Merely speculative knowledge is of little avail: it is only like the light of the moon, which dissipates obscurity indeed, but communicates neither heat nor strength. The knowledge which alone will augment our love, is that which produces suitable impression on the mind; it is that which, like the sun-beam, enlivens and invigorates our whole frame.
I have urged the need to chip away at national sovereignty and expand global loyalty. But I believe that global loyalty will be reached through patriotism, not by rejecting it. Christians simply cannot allow political leaders to hijack patriotism in the service of fervent jingoism.
The whole body of the faithful profess that they “believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary.” By which three clauses the engines of almost all heretics are shattered.
One day when the disciples were asking among themselves as to who was of greatest importance in the kingdom of heaven, the evangelist recounts that Jesus “called a little child over and stood the child in their midst and said: ‘I assure you, unless you change and become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of God.
Many miracles were also wrought by divine power through His servant Willibrord. Whilst the ministry of preaching the Gospel is to be preferred to the working of miracles and the showing of signs, yet, because such miracles are recorded as having been performed, I think mention of them ought not to be suppressed;
Christianity and Social Order, published in 1942, was Temple’s last and perhaps his most provocative book, in which he articulated the principles which had guided his political activity and challenged many popular assumptions. The church is not a department of life concerned only with personal beliefs and devotional practices, he wrote.
An old saying holds that religion and politics don’t mix. Probably it was first said to Pharaoh when he turned down Moses’ plea to “let my people go.” Generally what it means is, “Your religion doesn’t mix with my politics.”
This is the depth of the liturgy. It is the presence of angels, archangels, the kingdom of heaven, earth and its people, the whole of creation, and the Creator, too. It is an all-embracing drama, a meeting-place of the earthly and the heavenly.
The “communion of saints” is an important resource for the cultivation of Christian spirituality. A portion of the current consensus is based in a willingness to think of the “saints” in a fashion that includes and yet goes beyond the formal process of canonization.
This hymn was written by the Reverend Robert Lowry, D.D., a Baptist minister in New York and the editor of a number of popular Sunday school songbooks. He wrote the words this well-known hymn when he was a pastor in Brooklyn, on a hot July day in 1864 during a severe epidemic.