If we once accept the doctrine of the Incarnation, we must surely be very cautious in suggesting that any circumstance read more

If we once accept the doctrine of the Incarnation, we must surely be very cautious in suggesting that any circumstance in the culture of first-century Palestine was a hampering or distorting influence upon His teaching. Do we suppose that the scene of God's earthly life was selected at random? -- that some other scene would have served better?

It is no hard matter to adhere to God while you are in the enjoyment of His comforts and consolations; read more

It is no hard matter to adhere to God while you are in the enjoyment of His comforts and consolations; but if you would prove your fidelity to Him, you must be willing to follow Him through the paths of dryness and desertion. The truth of a friend is not known while he is receiving favours and benefits from us; but if he remain faithful to us when we treat him with coldness and neglect, it will be a proof of the sincerity of his attachment.

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.

If New Testament Christianity is to reappear today with its power and joy and courage, men must recapture the basic read more

If New Testament Christianity is to reappear today with its power and joy and courage, men must recapture the basic conviction that this is a Visited planet. It is not enough to express formal belief in the "Incarnation" or in the "Divinity of. Christ"; the staggering truth must be accepted afresh -- that in this vast, mysterious universe, of which we are an almost infinitesimal part, the great Mystery, Whom we call God, has visited our planet in Person. It is from this conviction that there springs unconquerable certainty and unquenchable faith and hope. It is not enough to believe theoretically that Jesus was both God and Man; not enough to admire, respect, and even worship Him; it is not even enough to try to follow Him. The reason for the insufficiency of these things is that the modern intelligent mind, which has had its horizons widened in dozens of different ways, has got to be shocked afresh by the audacious central Fact -- that, as a sober matter of history, God became one of us.

We cannot know whether we love God, although there may be strong reason for thinking so; but there can be read more

We cannot know whether we love God, although there may be strong reason for thinking so; but there can be no doubt about whether we love our neighbor or not. Be sure that, in proportion as you advance in fraternal charity, you are increasing your love of God, for His Majesty bears so tender an affection for us that I cannot doubt He will repay our love for others by augmenting, and in a thousand different ways, that which we bear for Him.

"They shall return unto me with their whole heart." "Ye shall search for me with all your heart." He makes read more

"They shall return unto me with their whole heart." "Ye shall search for me with all your heart." He makes a direct call to us for single-mindedness: a single-minded longing for Him -- no lesser aim will do; no desire to be good, no striving to measure up to some standard we have set for ourselves, to correct some failure we have been shown in our way of life. These may be temporarily necessary, but they will turn to dust and ashes, they will end in a grim dryness, unless at the back of them all is what He asks of us --a never-ending search for a real knowledge of Him, for a sense of His reality, a confidence in His companionship, a joy and delight in the very person of God Himself. It is for this that we must learn to long and long, till our prayers for it become not just a form of words, but a stretching out of our whole being to Him. ... The Notebooks of Florence Allshorn November 27, 1999 When God finished man He breathed into the human form the divine life, "and man became a living soul." Man is created to be a witness and likeness of God. God and man are so near to one another that it was possible for the Eternal Word to become Man without ceasing to be God, to re-ascend to the Highest without dehumanizing the Manhood which He had assumed; so near that the believer may say in the fullest meaning of the words, "I live, yet not I, but Christ".

Continued from yesterday: This is Paul's meaning. The state of slavery described in Romans 7 is a slavery to read more

Continued from yesterday: This is Paul's meaning. The state of slavery described in Romans 7 is a slavery to wrong desires; not merely to "flesh" in the abstract, as implying our material nature and environment, but to the "mind of the flesh" -- the lower nature and environment made a part of one's conscious self. What the Law could not do, God has done by the gift of the Spirit of Christ: He has given the victory to the higher self. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." (II Cor. 3:17) "The Law of the Spirit -- the law of a life in communion with Christ Jesus -- has made me free from the law of sin and death." (Rom. 8:2) Whereas life was a hopeless struggle, it now becomes a struggle in which the handicap is removed, and victory already secured in principle, because God has come into the life. The Law was external; it was the taskmaster set over against the troubled and fettered will of man. The Spirit is within, the mind of the Spirit is the mind of the man himself, and from within works out a growing perfection of life which satisfies the real longing of the soul. In the full sense freedom is still an object of hope; but the liberty already attained makes possible the building up of a Christian morality.

Commemoration of Allen Gardiner, founder of the South American Missionary Society, 1851 Commemoration of Albert Schweitzer, Teacher, Physician, Missionary, 1965 read more

Commemoration of Allen Gardiner, founder of the South American Missionary Society, 1851 Commemoration of Albert Schweitzer, Teacher, Physician, Missionary, 1965 Who is it that has helped you most? Has it not been those who believed in you? Perhaps there may be few such left. The light of expectation may have died out of the most friendly and hopeful eyes; and you yourself may have lost heart. Ah! but there is still One whose faith in you has never wavered. And how wonderful it is that that one should be Jesus Christ!... It was a wonderful dream God dreamed, Christ says, when He created you; it was a stately being that was in His mind when you were fashioned; and I can make you all He meant that you should be.

The problem is not that the churches are filled with empty pews, but that the pews are filled with empty read more

The problem is not that the churches are filled with empty pews, but that the pews are filled with empty people.