Commemoration of William Augustus Muhlenberg of New York, Priest, 1877 To put it shortly, the Church forgets that Christianity read more

Commemoration of William Augustus Muhlenberg of New York, Priest, 1877 To put it shortly, the Church forgets that Christianity is not an attitude of mind, but a type of life: a man's spirit is not known by his opinion, but by his action and general conduct.

Commemoration of Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, 690 To pass from estrangement from God to be a son read more

Commemoration of Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, 690 To pass from estrangement from God to be a son of God is the basic fact of conversion. That altered relationship with God gives you an altered relationship with yourself, with your brother man, with nature, with the universe. You are no longer working against the grain of the universe; you're working with it... You have been forgiven by God and now you can forgive yourself. All self hate, self-despising, self-rejection, drop away, and you accept yourself in God, respect yourself, and love yourself... You cease to move into yourself, away from others. You give up your antagonism. You begin to move toward others in love. God moved toward you in gracious, outgoing love, and you move toward others in that same outgoing love.

The test of life are to make, not break us. Trouble may demolish a man's business but build up his read more

The test of life are to make, not break us. Trouble may demolish a man's business but build up his character. The blow at the outward man may be the greatest blessing to the inner man. If God, then, puts or permits anything hard in our lives, be sure that the real peril, the real trouble, is that we shall lose if we flinch or rebel.

Feast of Paulinus, Bishop of York, Missionary, 644 The first service one owes to others in the fellowship read more

Feast of Paulinus, Bishop of York, Missionary, 644 The first service one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love of God begins in listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that He not only gives us His Word but lends us His ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him.

He who devotes sixteen hours a day to hard study may become at sixty as wise as he thought himself read more

He who devotes sixteen hours a day to hard study may become at sixty as wise as he thought himself at twenty.

Feast of Hugh, Carthusian Monk, Bishop of Lincoln, 1200 Frightful this is in a sense, but it is read more

Feast of Hugh, Carthusian Monk, Bishop of Lincoln, 1200 Frightful this is in a sense, but it is true, and every one who has merely some little knowledge of the human heart can verify it: there is nothing to which a man holds so desperately as to his sin.

Feast of Mary, Martha & Lazarus, Companions of Our Lord The greatest proof of Christianity for others is read more

Feast of Mary, Martha & Lazarus, Companions of Our Lord The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief.

Feast of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 988 We must confess our sins in order to obtain pardon; but we read more

Feast of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 988 We must confess our sins in order to obtain pardon; but we must see our sins in order to confess. How few of those who think that they have confessed and been pardoned have ever seen their sin!

Continuing a series on God and the human condition: The situation in which we find ourselves in this world read more

Continuing a series on God and the human condition: The situation in which we find ourselves in this world seems to be a condition of estrangement from God, with little feeling of contact with Him, yet a curious nostalgic feeling that somewhere He exists and that our life would be much more complete if we were in relationship with Him. The deep, seemingly indestructible awareness of something like homesickness for God is the natural basis for believing in some kind of "fall" -- we seem to remember something better and to be possessed to recapture it. There appears to be a gap, a chasm, between God and us which must be crossed if we are to be in relationship with him. We know that our own wrongdoing can widen the chasm: we are not so sure what will close it. Yet our first great need is not for a set of rules about how to be good: it is for something to bridge that yawning canyon between us and the God we dimly seem to remember, but cannot entirely forget.