There is a state of perfect peace with God which can be attained under imperfect obedience.

There is a state of perfect peace with God which can be attained under imperfect obedience.

Above all, the group must keep remembering that true growth in grace is not to be achieved by our own read more

Above all, the group must keep remembering that true growth in grace is not to be achieved by our own efforts or contriving, but must be received as the gift of God's Spirit, working in and among us. The work of the group is to keep open the channels of receptiveness through study, discipline, prayer, and self-offering. When a group learns to live in this faith, it can keep the lines of endeavor tentative and sensitive to new headings and possibilities, on the one hand; and, on the other, move forward resolutely under such light as is now given.

More than any other religion or, indeed, than any other element in human experience, Christianity has made for the intellectual read more

More than any other religion or, indeed, than any other element in human experience, Christianity has made for the intellectual advance of man in reducing languages to writing, creating literatures, promoting education from primary grades through institutions of university level, and stimulating the human mind and spirit to fresh explorations into the unknown. It has been the largest single factor in combating, on a world-wide scale, such ancient foes of man as war, famine, and the exploitation of one race by another. More than any other religion, it has made for the dignity of human personality. This it has done by a power inherent within it of lifting lives from selfishness, spiritual mediocrity, and moral defeat and disintegration, to unselfish achievement and contagious moral and spiritual power and by the high value which it set upon every human soul through the possibilities which it held out of endless growth in fellowship with the eternal God.

A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless. ... Simone Weil August 18, read more

A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless. ... Simone Weil August 18, 2000 My biological work convinced me that the One who was declared dead by Nietzsche, and silent by Sartre, actually is very much alive and speaking to us through all things. ... C. J. Briejèr, letter to Rachel Carson August 19, 2000 The Christian cell in a factory or a professional circle, funding its own activities, deciding its own pattern of work, studying the Bible and perhaps celebrating the Lord's supper as an entity on its own, comes very much closer to Independency as Robert Browne saw it than the unholy isolationism of a prosperous suburban church, with 200 members who scarcely know each other by sight. If a sizable proportion of the Free Church ministry were enabled to become itinerant once again -- not necessarily itinerant in the geographical sense, but itinerant in the complex mazes of contemporary society, fathers in God to Christian organisms evolved by the lay men and women who spend their lives in these mazes -- new heart would be put into both ministry and laity, and incidentally, new impetus given to the search for Christian unity.

EPIPHANY The paradox is that a genuine "love for souls" which allows itself to be diverted by fashionable modes read more

EPIPHANY The paradox is that a genuine "love for souls" which allows itself to be diverted by fashionable modes into a mere "winning" of them to this or that mutually exclusive version of the "Truth", very often descends to a use of people for more-or-less irrelevant ends (already an evil), and can then so easily degenerate into a total misuse of people for alleged evangelical "results" with the consequent loss of all respect for people and their souls, and the withering of the original concern and love.

Taken as practical counsel for survival, the Fifth Commandment is now almost a dead letter. Yet if our world were read more

Taken as practical counsel for survival, the Fifth Commandment is now almost a dead letter. Yet if our world were truly Christian, the change might be a reason for rejoicing. We no longer need our families -- we are therefore free to love them with complete unselfishness. Now at last it is possible to honour our parents genuinely, because they no longer have the power to kill us if we don't. The old sort of honour was sometimes an ugly sham: the son who respects Father only out of fear of punishment is not much of a son, just as the Christian who worships God only out of fear of hell is precious little of a Christian. But the new sort of honour can be a beautiful and holy thing. There are many sweet and sane families bound together by love; there are plenty of experts who remind us that only love can make the modern family work at all. And one must admit that there are plenty of parents very willing to be honoured. The catch is that not so many of them are willing to be honourable.

Feast of Christina Rossetti, Poet, 1894 What can I give Him Poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, read more

Feast of Christina Rossetti, Poet, 1894 What can I give Him Poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would give Him a lamb, If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part, -- But what I can, I give Him, Give my heart.

The Creeds were formulated gradually, as a result of a series of desperate controversies -- controversies which are now named read more

The Creeds were formulated gradually, as a result of a series of desperate controversies -- controversies which are now named sometimes after the supposed leaders and representatives of a particular interpretation of the Christian religion, and sometimes after the particular interpretation itself. I need not now attempt to make precise these heresies, as they came to be called. It is necessary only to point out that in various ways all these heresies were simplifications. By means of them the revelation of God to men was made, or appeared to be made, less scandalous. On the other hand, the various clauses of the Creed were not formulated as a new simplification, or as an alternative-ism. They were nothing more than emphatic statements of the Biblical scandal, statements which brought into sharp antagonism the new simplification and the old, Scriptural, many-sided and vigorous truth.

It is necessary to point out that our responsibility is a relative one only, for as we think of the read more

It is necessary to point out that our responsibility is a relative one only, for as we think of the world-wide disintegration of the human family, the prospect before us could easily fill us with alarm and despondency, if we were not sure first of the absolute sovereignty of God who (I speak reverently) knows what He is doing in conducting this enormous experiment that we call life.