Christian Quotations of the Day
for April, 2002

April 1, 2002

Commemoration of Frederick Denison Maurice, Priest, teacher, 1872

         We do not cease to be children because we are disobedient children.
         ... Frederick Denison Maurice

April 2, 2002


         The very uniqueness of the Resurrection as a historical event always causes problems when we try to describe it, just as it did for the original writers. Nevertheless, the background to the New Testament is one of expectation of resurrection, and only the historical rising-again of Jesus makes sense of the narrative in this context.
         ... Michael Sadgrove & Tom Wright

April 3, 2002


         The perfection of His relation to us swallows up all our imperfections, all our defeats, all our evils; for our childhood is born of His fatherhood. That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and his desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to Him, "Thou art my refuge, because Thou art my home". Such a faith will not lead to presumption. The man who can pray such a prayer will know better than another that God is not mocked; that He is not a man that He should repent; that tears and entreaties will not work on Him to the breach of one of His laws; that for God to give a man, because he asked for it, that which was not in harmony with His laws of truth and right, would be to damn him -- to cast him into the outer darkness.
         ... George Macdonald, "The Child in the Midst"

April 4, 2002


         Let them pretend what they please, the true reason why any despise the new birth is because they hate a new life. He that cannot endure to live to God will as little endure to bear of being born of God.
         ... John Owen

April 5, 2002


         No man ever did, nor ever shall, truly go forth to convert the nations, nor to prophesy in the present state of witnesses against Antichrist, but by the gracious inspiration and instigation of the Holy Spirit of God... I prejudice not an external test and call, which was at first and shall be again in force at the resurrection of the churches, ... but in the present state of things I cannot but be humbly bold to say that I know no other true sender but the most Holy Spirit. And when He sends, His messengers will go, His prophets will prophesy, though all the world should forbid them.
         ... Roger Williams, The Hireling Ministry

April 6, 2002

Commemoration of Albrecht Dürer, artist, 1528, and Michelangelo Buonarrotti, artist, spiritual writer, 1564

         Sweep away the illusion of Time; glance, if thou have eyes, from the near moving-cause to the far-distant Mover. The stroke that came transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? Oh, could I transport thee direct from the Beginnings to the Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder! Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God; that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish.
         ... Thomas Carlyle, The Open Secret

April 7, 2002


         Time is too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love -- time is eternity.
         ... Henry van Dyke

April 8, 2002

Commemoration of William Augustus Muhlenberg of New York, Priest, 1877

         If our hopes, whatever we protest, really lie in this world instead of in the eternal order, we shall find it difficult to accept the New Testament teaching of the Second Coming. In our eyes, the job is not yet done; and such an action would be, though we would not put it so, an interference. But suppose our hope rests in the purpose of God: then we safely leave the timing of the earthly experiment to Him. Meanwhile, we do what we were told to do -- to be alert and to work and pray for the spread of His Kingdom.
         ... J. B. Phillips, New Testament Christianity

April 9, 2002

Feast of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teacher, Martyr, 1945

         There remains for us only the very narrow way, often extremely difficult to find, of living every day as though it were our last, and yet living in faith and responsibility as though there were to be a great future.
         ... Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "After Ten Years"

April 10, 2002

Feast of William Law, Priest, Mystic, 1761
Commemoration of William of Ockham, Franciscan Friar, Philosopher, Teacher, 1347
Commemoration of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Priest, Scientist, Visionary, 1955

         There is no wrath that stands between God and us, but what is awakened in the dark fire of our own fallen nature; and to quench this wrath, and not His own, God gave His only begotten Son to be made man. God has no more wrath in Himself now than He had before the creation, when He had only Himself to love... And it was solely to quench this wrath, awakened in the human soul, that the blood of the Son of God was necessary; because nothing but a life and birth, derived from Him into the human soul, could change this darkened root of a self-tormenting fire into an amiable image of the Holy Trinity as it was at first created.
         ... William Law, Christian Regeneration

April 11, 2002

Commemoration of George Augustus Selwyn, first Bishop of New Zealand, 1878

         Jesus hath many lovers of His heavenly Kingdom, but few bearers of His Cross. He hath many desirous of consolation, but few of tribulation. Many love Jesus so long as no adversities befall them.
         ... Thomas à Kempis

April 12, 2002


         God is present by love alone. By love alone He is great and glorious. By love alone He liveth and feeleth in other persons. By love alone He enjoyeth all the creatures, by love alone He is pleasing to Himself, by love alone He is rich and blessed. O, why dost not thou by love alone seek to achieve all these, by love alone attain another self, by love alone live in others, by love attain thy glory? The same is shriveled up and buried in a grave that does not love. But that which does love wisely and truly is the joy and end of all the world, the King of Heaven and the friend of God, the shining light and temple of eternity, the brother of Jesus Christ, and one spirit with the Holy Ghost.
         ... Thomas Traherne

April 13, 2002


         If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me.
         ... Robert Murray M'Cheyne

April 14, 2002


         I believe that pure thinking will do more to educate a man than any other activity he can engage in. To afford sympathetic entertainment to abstract ideas, to let one idea beget another, and that another, till the mind teems with them; to compare one idea with others, to weigh, to consider, evaluate, approve, respect, correct, refine; to join thought with thought like an architect till a whole edifice has been created within the mind; to travel back in imagination to the beginning of the creation and then to leap swiftly forward to the end of time; to bound upward through illimitable space and downward into the nucleus of an atom; and all this without so much as moving from our chair or opening the eyes--this is to soar above all the lower creation and come near to the angels of God.
         ... A. W. Tozer, Man: The Dwelling Place of God

April 15, 2002


         Great is the difference betwixt a man's being frightened at, and humbled for, his sins. One may passively be cast down by God's terrors, and yet not willingly throw himself down as he ought at God's footstool.
         ... Thomas Fuller, A Wounded Conscience

April 16, 2002


         Should I worship Him from fear of hell, may I be cast into it. Should I serve Him from desire of gaining heaven, may He keep me out. But should I worship Him from love alone, He reveal Himself to me, that my whole heart may be filled with His love and presence.
         ... Sadhu Sundar Singh

April 17, 2002


         Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them -- every day begin the task anew.
         ... Francois de Sales

April 18, 2002


         The conception of the Church which we tend to reproduce as the fruit of our missionary work is so much a replica of our own, so much that of a fundamentally settled body existing for the sake of its own members rather than that of a body of strangers and pilgrims, the sign and instrument of a supernatural and universal salvation to be revealed, that our missionary advance tends to follow the lines of cultural and political expansion. and to falter when that advance stops.
         ... Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God

April 19, 2002

Commemoration of Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1012

         The higher faiths call their followers to strenuous moral effort. Such effort is likely to be arduous and painful in proportion to the height of the ideal, desperate in proportion to the sensitiveness of the conscience. A morbid scrupulousness besets the morally serious soul. It is anxious and troubled, afraid of evil, haunted by the memory of failure. The best of the Pharisees tended in this direction, and no less the best of the Stoics. And so little has Christianity been understood that the popular idea of a serious Christian is modeled upon the same type of character. (Continued tomorrow)
         ... C. Harold Dodd, The Meaning of Paul for Today

April 20, 2002


         The ascetic believed that, because he was so holy, the Devil was permitted special liberties with him, and he found in his increasing agony of effort a token of divine approval. Not along this track lies the path of moral progress. Christianity says: face the evil once for all, and disown it. Then quiet the spirit in the presence of God. Let His perfections fill the field of vision. In particular, let the concrete embodiment of the goodness of God in Christ attract and absorb the gaze of the soul. Here is the righteousness, not as a fixed and abstract ideal, but in a living human person. The righteousness of Christ is a real achievement of God's own Spirit in man.
         ... C. Harold Dodd, The Meaning of Paul for Today

April 21, 2002

Feast of Anselm, Abbot of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1109

         Those blessed ones of thine... shall rejoice according as they shall love; and they shall love according as they shall know. How far they will know thee, Lord, then! and how much they will love thee!
         ... St. Anselm, Discourse on the Existence of God

April 22, 2002

Deep unto deep, O Lord,
         Crieth in me,
Gathering strength I come,
         Lord, unto Thee.
Jesus of Calvary,
         Smitten for me,
Ask what Thou wilt, but give
         Love to me.
         ... Amy Carmichael

April 23, 2002

Feast of George, Martyr, Patron of England, c.304
Commemoration of Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1988

         The belief in baptismal regeneration of infants, which had... become almost universal [in the middle ages], and the reliance on mysterious sacramental efficacy for sanctification and heavenly admission, strongly militated against regeneration and spiritual reality within the Church. The complete professionalization of a priestly ministry largely eliminated laymen from direct evangelism and robbed them of the missionary spirit, since they were not to be trusted to teach and could not validly administer the saving symbols. The reliance on organization and ceremonial grace, along with the growing concept of the representative relation of the Pope on earth to the Christ in heaven, involved a practical ignoring of the Holy Spirit as the divinely ordained Counterpart of the Christ and the informing soul of the Church... The vast territorial extent of Christianity and the very general ignorance of world geography made it possible for Christians to lose sight of the non-Christian world and to feel, even if somewhat vaguely, that the Christian task was complete, so far as its world occupation was concerned. The Mohammedan growth had encircled the Christian territories. The relations between Christendom and the Mohammedan world fostered anything else than a spirit of helpfulness and a disposition to give the blessings of the one to the other. Christian information about the heathen world was largely cut off by... Mohammedanism; and in order to reach the heathen, missionaries would have to make their way through Mohammedan territory.
         ... William Owen Carver, The Course of Christian Missions

April 24, 2002

Commemoration of Mellitus, First Bishop of London, 624

         It is not that we keep His commandments first, and that then He loves; but that He loves us, and then we keep His commandments. This is that grace, which is revealed to the humble, but hidden from the proud.
         ... St. Augustine

April 25, 2002

Feast of Mark the Evangelist

         All antinomianism is a radical denial of Christ and of God. And antinomianism is by no means merely a thing of the past. It is present wherever zeal for the Christian religion, for worship, theology, and all manner of other Church activities is unaccompanied by moral earnestness, wherever Christians can complacently and without any sense of incongruity combine piety with indifference to their neighbours' needs and a comfortable acquiescence in social and political injustice.
         ... C. E. B. Cranfield, I & II Peter and Jude

April 26, 2002


         If I am a son of God, nothing but God will satisfy my soul; no amount of comfort, no amount of ease, no amount of pleasure, will give me peace or rest. If I had the full cup of all the world's joys held up to me, and could drain it to the dregs, I should still remain thirsty if I had not God.
         ... G. A. Studdert Kennedy, The Wicket Gate

April 27, 2002

Feast of Christina Rossetti, Poet, 1894
Heaven overarches earth and sea,
         Earth-sadness and sea-bitterness.
Heaven overarches you and me:
A little while and we shall be -
Please God -- where there is no more sea
                  Nor barren wilderness.

Heaven overarches you and me,
         And all earth's gardens and her braves.
Look up with me, until we see
The day break and the shadows flee.
What though to-night wrecks you and me,
                  If so to-morrow saves?
         ... Christina Rossetti

April 28, 2002

Commemoration of Peter Chanel, Religious,
Missionary in the South Pacific, Martyr, 1841

         The [Roman] imperial coinage (which was regularly used as a propaganda medium... is full of the characteristic motifs of Advent and Epiphany, celebrating the blessings which the manifestation of each successive divine emperor was to bring to a waiting world. Among the adulatory formulas with which the emperor was acclaimed, Prof. Ethelbert Stauffer mentions, as going back to the first century, "Hail, Victory, Lord of the earth, Invincible, Power, Glory, Honour, Peace, Security, Holy, Blessed, Unequalled, Great, Thou alone worthy art, Worthy is he to inherit the Kingdom, Come, come, do not delay, Come again" (p. 155) [in Christ and the Caesars]. Indeed, one has only to read Psalm 72, in Latin, in the official language of the empire, to see that it is largely the same formal language which is used alike in the Forum for the advent of the emperor, and in the catacombs for the celebration of the "Epiphany of Christ" (p. 251). Who was worthy to ascend the throne of the universe and direct the course of history? Caesar, or Jesus?
         ... Frederick F. Bruce, The Apostolic Defense of the Gospel

April 29, 2002

Feast of Catherine of Siena, Mystic, Teacher, 1380

         Can we believe that God ever modifies His action in response to the suggestions of man? For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it. But neither does God need any of those things that are done by finite agents, whether living or inanimate. He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers; or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries. Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to cooperate in the execution of His will. "God", says Pascal, "instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality." But it is not only prayer; whenever we act at all, He lends us that dignity. It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so.
         ... C. S. Lewis, "The Efficacy of Prayer"

April 30, 2002

Commemoration of Pandita Mary Ramabai, Translator of the Scriptures, 1922

         A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of tomorrow's dangers, a straw under my knees, a noise in my ear, a light in my eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayers.
         ... John Donne

Compilation Copyright, 1996-2008, by Robert McAnally Adams,

Curator, Christian Quotation of the Day.
Logo image Copyright 1996 by Shay Barsabe, "Simple GIFs", by kind permission.