Feast of John, Apostle & Evangelist [Eternal life is] naught else than that blessed regard wherewith Thou never ceasest read more

Feast of John, Apostle & Evangelist [Eternal life is] naught else than that blessed regard wherewith Thou never ceasest to behold me, yea, even the secret places of my soul. With Thee, to behold is to give life: It is unceasingly to impart sweetest love of Thee; 'tis to inflame me to love of Thee by love's imparting, and to feed me by inflaming, and by feeding to kindle my yearning, and by kindling to make me drink of the dew of gladness, and by drinking to infuse in me a fountain of life, and by infusing to make it increase and endure.

Commemoration of Charles de Foucauld, Hermit, Servant of the Poor, 1916 Race highlights the fact that in our read more

Commemoration of Charles de Foucauld, Hermit, Servant of the Poor, 1916 Race highlights the fact that in our congregational life we usually do not reflect the variety of cultures. There are Asian, West Indian, and Anglo-Saxon congregations worshiping and meeting close to each other. These groups meet at work and in school, but not always in church. If the church is middle-class and intellectual in the language of the services, in the music employed, in the life-style expected of Christians, in its leadership, and in the methods of presenting the gospel, then the whole atmosphere is such as to repel those who are not middle-class and intellectual. They feel out of place and unwanted, even if they are given a friendly greeting at the door. The life of the New Testament Church was evidence of the supernatural; God was in their midst. The power of Christ was a reality. The fellowship could not be explained in simple natural terms. A church divided on social and racial lines is not evidence for the supernatural, but for the simply human and social.

If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet read more

If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me.

Feast of Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne, Missionary, 687 The desire for certitude is natural enough and explains the human read more

Feast of Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne, Missionary, 687 The desire for certitude is natural enough and explains the human tendency to mistake faith for certainty. This is not a specially religious mistake. We think of supernaturalism when faith is mentioned, but the naturalistic description of the world also operates on assumptions that require a faith as robust as does the most soaring mysticism. The usual efforts to skirt faith beg all the questions there are. A psychiatrist, for instance, who points out to you that you believe in God the Father because you need a father, or that you became a missionary to expiate your guilt feelings, may be quite correct, but he has not touched on the prior question as to whether there is, in fact, a cosmic father figure who is the archetype of all other fathers, or whether there is an evangel worth spending your life promulgating.

Those talents which God has bestowed upon us are not our own goods but the free gifts of God; and read more

Those talents which God has bestowed upon us are not our own goods but the free gifts of God; and any persons who become proud of them show their ungratefulness.

Commemoration of John Wyclif, Reformer, 1384 All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on read more

Commemoration of John Wyclif, Reformer, 1384 All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors.

Alas, we but chase feathers flying in the air, and tire our own spirits, for the froth and over-gilded clay read more

Alas, we but chase feathers flying in the air, and tire our own spirits, for the froth and over-gilded clay of a dying life. One sight of what my Lord hath let me see within this short time, is worth a world of worlds.

Feast of Bartholomew the Apostle How readily we assume that the Church is the only channel of divine action read more

Feast of Bartholomew the Apostle How readily we assume that the Church is the only channel of divine action among men! Common sense tells us this assumption is wrong -- and nothing in the Bible supports such a conclusion. Believing that God is the Lord of history, we believe that God is at work now in the development of industry and commerce throughout the world, in the experiments and researches of the scientists, in the deliberations of the United Nations, and in the course of events in Berlin and Havana, in Moscow and Peiping, and Detroit. One might say, then that He seems to be doing some very strange and contradictory things! But, though we cannot claim to know God's purpose in all this, we do believe that God acts in all these circumstances. The revolutionary changes of our time are not all a mistake: they are not taking place without God.

The rejection as unhistorical of all passages which narrate miracles is sensible if we start by knowing that the miraculous... read more

The rejection as unhistorical of all passages which narrate miracles is sensible if we start by knowing that the miraculous... never occurs. Now, I do not want here to discuss whether the miraculous is possible: I only want to point out that this is a purely philosophical question. Scholars, as scholars, speak on it with no more authority than anyone else. The canon, "If miraculous, unhistorical", is one they bring to their study of the texts, not one they have learned from it. If one is speaking of authority, the united authority of all the Biblical critics in the world counts for nothing. On this they speak simply as men -- men obviously influenced by, and perhaps insufficiently critical of, the spirit of the age they grew up in.