Feast of Josephine Butler, Social Reformer, 1906 Commemoration of Apolo Kivebulaya, Priest, Evangelist, 1933 [In nineteenth-century America] religion read more

Feast of Josephine Butler, Social Reformer, 1906 Commemoration of Apolo Kivebulaya, Priest, Evangelist, 1933 [In nineteenth-century America] religion became a matter of conduct, of good deeds, of works, with only a vague background of faith. It became highly functional, highly pragmatic; it became a guarantee of success, moral and material. "The proper study of mankind is man," was the evasion by which many American divines escaped the necessity for thought about God.

... They haled him, trembling, to the Judgement Seat. "O Lord, behold the man who made the nails that read more

... 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...

It is no strain of metaphor to say that the love of God and the wrath of God are the read more

It is no strain of metaphor to say that the love of God and the wrath of God are the same thing, described from opposite points of view. How we shall experience it depends upon the way we shall come up against it: God does not change; it is man's moral state that changes. The wrath of God is a figure of speech to denote God's unchanging opposition to sin; it is His righteous love operating to destroy evil. It is not evil that will have the last word, but good; not sorrow, but joy; not hate, but love.

Commemoration of Martyrs of Papua New Guinea, 1942 I know there are many who have pitied my beginnings, read more

Commemoration of Martyrs of Papua New Guinea, 1942 I know there are many who have pitied my beginnings, thinking it tragic that I had to endure such traumas both as a child and throughout my life, but I confess that I have rather pitied those who have never tasted the bitterness of a trial "too severe." For how is one to appreciate the contrast of light's dawning hope if his soul has never trembled through the dark hours of a nightmare's watch? Or how can one prove God's faithfulness if he never is granted the privilege of wandering through a barren desert, where only pools of Christ's Presence can possibly provide survival? It is a great honor to be apportioned pain. Christ Himself, though God incarnate, learned obedience through what He suffered. Dare we assume that we as His children can be taught by any wiser or kinder instructor than the severity of unwanted pain? We dare not steel ourselves against our trials, running away from the fires where our pruned branches crumble to ashes. For if we escape those flames, we will risk barrenness of soul and will miss out on the beauty that only is born through the ashes of yesterday's grief.

Feast of All Souls The antithesis between death and life is not so stark for the Christian as it read more

Feast of All Souls The antithesis between death and life is not so stark for the Christian as it is for the atheist. Life is a process of becoming, and the moment of death is the transition from one life to another. Thus it is possible for a Christian to succumb to his own kind of death-wish, to seek that extreme of other-worldliness to which the faith has always been liable, especially in periods of stress and uncertainty. There may appear a marked preoccupation with death and a rejection of all temporal things. To say that this world is in a fallen state and that not too much value must be set upon it, is very far from the Manichaean error of supposing it to be evil throughout. The Christian hope finds ambivalence in death: that which destroys, also redeems.

Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865 None use instituted forms or ways read more

Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865 None use instituted forms or ways of worship profitably, but such as find communion with God in them, or are seriously humbled because they do not.

Christians in general are far too eager to urge special exceptions when they hear these charges [of corruption in the read more

Christians in general are far too eager to urge special exceptions when they hear these charges [of corruption in the church] preferred; far too ready to make out a case for themselves while they admit their application to others; far too ready to think that the cause of God is interested in the suppression of facts. The prophets should have taught us a different lesson. They should have led us to feel that it was a solemn duty, not to conceal, but to bring forward all the evidence which proves, not that one country is better than another, or one portion of the church better than another, but that there is a principle of decay, a tendency to apostasy in all, and that no comfort can come from merely balancing symptoms of good here against symptoms of evil there, no comfort from considering whether we are a little less contentious, a little less idolatrous than our neighbors.

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 Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, ... but delight to be alone and single with Omnipresency... Life is pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.

Commemoration of Brooke Foss Westcott, Bishop of Durham, Teacher, 1901 It may well be that the unknowable name stands read more

Commemoration of Brooke Foss Westcott, Bishop of Durham, Teacher, 1901 It may well be that the unknowable name stands for the ultimate mystery of Jesus Christ. His love we can experience; His salvation we can appropriate; His help we can claim; but their remains in Him the divine mystery of the Incarnation, which is beyond our understanding, and before which we can only worship and adore.