To make the improving of our own character our central aim is hardly the highest kind of goodness. True goodness forgets itself and goes out to do the right thing for no other reason than that it is right.
         ... Lesslie Newbigin
 
 

         Rest in the Lord; wait patiently for Him. In Hebrew, "Be silent in God, and let Him mould thee." Keep still, and He will mould thee to the right shape.
         ... Martin Luther
 
 

         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.
         ... Phillips Brooks, The Law of Growth

         I have found (to my regret) that the degrees of shame and disgust which I actually feel at my own sins do not at all correspond to what my reason tells me about their comparative gravity. Just as the degree to which, in daily life, I feel the emotion of fear has very little to do with my rational judgment of the danger. I'd sooner have really nasty seas when I'm in an open boat than look down in perfect (actual) safety from the edge of a cliff. Similarly, I have confessed ghastly uncharities with less reluctance than small unmentionables -- or those sins which happen to be ungentlemanly as well as unchristian. Our emotional reactions to our own behaviour are of limited ethical significance.
         ... C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm
 
 

         Never do anything through strife, or emulation, or vainglory. Never do anything in order to excel other people, but in order to please God, and because it is His will that you should do everything in the best manner that you can.
         ... William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
 
 

         Then are we servants of God, then are we the disciples of Christ, when we do what is commanded us and because it is commanded us.
         ... John Owen
 
 

         God, to redeem us at the deepest portion of our nature -- the urge to love and be loved -- must reveal His nature in an incredible and impossible way. He must reveal it at a cross. At the cross God wrapped his heart in flesh and blood and let it be nailed to the cross for our redemption.
         ... E. Stanley Jones
 
 

         To take up the cross of Christ is no great action done once for all; it consists in the continual practice of small duties which are distasteful to us.
         ... John Henry Newman
 
 

         Logic may be viewed, perhaps, as a machine which is designed, at best, to be such that when we feed into it certain data and turn the logic crank, we inevitably get certain conclusions out the other end. Logic is designed to give inevitably true results starting from known true -- or assumed-to-be-true -- premises. Logic is a wonderful tool when we want only logical conclusions. We should not reject such a machine merely because it is not equipped to handle all of reality. The scientist who commits himself to use a logic machine is doing wisely, qua scientist, for use on data of science. But if he feeds into that machine convictions that there is not God, or ignores God because He is not in his corpus of data, and then draws from his logic the conclusion that God does not exist, his conclusion is irrelevant. Logic is a tool; it should not be made into a religion.
         ... Kenneth L. Pike, With Heart and Mind
 
 

         The Holy Scriptures are our letters from home.
         ... St. Augustine

         The disorder of secularism is perhaps nowhere more apparent in our contemporary Church than in the extent to which we have permitted the order of the world to creep into the order of the Church... That it should carry out its mission to the men in the middle classes of capitalist society is doubtless a part of the Church's order; but that the mission should result in the formation of a middle-class church which defends the secular outlook and interests of that class is an evident corruption.
         ... H. Richard Niebuhr
 
 

         If God bores you, tell Him that He bores you, that you prefer the vilest amusements to His presence, that you only feel at your ease when you are far from Him.
         ... François Fénelon
 
 

         This making of your peace with God is not, and never can be, a mere matter of emotional surrender, however honest and sincere. It must be an act of the whole man, feeling, thinking, and doing, in every department of his life, in obedience to a great governing and controlling principle. It must be the response of the whole man to his whole world. God must be at least as big as the world if He is to be God at all. Religion applies either to everything or to nothing, and no department of life can be left outside of God. Whatever appears to be beyond His control must, to the religious man, become either a problem to serve or an obstacle to be overcome, and whatever is essentially opposed to Him must become an evil to be destroyed. The soul that has really made its peace with God simply cannot tolerate anything or anybody as being permanently outside of Him.
         ... G. A. Studdert Kennedy, The Wicket Gate
 
 

Lord, it belongs not to my care,
         Whether I die or live;
To love and serve Thee is my share,
         And this Thy grace must give.

 If life be long I will be glad,
         That I may long obey;
If short--yet why should I be sad
         To soar to endless day?

 Christ leads me through no darker rooms
         Than He went through before;
He that unto God's kingdom comes,
         Must enter by this door.

 Come, Lord, when grace has made me meet
         Thy blessed face to see;
For if Thy work on earth be sweet,
         What will Thy glory be!

 Then shall I end my sad complaints,
         And weary, sinful days;
And join with the triumphant saints,
         To sing Jehovah's praise.

 My knowledge of that life is small,
         The eye of faith is dim;
But 'tis enough that Christ knows all,
         And I shall be with him.
 

         ... Richard Baxter
 
 

         Christianity is a religion which concerns us as we are here and now, creatures of body and soul. We do not "follow the footsteps of his most holy life" by the exercise of a trained religious imagination, but by treading the firm, rough earth, up hill and down dale.
         ... Evelyn Underhill
 
 

         If indeed there had been anything better and more profitable to the health of men than to suffer, Christ would surely have shown it by word and example.
         ... Thomas à Kempis
 
 

         Now the great thing is this: we are consecrated and dedicated to God in order that we may thereafter think, speak, meditate, and do, nothing except to his glory. For a sacred thing may not be applied to profane uses without marked injury to him.
         ... John Calvin
 
 

         To thee, O God, we turn for peace; but grant us, too, the blessed assurance that nothing shall deprive us of that peace, neither ourselves, nor our foolish, earthly desires, nor my wild longings, nor the anxious cravings of my heart.
         ... Søren Kierkegaard
 
 

         From time immemorial men have quenched their thirst with water without knowing anything about its chemical constituents. In like manner we do not need to be instructed in all the mysteries of doctrine, but we do need to receive the Living Water which Jesus Christ will give us and which alone can satisfy our souls.
         ... Sadhu Sundar Singh

         God, in a man who is made partaker of His nature, desireth and taketh no revenge for all the wrong that is or can be done unto Him. This we see in Christ when He saith: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
         ... Theologia Germanica

         Alas! day by day we ask that His Will may be done, and yet, when it comes to the doing, we find it so hard! We offer ourselves so often to God -- we continually say, "Lord, I am Thine, I give Thee my heart," and when He accepts it, we are such cowards. How dare we call ourselves His, if we cannot shape our own wills to His?
         ... François de Sales
 
 

         Irresponsible spending is the scandal of Christian America, in the face of the world's need. The American standard of living has risen to unprecedented heights, although a large portion of the world exists on a sub-human level. Philanthropy, as we practice it, is not enough --- although the word philanthropy actually means brotherhood. Our stewardship of God's goods requires that we administer in God's name -- that is, with full awareness that the world is His and that His love is directed toward us no more fully than toward every man.
         ... Rachel Henderlite, A Call to Faith
 
 

         Man is challenged to participate in the sufferings of God at the hands of a godless world. He must therefore plunge himself into the life of a godless world, without attempting to gloss over its ungodliness with a veneer of religion or trying to transfigure it. He must live a 'worldly' life and so participate in the suffering of God. He may live a worldly life as one emancipated from all false religions and obligations. To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way, to cultivate some particular form of asceticism (as a sinner, a penitent, or a saint), but to be a man. It is not some religious act which makes a Christian what he is, but participation in the suffering of God in the life of the world.
         ... Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
 
 

         It takes a determined effort of the mind to break free from the error of making books an end in themselves. The worst thing a book can do for a Christian is to leave him with the impression that he has received from it anything really good; the best it can do is to point the way to the Good he is seeking. The function of a good book is to stand like a signpost directing the reader toward the Truth and the Life. That book serves best which early makes itself unnecessary, just as a signpost serves best after it is forgotten, after the traveler has arrived safely at his desired haven. The work of a good book is to incite the reader to moral action, to turn his eves toward God and urge him forward. Beyond that it cannot go.
         ... A. W. Tozer, The Divine Conquest
 
 

         To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.
         ... Thomas Aquinas
 
 

         Enough has... been said to show that the impoverished secularized versions of Christianity which are being urged upon us for our acceptance today rest not upon a serious application of the methods of scientific scholarship nor upon a serious intuitive appreciation of the Gospels as a whole in their natural context, but upon a radical distaste for the supernatural.
         ... E. L. Mascall, The Secularization of Christianity
 
 

         God gave us faculties for our use; each of them will receive its proper reward. Then do not let us try to charm them to sleep, but permit them to do their work until divinely called to something higher.
         ... Teresa of Avila
 
 

         Knowledge of God can be fully given to man only in a Person, never in a doctrine. Faith is not the holding of correct doctrine, but personal fellowship with the living God.
         ... William Temple
 
 

         You cannot escape Christ, do what You will. You reject His divinity, but, so doing, you have not evaded Him. If He is a man just like us, then obviously you must be a man like Him.
         ... A. J. Gossip
 
 

         It is no hard matter to adhere to God while you are in the enjoyment of His comforts and consolations; but if you would prove your fidelity to Him, you must be willing to follow Him through the paths of dryness and desertion. The truth of a friend is not known while he is receiving favours and benefits from us; but if he remain faithful to us when we treat him with coldness and neglect, it will be a proof of the sincerity of his attachment.
         ... William Backhouse and James Jansen, A Guide to True Peace

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