Feast of William Tyndale, Translator of the Scriptures, Martyr, 1536 To hold your truth, to believe it with read more

Feast of William Tyndale, Translator of the Scriptures, Martyr, 1536 To hold your truth, to believe it with all your heart, to work with all your might, first to make it real to yourself and then to show its preciousness to other men, and then -- not till then, but then -- to leave the questions of when and how and by whom it shall prevail to God: that is the true life of the believer. There is no feeble unconcern and indiscriminateness there, and neither is there any excited hatred of the creed, the doctrine, or the Church, which you feel wholly wrong. You have not fled out of the furnace of bigotry to freeze on the open and desolate plains of indifference. You believe and yet you have no wish to persecute.

Feast of Chad, Abbot of Lastingham, Bishop of Lichfield, Missionary, 672 Devotional poetry... has to do with devotedness, with read more

Feast of Chad, Abbot of Lastingham, Bishop of Lichfield, Missionary, 672 Devotional poetry... has to do with devotedness, with trust merged into faith, with love's steadfastness. It finds men's worthwhileness deep laid in relationship to God's worthwhileness, and this devotion is expressed in communication. It finds this world precious insofar as it... symbolizes God's love and therefore it runs counter to our national sin of distrust in God. (And yet, how can we trust Him without knowing and living unto Him and loving Him?).

One mustn't make the Christian life into a punctilious system of law, like the Jewish, for two reasons. (1) It read more

One mustn't make the Christian life into a punctilious system of law, like the Jewish, for two reasons. (1) It raises scruples when we don't keep the routine. (2) It raises presumption when we do. Nothing gives one a more spuriously good conscience than keeping rules, even if there has been a total absence of all real charity and faith.

Feast of Saints & Martyrs of England The one supreme, unchangeable rule of love, which is a law to read more

Feast of Saints & Martyrs of England The one supreme, unchangeable rule of love, which is a law to all intelligent beings of all worlds and will be a law to all eternity, is this, viz., that God alone is to be loved for Himself, and all other beings only in Him and for Him. Whatever intelligent creature lives not under this rule of love is so far fallen from the order of his creation, and is, till he returns to this eternal law of love, an apostate from God and incapable of the kingdom of Heaven. Now, if God is alone to be loved for Himself, then no creature is to be loved for itself; and so all self-love in every creature is absolutely condemned. And if all created beings are only to be loved in and for God, then my neighbour is to be loved as I love myself, and I am only to love myself as I love my neighbour or any other created being that is, only in and for God.

Feast of Juliana of Norwich, Mystic, Teacher, c.1417 I saw full surely in this and in all, that ere read more

Feast of Juliana of Norwich, Mystic, Teacher, c.1417 I saw full surely in this and in all, that ere God made us he loved us; which love never slackened, nor ever shall be. And in this love he hath done all his works; and in this love he hath made all things profitable to us; and in this love our life is everlasting. In our making we had beginning; but the love wherein he made us was in him from without beginning; in which love we have our beginning. And all this shall we see in God, without end.

It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen read more

It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.

I have found (to my regret) that the degrees of shame and disgust which I actually feel at my own read more

I have found (to my regret) that the degrees of shame and disgust which I actually feel at my own sins do not at all correspond to what my reason tells me about their comparative gravity. Just as the degree to which, in daily life, I feel the emotion of fear has very little to do with my rational judgment of the danger. I'd sooner have really nasty seas when I'm in an open boat than look down in perfect (actual) safety from the edge of a cliff. Similarly, I have confessed ghastly uncharities with less reluctance than small unmentionables -- or those sins which happen to be ungentlemanly as well as unchristian. Our emotional reactions to our own behaviour are of limited ethical significance.

The true way to be humble is not to stoop till thou art smaller than thyself, but to stand at read more

The true way to be humble is not to stoop till thou art smaller than thyself, but to stand at thy real height against some higher nature that will show thee what the real smallness of thy greatness is.

Feast of Josephine Butler, Social Reformer, 1906 Commemoration of Apolo Kivebulaya, Priest, Evangelist, 1933 If the appetite alone hath read more

Feast of Josephine Butler, Social Reformer, 1906 Commemoration of Apolo Kivebulaya, Priest, Evangelist, 1933 If the appetite alone hath sinned, let it alone fast, and it sufficeth. But if the other members also have sinned, why should they not fast, too... Let the eye fast from strange sights and from every wantonness, so that that which roamed in freedom in fault-doing may, abundantly humbled, be checked by penitence. Let the ear, blameably eager to listen, fast from tales and rumors, and from whatsoever is of idle import, and tendeth least to salvation. Let the tongue fast from slanders and murmurings, and from useless, vain, and scurrilous words, and sometimes also, in the seriousness of silence, even from things which may seem of essential import. Let the hand abstain from ... all toils which are not imperatively necessary. But also let the soul herself abstain from all evils and from acting out her own will. For without such abstinence the other things find no favor with the Lord.