The whole human race, like this woman, was bent over and bowed down to the ground. Someone already understands these enemies. He cries out against them and says to God, “They have bowed my soul down.” The devil and his angels have bowed the souls of men and women to the ground. He has bent them forward to be intent on temporary and earthly things and has stopped them from seeking the things that are above.
We have some idea, perhaps, what prayer is, but what is meditation? Well may we ask; for meditation is a lost art today, and Christian people suffer grievously from their ignorance of the practice
It is good that faith is shadowy. It tempers the light to the dim-sighted eye and prepares the eye for the light. It is written: “By faith he cleanses their hearts” [Ac 15:19]. Faith, therefore does not extinguish the light but protects it. All that which an angel sees clearly, the shadow of faith delivers to me, stored up now in the embrace of the faithful, to be revealed in due time. Is it not expedient to hold that which is obscure when you cannot comprehend it in its nakedness?
If God had not intended that women should use their reason, He would not have given them any, for He does nothing in vain. If they are to use their reason, certainly it ought to be employed about the noblest objects, and in business of the greatest consequence, therefore, in religion.
My own firm conviction is that the variant conceptions of the Gospel in the New Testament, so far from being different gospels, are consistent and mutually completive aspects of the one and only Gospel. In proportion as we conceive the Gospel of God in its entirety and in its immensity, in just that degree do all scriptural,
Timothy Cutler was ordained and installed Pastor of the Congregational Church in Stratford, Conn., on the 11th of January, 1710. Here he sustained a very high reputation, as a preacher, and was regarded as one of the most influential clergymen in the Colony. Yale College, having, after a serious and somewhat protracted conflict, become established in New Haven, the Trustees of that institution convened in March, 1719, and requested Mr. Cutler to take charge of it, until their next meeting. He consented to do so, and immediately entered on his duties; and so satisfactorily did he discharge them, that the Trustees, at their next meeting, in September, regularly appointed him Rector.
Whom earth, and sea, and eke the skies,
Adore, and worship, and declare,
As ruler of the triple frame,
The closure of Maria bare.
We affirm that the fire that Christ sent out is for humanity’s salvation and profit. May God grant that all our hearts be full of this. The fire is the saving message of the gospel and the power of its commandments. We were cold and dead because of sin and in ignorance of him who by nature is truly God. The gospel ignites all of us on earth to a life of piety and makes us fervent in spirit, according to the expression of blessed Paul.
In 1965 Lowndes County, Alabama, the piney hill country between Selma and Montgomery, was known among civil rights workers as “Bloody Lowndes.” It was one of the poorest counties in America, a place where 80 percent of the population was black, and not one black had ever voted. The official motto of the Lowndes County Democratic party was “White Supremacy.” After civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo was murdered, bumper stickers reading “Open Season” appeared on cars in Lowndes County. “Selma was scary enough,” said one civil rights worker, “but Lowndes County was the edge of the civilized planet.”
Rise as soon as your health and other occasions shall permit; but it is good to be as regular as you can, and as early. Remember, he that rises first to Prayer, hath a more early title to a blessing. But he that changes night into day, labour into idleness, watchfulness to sleep, changes his hopes of blessing into a dream