Inward rest… gives an air of leisure to [Christ’s] crowded life: above all, there is in this Man a secret and a power of dealing with the waste-products of life, the waste of pain, disappointment, enmity, death — turning to divine uses the abuses of man, transforming arid places of pain to fruitfulness, triumphing at last in death, and making a short life of thirty years or so, abruptly cut off, to be a “finished” life. We cannot admire the poise and beauty of this human life, and then ignore the things that made it.
… A. E. Whitham (1879-1938), The Discipline and Culture of the Spiritual Life [1938]
Religion is not ours till we live by it, till it is the Religion of our thoughts, words, and actions, till it goes with us into every place, sits uppermost on every occasion, and forms and governs our hopes and fears, our cares and pleasures.
…William Law (1686-1761) Feast of Monica, Mother of Augustine of Hippo, 387
“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
Jon Krakauer, Into The World, and quoted by Aron Ralston in his book Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Atria Books, a trademark of Simon Schuster, Inc., 2004, p. 73.
“Knowledge is indispensable to Christian life and service,” writes John Stott. “If we do not use the mind which God has given us, we condemn ourselves to spiritual superficiality.”
Every time we say, ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit,’ we mean that we believe that there is a living God able and willing to enter human personality and change it.
… J. B. Phillips (1906-1982), Plain Christianity [1954]
Augustine shows clearly the religious character of sin. Sin for him is not a moral failure; it is not even disobedience. Disobedience is a consequence but not the cause. The cause is: turning away from God, and from God as the highest good, as the love with which God loves Himself, through us. For this reason, since sin has this character — if you say “sins”, it is easily dissolved into moral sins; but sin is first of all basically the power of turning away from God. For this very reason, no moral remedy is possible. Only one remedy is possible: return to God. But this of course is possible only in the power of God, and this power is lost. This is the state of man under the conditions of existence.
…Paul Tillich (1886-1965), A History of Christian Thought [1968]
