Wonderful is the depth of thy words, whose surface is before us, gently leading on the little ones: and yet read more

Wonderful is the depth of thy words, whose surface is before us, gently leading on the little ones: and yet a wonderful deepness, O my God, a wonderful deepness. It is awe to look into it; even an awfulness of honour, and a trembling of love.

Feast of Thomas Aquinas, Priest, Teacher of the Faith, 1274 This Christian claim [of universal validity] is naturally offensive read more

Feast of Thomas Aquinas, Priest, Teacher of the Faith, 1274 This Christian claim [of universal validity] is naturally offensive to the adherents of every other religious system. It is almost as offensive to modern man, brought up in the atmosphere of relativism, in which tolerance is regarded almost as the highest of the virtues. But we must not suppose that this claim to universal validity is something that can quietly be removed from the Gospel without changing it into something entirely different from what it is... Jesus' life, his method, and his message do not make sense, unless they are interpreted in the light of his own conviction that he was in fact the final and decisive word of God to men... For the human sickness there is one specific remedy, and this is it. There is no other.

Commemoration of Samuel Seabury, First Anglican Bishop in North America, 1796 Gather my broken fragments to a whole, read more

Commemoration of Samuel Seabury, First Anglican Bishop in North America, 1796 Gather my broken fragments to a whole, As these four quarters make a shining day. Into thy basket, for my golden bowl, Take up the things that I have cast away In vice or indolence or unwise play. Let mine be a merry, all-receiving heart, But make it a whole, with light in every part.

I did not expect to hear that it could be, in an assembly convened for the propagation of Christian knowledge, read more

I did not expect to hear that it could be, in an assembly convened for the propagation of Christian knowledge, a question whether any nation uninstructed in religion should receive instruction; or whether that, instruction should be imparted to them by a translation of the holy-books into their own language. If obedience to the will of GOD be necessary to happiness, and knowledge of his will be necessary to obedience, I know not how he that withholds this knowledge, or delays it, can be said to love his neighbour as himself. He, that voluntarily continues ignorance, is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces; as to him that should extinguish the tapers of a light-house, might justly be imputed the calamities of shipwrecks. (Continued tomorrow) ... a letter from Samuel Johnson to William Drummond of Edinburgh, 1766 July 13, 2002 Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity; and as no man is good but as he wishes the good of others, so no man can be good in the highest degree, who wishes not to others the largest measures of the greatest good. To omit for a year, or for a day, the most efficacious method of advancing Christianity [i.e., the Bible], in compliance with any purposes that terminate this side of the grave, is a crime [the like] of which I know not that the world has yet had an example. ... a letter from Samuel Johnson to William Drummond of Edinburgh, 1766 July 14, 2002 Feast of John Keble, Priest, Poet, Tractarian, 1866 The "good" man, the man whose god is righteousness, has as his life's ambition the keeping of rules and commandments and the keeping of himself uncontaminated by the world. This sounds admirable; but, as the truth of Christ showed, the whole of such living, the whole drive and ambition, the whole edifice, is self-centered. That entire process of effort must be abandoned if a man is to give himself in love to God and his fellows. He must lose his life if he is ever going to find it.

Feast of Joseph of Nazareth It is the custom of unbelievers to speak as if the air of Palestine read more

Feast of Joseph of Nazareth It is the custom of unbelievers to speak as if the air of Palestine were then surcharged with belief in the supernatural, miracles were everywhere. Thus they would explain away the significance of the popular belief that our Lord wrought signs and wonders. But in so doing they set themselves a worse problem than they evade. If miracles were so very common, it would be as easy to believe that Jesus wrought them as that He worked at His father's bench, but also it would be as inconclusive. And how then are we to explain the astonishment which all the evangelists so constantly record? On any conceivable theory, these writers shared the beliefs of that age, and so did the readers who accepted their assurance that all were amazed, and that His report "went out straightway everywhere into all the region of Galilee." These are emphatic words, and both the author and his readers must have considered a miracle to be more surprising than modern critics believe they did. Yet we do not read of any one was converted by this miracle. All were amazed, but wonder is not self-surrender. They were content to let their excitement die out -- as every violent emotion must -- without any change of life, any permanent devotion to the new Teacher and His doctrine.

Feast of William Tyndale, Translator of the Scriptures, Martyr, 1536 Christ had given the apostles a world-wide commission, read more

Feast of William Tyndale, Translator of the Scriptures, Martyr, 1536 Christ had given the apostles a world-wide commission, embracing all the nations; but intellectually they did not understand what He meant. They found that out as they followed the impulse of the Spirit.

Feast of Mary Sumner, Founder of the Mothers' Union, 1921 Unbelief is actually perverted faith, for it puts read more

Feast of Mary Sumner, Founder of the Mothers' Union, 1921 Unbelief is actually perverted faith, for it puts its trust, not in the living God but in dying men. The unbeliever denies the selfsufficiency of God and usurps attributes that are not his. This dual sin dishonors God and ultimately destroys the soul of man.

Without realizing what was happening, most of us gradually came to take for granted the premises underlying the philosophy of read more

Without realizing what was happening, most of us gradually came to take for granted the premises underlying the philosophy of optimism. We proceeded to live these propositions, though we would not have stated them as blandly as I set them forth here: Man is inherently good. Individual man can carve out his own salvation with the help of education and society through progressively better government. Reality and values worth searching for lie in the material world that science is steadily teaching us to analyze, catalogue, and measure. While we do not deny the existence of inner values, we relegate them to second place. The purpose of life is happiness, [which] we define in terms of enjoyable activity, friends, and the accumulation of material objects. The pain and evil of life -- such as ignorance, poverty, selfishness, hatred, greed, lust for power -- are caused by factors in the external world; therefore, the cure lies in the reforming of human institutions and the bettering of environmental conditions. As science and technology remove poverty and lift from us the burden of physical existence, we shall automatically become finer persons, seeing for ourselves the value of living the Golden Rule. In time, the rest of the world will appreciate the demonstration that the American way of life is best. They will then seek for themselves the good life of freedom and prosperity. This will be the greatest impetus toward an end of global conflict. The way to get along with people is to beware of religious dictums and dogma. The ideal is to be a nice person and to live by the Creed of Tolerance. Thus we offend few people. We live and let live. This is the American Way.

Commemoration of Swithun, Bishop of Winchester, c.862 Commemoration of Bonaventure, Franciscan Friar, Bishop, Peacemaker, 1274 In addition to read more

Commemoration of Swithun, Bishop of Winchester, c.862 Commemoration of Bonaventure, Franciscan Friar, Bishop, Peacemaker, 1274 In addition to the general situations in which men find themselves today, there are those things in personal life which have always tested faith: the inexplicable tragedies and injustices; the suffering of innocent people, especially of children; the seeming uselessness of prayer, and so forth. It is surely life itself that makes against belief in most cases. It is the contradiction in real life between any image of God as good -- whether God is "above", "beneath", or "within" -- that makes men atheists. Yet how few books and how few sermons touch on this basic problem! Our theological libraries are crammed with books devoted to every aspect of textual and higher criticism of the Bible; but of genuine theological thinking about the things which drive religion from men's hearts, there is appallingly little to be found. The archaeology of Christian origins seems largely to have replaced genuine theology.