If faith is the gaze of the heart at God, and if this gaze is but the raising of the inward eyes to meet the all-seeing eyes of God, then it follows that it is one of the easiest things possible to do.
         ... A. W. Tozer
 
 

         This insensibility of ours is a bad symptom. For one thing, it implies that we have no spiritual ambition, else we should not be satisfied with such poor lives; that we cannot have thought out the fact of Jesus Christ, and how immeasurably He has raised the standard. Will you hang your wretched daubs beside the works of Titian and Michelangelo and not be shamed by the enormous contrast -- stand back and say, with a satisfied smirk, "That is pretty good, you know!"? And can you live face to face with Jesus Christ, and be content with what you are?
         ... A. J. Gossip, From the Edge of the Crowd
 
 

         There is a curious betrayal of the popular estimate of this world and the world to come, in the honour paid to those who cast away life in battle, or sap it slowly in the pursuit of wealth or honours, and the contempt expressed for those who compromise life on behalf of souls, for which Christ died. Whenever, by exertion in any unselfish cause, health is broken or fortune impaired, or influential friends estranged, the follower of Christ is called an enthusiast, a fanatic, or even more plainly a man of unsound mind. He may be comforted by remembering that Jesus was said to be beside Himself when teaching and healing left Him not leisure even to eat.
         ... G. A. Chadwick
 
 

         To me there is a much more frightening ignorance in our modern world than the "ignorance of the heathen". I am referring to the almost total ignorance of the content and implication of the Christian Faith shown by many "clever" people today. Frankly, I find it horrifying to discover that men who are experts in their own line -- in astronomy, genetics, or nuclear physics, for example -- have no adult knowledge of what the Church of Christ stands for, and a complete blank ignorance of what the Church is achieving today. It is the more horrifying because people who rightly respect the expert for his knowledge in his own field have no idea that he has not carefully examined and reluctantly discarded Christianity; but in all probability he has never studied it at all!
         ... J. B. Phillips, The Church Under the Cross
 
 

O God of earth and altar,
         Bow down and hear our cry;
Our earthly rulers falter,
         Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
         The swords of scorn divide;
Take not Thy thunder from us,
         But take away our pride.

 From all that terror teaches,
         From lies of tongue and pen;
From all the easy speeches
         That comfort cruel men;
From sale and profanation
         Of honor and the sword;
From sleep and from damnation,
         Deliver us, good Lord!

 Tie in a living tether
         The prince and priest and thrall;
Bind all our lives together,
         Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation
         Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,
         A single sword to Thee.
         ... Gilbert K. Chesterton [1906]

         He that is alive may know that he was born, though he know neither the place where nor the time when he was so; and so may he that is spiritually alive, and hath ground of evidence that he is so, that he was born again, though he know neither when, nor where, nor how. And this case is usual in persons of quiet natural tempers, who have had the advantage of education under means of light and grace. God ofttimes, in such persons, begins and carries on the work of his grace insensibly, so that they come to good growth and maturity before they know that they are alive.
         ... John Owen
 
 

         It is a great mystery of divine love, that not even in Christ was exception made of the death of the body; and although He was the Lord of nature, He refused not the law of the flesh which He had taken upon Him. It is necessary for me to die; for Him it was not necessary.
         ... St. Ambrose
 
 

         Nothing is so easy to men of goodwill as goodwill itself, and this is all that God requires. Every act of goodwill permanently and sensibly increases goodwill. Trifling acts of goodwill are often more efficacious in this way than great ones. A flower given in kindness and at the right time profits more, both to giver and receiver, than some vast material benefit in which the goodwill is hidden by the magnitude of the act. Some little, sensible, individual touch from the hand of our Lord may convert the heart more than the contemplation of His death for us.
         ... Coventry Patmore, The Rod, the Root, and the Flower
 
 

         There is no condition wherein a man does not depend on many others, wherein he is not more obliged to follow their fancies than his own. All the commerce of life is a perpetual constraint to the laws of good breeding, and the necessity of humoring others; and besides, our own passions are the worst tyrants: if you obey them but by halves, a perpetual strife and contest exists within; and if you entirely give up yourself to them, it is horrid to think to what extremities they will lead. May God preserve us from that fatal slavery, which the mad presumption of man calls liberty! Liberty is to be found only in Him.
         ... François Fénélon
 
 

         They only renounce the world as they ought, who live in the midst of it without worldly tempers, who comply with their share in the offices of human life without complying with the spirit that reigneth in the world.
         ... William Law
 
 

         This power of being outwardly genial and inwardly austere, which is the real Christian temper, depends entirely upon the time set apart for personal religion. It is always achieved if courageously and faithfully sought; and there are no heights of love and holiness to which it cannot lead.
         ... Evelyn Underhill
 
 

         The Church is not a tribe for the improvement in holiness of people who think it would be pleasant to be holy, a means to the integration of character for those who cannot bear their conflicts. It is a statement of the divine intention for humanity.
         ... Harold Loukes
 
 

         It is by affliction chiefly that the heart of man is purified, and that the thoughts are fixed on a better state. Prosperity has power to intoxicate the imagination, to fix the mind upon the present scene, to produce confidence and elation, and to make him who enjoys affluence and honors forget the hand by which they were bestowed. It is seldom that we are otherwise than by affliction awakened to a sense of our imbecility, or taught to know how little all our acquisitions can conduce to safety or quiet, and how justly we may inscribe to the superintendence of a higher power those blessings which in the wantonness of success we considered as the attainments of our policy and courage.
         ... Samuel Johnson
 
 

         No knowledge, therefore, and no conceptions in this mortal life, can serve as proximate means of this high union of the love of God. All that the understanding can comprehend; all that the will may be satisfied with; and all that the imagination may conceive; is most unlike unto God, and most disproportionate to Him.
         ... John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel

         If we are to accept the teaching of Jesus at all, then the only test of the reality of a man's religion is his attitude to his fellow men. The only possible proof that a man loves God is the demonstrated fact that he loves his fellow men.
         ... William Barclay
 
 

         It is wrong to suppose that for Paul faith is a meritorious act on man's part, which wins salvation, or even, in a more modern way of speech, a creative moral principle in itself. Paul does not, in fact, speak (when he is using the language strictly) of "justification by faith", but of "justification by grace through faith," or "on the grounds of faith." This is not mere verbal subtlety. It means that the "righteousness of God" becomes ours, not by the assertion of the individual will as such, but by the willingness to let God work.
         ... C. Harold Dodd, The Meaning of Paul for Today
 
 

         The less you feel and the more firmly you believe, the more praiseworthy is your faith and the more it will be esteemed and appreciated; for real faith is much more than a mere opinion of man. In it we have true knowledge: in truth, we lack nothing save true faith.
         ... Meister Eckhart
 
 

         One of the heritages from history which prevents us so often from seeing the Church, with all its greatness and misery, in its true light, is the distinction between the "empirical" and the "ideal" Church. It is to such a degree an element of our thinking that we hardly notice it. It has been since the first centuries a standard view, a means to give account of the, indeed, often disappointing state and quality of Christian faith and practice in the Church as it appeared. As such it is understandable; but nevertheless it proceeds more from the counsels of worldly wisdom than from the faith-as-response by which the Church should live, and the call to incessant renewal under which the Church stands as "God's own household", "growing into a holy temple in the Lord". However stubborn and refractory the stuff of ordinary reality may be -- and it is -- the Church, though with clear realism seeing this reality, can never permit itself to put the divine indicatives and imperatives, which are her peculiar directives and points of orientation, behind considerations which are properly speaking worldly in character.
         ... Hendrik Kraemer, A Theology of the Laity
 
 

         Christ is the Word of God. It is not in certain texts written in the New Testament, valuable as they are; it is not in certain words which Jesus spoke, vast as is their preciousness; it is in the Word, which Jesus is, that the great manifestation of God is made.
         ... Phillips Brooks
 
 

         The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us.
         ... John Henry Newman
 
 

         Once you make up your mind never to stand waiting and hesitating when your conscience tells you what you ought to do, and you have got the key to every blessing that a sinner can reasonably hope for.
         ... John Keble
 
 

         [The entire Old Testament] ground-plan is the whole scheme of Messianic prophecy, from the germinal revelation in Genesis concerning the suffering, yet triumphant Seed of the Woman to the coming to His Temple of the long-absent "Angel of the Covenant" in Malachi. That hope alone explains the Book, giving meaning and consistency to its story. Was it a chimera, an hallucination? According to the prophecy of Micah, the messianic Shepherd of Israel had to be born in Bethlehem. It is unthinkable that an heir to the throne of David could be born in Bethlehem now, and be also able to prove his legitimacy by documentary evidence. The event must clearly have taken place already, or Micah is a false prophet, a raiser of false hopes, along with the other writers in the Old Testament.
         ... Max I. Reich
 
 

         The Revelation of God is not a book or a doctrine, but a living Person.
         ... Emil Brunner
 
 

High o'er the lonely hills black turns to gray,
Bird-song the valley fills, mists fold away
Gray wakes to green again,
Beauty is seen again,
         Gold and serene again dawneth the day.

 So, o'er the hills of life, stormy, forlorn,
Out of the cloud and strife sunrise is born;
Swift grows the light for us,
Ended is night for us,
         Soundless and bright for us breaketh God's morn.

 Hear we no beat of drums, fanfare, nor cry,
When Christ the herald comes quietly nigh;
Splendor He makes on earth;
Color awakes on earth;
         Suddenly breaks on earth light from the sky.

 Bid then farewell to sleep: rise up and run!
What though the hill be steep? Strength's in the sun.
Now you shall find at last
Night's left behind at last,
         And for mankind at last, Day has begun!
         ... Jan Struther

He has come! the Christ of God;
Left for us His glad abode,
Stooping from His throne of bliss,
To this darksome wilderness.

 He has come! the Prince of Peace;
Come to bid our sorrows cease;
Come to scatter with His light
All the darkness of our night.

 He, the Mighty King, has come!
Making this poor world His home;
Come to bear our sin's sad load,--
Son of David, Son of God!

 He has come whose name of grace
Speaks deliverance to our race;
Left for us His glad abode,--
Son of Mary, Son of God!

 Unto us a Child is born!
Ne'er has earth beheld a morn,
Among all the morns of time,
Half so glorious in its prime!

 Unto us a Son is given!
He has come from God's own heaven,
Bringing with Him, from above,
Holy peace and holy love.
         ... Horatius Bonar

Joy to the world! the Lord is come!
         Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room,
         And heav'n and nature sing.

 Joy to the earth! the Savior reigns!
         Let men their songs employ,
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains,
         Repeat the sounding joy.

 No more let sins and sorrows grow,
         Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
         Far as the curse is found.

 He rules the world with truth and grace,
         And makes the nations prove
The glories of his righteousness,
         And wonders of his love.
         ... Isaac Watts, Psalm 98 from Psalms of David Imitated

         [Eternal life is] naught else than that blessed regard wherewith Thou never ceasest to behold me, yea, even the secret places of my soul. With Thee, to behold is to give life: It is unceasingly to impart sweetest love of Thee; 'tis to inflame me to love of Thee by love's imparting, and to feed me by inflaming, and by feeding to kindle my yearning, and by kindling to make me drink of the dew of gladness, and by drinking to infuse in me a fountain of life, and by infusing to make it increase and endure.
         ... Nicolas of Cusa, The Vision of God
 
 

         You will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling wilderness. Then he is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation, a rock rising above the storm.
         ... Robert Murray M'Cheyne
 
 

         Owing to the pressure of an ever-increasing number of subjects introduced into the curriculum of a school, it is only too possible for men to be held to be educated and intelligent without ever having seriously tested their intelligence upon, say, the Book of Job, or upon the Epistle of Paul to the Romans. No doubt there are very good excuses for this lack of discipline. Many forward-thinking men will tell you that the Bible is not worth serious attention, that it is simple, trivial, and out-of-date; and so, even though you may hear the Bible read, read it yourselves, or even study it, the tension of your energy may be relaxed -- subtly relaxed. But is quite certain that a widespread relaxation of the tension of Biblical interpretation has disastrous effects. For there is no corruption that threatens a country so surely as the corruption or sentimentalizing of its religion; and there is no corruption of the Christian religion so swift as that which sets in when the Church loses its strict Biblical discipline.
         ... E. C. Hoskyns, We Are the Pharisees
 
 

         The missionary work of the non-professional missionary is essentially to live his daily life in Christ, and therefore with a difference, and to be able to explain, or at least to state, the reason and cause of the difference to men who see it... His preaching is essentially private conversation, and has at the back of it facts, facts of a life which explain and illustrate and enforce his words... It is such missionary work, done consciously and deliberately as missionary, that the world needs today. Everybody, Christian and pagan alike, respects such work; and, when it is so done, men wonder, and inquire into the secret of a life which they instinctively admire and covet for themselves... The spirit which inspires love of others and efforts after their well-being, both in body and soul, they cannot but admire and covet -- unless, indeed, seeing that it would reform their own lives, they dread and hate it, because they do not desire to be reformed. In either case, it works.
         ... Roland Allen, Non-Professional Missionaries
 
 

         Christian men and women, old and young, should study well in the New Testament, for it is of full authority, and open to understanding by simple men, as to the points that are most needful to salvation. Each part of Scripture, both open and dark, teaches meekness and charity; and therefore he that keeps meekness and charity has the true understanding and perfection of all Scripture. Therefore, no simple man of wit should be afraid to study in the text of Scripture. And no cleric should be proud of the true understanding of Scripture, because understanding of Scripture without charity that keeps God's commandments, makes a man deeper damned... and pride and covetousness of clerics is the cause of [the Church's] blindness and heresy, and deprives them of the true understanding of Scripture.
         ... John Wycliffe, The Wicket

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