The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

Sectarianism is limitation. Some truth taught in Scripture, some part of the divine revelation, is apprehended, and the heart responds read more

Sectarianism is limitation. Some truth taught in Scripture, some part of the divine revelation, is apprehended, and the heart responds to it and accepts it. As it is dwelt upon, expounded, defended; its power and beauty increasingly influence those affected by it. Another side of truth, another view of revelation, also contained in Scripture, seems to weaken, even to contradict, the truth that has been found to be so effectual. and in jealous fear for the doctrine accepted and taught, the balancing truth is minimized, explained away, and even denied. So on a portion of revelation, on a part of the Word, a sect is founded, good and useful because it preaches and practices Divine truth, but limited and unbalanced because it does not see all truth, nor frankly accept the whole of Scripture. Its members are not only deprived of the full use of all Scripture, but are cut off from the fellowship of many saints, who are less limited than they, or limited in another direction.

Feast of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teacher, Martyr, 1945 During the last year or so, I have come to appreciate the read more

Feast of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teacher, Martyr, 1945 During the last year or so, I have come to appreciate the "worldliness" of Christianity as never before. The Christian is not a homo religiosus but a man, pure and simple, just as Jesus became man... It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to believe. One must abandon every attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, a converted sinner, a churchman, a righteous man, or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one... This is what I mean by worldliness -- taking life in one's stride, with all its duties and problems, its successes and failures, its experiences and helplessness... How can success make us arrogant or failure lead us astray, when we participate in the sufferings of God by living in this world?

Justification is withdrawn from works, not that no good works may be done, or that what is done may be read more

Justification is withdrawn from works, not that no good works may be done, or that what is done may be denied to be good, but that we may not rely upon them, glory in them, or ascribe salvation to them.

Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: The primary object of prayer is to know God better; we and our read more

Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: The primary object of prayer is to know God better; we and our needs should come second. ... The Notebooks of Florence Allshorn March 16, 2000 Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: I have called my material surroundings a stage set. In this I can act. And you may well say "act". For what I call "myself" (for all practical, everyday purposes) is also a dramatic construction; memories, glimpses in the shavinglass, and snatches of the very fallible activity called "introspection", are the principal ingredients. Normally I call this construction "me"' and the stage set "the real world". Now the moment of prayer is for me -- or involves for me as its condition -- the awareness, the reawakened awareness, that this "real world" and "real self" are very far from being rock-bottom realities. I cannot, in the flesh, leave the stage, either to go behind the scenes or to take my seat in the pit; but I can remember that these regions exist. And I also remember that my apparent self -- this clown or hero or super -- under his grease-paint is a real person with an off-stage life. The dramatic person could not tread the stage unless he concealed a real person: unless the real and unknown I existed, I would not even make mistakes about the imagined me. And in prayer this real I struggles to speak, for once, from his real being, and to address, for once, not the other actors, but -- what shall I call Him? The Author, for He invented us all? The Producer, for He controls all? Or the Audience, for He watches, and will judge, the performance?

Feast of Thomas Aquinas, Priest, Teacher of the Faith, 1274 We have all the reason in the world to read more

Feast of Thomas Aquinas, Priest, Teacher of the Faith, 1274 We have all the reason in the world to believe that the goodness and justice of God is such as to make nothing necessary to be believed by any man which, by the help of due instruction, may not be made sufficiently plain to a common understanding.

The intelligence which has learned to be a law to itself, criticising, rejecting, appropriating, assimilating, cannot deny its nature and read more

The intelligence which has learned to be a law to itself, criticising, rejecting, appropriating, assimilating, cannot deny its nature and suspend its functions when it opens the New Testament. It cannot make itself the slave of men, not even though the men are Peter and Paul and John; no, not even though it were the Son of Man Himself. It resents dictation, not willfully nor wantonly, but because it must; and it resents it all the more when it claims to be inspired. If, therefore, the Atonement can only be received by those who are prepared from the threshold to acknowledge the inspiration and the consequent authority of Scripture, it can never be received by modern men at all.

Feast of the Holy Cross Does not every man feel, that there is corruption enough within him read more

Feast of the Holy Cross Does not every man feel, that there is corruption enough within him to drive him to the commission of the greatest enormities, and eternally to destroy his soul? He can have but little knowledge of his own heart who will deny this. On the other hand, who that is holding on in the ways of righteousness, does not daily ascribe his steadfastness to the influence of that grace which he receives from God; and look daily to God for more grace, in order that he may be "kept by his power through faith unto salvation (Zech. iv. 9)?" No man can in any measure resemble the scripture saints, unless he be of this disposition. Why then must these things be put in opposition to each other, so that every advocate for one of these points must of necessity controvert and explode the other? Only let any pious person... examine the language of his prayers after he has been devoutly pouring out his soul before God, and he will find his own words almost in perfect consonance with the foregoing statement.

Feast of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 988 Eternal Lord, how faint and small Our greatest, strongest thoughts must seem To read more

Feast of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 988 Eternal Lord, how faint and small Our greatest, strongest thoughts must seem To Thee, who overseest all, And leads us through Life's shallow stream. How tangled are our straightest ways; How dimly flares our brightest star; How earthbound is our highest praise To Thee, who sees us as we are. Our feet are slow where Thine are fast; Thy kiss of grace meets lips of stone; And we admit Thy love at last To hearts that have none of their own.