Feast of Cyril & Methodius, Missionaries to the Slavs, 869 & 885 Commemoration of Valentine, Martyr at Rome, c.269 read more

Feast of Cyril & Methodius, Missionaries to the Slavs, 869 & 885 Commemoration of Valentine, Martyr at Rome, c.269 I will tell you what to hate: hate hypocrisy, hate cant, hate intolerance, oppression, injustice; hate pharisaism. Hate them as Christ hated them, with a deep, living, godlike hatred.

Where every day is not the Lord's, the Sunday is his least of all. There may be a sickening unreality read more

Where every day is not the Lord's, the Sunday is his least of all. There may be a sickening unreality even where there is no conscious hypocrisy.

The sovereign God wants to be loved for Himself and honored for Himself, but that is only part of what read more

The sovereign God wants to be loved for Himself and honored for Himself, but that is only part of what He wants. The other part is that He wants us to know that when we have Him we have everything -- we have all the rest.

Commemoration of John Donne, Priest, Poet, 1631 He was the Word that spake it; He took the bread and brake read more

Commemoration of John Donne, Priest, Poet, 1631 He was the Word that spake it; He took the bread and brake it; And what that Word did make it I do believe, and take it.

But when once Christ had called him, Peter had no alternative he must leave the ship and come to Him. read more

But when once Christ had called him, Peter had no alternative he must leave the ship and come to Him. In the end, the first step of obedience proves to be an act of faith in the word of Christ. But we should completely misunderstand the nature of grace if we were to suppose that there was no need to take the first-step, because faith was already there. Against that, we must boldly assert that the step of obedience must be taken before faith can be possible. Unless he obeys, a man cannot believe.

Commemoration of Martyrs of Papua New Guinea, 1942 It is fatally easy to think of Christianity as something to read more

Commemoration of Martyrs of Papua New Guinea, 1942 It is fatally easy to think of Christianity as something to be discussed and not as something to be experienced. It is certainly important to have an intellectual grasp of the orb of Christian truth; but it is still more important to have a vital, living experience of the power of Jesus Christ. When a man undergoes treatment from a doctor, he does not need to know the way in which the drug works on his body in order to be cured. There is a sense in which Christianity is like that. At the heart of Christianity there is a mystery, but it is not the mystery of intellectual appreciation; it the mystery of redemption.

The Christian message is not an exhortation -- "try hard to be good." Good advice, but there is no saving read more

The Christian message is not an exhortation -- "try hard to be good." Good advice, but there is no saving gospel in that.

There is a state of perfect peace with God which can be attained under imperfect obedience.

There is a state of perfect peace with God which can be attained under imperfect obedience.

Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865 Let a man but separate himself from read more

Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865 Let a man but separate himself from all contingencies and from all works, and there will come over him in this state of emptiness a peace which is very great, lovely, and agreeable, and which is in itself no sin since it is part of our human nature. But when it is taken for a veritable possessing of God, or unity with God, then it is sin, for it is in reality nothing else than a state of thorough passivity and apathy untouched by the power from on high -- a purely negative state from which (if one in arrogance calls it divine) nothing follows but blindness, failure of understanding, and a disinclination to be governed by the rules of ordinary righteousness.