Phillips Brooks ( 10 of 40 )
Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do no pray for tasks equal to your powers. read more
Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do no pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for power equal to your tasks.
Commemoration of Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, spiritual writer, 1893 Wherever souls are being tried and ripened, in read more
Commemoration of Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, spiritual writer, 1893 Wherever souls are being tried and ripened, in whatever commonplace and homely way, there God is hewing out the pillars for his temple.
Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: Every true prayer has its background and its foreground. The foreground of prayer read more
Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: Every true prayer has its background and its foreground. The foreground of prayer is the intense, immediate desire for a certain blessing which seems to be absolutely necessary for the soul to have; the background of prayer is the quiet, earnest desire that the will of God, whatever it may be, should be done. What a picture is the perfect prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane! In front burns the strong desire to escape death and to live; but behind there stands, calm and strong, the craving of the whole life for the doing of the will of God... Leave out the foreground, let there be no expression of the will of him who prays, and there is left a pure submission which is almost fatalism. Leave out the background, let there be no acceptance of the will of God, and the prayer is only an expression of self-will, a petulant claiming of the uncorrected choice of him who prays. Only when the two are there together, the special desire resting on the universal submission, the universal submission opening into the special desire, is the picture perfect and the prayer complete.
Commemoration of Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, spiritual writer, 1893 The Bible is like a telescope. If a read more
Commemoration of Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, spiritual writer, 1893 The Bible is like a telescope. If a man looks through his telescope, then he sees worlds beyond; but if he looks at his telescope, then he does not see anything but that. The Bible is a thing to be looked through, to see that which is beyond.
Feast of Luke the Evangelist No man dares to condemn the Christian faith today, because the Christian faith has read more
Feast of Luke the Evangelist No man dares to condemn the Christian faith today, because the Christian faith has not been tried. Not until men get rid of the thought that it is a poor machine, an expedient for saving them from suffering and pain; not until they get the grand idea of it as the great power of God present in and through the lives of men; not until then does Christianity enter upon its true trial and become ready to show what it can do.
Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865 Only when a man tries to live read more
Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865 Only when a man tries to live the divine life can the divine Christ manifest Himself to him. Therefore, the true way for you to find Christ is not to go groping in a thousand books. It is not for you to try evidences about a thousand things that people have believed of Him, but it is for you to undertake so great a life, so devoted a life, so pure a life, so serviceable a life, that you cannot do it except by Christ, and then see whether Christ helps you. See then whether there comes to you the certainty that you are a child of God, and the manifestation of the child of God becomes the most credible, the most certain thing to you in all of history.
Feast of Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, Teacher, 1910 Commemoration of Martyrs of Uganda, 1886 & 1978 God frees read more
Feast of Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, Teacher, 1910 Commemoration of Martyrs of Uganda, 1886 & 1978 God frees our souls, not from service, not from duty, but into service and into duty; and he who mistakes the purpose of his freedom mistakes the character of his freedom. He who thinks that he is being released from the work, and not set free in order that he may accomplish that work, mistakes the condition into which his soul is invited to enter.
Feast of Stephen, Deacon, First Martyr O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie! read more
Feast of Stephen, Deacon, First Martyr O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by: Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting Light; The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee tonight. For Christ is born of Mary; And gathered all above, While mortals sleep, the angels keep Their watch of wondering love. O morning stars together Proclaim the holy birth; And praises sing to God the King, And peace to men on earth. How silently, how silently, The wondrous gift is giv'n! So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of His Heav'n. No ear may hear His coming, But in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive Him still, The dear Christ enters in. O holy Child of Bethlehem, Descend to us, we pray, Cast out our sins, and enter in, Be born in us today. We hear the Christmas angels The great glad tidings tell; O come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Emmanuel.
Feast of Anselm, Abbot of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1109 I hear men praying everywhere for read more
Feast of Anselm, Abbot of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1109 I hear men praying everywhere for more faith, but when I listen to them carefully, and get to the real heart of their prayer, very often it is not more faith at all that they are wanting, but a change from faith to sight. Faith says not, "I see that it is good for me, so God must have sent it," but, "God sent it, and so it must be good for me." Faith, walking in the dark with God, only prays Him to clasp its hand more closely.
No one who has come to true greatness has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to the read more
No one who has come to true greatness has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to the people, and what God has given them he gives it for mankind.
