Sunday, April 28, 2013

Quote of the Day


…a study which is exclusively practical and devotional is necessarily imperfect.  There are many things in Scripture which do not lend themselves to an immediate practical purpose, and which in fact are as good as shut out from the circle of ordinary Bible-reading.  I know that good people often try to hide this fact from themselves by hooking on some sort of lesson to passages which they do not understand, or which do not directly touch any spiritual chord.  There is very respectable precedent for this course, which in fact is nothing else than the method of topical  exegesis that reigned supreme in the Old Catholic and Medieval Church.  The ancient fathers laid down the principle that everything in Scripture which, taken in its natural sense, appears unedifying must be made edifying by some method of typical or figurative application.  In principle this is no longer admitted in the Protestant Churches (unless perhaps for the Song of Solomon), but in practice we still get over many difficulties by tacking on a lesson which is  not really taken out of the difficult passage, but read into from some other part of Scripture.  People satisfy themselves in this way, but they do not solve the difficulty.  Let us be frank with ourselves, and admit that there are many things in Scripture in which unsystematic and merely devotional reading finds no profit.

 
William Robertson Smith
I do not agree with his stance on the Old Testament(higher criticism)

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Quote of the Day


We may if we please, confine our study of Scripture to what is immediately edifying, skimming lightly over all pages which do not serve a direct purpose of devotion, and ignoring every difficulty which does not yield to the faculty of practical insight, to the power of spiritual sympathy with the mind of the Spirit, which the thoughtful Christian necessarily acquires in the habitual excessive of bringing Scripture to bear on the daily needs of his own life.  This use of Scripture is full of personal profit, and raises no intellectual difficulties.  But it does not do justice to the whole Word of God.  It cannot exhaust the whole mind of the Spirit.  It is limited for every individual by the limitations of his own spiritual experience.  Reading the Bible in this way, a man comes to a very personal appreciation of so much of God's truth as is in immediate contact with the range of his own life.  But he is sure to miss many truths which belong to another range of experience, and to read into the inspired page things from his own experience which involve human error.  In this way he becomes narrow, and full of prejudice, which prevent him from seeing that the Bible is larger than his knowledge of it, and that other men whose needs are different from his may be quite in the right in getting things out of the Scripture which he does not know, does not need, and is inclined to call false or dangerous.  

William Robertson Smith
(Disclaimer:  his stance in his writings on higher criticism is wrong)

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Quote of the Day


My song shall bless the Lord of all,
My praise shall climb to His abode;
Thee, Savior, by that name I call,
The great Supreme, the mighty God.

Without beginning, or decline,
Object of faith, and not of sense;
Eternal ages saw Him shine,
He shines eternal ages hence.

As much, when in the manger laid,
Almighty Ruler of the sky;
As when the six days’ works He made,
Filled all the morning-stars with joy.

A cheerful confidence I feel,
My well-placed hopes with joy I see;
My bosom glows with heav’nly zeal
To worship Him Who died for me.

As man, He pities my complaint,
His pow’r and truth are all divine;
He will not fail, He cannot faint,
Salvation’s sure, and must be mine.

 
William Cowper

- ?

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Quote of the Day


Tell F. that I am surprised at his going to a separate church because of choir attractions.  What is the use of his complaining of ritualism and so on, if he does not practice what he preaches?  For myself, I had enough of musical services in Stratford, and want no more.  Where are we told in the Bible that 'the choir is the power of God unto salvation'? And when men try to preach the Gospel which is the power of God unto salvation, it offends fastidious tastes for its plain-spokenness. Oh that we English people thought less about the messenger and more about the glorious message!
 
Thomas Walker

Monday, April 15, 2013

Quote of the Day


It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.

G. K. Chesterton

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Quote of the Day


The cross is laid on every Christian. It begins with the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with His death -- we give over our lives to death. Since this happens at the beginning of the Christian life, the cross can never be merely a tragic ending to an otherwise happy religious life. When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow Him, or it may be a death like Luther's, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time -- death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at His call. That is why the rich young man was so loath to follow Jesus, for the cost of his following was the death of his will. In fact, every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die, and therefore Jesus Christ and His call are necessarily our death and our life. 
  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Quote of the Day


The grace that does not change my life will not save my soul. 

 Charles Spurgeon

Monday, April 8, 2013

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Quote of the Day


The Gospel itself is the power of God unto salvation (Rom 1:16)…Since unbelief is at heart a moral, rather than an intellectual problem, no amount of evidences will ever turn unbelief to faith.  But the revealed Word of God has inherent power to do so…

John MacArthur

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Quote of the Day

There is an essential difference between the decease of the godly and the death of the ungodly. Death comes to the ungodly man as a penal infliction, but to the righteous as a summons to his Father's palace. To the sinner it is an execution, to the saint an undressing from his sins and infirmities. Death to the wicked is the King of terrors. Death to the saint is the end of terrors, the commencement of glory.
  
Charles Spurgeon