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sabbath sacrament sacrifice safety salvation sanctification Satan sceptic science Scripture Scotland secrecy secularism security self-control self denial self esteem selfishness service sex Shakespeare ships significance silence simplicity sin sincerity sixties slander slavery sleep smoking snow socialism society solitude sorrow sovereignty of God speaking specialisation speed spelling spoonerisms sport spring state statistics stewardship strangers. strength study stupidity success suffering suicide superstition swearing sympathy
The sabbath is God's special present to the working man, and one of its chief objects is to prolong his life, and preserve efficient his working tone. The savings bank of human existence is the weekly sabbath. William G. Blaikie
M. Let us now see how far this command has reference to
us.
S. In regard to the ceremony [the resting one day in
seven], I hold that it was abolished, as the reality
existed in Christ.
M. How?
S. Because, by virtue of his death, our old man is
crucified, and we are raised up to newness of life.
M. What of the commandment then remains for us?
S. Not to neglect the holy ordinances which contribute to
the spiritual polity of the Church; especially to frequent
sacred assemblies, to hear the word of God, to celebrate the
sacraments, and engage in the regular prayers, as
enjoined.
M. But does the figure give us nothing more?
S. Yes, indeed. We must give heed to the thing meant by it;
namely, that being engrafted into the body of Christ, and
made his members, we cease from our own works, and so resign
ourselves to the government of God.
Calvin's Catechism for the Church at Geneva. - on the Fourth
Commandment
Sundays, quiet islands on the tossing seas of life. - S.W. Duffield
If anywhere the day is made holy for the mere day's sake -- if anyone set up its observance on a Jewish foundation, then I order you to work on it, to ride on it, to dance on it, to feast on it, to do anything that shall remove this encroachment on Christian liberty.- Luther
Luther, in speaking of the good by itself and the good for its expediency alone, instances the observance of the Christian day of rest, -- a day of repose from manual labour, and of activity in spiritual labour, -- a day of joy and cooperation in the work of Christ's creation. "Keep it holy", says he, "for its use's sake -- both to body and soul! But if anywhere the day is made holy for the mere day's sake, -- if anywhere anyone sets up its observance upon a Jewish foundation, then I order you to work on it, to ride on it, to dance on it, to feast on it -- to do anything that shall reprove this encroachment on the Christian spirit and liberty."... Samuel Tayler Coleridge (1772-1834), Table Talk
Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that
they themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their
neighbors were dead and in Hell.
H. L. Mencken
In Hebrew thought the word 'rest ' has a positive meaning
and ' stands for consummation of a work accomplished and the
joy and satisfaction attendant upon this. Such was its
prototype in God...For mankind, too, a great task awaits to
be accomplished, and at its close beckons a rest of joy and
satisfaction that shall copy the rest of God. Before all
other important things, therefore, the Sabbath is an
expression of the eschatological principle on which the life
of humanity has been constructed...It teaches its lesson
through the rhythmical succession of six days of labour and
one ensuing day of rest in each successive week. Man is
reminded in this way that life is not an aimless existence,
that a goal lies beyond.'
Geoffrey B Wilson, Hebrews, Banner of Truth, 1970, p52,
quoting, G Vos, Biblical Theology, pp156-157.
Division has always been a disease of the church... The Love Feast, which should have been the sign and symbol of perfect unity, has become a thing of divisions and class distinctions. And here there is something which only the newer translations reveal. In the older translations, it is said that to eat and drink at the sacrament without discerning the Lord's body is the way to judgment and not to salvation. But in the best Greek text, the word Lord's is not included. The sin is not to discern the body; that is to say, not to discern that the church is a body, not to be aware of the oneness of the church, not to be aware of the togetherness in which all its members should be joined.... William Barclay (1907-1978), Ethics in a Permissive Society
He was the Word, that spake it:
He took the bread and brake it;
And what that Word did make it,
I do believe and take it.
Dr. John Donne. 1573-1631. Divine Poems. On the Sacrament
There is more in sacramental bread than in common bread. Though the nature is not changed, the use is changed. It does not only nourish the body as it did before, but also it brings a bread with which it nourishes the soul. For as sure as we receive bread, so sure we receive Christ - not only the benefits of Christ, but Christ. Henry Smith
It is in spending oneself that one becomes rich. Sara Bernhardt
To gain that worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else. Bernadette Devlin b 1947
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. Jim Elliot
Unless a life is lived for others, it is not worthwhile. Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world.-- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
Out of this nettle danger we pluck this flower safety -- Shakespeare, Henry IV pt 1
A ship in a harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are for. John A. Shedd
If you play it safe in life, you've decided that you don't want to grow any more. Peter Thomson (1929-____)
You have perhaps waited for years to be freed from some need. For a long, long time you have looked out from the darkness in search of the light, and have had a difficult problem in life that you have not been able to solve in spite of great efforts. And then, when the time was fulfilled and God's hour had come, did not a solution, light, and deliverance come quite unexpectedly, perhaps quite differently than you thought?- Eberhard Arnold, "When the Time Was Fulfilled"
Salvation is free, ... but discipleship will cost you your life.-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I am His by purchase and I am His by conquest; I am His by donation and I am His by election; I am His by covenant and I am His by marriage; I am wholly His; I am peculiarly His; I am universally His; I am eternally His. Once I was a slave but now I am a son; once I was dead but now I am alive; once I was darkness but now I am light in the Lord; once I was a child of wrath, an heir of hell, but now I am an heir of heaven; once I was Satan's bond-servant but now I am God's freeman; once I was under the spirit of bondage but now I am under the Spirit of adoption that seals up to me the remission of my sins, the justification of my person and the salvation of my soul.-- THOMAS BROOKS
No one is safe by his own strength, but he is safe by the grace and mercy of God.... Cyprian (?-258)
The emphasis to-day is being put on the fact that we have to save men; we have not. We have to exalt the Saviour Who saves men, and then make disciples in His Name.- Oswald Chambers
Not a better salvation, but salvation better - Sinclair Ferguson on the experiences of OT & NT believers.
God Himself underwrites your battle and has appointed His own Son 'the Captain of your salvation.'-- William Gurnall
Take heart therefore, O ye saints, and be strong; your cause is good, God himself espouseth your quarrel, who hath appointed you his own Son, General of the field, called 'the Captain of our salvation,' Heb 2:10. - WILLIAM GURNALL
Tis no easy matter to be saved. 'Twas difficult work to Jesus Christ to work redemption for us. 'Tis difficult work to the Spirit to work grace in us, and to carry it on against corruptions, temptations, distractions. - PHILIP HENRY
Let men count it folly or frenzy or whatsoever. We care for no knowledge, no wisdom in the world but this - that man has sinned and God has suffered, that God has been made the sin of man and man is made the righteousness of God. RICHARD HOOKER
Often people think they are lost. They think that nothing in the world can help them. And then God looks and says, "It is time." And all at once everything looks different. Everything comes into a different light, and all at once you see that all is not lost, but won. Remember this, all is not lost in His eyes. "The lowly shall be lifted up, the first shall be last." - Ger Koopman , A Different Light
It is just like someone who is sick, and who believes the doctor who promises his full recovery. In the meantime, he obeys the doctor's orders in the hope of the promised recovery, and abstains from those things which he was told to lay off, so that he may in no way hinder the promised return to health...Now is this sick man well? He is sick in reality - but he is well on account of a sure promise of the doctor, whom he trusts, and who reckons him as already being cured...So he is at one and the same time time both a sinner and righteous. He is a sinner in reality, but righteous by the sure imputation and promise of God that he will continue to deliver him from sin until he has completely cured him. So he is entirely healthy in hope, but a sinner in reality. MARTIN LUTHER, commenting on Romans
Heaven have mercy on us all- Presbyterians and Pagans alike- for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.--Herman Melville,_Moby Dick_ ch 17 "The Ramadan"
We do not keep these commands to earn our salvation. Salvation comes only on the basis of the altar, which represented Christ‚s death in space and time. We must accept salvation with the empty hands of faith. Rather, the commands are the conditional statement in the midst of the unconditional promises. For example, do you as a Christian want to be forgiven existentially by God? Then have a forgiving heart toward other men. That is what Jesus was saying. - Francis Schaeffer
Are you still thirsting? Christ gives the invitation not only to others but to you. He is the fountainhead. He has died and is risen. He offers the only way to eternal life, asking only that you admit your need, raise the empty hands of faith, and accept His gift. What is eternal life? It is meaning in life now as well as living one‚s life forever. Drink deep. Jesus offers a brimming cup.- Francis Schaeffer
To live above
With saints we love,
Yes that will be glory.
To live below
With saints we know,
Well that's a different story.
There is no cruise control on the Christian life - Heard on a NY radio station 24 Oct 04
A saint is someone whose life makes it easier to believe in God. - William Barclay
See that your chief study be about heart, that there God's image may be planted, and his interest advanced, and the interest of the world and flesh subdued, and the love of every sin cast out, and the love of holiness succeed; and that you content not yourselves with seeming to do good in outward acts, when you are bad yourselves, and strangers to the great internal duties. The first and great work of a Christian is about his heart.-- RICHARD BAXTER
God designs that those whom He sanctifies...shall tarry awhile in this present evil world, that their own experience of temptations may teach them how great the deliverance is, which God has wrought for them.--David Brainerd- tract, 3 Februaury 1744
It is easier going out of the way when we are in, than going in when we are out.--John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, Bypath Meadow
From easy choices, weakenings,
Subtle love of softening things,
(Not thus are spirits fortified;
Not this way went the Crucified;)
From all that dims Thy Calvary,
0 Lamb of God, deliver me.Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay,
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire;
Let me not sink to be a clod:
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God!
Amy Carmichael (1867-1951)
It's a blessed thing to die daily. For what is there in this world to be accounted of! The best men according to the flesh, and things, are lighter than vanity. I find this only good, to love the Lord and his poor despised people, to do for them and to be ready to suffer with them....and he that is found worthy of this hath obtained great favour from the Lord; and he that is established in this shall ( being conformed to Christ and the rest of the Body) participate in the glory of a resurrection which will answer all.-- Oliver Cromwell, letter to Sir Thmas Fairfax, 7 March 1646
Indeed the saints in themselves have no excellence as they are in and of themselves.... They are in themselves filthy, vile creatures and see themselves to be so. they have an excellence and a glory in them because they have Christ dwelling in them.... Tis some. thing of God. This holy heavenly spark is put into the soul in con version, and God maintains it there. All the power of hell cannot put it out.... Though it be small ... 'tis a powerful thing. It has influence on the heart to govern that, and brings forth holy fruits in the life, and won't cease to prevail 'til it has consumed all the corruption that is left in the heart and 'til it has turned the whole soul, as it were, into a pure, holy and heavenly flame. JONATHAN EDWARDS
One does not surrender a life in an instant . That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime. -- Jim Elliot
Sheep and swine can both end up in the mire. Yet the essential difference in their two natures is quie visible from the reaction each has to its fallen condition. While sheep do stray and stumble into the mire, they quickly loathe the situation and struggle to get free. They may be dirty, but they desire to be clean. They may be stuck, but they bleat for their shepard to come and save them out of the muck. But swine, in keeping with their nature, wallow in the muck, content to stay there all day. JOHN ENSOR
Sanctify yourself and you will sanctify society. Francis of Assisi
No sweat, no sanctification. Russ Gaippe
Our journey is up-hill, with a dead body upon our backs, the devil doing what he can to pull us down.-- Philip Henry
Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religious hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper, and where he finds only new gradations of anguish and precipices of horror. - Samuel Johnson: Rambler #69
This life therefore is not righteousness but growth in righteousness; not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not what we shall be but we are growing toward it; the process is not yet finished but it is going on; this is not the end but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified. -- MARTIN LUTHER
I am tempted to think that I am now an established Christian,--that I have overcome this or that lust so long,--that I have got into the habit of the opposite grace,--so that there is no fear; I may venture very near the temptation--nearer than other men. This is a lie of Satan. One might as well speak of gunpowder getting by habit of resisting fire, so as not to catch spark. As long as powder is wet, it resists the spark; but when it becomes dry, it is ready to explode at the first touch. As long as the Spirit dwells in my heart, He deadens me to sin, so that, if lawfully called through temptation, I may reckon upon God carrying me through. But when the Spirit leaves me, I am like dry gunpowder. Oh for a sense of this! - ROBERT M M'CHEYNE
Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. -- George Orwell
How can we feel our need of His help, or our dependence on Him, or our debt to Him, or the nature of His gift to us, unless we know ourselves.... This is why many in this age (and in every age) become infidels, heretics, schismatics, disloyal despisers of the Church.... They have never had experience of His power and love, because they have never known their own weakness and need. John Henry Cardinal Newman
I am persuaded that love and humility are the highest attainments in the school of Christ and the brightest evidences that he is indeed our Master. ... John Newton (1725-1807)
A soul may be in as thriving a state when thirsting, seeking and mourning after the Lord as when actually rejoicing in Him; as much in earnest when fighting in the valley as when singing upon the mount. JOHN NEWTON
I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what I hope to be. But still, I am not what I used to be. And by the grace of God, I am what I am. John Newton (1725-1807)
Just as the sinner's despair of any hope from himself is the first prerequisite of a sound conversion, so the loss of all confidence in himself is the first essential in the believer's growth in grace. A.W. PINK
Jesus, like any good fisherman, first catches the fish; then He cleans them.Mark Potter
We must remember throughout our lives that in God's sight there are no little people and no little places. Only one thing is important: to be consecrated persons in God's place for us, at each moment. -- Francis A. Schaeffer, No Little People, Ch. 1
We are set for microwave, but God prefers to marinate. Dutch Sheets, Intercessory Prayer
The life of a Christian should be a meditation how to unloose his affection from inferior things. He will easily die that is dead before in affection.- R. Sibbes--Soul's Conflict
By constantly meditating on the goodness of God and on our great deliverance from that punishment which our sins have deserved, we are brought to feel our vileness and utter unworthiness; and while we continue in this spirit of self-degradation, everything else will go on easily. We shall find ourselves advancing in our course; we shall feel the presence of God; we shall experience His love; we shall live in the enjoyment of His favour and in the hope of His glory... You often feel that your prayers scarcely reach the ceiling; but, oh, get into this humble spirit by considering how good the Lord is, and how evil you all are, and then prayer will mount on wings of faith to heaven. The sigh, the groan of a broken heart, will soon go through the ceiling up to heaven, aye, into the very bosom of God. ... Charles Simeon (1759-1836)
Lord, come away;
Why dost thou stay?
Thy road is ready and thy paths made straight
With longing expectations wait
The consecration of thy beautious feet.
Ride on triumphantly; behold! we lay
Our lusts and proud wills in thy way.
Hosannah! welcome to our hearts: Lord, here
Thou hast a temple too, and full as dear
As that of Sion; and as full of sin --
Nothing but thieves and robbers dwell therein;
Enter and chase them forth, and cleanse the floor,
Crucify them, that they may never more
Profane that holy place
Where thou hast chose to set thy face.
And then if our still tongues shall be
Mute in the praises of thy deity,
The stones out of the temple wall
Shall cry aloud and call
Hosannah! and thy glorious footsteps greet.
... Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667)
Thoughtfulness is the beginning of great sanctity. If you learn this art of being thoughtful, you will become more and more Christ-like, for his heart was meek and he always thought of others. Our vocation, to be beautiful, must be full of thought for others. ... Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997)
When I was young,
I was so gay and mean,
And I drank and chased the girls
Just like young St Augustine.
St Augustine,
He got to be a saint.
So if I get to be one also,
Please, mama, don't you faint
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr --Cat's Cradle, Books of Bokonon ,
Bokonon's 14th Calypso
Sanctification is a supernatural thing; it is divinely infused. We are naturally polluted, and to cleanse, God takes to be his prerogative...Sanctification is a flower of the Spirit's planting. Thomas Watson "The Ten Commandments":
Every one, though born of God in an instant, yet undoubtedly grows by slow degrees.'- John Wesley letter: 27 June 1760
The renewal of our natures is a work of great importance. It is not to be done in a day. We have not only a new house to build up, but an old one to tear down. George Whitefield
Be content with no degree of sanctification. Be always crying out, "Lord, let me know more of myself and of thee." -- George Whitefield ,letter:
Give Satan an inch and he´ll be a ruler.
Kevin Lomax: Who are you?
John Milton: Oh there are so many names.
Kevnin Lomax: Satan?
John Milton: Call me Dad.
Devil's Advocate 1997
The natural response to denials of Satan's existence is to ask, Who then runs his business.-- J.I. PACKER
Do not mock the Gospels and say there is no Satan. Evil
is too real in the world to say that. Do not say the idea of
Satan is dead and gone. Satan never gains so many cohorts,
as when, in his shrewdness, he spreads the rumor that he is
long since dead.
Do not reject the Gospel because it says the Saviour was
tempted. Satan always tempts the pure--the others are
already his. Satan stations more devils on monastery walls
than in dens of iniquity, for the latter offer no
resistance.
Do not say it was absurd that Satan should appear to Our
Lord, for Satan must always come close to the godly and the
strong--the others succumb from a distance. --Fulton John
Sheen (1895-1979) _The Eternal Galilean_ [1936]
Satan watches for those vessels that sail without convoy. -- GEORGE SWINNOCK
A skeptic is one who won't take know for an answer.
Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.
Vitamin C deficiency is apauling
Di-Hydrogen Monoxide is colourless, odourless and fatal
when inhaled.
This chemical, which has a pH even higher than concentrated
sulphuric acid, is being dumped in our rivers and
oceans.
Ban it now!
Heisenberg may have slept here...
The history of science resembles a collection of ghosts remembering that once they too were gods.-- David Berlinsky, theoretical mathematician
A lot of what we call science is actually faith in disguise. I think some people were desperately searching for something other than traditional Christianity, and they have elevated to the level of hard truth some things - notably about Darwin - that have not yet been proven beyond dispute. To believe in the theory of evolution is to me as much of an act of faith as to believe in Adam and Eve. I don't think it's been proven at all. I remember Piltdown Man, and the bones of that 'prehistoric ancestor of mankind' in Africa that turned out to be the bones of a pig. There is a lot of hoax and fraud in the contentions of science. The theory of evolution contains as much hypothesis as any religion. - Patrick Buchanan, Right Now! June 202
Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the heavenly science of Christ. John Calvin
Unfortunately, 19th-century scientists were just as ready
to jump to the conclusion that any guess about nature was an
obvious fact, as were 17th-century sectarians to jump to the
conclusion that any guess about Scripture was the obvious
explanation . . . . and this clumsy collision of two very
impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of
Science and Religion.
G K Chesterton {Saint Thomas Aquinas, Garden City, NY:
Doubleday Image, 1933, p. 88
It is a mortifying truth, and ought to teach the wisest of us humility, that many of the most valuable discoveries have been the result of chance rather than of contemplation, and of accident rather than of design.-- Charles Caleb Colton
Ultimate questions will always lie beyond the scope of empirical science as it is. ~Paul Davies, The Mind of God (1992)
There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination. -- Daniel C. Dennett
Scientists often have a naive faith that if only they could discover enough facts about a problem, these facts would somehow arrange themselves in a compelling and true solution. -- Theodosius Dobzhansky
According to classical aerodynamics, it is impossible for a bumblebee to fly. Doctor Who
Science has sometimes been said to be opposed to faith, and inconsistent with it. But all science, in fact, rests on a basis of faith, for it assumes the permanence and uniformity of natural laws - a thing which can never be demonstrated Tyron Edwards
Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source offeeling, however springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image:science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.--Albert Einstein,_Ideas and Opinions_, p. 46 (1954)
It is surely one of the curious paradoxes of history that science which professionally has little to do with faith, owes its origins to an act of faith that the universe can be rationally interpreted, and that science today is sustained by that assumption.~Loren C.Eiseley, "Darwin's Century: Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It," (1958)
Science is much closer to myth than a scientific philosophy is prepared to admit. It is one of the many forms of thought that have been developed by man, and not necessarily the best. It is conspicuous, noisy, and impudent, but it is inherently superior only for those who have already decided in favour of a certain ideology, or who have accepted it without ever having examined its advantages and its limits. -- Paul Feyerabend, in "Against Method"
I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy. -- Richard Feynmann
Anatomy is destiny-- Sigmund Freud
The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is
comparison of prediction with experience.
Milton Friedman (1912-____) : "Essays in Positive
Economics," 1953.
The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of
faith.
James A. Froude (1818-1894) In "Isaac Asimov's Book of
Science and Nature Quotations," ed. Jason Shulman &
Isaac Asimov, 1988.
There is one particular angle to the stem-cell debate that nobody's addressing: the total silence of the anti-biotech left. For some reason, whenever Monsanto comes out with a genetically enhanced carrot or a faster-growing soybean, some white guy with faux dreadlocks and open-toed shoes is out there screaming about the end of the world. But when the NIH wants to crack open a human embryo so it can grow a new liver or human heart or just a plain old human in a petri dish, there's total silence. -- Jonah Goldberg
Modern science kills God and takes his place on the vacant throne. Science is the sole legitimate arbiter of all relavent truth.- Vaclav Havel (1936-).
Science is the topography of ignorance.-- O. W. Holmes
Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing. Victor Hugo
For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power
of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled
the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the
highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is
greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there
for centuries.
Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, page 116
...the cosmology of a given age is not the result of
unilinear, "scientific" development, but rather the most
striking, imaginative symbol of its mentality- the
projection of its conflicts, prejudice and specific ways of
double-think onto the graceful sky.
Arthur Koestler
Science is the systematic classification of experience.- George Henry Lewes (1817-1878)
Science is methodology. As a belief system it's disastrous. ~Astronaut Ed Mitchell, BBC TV 11 Oct.1981
I suppose that every age has its own particular fantasy: ours is science. A seventeenth-century man like Blaise Pascal, who thought himself a mathematician and scientist of genius, found it quite ridiculous that anyone should suppose that rational processes could lead to any ultimate conclusions about life, but easily accepted the authority of the Scriptures. With us, it is the other way `round.... Malcolm Muggeridge, Jesus Rediscovered [1969]
If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent.-- Sir Isaac Newton
There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other. Every serious and reflective person realizes...that the religious element in his nature must be recognized and cultivated if all the powers of the human soul are to act together in perfect balance and harmony. And indeed it was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls....Science enhances the moral values of life...because every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being.--Max Planck, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics_Where Is Science Going?_ pp. 168-69 (1932)
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve. -- Max Planck
The scientific age with its urban-industrial culture is,
for all its magnificent achievements and intoxicating
success, in a very real sense a dark age. Its complete
bondage to nature has enclosed the mind and spirit of man in
a fast prison out of which, try as he may, he can find no
way of escape. The inability to perceive any longer the
reality of things invisible and unseen is a sickness of the
soul which cries out to be cured. The only way to dispel the
darkness of the present age and liberate it from the prison
within which it has become bound is to restore the proper
relationship of nature to supernature and of time to
eternity as an essential feature of external reality. Until
this can be accomplished, there is really very little that
the Church or Christianity in general has to offer to this
age.
W. G. Pollard
Nature, and Nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said, 'Let Newton be!'and all was light.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) Epitaphs
I can accept the theory of relativity as little as I can
accept the existence of atoms.
Ernst Mach (1838-1916), Austrian physicist after whom Mach
numbers are named. in Robert Youngson, Scientific Blunders:
A brief history of how wrong scientists can sometimes be,
Robinson,1998
Bad science and bad religion simply swap roles, the former proclaiming Truth, the latter worshiping Doubt. -- Jeffrey Satinover
Christianity believes that God has created an external world that is really there; and because He is a reasonable God, one can expect to be able to find the order of the universe by reason. Francis A. Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man, Ch. 4
See how often science has altered its very basis. Science
is notorious for being most scientific in destruction of all
the science that has gone before it. I have sometimes
indulged myself in reading ancient natural history, and
nothing can be more comic.
In twenty years' time some of us may probably find great
amusement in the serious scientific teaching of the present
hour, even as we do now in the systems of the last century.
It may happen that in a little time the doctrine of
evolution will be the standing jest of schoolboys. --Charles
Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) _Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit_
Volume 37 [1891]
Science can give us power over nature, but it cannot give us power over human nature.---- Thomas S. Szasz, remarks to graduates upon his receipt of honorary Doctor of Science degree from State University of New York, May 20, 2001
Historically, religion came first and science grew out of
religion. Science has never superseded religion, and it is
my expectation that it never will.
Arnold Toynbee
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the old Oolitic Silurian period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will havejoined their sidewalks and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi.
Experience does not ever err; it is only your judgment that errs in promising itself results which are not caused by your experiments. -- Leonardo Da Vinci, _Notebooks_
In this modern world of ours many people seem to think that science has somehow made such religious ideas as immortality untimely or old fashioned. I think science has a real surprise for the skeptics. Science, for instance, tells us that nothing in nature, not even the tiniest particle, can disappear without a trace. Nature does not know extinction. All it knows is transformation. If God applies this fundamental principle to the most minute and insignificant parts of His universe, doesn't it make sense to assume that He applies it to the masterpiece of His creation, the human soul? -- WERNER VON BRAUN
Science is a match that man has just got alight. He
thought he was in a room -- in moments of devotion, a temple
-- and that his light would be reflected from and display
walls inscribed with wonderful secrets and pillars carved
with philosophical systems wrought into harmony. It is a
curious sensation, now that the preliminary splutter is over
and the flame burns up clear, to see his hands and just a
glimpse of himself and the patch he stands on visible, and
around him, in place of all that human comfort and beauty he
anticipated -- darkness still.
H. G. Wells, "The Rediscovery of the Unique", THE
FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW, N. S. 50 (July 1891).
Even if all possible scientific questions be answered,
the problems of life have still not been touched at all.
L J J Wittgenstein, 1889-1951 Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus, 6.52 (1921), translation C. K. Ogden
and Frank Ramsey (1922)
Lord grant that Marshall Wade
May by Thy mighty aid
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush,
And like a torrent rush
Rebellious Scots to crush
God save the King.
National Anthem, circa 1745, the verse everyone omitsLand of the hill and heather
Land of the awful weather
Land where the midges gather
Scotland the brave.The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,
They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;
The sire turns o'er, with patriarchal grace,
The big ha'-bible, ance his father's pride:
His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside,
His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare;
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
He wales a portion with judicious care;
And "Let us worship God!" he says with solemn air.They chant their artless notes in simple guise,
They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim;
Perhaps "Dundee's" wild-warbling measures rise,
Or plaintive "Martyrs," worthy of the name;
Or noble "Elgin" beets the heaven-ward flame,
The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays:
Compar'd with these, Italian trills are tame:
The tickl'd ears no heart-felt raptures raise;
Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise.The priest-like father reads the sacred page,
How Abram was the friend of God on high;
Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage
With Amalek's ungracious progeny;
Or how the royal bard did groaning lie
Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire;
Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;
Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire;
Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,
How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;
How He, who bore in Heaven the second name,
Had not on earth whereon to lay His head:
How His first followers and servants sped;
The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:
How he, who lone in Patmos banished,
Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand,
And heard great Bab'lon's doom pronounc'd by Heaven's command.Then kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King,
The saint, the father, and the husband prays:
Hope "springs exulting on triumphant wing,"
That thus they all shall meet in future days,
There ever bask in uncreated rays,
No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear,
Together hymning their Creator's praise,
In such society, yet still more dear;
While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere.Compar'd with this, how poor Religion's pride,
In all the pomp of method, and of art;
When men display to congregations wide
Devotion's ev'ry grace, except the heart!
The Power, incens'd, the pageant will desert,
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole;
But haply, well-pleas'd, the language of the soul;
And in His Book of Life the inmates poor enroll.Then homeward all take off their sev'ral way;
The youngling cottagers retire to rest:
The parent-pair their secret homage pay,
And proffer up to Heaven the warm request,
That He who stills the raven's clam'rous nest,
And decks the lily fair in flow'ry pride,
Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best,
For them and for their little ones provide;
But chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine preside.From scenes like these, old Scotia's grandeur springs,
That makes her lov'd at home, rever'd abroad:
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,
"An honest man's the noblest work of God;"
And certes, in fair virtue's heavenly road,
The cottage leaves the palace far behind;
What is a lordling's pomp? a cumbrous load,
Disguising oft the wretch of human kind,
Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refin'd!O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!
For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent,
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil
Be blestwith health, and peace, and sweet content!
And O! may Heaven their simple lives prevent
From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!
Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,
A virtuous populace may rise the while,
And stand a wall of fire around their much-lov'd isle.
Robert Burns, The Cotter's Saturday NightFrom the lone shieling of the misty island
Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas
Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides!
R Burns "My Heart's in the Highlands (1790)
These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm.Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equaled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig. --Alfred Hitchcock
Asked by a Scot what Johnson thought of Scotland: "That it is a very vile country, to be sure, Sir" "Well, Sir! (replies the Scot, somewhat mortified), God made it." Johnson: "Certainly he did; but we must always remember that he made it for Scotchmen, and comparisons are odious, Mr. S------; but God made hell." -- Hester Thrale Piozzi: Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson
We were by no means pleased with our inn at Bristol. "Let us see now, (said I), how we should describe it." Johnson was ready with his raillery. "Describe it,sir? Why, it was so bad that Boswell wished to be in Scotland!"--Boswell, Life of Johnson, of May 1776.
Mr. Arthur Lee mentioned some Scotch who had taken possession of a barren part of America, and wondered why they would choose it. Johnson: "Why, Sir, all barrenness is comparative. The Scotch would not know it to be barren." Boswell: "Come, come, he is flattering the English. you have now been in Scotland, Sir, and say if you did not see meat and drink enough there." Johnson: "Why yes, Sir; meat and drink enough to give the inhabitants sufficient strength to run away from home.- James Boswell: Life of Johnson
The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England! -- Samuel Johnson (Boswell: Life of Johnson)
Golf is an exercise in Scottish pointlessness for people who are no longer able to throw telephone poles at each other. -- Florence King, 1999
The child of Mary Queen of Scots,
A shifty mother's shiftless son
Bred up among intrigues and plots,
Learnèd in all things, wise in none.
Ungainly, babbling, wasteful, weak,
Shrewd, clever, cowardly, pedantic,
The sight of steel would blanch his cheek,
The smell of baccy drive him frantic.
He was the author of his line --
He wrote that witches should be burnt;
He wrote that monarchs were divine,
And left a son who -- proved they weren't! -- Kipling
Beautiful, glorious Scotland, has spoilt me for every other country! Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882) : Letter, 21 Aug 1869; in "The Mary Lincoln Letters," 1956.
Ahh, the soothing o' the Pipes... Whenever I find myself missing its melodious sounds, I just toss the cat in the dryer on low heat. Jordan Montgomery
Breathes there a man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd
From wandering on a foreign strand!...
Sir Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel 1805
The fact that I am not a haggis addict is probably due to my having read Shakespeare. It is the same with many Englishmen. There is no doubt that Shakespeare has rather put us off the stuff.... You remember the passage to which I refer? Macbeth happens upon the three witches while they are preparing the evening meal. They are dropping things into the cauldron and chanting "Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog," and so on, and he immediately recognises the recipe. "How now, you secret, black and midnight haggis," he cries shuddering. - P.G. Wodehouse
Scripture
The Holy and Inspired Scriptures are sufficient of themselves for the preaching of the Truth. -- Athanasius, Contra Gentiles, I:1
Wonderful is the depth of thy words, whose surface is before us, gently leading on the little ones: and yet a wonderful deepness, O my God, a wonderful deepness. It is awe to look into it; even an awfulness of honour, and a trembling of love.... Augustine (345-430), Confessions
Just as the Holy Spirit came upon the womb of Mary, so He came upon the brain of a Moses, a David, an Isaiah, a Paul, a John and the rest of the writers of the divine library. The power of the Highest overshadowed them, therefore that holy thing which was born of their minds is called the Holy Bible, the word of God. The writing of Luke will, of course, have the vocabulary of Luke and the work of Paul will bear the stamp of Paul s mind. However, this is only in the same manner that the Lord Jesus might have had eyes like his mother s or hair that was the same color and texture as hers. He did not inherit her sins because the Holy Spirit has come upon her. If we ask, how could this be, the answer is God says so. And the writings of men of the Book did not inherit the errors of their carnal minds because their writings were conceived by the Holy Spirit and born out of their personalities without partaking of their fallen nature. If we ask, how could this be, again the answer is God says so. DONALD GREY BARNHOUSE, The Invisible War
Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?" declares the LORD. "This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word. Isa. 66:2
We are to believe and follow Christ in all things, including his words about Scripture. And this means that Scripture is to be for us what it was to him: the unique, authoritative, and inerrant Word of God, and not merely a human testimony to Christ, however carefully guided and preserved by God. If the Bible is less than this to us, we are not fully Christ's disciples.... James Montgomery Boice, "The Preacher & God's Word"
There are no provisos to be laid down in point of faith; all is truth, and we must believe all. Faith does not single out its object; it does not pick and choose, but believes all that God has spoken.-- Samuel Bolton
Whenever His Wrd is set before us, we must tremble, because nothing is hid from Him.-- John Calvin, Commentary on Heb 4:13
Scripture will ultimately suffice for a saving knowledge of God only when its certainty is founded upon the inward persuasion of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, these human testimonies which exist to confirm it will not be vain if, as secondary aids to our feebleness, they follow that chief and highest testimony. But those who wish to prove to unbelievers that Scripture is the Word of God are acting foolishly, for only by faith can this be known. John Calvin (1509-1564)
WE AFFIRM that the term hermeneutics, which historically
signified the rules of exegesis, may properly be extended to
cover all that is involved in the process of perceiving what
the biblical revelation means and how it bears on our
lives.
WE DENY that the message of Scripture derives from, or is
dictated by, the interpreter's understanding. Thus we deny
that the "horizons" of the biblical writer and the
interpreter may rightly "fuse" in such a way that what the
text communicates to the interpreter is not ultimately
controlled by the expressed meaning of the Scripture. -The
Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics
WE AFFIRM that since God is the author of all truth, all
truths, biblical and extrabiblical, are consistent and
cohere, and that the Bible speaks truth when it touches on
matters pertaining to nature, history, or anything else. We
further affirm that in some cases extrabiblical data have
value for clarifying what Scripture teaches, and for
prompting correction of faulty interpretations.
WE DENY that extrabiblical views ever disprove the teaching
of Scripture or hold priority over it. -The Chicago
Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics.
http://www.bible-researcher.com/chicago2.html
I exhort and entreat you all, disregard what this man and that man thinks about such things, and inquire from the Holy Scriptures all these things. - Chrysostom
In the Scriptures be the fat pastures of the soul; therein is no venomous meat, no unwholesome thing; they be the very dainty and pure feeding. He that is ignorant, shall find there what he should learn. --Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556)
The inspiration of Scripture is a harmony of the active mind of the writer and the sovereign direction of the Holy Spirit to produce God's inerrant and infallibile Word to mankind. -- Brian Edwards book "Nothing But the Truth"
We believe that the Word contained in these books [viz., the Bible] has proceeded from God, and receives its authority from Him alone, and not from men. And inasmuch as it is the rule of all truth, containing all that is necessary for the service of God and for our salvation, it is not lawful for men, nor even for angels, to add to it, to take away from it, or to change it. Whence it follows that no authority, whether of antiquity, or custom, or numbers, or human wisdom, or judgments, or proclamations, or edicts, or decrees, or councils, or visions, or miracles, should be opposed to these Holy Scriptures, but on the contrary, all things should be examined, regulated, and reformed according to them.... The French Confession of Faith [1559]
1. Scripture is to be interpreted with confidence in and
openness to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
2. The scripture principle: Scripture is to be interpreted
in light of scripture, comparing scripture with scripture,
with openness to hear the whole Word of God, not just
selected parts of it.
3. The Christological principle: Scripture is to be
interpreted in light of God's central self-revelation in
Jesus Christ.
4. The rule of love: Scripture is to be interpreted in light
of the one commandment of God that summarizes all other
commandments -- love for God and for all our neighbors.
5. The rule of faith: Scripture is to be interpreted with
respect for the church's past and present interpretation of
scripture.
6. Scripture is to be interpreted in light of the literary
forms and historical context in which it was written.
7. Scripture is to be interpreted seeking the word and work
of the living God in our time and place.
8. Scripture is to be interpreted with awareness of our
limitations and fallibility and with openness to change our
mind and be corrected. "Reformed" means always being
reformed afresh by the Word of God."
Shirley Guthrie, [Professor Emeritus at Columbia
Theological Seminary, U.S.A.] Rules for Biblical
Interpretation in the Reformed Tradition
To wrestle with the theme of the Scriptures is your proper preparation for the rough things of human life, as we see it, and observe it, and are immersed in it. The Truth which is being spoken to you most clearly in the Scriptures is your only protection against cynicism and skepticism, just as it is your only protection against that false romanticism which is the modern cruel substitute for faith in God. --Sir Edwyn Clement Hoskyns
The case for inerrancy rests precisely where it has always rested, namely, on the lordship of Christ and his commission to the prophets and apostles, who were his representatives. Because it rests on Christ and his authority, the question of inerrancy will therefore remain a key doctrine of the evangelical church so long as Christ is Lord. Evangelicals must remember, however, that this basis must be set forth anew for every generation. What was adequate for Gaussen, Pieper, and Warfield is still valuable, but it is not necessarily adequate to serve as the foundation for the thinking of our generation. The case for inerrancy must be made anew with each presentation of the gospel teaching.... Kenneth S. Kantzer, "Evangelicals and the Doctrine of Inerrancy"
I am much afraid that schools will prove to be the great gates of Hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not increasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt. Martin Luther
If the scriptures do thoroughly direct men to know God in Christ, and save their own souls, why should we look any further? Now, they do not only furnish every private Christian with this knowledge; but the man of God, who is to instruct others, he needeth look no further, but is furnished out of the scripture with all things necessary to discharge his office. Therefore here we fix and rest, we have a sufficient rule, and a full record of all necessary Christian doctrine. THOMAS MANTON
[If] there be any difference among professed believers as to the sense of Scripture, it is their duty to tolerate such difference in each other, until God shall have revealed the truth to all. John Milton (1608-1674)
In the divine Scriptures, there are shallows and there are deeps; shallows where the lamb may wade, and deeps where the elephant may swim.--John Owen
When evangelicals call the Bible "inerrant", part at least of their meaning is this: that, in exegesis and exposition of Scripture and in building up our biblical theology from the fruits of our Bible study, we may not (1) deny, disregard, or arbitrarily relativize, anything that the biblical writers teach, nor (2) discount any of the practical implications for worship and service that their teaching carries, nor (3) cut the knot of any problem of Bible harmony, factual or theological, by allowing ourselves to assume that the inspired writers were not necessarily consistent either with themselves or with each other. It is because the word "inerrant" makes these methodological points about handling the Bible, ruling out in advance the use of mental procedures that can only lead to reduced and distorted versions of Christianity, that it is so valuable and, I think, so much valued by those who embrace it.... James I. Packer (1926- )
God the Father is the giver of Holy Scripture; God the Son is the theme of Holy Scripture; and God the Spirit is the author, authenticator, and interpreter of Holy Scripture.... J. I. Packer (1926- )
If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of
His, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive
any truth by my ministry: for I am verily persuaded, the
Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of His holy
Word.
John Robinson (1576?-1625) to the "Mayflower" emigrants
First of all, there was nothing autonomous in the area of final authority. For the Reformation, final and sufficient knowledge rested in the Bible ˜ that is, Scripture alone, in contrast to Scripture plus anything else parallel to the Scriptures, whether it be the Church or a natural theology. Second, there was no idea of man being autonomous in the area of salvation. In the Roman Catholic position there was a divided work of salvation ˜ Christ died for our salvation, but man had to merit the merit of Christ. Thus there was a humanistic element involved. The reformers said that there is nothing man can do; no autonomous or humanistic religious or moral effort of man can help. One is saved only on the basis of the finished work of Christ as He died in space and time in history, and the only way to be saved is to raise the empty hands of faith and, by God‚s grace, to accept God‚s free gift ˜ faith alone. It was Scripture alone and faith alone. - Francis Schaeffer
Evangelical Christians need to notice, at this point,
that the Reformation said 'Scripture Alone' and not 'the
Revelation of God in Christ Alone'. If you do not have the
view of the Scriptures that the Reformers had, you really
have no content in the word 'Christ' --and this is the
modern drift in theology. Modern theology uses the word
without content because 'Christ' is cut away from the
Scriptures. The Reformation followed the teaching of Christ
Himself in linking the revelation Christ gave of God to the
revelation of the written Scriptures.
The Scriptures give the key to two kinds of knowledge --the
knowledge of God, and knowledge of men and nature. The great
Reformation confessions emphasize that God revealed His
attributes to man in the Scriptures and that this revelation
was meaningful to God as well as to man. There could have
been no Reformation and no Reformation culture in Northern
Europe without the realization that God had spoken to man in
the Scriptures and that, therefore, we know something truly
about God, because God has revealed it to man. - F A
Schaeffer, Escape From Reason Ch. 2 A Unity of Nature and
Grace pp21
God's Word will never pass away, but looking back to the Old Testament and since the time of Christ, with tears we must say that because of lack of fortitude and faithfulness on the part of God's people, God's Word has many times been allowed to be bent, to conform to the surrounding, passing, changing culture of that moment rather than to stand as the inerrant Word of God judging the form of the world spirit and the surrounding culture of that moment. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, may our children and grandchildren not say that such can be said about us. Francis A. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster, p65
Men talk of "the mistakes of Scripture." I thank God that I have never met with any. Mistakes of translation there may be, for translators are men. But mistakes of the original word there never can be, for the God who spoke it is infallible, and so is every word he speaks, and in that confidence we find delightful rest. --Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) _Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit_, Volume 39 [1893]
Most people are bothered by those passages in scriptures which they cannot understand. But for me, I always notice that the passages in scripture which trouble me the most are those that I do understand. Mark Twain
The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men. THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION OF FAITH, Chapter I, Section 6
We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture, and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it does abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God: yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.... The Westminster Confession of Faith
Q. 4. How doth it appear that the Scriptures are the word
of God?
A. The Scriptures manifest themselves to be the word of God,
by their majesty and purity; by the consent of all the
parts, and the scope of the whole, which is to give all
glory to God; by their light and power to convince and
convert sinners, to comfort and build up believers unto
salvation: but the Spirit of God bearing witness by and with
the Scriptures in the heart of man, is alone able fully to
persuade it that they are the very word of God.
WESTMINSTER LARGER CATECHISM
I learned the "Clowney Triangle" when I was at
Westminster Seminary. Essentially, it's a Hermenutical grid
&endash; "How do I understand the text in front of me?"
Step one: Answer the question as best you can "What did the
text mean to it's original audience?" This gets to immediate
context and the sitz im leben issues. This first question
puts us into a place where we hear the text speaking clearly
to its readers. This is the reason for understanding orginal
languages and cultural background, not so that we can
impress others, but so we can hear.
Step two: "How is this text understood in the flow of
redemptive history?" Now we move the context question to
encompass all of scripture and redemptive history with the
eye on how this text advances the story of grace. This keeps
us from isolating a text from the whole story or from
narrowing the grand story of redemption down too
narrowly.
Step three is "How does this text tell me about Jesus
&endash; the cross and resurrection?" This is the gospel
question &endash; how is this good news? No exegesis is
complete without it being focused on the person and work of
Christ (Luke 24:13-35).
Step four is finally the "us" question "How then does this
text speak to us?" This question is often asked too early.
It needs to wait until the other three steps have been
completed.
This is the reason I call it a square is because of the 4
points that must be made to move to the application. Most
aberrant exegesis can be traced to skipping one or more of
the four steps (e.g. To move from step 1 to step 4 is
moralism &endash; just do it. To move from 1 to 3 is
mysticism &endash; Jesus without a context, etc.).- Sam
Wheatley http://www.edmundclowney.com/
Love's secret is always to be doing things for God, and not to mind because they are such very little ones. --Frederick William Faber (1814-1863)
Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny. Robert Heinlein
The real constitution of things is accustomed to hide itself.-- Heraclitus
To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself. - Dr Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784
The claim that secularisation has its roots in Biblical faith and that it is the fruit of the Gospel has no substance in historical fact. Secularisation has its roots not in Biblical faith, but in the interpretation of Biblical faith by Western man; it is not the fruit of the Gospel, but it is the fruit of the long history of philosophical and metaphysical conflict in the religious and purely rationalistic world view of Western man. Of all the great revealed religions, Christianity alone shifted its centre of origin, from Jerusalem to Rome, symbolising the beginning of the Westernisation of Christianity and its gradual and successive permeation by Western elements that in subsequent periods of its history produced and accelerated the momentum of secularisation. This is why, for the Muslim, there are two versions of Christianity: the original true one, and the Western version of it.-- Banu Az-Zubair
There is no longer a Christian mind ... the modern Christian has succumbed to secularization. He accepts religion -- its morality, its worship, its spiritual culture; but he rejects the religious view of life, the view which sets all earthly issues within the context of the eternal, the view which relates all human problems social, political, cultural to the doctrinal foundations of the Christian Faith, the view which sees all things here below in terms of God's supremacy and earth's transitoriness, in terms of Heaven and Hell. --HARRY BLAMIRES
..sectarian governments with coercive sword power eliminate their dissenting opposition. The sectarian world brooks no opposition; s view of justice and liberty demands purity. Thus, hard line theocrats vehemently oppose genuine pluralism; any pluralism that permits "false religions" full opponent be tolerated in "Christian America". Similarly, sectarian secularists cannot tolerate even the teeny-tiniest vestige of religious symbolism in the square. The full exercise of the state's coercive power must be used to remove every creche or menorah from the town squares of America, which are to be kept purely and nakedly secular. - John Bolt, A Free Church, A Holy Nation: Abraham Kuyper's American Public Theology, Eerdmans, 2001, p 379
The coalition with Roman Catholics was born out of a cultural cobelligerance against the overwhelming and growing pressures of secularism in Dutch nineteeth century education. - - John Bolt, A Free Church, A Holy Nation: Abraham Kuyper's American Public Theology, Eerdmans, 2001, p 394
An important point is that the correlation between the death of religious faith and the death of peoples and civilisation is absolute. I believe that the death of Christianity in the soul of Western man, and its replacement by a more materialistic, hedonistic, individualistic, la dolce vita belief, and the embrace ofthe sexual revolution combined, mean that Western man has consumed a carcinogenic that is killing him. Peoples that no longer believe in the cult out of which their culture and civilisation came will not sustain that civilisation. And as TS Eliot said: "If Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes". The Christian faith and belief in which Western man was marinaded for 2,000 years was fundamentally the immune system of the West, which warded off all manner of psychic infections. But Christianity has died, and been replaced by a new faith of secular humanism, which is having an effect on the West comparable to that of the HIV virus on a person. Eventually, it will kill us. - Patrick Buchanan, Right Now! June 2022
... a widespread secularization increasingly descends into a moral, intellectual, and spiritual nihilism that denies not only the One who is the Truth but the very idea of truth itself. - Charles Colson and others, Evangelicals & Catholics Together:The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium,1994
It is nor secularism per se that differs with (sic) the central thrust of Christianity. But it is this persistent aim to resolve the pain of life, either through changing the outward world or through a personal accommodation to the world, that strikes directly against the core of a Christian view of life. - A J Conyers, The Eclipse of Heaven,, Inter Varsity Press, 1992 p.70.
The replacement of Christian with secular institutions is the culminating and critical result of the Industrial Revolution. That states should attempt to dispense with theological supports is one of the many crucial experiments that bewilder our brains and unsettle our way today. Laws which were once presented as the decrees of a god-given king are now frankly the confused commands of fallible men. Education, which was the sacred province of god-inspired priests, becomes the task of men and women shorn of theological robes and awe, and relying on reason and persuasion to civilize young rebels who fear only the policeman and may never learn to reason at all. Colleges once allied to churches have been captured by businessmen and scientists. The propaganda of patriotism, capitalism, or Communism succeeds to the inculcation of a supernatural creed and moral code. Holydays give way to holidays. Theaters are full even on Sundays, and even on Sundays churches are half empty. - Durant', Lessons of History pp. 48, 49
If the decline of Christianity created the modern political zealot--and his crimes--so the evaporation of religious faith among the educated left a vacuum in the minds of Western intellectuals easily filled by secular superstition. --Paul Johnson
Once Mel Gibson revealed himself to be, like the president, a person of serious religious faith, the gloves came off. Mel Gibson has done a major favor for serious faith, both Jewish and Christian, in America. He has made it "cool" to be religious, but in so doing he has unleashed the hatred of secular America against himself personally, against his work and against his family. God bless him. ---Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "Why Jewish groups passionately hate Mel Gibson" http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37963
There are advocates of state secularism who propose a 'neutral' non-religious basis for the constitution and institutions of society. But can a non-religious worldview ever be neutral? Surely it must embrace values of some sort, otherwise our national symbols would symbolise nothing and provide no basis for unity. A truly secular constitution rests on the fundamental assumption either that there is no God, or that the concept of God is utterly irrelevant to public life. The secular worldview is therefore neither neutral nor inclusive. Like any religious view, it imposes a set of assumptions on everyone who plays a part in public life. - Oliver Letwin MP E pluribus unum - agreeing to differ http://www.conservatives.com/news/article.cfm?obj_id=58240
We start from the idea that different faiths have an equal right to co-exist. We move on to conflate this proposition with the claim that all faiths are equally valid. From this point it is argued that exclusive claims to the truth by any one faith undermine the validity of other faiths and thus their right to coexist. Finally, exclusive claims to truth are seen as a basis for intolerance, which, the power of the state should be used to counter, or at least discourage.Hence the attack on faith schools from those who speak as if Muslim schools had caused riots in places were no such schools exist; or as if Catholic schools were tearing Scotland apart; or as if parish schools could bring sectarian conflict to the English shires. That such attacks should continue in the face of all the facts, testifies to a prejudice that has no place in our constitution. - Oliver Letwin MP E pluribus unum - agreeing to differ http://www.conservatives.com/news/article.cfm?obj_id=58240
Secularism in the Christian world was an attempt to resolve the long and destructive struggle of church and state. Separation, adopted in the American and French Revolutions and elsewhere after that, was designed to prevent two things: the use of religion by the state to reinforce and extend its authority; and the use of the state power by the clergy to impose their doctrines and rules on others. This is a problem long seen as purely Christian, not relevant to Muslims or for that matter to Jews, for whom a similar problem has arisen in Israel. Looking at the contemporary Middle East, one must ask whether this is still true--or whether Muslims and Jews may perhaps have caught a Christian disease and might therefore consider a Christian remedy. --Bernard Lewis, _What Went Wrong? - Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response_, cr. 2002, Oxford University Press
I can see little consistency in a type of Christian activity which preaches the gospel on the street corners and at the ends of earth, but neglects the children of the covenant by abandoning them to a cold and unbelieving secularism.-- J. Gresham Machen
There's no reason to bring religion into it. I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, so as to keep it out of as many things as possible. Sean O'Casey
Secularists...... have, argues Richard Appignanesi, author of Introducing Existentialism, "found a fundamentalism of their own - political correctness". From banning religious messages on Christmas cards through talking of partners instead of spouses and then, more recently, calling for St Mary Magdalene school in Islington to change its name, which was deemed "divisive" in a multicultural society, the "thought police" have produced what Appignanesi calls "the slamming door of the liberal mind". Secularists, he believes, show as much of an interest in indoctrination as the religious groups they hate so much. - Cristina Odone http://www.newstatesman.com/nscoverstory.htm
I am asked why, as a Jew, I have led this fight to keep
the cross on the county seal.I have three responses.
First, I fear those who rewrite history. As I noted in a
previous column on this subject, when I was a graduate
student at Columbia University's Russian Institute, I
learned that a major characteristic of totalitarian regimes
is their rewriting of history. As a famous Soviet dissident
joke put it: "In the Soviet Union, the future is known; it's
the past which is always changing." Given the relationship
between changing the past and totalitarianism, those who
love liberty ought to be frightened by the ACLU and the
Board of Supervisors.
Second, I fear intolerance. And the move to expunge the
singular Christian contribution to an American county and
city is intolerant to the point of bigotry. No religious
Christians, despite their deep opposition to paganism, ever
objected to the pagan goddess that is many times larger than
the cross. I have found over and over that mostChristians
who preach faith are more tolerant than most leftists who
preach tolerance.
Third, and most important, I fear the removal of the
Judeo-Christian foundation of our society. This is the
real battle of our time, indeed the civil war of our time.
The Left wants America to become secular like Western
Europe, not remain the Judeo-Christian country it has always
been. But unlike the Left, I do not admire France and
Belgium and Sweden. And that is what the battle over the
seal of America's most populous county is ultimately about.
It is not about separation of church and state. It is about
separation of a county from its history. And it is about
separation of America from its moral foundations.
In 1834, 99 years before Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to
power, the great German poet Heinrich Heine, a secular Jew,
predicted what would happen if Christianity ever weakened in
Germany:
A drama will be enacted in Germany compared to which the
French Revolution will seem like a harmless walk in the
park. Christianity restrained the marshal ardor of the
Germans for a time, but it did not destroy it; once the
restraining guard is shattered, savagery will rise again . .
. the mad fury of the berserk of which Nordic poets sing and
speak.
That is what this American, this Jew, and millions of others
believe is at stake in the Left's attempt to impose a
redesign of the Los Angeles County seal and thereby redesign
America. -Dennis Prager
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/dp20041116.shtml
The secular world -- especially its left -- fears and
rejects the language of good and evil because it smacks of
religious values and violates their moral
relativism.......
A major reason for the left's loathing of George W. Bush is
his use of moral language -- such as in his widely condemned
description of the regimes of North Korea, Iran and Iraq as
an "axis of evil." These people reject the central
Judeo-Christian value of the existence of objective good and
evil and our obligation to make such judgments. Secularism
has led to moral confusion, which in turn has led to moral
paralysis.
If you could not call the Soviet Union an "evil empire" or
the Iranian, North Korean and Iraqi regimes an "evil axis,"
you have rendered the word "evil" useless. And indeed it is
not used in sophisticated secular company -- except in
reference to those who do use it (usually religious
Christians and Jews).
Is abortion morally wrong? To the secular world, the answer
is "It's between a woman and her physician." There is no
clearer expression of moral relativism: Every woman
determines whether abortion is moral. On the other hand, to
the individual with Judeo-Christian values, it is not
between anyone and anyone else. It is between society and
God. Even among religious people who differ in their reading
of God's will, it is still never merely "between a woman and
her physician."
And to those who counter these arguments for God-based
morality with the question, "Whose God?" the answer is the
God who revealed His moral will in the Old Testament, which
Jews and Christians -- and no other people -- regard as
divine revelation.
The best-known verse in the Bible is "Love your neighbor as
yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). It is a reflection of the
secular age in which we live that few people are aware that
the verse concludes with the words, "I am God." Though
entirely secularized in common parlance, the greatest of the
ethical principles comes from God. Otherwise it is just
another man-made suggestion, no more compelling than "Cross
at the green, not in between. - Dennis Prager, The case for
Judeo-Christian values: Part II,January 11, 2005
I believe that pluralistic secularism, in the long run,
is a more deadly poison than straightforward
persecution.
Frank Schaeffer THE IMPORTANCE OF MONASTICISM IN OUR
CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY Orthodox Life No. 3,1996
We feel that universal human rights must be indivisible... Giving religious groups the right to discriminate against others (such as non- believers, unmarried cohabitees, the divorced, "adulterers", fornicators" and homosexuals) undermines the very concept of universal human rights and the freedom of individuals to self-determination and to create their own lives in their own way."(Original unknown. Quoted by the Secular Society - 2001)
I would much prefer to hear an " extremist " evangel (sic) promote self-control than listen to a political libertine treat the law as if it were a catacomb of escape hatches. In letting people of faith speak, we do not open the door to theocracy. We give them a chance to enrich and complicate public debate. When politicians declare religious arguments out of bounds, they not only condemn discourse to a level of stunning superficiality; they wage war on all faiths. There's nothing more dangerous or extreme than a politician determined to take the place of God. -- Tony Snow
We have forgotten that evil is infectious, as infectious as small-pox; and we do not perceive that if we allow whole departments of our life to become purely secular, and to create and maintain moral or immoral standards on their own, in time the whole of life is bound to become corrupt. ... G. A. Studdert Kennedy (1883-1929), The Wicket Gate [1923]
For the last 250 years or so, secularists have waited patiently for the fulfilment of their prediction that religion would die out in the next generation or two. But religious people have been singularly uncooperative, and new strategies have developed for controlling this blight on human progress. If religion won't "wither away" as philosopher Richard Rorty has wished, then perhaps it can be privatized and thereby removed from influence on public life‚ - sort of like localizing an outbreak of the plague. Daniel Taylor, Deconstructing the gospel of tolerance., Christianity Today. January 11, 1999 Vol. 43, No. 1, Page 42.
Don't think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm.-- Malayan proverb
Most people want security in this world, not liberty. --Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) _Minority Report_ [1956] Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security is the denial of life. Germaine Greer
Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others! --William Hazlitt (1778-1830) _Table Talk_ [1821-1822], "On Living to One's Self"
Security is not the meaning of my life. Great opportunities are worth the risks. Shirley Hufstedler (1925-____)
Who is secure in all his basic needs? Who has work, spiritual care, medical care, housing, food, occasional entertainment, free clothing, free burial, free everything? The answer might be nuns and monks, but the standard reply is 'prisoners'. - Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world; but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home. C S Lewis ( The Problem of Pain)
There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity.... Douglas MacArthur, 1955
Our house is made of glass . . . and our lives are made of glass; and there is nothing we can do to protect ourselves.Joyce Carol Oates (1938-____) "American Appetites," 1
When we forget ourselves, we usually do something that everyone else remembers.
Having control over myself is nearly as good as having control over others.
Can you walk on water? You have done no better than a straw. Can you fly through the air? You are no better than a gnat. Conquer your heart--then you may become somebody. -- Khwaja Abdullah Ansari of Herat, 11thC
I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself. --Pietro Aretino (1492-1556) _Letter to Agostino Ricchi_ [May 10, 1537]
Conquer thyself, till thou has done this, thou art but a slave; for it is almost as well to be subjected to another's appetite as to thine own. ~Sir Richard Burton
Who to himself is law no law doth need,
Offends no law, and is a king indeed.
George Chapman. 1557-1634. Bussy D'Ambois. Act ii. Sc. 1.
The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself. Winston Churchill
The "Inside-Out" approach to personal and self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self - with your paradigms, your character, and your motives. The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.... Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
No steam or gas ever drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.- Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969) "Living Under Tension."
All of your scholarship, all your study of Shakespeare and Wordsworth would be vain if at the same time you did not build your character and attain mastery over your thoughts and your actions.--Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)
A man cannot govern a nation if he cannot govern a city;
he cannot govern a city if he cannot govern a family; he
cannot govern a family unless he can govern himself; and he
cannot govern himself unless his passions are subject to
reason.
Hugo Grotius
It's not the mountain we conquer but ourselves. Edmund Hillary
I do not wonder that, where the monastick life is permitted, every order finds votaries, and every monastery inhabitants. Men will submit to any rule, by which they may be exempted from the tyranny of caprice and of chance. They are glad to supply by external authority their own want of constancy and resolution, and court the government of others, when long experience has convinced them of their own inability to govern themselves. -- Samuel Johnson: Letter to Baretti (June 10, 1761)
Be charitable and indulgent to every one but thyself. Joubert (1754-1824)
If you cannot mould yourself entirely as you would wish, how can you expect other people to be entirely to your liking? Thomas a Kempis
All of the significant battles are waged within the self.--Sheldon Kopp
He who reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires, and fears, is more than a king. John Milton
The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself -- the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us -- that's where it's at. - Jesse Owens (1913-1980)
I have conquered an empire but I have not been able to conquer myself. Peter the Great (1672-1725) Czar of Russia
It is not enough to have great qualities, we should also have the management of them. -- Francois de La Rochefoucald
Better[stronger] is he who controls his urges than he who captures a city.- Talmud
He that will not command his thoughts . . . will soon lose the command of his actions. --Thomas Wilson
You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself. -- Leonardo da Vinci
If you were to rise early every morning, as an instance of self-denial, as a method of renouncing indulgence, as a means of redeeming your time and of fitting your spirit for prayer, you would find mighty advantages from it. This method, though it seem such a small circumstance of life, would in all probability be a means [toward] great piety. It would keep it constantly in your head that softness and idleness were to be avoided and that self-denial was a part of Christianity... It would teach you to exercise power over yourself, and make you able by degrees to renounce other pleasures and tempers that war against the soul. ... William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life [1728]
Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
I read an article that said the way to achieve inner peace is to finish things I had started. Today I finished two bags of potato chips, a chocolate pie, bottle of wine and a small box of chocolate candy. I feel better already.
The relationships we have with the world are largely determined by the relationships we have with ourselves.... Greg Anderson, The 22 Non-Negotiable Laws of Wellness
Some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much, but you have to crawl into your wounds to discover where your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin. Tori Amos
The bad man is continually at war with, and in opposition to, himself. -- Aristotle
Finding oneself was a misnomer; a self is not found but made. --Jacques Barzun, _From Dawn to Decadence_
SELF-ESTEEM, n. An erroneous appraisement. -- Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary
He who knows himself best esteems himself least. --Henry George Bohn (1796-1884)
Self esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves. -- Nathaniel Branden
An individual's self-concept is the core of his personality. It affects every aspect of human behavior: the ability to learn, the capacity to grow and change . . . . A strong, positive self-image is the best possible preparation for success in life. - Joyce Brothers(1928-____)
Most people with low self-esteem have earned it. -George Carlin
"Who is the world am I?" Ah, that's the great puzzle! ~Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The one sole thing in myself in which I glory is that I see in myself nothing in which I can glory. -- Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510)
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. --Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) _Orthodoxy_ [1908], "The Logic of Elfland"
Sever me from myself
that I may be grateful to you;
may I perish to myself
that I may be safe in you;
may I die to myself
that I may live in you;
may I wither to myself
that I may blossom in you;
may I be emptied of myself
that I may abound in you;
may I be nothing to myself
that I may be all to you.
Desiderius Erasmus (1467-1536) [Dutch humanist
scholar]
There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond,
and to know one's self
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) In "Webster's Electronic
Quotebase," ed. Keith Mohler, 1994.
Be yourself, who else is better qualified? -- Frank J. Giblin
You've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself -- and how little I deserve it.-- William Gilbert (1836-1911)
For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.- Abraham J. Heschel
The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own. -- Eric Hoffer
When we leave people on their own, we are delivering them into the hands of a ruthless taskmaster from whose bondage there is no escape. The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself. -- Eric Hoffer
That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own self-esteem... Samuel Johnson
He had delusions of adequacy. - Walter Kerr (1913 &endash; 1996), on an unknown actor
Whatever else you may be sure of, be sure of this: that you are dreadfully like other people. -- James Russell Lowell, _My Study Windows_, 1871
Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.-- H. L. Mencken
The only conquests that are permanent and leave no regrets are our conquests over ourselves.--- Napoleon
Lust, Pride, Sloth, and Gluttony, or, as we call them these days, "geetting in touch with your sexuality," "raising your self-esteem," "relaxation therapy," and "being a recovered bulimic."-- P. J. O'Rourke, _The CEO of the Sofa_, 2001
It may be called the Master Passion, the hunger for self-approval.-- Mark Twain
When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself. -- Mark Twain
Sometimes the only way you can feel good about yourself is by making someone else look bad. And I'm tired of making other people feel good about themselves. Homer Simpson
Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves Gene Fowler, "Skyline"
O take heed of this squint eye to our profit, pleasure, honour, or anything beneath Christ and heaven; for they will take away your heart ... that is, our love, and if our love be taken away, there will be little courage left for Christ. WILLIAM GURNALL
It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others. -- John Andrew Holmes
A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes. -- Thomas Henry Huxley
He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others
shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his
grandson rich.
Samuel Johnson: Journey to the Western Islands of
Scotland
There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good." -- Samuel Johnson: Taxation No Tyranny
A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights. ... Napoleon Bonaparte, "Maxims", 1804-1815
Where no man thinks himself under any obligation to submit to another, and, instead of co-operating in one great scheme, every one hastens through by-paths to private profit, no great change can suddenly be made; nor is superior knowledge of much effect, where every man resolves to use his own eyes and his own judgment, and every one applauds his own dexterity and diligence, in proportion as he becomes rich sooner than his neighbour. -- Samuel Johnson: Introduction to the Political State of Great Britain
There can be no place for self entirely - Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) to his captains.
The world is living today in what might be described as an era of carnality, which glorifies sex, hates restraint, identifies purity with coldness, innocence with ignorance, and turns men and women into Buddhas with their eyes closed, hands folded across their breasts, intently looking inward, thinking only of self. --Fulton John Sheen (1895-1979) _The Cross and the Beatitudes_ [1937]
Religion should never become the subject of selfishness, yet I fear some treat it as if its chief end were personal spiritual gratification. When a man's religion totally lies in saving only himself and in enjoying holy things for himself, there is a disease within him. When his judgment of a sermon is based on the one question, "Did it feed me?" it is a swinish judgment. There is such a thing as getting a swinish religion in which you are yourself first, yourself second, yourself third, yourself to the utmost end. Did Jesus think or speak in that fashion? Contemplation of Christ Himself may be carried out so as to lead you away from Him. The recluse meditates on Jesus, but he is as unlike the busy, self-denying Jesus as any can be. Meditation, unattended by active service in the spreading of the Gospel among men, well deserves the rebuke of the angel, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven?" Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892)
The centre of trouble is not the turbulent appetites -- though they are troublesome enough. The centre of trouble is in the personality of man as a whole, which is self-centred and can only be wholesome and healthy if it is God-centred.--William Temple (1881-1944)
A lot of people want to serve God, but only in an advisory capacity.
God likes help when helping people. -Irish Proverb
Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, 63 B.C.
You might be a rock 'n' roll addict prancing on the
stage,
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage,
You may be a business man or some high degree thief,
They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief
But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.
~Bob Dylan, Gotta Serve Somebody
What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other? -George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile. -Albert Einstein
The service we render to others is really the rent we pay for our room on this earth. It is obvious that man is himself a traveler; that the purpose of this world is not "to have and to hold" but "to give and to serve." There can be no other meaning.--Wilfred T. Grenfell
We pause to recall what our country has done for each of us and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return.- Oliver Wendell Holmes
God hath work to do in this world; and to desert it because of its difficulties and entanglements, is to cast off His authority. It is not enough that we be just, that we be righteous, and walk with God in holiness; but we must also serve our generation, as David did before he fell asleep. God hath a work to do; and not to help Him is to oppose Him. - JOHN OWEN
As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall. JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712 - 1778)
I do not know which will be the destiny of each one of you; but one thing I know ‚ the only ones among you who will be really happy will be those who have sought and found the way to serve. -Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)
Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant. -Robert Louis Stevenson
"Doesn't the futility of it all depress you,
Bernard?"
"Not really, Minister. I'm a civil servant."
Yes, Prime Minister - Jonathan Lynn & Anthony Jay
I used to kiss her on the lips, but its all over now.
Her kisses left something to be desired -- the rest of her.
Familiarity breeds children.
Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, you probably won't either.
A man who is old enough to know better is always on the look out for a girl who doesn't.
One day, shortly after having her 9th baby, the good Irish lady ran into her parish priest. He congratulated her on the new offspring, then said, "But isn't having nine babies a little much?." "Well," she said, "I don't know why I get pregnant so often, it must be something in the air." "Yes," replied the priest, "your legs."
Men won't buy the cow if they can get the milk free.
There is no wisdom below the girdle. 17th Century proverb
This I know........I have been preaching 23 years.......I have never performed a wedding where BOTH parties were virgins.-- Email from a pastor, 26 June 2000
It was the most fun I ever had without laughing. -- Woody Allen, Annie Hall
Nuptial love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it;
but wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it.
Francis Bacon Essays "Of Love" (1597)
We may all be inclined to think of man's countless foolish and selfish intentions, his twisted and mischievous words and deeds. From all these, sin can be known, as a tree can be known from its fruits. Yet these outward signs are not sin itself, the wages of which are death. Sin is not confined to the evil things we do. It is the evil within us, the evil which we are. Shall we call it our pride or our laziness, or shall we call it the deceit of our life? Let us call it for once the great defiance which turns us again and again into the enemies of God and of our fellowmen, even of our own selves. -- Karl Barth (1886-1968)
The sexual reality [after the sexual revolution] was often halfhearted and disappointing, much obsession but little passion--what D. H. Lawrence had called "sex in the head." Men and women did not benefit from the boasted "revolution" as they had expected; it did give some people the free play they wanted, but it pushed many more into courses unsuited to their nature and capacities. It did not install the Mohammedan paradise on earth, although everything in sight suggested that it had. Pornography is a form of utopian literature and, like the advertising of Desire, it set a standard that brought on paralysis. When an erectifying drug was put on the market, the millions who rushed to obtain it numbered the healthy young as well as the ailing old, and women at once demanded its feminine equivalent. It was apparently not known that desire must be dammed up to be self-renewing. -- Jacques Barzun, _From Dawn to Decadence_, 2000
Among men, sex sometimes results in intimacy; among
women, intimacy sometimes results in sex.
Barbara Cartland
The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable. Lord Chesterfield
It has been left to the last Christians, or rather to the first Christians fully committed to blaspheming and denying Christianity, to invent a new kind of worship of Sex, which is not even a worship of Life. It has been left to the very latest Modernists to proclaim an erotic religion which at once exalts lust and forbids fertility . . . The new priests abolish the fatherhood and keep the feast - to themselves. G K Chesterton {The Well and the Shallows, NY: Sheed & Ward, 1935, p. 233}
Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.-- Crisp, Quentin (1908-1999) _The Naked Civil Servant_ (1968) ch. 8
Kisses may not spread germs, but they certainly lower resistance. Louise Erickson
A woman without breasts is like a bed without pillows. -- Anatole France,
Sometimes in the heat of passion, the little head tells the big head what to do and the big head should think twice about it. --Lorenzo Anello (Robert De Niro) (Giving fatherly advice to his son in the film _A Bronx Tale_ [1993], Directed by Robert De Niro)
Do you not know how uncontrolled and unreliable the average human being is in all that concerns sexual life? --Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) _Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis_ [1916-1917]
I'll tell you what really turns my toes up -love scenes [between] 68 year old men and young actresses. I promise you, when I get to that age I will say no. ~Mel Gibson, The Observer (16 May 1999) -referring to Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones in Entrapment
Have ye beheld (with much delight)
A red rose peeping through a white?
Or else a cherry (double graced)
Within a lily? Centre placed?
Or ever marked the pretty beam
A strawberry shows half drowned in cream?
Or seen rich rubies blushing through
A pure smooth pearl, and orient too?
So like to this, nay all the rest,
Is each neat niplet of her breast.
Robert Herrick, Upon the Nipples of Julia's Breast
I am happy now that Charles calls on my bedchamber less frequently than of old. As it is, I now endure but two calls a week and when I hear his steps outside my door I lie down on my bed, close my eyes, open my legs and think of England.-- Lady Hillingdon 1857-1940, Journal , 1912.
She's descended from a long line her mother listened to. Gypsy Rose Lee (1914-1970)
[Milton's] argument is (a) St. Augustine was wrong in thinking God's only purpose in giving Adam a female, instead of a male, companion, was copulation. For (b) there is a "peculiar comfort" in the society of man and woman "beside, (i.e. in addition to, apart from) the genial bed"; and (c) we know from Scripture that something analogous to "play" or "slackening the cords" occurs even in God. That is why the Song of Songs describes a thousand raptures...far on the hither side of carnal enjoyment. --C. S. Lewis, _Preface to Paradise Lost_
For the past twenty years you and I have been fed all day long on good solid lies about sex. C S Lewis
Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it; the old Christian rule is, "Either marriage, with completely faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence. --Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) _Mere Christianity_ [1952], Book III, Chapter 5
Sex is hardly ever just about sex. Shirley MacLaine
G M: So, Mrs. Smith, do you have any children?
S: Yes, thirteen.
G M: Thirteen! Good lord, isn't that a burden?
S: Well, I love my husband.
G M: Lady, I love my cigar but I take it out of my mouth
once in a while.
Groucho Marx, on You Bet Your Life
50% of men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe. Jackie Mason
Continentals have sex life. The English have hotwater bottles.- George Mikes, How to be an Alien
Sex is the mysticism of materialism. Malcolm Muggeridge
The orgasm has replaced the cross as the focus of longing and fulfilment. Malcolm Muggeridge "Tread Softly" p. 46 (1966)
Sex is the ersatz or substitute religion of the 20th
Century.
Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990) Contribution, N.Y. Times
Magazine [March 24, 1968]
Sensuality often makes love grow too quickly, so that the root remains weak and is easy to pull out. --Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) _Beyond Good and Evil_ [1886], "Maxims and Interludes," No. 120
When the devil makes his offer (always open incidentally)
of the kingdoms of the earth, it is the bordellos which glow
so alluringly to most of us, not the banks and the
counting-houses and the snow-swept corridors of power . . .
Sex is the mysticism of a materialistic society - in the
beginning was the Flesh, and the Flesh became Word; with its
own mysteries - this is my birth pill; swallow it in
remembrance of me! - and its own sacred texts and scriptures
- the erotica which fall like black atomic rain on the just
and unjust alike, drenching us, stupefying us. To be
carnally minded is life!
Malcom Muggeridge, Jesus Rediscovered, Bungay, Suffolk, UK:
Fontana Books, 1969, p. 3
Sensuality often makes love grow too quickly, so that the root remains weak and is easy to pull out. --Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) _Beyond Good and Evil_ [1886], "Maxims and Interludes," No. 120
That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them. Dorothy Parker
Maybe the Lord brought down this plague", because "illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments "- In Reagan's official biography, Dutch, by Edmund Morris, the former US president is quoted as saying of the condition Aids:
GOVERNMENT attempts to reduce high-risk sexual behaviour among teenagers have had exactly the opposite effect, according to a new study. Academics at Nottingham University are reported to have found that expanding contraceptive services and providing the morning-after pill free to teenagers have encouraged sexual behaviour rather than reducing it. They discovered that sexual activity and sexually transmitted diseases have risen fastest in those areas where the Government's policy has been most actively pursued. Critics said that the findings exploded the official line that the best way to tackle rising teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) was by making contraception more easily available. -- STUART REID, Action on teenage sex 'backfiring', _Edinburgh News_
The reason most people sweat is so they will not catch fire while they are making love. Don Rose
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never;
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny.
William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
Sex divorced from love, instead of raising man by taking him away from himself, drags him down to the hall of mirrors where he is always confronted with self. Sex does not care about the person, but about the act. The fig leaf which once was put over the secret parts of man and woman in sculpture is now put over the face. The person does not matter. --Fulton John Sheen (1895-1979) _Those Mysterious Priests_ [1974]
A kiss from a man without a moustache is like lamb without mint sauce. -Elizabeth Weeks 1881-1950 (not her's originally I am sure but Grandma used to say this)
God gave us a penis and a brain, but not enough blood to use both at the same time. Robin Williams
Then I suppose I should tell you about Lord Reading's
recent marriage to a woman some forty years younger than
himself. The London Times account of the wedding ended,
unfortunately, with this sentence 'The bridegroom's gift to
the bride was an antique pendant.' -- Alexander
Woollcott.
He was not of an age, but for all time.
Ben Jonson, To the Memory of my Beloved, the Author, Mr
William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare was born on 23 April 1564 and died on 23 April
1616.
If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning,we may study his commentators.-- William Hazlitt, _Table Talk_, 1821
Vows made in storms are forgotten in calms. French Proverb
There are only two kinds of naval vessels - submarines, and targets. Submariner's Proverb
Two captains will sink the ship. Turkish Proverb
Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Ralph Waldo Emerson
No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned . . . A man in a jail has more room, better food and commonly better company. Samuel Johnson
Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea. Samuel Johnson
A sure cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree. Spike Milligan
A ship is always referred to as "she" because it costs so
much to keep one in paint and powder.
Admiral Chester William Nimitz, in a speech before the
Society of Sponsors of the U. S. Navy, 13 February 1940.
Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think there are no little things. Bruce Barton 1886 &endash; 1967
Let us not cease to do the utmost, that we may incessantly go forward in the way of the Lord; and let us not despair of the smallness of our accomplishments. JOHN CALVIN
Hence that dread and amazement with which as Scripture uniformly relates holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God. JOHN CALVIN
Almost anything you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.--Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)
It is not the glorious battlements, the painted windows, the crouching gargoyles that support a building, but the stones that lie unseen in or upon the earth. It is often those who are despised and trampled on that bear up the weight of a whole nation. - JOHN OWEN
It is because God has assigned worth to men and women that human dignity is established.From his creation to his redemption, man's dignity is preserved. His origin is significant. His destiny is significant. He is significant. The conviction that permeates each chapter is the importance of daily respect for the dignity of other people which requires a sensitivity to their self-esteem. We are also led to the realization that the most fragile mechanization on this planet is the human ego. R. C. Sproul, The Hunger for Significance
Every person needs to feel significant. We want our lives to count. We yearn to believe that in some way we are important and that hunger for significance--a drive as intense as our need for oxygen--doesn't come from pride or ego. It comes from God because he wants each of us to understand how important we are. ... We must seek our roots, our origin, and our destiny so that we can know our present value. ..... ...We can help each other realize that we are persons of significance being made in the image of God. R. C. SPROUL
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
A good time to keep your mouth shut is when you're in deep water.
I need not suffer in silence while I can still moan, whimper, and complain.
Never miss a good chance to shut up.
Silence is not always golden; sometimes it is yellow.
Please sound your horn if you agree with the Noise Abatement Society. - Car sticker
Lord, keep your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth.
Please sound your horn if you agree with the Noise Abatement Society. - Car sticker
Ko kurum magana ce. Even silence speaks. - Hausa proverb, Nigeria.
A silent wife is a gift of the Lord. Sirach 26:14
Silence is the virtue of fools --Francis Bacon
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute. Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.Thomas Carlyle~
Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent. -- Dionysus the Elder
The brain is like a TV set; when it goes blank, it's a good idea to turn off the sound. -- Sam Ewing , The Saturday Evening Post 7/14/97
Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence, and if he knew this he would no longer be ignorant. --Sa'di Gulistan
That man's silence is wonderful to listen to. - Thomas Hardy (1840 &endash; 1928)
A man is known by the silence he keeps. Oliver Herford(1863-1935 )In "The Speaker's Electronic Reference Collection," AApex Software, 1994.
He who has heard the Word of God can bear his silences.. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)
It is the wise head that makes the still tongue. --W. J. Lucas
No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut.-- Sam Rayburn (1882 &endash; 1961)
Silence is the safest course for any man to adopt who distrusts himself.--La Rochefoucauld
One learns in life to keep silent and draw one's own confusions.-Cornelia Otis Skinner (1901 - 1979)
He has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation perfectly delightful. Sydney SMITH
Our religious activities should be ordered in such a way as to have plenty of time for the cultivation of the fruits of solitude and silence. - A.W. Tozer, The Works of A.W. Tozer
When the solution is simple, God is answering. - Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955
In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(1807-1882)
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.- Charles Mingus
If my heart can become pure and simple like that of a child, I think there probably can be no greater happiness than this.- Kitaro Nishida
There is a certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit.- Alexander Pope, 1688 - 1744
Whenever there is a simple error that most laymen fall for, there is always a slightly more sophisticated version of the same problem that experts fall for.- Amos Tversky
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. -- Leonardo DaVinci
Seek simplicity but distrust it. - Alfred North Whitehead, 1861 - 1947
After the pastor's scathing sermon on the congregation's myriad sins, one member said,'At least I haven't made any graven images'.
It is unlikely there'll be a reduction in the wages of sin.
If there is no sorrow for sin, there will be no joy in salvation.
Mind polluted? Get led free with Jesus.
Forbidden fruit causes many jams.
The follies of youth become the vices of manhood and the disgrace of old age.
To err is human, but to blame it on someone else is even more human
There are only two kinds of people: sinners who think they are saints, and saints, who know they are sinners. I will never cease to teach this embarrassing truth because without it, I am convinced, there simply is no knowledge and no morality, only the deceptive appearances of them.
Missing the mark - the reason we are so threatened by the holiness of God is that we are sinful. After a muddy game of football, a player may not feel out of place alongside all the other muddy players, but take him immdeiately from the field of play and present him at the head table of a formal banquet, then he will feel conspicuous in the extreme. Similarly, one man judged along another may feel perfectly content but in the presence of God...he only wants to get away as soon as possible. And when there is no place to run, then all he can do is hide his face.
God is not against us because of our sin. He is with us against our sin.
Sin fascinates you, then it assassinates you.
Sense of sin may be often great, and more felt than grace; yet not be more than grace. A man feels the ache of his finger more sensibly than the health of his whole body; yet he knows that the ache of a finger is nothing so much as the health of the whole body. THOMAS ADAMS
Sin is not only manifested in certain acts that are forbidden by divine command. Sin also appears in attitudes and dispositions and feelings. Lust and hate are sins as well as adultery and murder. And, in the traditional Christian view, despair and chronic boredom -- unaccompanied by any vicious act -- are serious sins. They are expressions of man's separation from God, as the ultimate good, meaning, and end of human existence. Mortimer J. Adler (1902- 2001)
It is one thing to have sin alarmed only by convictions, and another to have it crucified by converting grace. Many, because they have been troubled in conscience for their sins, think well of their case, miserably mistaking conviction for conversion.--JOSEPH ALLIENE
O miserable man, what a deformed monster has sin made you! God made you "little lower than the angels"; sin has made you little better than the devils. -- Joseph Alleine
The flesh is a worse enemy than the devil himself.-- Isaac Ambrose
Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum.
With love for mankind and hatred of sins. Often quoted as
"Love the sinner but hate the sin."
Augustine of Hippo (354-430) e Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations (4th ed.)
My will was perverse and lust had grown from it, and when I gave in to lust, habit was born; and when I did not resist the habit, it became a necessity. These were the links which together formed what I have called my chain, and it held me fast in the duress of servitude. -- Augustine (354-430) _Confessions_ [397-401], Part VIII, Section 5
This is the glory of the Biblical view of sin: it is not inherent and will not last forever - a very optimistic view. And, on a personal level, it can be forgiven and even woven into God's plan.Those who deny the reality of sin, have a very pessimistic view: that evil is with us forever because it is in inherent in reality.- Andrew Basden, post on Thinknet
Never does sin so reign in the Church or State, as when it has gained reputation,or, at least, is no disgrace to the sinner,nor is a matter od offence to we who behold it. - Richard Baxter
I hate the sin, but I love the sinner. --Thomas Buchanan Read (1822-1872) _What a Word May Do_
And the longer you delay, the more your sin gets strength
and rooting. If you cannot bend a twig, how will you be able
to bend it when it is a tree?
Richard Baxter
Not only the worst of my sins, but the best of my duties speak me a child of Adam. --WILLIAM BEVERIDGE
If the guilt of sin is so great that nothing can satisfy it but the blood of Jesus; and the filth of sin is so great that nothing can fetch out the stain thereof but the blood of Jesus, how great, how heinous, how sinful must the evil of sin be.--WILLIAM BRIDGE
An implicit confession is almost as bad as an implicit faith; wicked men commonly confess their sins by wholesale, We are all sinners; but the true penitent confesses his sins by retail -- Thomas Brooks A Cabinet of Jewels: Works, vol. 3, pp. 405-406.
God promises to deliver us from the penalty of sin (justification), the power of sin (sanctification) and the presence of sin (glorification). --DAVE BROWN
As any sin passes through its stages from temptation, to toleration, to approval, its name is first euphemized, then avoided, then forgotten. A colleague tells me that some of his fellow legal scholars call child molestation "intergenerational intimacy": that's euphemism. A good-hearted editor tried to talk me out of using the term "sodomy": that's avoidance. My students don't know the word "fornication" at all: that's forgetfulness. -- J. Budziszewski, "The Revenge of Conscience", _First Things_, June 1998,
If you saw the knife that cut the throat of your dearest child, would not your heart rise against that knife? Suppose you came to a table and there is a knife laid at your plate, and it was told to you that this is the knife that cut the throat of your child. Fathers, if you could still use that knife like any other knife, would not someone say, 'There was but little love to your child?' So when there is a temptation come to any sin, this is the knife that cut the throat of Christ, that pierced his sides, that was the cause of all his suffering, that made Christ to be a curse. Now will you not look upon that as a cursed thing that made Christ to be a curse? Oh, with what detestation would a man or woman fling away such a knife! And with the like detestation it is required that you should renounce sin, for that was the cause of the death of Christ. --Jeremiah Burroughs
Sin is the dare of God's justice, the rape of His mercy, the jeer of His patience, the slight of His power, and the contempt of His love.-- John Bunyan
Though Satan instils his poison, and fans the flames of our corrupt desires within us,we are yet not carried by any external force to the commission of sin, but our own flesh entices us, and we willingly yield to its allurements. -- Calvin on Gen 22:1
Take heed of secret sins. They will undo thee if loved and maintained: one moth may spoil the garment; one leak drown the ship; a penknife stab and kill a man as well as a sword; so one sin may damn the soul; nay, there is more danger of a secret sin causing the miscarrying of the soul than open profaneness, because not so obvious to the reproofs of the world; therefore take heed that secret sinnings eat not out good beginnings. Jeremiah BurroughsEvery one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols. John Calvin
The deadliest sin were the consciousness of no sin. --Thomas Carlyle
Unbelief was the first sin, and pride was the first-born of it. STEPHEN CHARNOCK
MODERN masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equallyi mpressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin -- a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or not man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere Materialists, have begun in our day notto deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R. J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions he must either deny the existence of God, as all Atheists do, or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.-- G K Chesterton 'Orthodoxy.'
The London Times once asked a number prominent people to
write essays on the topic, What s Wrong with the World. G.
K. Chesterton reply is the shortest and most to the point in
history:
Dear Sirs:
I am.
Sincerely,
G. K. CHESTERTON
The gospel of Jesus Christ must be the bad news of the conviction of sin before it can be the Good News of redemption. The truth is revealed in God's Holy Word; life can be lived only in absolute and disciplined submission to its authority.-- Charles Colson
I am having more trouble with myself than any other man I have ever met. --Raymond Dale
Politics without principles
Pleasures without conscience
Wealth without work
Knowledge without character
Industry without morality
Science without humanity
Worship without sacrifice
Frederic Donaldson, The 7 Modern Sins
Men perish with whispering sins -- nay, with silent sins, sins that never tell the conscience that they are sins, as often with crying sins; and in hell there shall meet as many men that never thought what was sin, as that spent all their thoughts in the compassing of sin.... John Donne (1573-1631)
Any sin is more or less heinous depending upon the honor and majesty of the one whom we had offended. Since God is of infinite honor, infinite majesty, and infinite holiness, the slightest sin is of infiniteconsequence. The slightest sin is nothing less than cosmic treason when we realize against whom we have sinned. JONATHAN EDWARDS, The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners
Brethren, it is easier to declaim against a thousand sins of others, than to mortify one sin in ourselves.- John Flavel
I cling to my imperfection, as the very essence of my being.-- Anatole France, _The Garden of Epicurus_, 1894
Once upon a time there were seven deadly sins. They were
called deadly because they led to spiritual death and
therefore to damnation. The seven sins were (and are): lust,
gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride.Now all of
them, with the exception of pride, have become medical
conditions. Pride has become a virtue.
A secular society always feels uncomfortable with the moral
imagination associated with the seven deadly sins. The
Enlightenment replaced the idea of sin, which is deemed to
be an offence against God, with the idea of crime, which is
an offence against other people. But the rationalists still
shared with religion the belief that individuals are
responsible for their wrongdoing. However, these days we do
not simply feel estranged from a religious universe; we also
find it difficult to attribute the act of sinning to human
behaviour. Today, the notion of personal guilt, which
underpins the concept of the seven deadly sins, exists only
in caricature. That is why Western culture can only make
sense of the act of sinning as a symptom of a regrettable
psychological disease. Actions that were once denounced as a
sin are no longer interpreted through the vocabulary of
morality but are diagnosed through the language of therapy.
The deadly sins have become behavioural problems that
require treatment rather than punishment.
There are no longer sinners, only addictive personalities. -
Frank Furedi, "Making a virtue of vice" The Spectator 12 Jan
2002
Mercy should make us ashamed, wrath afraid to sin.-- William Gurnall
Sin disabled man to keep God's law, but it doth not enfranchise or disoblige him that he need not keep it.--William Gurnall
God's wounds cure, sin's kisses kill.-- William Gurnall
Men love everything but righteousness and fear everything but God.-- Vance Havner HEARTS AFIRE (Westwood, N. J.: Fleming H. Revell, 1952) (p. 134)
What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!---Nathaniel Hawthorne, _The House of the Seven Gables_, Chap. 11
Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. -- Robert Heinlein
Sins are like circles in the water when a stone is thrown into it; one produces another. When anger was in Cain's heart, murder was not far off.-- Philip Henry
Look into any man's heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed. -Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)_Pillars of Society_
To argue from mercy to sin is the devil's logic.-- JAMES JANEWAY
Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be built.-- Immanuel Kant
Being Lutheran, Mother believed that self-pity is a deadly sin and so is nostalgia, and she had no time for either.-- Garrison Keillor
Of course the more you love the sinner the more you hate and make war on the sin, just as the more you love the person, the more you hate and kill the cancer cells that are killing the person. Compassion for cancer cells does not come from compassion for persons; it comes precisely from lack of compassion for persons. --Peter Kreeft, Ecumenical Jihad
We are free to sin, but not to control sin's consequences. -- J. Kenneth Kimberlin
The good news makes no sense unless you believe the bad news first. A free operation is not good news if you don t think you have a mortal disease. Once the main obstacle to believe in Christianity was the good news. It seemed like a fairy tale; too good to be true. Today, the main obstacle is the bad news; people just don t believe in sin even though that is the only Christian doctrine that can be proven by reading daily newspapers. Calling a person sinful is not to deny that his being remains good, any more than calling the statute of Venus de Milo a damaged work of art means denying that its sculptor created a masterpiece. Humanity is a good thing gone bad, the image of God in rebellion against God, God 's beloved in a state of rebellion. -- PETER KREEFT
Sin lives solely by plagiarising the ideas of God-Abraham Kuyper, Uniformity:The Curse of Modern Life
It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick.~C.S. Lewis 1898-1963, The Screwtape Letters (1941)
I more fear what is within me than what comes from without. MARTIN LUTHER
In ourselves, we are sinners, and yet through faith we are righteous by the imputation of God. For we trust him who promises to deliver us, and in the meantime struggle so that sin may not overwhelm us, but that we may stand up to it until he finally take it away from us. MARTIN LUTHER
First we practice sin, then defend it, then boast of it. --THOMAS MANTON
Religion would not have many enemies, if it were not an enemy to their vices. - Massillon
The idea that Christianity is basically a religion of moral improvement... has its roots in the liberal Protestantism of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century... It is this stereotype which continues to have influence today... But then came the First World War... What had gone wrong was that the idea of sin had been abandoned by liberal Christianity as some kind of unnecessary hangover from an earlier and less enlightened period in Christian history. -- Alister McGrath, _Bridge-Building: Effective Christian Apologetics_, 1992,
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.-- H.L. Mencken
Man's disobedience] brought into this World a world of woe,
Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery,
Death's Harbinger.
John Milton. 1608-1674. Paradise Lost. Book IX, 11 - 13
The ingenuity of self-deception is inexhaustible.-- Hannah More
You'll never be able to speak against sin if you're entertained by it. --John Muncee
There must be a constant and increasing appreciation that though sin still remains it does not have the mastery. There is a total difference between surviving sin and reigning sin, the regenerate in conflict with sin and the unregenerate complacent to sin. It is one thing for sin to live in us: it is another for us to live in sin. It is of paramount concern for the Christian and for the interests of his sanctification that he should know that sin does not have the dominion over him, that the forces of redeeming, regenerative, and sanctifying grace have been brought to bear upon him in that which is central in his moral and spiritual being, that he is the habitation of God through the Spirit, and that Christ has been formed in him the hope of glory.... John Murray, Redemption - Accomplished and Applied
All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.-- Reinhold Niebuhr
In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose. -- J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), _The Open Mind_
The custom of sinning takes away the sense of it, the course of the world takes away the shame of it. -- John Owen
The vigour and power and comfort of our spiritual life depends on our mortification of deeds of the flesh. -- J Owen
When sin lets us alone we may let sin alone; but as sin is never less quiet than when it seems to be most quiet, and its waters are for the most part deep when they are still, so ought our contrivances against it to be vigorous at all times and in all conditions, even where there is least suspicion. --John Owen
Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you. John Owen
The indulgence of one sin opens the door to further sins. The indulgence of one sin diverts the soul from the use of those means by which all other sins should be resisted. --JOHN OWEN
Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death. --JOHN OWEN
Thus, for instance, some will assure us that it is a waste of time preaching to modern hearers about the law and sin, for (it is said) such things mean nothing to them. Instead (it is suggested) we should just appeal to the needs which they feel already, and present Christ to them simply as One who gives peace, power and purpose to the neurotic and frustrated-a super-psychiatrist, in fact. Now this suggestion excellently illustrates the danger of the minimising approach. If we do not preach about sin and God's judgement on it, we cannot present Christ as Saviour from sin and the wrath of God. And if we are silent about these things, and preach a Christ who saves only from self and sorrows of this world, we are not preaching the Christ of the Bible. We are, in effect bearing false withness and preaching a false Christ. Our message is "another gospel, which is not another.-- J I Packer, A Quest for Godliness, PG 164-165
Pleasure is the bait of sin. --Plato (B.C. 427?-347?)
I hate the sin, but I love the sinner. --Thomas Buchanan Read (1822-1872) _What a Word May Do_
When we grieve Him, we push aside the One who is the
agent to us of the work of Christ for our present life. On
the basis of the finished, passive work of Christ (that is,
His suffering on the cross), and on the basis of the active
obedience of Christ (that is, His keeping the law perfectly
through His life), the fruits are there. They are there to
flow out through the agency of the Holy Spirit through us
into the external world. The fruits are normal; not to have
them is not to have the Christian life which should be
considered usual. There are oceans of grace which wait.
Orchard upon orchard waits; vineyard upon vineyard of fruit
waits. There is only one reason why they do not flow out
through the Christian‚s life, and that is that the
instrumentality of faith is not being used. This is to
quench the Holy Spirit. When we sin in this sense, we sin
twice: we sin in the sin, and this is serious, as it is
against the law and the character of God Himself, our
Father; but at the same time we sin by omission, because we
have not raised the empty hands of faith for the gift that
is there.
In the light of the structure. of the total universe; in the
light of our calling to exhibit the existence and character
of God between the ascension and the second coming; in the
light of the terrible price of the cross, whereby all the
present and future benefits of salvation were purchased on
our behalf ˜ in the light of all this, the real sin of
the Christian is not to possess his possessions, by faith.
This is the real sin.
But whatever is not of faith is sin (Romans 14:23b). The sin
here is in not raising the empty hands of faith. -
Francis Schaeffer
The inward area is the first place of loss of true Christian life, of true spirituality, and the outward sinful act is the result.-- Francis Schaeffer
With the Fall all became abnormal. It is not just that the individual is separated from God by his true moral guilt, but each of us is not what God made us to be. Beyond each of us as individuals, human relationships are not what God meant them to be. And beyond that, nature is abnormal -- the whole cause-and-effect significant history is now abnormal. To say it another way: there is much in history now which should not be. -- Francis A. Schaeffer, True Spirituality, Ch. 1
I have come to the conclusion that none of us in our
generation feels as guilty about sin as we should or as our
forefathers did.
Francis Schaeffer letter: 14 Jan 1972
All my life I have been seeking to climb out of the pit of my besetting sins and I cannot do it and I never will unless a hand is let down to draw me up.-- Seneca
No man is free who is a slave to the flesh. Seneca (B.C. 3-65 A.D.)
We are all sinful. Therefore whatever we blame in another we shall find in our own bosoms. ~Seneca: De Ira, Bk.III, sec.26
In all their jollity in this world, the wicked are but as a book fairly bound, which when it is opened is full of nothing but tragedies. So when the book of their consciences shall be once opened, there is nothing to be read but lamentations and woes. --RICHARD SIBBES
Oh, how horrible our sins look when they are committed by someone else!-- Chuck Smith
Any cloth may cover our sores, but the finest silk will not cover our sins. --HENRY SMITH
Suffering is better than sinning. There is more evil in a drop of sin than in an ocean of affliction. Better, burn for Christ, than turn from Christ. --Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)
It is a grievous token of hardness of heart when we can
live contentedly without the present enjoyment of the
Saviour's face.
Spurgeon‚ sermon,"A WARNING AGAINST HARDNESS OF HEART"
No. 620 Hebrews 3:13
I daily feel that the atmosphere of earth has as much a
tendency to harden my heart, as to harden plaster which is
newly spread upon the wall; and unless I am baptized anew
with the Spirit of God, and constantly stand at the foot of
the cross, reading the curse of sin in the crimson
hieroglyphics of my Savior’s dying
agonies, I shall become as steeled and insensible as the
mass of professors already are.
Spurgeon‚ sermon,"A WARNING AGAINST HARDNESS OF HEART"
No. 620 Hebrews 3:13
Shame on us, that any of us should be guilty of such
tampering with that accursed thing which slew the Lord of
glory.
Spurgeon‚ sermon,"A WARNING AGAINST HARDNESS OF HEART"
No. 620 Hebrews 3:13
Man loves his own ruin. The cup is so sweet that though he knows it will poison him, yet he must drink it. And the harlot is so fair, that though he understands that her ways lead down to hell, yet like a bullock he follows to the slaughter till the dart goes through his liver. Man is fascinated and bewitched by sin. --Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)_Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit_ Vol. 13 [1867]
Sin goes in a disguise, and thence is welcome; like Judas, it kisses and kills; like Joab, it salutes and slays.-- George Swinnock
No sin is small. It is against an infinite God, and may have consequences ummeasurable. No grain of sand is small in the mechanism of a watch.--Jeremy Taylor
As long as we want to be different from what God wants us to be at the time, we are only tormenting ourselves to no purpose. -- Gerhart Tersteegen
Tell me your doctrine of the Fall and I will tell you the state of your theology. RA Torrey
Pollution is the forerunner of perdition. -- John Trapp
Adam was but human--this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake; he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent. -- Mark Twain, _Pudd'nhead Wilson_
The picture of fallen man as given in Scripture is that he knows God but does not want to recognize Him as God.-- CORNELIUS VAN TIL
When sin is your burden, Christ will be your delight. --THOMAS WATSON
Let them fear death who do not fear sin.--THOMAS WATSON
Sin hath the devil for its father, shame for its companion, and death for its wages. --THOMAS WATSON
The scriptures tell us that all men have been gripped by powers that they cannot break away from. What are these powers? Let me list them: 1) Men are slaves to sin. 2) Men are slaves to Satan. 3) Men are held for punishment in God's justice system.-- Tom Wells, A Price for A People, PG 13
The longer I live, the larger allowances I make for human infirmities.-John Wesley(1703-1791)
Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.-- Ps. 86:11 NIV
Of a person [Burke] who differed from him in politicks, he said, "In private life he is a very honest gentleman; but I will not allow him to be so in public life. People may be honest, though they are doing wrong; that is between their Maker and them. But we, who are suffering by their pernicious conduct, are to destroy them. We are sure that ------ [Burke] acts from interest. We know what his genuine principles were. They who allow their passions to confound the distinctions between right and wrong, are criminal. They may be convinced; but they have not come honestly by their conviction."-- Boswell: Life of Johnson
My uncle used to tell me, 'Dave, the most important thing in life is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you got it made.'-- David Lee Roth
But oh. sincerity, sincerity, if I knew what sincerity meaneth!--S Rutherford, Letter 281, p 526
This above all, to thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Polonius at
I, iii)
The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. --Oscar Wilde
Many teachers of the Sixties generation said "We will steal your children", and they did. A significant part of America has converted to the ideas of the 1960s - hedonism, self-indulgence and consumerism. For half of all Americans today, the Woodstock culture of the Sixties is the culture they grew up with - their traditional culture. For them, Judeo-Christian culture is outside the mainstream now. The counter-culture has become the dominant culture, and the former culture a dissident culture - something that is far out, and 'extreme'. - Patrick Buchanan, Right Now! June 2022
What I believed in the Sixties: Everything. You name it and I believed it. I believed love was all you need. I believed you should be here now. I believed drugs could make everyone a better person. I believed I could hitchhike to California with thirty-five cents and people would be glad to feed me. I believed Mao was cute. I believed private property was wrong. I believed my girlfriend was a witch. I believed the university was putting saltpeter in the cafeteria food. I believed stones had souls. I believed my parents were Nazi space monsters. I believed stones had souls. I believed the NLF were the good guys in Vietnam. I believed Lyndon Johnson was plotting to murder all the Negroes. I believed Yoko Ono was an artist. I believed Bob Dylan was a musician. I believed I would live forever or until twenty-one, whichever came first. I believed the world was about to end. I believed the Age of Aquarius was about to happen. I believed the "I Ching" said to cut classes and take over the dean's office. I believed wearing my hair long would end poverty and injustice. I believed there was a great throbbing web of psychic mucus and we were all part of it somehow. I managed to believe Gandhi and H. Rap Brown at the same time. With the exception of anything my mom and dad said, I believed everything. What I believe now: Nothing. Well, nothing much, I mean. I believe things that can be proven by reason and by experiment, and, believe you me, I want to see the logic and the lab equipment. I believe that Western civilization, after some disgusting glitches, has become almost civilized. I believe it is our first duty to protect that civilization. I believe it is our second duty to improve it. I believe it is our third duty to extend it if we can. But let's be careful about that last point. Not everybody is ready to be civilized. I wasn't in 1969. P. J. O'Rourke.
..the awful power of make-believe...-- P. J. O'Rourke, "Second Thoughts About the 1960s"
It was a kind of hoggish appetite for romance that sent my spoiled and petulant generation on a journey to Oz, a journey from which some of us are only now straggling back, in intellectual tatters.-- P. J. O'Rourke, "Second Thoughts About the 1960s"
Of course teenagers have been throwing high-blown and moralistic fits of childishness since the dawn of time. So what was new about the ‚60s? What was new was that in the ‚60s the children were allowed to get away with it. Instead of rebutting their exaggerations and silliness, the adult culture told the kids they were idealists and visionaries. Then suddenly whole bunches of people started growing their hair, inventing their own rules, and railing against limits, responsibility, and adulthood. A couple million Peter Pans said "I really believe that..." and wham! many of the grown-ups running the country were dressing, thinking, and acting in confused sympathy. -- Karl Zinsmeister
To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness. Edgar Allan Poe
O Wilberforce! thou man of black renown,
Whose merit none enough can sing or say,
Thou hast struck one immense Colossus down,
Thou moral Washington of Africa!
But there 's another little thing, I own,
Which you should perpetrate some summer's day,
And set the other halt of earth to rights;
You have freed the blacks--now pray shut up the whites.
Lord Byron, _Don Juan_, canto xiv
But I must own to the shame of my own countrymen, that I was first kidnapped and betrayed by my own complexion, who were the first cause of my exile and slavery; but if there were no buyers there would be no sellers. - Ottobah Cugoano,, Thoughts, Sentiments an the Evil, Wicked Traffic of the Slavery, Commerce of the Human Species, London, 1787.
In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy. -- Ivan Illich (1926-2002)
Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. --Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865
If slavery is not distinctly Western, what is? The movement to end slavery! Abolition is an exclusively Western institution. The historian J.M. Roberts writes, "No civilization once dependent on slavery has ever been able to eradicate it, except the Western." [...]Never in the history of the world, outside of the West, has a group of people eligible to be slave owners mobilized against the institution of slavery. This distinctive Western attitude is reflected by Abraham Lincoln: "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master." --Dinesh D'Souza, _What's So Great About America_, 2002
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.-- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
The great paradox of faith is that we find our perfect freedom only when become slaves - slaves to God...In the ancient world, slaves judged their self-worth in relation to the importance of their masters. The greater the social status of a master, the greater the esteem of the slave. Christians are slaves of the greatest and kindest Master of all... ALISTER McGRATH
I'm against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.--H. L. Mencken
Domestic slavery was common in Africa and well before
European slave buyers arrived, there was trading in humans.
Black slaves were captured or bought by Arabs and exported
across the Saharan desert to the Mediterranean and Near
East.
In 1492, the Spaniard Christopher Columbus discovered for
Europe a 'New World'. The find proved disastrous not only
for the 'discovered' people but also for Africans. It marked
the beginning of a triangular trade between Africa, Europe
and the New World. European slave ships, mainly British and
French, took people from Africa to the New World. They were
initially taken to the West Indies to supplement local
Indians decimated by the Spanish Conquistadors. The slave
trade grew from a trickle to a flood, particularly from the
seventeenth century onwards.
Portugal's monopoly in the obnoxious trade was broken in the
sixteenth century when England followed by France and other
European nations entered the trade. The English led in the
business of transporting young Africans from their homeland
to work in mines and till lands in the Americas.
Most slaves sold by Africans
Estimates of the total human loss to Africa over the four
centuries of the transatlantic slave trade range from 30
million to 200 million. At the initial stage of the trade
parties of Europeans captured Africans in raids on
communities in the coastal areas. But this soon gave way to
buying slaves from African rulers and traders. The vast
majority of slaves taken out of Africa were sold by African
rulers, traders and a military aristocracy who all grew
wealthy from the business. Most slaves were acquired through
wars or by kidnapping. - Tunde Obadina, Slave trade: a root
of contemporary African Crisis
There is a beauteous plant that grows
In Western India's sultry clime,
Which makes, alas, the Black man's woes,
And also makes the White man's crime.
Amelia Opie, The Black Man's Lament or How to Make Sugar,
London, 1824
Mammon is the largest slave-holder in the world. --Frederick Saunders
It hurt the economic historians, the Marxists and the fabians, to admit that the Ten Hour Bill, the basic piece of 19th century legislation, came down from the top, out of aa nobleman's private feelings about the Gospel, or that the abolition of the slave trade was achieved, not through the operation of some "law" of profit and loss, but peurlet as the result of tyhe new humanitarianism of the Evangelicals. - Barbara Tuchman, Bible and Sword.
Brethren, it is easier to declaim against a thousand sins of others, God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and the reformation of manners.-- William Wilberforce, diary, 1787
They charge me with fanaticism. If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large. --William Wilberforce, speech, House of Commons, 19 June 1816
Laugh, and the world laughs with you; snore, and you sleep alone. - Anthony Burgess (1917 &endash; 1993)
Sleep is pain's easiest salve -- John Donne
That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep.-Aldous Huxley
I look back on my life with regret. All those wasted years. All that time spent awake. ---from a Garfield cartoon by Jim Davis, showing Garfield napping peacefully
The amount of sleep needed by the average person is five minutes more --Max Kauffman
Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care.
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
Shakespeare: Macbeth, Act II, Scene 2
Cancer cures smoking.
Whene'er I take my pipe and stuff it
And smoke to pass the time away,
My thoughts, as I sit there and puff it,
Dwell on a picture sad and gray:
It teaches me that very like
Am I myself unto my pipe.Like me, this pipe so fragrant burning
Is made of naught but earth and clay;
To earth I too shall be returning.
It falls and, ere I'd think to say,
It breaks in two before my eyes;
In store for me a like fate lies.No stain the pipe's hue yet doth darken;
It remains white. Thus do I know
That when to death's call I must harken
My body, too, all pale will grow.
To black beneath the sod 'twill turn,
Likewise the pipe, if oft it burn.Or when the pipe is fairly glowing,
Behold then, instantaneously,
The smoke off into thin air going,
Til naught but ash is left to see.
Man's fame likewise away will burn
And unto dust his body turn.How oft it happens when one's smoking:
The stopper's missing from its shelf,
And one goes with one's finger poking
Into the bowl and burns oneself.
If in the pipe such pain doth dwell,
How hot must be the pains of Hell.Thus o'er my pipe, in contemplation
Of such things, I can constantly
Indulge in fruitful meditation,
And so, puffing contentedly,
On land, on sea, at home, abroad,
I smoke my pipe and worship God.
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker-(From the Second Little Clavier Book for Anna Magdalena Bach, 1725)
Christians in Norway are sooo shocked when they hear that Christians in England drink that their mouths drop open and their cigarettes fall right out! -- Anonymous Norwegian Pastor
Do you mind if I smoke? Oscar Wilde (to Sarah
Bernhardt)
I don't care if you burn. Sarah Bernhardt, in reply
Now that I'm gone, I tell you: don't smoke, whatever you do, don't smoke.--Yul Brynner, cancer victim (In a posthumous anti-smoking commercial)
A good cigar is as great a comfort to a man as a good cry is to a woman - Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, 1803 - 1873
Sublime tobacco! which from east to west
Cheers the tar's labour or the Turkman's rest.
Lord Byron. 1788-1824. The Island. Canto ii. Stanza 19.Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe
When tipp'd with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe;
Like other charmers, wooing the caress
More dazzlingly when daring in full dress;
Yet thy true lovers more admire by far
Thy naked beauties--give me a cigar!
Lord Byron. 1788-1824. The Island. Canto ii. Stanza 19.Thou, who when fears attack,
Bidst them avaunt, and Black
Care, at the horseman's back
Perching, unseatest;
Sweet when the morn is gray;
Sweet when they've cleared away
Lunch; and at close of day
Possibly sweetest:
C. S. Calverey, "Ode to Tobacco"Oh Nymph of transatlantic fame,
Where'er thine haunt, whate'er thy name,
Whether reposing on the side
Of Oroonoquo's spacious tide,
Or listening with delight not small
To Niagara's distant fall,
'Tis time to cherish and to feed
The pungent nose-refreshing weed,
Which, whether pulverised it gain
A speedy passage to the brain,
Or, whether, touch'd with fire, it rise
In circling eddies to the skies,
Does thought more quicken and refine
Than all the breath of all the Nine-
Forgive the bard, if bard he be,
Who once too wantonly made free,
To touch with a satiric wipe
That symbol of thy power, the pipe;
So may no blight infest thy plains
And no unseasonable rains;
And so may smiling peace once more
Visit America's sad shore;
And thou secure from all alarms,
Of thundering drums and glittering arms,
Rove unconfined beneath the shade
Thy wide-expanded leaves have made;
So may thy votaries increase,
And fumigation never cease,
May Newton with renew'd delights
Perform thy odoriferous rites.
While clouds of incense half divine
Involve thy disappearing shrine:
And so may smoke-inhaling Bull
Be always filling, never full.
William Cowper ADDRESS TO TOBACCOI have known many persons who turned their gold into smoke, but you are the first to turn smoke into gold. - Queen Elizabeth I to Sir Walter Raleigh
This Indian weed now wither'd quite,
'Tho' green at noon, cut down at night,
Shows thy decay;
All flesh is hay.
Thus think, and smoke tobacco.The pipe so lily-like and weak,
Does thus thy mortal state bespeak.
Thou art ev'n such,
Gone with a touch.
Thus think, and smoke tobacco.And when the smoke ascends on high,
Then thou behold'st the vanity
Of worldly stuff,
Gone with a puff.
Thus think, and smoke tobacco.And when the pipe grows foul within,
Think on thy soul defil'd with sin;
For then the fire,
It does require.
Thus think, and smoke tobacco.And seest the ashes cast away;
Then to thyself thou mayest say
That to the dust
Return thou must.
Thus think, and smoke tobacco.
Smoking Spiritualised Part One: The Law - Thomas Jenner (1636?)Was this small plant for thee cut down?
So was the plant of great renown;
Which mercy sends
For nobler ends.
Thus think, and smoke tobacco.Doth juice medicinal proceed
From such a naughty foreign weed?
Then what's the pow'r
Of Jesse's flow'r?
Thus think, and smoke tobacco.The promise, like the pipe, inlays,
And by the mouth of faith conveys
What virtue flows
From Sharon's rose.
Thus think, and smoke tobacco.In vain th' unlighted pipe you blow;
Your pains in inward means are so,
'Till heav'nly fire
Thy heart inspire.
Thus think, and smoke tobacco.The smoke, like burning incense tow'rs
So should a praying heart of yours,
With ardent cries,
Surmount the skies.
Thus think, and smoke tobacco.
Smoking Spiritualised Part Two: The Gospel - Ralph Erskine (1685-1752)
And a woman is just a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke. --THE BETROTHED by Rudyard Kipling
For thy sake, tobacco, I
Would do anything but die.
Charles Lamb. 1775-1834. A Farewell to Tobacco.
Sin is the transgression of the law: I will not own to sin when I am not conscious of it... When I have found intense pain relieved, a weary brain soothed,and calm refreshing sleep obtained by a cigar, I have felt grateful to God, and have blessed His name.-- C H Spurgeon
[on smoking--to someone who had written to Spurgeon saying he 'had heard he smoked, and could not believe it true'] Dear---------, I cultivate my flowers and burn my weeds. Yours truly, C. H. Spurgeon C. H. Spurgeon. Letters, p.143
While Mr. Spurgeon was living at Nightingale Lane,
Clapham, an excursion was one day organised by one of the
young men's classes at the Tabernacle. The brake with the
excursionists was to call for the President on their way to
mid-Surrey.
It was a beautiful early morning, and the men arrived in
high spirits, pipes and cigars alight, and looking forward
to a day of unrestrained enjoyment. Mr. Spurgeon was ready
waiting at the gate. He jumped up to the box-seat reserved
for him, and looking round with an expression of
astonishment, exclaimed: "What, gentlemen! Are you not
ashamed to be smoking so early?"
Here was a damper! Dismay was on every face. Pipes and
cigars one by one failed and dropped out of sight. When all
had disappeared, out came the President's cigar-case. He lit
up and smoked away serenely. The men looked at him
astonished. "I thought you said you objected to smoking, Mr.
Spurgeon?" one ventured.
"Oh no, I did not say I objected. I asked if hey were not
ashamed, and it appears they were, for they have all put
their pipes away." Amid laughter the pipes reappeared, and
with puffs of smoke the party went on merrily.
William Williams, Charles Haddon Spurgeon: Personal
Reminiscences (London: The Religious Tract Society,1895.),
30-32.
I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time.I have no other restriction as regards smoking. - Mark Twain, 70th birthday speech.
Snowmen fall from heaven unassembled.
When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;
Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing,
Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:
Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;
And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,
Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go.
But even for them awhile no cares encumber
Their minds diverted, the daily word is unspoken,
The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber
At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm
they have broken.
Robert Bridges: London Snow
If the world were so organised that everything has to be fair, no living creature could survive for a day. The birds would be forbidden to eat worms, and everyone's self-interest would have to be served.
We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion that the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one!
We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain. --Frederic Bastiat, 1850
What then, is the common denominator to which all forms of socialism are reducible, and what is the bond that unites them against natural society, or society as planned by Providence? There is none except this: They do not want natural society. What they want is an artificial society, which has come forth full-grown from the brain of its inventor... They quarrel over who will mould the human clay, but they agree that there is human clay to mould. Mankind is not in their eyes a living and harmonious being endowed by God Himself with the power to progress and to survive, but an inert mass that has been waiting for them to give it feeling and life; human nature is not a subject to be studied, but matter on which to perform experiments. - Frederic Bastiat
...the myth of socialism is far stronger than the reality of capitalism. That is because capitalism is not really an ism at all. It is what people do if you leave them alone. --Arnold Beichmen
The difference between libertarianism and socialism is that libertarians will tolerate the existence of a socialist community, but socialists can't tolerate a libertarian community. -- David D. Boaz (1997)
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. --John William Henry Boetcker
Once freedom is equated with a certain material standard of living, confiscation becomes the path to liberation. -- James Bovard
The socialist state requires greater and greater degrees of force to make it function. If resources and wealth are allocated on the basis of need rather than production, people will compete to be more needy rather than more productive. -- Linda Bowles
Thou shalt not covet" means that it is sinful even to contemplate the seizure of another man's goods -- which is something which Socialists, whether Christian or otherwise, have never managed to explain away. -- John Chamberlain
[No society can survive the socialist] fallacy that there is an absolutely unlimited number of inspired officials and an absolutely unlimited amount of money to pay them.--G K Chesterton
It is not alone that property, in all its forms, is
struck at, but that liberty, in all its forms, is challenged
by the fundamental conceptions of Socialism.
Winston Churchill
I do not wonder that British youth is in revolt against the morbid doctrine that nothing matters but the equal sharing of miseries; that what used to be called the submerged tenth can only be rescued by bringing the other nine-tenths down to their level; against the folly that it is better that everyone should have half rations rather than that any by their exertions, or ability, should earn a second helping.--Winston Churchill
All men are created equal' says the American Declaration of Independence. 'All men shall be kept equal' say the Socialists.--Winston Churchill
...he drove a sharp needle into Labour policy one day when he met [Clement Atlee] in the men's room. Atlee, arriving first, had stepped up to the urinal trough when Churchill strode in on the same mission, glanced at him, and stood at the trough as far away from him as possible. Atlee said, "Feeling standoffish today, are we, Winston?" Churchill said: "That's right. Every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it." -- William Manchester, The Last Lion (1988) "Dreams of Glory"
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings, the inherent vice of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.~Winston Churchill 1874-1965 (attrib.)
We are living in a sick society filled with people who would not directly steal from their neighbor but who are willing to demand that the government do it for them.--William L. Comer
When you subsidise poverty and failure, you get more of both. James Dale Davidson
Once you admit that the individual is merely a means to serve the ends of the higher entity called society or the nation, most of those features of totalitarian regimes which horrify us follow of necessity.From the collectivist standpoint intolerance and brutal suppression of dissent, the complete disregard of the life and happiness of the individual, are essential and unavoidable consequences of this basic premise. --F. A. Hayek _The Road to Serfdom_ Chapter 10
All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly which can -- and must -- be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a "perfect society" on any foundation other than "Women and children first!" is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly -- and no doubt will keep trying.--Robert A. Heinlein, _Time Enough For Love_
I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature. -- Sidney Hook (Webb)
It is significant that the socialist mentality is usually also an atheistic mentality, where atheism is understood not so much as the disbelief in God as the hatred of God˜an attitude as precarious logically as it has been destructive in practice. There is an important sense in which religion as traditionally understood reconciles humanity to imperfection and to failure. Since the socialist sets out to abolish failure, traditional religion is worse than _de trop_: it is an impediment to perfection. -- Roger Kimball, "The Death of Socialism", _The New Criterion_, April 2002, http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/20/apr02/social.htm
Who is secure in all his basic needs? Who has work, spiritual care, medical care, housing, food, occasional entertainment, free clothing, free burial, free everything? The answer might be nuns and monks, but the standard reply is 'prisoners'; i.e., citizens of a provider state. -- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.--G. Gordon Liddy
He (Aneurin Bevan) enjoys prophesying the imminent fall of the capitalist system, and is prepared to play a part, any part, in its burial, except that of mute. -- Harold Macmillan, speech in Commons, 1934
Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion. - Richard John Neuhaus
Socialism: nothing more than the theory that the slave is always more virtuous than his master.--H. L. Mencken Socialism is simply Communism for people without the testosterone to man the barricades.-- Gary North
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.-- George Orwell. The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
Whether considered as a doctrine, or as an historical
fact, or as a movement, socialism, if it really remains
socialism, cannot be brought into harmony with the dogmas of
the Catholic church.
Pope Pius XI (Achille Ratti) , From the encyclical,
Quadragesimo Anno (1931)
If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which, moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.-- Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno (On Reconstruction of the Social Order), Encyclical promulgated on 15 May 1931
'Helping industry' is the elephant pit of socialism, a deep hole with sharp spikes at the bottom, covered over with twigs and fresh grass. Enoch Powell September 1969
The overwhelming majority of today's intellectuals, it
must be kept in mind, believe virtually every point of the
indictment of capitalism... Thus, from their perspective,
socialism should have succeeded and capitalism have failed.
They had to expect that Soviet Russia, with its alleged
rational economic planning and concentration on the building
up of heavy industry, should have achieved the kind of
economic eminence that Japan has achieved under capitalism,
and have done so long ago. At the same time, they had to
expect that the United States and Western Europe should have
fallen into greater and greater chaos and poverty.
Yet, despite everything they believe, and think they
understand, socialism has failed, while capitalism has
succeeded. Being unwilling to admit that they have been
wrong in their beliefs--thoroughly, devastatingly
wrong--they choose to interpret the failure of socialism and
success of capitalism as proof of the impotence of the mind
to grasp reality, and now turn en masse to supporting the
ecology movement and its assault on science and technology.
In this way, ironically, the failure of socialism and
success of capitalism have played an important role in
accelerating the growth of irrationalism.
George Reisman, _Capitalism, A Treatise on Economics_,
1996
Then there was communism's weak-tea sister, socialism. Socialists maintained that we shouldn't take all the money away from all the people since all the people don't have money. We should take all the money away from only the people who make money. Then, when we run out of that, we could take more money from the people who...hey, wait! Where'd you people go? What do you mean you're "tax exiles in Monaco?"-- P. J. O'Rourke, _The CEO of the Sofa_, 2001
There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and
there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who
portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he
wants to expand the government's charitable programs is
merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other
people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride
in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good
with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head.
P.J. O'Rourke
The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to egalitarians, to people obsessed with fairness, to American presidential candidates in the year 2000 &emdash; to everyone who believes that wealth should be redistributed. And the message is clear and concise: Go to hell. -- P. J. O'Rourke, Eat the Rich
The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to collectivists, to people who believe that wealth is best obtained by redistribution, and that message is clear and concise . . . Egalitarianism is sinful; it's also cowardly. -- P.J. O'Rourke
Great Socialist statesmen aren't made, they're stillborn. --Saki
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. Thomas Sowell
The grand delusion of contemporary liberals is that they have both the right and the ability to move their fellow creatures around like blocks of wood--and that the end results will be no different than if people had voluntarily chosen the same actions. --Thomas Sowell
It is less important to redistribute wealth than it is to redistribute opportunity. Arthur H. VandenbergSocialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. Thomas Sowell
The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive. -- Thomas Sowell
The strongest argument for socialism is that it sounds good. The strongest argument against socialism is that it doesn't work. But those who live by words will always have a soft spot in their hearts for socialism because it sounds so good.-- Thomas Sowell
The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take the people's money quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly. - Thomas Sowell 5/11/98
The proverb warns that "You should not bite the hand that feeds you." But maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself. -- Thomas Szasz
We are not without accomplishment. We have managed to distribute poverty equally. -Nguyen Co Thach, Vietnamese foreign minister
Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. -- Alexis de Tocqueville
It is less important to redistribute wealth than it is to redistribute opportunity. Arthur H. Vandenberg
It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding what is the interest of the individual. -Jeremy Bentham _An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation_, 1789 Chapter I, "Of the Principle of Utility"3
A nation as a society forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society. --Thomas Jefferson
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. --Krishnamurti
Civil society depends on people agreeing to two things: Don't deliberately give offense to others, and don't be too easily offended. Too few people are giving any thought to either.-Karl Lembke
Since the social victim has been oppressed by society, he comes to feel that his individual life will be improved more by changes in society than by his own initiative. Without realizing it, he makes society rather than himself the agent of change. The power he finds in his victimization may lead him to collective action against society, but it also encourages passivity within the sphere of his personal life. -- Shelby Steele
Mystical references to "society" and its programs to "help" may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats-- Thomas Sowell
There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.-- Margaret Thatcher, Woman's Own, 31 October 1987.
A man can get away from his own kind, but not from himself
Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favourable to virtue: pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporeal health; and those who resist gaiety, will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite; for the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember that the solitary mind is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad: the mind stagnates for want of employment, grows morbid, and is extinguished like a candle in foul air. --Piozzi: Anecdotes of Johnson
He that lives well in the world is better than he that lives well in a monastery. But, perhaps, every one is not able to stem the temptations of public life; and if he cannot conquer, he may properly retreat. Some have little power to do good, and have likewise little strength to resist evil. Many are weary of their conflicts with adversity, and are willing to eject those passions which have long busied them in vain. And many are dismissed by age and diseases from the more laborious duties of society. In monasteries the weak and timorous may be happily sheltered, the weary may repose, and the penitent may meditate. Those retreats of prayer and contemplation have something so congenial to the mind of man that, perhaps, there is scarcely one that does not purpose to close his life in pious abstraction with a few associates serious as himself.-- Samuel Johnson: Rasselas [given to the character Imlac]
Study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves.-- Samuel Johnson: Rambler #89
If you know someone who tries to drown their sorrows, you might tell them sorrows know how to swim.
A day of sorrow is longer than a month of joy. Chinese Proverb
Sorrow makes men sincere. Henry Ward Beecher
Sorrow is only one of the lower notes in the oratorio of our blessedness. Adoniram Gordon
I walked a mile with Pleasure,
She chattered all the way;
But left me none the wiser,
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne'er a word said she;
But, oh, the things I learned from her,
When Sorrow walked with me!
Robert Browning Hamilton (1880-1950) _Along the Road_
Come, ye disconsolate, where'er ye languish
Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel;
Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish:
Earth has no sorrow that heav'n cannot heal
Joy of the desolate, light of the straying,
Hope of the penitent, fadeless and pure!
Here speaks the Comforter, tenderly saying,
'Earth has no sorrow that heav'n cannot cure.'
Here see the Bread of Life; see waters flowing
Forth from the throne of God, pure from above:
Come to the feast of love; come, ever knowing
Earth has no sorrow but heav'n can remove."
Thomas Moore 1779-1852, Thomas Hastings 1784-1872
Sorrows remembered sweeten present joys. Robert Pollock
Our trusting the Lord does not mean that there are not times of tears. I think it is a mistake as Christians to act as though trusting the Lord and tears are not compatible. FRANCIS SCHAEFFER
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions! --William Shakespeare (1564-1616) _Hamlet_ [1600-1601], Act IV, Sc.5, Ln. 78
Help someone in distress and you lighten your own burden; the very joy of alleviating the sorrow of another is the lessening of one's own.--Fulton John Sheen (1895-1979)_On Being Human_ [1982]
The more you join in with people in their joys and their sorrows, the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you.... But it is sorrow and trouble that brings you the nearest. Mark Twain
Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.-- Oscar Wilde
And who is fit to criticise God's plan?
Why, surely it is not this self same Man,
Whose actions always end in self-defeat,
Himself confounded by his own conceit.
Man proudly marches forth in error bold,
Accepts the gilded, and forsakes the gold.
The source of sovreign authority is found in God alone
and not in the will of the people nor in human law.
Anti-Revolutionary Party of The Netherlands, 3 April 1879,
in The Practice of Political Spirituality, McKendree R
Langley, Paedeia Pres 1984, p27
The LORD is King for ever and ever -- Ps. 10:16
There is a God in heaven who overrules all things for the best; and this is the comfort of my soul. --DAVID BRAINERD
The sovereignty of God is that golden sceptre in his hand by which he will make all bow, either by his word or by his works, by his mercies or by his judgements. Thomas Brooks
Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings. For there is none worthy of the name but God, whom heaven, earth and sea obey . King Canute
Receive this Orb set under the Cross, and remember that
the whole world is subject to the power and empire of Christ
our redeemer.
Archbishop's words to the Monarch in the Coronation
There has been a wonderful alteration in my mind, in respect to the doctrine of God's sovereignty, from that day to this...God's absolute sovereignty...is what my mind seems to rest assured of, as much as of any thing that I see with my eyes...The doctrine has very often appeared exceeding pleasant, bright and sweet. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God...God's sovereignty has ever appeared to me, a great part of his glory. It has often been my delight to approach God, and adore him as a sovereign God. --JONATHAN EDWARDS, Personal Narrative
All the plots of hell and commotions on earth have not so much as shaken God's hand to spoil one letter or line he has been drawing..-- William Gurnall
God never sends the' mouth but he sendeth meat. --John Heywood. Circa 1565. Proverbs Chap. iv.
In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all
authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions of both
men and States must be referred, We, the people,... Humbly
acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus
Christ, ..... Do hereby adopt, enact, and give to ourselves
this Constitution.
The preamble to the Irish Constitution
All powers of government, legislative, executive and judicial, derive, under God, from the people.-- Irish Constitution Article 6
Man proposes, but God disposes. --Thomas à Kempis. 1380-1471. Imitation of Christ. Book i. Chap. 19.
God,is present in all life, with the influence of His omnipresent and almighty power, and no sphere of human life is conceivable in which religion does not maintain its demands that God shall be praised, that God's ordinances shall be observed, and that every labora shall be permeated with its ora in fervent and ceaseless prayer. Wherever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever he may apply his hand, in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry, or his mind, in the world of art, and science, he is in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before the face of his God, he is employed in the service of his God, he has strictly to obey his God, and above all, he has to aim at the glory of his God.-- Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920)Calvinism, London, 1932, p. 89,90.
The sovereignty of the state as the power that protects
the individual and that defines the mutual relationships
among the visible spheres, rises high above them by its
right to command and compel. But within these spheres …
another authority rules, an authority that descends directly
from God apart from the state. This authority the state does
not confer but acknowledges.
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920)
We understand hereby, that the family, the business,
science, art and so forth are all social spheres, which do
not owe their existence to the State, but obey a high
authority within their own bosom; an authority which rules,
by the grace of God, just as the sovereignty of the State
does.
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920)Calvinism, London, 1932, p.
143
In the total expanse of human life there is not a single square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign,does not declare,'That is mine!'. --Abraham Kuyper
My life is rules by but one passion.
One higher urge drives will and soul.
May breath fail me before I ever
allow that sacred urge to fall.
'Tis to affirm God's holy statutes
In church and state, in home and school,
despite the world's strong remonstrations,
to bless our people with His rule.
'Tis to engrave God's holy order,
heard in Creation and the Word,
upon the nation's public conscience,
till God is once again its Lord.
Abraham Kuyper, Kuyper Gedenkboek, 1897
Safe?... Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't
safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.
C S Lewis The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
The Bible says my King is a seven-way King:
He's the King of the Jews - that's a racial King.
He's the King of Israel - that's a national King.
He's the King of Righteousness.
He's the King of the Ages.
He's the King of Heaven.
He's the King of Glory.
He's the King of Kings and He's Lord of Lords.David said: "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork."
My King is a sovereign King - no means of measure can define His limitless love.
No far seeing telescope can bring into visibility the coastline of his shoreless supplies.
No barrier can hinder Him from pouring out His blessings.
He's enduringly strong.
He's entirely sincere.
He's eternally steadfast.
He's immortally graceful.
He's imperially powerful.
He's impartially merciful.... do you know Him?He's the greatest phenomenon that has ever crossed the horizons of this world.
He's God's Son.
He's the sinner's Saviour.
He's the centrepiece of civilisation.
He stands in the solitude of Himself.
He's august and He's unique.He's unparalleled, He's unprecedented.
He's the loftiest idea in literature.
He's the highest personality in philosophy.
He is the supreme problem in higher criticism.
He's the fundamental doctrine of true theology.
He's the core and necessity for spiritual religion.
He's the miracle of the age, yes, He is.
He's the superlative of everything good that you choose to call Him.
He's the only one qualified to be an all-sufficient Saviour..... I wonder if you know Him?He supplies strength for the weak.
He's available for the tempted and the tried.
He sympathises and He saves.
He guards and He guides.
He heals the sick.
He cleanses the lepers.
He forgives sinners.
He discharges debtors.
He delivers the captives.
He defends the feeble.
He blesses the young.He serves the unfortunate.
He regards the aged.
He rewards the diligent and
He beautifies the meek.... I wonder if you know Him?Well, this is my King.
He is the King.
He's wellspring of wisdom.
He's the doorway of deliverance.
He's the pathway of peace.
He's the roadway of righteousness.
He's the highway of holiness.
He's the gateway to glory.... do you know Him?Well, His office is manifold.
His promise is sure.
His life is matchless.
His goodness is limitless.
His mercy is everlasting.
His love never changes.
His Word is enough.
His grace is sufficient.
His reign is righteous.
His yoke is easy and
His burden is light.I wish I could describe Him to you.
But He's indescribable.
He's incomprehensible.
He's invincible.
He's irresistible.Well, you can't get Him out of your mind.
You can't get Him off your hand.
You can't outlive Him and
You can't live without Him.Well, the Pharisees couldn't stand Him, but they found out they couldn't stop Him.
Pilate couldn't find any fault in Him.
The witnesses couldn't get their testimonies to agree.
Herod couldn't kill Him.
Death couldn't handle Him.
The grave couldn't hold Him.That's my King. That's my King. Yeah!"
"My King, more than the supreme problem of higher criticism"
A prayer of black preacher Dr. Lockeridge
Knowing that I am not the one in control gives great encouragement. Knowing the One who is in control is everything. --Alexander Michael
It is a throne of grace that God in Christ is represented to us upon; but yet is is a throne still whereon majesty and glory do reside, and God is always to be considered by us as on a throne.JOHN OWEN
Our free will gives us the ability to get ourselves into serious grief. Gods' sovereignty, is His ability to rescue us!!!-- Len Parrish
My faith hath no bed to sleep upon but omnipotency.- S. Rutherford
If I want only pure water, what does it matter to me whether it be brought in a vase of gold or of glass? What is it to me whether the will of God be presented to me in tribulation or consolation, since I desire and seek only the Divine will? ... Francois de Sales (1567-1622)
The Lord is the General, and he has the right . . . the sovereign right . . . to put us where he wants in the battle. - Francis A Schaeffer, Knoxville L'Abri Conference
There has been a wonderful alteration in my mind, in respect to the doctrine of God's sovereignty, from that day to this...God's absolute sovereignty...is what my mind seems to rest assured of, as much as of any thing that I see with my eyes...The doctrine has very often appeared exceeding pleasant, bright and sweet. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God...God's sovereignty has ever appeared to me, a great part of his glory. It has often been my delight to approach God, and adore him as a sovereign God. JONATHAN EDWARDS, Personal Narrative
We do not segment our lives, giving some time to God, some to our business or schooling, while keeping parts to ourselves. The idea is to live all of our lives in the presence of God, under the authority of God, and for the honor and glory of God. That is what the Christian life is all about. - R. C. SPROUL
I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less that God wishes - that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit, as well as the sun in the heavens - that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their course. The creeping of an aphid over the rosebush is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence - the fall of...leaves from a poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche. CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON
It would be easy to show that at our present rate of progress the kingdoms of this world never could become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. Indeed, many in the Church are giving up the idea of it except on the occasion of the advent of Christ, which, as it chimes in with our own idleness, is likely to be a popular doctrine. I myself believe that King Jesus will reign, and the idols be utterly abolished. . . . The Holy Ghost would never suffer the imputation to rest upon His holy name that He was not able to convert the world. -- Charles Haddon Spurgeon
I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified unless we preach what is nowadays called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the Gospel and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the Gospel... unless we preach the sovereignty of God in his dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah. Nor do I think we can preach the Gospel unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of his elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the cross; nor can I comprehend the Gospel which allows saints to fall away after they are called. --Charles H. Spurgeon
Let the emperor make war on heaven; let him lead heaven captive in his triumph; let him put guards on heaven; let him impose taxes on heaven! He cannot. . . . He gets his sceptre where he first got his humanity; his power where he got the breath of life. --Tertullian (AD 200)
I infer that God's decrees, and the necessity of event flowing thence, neither destroy the true free-agency of men, nor render the commission of sin a jot less heinous. They neither force the human will, nor extenuate the evil of human actions. Predestination, foreknowledge, and providence, only secure the event, and render it certainly future, in a way and manner (incomprehensibly indeed by us; but) perfectly consistent with the nature of second causes. --Augustus Toplady
The moment we make up our minds that we are going on with this determination to exalt God overall, we step out of the worldís parade... We acquire a new viewpoint; a new and different psychology will be formed within us; a new power will begin to surprise us by its upsurgings and its outgoings. ... A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), The Pursuit of God [1948]
God, we know you are in charge, but why don't you make it
slightly more obvious?
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 1990 (address to students at at
West Point)
Chance has no share in the government of the world. The
Lord reigns, and disposes all things, strongly and sweetly,
for the good of them that love him.
John Wesley , letter
Unless God has raised you up for this very thing [ablishing slave trade trading] you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be with you who can be against you. JOHN WESLEY, letter to William Wilberforce 10 days before Wesley's death
I bear no ill-will against those responsible for this.
That sort of talk will not bring her back to life. I shall
pray for those people tonight and every night. I know there
has to be a plan even though we might not understand it. God
is good and we shall meet again.
Gordon Wilson, whose daughter was killed in the IRA bombing
of Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, on 8 November 1987.
For me, as an old soldier, it has never been my place to ask my commander why this battle or this war is not over yet, or why peace has not come.- Allan Winger
Stand up; speak up; shut up.
Be sincere.
Be brief.
Be seated.
An after-dinner speech should be like a lady's dress---long enough to cover the subject and short enough to be interesting. R.A.Butler
He is one of those orators of whom it was well said, 'Before they get up, they do not know what they are going to say; when they are speaking they do not know what they are saying; and when they have sat down they do not know what they have said.' Winston Churchill 1874-1965
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time--a tremendous whack.-- Winston Churchill
Haven't you heard yet that I put something more than whisky into my speeches? ~ Winston Churchill
Whoever has received knowledge and eloquence in speech from God should not be silent or secretive but demonstrate it willingly. When a good is widely heard of, then, and only then, does it bloom, and when that good is praised by man, it has spread its blossoms. ~ Marie de France, Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante, The Lais of Marie de France (1978)
The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force. Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)Mein Kampf, vol. 1, Ch. 3, 1925.
Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both.-- Joh Andrew Holmes, _Wisdom in Small Doses_
A loud voice cannot compete with a clear voice, even if it's a whisper. -- Bary Neal Kaufman, from Peter Wooley's _What! And Give Up Show Business?_
Do not fear to repeat what has already been said. Men need the truth dinned into their ears many times and from all sides. The first rumor makes them prick up their ears, the second registers, and the third enters.RenÈ ThÈophile Hyacinthe LaÎnnec (1781ñ1826)
I will try to follow the advice that a university president once gave a prospective commencement speaker. "Think of yourself as the body at an Irish wake" he said. "They need you in order to have the party, but no one expects you to say very much." Anthony Lake, 1995
Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot. -- D.H. Lawrence
There's no point in speaking unless you can improve on silence. attributed to Edmund Muskie
Those who have had anything useful to say have said it far too often, and those who have had nothing to say have been no more reticent. --B F Skinner
I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to. --J. R. R. Tolkien, _The Two Towers_
I will be brief. Not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the world's shortest speech. He said "I will be so brief I have already finished," and he sat down. Edward O. Wilson, 1995
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. --Robert A. Heinlein
Speed isn't the only important thing; direction counts, too.
Sauri ya haifi nawa ? To how many children has speed given birth? - Hausa Proverb, Nigeria
Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly -- Mae West
NOTE: This mail is a natural product. The sleight variations in spelling and grammar enhance its individual charicter and beauty and in no way are to be considered flaws or defects.
To be read quickly.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it
deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the
olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the
rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll
raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed
ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
A man occupied with public or other important business cannot, and need not, attend to spelling. --Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
Gandhi and Nietzsche and Schulz
Form a trio of unheeded rules
The h within Ghandi can wander at will
And the digraphs of Neitsche cause many a spill
And Schultz has a t that is haunting him still
But that doesn't imply they are nothing but fools
Who spell Ghandi and Nietsche
Spell Gahndi and Neitzche
Spell Gandhi and Nietzsche and Schulz
Martin DeMello. A Pig's Eye View of Orthography, (apologies
to Dorothy Parker) , in alt.quotations
My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling, but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places. Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne
Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, "How do you spell Charles M. Schulz?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one quotation.- G. L. Sicherman
Sir, you have tasted two whole worms; you have hissed all my mystery lectures and been caught fighting a liar in the quad, you will leave Oxford by the next town drain. William A. Spooner (1844 -1930)
Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical. --Yogi Berra
If the people don't want to come out to the park, nobody's gonna stop 'em.--Yogi Berra
Most sorts of diversion in men, children, and other animals, are an imitation of fighting.--Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)_Thoughts on Various Subjects_ [1711]
The addiction to sports, therefore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested development in man's moral nature.--Thorsten Veblen_The Theory of the Leisure Class_
See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves is heard in our land.
Song of Songs 2:11,12
The state is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else. -- Frederic Bastiat
Every actual state is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The task of weaning various people and groups from the national nipple will not be easy. The sound of whines, bawls, screams and invective will fill the air as the agony of withdrawal pangs finds voice. --Linda Bowles, "The Weaning Process, " Washington Times, December 20, 1994, p. A16.
We have entered an Orwellian era in which entitlement replaces responsibility, coercion is described as compassion, compulsory redistribution is called sharing, race quotas substitute for diversity, and suicide is prescribed as 'death with dignity.' Political discourse has become completely corrupted. The reason is that if you tell people directly that you want to raise their taxes, transfer their wealth, count them by skin color, or let doctors kill them, most will object. Statists know this and therefore are obliged to obfuscate. -- Theodore Forstmann
The state is the servant of the citizen, and not his master--John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963) _State of the Union Address_ [January 11, 1962]
… we have gratefully to receive from the hand of God the institution of the state with its magistrates as a means of preservation.… On the other hand … by virtue of our natural impulse, we must ever watch against the danger which lurks for our personal liberty in the power of the state. - Abraham Kuyper (1837&endash;1920)
It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men. --Henry L. Mencken (1926) quoted in Nock's _Our Enemey the State_
It is not a sign of communal well-being when men turn to their government to execute all their business for them, but rather a sign of decay, as in the United States today. The state, indeed, is but one of the devices that a really healthy community sets up to manage its affairs. --H. L. Mencken _The American Mercury_ p.507
Thus the State turns every contingency into a resource for accumulating power in itself, always at the expense of social power; and with this it develops a habit of acquiescence in the people. New generations appear, each temperamentally adjusted &endash; or as I believe our American glossary now has it, 'conditioned' - to new increments of State power, and they tend to take the process of continuous accumulation as quite in order. All the State's institutional voices unite in confirming this tendency; they unite in exhibiting the progressive conversion of social power into State power as something not only quite in order, but even as wholesome and necessary for the public good." --Albert J. Nock, _Our Enemy the State_ (1935)
If Big Brother (of Orwell's 1984) comes to America, he will not be a fearsome, foreboding figure with a heart-chilling, omnipresent glare as in 1984. He will come with a smile on his face, a quip on his lips, a wave to the crowd, and a press that (a) dutifully reports the suppressive measures he is taking to save the nation from internal chaos and foreign threat; and (b) gingerly questions whether he will be able to succeed. --Michael Parenti _Inventing Reality_ (1986)
The politics of God requires us to reject the politics of man, which sees State intervention as the answer to society's problems.the politics of God, the true politics, requires us to adhere to God's social order, a social order in which Church and family have roles that are equally as important as that of the State and which may not be usurped by the State.In this sense Christianity as a political religion is all-embracing - i.e. it embraces all of life. -Stephen Perks ,'Christianity As A Political Faith' 'Christianity & Society', April 2004
Of course it is not the duty of the State to proclaim the Christian faith and compel people to believe the truth.The calling of the State is to administer public justice.what constitutes the public justice that the State is called to uphold must be defined by the word of God as this has been given to us in the Christian Scriptures, and it is the duty of the State to uphold the law of God as it relates to the political sphere even where those guilty of acts defined as criminal offences by God's word believe this to be a violation of their religious and civil liberties (cf 1 Tim. 1:8-11). In such cases no one is persecuted for their 'beliefs'; rather, they are punished for their 'crimes'.But what constitutes the crime that the State must suppress must be defined by the word of God, and therefore the State must look to God's law to guide it in its calling as the servant of God. Stephen Perks ,'Christianity As A Political Faith' 'Christianity & Society', April 2004
A state can no more give up part of her sovereignty than a lady can give up part of her virtue.--John Randolph (attrib.)
It is worth noting that the people today who so vehemently wish to sweep religion from all public spaces and institutions are also the same people who consistently oppose freedom. They want only one God &emdash; the state, which of course they intend to run. --Charley Reese, "Jefferson Speaks", Friday, November 29, 2002
To have the state as servant and not as master - Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power,p372
Statisticians probably do it.
Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
Half of the people in the world are below average.
On the average, everybody has one testicle.
79.84% of all statistics are made up on the spot. The other 42% are made up later on.
A report by the think-tank Demos reveals that in spite of the view that Britain is becoming a secular society, the majority in the country still proclaim themselves to be Christian, with only 4% claiming to be atheist. The most startling finding is that not only do 71% of British people believe in God but 68% profess themselves to be Christians, with over 50% believing in heaven, the resurrection and life after death. 53% pray. Christian Institute
[The War Office kept three sets of figures:] one to mislead the public, another to mislead the Cabinet, and the third to mislead itself. Herbert Henry Asquith (09/12/1852 &endash; 02/15/1928
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.-Albert Einstein
One-fifth of the people are against everything all the
time.
Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968)Speech, 6 May 1964, University
of Pennsylvania.
He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts - for support rather than illumination. Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of ten it will.... Paul Harvey News, 1979
And if you're happy knowing the mean, and not knowing the distribution, well then I will gladly bet you $20 that the next person through that door will have an above average number of legs.-- Brian Pymont
Oh don't tell me of facts-I never believe facts; you know Canning said nothing was so fallacious as facts, except figures. -Sydney SMITH
There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.Rex Stout
I always find that statistics are hard to swallow and impossible to digest. The only one I can remember is that if all the people who go to sleep in church were laid end to end they would be a lot more comfortable. --Mrs. Robert A. Taft
Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable. -- Mark Twain
All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbours. John Calvin (1509-1564), The Institutes of the Christian Religion
I promised to deal with the reason why none of the New
Testament writers ever made the tithe the basis for
Christian giving. The fact is quite conspicuous and quite
startling, especially in the case of Paul. The relief fund
for Jerusalem would have given him ample opportunity and
reason to insist upon the tithe if he had wanted to make it
normative for the Church. Why did Jesus, Paul, and all the
Apostles refrain from making use of that well-established
biblical tradition?
After having read through the New Testament witness to
simplicity, and specifically its statements on wealth, the
answer to that question is probably obvious to you. The
tithe is simply in not a sufficiently radical concept to
embody the carefree unconcern for possessions that marks
life in the Kingdom of God. Jesus Christ is the Lord of all
our goods, not just ten percent. It is quite possible to
obey the law of the tithe without ever dealing with our
mammon lust. We can feel that our monthly check to the
Church meets the new law of Jesus, and never once root out
reigning covetousness and greed. It is quite possible to
tithe and at the same time oppress the poor and needy.
The tithe is not necessarily evil; it simply cannot provide
a sufficient base for Jesus' call to carefree unconern over
provision. It fails to dethrone the rival god of
materialism. It can never bring the freedom and liberality
which is to characterize economic fellowship among the
children of the Kingdom. Perhaps the tithe can be a
beginning way to acknowledge God as the owner of all things,
but it is only a beginning and not an ending. -- "Freedom of
Simplicity" by Richard J. Foster.
In our attempt to overcome estrangement and to make ourselves a home in the world, we have made ourselves, more than ever, strangers. - A J Conyers, The Eclipse of Heaven,, Inter Varsity Press, 1992 p.71.
I have the strength of ten men! (Small, weak, skinny men with asthma.)-- Crist Drutis
God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.-- C. S. Lewis
But what is strength without a double share
Of wisdom?
John Milton. (1608 -1674). Samson Agonistes
We all have the strength to endure the misfortunes of others. --La Rochefoucauld
God always gives us strength enough, and sense enough, for every thing that He wants us to do.... John Ruskin (1819-1900)
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant. -- William Shakespeare
A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain.-- Mildred W. Struven
The delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age.--Benjamin Disraeli
You are the same today as you will be five years from now except for two things . . . the people you meet and the books you read. --Charles E. Jones
Study is the bane of childhood, the oil of youth, the indulgence of adulthood, and a restorative in old age.-- Walter Savage Landor
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have laboured hard for.-- Socrates
The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
Living in Hollywood is like living in a bowl of granola. What ain't fruits and nuts is flakes.
Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
Hanlon's Razor "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
[W]e have not been scuffling in this waste-howling wildness for the right to be stupid.-- Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995) "The Salt Eaters," 1980.
.Isn't it curious that narrow-minded people are often the most thickheaded? -- Frank Baer
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. -- Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915)
If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out? - Will Rogers
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. -- Friedrich von Schiller
I'm not intending to imply insult or judgement here but I am curious to know in order to be able to respond to your posts in an appropriate manner, so please forgive what appears to be, but in fact is not intended as, an insulting question: Are you stupid? -- Melinda Shore
Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.
Success is just a matter of luck -- ask any failure.
A sense of duty and responsibility leads to a successful life... not brains....
There are two rules for success in life.
Rule 1: Don't tell people everything you know.
The dictionary is the only place where SUCCESS comes before WORK.
No one ever attains success by simply doing what is required of him. --Charles Kendall Adams
The world isn't interested in the storms you encountered, but whether or not you brought in the ship. - Raul Armesto
Keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final. Roger Babson (1875-1967)
There are two great rules in life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that every one can in the end get what he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is more or less of an exception to the general rule. --Samuel Butler
Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world except money. - Johnny Cash (1932 &endash; 2003)
Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable.- Coco Chanel (1883-1971) In "McCall's Magazine."
Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes - they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice. - Agatha Christie (1890-1976)Remembered Death, 1945.
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. - Winston Churchill
The secret of success is constancy of purpose.&endash;Benjamin Disraeli
Success is relative: it's what we can make of the mess we have made of things. -T. S. Eliot
Maybe life is a grindstone; whether it polishes you or wears you down depends on what you're made of. Kay Fletcher
Success is always temporary. When all is said and done, the only thing you'll have left is your character.--- Vince Gill
The day is committed to error and floundering; success and achievement are matters of long range.-- Goethe
We will either find a way, or make one. Hannibal.
Success seems to be connected with action. Successful men keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit. - Conrad Hilton (1887 &endash; 1979)
Many people dream of success. To me, success can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection.... Soichiro Honda, Art of Juggling; How to Achieve Your Full Potential in Business, Learning and Life by Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan
Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune.; but great minds rise above them. Washington Irving
It is certain that success naturally confirms in us a favourable opinion of our own abilities. Scarce any man is willing to allot to accident, friendship, and a thousand causes, which concur in every event without human contrivance or interposition, the part which they may justly claim in his advancement. We rate ourselves by our fortune rather than our virtues, and exorbitant claims are quickly produced by imaginary merit.-- Samue Johnson: Rambler #172
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified. --Samuel Johnson
Nature gave men two ends - one to sit on and one to think with. Ever since then man's success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most. George R. Kirkpatrick
Success didn't spoil me; I've always been insufferable. Fran Lebowitz
The desire for success lubricates secret prostitutions in the soul. Norman Mailer
The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me. - Howard Nemerov (1920&endash;1991)
Life has not taught me to expect nothing, but she has taught me not to expect success to be the inevitable result of my endeavors. She taught me to seek sustenance from the endeavor itself, but to leave the result to God. --Alan Paton
Women are rarely as successful as men ˆ they have no wives to advise them. -- Bob Phillips
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure. --- Colin Powell.
I feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.--Jonas Salk
He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory is a benediction. -- Bessie A. Stanley (b.1879)
Success is a journey, not a destination. Ben Sweetland
The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation. - Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910
Success in almost any field depends more on energy and drive than it does on intelligence. This explains why we have so many stupid leaders. - Sloan Wilson (1920 &endash; )
I couldn't wait for success so I went on ahead without it. -- JONATHAN WINTERS
If God wants people to suffer, he sends them too much understanding.-Yiddish Proverb
When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool. -Chinua Achebe (1930-____): "Arrow of God," 1967.
Suffering isn't ennobling; recovery is. -- Christiaan H. Barnard
We are never ripe till we have been made so by suffering.~Henry Ward Beecher
If souls can suffer alongside, and I hardly know it, because the spirit of discernment is not in me, then I know nothing of Calvary love.... Amy Carmichael (1867-1951)
Suffering, once accepted, loses its edge, for the terror of it lessens, and what remains is generally more manageable than we had imagined.-- Lesley Hazelton
Few spirits are made better by the pain and languor of sickness; as few great pilgrims become eminent saints.-- Thomas a Kempis
In a sense it (Christianity) creates, rather than solves, the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteousness and loving. C. S. LEWIS, THE PROBLEM OF PAIN
The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.- Thomas Merton
Virtue will have naught to do with ease.... It demands a rough and thorny path. --Montaigne
Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.-- Mary Tyler Moore
The cross symbolises a cosmic as well as historic truth. Love conquers the world, but its victory is not an easy one. The old does not give way to the new without trying to overcome it.-- Reinhold Niebuhr
Suffering passes; having suffered never passes. --Charles Pegúy (1873-1914)
Never to suffer would never to have been blessed. Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849)
..show yourself a Christian, by suffering without murmuring; - in patience possess your soul: they lose nothing who gain Christ. I commend you to the mercy and grace of our Lord Jesus. - Samuel Rutherford, Letters, II. To LADY KENMURE, on the occasion of the death of her infant daughter, ANWOTH, Jan, 15, 1629
I know you are in grief and heaviness; and if it were not so, you might be afraid, because then your way would not be so like the way that our Lord saith leadeth to the New Jerusalem. Sure I am, if you knew what were before you, or if you saw some glances of it, you would, with gladness, swim through the present floods of sorrow, spreading forth your arms out of desire to be at land. - Samuel Rutherford, Letters IV. To LADY KENMURE, ANWOTH, Feb. 1, 1630
Unhurt people are not much good in the world. --Enid Starkie
It is by those who have suffered that the world has been advanced.-- Leo Tolstoy
Suffer all, and conquer all.... John Wesley (1703-1791)
Gladly shall I come whenever bodily strength will allow
to join my testimony with yours in Olney pulpit, that God is
love. As yet I have not recovered from the fatigues of my
American expedition. My shattered bark is scarce worth
docking any more. But I would fain wear, not rust, out. Oh!
my dear Mr. Newton, indeed and indeed I am ashamed that I
have done and suffered so little for Him that hath done and
suffered so much for ill and hell-deserving me.
George Whitefield (1714-1770), letter to John Newton
The need to let suffering speak is a condition of all truth. - Theodor AdornSuccess in almost any field depends more on energy and drive than it does on intelligence. This explains why we have so many stupid leaders. - Sloan Wilson (1920 &endash; )
Samson crushed himself and his enemies to death beneath
the ruins of a building. He can only be excused on the
grounds that the Spirit of the Lord, who wrought miracles
through him, had bidden him to do so. But, apart from such
men excepted by the command of a just law in general or of
God, the very Source of justice, in a special case, any one
who kills a human being, himself or another, is guilty of
murder.
Augustine, City of God, Book 1, Chapter 21, Image Books,
Doubleday,1958:
It is significant that in Holy Scripture no passage can be found enjoining or permitting suicide either in order to hasten our entry into immortality or to void or avoid temporal evils. God's command, "thou shalt not kill," is to be taken as forbidding self-destruction, especially as it does not add 'thy neighbor,' as it does when it forbids false witness, 'Thou shalt not bear false witness against they neighbor,' However, no one should think he is guiltless when be bears false witness against himself, since the duty to love one's neighbor is measured by the love of oneself, as it is written, "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." --. Augustine, City of God, Chapter 20
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. -- Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1955)
"It's the arsehole's way out" -- Andy McNabb ex-SAS on suicide.
I've always found it fascinating that the suicide rate of handicapped people is far less than of those not handicapped.-- Michael Levine
Suicide is belated acquiescence in the opinion of one's wife's relatives.-- H.L. Mencken
The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night. --Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) _Beyond Good and Evil_ [1886], "Maxims and Interludes," No. 157
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you:
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
Dorothy ParkerO, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
William Shakespeare. Hamlet. Act i. Sc.2
Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.--Edmund Burke (1729-1797) _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ [1790]
Superstition--what is it but distrust in God! --Mary Cholmondeley _Let Loose in Dracula's Brood_
The inferior man‚s reasons for hating knowledge are
not hard to discern. He hates it because it is complex
because it puts an unbearable burden upon his meager
capacity for taking in ideas. Thus his search is always for
short cuts. All superstitions are such short cuts.
H. L. Mencken, "Homo neanderthalis", The Baltimore Evening
Sun, June 29, 1925
Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember: it didn't work for the rabbit! R. E. Shay
No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man. Life and death to him are haunted grounds, filled with goblin forms of vague and shadowy dread. --Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
Profanity is the weapon of the witless.
The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low, that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.--George Washington
Those who have never been ill are incapable of real sympathy for a great many misfortune. Andre Gide
What people really need is a good listening to. Mary Lou Casey
Canvassing for the Tadcaster West ward in a Selby
District Council by-election, I struck up a conversation
with a local pensioner. She asked me which party I was
standing for and when I told her the Conservatives she
replied: "Oh my dear, I know just how you feel. I'm a
Jehovah's Witness.
JULIET PECK, The Times 6.5.98