Theologians From England

"Mourning after an absent God is an evidence of a love as strong, as rejoicing in a present one."

"Nothing satisfies God but the voluntary sacrifice of love. The pain of Christ gave God no pleasure — only the love that was tested by pain — the love of perfect obedience."

"This is the true liberty of Christ, when a free man binds himself in love to duty. Not in shrinking from our distasteful occupations, but in fulfilling them, do we realize our high origin."

"My Christian brethren, if the crowd of difficulties which stand between your souls and God succeed in keeping you away, all is lost. Right into the Presence you must force your way, with no concealment, baring the soul with all its ailments before Him, asking, not the arrest of the consequences of sin, but the cleansing of the conscience " from dead works to serve the living God," so that if you must suffer, you will suffer as a forgiven man."

"I will tell you what to hate. Hate hypocrisy, hate cant, hate indolence, oppression, injustice; hate Pharisaism; hate them as Christ hated them — with a deep, living, godlike hatred."

"And now because you are His child, live as a child of God; be redeemed from the life of evil, which is false to your nature, into the life of goodness, which is the truth of your being. Scorn all that is mean; hate all that is false; struggle with all that is impure Live the simple, lofty life which befits an heir of immortality."

"There are few signs in a soul's state more alarming than that of religious indifference, that is, the spirit of thinking all religions equally true— the real meaning of which is, that all religions are equally false."

"This is the secret of Christ's kingship— "He became obedient — wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him." And this is the secret of all obedience and all command. Obedience to a law above you subjugates minds to you who never would have yielded to mere will."

"There is a grand fearlessness in faith. He who in his heart of hearts reverences the good, the true, the holy — that is, reverences God — does not tremble at the apparent success of attacks upon the outworks of faith. They may shake those who rest on those outworks — they do not move him whose soul reposes on the truth itself. He needs no prop or crutches to support his faith. Founded on a Rock, Faith can afford to gaze undismayed at the approaches of Infidelity."

"Child of God, if you would have your thought of God something beyond a cold feeling of His presence, let faith appropriate Christ."

"There is a power in the soul, quite separate from the intellect, which sweeps away or recognizes the marvelous, by which God is felt. Faith stands serenely far above the reach of the atheism of science. It does not rest on the wonderful, but on the eternal wisdom and goodness of God. The revelation of the Son was to proclaim a Father, not a mystery. No science can sweep away the everlasting love which the heart feds, and which the intellect does not even pretend to judge or recognize."

"You cannot undo your acts. If you have depraved another's will, and injured another's soul, it may be in the grace of God that hereafter you will be personally accepted, and the consequence of your guilt inwardly done away; but your penitence cannot undo the evil you have done. The forgiveness of God — the blood of Christ itself — does not undo the past."

"Sow the seeds of life — humbleness, pure-heartedness, love; and in the long eternity which lies before the soul, every minutest grain will come up again with an increase of thirty, sixty, or a hundred fold."

"By experience; by a sense of human frailty; by a perception of "the soul of goodness in things evil;" by a cheerful trust in human nature; by a strong sense of God's love; by long and disciplined realization of the atoning love of Christ; only thus can we get a free, manly, large, princely spirit of forgiveness."

"This world is given as a prize for the men in earnest; and that which is true of this world is truer still of the world to come."

"Every natural longing has its natural satisfaction. If we thirst, God has created liquid to gratify thirst. If we are susceptible of attachment, there are beings to gratify that love. If we thirst for life and love eternal, it is likely there are an eternal life and an eternal love to satisfy that craving."

"You reap what you sow — not something else, but that. An act of love makes the soul more loving. A deed of humbleness deepens humbleness. The thing reaped is the very thing sown, multiplied a hundred fold. You have sown a seed of life, you reap life everlasting."

"Read a work on the "Evidences of Christianity," and it may become highly probable that Christianity, etc., are true. This is an opinion. Feel God. Do His will, till the Absolute Imperative within you speaks as with a living voice, " Thou shalt, and thou shalt not;" and then you do not think, you know that there is a God."

"However dreary we may have felt life to be here, yet when that hour comes — the winding up of all things, the last grand rush of darkness on our spirits, the hour of that awful sudden wrench from all we have ever known or loved, the long farewell to sun, moon, stars, and light — brother man, I ask you this day, and I ask myself humbly and fearfully, "What will then be finished? When it is finished, what will it be? Will it be the butterfly existence of pleasure, the mere life of science, a life of uninterrupted sin and self-gratification, or will it be, 'Father, I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do?'""

"A consistent Christian may not have rapture; he has that which is much better than rapture — calmness — God's serene and perpetual presence."

"Life, like war, is a series of mistakes; and he is not the best Christian nor the best general who makes the fewest false steps. Poor mediocrity may secure that; but he is the best who wins the most splendid victories by the retrieval of mistakes. Forget mistakes; organize victory out of mistakes."

"He who lives to God rests in his Redeemer's love, and is trying to get rid of his old nature — to him every sorrow, every bereavement, every pain, will come charged with blessings, and death itself will be no longer the " king of terrors," but the messenger of grace."

"There is a mighty gulf between those who love and those who do not love God To the one class we owe civility, courtesy, kindness, even tenderness. It is only those who love the Lord who should find in our hearts a home."

"The Christian life is not knowing or hearing, but doing."

"Life passes; work is permanent. It is all going — fleeting and withering. Youth goes. Mind decays. That which is done remains. Through ages, through eternity, what you have done for God, that, and only that, you are. Deeds never die."

"Every day in this world has its work; and every day as it rises out of eternity keeps putting to each of us this question afresh, "What will you do before to-day has sunk into eternity and nothingness again? " And now what have we to say with respect to this strange, solemn thing — Time? That men do with it through life just what the apostles did for one precious and irreparable hour in the garden of Gethsemane — they go to sleep."

"Now see what a Christian is, drawn by the hand of Christ. He is a man on whose clear and open brow God has set the stamp of truth; one whose very eye beams bright with honor; in whose very look and bearing you may see freedom, manliness, veracity; a brave man — a noble man — frank, generous, true, with, it may be, many faults; whose freedom may take the form of impetuosity or rashness, but the form of meanness never."

"Brethren, are you in earnest? If so, though your faith be weak, and your struggles unsatisfactory, you may begin the hymn of triumph now, for victory is pledged. Thanks be to God, which " — not shall give, but "giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.""

"God's truth is too sacred to be expounded to superficial worldliness in its transient fit of earnestness."

"It is more true to say that our opinions depend upon our lives and habits than to say that our lives depend upon our opinions, which is only now and then true."

"Christ's miracles were vivid manifestations to the senses that He is the Saviour of the body — and now as then the issues of life and death are in His hands — that our daily existence is a perpetual miracle. The extraordinary was simply a manifestation of God's power in the ordinary."

"My Saviour! fill up the blurred and blotted sketch which my clumsy hand has drawn of a Divine life, with the fullness of Thy perfect picture. I feel the beauty I cannot realize; robe me in Thine unutterable purity."

"It was necessary for the Son to disappear as an outward authority, in order that He might reappear as an inward principle of life. Our salvation is no longer God manifested in a Christ without us, but as a " Christ within us, the hope of glory.""

"If we knew all our need, what a large want book we should require! How comforting to know that Jesus has a supply book which exactly meets our want book. We want the vision of a calmer and simpler beauty, to tranquillize us in the midst of artificial tastes — we want the draught of a pure spring to cool the flame of our excited life; we want, in other words, the spirit of the life of Christ, simple, natural, with power to soothe and calm the feelings which it rouses; the fullness of the spirit which can never intoxicate."

"The mistake we make is to look for a source of comfort in ourselves: self-contemplation, instead of gazing upon God. In other words, we look for comfort precisely where comfort never can be."

"He is not affected by our mutability; our changes do not alter Him. When we are restless, He remains serene and calm; when we are low, selfish, mean or dispirited, He is still the unalterable I AM, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. What God is in Himself, not what we may chance to feel Him in this or that moment to be, that is our hope. My soul, "hope thou in God.""

"He in whose heart the law was, and who alone of all mankind was content to do it, His sacrifice alone can be the sacrifice all-sufficient in the Father's sight as the proper sacrifice of humanity; He who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, He alone can give the Spirit which enables us to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. He is the only High-Priest of the universe."

"There is not one judgment day, surely, but a thousand! Every time we confront beauty, truth, goodness or love, our response to them judges us."

"Death, we are told, should be left to God. We do not leave birth to God. We space births. We prevent births. We arrange births. Man should learn to become the lord of death as well as the master of birth."

"Hell may last as long as sinful humanity lasts, but that does not mean that any individual will remain in it all that time. The time of purging can only continue until purification is reached. And a God driven to employ an endless Hell would be a God turned fiend himself, defeated in his original purpose."

"Faith in God includes faith in those who help God."

". . . I believe that the annihilation of even one soul spells a defeat of God’s purposes, a denial of Christ’s teaching and a closure of heaven against those who love the lost soul."

"Death itself seems not to make a great difference. Certainly man’s eternal destiny is not determined by the act—often the accident—of dying. Spiritually, and apparently mentally, he goes on where he left off. . ."

"I know we can go too far and try to whitewash what is plain sin; to seek to excuse really bad behavior and to account for it in terms of infantile environment, traumatic experiences, psychological complexes and the like. But I regard it as a sign of progress that we are at last doubting the value of the cane and tawse in the schoolroom and the birch and the hangman’s rope in the jails."

"Behavior that was innocent and amoral on the animal level of man’s development became immoral as man moved upward on his evolutionary path, and, assisted by prophets, seers and saints, higher and higher moral peaks were discerned. When we come to Jesus, the moral demand made upon man by his new insights was impossible to reach were it not that he offered power to become and claimed himself to be the Way as well as the Goal."

"I believe that all men, whatever their religion or lack of it, pass on into another phase of being, to another class in God’s school."

"He revealed what God must be like and what man may be like, and he pledged himself to stand by his little brothers until they too achieved God’s age-long purpose on this minor planet; until all the sons of men realized their possibilities and became the sons of God."

"No words used in the Gospels can legitimately be twisted to mean unending punishment, and indeed, such an expression is self-contradictory. The main motive of punishment surely is to reform the sufferer; in school, to make a better scholar; in the State, to make a better citizen. If the punishment goes on forever when does the sufferer benefit by the punishment or use the lesson he has learned so painfully? If Hell were endless it would be valueless."

"Some laymen feel that, out of loyalty, they ought to cling to ancient ways of expressing the Christian faith and that to doubt is to sin. But doubt is not the enemy of faith. It is the growing edge of faith. . ."

"Let us never imagine that faith can ever be furthered by suppressing doubt, let alone by suppressing evidence. All truth is one, and religion must be as eager as science to know the truth as far as man can perceive it. If something we have treasured as truth is really contradicted by unanswerable evidence, then in the name of the God of truth we must part with it however venerable it may be. Let us never suppose that we can take over faith from our parents without examination, or believe anything merely because another says it is true. But let us not be content with a static agnosticism which never rouses itself to make inquiry. Let us examine the evidence and then in complete loyalty to its trend make a leap both of intellect and will, and, committing ourselves, acting as if all were established, try out in life the faith that carries us on wings after the hard road of fact and reason stops."