One of the results of the Reformation,... which is somewhat difficult of explanation, was the attitude of the Protestant Church read more

One of the results of the Reformation,... which is somewhat difficult of explanation, was the attitude of the Protestant Church of the Reformation to missions during the Reformation period (1517-1650). Having themselves been emancipated from the superstitions and slavery of a false doctrine and a harsh ecclesiastical government, it would be thought most natural that the Reformers and those who followed them should promptly turn their attention to spreading these glad tidings among non-Christian peoples; but here a strange anomaly is found in the fact that there had been hardly any period, in the entire history of the Christian Church, so destitute of any concerted effort to spread the gospel in heathen lands [as] just this period of the Reformation.

Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting.

Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting.

We Christians must simplify our lives or lose untold treasures on earth and in eternity. Modern civilization is so complex read more

We Christians must simplify our lives or lose untold treasures on earth and in eternity. Modern civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life all but impossible. The need for solitude and quietness was never greater than it is today.

Feast of Catherine of Siena, Mystic, Teacher, 1380 You, O eternal Trinity, are a deep sea, into which the read more

Feast of Catherine of Siena, Mystic, Teacher, 1380 You, O eternal Trinity, are a deep sea, into which the more I enter the more I find, and the more I find the more I seek. The soul cannot be satiated in your abyss, for she continually hungers after you, the eternal Trinity, desiring to see you with the light of your light. As the hart desires the springs of living water, so my soul desires to leave the prison of this dark body and see you in truth.

Commemoration of William Augustus Muhlenberg of New York, Priest, 1877 If, when God sends judgments upon others, we do read more

Commemoration of William Augustus Muhlenberg of New York, Priest, 1877 If, when God sends judgments upon others, we do not take warning and example by them; if instead of reflecting upon ourselves and questioning our ways we fall to censuring others; if we will pervert the meaning of God's providences and will not understand the design and intention of them; then we leave God no other way to awaken us to a consideration of our evil ways but by pouring down his wrath upon our heads, so that he may convince us that we are sinners by the same argument from whence we have concluded others to be so.

Beginning a short series of verse on Christ: ... They haled him, trembling, to the Judgement Seat. read more

Beginning a short series of verse on Christ: ... They haled him, trembling, to the Judgement Seat. "O Lord, behold the man who made the nails that pierced Thy feet!" The Master laid a thin, scarred hand upon the shame-bowed head. "They were good nails," he said...

Continued from yesterday: This is Paul's meaning. The state of slavery described in Romans 7 is a slavery to read more

Continued from yesterday: This is Paul's meaning. The state of slavery described in Romans 7 is a slavery to wrong desires; not merely to "flesh" in the abstract, as implying our material nature and environment, but to the "mind of the flesh" -- the lower nature and environment made a part of one's conscious self. What the Law could not do, God has done by the gift of the Spirit of Christ: He has given the victory to the higher self. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." (II Cor. 3:17) "The Law of the Spirit -- the law of a life in communion with Christ Jesus -- has made me free from the law of sin and death." (Rom. 8:2) Whereas life was a hopeless struggle, it now becomes a struggle in which the handicap is removed, and victory already secured in principle, because God has come into the life. The Law was external; it was the taskmaster set over against the troubled and fettered will of man. The Spirit is within, the mind of the Spirit is the mind of the man himself, and from within works out a growing perfection of life which satisfies the real longing of the soul. In the full sense freedom is still an object of hope; but the liberty already attained makes possible the building up of a Christian morality.

There are those who in their very first seeking of it are nearer the kingdom of Heaven than many who read more

There are those who in their very first seeking of it are nearer the kingdom of Heaven than many who have for years believed themselves to be of it. In the former there is more of the mind of Jesus, and when He calls them they recognize Him at once and go after Him; while the others examine Him from head to foot and, finding Him not sufficiently like the Jesus of their conception, turn their backs and go to church or chapel or chamber to kneel before a vague form mingled of tradition and fancy.

Our deepest insight into the nature of God is expressed with a family analogy. He is both Father and Son read more

Our deepest insight into the nature of God is expressed with a family analogy. He is both Father and Son bound together in one Spirit. We are created to be brothers under God, the Father. The human family is our best illustration of how each person grows in his unique potentialities by sharing in the loving care of a society of other persons. Yet each member of the family discovers what it is to give of himself for the sake of the others. The human family is only an analogy both for our thought about God and about society; but no Christian thought gets very far away from it.