What I am concerned with here is not to write a new life of Jesus, but to set down my read more

What I am concerned with here is not to write a new life of Jesus, but to set down my witness to the continued shocks which his words and deeds gave me as I approached the Gospels uninsulated by the familiar cover of beautiful language. The figure who emerged is quite unlike the Jesus of conventional piety, and even more unlike that imagined hero whom members of various causes claim as their champion. What we are so often confronted with today is a "processed" Jesus. Every element that we feel is not consonant with our "image" of him is removed, and the result is more insipid and unsatisfying than the worst of processed food.

It is no hard matter to adhere to God while you are in the enjoyment of His comforts and consolations; read more

It is no hard matter to adhere to God while you are in the enjoyment of His comforts and consolations; but if you would prove your fidelity to Him, you must be willing to follow Him through the paths of dryness and desertion. The truth of a friend is not known while he is receiving favours and benefits from us; but if he remain faithful to us when we treat him with coldness and neglect, it will be a proof of the sincerity of his attachment.

The various moral and theological and sociological disputes of the day, however progressively resolved with ecclesiastical connivance, have nothing to read more

The various moral and theological and sociological disputes of the day, however progressively resolved with ecclesiastical connivance, have nothing to say to this spiritual hunger, which is not assuaged by legalized abortion and homosexuality, solaced by contraception, or relieved by majority rule. Nor will it take comfort in the thought that God is dead, or that mankind has come of age, or even in ecumenical negotiations for writing off Papal Infallibility against the validity of Anglican Orders. The only means of satisfying it remains that bread of life which Jesus offered, with the promise that those who are of it should never hunger again. The promise stands.

Steadfastness in believing doth not exclude all temptations from without. When we say a tree is firmly rooted, we do read more

Steadfastness in believing doth not exclude all temptations from without. When we say a tree is firmly rooted, we do not say the wind never blows upon it.

The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. read more

The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility.

Among our own people also the church sorely needs clergy in close touch with the ordinary life of the laity, read more

Among our own people also the church sorely needs clergy in close touch with the ordinary life of the laity, living the life of ordinary men, sharing their difficulties and understanding their trials by close personal experience. Stipendiary clergy cut off by training and life from that common experience are constantly struggling to get close to the laity by wearing lay clothing, sharing in lay amusements, and organizing lay clubs; but they never quite succeed. To get close to men, it is necessary really to share their experience, and to share their experience is to share it by being in it, not merely to come as near to it as possible without being in it.

As Christians we believe that man is not a thing; he is not a commodity to be bought and sold, read more

As Christians we believe that man is not a thing; he is not a commodity to be bought and sold, and he is not to be used in an impersonal way. Man, a child of God, is a person with a personal destiny and with eternal value. This Christian belief underlies the democratic principle that the State, first of all, exists for the sake of its citizens; the individual is important... As Christians we also believe that we are made for one another because we are made for God. "Solidarity" is a good word for our essential condition. Beneath all our differences is a unity... This Christian belief underlies a second basic democratic principle, which is, in governing themselves, people of a community -- in a town, a city, a state, a nation -- can, despite inevitable conflicts, press effectively toward the goal of justice and liberty for all.

There is no condition wherein a man does not depend on many others, wherein he is not more obliged to read more

There is no condition wherein a man does not depend on many others, wherein he is not more obliged to follow their fancies than his own. All the commerce of life is a perpetual constraint to the laws of good breeding, and the necessity of humoring others; and besides, our own passions are the worst tyrants: if you obey them but by halves, a perpetual strife and contest exists within; and if you entirely give up yourself to them, it is horrid to think to what extremities they will lead. May God preserve us from that fatal slavery, which the mad presumption of man calls liberty! Liberty is to be found only in Him.

In my intellect, I may divide [faith and works], just as in the candle I know there is both light read more

In my intellect, I may divide [faith and works], just as in the candle I know there is both light and heat; yet put out the candle, and both are gone.