the head of a goat and confessed all the sins of the nation. Then the goat carrying the sins of the people is sent off into the wilderness. But it is not just a piece of history! There is in the modern world a quest for scapegoats though with one enormous difference. Whenever there is an accident or a tragedy, there is a search for someone to blame. Often all the modern means of communication join in; accusations, resignations, demands for compensation and the rest. If a guilty person is found, then an orgy of condemnation and vilification. Rarely a sense of, there but for the grace of God go I. Instead of dealing gently with one another's failure because of our own vulnerability to criticism, there is the presumption that we are in a fit condition to judge and to condemn. The enormous difference? The original scapegoat followed a confession of the sins of the people. There was no blaming of someone else, but an admission of guilt and a quest for the forgiveness of God. The goat wasn't hated, but was a dramatic picture of the carrying away sins. It was the very opposite of a selfrighteous victimisation of someone else. Ever since 200 A.D., Christians have seen the scapegoat as a picture of Jesus. As it was led out to die in the wilderness bearing the sins of the people, so he was crucified outside Jerusalem for our sins. We are to be both forgiven and forgiving people.

Feast of Barnabas the Apostle The disorder of secularism is perhaps nowhere more apparent in our contemporary Church than read more

Feast of Barnabas the Apostle The disorder of secularism is perhaps nowhere more apparent in our contemporary Church than in the extent to which we have permitted the order of the world to creep into the order of the Church... That it should carry out its mission to the men in the middle classes of capitalist society is doubtless a part of the Church's order; but that the mission should result in the formation of a middle-class church which defends the secular outlook and interests of that class is an evident corruption.

It is no strain of metaphor to say that the love of God and the wrath of God are the read more

It is no strain of metaphor to say that the love of God and the wrath of God are the same thing, described from opposite points of view. How we shall experience it depends upon the way we shall come up against it: God does not change; it is man's moral state that changes. The wrath of God is a figure of speech to denote God's unchanging opposition to sin; it is His righteous love operating to destroy evil. It is not evil that will have the last word, but good; not sorrow, but joy; not hate, but love.

Feast of Monica, Mother of Augustine of Hippo, 387 Augustine shows clearly the religious character of sin. Sin for read more

Feast of Monica, Mother of Augustine of Hippo, 387 Augustine shows clearly the religious character of sin. Sin for him is not a moral failure; it is not even disobedience. Disobedience is a consequence but not the cause. The cause is: turning away from God, and from God as the highest good, as the love with which God loves Himself, through us. For this reason, since sin has this character -- if you say "sins", it is easily dissolved into moral sins; but sin is first of all basically the power of turning away from God. For this very reason, no moral remedy is possible. Only one remedy is possible: return to God. But this of course is possible only in the power of God, and this power is lost. This is the state of man under the conditions of existence.

Commemoration of Giles of Provence, Hermit, c.710 It was not by dialectic that it pleased God to save His read more

Commemoration of Giles of Provence, Hermit, c.710 It was not by dialectic that it pleased God to save His people; "for the kingdom of God consisteth in simplicity of faith, not in wordy contention.".

The missionary work of the non-professional missionary is essentially to live his daily life in Christ, and therefore with a read more

The missionary work of the non-professional missionary is essentially to live his daily life in Christ, and therefore with a difference, and to be able to explain, or at least to state, the reason and cause of the difference to men who see it... His preaching is essentially private conversation, and has at the back of it facts, facts of a life which explain and illustrate and enforce his words... It is such missionary work, done consciously and deliberately as missionary, that the world needs today. Everybody, Christian and pagan alike, respects such work; and, when it is so done, men wonder, and inquire into the secret of a life which they instinctively admire and covet for themselves... The spirit which inspires love of others and efforts after their well-being, both in body and soul, they cannot but admire and covet -- unless, indeed, seeing that it would reform their own lives, they dread and hate it, because they do not desire to be reformed. In either case, it works.