Commemoration of Nicholas Ferrar, Deacon, Founder of the Little Gidding Community, 1637 To me there is a much more read more

Commemoration of Nicholas Ferrar, Deacon, Founder of the Little Gidding Community, 1637 To me there is a much more frightening ignorance in our modern world than the "ignorance of the heathen". I am referring to the almost total ignorance of the content and implication of the Christian Faith shown by many "clever" people today. Frankly, I find it horrifying to discover that men who are experts in their own line -- in astronomy, genetics, or nuclear physics, for example -- have no adult knowledge of what the Church of Christ stands for, and a complete blank ignorance of what the Church is achieving today. It is the more horrifying because people who rightly respect the expert for his knowledge in his own field have no idea that he has not carefully examined and reluctantly discarded Christianity; but in all probability he has never studied it at all!

Feast of Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath & Wells, Hymnographer, 1711 [My father's] common salutation of his family read more

Feast of Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath & Wells, Hymnographer, 1711 [My father's] common salutation of his family or friends, on the Lord's day in the morning, was that of the primitive Christians: "The Lord is risen, He is risen indeed"; making it his chief business on that day to celebrate the memory of Christ's resurrection.

Feast of Mary Magdalen, Apostle to the Apostles When our lives are focused on God, awe and wonder lead read more

Feast of Mary Magdalen, Apostle to the Apostles When our lives are focused on God, awe and wonder lead us to worship God, filling our inner being with a fullness we would never have thought possible. Awe prepares the way in us for the power of God to transform us and this transformation of our inner attitudes can only take place when awe leads us in turn to wonder, admiration, reverence, surrender, and obedience toward God. ... James Houston, The Transforming Power of Prayer July 23, 2000 Commemoration of Bridget of Sweden, Abbess of Vadstena, 1373 Christ came, not so much to preach the Gospel, as that there might be a Gospel to preach.

I need not shout my faith. Thrice eloquent Are quiet trees and the green, listening sod; Hushed are the read more

I need not shout my faith. Thrice eloquent Are quiet trees and the green, listening sod; Hushed are the stars, whose power is never spent; The hills are mute: yet, how they speak of God!

In most parts of the Bible, everything is implicitly or explicitly introduced with "Thus saith the Lord". It is... not read more

In most parts of the Bible, everything is implicitly or explicitly introduced with "Thus saith the Lord". It is... not merely a sacred book but a book so remorselessly and continuously sacred that it does not invite -- it excludes or repels -- the merely aesthetic approach. You can read it as literature only by a tour de force... It demands incessantly to be taken on its own terms: it will not continue to give literary delight very long, except to those who go to it for something quite different. I predict that it will in the future be read, as it always has been read, almost exclusively by Christians.

Feast of David, Bishop of Menevia, Patron of Wales, c.601 The scandal of the Bible does not lie so read more

Feast of David, Bishop of Menevia, Patron of Wales, c.601 The scandal of the Bible does not lie so much in its claim to record the Word of God, as in its insistence that the Word of God is to be heard in a particular historical happening, in a particular locality -- and only there. To put it in a provocative manner: the Bible is theology. It is historical theology. It can reveal its meaning only to those who regard it as the Word of God, and are able to preserve a strict confidence in the universal significance of particular historical occasions.

Feast of Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, Teacher, 367 Commemoration of Kentigern (Mungo), Missionary Bishop in Strathclyde & Cumbria, 603 read more

Feast of Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, Teacher, 367 Commemoration of Kentigern (Mungo), Missionary Bishop in Strathclyde & Cumbria, 603 Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you yourself shall be the miracle.

Commemoration of Thomas Bray, Priest, Founder of SPCK, 1730 The fortitude of a Christian consists in patience, not in read more

Commemoration of Thomas Bray, Priest, Founder of SPCK, 1730 The fortitude of a Christian consists in patience, not in enterprises which the poets call heroic, and which are commonly the effects of interest, pride, and worldly honor.

There is an evil power, a Satanic power, which holds souls in error, and which persists. It is interesting to read more

There is an evil power, a Satanic power, which holds souls in error, and which persists. It is interesting to note that in the first centuries of the Christian era many demoniacal phenomena appeared in countries in the course of being converted from idolatry to Christianity. The same is true of pagan civilisation today. In my research into the fourth century, I was surprised to find a great recrudescence of magical practices at the very moment when Roman civilization under Constantine was about to be snatched away bodily from paganism and enter... into the kingdom of the Son; at that time, all the rites of sorcery took on an incredible virulence.