The Indian upon God

I passed along the water's edge below the humid trees,
My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round me knees,
My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moorfowl pace
All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase
Each other round in cricles, and heard the eldest speak:
Who holds the world between His bill and made us strong or weak
Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky.
The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams from His eye.
I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk:
Who made the world and ruleth it, He hangeth on a stalk,
For I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide
Is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide.
A little way within the gloom a roebuck raised his eyes
Brimful of starlight, and he said: The Stamper of the Skies,
He is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could He
Conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me?
I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say:
Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay,
He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night
His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.
--W.S. Yeats

The point of the poem becomes obvious by the time the peacock speaks. Yet Yeats misses a significant point of theology, and I'm tempted to append to his poem something like:

The great Creator of all that is gave His image to me,
I am man, yet He is God, wholly other is He.
He gave me a shape, but he has no form
His love warms like the sun yet he rides the storm
He is timeless--eternal--while my years are few
The Great Spirit lives on when my life is through.

Le Bon Dieu

God has become to many of us an easy-going, good-natured, indulgent parent who can be coaxed and wheedled and cajoled by his children, and who can deny them nothing--le bon Dieu of the Frenchman.

We have become "familiar" with God; we are on "easy terms" with Him; we speak to Him and about Him as we would to and about our next-door neighbor. We scarcely know what it means to worship God acceptably "with reverence and godly awe." And with our shallow and emasculated ideas of God we get a shallowness and superficiality and flippancy in our religious life.
--John Daniel Jones

God wills it

"Deus vult" might have been taken by the Puritans for their motto, "God wills it, God wills it." For that is exactly how they regarded themselves--as agents of the divine purposes, instruments of the divine will.

And there you have the secret of their pertinacity, their strength, their indomitable courage. The man who believes he is sent, that he has a mission, that back of his own will is the divine and almight will, is always a terrible [better sense: formidable] person.
--John Daniel Jones

Privacy

There are more eyes fixed on man than he realizes: he sees not as he is seen. He thinks himself obscure and unobserved, but let him remember that a cloud of witnesses holds him in full view. Wherever he is, at every instant, there are beings whose attention is riveted on his doings, and whose gaze is constantly fixed on his actions.

Within your hall, there are myriads of spirits unseen to us--spirits good and spirits evil; upon us tonight the eyes angels rest. Attentively those perfect spirits regard our order, they hear our songs, they observe our prayers.

--Charles Spurgeon

Charity

Perhaps a person possesses no bread to extend as an alms to the needy, but still greater is what a person who has a tongue is able to give. It is more important to refresh a mind that will live forever with the food of the word than to satisfy with earthly food the stomach of a body that is going to die.
--Caesarius of Arles

Patience vs. arrogance

The patient person suffers any evil rather than that his hidden good qualities become known through the evil of ostentation. On the contrary, the arrogant person prefers that good should be attributed to him even falsely, rather than that he should suffer the slightest evil.
--Gregory the Great

Watered Down Majesty

Sometimes I wonder whether the very emphasis we have laid on the tenderness and gentleness and patience of God's fatherly love has made it easy for men to sin. We have made God's forgiveness so cheap that sin has come to appear a light and trivial matter.
--John Daniel Jones

Friends, Romans, Countrymen . . .

In regard to our congregations, the old orator might soon see his prayer answered. "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears," for when the gospel is preached, we lend our ears to everybody. We are accustomed to hear for our neighbors and not for ourselves. Now, I have no objection to your lending anything else you like, but I have a strong objection to you lending your ears. I would be glad if you kept them at home for a minute or two, for I want to make you hear for yourselves this truth . . . God sees you as much as if there were nobody else in the world for Him to look at.
--Charles Spurgeon

Virtue and vice

Virtue has often been crushed out of the front rank as vice forced its way to preeminence. The praying man often has to kneel upon cold stones while the profane man walks on velvet.
--Joseph Parker

Young man, are you striving to do good, and are others imputing wrong motives to you? Do not be particular about answering them. Just go straight on and yourlife will be the best refutation of the charges.
--Charles Spurgeon

The Ground Plan in Religion

For the idea of God is the ground plan in religion. If the ground plan is cramped and meager, the building erected upon it is bound to be cramped and meager too. You cannot build a bigger building than your base will safely carry . . . And in exactly the same way, you can never build a big religion upon a little God . . . Our doubts and timidities and despairs arise from the fact that we have made Him altogether like ourselves.
--John Daniel Jones

Made In the Image of God

There is only one single human form that makes a person like God, but there are many into which he can transform himself. If he is cunning, he has the face of a fox; if he shows a poisonous, dangerous face, he has the face of a snake; if he looks wild, he has the face of a lion; if his face is ungovernable, flattering and desiring pleasures, he has the face of a dog. Generally out of one human being and one form emerge a whole plurality of characters and forms. Thus, it is the goal to get rid of all forms--even if some people do not share this opinion--in order to show that he has the face that God created.
--Didymus the Blind

The Self-Examined Life

Let us be displeased with ourselves when we sin, because sins displease God. And because we are not in fact with out sin, let us at least be like God in this respect, that what displeases him displeases us . . . He designed and constructed you; but take a look at yourself and eliminate from yourself everything that does not come from his workshop.
--Augustine

The King's Seal

Christ is the seal on the forehead, the seal in heart--on the forehead that we may always confess him, in the heart that we may always love him, and a sign on the arm that we may always do his work.
--Ambrose

Greed

Let none of us entertain the desire for possessions, for what gain is it to acquire those things which we cannot take with us? Why not rather acquire those that we can take: prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, understanding, charity, love of the poor, faith in Christ, gentleness, hospitality? If we obtain these, we shall find them there before us preparing a welcome for us in the land of the meek.
--Athanasius

The Power of Love

No storm, no profound danger, no fear of death or of punishment diminishes the strength oflove; in such happenings as we are tested, in them lies the happy life, even though it is deluged by many dangers. For the wise person is not broken by bodily ills nor is he distrubed by misfortunes, but he remains happy even amid troubles . . . For the happiness of life does not lie in bodily pleasures, but in a conscience pure of every strain of sin, and in hte mind of the one who knows that the good is also pleasurable, even though it is harsh, and that what is shameful does not give delight, even though it is sweet.
--Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, mid 5th century AD

God Is Watching

If you believe that God is about your bed and about your path and spies out all your ways, then take care not to do the least thing, not to speak the least word, not to indulge the least thought that you think would offend Him.

(Suppose one of your mortal fellow persons, suppose only a holy man, were to stand by you. Would you not be extremely cautious how you conducted yourself, both in word and action? How much more cautious ought you to be when you know that not a holy man, not an angel of God, but God Himself, the Holy One "that inhabits eternity," is inspecting your heart, your tongue, your hand, every moment.)
--John Wesley

How often ministers and pastors experience this! People apologize to them for cussing or whatever in their presence, yet think nothing of offending the God whom they believe is watching over them to protect them from evil!

Human nature

We kneel in our closets in shame for what we are, and we tell our God that the lowest place is too good for us. Then we go into the world, and if we meet with slight or disrespect, or if our opinion is ignored, or if another is preferred before us, there is all the anguish of a galled and jealous spirit.
--Frederick W. Robinson

Take Up Your Cross

God gives everybody, I think, a cross, when He enters upon a Christian life. when it comes into the believer's hands, what is it? It is the rude oak, four-squared, full of splinters and slivers, and rudely tacked together. And after 40 years I see some men carrying their cross just as rude as it was at first.

Others, I perceive, begin to wind around about it faith, hope, and patience, and after a time, like Aaron's rod, it blossoms all over. At last their cross has been so covered with holy affections that it does not seem anymore to be a cross. They carry it so easily and are so much more strengthened than burdened by it, that men almost forget that it is a cross, by the triumph with which they carry it.
--Henry Ward Beecher

A Reason for Bad Things That Happen

Like the emery and sand with which we scour off rude surfaces, evil and trouble in this world are but instruments. And they are in the hands of God. If they bite with sharp attrition, it is because we need more scouring. It is because men's troubles need ruder handling and chiseling, that evils float in the air, swim in the sea, and spring up from out of the ground. But it is under the control of the God of consolation, . . . the God of comfort, and the Father of mercies.
--Henry Ward Beecher

The Lord Reigns!

Let the earth rejoice! The touching faith men had in the natural and inevitable "progress" of the race has received many a shattering blow. Society seems to be turning toward barbarism rather than away from it . . . The destinies of the world are not, for instance, at the mercy of fleets and armies--The Lord reigns. . . . It is not armies and alliances that settle the destinies of people. "The Lord reigns." It is God who decides the fate of nations. He makes low and raises up, and none can usurp his power . . . To believe in the active sovereignty of God is to believe in the strength and supremacy of righteousness.
--John Daniel Jones, 1865 - 1942

It was the two mammoth, worldwide, unprecedented in violence and ugliness of man killing man, 20th century wars that shattered the idealism of 19th century classic liberalism. Disillusioned liberals drifted into pacifism, turned conservative, or adopted the ideas of Karl Marx, adopting the methods of deceit and ready to use violence in an effort to gain power.

Dead Flies

Just as dead flies spoil an entire pot of sweet ointment, so even one transgressor can infect the entire church.
--Fulgentius

Immediate Gratification

The cluster of grapes in bloom, suspended from the branch, is not desired by everyone, because it fails to possess an immediate pleasure. Rare indeed are those who rejoice at postponing pleasures, for people attach themselves naturally to the preference of present enjoyment, just as those pleasures whose utility is not immediate but resides in future hope are reckoned not to have the same usefulness.
--Nilus of Ancyra

What's In It For Me?

The common response of humanity is to recognize his divinity [of Jesus] when they enjoy his benefits and are convinced by numerous signs.

(It is not the same to believe in one who works miracles and is glorified as to to trust in one who is crucified, buried and taken for dead.)
--Nilus of Ancyra

Why be baptized?

. . . he referred [Solomon writing in the Song of Songs] by "Pharaoh" to the implacable foe of our noature, the noxious enemy common to us all whom he drowned in the holy waters of baptism . . .
--Theodoret of Cyr

To which Origen adds:
For it is certain that the evil spirits stir up the temptations and troubles which they arouse against the saints, by means of certain souls who are suitable and convenient for the purpose. Mounting these like chariots, they fiercely attack and assail both the church of God and individual believers.

Looking for the Good Shepherd

It is logical for the bride [the church] to enquire at the time of midday where the bridegroom takes his rest because when the light of knowledge became stronger, heresies developed which, while bearing the name of Christians, were nevertheless devoid of truth. This is the reason she is exercised and anxious to learn the spot where the bridegroom rests the sheep, the risk of falling in with the flocks of so-called companions . . . The bride begs not to fall in with these people since they give the appearance of shepherds and likewise seem to have flocks and herds. Of such kind are the people who hold the views of Arius, Eunomius, Marcion, Valentinus, Mani and Montanus [authors of ancient heresies from the first 400 years A.D.]. While invested with a Christian appearance and name, building churches, reading divine Scriptures to sheep led astray, wrongly tending their followers and thought to be companions of the bridgroom, they are instead pernicious schemers, providing the sheep with poison instead of nourishing draughts.
--Theodoret of Cyr

Let's add today's heresies to the list: Mr. Goodman, "if you're good, you'll go to heaven;" Ms. Swami, Christian reincarnation; Mr. Roster, "if you're a member of a church, you're saved--go to heaven;" Ms. Exclusive, "if you haven't been fully immersed (entire body under the water) for your baptism, you won't go to heaven;" Mr. Once-OK, Always-OK, "all you have to do is confess Christ once, after that, you can't sin no matter what you do;" Ms. Pac-Man, chewing up people in the church because it's her Christian duty to point out their faults; Mr. Death-Do-Us-Part, who will enjoy his sins and convert on his deathbed, cheating death of its victim.

NOTE to self: this would make a good sermon if I'm ever asked to preach somewhere. It would make an execellent revival sermon.
Mr. Goodman: Isaiah 64.6a, Revelation 2.1-7
Ms. Swami: Hebrews 9.27, Revelation 2.8-11
Mr. Roster: Revelation 2.1-7, 3.1-6
Ms. Exclusive: Ezekiel 36.24, Romans 10.9,10, Revelation 2.12-17, Galatians 4.9,10, 5.1-6
Mr. Once-OK, Always-OK: Ephesians 4.30, Romans 10.9,10, Revelation 2.18-29
Ms. Pac-Man: 3 John 10-12, Jude 14-16
Mr. Death-Do-Us-Part: Galatians 6.7,8, Revelation 3.1-6

The Church

The church of God is like the house of a certain king. It has a gate; it has a staircase, it has a dining room, and it has a bedroom. Everyone within the church has faith and has already entered the gate to the house, for, just as the gate opens the way to the rest of the house, so does faith provide entrance to the rest of the virtues.
--Gregory the Great (A.D. 5th century)

The Ancients on Solomon's contribution to the Bible

Proverbs offers those interested moral benefit, while Ecclesiastes comments on the nature of visible realities and thoroughly explains the futility of the present life so that we may learn its transitory character, despise passing realities and long for the future as something lasting.

The Song of Songs . . . brings out the mystical intercourse between the bride and the bridegroom, the result being that the whole of Solomon's work constitutes a kind of ladder with three steps--moral, physical, and mystical.

That is to say, the person approaching a religious way of life must first purify the mind with good behavior, then strive to discern the futility of impermanent things and the transitory character of what seems pleasant, and then finally take wings and long for the bridegroom, who promises eternal goods.

The Pursuit of Happiness

. . . that, being overeager to attain perfect happiness at once in the society of this present world, they are unwilling to await the only true happiness which will come in due time in the world to come.
--Augustine of Hippo

How well he knows our time! La plus que ca change, la plus que la meme chose. (The more things change, the more they stay the same.)

Heartbreak makes us human

Our needs testify to our immortality. And none of our needs do so more clearly than the need of our broken hearts for solid comfort and lasting assurance. Indeed, it is our heartbreaks that prove there is something within us which refuses to answer to material comforts or to be satisfied with anything temporal. This fact establishes our relationship to God, who has made us for Himself.
--J. Stuart Holden