To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom; and he that increaseth his riches, increaseth his cares; but read more

To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom; and he that increaseth his riches, increaseth his cares; but a contented mind is a hidden treasure, and trouble findeth it not.

Feast of Timothy and Titus, Companions of Paul Commemoration of Dorothy Kerin, Founder of the Burrswood Healing Community, 1963 read more

Feast of Timothy and Titus, Companions of Paul Commemoration of Dorothy Kerin, Founder of the Burrswood Healing Community, 1963 The fundamental doctrines of our evangelical belief are... the full inspiration and ruling authority of Holy Scripture, with its consequences, the Divinity of Christ, the finality of His Atonement, and salvation through faith alone. These basic truths should be studied as set forth in the New Testament, that they may be asserted or defended whenever occasion requires. If this be done in a humble and Christian spirit, we shall in the long run be promoting the cause of Christian unity, which must ultimately find its basis in the truth which God has revealed.

The Gospel is not presented to mankind as an argument about religious principles. Nor is it offered as a philosophy read more

The Gospel is not presented to mankind as an argument about religious principles. Nor is it offered as a philosophy of life. Christianity is a witness to certain facts -- to events that have happened, to hopes that have been fulfilled, to realities that have been experienced, to a Person who has lived and died and been raised from the dead to reign for ever.

Easter Because upon the first glad Easter day The stone that sealed His tomb was rolled away, So, through the read more

Easter Because upon the first glad Easter day The stone that sealed His tomb was rolled away, So, through the deepening shadows of death's night, Men see an open door ... beyond it, light.

Feast of All Saints He took upon Him the flesh in which we have sinned, that by wearing read more

Feast of All Saints He took upon Him the flesh in which we have sinned, that by wearing our flesh He might forgive sins; a flesh which He shares with us by wearing it, not by sinning in it. He blotted out through death the sentence of death, that by a new creation of our race in Himself He might sweep away the penalty appointed by the former Law... For Scripture had foretold that He who is God should die; that the victory and triumph of them that trust in Him lay in the fact that He, who is immortal and cannot be overcome by death, was to die that mortals might gain eternity. (Continued tomorrow) ... St. Hilary, On the Trinity November 2, 2000 Feast of All Souls In this calm assurance of safety did my soul gladly and hopefully take its rest, and feared so little the interruption of death, that death seemed only a name for eternal life. And the life of this present body was so far from seeming a burden or affliction that it was regarded as children regard their alphabets, sick men their draughts, shipwrecked sailors their swim, young men the training for their profession, future commanders their first campaign -- that is, as an endurable submission to present necessities, bearing the promise of a blissful immortality. ... St. Hilary, On the Trinity November 3, 2000 Feast of Richard Hooker, Priest, Anglican Apologist, Teacher, 1600 Commemoration of Martin of Porres, Dominican Friar, 1639 People make mistakes when they believe. They may even want something so badly that passion creates its own evidences. Reprehensible though these habits are, they nonetheless fall within the pale of man's general effort to conform the self to things as they are. But when a person acknowledges the deficiency of evidences and yet goes right on believing, he defends a position that is large with the elements of its own destruction. Any brand of inanity can be defended on such a principle.

Feast of St. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, Teacher, 373 To be right with God has often meant to be read more

Feast of St. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, Teacher, 373 To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men.

Anyone can believe that Jesus was a god: what is so hard to credit is that He who hung upon read more

Anyone can believe that Jesus was a god: what is so hard to credit is that He who hung upon the cross was the God. That is what you are asked as Christians to believe. And it is the sword, glittering but fearful. It must cut your life away from the standards of this world, away from its thought and its measures, no less than its aims and hopes. Hard and bitter is the separation, and you will be parted from many great and noble men, some perhaps your own teachers, who can accept about Jesus everything but the one thing needful. The Christian faith, if accepted, drives a wedge between its own adherents and the disciples of every other philosophy or religion, however lofty or soaring. And they will not see this; they will tell you that really your views and theirs are the same thing, and only differ in words, which, if only you were a little more highly trained, you would understand. Even among Christ's nominal servants there are many who think a little good-will is all that is needed to bridge the gulf -- a little amiability and mutual explanation, a more careful use of phrases, would soon accommodate Christianity to fashionable modes of speaking and thinking, and destroy all causes of provocation. So they would. But they would destroy also its one inalienable attraction: that of being... a wonder, and a beauty, and a terror -- no dull and drab system of thought, no mere symbolic idealism.

Feast of Joseph of Nazareth It is the custom of unbelievers to speak as if the air of Palestine read more

Feast of Joseph of Nazareth It is the custom of unbelievers to speak as if the air of Palestine were then surcharged with belief in the supernatural, miracles were everywhere. Thus they would explain away the significance of the popular belief that our Lord wrought signs and wonders. But in so doing they set themselves a worse problem than they evade. If miracles were so very common, it would be as easy to believe that Jesus wrought them as that He worked at His father's bench, but also it would be as inconclusive. And how then are we to explain the astonishment which all the evangelists so constantly record? On any conceivable theory, these writers shared the beliefs of that age, and so did the readers who accepted their assurance that all were amazed, and that His report "went out straightway everywhere into all the region of Galilee." These are emphatic words, and both the author and his readers must have considered a miracle to be more surprising than modern critics believe they did. Yet we do not read of any one was converted by this miracle. All were amazed, but wonder is not self-surrender. They were content to let their excitement die out -- as every violent emotion must -- without any change of life, any permanent devotion to the new Teacher and His doctrine.

It is the "terror of the Lord" that causes us to "persuade" others, but it is the love of Christ read more

It is the "terror of the Lord" that causes us to "persuade" others, but it is the love of Christ that constraineth us to live to Him.