Does not the public repudiation of the whole Christian scheme of life in a large part of what was once read more

Does not the public repudiation of the whole Christian scheme of life in a large part of what was once known as Christendom force one to confront the question whether the path of Wisdom is not rather to attempt to work out a Christian doctrine of modern society and to order our national life in accordance with it? Those who would give a quick, easy or confident answer to this question have failed to understand it. It cannot even be seriously considered without a profound awareness of the extent to which Christian ideas have lost their hold over, or faded from the consciousness of, large sections of the population; of the far-reaching changes that would be called for in the structure, institutions and activities of existing society, which is in many of its features a complete denial of the Christian understanding of the meaning and end of man's existence; and of the stupendous and costly spiritual, moral, and intellectual effort that any genuine attempt to order national life in accordance with the Christian understanding of life would demand.

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.

Any single verse of the Bible, taken in isolation, may actually be dangerous to your spiritual health. Every part of read more

Any single verse of the Bible, taken in isolation, may actually be dangerous to your spiritual health. Every part of it must be read in relation to the whole message.

Every day is a little life: and our whole life is but a day repeated, whence it is that old read more

Every day is a little life: and our whole life is but a day repeated, whence it is that old Jacob numbers his life by days; and Moses desires to be taught this point of holy arithmetic, to number not his years but his days. [And so, those] that dare lose a day, are dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend it, desperate.

Commemoration of Clement, Bishop of Rome, Martyr, c.100 It is God Himself, personally present and redeemingly active, who comes read more

Commemoration of Clement, Bishop of Rome, Martyr, c.100 It is God Himself, personally present and redeemingly active, who comes to meet men in this Man of Nazareth. Jesus is more than a religious genius, such as George Fox, and more than a holy man, such as the lovable Lana in Kipling's Kim. He himself knows that he is more. The Gospel story is a tree rooted in the familiar soil of time and sense; but its roots go down into the Abyss and its branches fill the Heavens; given to us in terms of a country in the Eastern Mediterranean no bigger than Wales, during the Roman Principate of Tiberius Caesar in the first century of our era, its range is universal; it is on the scale of eternity. God's presence and his very Self were made manifest in the words and works of this Man. In short, the Man Christ Jesus has the decisive place in man's ageless relationship with God. He is what God means by 'Man'. He is what man means by 'God'.

Commemoration of Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of the Society of Jesus, 1556 As the devil showed great skill in read more

Commemoration of Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of the Society of Jesus, 1556 As the devil showed great skill in tempting men to perdition., equal skill ought to be shown in saving them. The devil studied the nature of each man, seized upon the traits of his soul, adjusted himself to them and insinuated himself gradually into his victims's confidence -- suggesting splendors to the ambitious, gain to the covetous, delight to the sensuous, and a false appearance of piety to the pious -- and a winner of souls ought to act in the same cautious and skillful way.

God's patience is infinite. Men, like small kettles, boil quickly with wrath at the least wrong. Not so God. If read more

God's patience is infinite. Men, like small kettles, boil quickly with wrath at the least wrong. Not so God. If God were as wrathful, the world would have been a heap of ruins long ago.

Feast of William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1944 In this age when it seems tacitly assumed that the read more

Feast of William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1944 In this age when it seems tacitly assumed that the Church is concerned only with another world than this, and in this world with nothing but individual conduct as bearing on prospects in that other world, hardly anyone reads the history of the Church in respect to its exercise of political influence. It is often assumed that the Church exercises little such influence and ought to exercise none; it is further assumed that this assumption is self-evident and has always been made by reasonable men. As a matter of fact the assumption is entirely modern and unjustified.

Many man's scruples lie almost wholly about obedience to authority and compliance with indifferent customs, but very seldom about the read more

Many man's scruples lie almost wholly about obedience to authority and compliance with indifferent customs, but very seldom about the dangers of disobedience and unpeaceableness and rending in pieces the Church of Christ by needless separations and endless divisions.