Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed, you might say in disguise, and is calling us read more

Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed, you might say in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in His great campaign of sabotage

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 It is one thing to fear God as threatening, with a holy reverence, and another to be afraid of the evil threatened.

Let no man deceive you with vain words or vain hopes or false notions of a slight and sudden repentance. read more

Let no man deceive you with vain words or vain hopes or false notions of a slight and sudden repentance. As if heaven were a hospital founded on purpose to receive all sick and maimed persons that, when they can live no longer to the lusts of the flesh and the sinful pleasures of this world, can but put up a cold and formal petition to be admitted there. No, no, as sure as God is true, they shall never see the Kingdom of God who, instead of seeking it in the first place, make it their last refuge and retreat.

Christian Unity is not a secular unity, and must be prompted by no secular motive. The unity we seek is read more

Christian Unity is not a secular unity, and must be prompted by no secular motive. The unity we seek is deeper than anything that the world offers. Communism, Fascism, National Socialism, and even Shintoism have proved their ability to bind men together in a common enterprise with great devotion and selfsacrifice; but these are secular ideals, intermixed with selfinterest, the love of master, and the use of force. Christian Unity can only be "in Christ". It is based on the New Birth and New Life in Christ, and upon the oneness of all the members in the Christ who is the Head. Therefore, "the quest for the unity of the Church must in fact be identical with the quest for Jesus Christ as the concrete Head and Lord of the Church." (Barth) What kind of unity, then, do we ask? It must be God's kind, that for which Christ prayed, and which, therefore, must be in the line of God's purpose. Will He not then take the initiative? It is for us to wait upon Him, and to go through the gates which He opens, to cast up the highway, to gather out the stones of stumbling, to lift up the standard, and to prepare the way of the Lord. (Isa. 62:10).

Commemoration of Sundar Singh of India, Sadhu, Evangelist, Teacher, 1929 The breadth and depth of [William] Carey's missionary read more

Commemoration of Sundar Singh of India, Sadhu, Evangelist, Teacher, 1929 The breadth and depth of [William] Carey's missionary service [in India] is well illustrated in the principles laid down for themselves by the Serampore Brotherhood to be read three times a year in each station in their charge. Here is a summary: To set an infinite value on men's souls. To abstain from whatever deepens India's prejudice against the Gospel. To watch for every chance of doing the people good. To preach Christ crucified as the grand means of conversions. To esteem and treat Indians always as equals. To be instant in the nurture of personal religion. To cultivate the spiritual gifts of the Indian brethren, ever pressing upon them their missionary obligation, since only Indians can win India for Christ.

Enough has... been said to show that the impoverished secularized versions of Christianity which are being urged upon us for read more

Enough has... been said to show that the impoverished secularized versions of Christianity which are being urged upon us for our acceptance today rest not upon a serious application of the methods of scientific scholarship nor upon a serious intuitive appreciation of the Gospels as a whole in their natural context, but upon a radical distaste for the supernatural.

Feast of Matthias the Apostle Much of the present dilemma and chaotic condition of both the secular and read more

Feast of Matthias the Apostle Much of the present dilemma and chaotic condition of both the secular and religious worlds today finds its cause with the setting aside of the "thus saith the Lord" by the clergy. A long series of rejections and subsequent attendant conditions follow the rejections of the Bible as God's Word. Next to that rejection has come the rejection of the God of the Bible. Next, there usually follows a rejection of the Bible's presentation of man as a lost rebel against God, [and then] comes the rejection of biblical morality and ethics. [After] all of these, the next step is a short one--the rejection of biblical obedience to the laws of God and man. And, of course, many more items of rejection can be added to the list. But the crucial point here is that all of these can be traced back to the initial rejection of the absolute authority of Holy Writ.

I read in Shakespeare of the majesty of the moral law, in Victor Hugo of the sacredness of childhood, in read more

I read in Shakespeare of the majesty of the moral law, in Victor Hugo of the sacredness of childhood, in Tennyson the ugliness of hypocrisy, in George Eliot the supremacy of duty, in Dickens the divinity of kindness, and in Ruskin the dignity of service. Irving teaches me the lesson of cheerfulness, Hawthorne shows me the hatefulness of sin, Longfellow gives me the soft, tranquil music of hope. Lowell makes us feel that we must give ourselves to our fellow men. Whittier sings to me of divine Fatherhood and human brotherhood. These are Christian lessons: who inspired them? Who put it into the heart of Martin Luther to nail those theses on the church door of Wittenberg? Who stirred and fired the soul of Savonarola? Who thrilled and electrified the soul of John Wesley? Jesus Christ is back of these all.

The scientific age with its urban-industrial culture is, for all its magnificent achievements and intoxicating success, in a very real read more

The scientific age with its urban-industrial culture is, for all its magnificent achievements and intoxicating success, in a very real sense a dark age. Its complete bondage to nature has enclosed the mind and spirit of man in a fast prison out of which, try as he may, he can find no way of escape. The inability to perceive any longer the reality of things invisible and unseen is a sickness of the soul which cries out to be cured. The only way to dispel the darkness of the present age and liberate it from the prison within which it has become bound is to restore the proper relationship of nature to supernature and of time to eternity as an essential feature of external reality. Until this can be accomplished, there is really very little that the Church or Christianity in general has to offer to this age.