A virtuous and a Christianlike conclusion--
To pray for them that have done scathe to us.

A virtuous and a Christianlike conclusion--
To pray for them that have done scathe to us.

Feast of Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath & Wells, Hymnographer, 1711 [The] doctrine of [inevitable] progress sustained our fathers read more

Feast of Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath & Wells, Hymnographer, 1711 [The] doctrine of [inevitable] progress sustained our fathers in the carrying of capitalistic democratic culture to most parts of the globe. Its core was the conviction that, in thus extending the range of western liberal culture and developing its assumptions, they were in effect establishing on earth that which would grow into the kingdom of God. Some put it sharply but un-Biblically: "building the kingdom"; others, of a more secular turn of mind, echoed J. A. Symonds' hymn, "These Things Shall Be". That whole view exists today only as debris, for it has foundered on the rocks, not so much of human sin, as of the contradictions and complexities of the very western culture that was the substance of its belief.

Feast of Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne, Missionary, 651 Commemoration of Cuthburga, Founding Abbess of Wimborne, c.725 Commemoration of John Bunyan, read more

Feast of Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne, Missionary, 651 Commemoration of Cuthburga, Founding Abbess of Wimborne, c.725 Commemoration of John Bunyan, Spiritual Writer, 1688 After this it was noised abroad that Mr. Valiant-for-truth was taken with a summons by the same post as the other, and had this for a token that the summons was true, "That his pitcher was broken at the fountain." Eccl. 12:6. When he understood it, he called for his friends, and told them of it. Then said he, I am going to my Father's; and though with great difficulty I have got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who will now be my rewarder. When the day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied him to the river-side, into which as he went, he said, "Death, where is thy sting?" And as he went down deeper, he said, "Grave, where is thy victory?" 1 Cor. 15:55. So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.

Feast of Oswald, King of Northumbria, Martyr, 642 It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter read more

Feast of Oswald, King of Northumbria, Martyr, 642 It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart.

THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE Every single time a sacrament is celebrated, God takes action, there and read more

THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE Every single time a sacrament is celebrated, God takes action, there and then -- does something, not on Calvary, but in that church. And what He does is to come to each soul partaking in the Sacrament and to assure it that He stands to the best and biggest of His promises and to the fullness of His grace in Christ... de-universalizes the Scriptures and individualizes them, makes them a personal promise, couched no longer in general terms but offered to very you and very me, as individually as if they covered no other but referred to you and me alone. We may be cold and dead and unresponsive. None the less, something happens in the Sacrament. For God stands to His side of the Covenant, whether we stand to ours or not.

The world, indeed, seems to be weary of the just, righteous, holy ways of God, and of that exactness in read more

The world, indeed, seems to be weary of the just, righteous, holy ways of God, and of that exactness in walking according to His institutions and commands which it will be one day known that He doth require. But the way to put a stop to this declension is not by accommodating the commands of God to the corrupt courses and ways of men. The truths of God and the holiness of His precepts must be pleaded and defended, though the world dislike them here and perish hereafter. His law must not be made to lackey after the wills of men, nor be dissolved by vain interpretations, because they complain they cannot -- indeed, because they will not -- comply with it. Our Lord Jesus Christ came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them, and to supply men with spiritual strength to fulfill them also. It is evil to break the least commandment; but there is a great aggravation of that evil in them that shall teach men so to do.

Not pleading with the Father, but expressing the Father's good pleasure is the key-note of true intercession. Forgiveness is God's read more

Not pleading with the Father, but expressing the Father's good pleasure is the key-note of true intercession. Forgiveness is God's idea, God's desire; and it is He who appoints both the Judge and the Counsel for the Defense. It was He who inaugurated the priestly work, that men might receive His cleansing and turn to the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world. God has provided for himself a Lamb. It is He who sends His Son to be our Elder Brother, and to incorporate us as adopted sons into the circle of His Fatherly love. So then it is the voice of His beloved Son which is most clearly heard by the Father in heaven. In that voice of intercession, all the voices of intercession are contained and heard. The Son is talking to the Father about us, and what He says is not Please but Yes.

Modern attempts to get away from the sheer historical facts of the Resurrection are, at best, based on a total read more

Modern attempts to get away from the sheer historical facts of the Resurrection are, at best, based on a total misunderstanding. The whole Bible proclaims the need for, and the achievement of, a salvation that will remake creation, and it is just such a salvation, at once supernatural and historical, that was won on Easter Day. If the Resurrection narratives are [merely] a subtle way of convincing us that God still loves us, or that there is a life beyond death, they must be reckoned among the oddest and most ill-conceived stories ever written.

Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary Concluding a Lenten series on prayer: Prayer is read more

Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary Concluding a Lenten series on prayer: Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us. It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little. When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God's voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him.