Christian writer

“ When we turn to the Christian writers, whom it is convenient to take by themselves, we pass into a different atmosphere. Of rhetoric there is plenty, for most of them had been subjected to the same literary influences as their Pagan contemporaries. ”

“ We want to know unmistakably what to believe, and how to act out our belief. What a blessing it is that, when we take up our Bibles in a humble and teachable spirit, we can say, ‘Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.’ But we are come upon strange times indeed, when professed teachers of the Christian religion can propound to us ‘a gospel without an atonement, a Bible without inspiration, and an ignorant Christ.’—Well, Thomas, shall we come into my study? Dr Prosser will excuse me for a few minutes. ”

“ The Christian, as well as those who never saw the Bible or a church, will feel at home with this poet anywhere. The advantage that the Christian will have in reading him is that he will understand him better. ”

“ As a man not barely believes, but knows assuredly that that very person is his particular friend in whom he sees all the proper, peculiar, distinguishing marks and characters of his friend, so the Christian knows that book to be the word of God in and upon which he sees all the proper marks and characters of a divinely inspired book. He tastes a sweetness, and feels a power, and sees a glory, in it truly divine. 3. The divinity of the scriptures must be known and acknowledged in the first place, before men can profitably use them, before they can give good heed to them. ”

“ In his treatment of this part of the subject, the work of Christ as the true Creator, through the Christian Church, of living morality, what is peculiar and impressive is the way in which sympathy with Christianity in its antique and original form, in its most austere, unearthly, exacting aspects, is combined with sympathy with the practical realities of modern life, with its boldness, its freedom, its love of improvement, its love of truth. It is no common grasp which can embrace both so easily and so firmly. ”

“ But the poet, in order to realize his grand idea, should be gifted not only with the highest poetical genius in order to represent the philosophical principles of Christianity in the peculiar characters and types of Christian art, and give them a new, independent, and majestic appearance; but he should be also possessed, on the one hand, of a clear and perfect knowledge of Christian doctrine and ethics, and a deep and extensive knowledge of philosophy and theology ”

“ And when we find the Christian religion thus excluded from Poetry, otherwise as good as ever was produced by human genius, what are we to think of the Poet, and of the world of thought and feeling, fancy and imagination, in which he breathes, nor fears to declare to all men that he believes himself to be one of the order of the High Priests of nature? ”

“ The poet and the true Christian have alike a hidden life. Worship is the vital element of each. Poetry has in it that kind of utility which good men find in their Bible, rather than such convenience as bad men often profess to draw from it. ”

“ But for a long time after Christianity had been victorious, the Christian narrative alone, in which, as in other primitive narratives, biography and history are united, furnished the only subject-matter for literature, and priests were its vehicles.
"From the fourth to the eighth century, there is no longer any profane literature; sacred literature stands alone; priests only study or write; and they only study, they only write, save some rare exceptions, upon religious subjects." ”

“ The New Testament requires the attention of every one, who professes himself a christian. You must read it with that humility, which becomes a finite being, but more particularly a young person; you will do well to pay especial attention to the sermon on the Mount, and to that admirable epitome of all moral philosophy, the rule of doing to others, as we would they should do unto us. ”

“ The Old Testament, which is the record of the earlier stages of the Christian revelation, distinctly preparatory and prophetic, forms a continual instruction in duty and righteousness. It grounds the moral life essentially in the religious, but religion must walk in holiness. ”

“ Our poets betray, in the passages which are the favorites of earnest minds, the influence of these Scriptures. From Paradise Lost to In Memoriam, from The Temple to the Christian Year, the poems which the devout delight in are either Biblical paraphrases or Biblical distillations. Our masters of fiction could not have written the scenes which most rouse our moral nature, could not have conceived the characters which most inspire our devotional nature, without the Bible. ”

“ The scientific study of the New Testament has brought clearly to light the individual traits of the various writers, but has shown at the same time the striking agreement of these writers in their fundamental conception of the Christian Faith. For those who set forth objectively the words and ministry of Jesus as well as for those who deal more explicitly with doctrinal interpretation, the centre of interest lies in the Person, the Passion and the Resurrection of Christ. ”

“ Christianity, on the contrary, existed first, and the Scripture was the organ through which it presented itself to, and propagated itself among men. That which existed before Scripture was the complex of saving facts, whose centre is Christ and the Christian life. The function of the Scripture, therefore, was to be the medium of making known the person and work of Christ, where the living message could not reach. ”

“ The central truths of Christianity are always the same; but Biblical criticism, the comparative study of Hebrew or Christian epochs, the domain of doctrinal thought, are growths of the human mind, and every advance has been the fruit of experimental searching. ”

“ Hence it is indispensably necessary for the Christian, in every period of his life, but especially when entering on his religious course, to implore the gracious influence of the Divine Spirit, to guard him against every species of error—to lead him into all truth—and to invest the truth with that holy unction, which will render it no less a source of the highest intellectual improvement, than of the most exquisite mental enjoyment. ”

“ Secondly, we desire that your Excellencies and Honors would weigh, with the infallible word of God, with the living example of Christ, and with the pious, unblamable life of the saints, how a true Christian should be disposed according to the Scriptures. If reading, singing, water, bread, wine, name, and boasting, would constitute true Christianity, then there would be a great number of Christians. ”

“ Should we have been wiser in our generation than they, but for the Bible? If in moral speculation we hear but little—too little—of the confession of what it owes to the Christian religion—in all the Philosophy, nevertheless, that is pure and of good report, we see that "the dayspring from on high has visited it." In all philosophic inquiry there is, perhaps, a tendency to the soul's exal [Pg 179] tation of itself—which the spirit and genius of Christianity subdues. ”

“ This war in which they have given their lives will make a vast difference in the definition of what a Christian is. I can detect no orthodox Christian message in either of their dreamings, but I do find in both poets a clean, high moral message, and therefore give them place in this pulpit of the poets. ”

“ His wide learning and liberal spirit, the rugged eloquence of his style, and his deep insight into human nature made him a most attractive and stimulating teacher; and his students responded with the utmost loyalty and devotion. The substance of his teaching was published in 1893 in the volume entitled Christ in Modern Theology, which its author described as ‘an endeavour, through a Christian doctrine of God, at a sketch of the first lines of a Christian theology’. ”

“ The present work merely aims at suggesting such conceptions of history, literature, worship, human nature, and divine Being, as point to a foreordained conformation of man to God, to be fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ, of which the fulfilment may be traced in the Christian writings and the Christian churches of the first and second centuries. ”

“ Leaving the sonnets, we come to a far more interesting portion of the works before us—the religious poems. As a Christian, our author is indeed admirable. He evinces not only a deep, strong, real, and realizing faith, but much fruitful thought over the mental details, so to speak, and a wonderful comprehension of the theory, theology, and mysteries of the church.
More properly than religious poems, we should speak of poems on religion; for the man's whole life is a religious poem. Scarcely a scrap is not full of his deep Catholicity. ”

“ Neglect the proper Scriptural culture of the spiritual life and the Christian will degenerate into a few irksome duties of cold formality. By the writers of the New Testament we are urgently exhorted, yea, commanded, to attend to certain duties necessary to keep us in the love of God. ”

“ For it is remarkable that those, who became Gospel writers, and it is to be presumed that they had attained great spiritual growth when they wrote their respective works, give no instructions to others, whether Jews or Gentiles, to observe the ceremonial permitted to the disciples by Jesus, as any ordinance of the Christian church. ”

“ Now let the reader mark the foregoing citations from standard Christian authors, setting forth some of the reasons which led the founders of Christianity to adopt a visible man-God in their worship in the person of Jesus Christ, Language could hardly be used to prove more conclusively that the whole thing grew out of an idolatrous proclivity to man-worship,—that is, the gross, sensuous, carnally-minded propensity to worship an extetnal, visible God,—proving, with the corroborative evidence of many other facts, that they were not a whit above the heathen in spiritual development. ”

“ Who can calculate the moral force of one hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred thousand Christian preachers in a world like ours, most of whom are arrayed on the side of morality and learning. It may be said that these benefits may more properly be considered to flow from Christianity as revealed in the Bible; that the Bible is the cause of all this great impulse to civilization. ”

“ Furthermore, the influence of the Christian Church in the country will largely depend upon the extent to which the Christians are better able to read and understand literary expression than their heathen neighbours. ”

“ The vibratory quality which most thrills our souls in the strains of Christian literature is due to the Bible material in it. The Bible holds stored the ethical electricity on which Christendom has drawn, through centuries, exhaustless energy. ”

“ These contrasts between the revelation of the Gospel and the standards p. 110of the Christian world have always troubled the most earnest spirits in every generation. Some of you remember, no doubt, how this contrast between Christian profession and the life of selfish sin and waste flashed into fierce poetry in one such spirit of the last generation, who grew up in this school. ”

“ In the fierce white light of his idealism human effort seemed weakness, human virtue but sin, human reason but folly. Absorbed as he was in the thought of God, craving for nothing less than a divine righteousness, a divine wisdom, a divine strength, he grasped the written Bible as the law of God and concentrated every energy in the effort to obey it. ”

“ The scripture is a perfect rule of faith and practice, and was designed for the man of God, the minister as well as the Christian who is devoted to God, for it is profitable for doctrine, &c. [3.] If we consult the scripture, which was given by inspiration of God, and follow its directions, we shall be made men of God, perfect, and thoroughly furnished to every good work. [4.] There is no occasion for the writings of the philosopher, nor for rabbinical fables, nor popish legends, nor unwritten traditions, to make us perfect men of God, since the scripture answers all these ends and purposes. ”

“ But one aspect of Revelation must not be allowed to exclude or to obscure another; and Christianity is dogmatical, devotional, practical all at once; it is esoteric and exoteric; it is indulgent and strict; it is light and dark; it is love, and it is fear. ”

“ Practically, an inspired writer of the New Testament means a writer under whom we can put ourselves to school to 'learn Christ' with {6} whole-hearted confidence and faith. This, of course, gives an additional reason of the most cogent force why we should continually recur to the sacred books of the New Testament. ”

“ Now, all our exigeant demands are met by words written in a Book, and by the manifestations of a Person; and we are waiting for a Christianity such as the world has not yet known. Hitherto, Christ has existed for our uses ”

“ Yet this book, the Bible, portrays the character of God, the Father of our spirits, and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, just as clearly as any work ever written by man portrays the shape, nature, construction and constitution of the human frame. ”

“ If the little life is in thy heart, my brother, let me implore thee to seek its growth by prayer, by public and social worship, by seeking acquaintance with the mind of the Spirit in holy Scripture. The Times newspaper—and the testimony of a secular journal may have weight on this matter—said not long ago in a leader: “We question if any person of any class ever read the Scriptures regularly and thoroughly without being or becoming not only religious, but sensible and consistent.” ”

“ Conscience bow him to the earth; Affection keep silence when the priest uplifts the Bible. Man is subordinate to the apocryphal, ambiguous, imperfect, and often erroneous Scripture of the Word; the Word itself, as it comes straightway from the fountain of Truth, through Reason, Conscience, Affection, and the Soul, he must not have. It takes the Bible for God's statute-book; combines old Hebrew notions into a code of ethics; takes figures for fact; settles questions in Morals and Religion by texts of Scripture! It can justify anything out of the Bible. ”