Commemoration of Pandita Mary Ramabai, Translator of the Scriptures, 1922 A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of read more

Commemoration of Pandita Mary Ramabai, Translator of the Scriptures, 1922 A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of tomorrow's dangers, a straw under my knees, a noise in my ear, a light in my eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayers.

Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life; meet every rising sun with such read more

Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life; meet every rising sun with such sentiments of God's goodness, as if you had seen it, and all things, new-created upon your account: and under the sense of so great a blessing, let your joyful heart praise and magnify so good and glorious a Creator.

Sacrifice, contrary to much popular opinion, was not to the Hebrew some crude, temporary and merely typical institution, nor simply read more

Sacrifice, contrary to much popular opinion, was not to the Hebrew some crude, temporary and merely typical institution, nor simply a substitute for that dispensation until better things were to be provided later. Sacrifice was then the only sufficient means of remaining in harmonious relation to God. No Hebrew dared neglect this obligation. It was adequate for the period in which God intended it should serve. This is not the same as saying, however, that Levitical sacrifice was on an equal with the sacrifice of Christ, nor that the blood of bulls and goats could, from God's side, take away sins; but it is recognizing the reality of the divine institution of Mosaic worship, and looking, as too often Old Testament interpreters fail to do, at sacrifice and priestly ritual from the viewpoint of the Hebrew in the Old Testament dispensation. Sacrifice, to the pious Hebrew, was not something insignificant, nor simply a perfunctory ritual, but it was an important element in his moral obedience to the revealed will of God. Sacrifice was by its very nature, which involved faith and repentance on the part of the worshiper and the putting to death of his substitute victim; intensely personal, ethical, moral, and spiritual, because it was intended to reflect the attitude of the heart and will toward God.

Feast of Aelred of Hexham, Abbot of Rievaulx, 1167 Commemoration of Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, Scholar, 689 God's read more

Feast of Aelred of Hexham, Abbot of Rievaulx, 1167 Commemoration of Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, Scholar, 689 God's unchangeableness is the very foundation of desire and hope and activity in things religious as in things natural. The uniformity of nature's operations in the one, and the constancy of God's promises in the other, give aim and certainty to events.

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).

Feast of Mary Sumner, Founder of the Mothers' Union, 1921 Thou knowest well how to excuse and color thine read more

Feast of Mary Sumner, Founder of the Mothers' Union, 1921 Thou knowest well how to excuse and color thine own deeds; but thou art not willing to receive the excuses of others. It were more just that thou shouldest accuse thyself, and excuse thy brother.

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.

Feast of Commemoration of Helena, Protector of the Faith, 330 The kingdom of heaven is not come even when read more

Feast of Commemoration of Helena, Protector of the Faith, 330 The kingdom of heaven is not come even when God's will is our law; it is fully come when God's will is our will.

That appearance on earth as an individual is the crisis in the history both of Christ Himself and of the read more

That appearance on earth as an individual is the crisis in the history both of Christ Himself and of the humanity He saves and leads. The ministry of Jesus, therefore, culminating in His death, is essential to Paul's whole thought. If in certain aspects of his theology it is the death that bulks most largely -- because it seemed to him to be the purest and most moving expression of what the whole life meant -- he is quite aware that the ethical impulse given by the example and teaching of Jesus is of the very stuff of the Christian life. He alludes to the Gospel story but sparingly, but those who study his teaching most closely become aware that he is himself acting and speaking all through under the impulse of the life and teaching of Jesus. If he refuses to "know Christ after the flesh," it means that he will not risk a harking back to the temporary conditions of the Galilean ministry when the Spirit of Christ is clearly leading out into new fields. The issues of that ministry have been gathered up in the new experience of "Christ in me", and that experience gives a living Christ, who leads ever onward those who will adventure with Him, and not a prophet of the past, whose words might pass into a dead tradition.