If there had anywhere appeared in space
Another place of refuge where to flee,
Our hearts had taken refuge from that place,
And not with Thee.
For we against creation's bars had beat
Like prisoned eagles, through great worlds had sought
Though but a foot of ground to plant our feet,
Where Thou wert not.
And only when we found in earth and air,
In heaven or hell, that such might nowhere be
That we could not flee from Thee anywhere,
We fled to Thee.
... Richard Chevenix Trench
I bind my heart, this tide, to the Galilean's side,
To the wounds of Calvary, to the Christ who died for me.
I bind my soul this day to the brother far away
And the brother near at hand, in this town and in this land.
I bind my heart in thrall to God, the Lord of all.--
To God, the poor man's friend, and the Christ whom He did send.
I bind myself to peace, to make strife and envy cease.
God, knit Thou sure the cord of my thralldom to my Lord!
... Lauchlan MacLean Watt
So long as we judge ourselves by human comparisons, there is plenty of room for self-satisfaction, and self-satisfaction kills faith, for faith is born of the sense of need. But when we compare ourselves with Jesus Christ, and through Him, with God, we are humbled to the dust, and then faith is born, for there is nothing left to do but to trust to the mercy of God.
... William Barclay, The Gospel of John (Vol.1)
Here [in Matthew 23] is an interpretation of Israel's history according to which God's people have always been disobedient and rebellious: their alienation from God, it is clearly implied, is to reach its climax in the murder of the Messiah himself.
... Anthony T. Hanson
Commemoration of Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1012
The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.
... George Macdonald
Perhaps we feel that we do not see much to encourage us. "I do not envy those who have to fight the battle of Christianity in the twentieth century," wrote Marcus Dods. "Yes, perhaps I do; but it will be a stiff fight." Of course, he did, and anybody with his valiant spirit would. There was a day when our Lord passed through cheering streets wildly enthusiastic; and another day when He watched the crowds deserting Him, till even the disciples themselves seemed to be withering, and He looked at them sadly. "Will you also go away?" He said. And Peter strode across the sudden empty spaces widening around Him, and put his back to Christ's. "No", he cried; "there are two of us, at least", and faced the world, Christ's poor minority of one. I would rather have been Peter than one of the shouting mob. And today, perhaps, we may get our chance of that.
... A. J. Gossip, From the Edge of the Crowd
Feast of Anselm, Abbot of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1109
"It is finished." It is hard for us to know the intonation with which these words of the dying Christ were spoken. If they came as the sufferer's sigh of relief, they must also have been the worker's glad cry of achievement. Everything had been done that could be, man had been offered a sight of God as He really was. For those of us who believe that, in seeing Jesus, we see God, the Cross is not a coarse framework of blood-stained wood, but the most precious emblem of man's dearest hopes; it is the great pledge which we sorely need, that love is stronger than hate, grace than sin, life than death.
... H. R. L. Sheppard, Two Days Before
All the references to the empty tomb come in the Gospels, which were written for Christians who wanted to know the facts. In the public preaching, to those who were not yet convinced, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, there was an insistent emphasis on the resurrection, but not a single reference to the tomb. For this I can see only one explanation. There was no point in speaking of the empty tomb, for everyone -- friend and foe alike -- knew that it was empty. The only points worth arguing about were why it was empty, and what its emptiness proved.
... J. N. D. Anderson, Christianity: the Witness of History
Feast of George, Martyr, Patron of England, c.304
Commemoration of Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1988
I greet Thy sepulchre, salute Thy grave,
That blest enclosure, where the angels gave
The first glad tidings of Thy early light,
And resurrection from the earth and night.
I see that morning in Thy convert's tears,
Fresh as the dew, which but this downing wears.
I smell her spices; and her ointment yields
As rich a scent as the now primrosed fields:
The Day-star smiles, and light, with Thee deceased,
Now shines in all the chambers of the East.
... Henry Vaughan
Commemoration of Mellitus, First Bishop of London, 624
The [Christian] "doctrines" are translations into our concepts and ideas
of that which God has already expressed in language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.
... C. S. Lewis, letter
Feast of Mark the Evangelist
There are, of course, interesting questions that can be asked about the nature of the transformation which our Lord's body underwent in his resurrection, and if we know anything about physics and biology we are quite likely to ask them. But, since we are concerned with an occurrence which is by hypothesis unique in certain relevant aspects, we are most unlikely to be able to give confident answers to them. [Paul M.] van Buren's remarks about biology and the twentieth century are nothing more than rhetoric or, at best, are simply empirical statements about his own psychology. The first century knew as well as the twentieth that dead bodies do not naturally come to life again, and no amount of twentieth-century knowledge about natural processes can tell us what may happen by supernatural means.
... E. L. Mascall, The Secularization of Christianity
It is a great mistake, and of very pernicious consequence to the souls of men, to imagine that the gospel is all promises on God's part, and that our part is only to believe them and to rely upon God for the performance of them, and to be very confident that He will make them good, though we do nothing else but only believe that He will do so. That the Christian religion is only a declaration of God's goodwill to us, without any expectation of duty from us -- this is an error which one could hardly think could ever enter into any who have the liberty to read the Bible and attend to what they read and find there. The three great promises of the gospel are all very expressly contained in our Saviour's first sermon upon the mount. There we find the promise of blessedness often repeated but never absolutely made, but upon certain conditions, plainly required on our part, as repentance, righteousness, humility, mercy, peaceableness, meekness, patience. Forgiveness of sins is likewise promised, but only to those who make a penitent acknowledgement of them and ask forgiveness for them., and are ready to grant that forgiveness to others which they beg of God for themselves. The gift of God's Holy Spirit is likewise promised, but it is upon condition of our earnest and importunate prayer to God. The gospel is everywhere full of precepts enjoining duty and obedience upon our part, as well as of promises on God's part, assuring blessings to us -- nay, full of terrible threatenings also if we disobey the precepts of the gospel.
... John Tillotson
Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood's slow loss,
And yet not weep?
Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;
Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky:
A horror of great darkness at broad noon
I only I.
Yet give not o'er
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.
... Christina Rossetti
Commemoration of Peter Chanel, Religious,
Missionary in the South Pacific, Martyr, 1841
The Gospel used to be presented as an appeal to believe in the Saviour who "did it all for me long ago", and then retired to a remote heaven where He receives the homage of believers till He comes again to inaugurate the Millennium. The mind of our generation, having little comprehension or taste for such a message, is usually content to try to discover "the Jesus of history", conceived as a human example and teacher of a distant past. Meanwhile, there exists always alongside all forms of religious belief the great tradition of mystical experience. The mystic knows that, whatever be the truth about an historic act or person, there is a Spirit dwelling in man. In our time, even natural science abates its arrogant denials and admits the possibility of such immanence... The weak point of mysticism, as seen at least by a matter-of-fact person, is that it is apt to be so nebulous ethically. What the Immanent is, those who claim most traffic with It can often least tell us. Is It a power making for righteousness, or is It a higher synthesis of good and evil? Or is It not a moral -- that is to say, not a personal Being at all?... The raising of these questions is not intended to throw any doubt upon the validity of mystical experience as such; but we have a right to ask what content is given in the experience. Paul was a mystic, but all his mystical experience had a personal object. It was Jesus Christ, a real, living person --historic, yet not of the past alone; divine, yet not alien from humanity.
... C. Harold Dodd, The Meaning of Paul for Today
You, O eternal Trinity, are a deep sea, into which the more I enter the more I find, and the more I find the more I seek. The soul cannot be satiated in your abyss, for she continually hungers after you, the eternal Trinity, desiring to see you with the light of your light. As the hart desires the springs of living water, so my soul desires to leave the prison of this dark body and see you in truth.
... Catherine of Siena
Commemoration of Pandita Mary Ramabai, Translator of the Scriptures, 1922
If ever I reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there: first, to meet some I had not thought to see there; second, to miss some I had expected to see there; and third -- the greatest wonder of all -- to find myself there.
... John Newton
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.
