If Christianity is what Jesus taught and lived and died for, then nothing can be truly the Gospel which lays less stress than he did upon every human being's need of forgiveness by God, and upon our human need to be perpetually forgiving each other. Sooner or later, the modern adult man, like all other men everywhere, must come to know his need to be forgiven, and that by God.
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Feast of Aelred of Hexham, Abbot of Rievaulx, 1167 Commemoration of Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, Scholar, 689 Continuing a read more
Feast of Aelred of Hexham, Abbot of Rievaulx, 1167 Commemoration of Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, Scholar, 689 Continuing a short series on Romans 8: Romans 8:14,16. Ephesians 1:13,14. The Witnessing and Sealing Spirit Why should the children of a king Go mourning all their days? Great Comforter, descend and bring Some tokens of thy grace. Dost though not dwell in all thy saints, And seal the heirs of heaven? When wilt thou banish my complaints, And shew my sins forgiven? Assure my conscience of her part In the Redeemer's blood; And bear thy witness with my heart, That I am born of God. Thou are the earnest of his love, The pledge of joys to come; And thy soft wings, celestial Dove, Will safe convey me home.
Ascension A comprehended god is no god.
Ascension A comprehended god is no god.
Pride calls me to the window, gluttony to the table, wantonness to the bed, laziness to the chimney-corner; ambition commands read more
Pride calls me to the window, gluttony to the table, wantonness to the bed, laziness to the chimney-corner; ambition commands me to go upstairs, and covetousness to come down. Vices, I see, are as well contrary to themselves as to virtue. Free me, Lord, from this distracted case; fetch me from being sin's servant to be Thine, whose "service is perfect freedom," for Thou art but one, and ever the same.
The final reality, and the ultimate fact of our total situation to which we need to be adjusted, is God. read more
The final reality, and the ultimate fact of our total situation to which we need to be adjusted, is God. That indeed would be my definition of God: God is He with whom we have ultimately to do, the final reality to which we have to face up, and with whom we have, in the last resort, to reckon.
We [must not] underestimate the enormity of the claim [made by the Jews]. Again and again in the Pentateuch, the read more
We [must not] underestimate the enormity of the claim [made by the Jews]. Again and again in the Pentateuch, the psalms, the prophets, and the subsequent writings which derive from them, the claim is made that the creator of the entire universe has chosen to live uniquely on a small ridge called Mount Zion, near the eastern edge of the Judean hill-country. The sheer absurdity of this claim, from the standpoint of any other worldview (not least that of Enlightenment philosophy), is staggering. The fact that Assyria, Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Egypt again, Syria and now Rome had made explicit mockery of the idea did not shake this conviction, but only intensified it. This was what Jewish monotheism looked like on the ground.
Feast of Charles Simeon, Pastor, Teacher, 1836 You have your season, and you have but your season; neither read more
Feast of Charles Simeon, Pastor, Teacher, 1836 You have your season, and you have but your season; neither can you lie down in peace, until you have some persuasion that your work as well as your life is at an end.
We are frequently advised to read the Bible with our own personal needs in mind, and to look for answers read more
We are frequently advised to read the Bible with our own personal needs in mind, and to look for answers to our own private questions. That is good, as far as it goes... But better still is the advice to study the Bible objectively, ... without regard, first of all, to our own subjective needs. Let the great passages fix themselves in our memory. Let them stay there permanently, like bright beacons, launching their powerful shafts of light upon life's problems -- our own and everyone's -- as they illumine, now one, now another dark area of human life. Following such a method, we discover that the Bible does "speak to our condition" and meet our needs, not just occasionally or when some emergency arises, but continually.
Setting aside the scandal caused by His Messianic claims and His reputation as a political firebrand, only two accusations of read more
Setting aside the scandal caused by His Messianic claims and His reputation as a political firebrand, only two accusations of personal depravity seem to have been brought against Jesus of Nazareth. First, that He was a Sabbath-breaker. Secondly, that He was "a gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners" -- or (to draw aside the veil of Elizabethan English that makes it sound so much more respectable) that He ate too heartily, drank too freely, and kept very disreputable company, including grafters of the lowest type and ladies who were no better than they should be. For nineteen and a half centuries, the Christian Churches have laboured, not without success, to remove this unfortunate impression made by their Lord and Master. They have hustled the Magdalens from the Communion-table, founded Total Abstinence Societies in the name of Him who made the water wine, and added improvements of their own, such as various bans and anathemas upon dancing and theatre-going. They have transferred the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, and, feeling that the original commandment "Thou shalt not work" was rather half-hearted, have added to it the new commandment, "Thou shalt not play.".
Feast of All Souls We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than read more
Feast of All Souls We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts.
