Commemoration of Katherine of Alexandria, Martyr, 4th century Thanksgiving (U.S.) Here [Mark11:27-33] they discerned a flaw, a heresy; read more

Commemoration of Katherine of Alexandria, Martyr, 4th century Thanksgiving (U.S.) Here [Mark11:27-33] they discerned a flaw, a heresy; and they would force Him either to make a fatal claim, or else to moderate His pretensions at their bidding, which would promptly restore their lost influence and leadership. Nor need we shrink from confessing that our Lord was justly open to such reproach, unless He was indeed Divine, unless He was deliberately preparing His followers for that astonishing revelation, soon to come, which threw the Church upon her knees in adoration of her God manifest in flesh.

We read not that Christ ever exercised force but once; and that was to drive profane ones out of his read more

We read not that Christ ever exercised force but once; and that was to drive profane ones out of his Temple, not to force them in.

Feast of Barnabas the Apostle The essential amorality of all atheist doctrines is often hidden from us by an read more

Feast of Barnabas the Apostle The essential amorality of all atheist doctrines is often hidden from us by an irrelevant personal argument. We see that many articulate secularists are well-meaning and law-abiding men; we see them go into righteous indignation over injustice and often devote their lives to good works. So we conclude that "he can't be wrong whose life is in the right" -- that their philosophies are just as good guides to action as Christianity. What we don't see is that they are not acting on their philosophies. They are acting, out of habit or sentiment, on an inherited Christian ethic which they still take for granted though they have rejected the creed from which it sprang. Their children will inherit some what less of it.

To live in a fully predictable world is not to be a true man, and Christ was a true man. read more

To live in a fully predictable world is not to be a true man, and Christ was a true man. His prayer in Gethsemane, his sweat of blood, show that the preceding anxiety is a part of human affliction, which we must try to accept with some sort of submission.

Feast of Luke the Evangelist He who prays as he ought will endeavour to live as he prays.

Feast of Luke the Evangelist He who prays as he ought will endeavour to live as he prays.

It is as reasonable to suppose it the desire of all Christians to arrive at Christian perfection as to suppose read more

It is as reasonable to suppose it the desire of all Christians to arrive at Christian perfection as to suppose that all sick men desire to be restored to perfect health; yet experience shows us, that nothing wants more to be pressed, repeated, and forced upon our minds, than the plainest rules of Christianity.

Feast of Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, Teacher, 1910 Commemoration of Martyrs of Uganda, 1886 & 1978 Jesus calls read more

Feast of Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, Teacher, 1910 Commemoration of Martyrs of Uganda, 1886 & 1978 Jesus calls us not only to repentance, to the "letting go" of the false gods we come to him with; but he goes one more difficult step farther: he also calls us to believe in him alone as the decisive, absolutely unique, once and for all, full revelation of God to man. This is extremely difficult for us, because Jesus was careful to give men no external guarantee that he was, in fact, God in the flesh. Otherwise, he realized, we would not be worshipping him, but would only be worshipping or trusting in the guarantee, whatever it might be.

When the Bible speaks of "following Jesus", it is proclaiming a discipleship which will liberate mankind from all man-made dogma, read more

When the Bible speaks of "following Jesus", it is proclaiming a discipleship which will liberate mankind from all man-made dogma, from every burden and oppression, from every anxiety and torture which afflicts the conscience. If they follow Jesus, men escape from the hard yoke of their own laws, and submit to the kindly yoke of Jesus Christ. But does this mean that we can ignore the seriousness of His command? Far from it! We can only achieve perfect liberty and enjoy fellowship with Jesus when His command, His call to absolute discipleship, is appreciated in its entirety. Only the man who follows the command of Jesus without reserve, and submits unresistingly to His yoke, finds his burden easy, and under its gentle pressure receives the power to persevere in the right way. The command of Jesus is hard -- unutterably hard -- for those who try to resist it.

Commemoration of Cecile Isherwood, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, Grahamstown, South Africa, 1906 The Church has no read more

Commemoration of Cecile Isherwood, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, Grahamstown, South Africa, 1906 The Church has no mission of its own. All we can have by ourselves is a club or a debating society; and our only hope, left to ourselves, is to win as many members for our own club and away from other clubs as we can. And whatever this is, it is not Mission. Mission belongs to God. The Mission was His from the beginning; it is His; it will always be His. He has His purposes from the foundation of the world, and the means to fulfill them; and the only part the Church has in this is obedience -- a share in the eternal and life-giving obedience of the Son of God... And the most terrible judgment on the Church comes when God leaves us to our own devices because He is tired of waiting for our obedience -- leaves us to be the domestic chaplains to a comfortable secular world -- and goes Himself into the wilderness of human need and injustice and pain. This judgment does come on churches and nations, when they forget that God is in command, that He does the choosing.