Feast of Evelyn Underhill, Mystical Writer, 1941 Those who complain that they make no progress in the life of read more

Feast of Evelyn Underhill, Mystical Writer, 1941 Those who complain that they make no progress in the life of prayer because they "cannot meditate" should examine, not their capacity for meditation, but their capacity for suffering and love. For there is a hard and costly element, a deep seriousness, a crucial choice, in all genuine religion.

Taken as practical counsel for survival, the Fifth Commandment is now almost a dead letter. Yet if our world were read more

Taken as practical counsel for survival, the Fifth Commandment is now almost a dead letter. Yet if our world were truly Christian, the change might be a reason for rejoicing. We no longer need our families -- we are therefore free to love them with complete unselfishness. Now at last it is possible to honour our parents genuinely, because they no longer have the power to kill us if we don't. The old sort of honour was sometimes an ugly sham: the son who respects Father only out of fear of punishment is not much of a son, just as the Christian who worships God only out of fear of hell is precious little of a Christian. But the new sort of honour can be a beautiful and holy thing. There are many sweet and sane families bound together by love; there are plenty of experts who remind us that only love can make the modern family work at all. And one must admit that there are plenty of parents very willing to be honoured. The catch is that not so many of them are willing to be honourable.

God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.

God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.

The demand that the Atonement shall be exhibited in vital relation to a new life in which sin is overcome... read more

The demand that the Atonement shall be exhibited in vital relation to a new life in which sin is overcome... is entirely legitimate, and it touches a weak point in the traditional Protestant doctrine. Dr. (Thomas) Chalmers tells us that he was brought up -- such was the effect of the current orthodoxy upon him -- in a certain distrust of good works. Some were certainly wanted, but not as being themselves salvation, only, as he puts it, as tokens of justification. It was a distinct stage in his religious progress when he realized that true justification sanctifies, and that the soul can and ought to abandon itself spontaneously and joyfully to do the good that it delights in. The modern mind assumes what Dr. Chalmers painfully discovered. An atonement that does not regenerate, it truly holds, is not an atonement in which men can be asked to believe.

Commemoration of Thomas Bray, Priest, Founder of SPCK, 1730 Continuing a short series on forgiveness: The Hebrew religion read more

Commemoration of Thomas Bray, Priest, Founder of SPCK, 1730 Continuing a short series on forgiveness: The Hebrew religion was an unfinished religion. That is one of the best proofs of its divine inspiration. The prophets had the forward look [and] great things were yet to come. As one of the most daring expressed it, the old and hallowed covenant, made by God at the Exodus, would be superseded by a new and higher relation; God would write his law into the hearts of the people; the old drill in outward statutes would disappear, for all men would know God by an inward experience of forgiveness and love.

Our hearts deceive us, because we leave them to themselves, are absent from them, taken up in outward rules and read more

Our hearts deceive us, because we leave them to themselves, are absent from them, taken up in outward rules and forms of living and praying. But this kind of praying, which takes all its thoughts and words only from the state of our hearts, makes it impossible for us to be strangers to ourselves. The strength of every sin, the power of every evil temper, the most secret workings of our hearts, the weakness of any or all our virtues, is with a noonday clearness forced to be seen, as soon as the heart is made our prayer book, and we pray nothing, but according to what we read, and find there.

God did not write a book and send it by messenger to be read at a distance by unaided minds. read more

God did not write a book and send it by messenger to be read at a distance by unaided minds. He spoke a Book and lives in His spoken words, constantly speaking His words and causing the power of them to persist across the years.

Feast of Anselm, Abbot of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1109 Jesus, as a mother you gather your people read more

Feast of Anselm, Abbot of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1109 Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you: you are gentle with us as a mother with her children; Often you weep over our sins and our pride: tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgement. You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds: in sickness you nurse us, and with pure milk you feed us. Jesus, by your dying we are born to new life: by your anguish and labour we come forth in joy. Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness: through your gentleness we find comfort in fear. Your warmth gives life to the dead: your touch makes sinners righteous. Lord Jesus, in your mercy heal us: in your love and tenderness remake us. In your compassion bring grace and forgiveness: for the beauty of heaven may your love prepare us.

Feast of Evelyn Underhill, Mystical Writer, 1941 Christianity is a religion which concerns us as we are here and read more

Feast of Evelyn Underhill, Mystical Writer, 1941 Christianity is a religion which concerns us as we are here and now, creatures of body and soul. We do not "follow the footsteps of his most holy life" by the exercise of a trained religious imagination, but by treading the firm, rough earth, up hill and down dale.