Feast of Mark the Evangelist The reason why we can hope to find God is that He is here, read more

Feast of Mark the Evangelist The reason why we can hope to find God is that He is here, engaged all the time in finding us. Every pulse of love is a tendril that draws us in His direction. Every verification of truth links the finite mind up into a Foundational Mind that undergirds us. Every deed of good will points toward a consummate Goodness which fulfills all our tiny adventures in faith. We can find Him because in Him we live and move and have our being.

Feast of Henry Martyn, Translator of the Scriptures, Missionary in India & Persia, 1812 I hear no one boast, read more

Feast of Henry Martyn, Translator of the Scriptures, Missionary in India & Persia, 1812 I hear no one boast, that he hath a knowledge of the Scriptures, but that he owneth a Bible written in golden characters. And tell me then, what profiteth this? The Holy Scriptures were not given to us that we should enclose them in books, but that we should engrave them upon our hearts.

Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.

Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.

Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary Continuing a short series on prayer: The read more

Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary Continuing a short series on prayer: The life of prayer is just love to God, and the custom of being ever with Him.

"The Bible," we are told sometimes, "gives us such a beautiful picture of what we should be." Nonsense! It gives read more

"The Bible," we are told sometimes, "gives us such a beautiful picture of what we should be." Nonsense! It gives us no picture at all. It reveals to us a fact: it tells us what we really are; it says, This is the form in which God created you, to which He has restored you; this is the work which the Eternal Son, the God of Truth and Love, is continually carrying on within you.

The most difficult task facing us today is to persuade the person who is enjoying Christian culture and Christian standards read more

The most difficult task facing us today is to persuade the person who is enjoying Christian culture and Christian standards that these do not survive of themselves.

Sacrifice, contrary to much popular opinion, was not to the Hebrew some crude, temporary and merely typical institution, nor simply read more

Sacrifice, contrary to much popular opinion, was not to the Hebrew some crude, temporary and merely typical institution, nor simply a substitute for that dispensation until better things were to be provided later. Sacrifice was then the only sufficient means of remaining in harmonious relation to God. No Hebrew dared neglect this obligation. It was adequate for the period in which God intended it should serve. This is not the same as saying, however, that Levitical sacrifice was on an equal with the sacrifice of Christ, nor that the blood of bulls and goats could, from God's side, take away sins; but it is recognizing the reality of the divine institution of Mosaic worship, and looking, as too often Old Testament interpreters fail to do, at sacrifice and priestly ritual from the viewpoint of the Hebrew in the Old Testament dispensation. Sacrifice, to the pious Hebrew, was not something insignificant, nor simply a perfunctory ritual, but it was an important element in his moral obedience to the revealed will of God. Sacrifice was by its very nature, which involved faith and repentance on the part of the worshiper and the putting to death of his substitute victim; intensely personal, ethical, moral, and spiritual, because it was intended to reflect the attitude of the heart and will toward God.

It is not enough to hold that God did great things for our fathers: not enough to pride ourselves on read more

It is not enough to hold that God did great things for our fathers: not enough to pride ourselves on the inheritance of victories of faith: not enough to build the sepulchres of those who were martyred by men unwilling, in their day of trial as we may be in our own, to hear new voices of a living God. Our duty is to see whether God is with us; whether we expect great things from Him; whether we do not practically place Him far off, forgetting that, if He is, He is about us, speaking to us words that have not been heard before, guiding us to paths on which earlier generations have not been able to enter. There is -- most terrible thought! -- a practical atheism, orthodox in language, reverent in bearing, which can enter a Christian church and charm the conscience to rest with shadowy traditions; an atheism which grows incessantly within us if we separate what cannot be separated with impunity, the secular from the divine, the past and the future from the present, earth from heaven, the things of Caesar from the things of God.

Feast of Gregory the Great, Bishop of Rome, Teacher, 604 The task is not, in essence, the securing read more

Feast of Gregory the Great, Bishop of Rome, Teacher, 604 The task is not, in essence, the securing of uniformity, or cooperation, or Church reunion, or any of the external forms, through which nevertheless the unity may be manifested. Within the wide bounds of the Christian Church there is abundant scope for the multiplicity of races, languages, and social conditions; room also for separate organizations with different traditions of faith and order, and much diversity of operation. But there is no room for strife or hostility, for pride or selfassertion, for exclusiveness or unkind judgments, nor for that kind of independence which leads men to ignore their fellowship with the great company of believers, the communion of saints. These things are contrary to the revealed will of God, and should be made at once to cease. As these disappear, the outward manifestation of unity will come in such ways as the Spirit of God shall guide.