Christian Quotations of the Day
for September, 2003
Commemoration of Giles of Provence, Hermit, c.710
It was not by dialectic that it pleased God to save His people; "for the kingdom of God consisteth in simplicity of faith, not in wordy contention."
... St. Ambrose
Commemoration of Martyrs of Papua New Guinea, 1942
It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourselves so, my friends. If you find yourselves so loaded, at least remember this: it is your own doing, not God's. He begs you to leave the future to Him and mind the present.
... George Macdonald
Feast of Gregory the Great, Bishop of Rome, Teacher, 604
For the flowers are great blessings.
For the Lord made a Nosegay in the meadow with his disciples and preached upon the lily.
For the flowers have great virtues for all senses.
For the flower glorifies God and the root parries the adversary.
For the flowers have their angels even the words of God's creation.
For there is a language of flowers.
For there is a sound reasoning upon all flowers.
For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ.
... Christopher Smart, Jubilate Agno
Commemoration of Birinus, Bishop of Dorchester (Oxon), Apostle of Wessex, 650
In his enthusiasm, the evangelist often finds it difficult seriously to imagine that anyone could be called not to be an evangelist. The man of vision and imagination finds it difficult to see the value of those who do no more than plod on faithfully along a well-tried road. The man whose concern is in personal dealing with people and leading them to understand God better finds it difficult to be patient with the theologian or the Christian philosopher whose work is in the quiet of a book-lined study. Yet the truth is that the wholeness which God is working to achieve is never complete in an individual, but through individuals living together as one body, each supplying the deficiencies of the others.
... J. B. Phillips, Making Men Whole
The introverted church is one which puts its own survival before its mission, its own identity above its task, its internal concerns before its apostolate, its rituals before its ministry. Undue emphasis on the static structure of the Church has led to the disappearance of a significant lay ministry in denominational Protestantism.
... Gibson Winter, The Suburban Captivity of the Churches
Commemoration of Allen Gardiner, founder of the South American Missionary Society, 1851
Commemoration of Albert Schweitzer, Teacher, Physician, Missionary, 1965
As we look out upon history and the world, it is with the same vision of all things in Christ which dominates the perceptions of all believers, without distinction of age, or race, or Church. Not a saint, a thinker, a hero, or a martyr of the Church, but we claim a share in his character, influence and achievements, by confessing the debt we owe to the great tradition which he has enriched by saintly consecration, true thought, or noble conduct.
... John Scott Lidgett
Commemoration of Douglas Downes, Founder of the Society of Saint Francis, 1957
For the Platonic or Aristotelian philosophy it is of no importance whether Plato or Aristotle ever lived. For the mystical practice of an Indian, Persian, Chinese, or Neo-Platonic mystic it is a matter of indifference whether Rama, Buddha, Laotse, or Porphyrius are myths or not. The mystic has no personal relation to them. It is not here a question of somebody telling me the truth which of myself I cannot find, but of my finding an access to the depths of the world in the depths of my soul. And everywhere the tendency is to eliminate personality. Even where religion does not have this mystical character, it has no relation to an historical person, who communicates himself to me. That is the characteristic essence of the Christian faith alone. Even where a prophet plays the role of a mediator of divine truth, as for example in Islam, the religious act is not directed toward him but toward his teaching or message. But the Christian does not believe in the teachings of Jesus -- which would not be Christian faith, but general religion -- he believes in Christ Himself as being the Word of God.
... Emil Brunner, The Word and the World
A man may go into the field and say his prayer and be aware of God, or he may be in Church and be aware of God; but if he is more aware of Him because he is in a quiet place, that is his own deficiency and not due to God, Who is alike present in all things and places, and is willing to give Himself everywhere so far as lies in Him... He knows God rightly who knows Him everywhere.
... Meister Eckhart
To live thus -- to cram today with eternity and not wait the next day -- the Christian has learnt and continues to learn (for the Christian is always learning) from the Pattern. How did He manage to live without anxiety for the next day -- He who from the first instant of His public life, when He stepped forward as a teacher, knew how His life would end, that the next day was His crucifixion; knew this while the people exultantly hailed Him as King (ah, bitter knowledge to have at precisely that moment!); knew, when they were crying, Hosanna!, at His entry into Jerusalem, that they would cry, "Crucify Him!", and that it was to this end that He made His entry. He who bore every day the prodigious weight of this superhuman knowledge -- how did He manage to live without anxiety for the next day?
... Søren Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses
Whoever strives to withdraw from obedience, withdraws from grace.
... Thomas à Kempis
It is not enough to hold that God did great things for our fathers: not enough to pride ourselves on the inheritance of victories of faith: not enough to build the sepulchres of those who were martyred by men unwilling, in their day of trial as we may be in our own, to hear new voices of a living God. Our duty is to see whether God is with us; whether we expect great things from Him; whether we do not practically place Him far off, forgetting that, if He is, He is about us, speaking to us words that have not been heard before, guiding us to paths on which earlier generations have not been able to enter. There is -- most terrible thought! -- a practical atheism, orthodox in language, reverent in bearing, which can enter a Christian church and charm the conscience to rest with shadowy traditions; an atheism which grows incessantly within us if we separate what cannot be separated with impunity, the secular from the divine, the past and the future from the present, earth from heaven, the things of Caesar from the things of God.
... Brooke Foss Westcott
Doubt, rather than faith, is high among the causes of the religious boom. And the church's response to this current situation will reveal, better than anything else, our faith in God -- or our faithlessness. If we churchmen interpret such pervasive doubt as a threat, then we will do as the church has done so often in the past: we will substitute the church for God, and make our church-centered activities into an ersatz kingdom of God. Our faithlessness will be evident in the easy paraphrase of the hard truth of the gospel, and in the lapse from the critical loyalty that God requires of us, into the vague and corrupting sentimentalism that has so marred American Protestantism. Or the church can interpret the present religious situation as a promise, as God's recall of His people to a new reformation. Our faithfulness to God-in-Christ will be manifest in the willingness to be honest with ourselves and with the gospel. Then we may view the church, not as an end in itself, but as the point of departure into the world for which the Son of God died. Which will it be?
... Carl R. Smith & Robert W. Lynn, "Experiment in Suburbia"
Feast of John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, Teacher, 407
Intellect can light up only a small area of the universe. For my part, I should subscribe to the familiar paradox that the more we know, the more we are conscious of our ignorance -- the further the intellect has traveled, the smaller it seems relatively to the distance still to be traveled... The intellect does, indeed, take us part of the way; we have no other mode of conveyance; and, in taking us as far as it does, it justifies us in taking the rest on trust... In following the religious account of the universe beyond the point at which it leaves reason behind, and trusting to it as an explanation of the many things that pass our understanding, we are accepting on faith conclusions which are not demonstrated by reason. In other words, we are acting as if a hypothesis were true, which, at the moment, at which we act upon it, is still a hypothesis and not a truth. Nevertheless, it is, I suggest, knowledge, the knowledge which we possess already and which reason has won for us, that makes it reasonable to do so.
... C. E. M. Joad, The Recovery of Belief
Feast of the Holy Cross
When scientists are honest, as most of them are, they are well aware of the fact that their competence in science does not give them a clue to the problem of how their science should be used in the service of man. The sensitive visitor to the mesas of Los Alamos is almost sure to meditate on the experience of that gifted man, Klaus Fuchs. Though his work in the laboratories was outstanding, his decision concerning the use of what he knew was disastrous. What if, in addition to his scientific competence, the younger Fuchs had shared something of the Christian conviction of his father, Emil Fuchs? Much of the subsequent history of our earth might then have been different.
... Elton Trueblood, The Incendiary Fellowship
If you will study the history of Christ's ministry from Baptism to Ascension, you will discover that it is mostly made up of little words, little deeds, little prayers, little sympathies, adding themselves together in unwearied succession. The Gospel is full of divine attempts to help and heal, in the body, mind and heart, individual men. The completed beauty of Christ's life is only the added beauty of little inconspicuous acts of beauty -- talking with the woman at the well; going far up into the North country to talk with the Syrophenician woman; showing the young ruler the stealthy ambition laid away in his heart, that kept him out of the kingdom of Heaven; shedding a tear at the grave of Lazarus; teaching a little knot of followers how to pray; preaching the Gospel one Sunday afternoon to two disciples going out to Emmaus; kindling a fire and broiling fish, that His disciples might have a breakfast waiting for them when they came ashore after a night of fishing, cold, tired, discouraged. All of these things, you see, let us in so easily into the real quality and tone of God's interests, so specific, so narrowed down, so enlisted in what is small, so engrossed in what is minute.
... Charles Henry Parkhurst
Feast of Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, Martyr, 258
Commemoration of Ninian, Bishop of Galloway, Apostle to the Picts, c. 430
Commemoration of Edward Bouverie Pusey, Priest, tractarian, 1882
The commandment of God is, that we love Our Lord in all our heart, in all our soul, in all our thought. In all our heart; that is, in all our understanding without erring. In all our soul; that is, in all our will without gainsaying. In all our thought; that is, that we think on Him without forgetting. In this manner is very love and true, that is work of man's will. For love is a willful stirring of our thoughts unto God, so that it receive nothing that is against the love of Jesus Christ, and therewith that it be lasting in sweetness of devotion; and that is the perfection of this life.
... Richard Rolle, The Commandments
Feast of Hildegard, Abbess of Bingen, Visionary, 1179
Thou wayfaring Jesus -- a pilgrim and stranger,
Exiled from heaven by love at Thy birth:
Exiled again from Thy rest in the manger,
A fugitive child 'mid the perils of earth --
Cheer with Thy fellowship all who are weary,
Wandering far from the land that they love:
Guide every heart that is homeless and dreary,
Safe to its home in Thy presence above.
... Henry Van Dyke
To me, to whom God hath revealed his Son, in a Gospel, by a Church, there can be no way of salvation, but by applying that Son of God, by that Gospel, in that Church. Nor is there any other foundation for any, nor other name by which any can be saved, but the name of Jesus. But how this foundation is presented, and how this name of Jesus is notified unto them, amongst whom there is no Gospel preached, no Church established, I am not curious in inquiring. I know that God can be as merciful as those tender Fathers present him to be; and I would be as charitable as they are. And therefore, humbly embracing that manifestation of his Son, which he hath afforded me, I leave God, to his unsearchable waies of working upon others, without further inquisition.
... John Donne, LXXX Sermons
Commemoration of Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, 690
The preacher and the writer may seem to have an... easy task. At first sight, it may seem that they have only to proclaim and declare; but in fact, if their words are to enter men's hearts and bear fruit, they must be the right words, shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds. This means, in practice, turning a face of flint toward the easy cliche, the well-worn religious cant and phraseology -- dear, no doubt, to the faithful, but utterly meaningless to those outside the fold. It means learning how people are thinking and how they are feeling; it means learning with patience, imagination and ingenuity the way to pierce apathy or blank lack of understanding. I sometimes wonder what hours of prayer and thought lie behind the apparently simple and spontaneous parables of the Gospel.
... J. B. Phillips, Making Men Whole
Feast of John Coleridge Patteson, First Bishop of Melanesia, & his Companions, Martyrs, 1871
Devotion signifies a life given, or devoted, to God. He therefore is the devout man, who lives no longer to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God, who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, who makes all the parts of his common life, parts of piety, by doing everything in the name of God, and under such rules as are conformable to His glory.
... William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
Feast of Matthew, Apostle & Evangelist
In the absence of any other proof, the thumb would convince me of God's existence.
... Isaac Newton
[With thanks to Ed Neeland at eneeland@ouc.bc.ca]
The Gospels contain what the Apostles preached -- the Epistles, what they wrote after the preaching. And until we understand the Gospel, the good news about our brother-king -- until we understand Him, until we have His Spirit, promised so freely to them that ask it -- all the Epistles, the words of men who were full of Him, and wrote out of that fullness, who loved Him so utterly that by that very love they were lifted into the air of pure reason and right, and would die for Him, without two thoughts about it, in the very simplicity of no choice -- the Letters, I say, of such men are to us a sealed book. Until we love the Lord so as to do what He tells us, we have no right to an opinion about what one of those men meant; for all they wrote is about things beyond us. The simplest woman who tries not to judge her neighbor, or not to be anxious for the morrow, will better know what is best to know, than the best-read bishop without that one simple outgoing of his highest nature in the effort to do the will of Him who thus spoke.
... George Macdonald, Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood
"Who hates his neighbor has not the rights of a child." And not only has he no rights as a child, he has no "father". God is not my father in particular, or any man's father (horrible presumption and madness!); no, He is only father in the sense of father of all, and consequently only my father in so far as He is the father of all. When I hate someone or deny God is his father, it is not he who loses, but I: for then I have no father.
... Søren Kierkegaard
Christ is the Master; the Scriptures are only the servant. The true way to test all the Books is to see whether they work the will of Christ or not. No Book which does not preach Christ can be apostolic, though Peter or Paul were its author. And no Book which does preach Christ can fail to be apostolic, although Judas, Ananias, Pilate, or Herod were its author.
... Martin Luther, Introduction to the New Testament
Feast of Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, Spiritual Writer, 1626
Commemoration of Sergius of Radonezh, Russian Monastic Reformer, Teacher, 1392
The more we study the early Church, the more we realize that it was a society of ministers. About the only similarity between the Church at Corinth and a contemporary congregation, either Roman Catholic or Protestant, is that both are marked, to a great degree, by the presence of sinners.
... Elton Trueblood
Commemoration of Wilson Carlile, Priest, Founder of the Church Army, 1942
There is a great difference between a lofty spirit and a right spirit. A lofty spirit excites admiration by its profoundness; but only a right spirit achieves salvation and happiness by its stability and integrity. Do not conform your ideas to those of the world. Scorn the "intellectual" as much as the world esteems it. What men consider intellectual is a certain facility to produce brilliant thoughts. Nothing is more vain. We make an idol of our intellect as a woman who believes herself beautiful worships her face. We take pride in our own thoughts. We must reject not only human cleverness, but also human prudence, which seems so important and so profitable. Then we may enter -- like little children, with candor and innocence of worldly ways -- into the simplicity of faith; and with humility and a horror of sin we may enter into the holy passion of the cross.
... François Fénelon, Meditation
Feast of Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists), 1660
To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, and to devote the will to the purpose of God.
... William Temple
We sometimes fear to bring our troubles to God, because they must seem small to Him who sitteth on the circle of the earth. But if they are large enough to vex and endanger our welfare, they are large enough to touch His heart of love. For love does not measure by a merchant's scales, not with a surveyor's chain. It hath a delicacy... unknown in any handling of material substance.
... R. A. Torrey
Feast of Michael & All Angels
Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's, if we are always criticizing trivial actions -- which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives.
... St. Teresa of Avila
Of this I am certain, that no one has ever died who was not destined to die some time. Now the end of life puts the longest life on a par with the shortest... And of what consequence is it what kind of death puts an end to life, since he who has died once is not forced to go through the same ordeal a second time? They, then, who are destined to die, need not be careful to inquire what death they are to die, but into what place death will usher them.
... St. Augustine, The City of God
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.