What is in ruins? The invisible church, composed of all Spirit-baptized persons, is indefectible, it cannot be ruined; against it read more

What is in ruins? The invisible church, composed of all Spirit-baptized persons, is indefectible, it cannot be ruined; against it "the gates of Hades shall not prevail." The local assembly may indeed by sadly ruined; but it can be restored, as, by the grace of God, has been seen times without number -- at Corinth, for example. The only other institution in question is that agglomeration of sects that is called "Christendom." But that is unrecognized by the New Testament -- it is not of God at all: and that it is "in ruins" is no matter for our regret.

We love orthodoxy. It is good. It is the best. It is the clean, clear cut teaching of God's Word, read more

We love orthodoxy. It is good. It is the best. It is the clean, clear cut teaching of God's Word, the trophies won by truth in its conflict with error, the levees which faith has raised against the desolating floods of honest or reckless misbelief or unbelief; but orthodoxy, clear and hard as crystal, suspicious and militant, may be but the letter well shaped, well named, and well learned, the letter which kills. Nothing is so dead as a dead orthodoxy -- too dead to speculate, too dead to think, to study, or to pray.

Commemoration of Margery Kempe, Mystic, after 1433 If you believe, where are your works? Your faith is something everyone read more

Commemoration of Margery Kempe, Mystic, after 1433 If you believe, where are your works? Your faith is something everyone knows, for everyone knows that Christ was [crucified], and that everywhere men pray to Him. The whole world knows that His glory has not been spread by force and weapons, but by poor fishermen. 0 wise man, do you think the poor fishermen were not clever enough for this? Where they worked, there they made hearts better; where they could not work, there men remained bad; and therefore was the faith true and from God. The signs which the Lord had promised followed their teaching: in His name they drove out the devil; they spoke in new tongues; if they drank any deadly drink, they received therefrom no harm. Even if these wonders had not occurred, there would have been the wonder of wonders, that poor fishermen without any miracle could accomplish so great a work as the faith. It came from God, and so is Christ true, and Christ is thy God, who is in heaven and awaits thee.

Commemoration of Samuel Seabury, First Anglican Bishop in North America, 1796 The fall was simply this, that some read more

Commemoration of Samuel Seabury, First Anglican Bishop in North America, 1796 The fall was simply this, that some creature -- that is, something which is not God -- took His place with man; and man, trusting the creature more than God, walked in its light -- or darkness -- rather than in fellowship with God. Righteousness comes back when man by faith is brought to walk with God again, and to give Him His true place by acting or being acted upon in all things according to His will. Anything, therefore, not of faith is sin. And all such sin is bondage. Self-will is bondage, for self-will or independence of God means dependence on a creature; and we cannot be dependent on a creature, be it what it may, without (more or less) becoming subject to it. What has not been given up for money, or for some creature's love? But who has ever thus served the creature more than the Creator without waking at last to feel he is a bondman? I say nothing of the worse bondage which comes from our self-will, in the indulgence of our own thoughts, or passions, or affections. Even the very energies of faith, while, as yet unchastened, it acts from self, ... may only bring forth more bondage... Who but God can set men free? And He sets them free as they walk with Him. All independence of Him is darkness.

We feel that other churches must accept, as the pre-conditions of fellowship, such changes as will bring them into conformity read more

We feel that other churches must accept, as the pre-conditions of fellowship, such changes as will bring them into conformity with ourselves in matters which we regard as essential, and that a failure to insist on this will involve compromise in regard to what is essential to the Church's being. But for precisely the same reason, we cannot admit a demand from others for any changes in ourselves which would seem to imply a denial that we already possess the esse of the Church.

Not immediately, but as the months and years passed, increasingly, from experience and thought based on extensive reading, I found read more

Not immediately, but as the months and years passed, increasingly, from experience and thought based on extensive reading, I found the Evangelical faith in which I had been reared confirmed and deepened. Increasingly I rejoiced in the Gospel -- the amazing Good News -- that the Creator of what to us human beings is this bewildering and unimaginably vast universe, so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Everlasting life, I came to see, is not just continued existence, but a growing knowledge -- not merely intellectual but wondering through trust, love, and fellowship -- of Him who alone is truly God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. (Continued tomorrow).

Feast of George, Martyr, Patron of England, c.304 Commemoration of Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1988 The Christian's read more

Feast of George, Martyr, Patron of England, c.304 Commemoration of Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1988 The Christian's life is lived in the open, not in a pious cubby-hole. As Christ gives Himself to feed us, so we have to incarnate something of His all-loving, all-sacrificing soul. If we do not, then we have not really received Him. That is the plain truth. It has been said that there are many ways and degrees of receiving the Blessed Sacrament. It really depends on how wide we open our hearts. A spiritually selfish communion is not a communion at all.

Feast of John Keble, Priest, Poet, Tractarian, 1866 God gave the prophecies, not to gratify men's curiosity by enabling read more

Feast of John Keble, Priest, Poet, Tractarian, 1866 God gave the prophecies, not to gratify men's curiosity by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and His own providence, not the interpreter's, be thereby manifested to the world.

Let us not forget the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us not think of it vaguely, and fall read more

Let us not forget the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us not think of it vaguely, and fall into the heretical fancy that the Son of God became man merely to transact certain things which were necessary to secure the salvation of men, and that after this object was achieved His human nature recedes into the background and impenetrable obscurity. No, it is not so; all-important as His work on earth was -- the only foundation of our hope and blessedness -- let us adore the revealed mystery that God gave us His Son, never to recall Him, as it were, and take Him away from us; He spared Him not and gave Him to us, allowing Him to become man, exalting Him as the Son of Man, enthroning Him because of his obedience unto death, and giving unto Him as the Son of Man all power in heaven and earth.