Instead of allowing yourself to be unhappy, just let your love grow as God wants it to grow. Seek goodness read more

Instead of allowing yourself to be unhappy, just let your love grow as God wants it to grow. Seek goodness in others. Love more persons more -- love them more impersonally, more unselfishly, without thought of return. The return, never fear, will take care of itself.

Commemoration of Richard Rolle of Hampole, Writer, Hermit, Mystic, 1349 Love ... is very noticeable as fervour and devotion read more

Commemoration of Richard Rolle of Hampole, Writer, Hermit, Mystic, 1349 Love ... is very noticeable as fervour and devotion and jubilation, and is yet not always the best thing; for sometimes it is not from love but is caused by nature that one has such taste and sweetness; or it may be a heavenly impression or it may be produced by the senses, and those who have most of this are not always the best. For even if it should be from God, our Lord gives this to such men in order to attract and charm them, and also to detach them from others. But if these same people later grow in love, they may not have so many feelings, and then it will become clear that they have love, if they remain wholly faithful to God without any such support.

Feast of Alban, first Martyr of Britain, c.209 Continuing a short series on authenticity: There is one growing read more

Feast of Alban, first Martyr of Britain, c.209 Continuing a short series on authenticity: There is one growing persuasion of the present age which I hope this book may somewhat serve to stem -- not by any argument, but by... a healthy up stirring ... of the imagination and the conscience. In these days, when men are so gladly hearing afresh that "in Him there is no darkness at all"; that God, therefore could not have created any man if He knew that he must live in torture to all eternity; and that His hatred to evil cannot be expressed by injustice, itself the one essence of evil, -- for certainly it would be nothing less than injustice to punish infinitely what was finitely committed, no sinner being capable of understanding the abstract enormity of what he does, -- in these days has a arisen another falsehood, less, yet very perilous: thousands of half-thinkers imagine that, since it is declared with such authority that hell is not everlasting, there is then no hell at all. To such folly, I, for one, have never given enticement or shelter. I see no hope for many, no way for the divine love to reach them, save through a very ghastly hell. Men have got to repent; there is no other escape for them, and no escape from that.

To the Christian, love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the read more

To the Christian, love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind is really an un-Christian conception of love. That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But to the Christian, love is the works of love. Christ's love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what-not: it was the work of love which was his life.

Feast of All Souls Do you think the work God gives us to do is never easy? Jesus says read more

Feast of All Souls Do you think the work God gives us to do is never easy? Jesus says His yoke is easy, His burden is light. People sometimes refuse to do God's work just because it is easy. This is sometimes because they cannot believe that easy work is His work; but there may be a very bad pride in it... Some, again, accept it with half a heart and do it with half a hand. But however easy any work may be, it can not be well done without taking thought about it. And such people, instead of taking thought about their work, generally take thought about the morrow, in which no work can be done any more than in yesterday.

Feast of Richard Hooker, Priest, Anglican Apologist, Teacher, 1600 Commemoration of Martin of Porres, Dominican Friar, 1639 Faith keeps read more

Feast of Richard Hooker, Priest, Anglican Apologist, Teacher, 1600 Commemoration of Martin of Porres, Dominican Friar, 1639 Faith keeps the soul at a holy distance from these infinite depths of divine wisdom, where it profits more by reverence and holy fear than any can do by their utmost attempt to draw nigh to that inaccessible light wherein these glories of the divine nature do dwell.

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.

With our heads, we believe that the church ought to be one truly "classless society" with all men standing on read more

With our heads, we believe that the church ought to be one truly "classless society" with all men standing on a plane of perfect equality at the foot of the Cross. But if in our hearts we do not genuinely want it, the unwanted know it well enough, count us as their enemies, and turn to other faiths. [Continued tomorrow].

Commemoration of John & Henry Venn, Priests, Evangelical Divines, 1813, 1873 This is the age of the conference and read more

Commemoration of John & Henry Venn, Priests, Evangelical Divines, 1813, 1873 This is the age of the conference and study group -- people talking about what they know they should be doing. In a subtle way, talking about something becomes an excuse for not doing it. This new bolt-hole of the conference and study group is not confined to the local congregation. It is a painful fact of life in the central structures of the churches. We have a welter of reports, commissions, surveys, liaison bodies, and so on. They have the appearance of progressive thinking and readiness to face change, combined with the function of being delaying devices. They are the sacraments of current Christianity, and its dilemma. Outreach is a move from power structures to meekness structures, and, in spite of the fact that Christians believe that it is the meek who shall inherit the earth, they show (as in the ecumenical movement) a distinct reluctance to relinquish power-structure thinking.