Category: Speaking to the Soul

Yet, little as Scripture tells us concerning him, it affords us enough for a lesson, and that an important one. These are the facts before us. St. Andrew was the first convert among the Apostles; he was especially in our Lord’s confidence; thrice is he described as introducing others to Him; lastly, he is little known in history, while the place of dignity and the name of highest renown, have been allotted to his brother Simon, whom he was the means of bringing to the knowledge of his Saviour

Advent, despite all earnestness, is a time of refuge because it has received a message. Oh, if people know nothing about the message and the promises anymore, if they only experience the four walls and the prison windows of their gray days, and no longer perceive the quiet footsteps of the announcing angels,

When we watch, we’re watching for signs. Signs are things we watch for because they are the leading edge of a larger reality we await. We may await recovery, rescue, or reconciliation. We may await fulfillment, recognition, or love. We long for so many things. We need signs that they are on the way, or even already present.

St. Paul kept holding up a vision of a new interconnected humanity. “Bear one another’s burdens,” he said. “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” . . . No one understood this better than C.S. Lewis’s novelist friend Charles Williams, who believed that we humans are meant to be what he called “godbearers” to each other, channels of God’s love. And he said that the deepest truth of our lives is what he called the “co-inherence,” that our lives are immersed in God. There’s no separating out God in us and us in God and you and me in each other.

The duty of prayer is so great and necessary a part of religion, that every degree of assistance toward the discharge of it will be always acceptable to pious minds. The inward and spiritual performance of this worship is taught us in many excellent discourses; but a regular scheme of prayer, as a Christian exercise, or a piece of holy skill, has been much neglected.

O God, it is good to be alive,

and numbered with the people

whom thou has made:

and I thank thee for thy gift of life.

Right is founded upon Truth; it is the Truth gone into operation. Now the Truth that underlies our actions towards others is the relations we hold with others. What we can all do at once is to awake to a consciousness of these relations and begin to correspond to them in our dealings with the cook and the waiting-maid, the clerk and the cash-girl, the railway conductor and the telegraph-boy, the factory-operative, the dressmaker, the newspaper reporter, as well as the beggar and the charity “case.”

Let us take the noble examples furnished in our own generation. Through envy and jealousy, the greatest and most righteous pillars [of the Church] have been persecuted and put to death. Let us set before our eyes the illustrious apostles. Peter, through unrighteous envy, endured not one or two, but numerous labours, and when he had finally suffered martyrdom, departed to the place of glory due to him.

When I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn’t go to the churches and Gospel Halls.

The Father of angels,

the true King of victory, will call a synod,

the Lord of retainers, to judge with righteousness.

Then all people on earth will

rise up as the almighty King will

command, the captain of angels, with the sound