Commemoration of Eglantine Jebb, Social Reformer, Founder of 'Save the Children', 1928 The less you feel and the more read more

Commemoration of Eglantine Jebb, Social Reformer, Founder of 'Save the Children', 1928 The less you feel and the more firmly you believe, the more praiseworthy is your faith and the more it will be esteemed and appreciated; for real faith is much more than a mere opinion of man. In it we have true knowledge: in truth, we lack nothing save true faith.

Feast of David, Bishop of Menevia, Patron of Wales, c.601 Is a mediator between the eternal spirit and the read more

Feast of David, Bishop of Menevia, Patron of Wales, c.601 Is a mediator between the eternal spirit and the finite an unreality, an intrusion? The mystic soul may impatiently think so, but the moral soul finds such mediation the way to reality; and the mystic experience is not quite trustworthy about reality. The pagan gods had no mediators, because they were not real or good gods; but the living God has a living Revealer. To know the living God is to know Christ; to know Christ is to know the living God. We do not know God by Christ but in Him. We find God when we find Christ; and in Christ alone we know and share his final purpose. Our last knowledge is not the contact of our person with a thing or a thought; it is intercourse of person and person.

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.

So long as a man confines his ideas of Christ to a rather misty hero figure of long ago who read more

So long as a man confines his ideas of Christ to a rather misty hero figure of long ago who died a tragic death, and so long as his ideas of Christianity are bounded by what he calls the Sermon on the Mount (which he has almost certainly not read in its entirety since he became grown-up), then the living truth never has a chance to touch him. This is plainly what has happened to many otherwise intelligent people. Over the years I have had hundreds of conversations with people, many of them of higher intellectual calibre than my own, who quite obviously had no idea of what Christianity is really about. I was in no case trying to catch them out: I was simply and gently trying to find out what they knew about the New Testament. My conclusion was that they knew virtually nothing. This I find pathetic and somewhat horrifying. It means that the most important Event in human history is politely and quietly bypassed. For it is not as though the evidence had been examined and found unconvincing: it had simply never been examined.

From the crude cry which we have so often heard during the war years: "If there is a God, why read more

From the crude cry which we have so often heard during the war years: "If there is a God, why doesn't He stop Hitler?", to the unspoken questioning in many a Christian heart when a devoted servant of Christ dies from accident or disease at what seems to us a most inopportune moment, there is this universal longing for God to intervene, to show His hand, to vindicate His purpose. I do not pretend to understand the ways of God any more than the next man; but it is surely more fitting as well as more sensible for us to study what God does do and what He does not do as He works in and through the complex fabric of this disintegrated world, than to postulate what we think God ought to do and then feel demoralized and bitterly disappointed because He fails to fulfil what we expect of Him.

It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart read more

It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.

Commemoration of Richard Rolle of Hampole, Writer, Hermit, Mystic, 1349 I have often, on my knees, been shocked to read more

Commemoration of Richard Rolle of Hampole, Writer, Hermit, Mystic, 1349 I have often, on my knees, been shocked to find what sort of thoughts I have, for a moment, been addressing to God; what infantile placations I was really offering, what claims I have really made, even what absurd adjustments or compromises I was, half-consciously, proposing. There is a Pagan, savage heart in me somewhere. For unfortunately the folly and idiot-cunning of Paganism seem to have far more power of surviving than its innocent or even beautiful elements. It is easy, once you have power, to silence the pipes, still the dances, disfigure the statues, and forget the stories; but not easy to kill the savage, the greedy, frightened creature now cringing, now blustering in one's soul.

Commemoration of Frederick Denison Maurice, Priest, teacher, 1872 We do not cease to be children because we are read more

Commemoration of Frederick Denison Maurice, Priest, teacher, 1872 We do not cease to be children because we are disobedient children.

Feast of Henry Martyn, Translator of the Scriptures, Missionary in India & Persia, 1812 A dog barks when read more

Feast of Henry Martyn, Translator of the Scriptures, Missionary in India & Persia, 1812 A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.