Quote of the Day

We are sensible of our own defects, but we have not the same clear view of the defects of others. We see our own hearts; we are conscious of the great corruption there; we have painful evidence of the impurity of the motives which often actuate us - of the evil thoughts and corrupt desires in our own souls; but we have not the same view of the errors, defects, and follies of others. We can see only their outward conduct; but, in our own case, we can look within. It is natural for those who have any just sense of the depravity of their own souls, charitably to hope that it is not so with others, and to believe that they have purer hearts. This will lead us to feel that they are worthy of more respect than we are. Hence, this is always the characteristic of modesty and humility - graces which the gospel is eminently suited to produce. A truly pious man will be always, therefore, an humble man, and will wish that others should be preferred in office and honor to himself. Of course, this will not make him blind to the defects of others when they are manifested; but he will be himself retiring, modest, unambitious, unobtrusive. This rule of Christianity would strike a blow at all the ambition of the world. It would rebuke the love of office and would produce universal contentment in any low condition of life where the providence of God may have cast our lot.

- Albert Barnes

Quote of the Day

Speaking of Martin Lloyd-Jones:  "Basically it lay in his conviction that ministers are called to be preachers, not writers.  He did not view the readiness of contemporary Christianity to allow the pulpit to be overshadowed by other means of communication as a wise adjustment to modern conditions but as a loss of faith in the means to which God has attached the special promise of His power."

Iain Murray

Quote of the Day

We must turn our back very resolutely upon every teaching of the Christian life which would lead us to try to obtain a direct vision of God.  We must not desire ever to hear audible voices or to have such visions as will give us a kind of mechanical, material certainty.  Now you know there were mystics who went in for that kind of thing… They did not like the idea of faith, they did not like the life which, as Paul describes it, says, 'we walk by faith not by sight'.  They wanted to see and hear, they wanted something tangible, and the result was they became victims of aberrations, of hallucinations and of all the manifestations which invariably accompany this craving for the immediate…We must not think of God in material terms.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Quote of the Day

At what point does our cultural engagement become just a sophisticated way of being worldly?

Trevin Wax

Quote of the Day

Every one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress(Matt 5:32).  The compact of marriage is a matter of such sacredness that it is not nullified even by separation.  For if a wife marries while her husband is still alive, even if he has left her, she commits adultery, and he who left her is the cause of this evil.  I wonder, however, whether, just as one can renounce an adulterous wife, it is also impossible to marry another when one has renounced her.  Holy Scripture makes this a difficult problem since the apostle says, on the authority of the Lord, that a woman should not leave her husband; but that if she does so, she must remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband.  Yet she should not in any case leave her husband and remain unmarried unless he is an adulterer;  for by leaving him she might cause one who was not an adulterer before to commit adultery (Matt 5:32).  Still, if she cannot exercise continence, she may properly be reconciled to her husband if she puts up with him or if he changes his ways.  But I do not see how a man could be allowed to marry another when he has left an adulterous wife since a woman is not allowed to marry another man if she leaves an adulterous husband.  Since this is so, the bond of fellowship between the spouses is so strong that although they are joined together for the sake of begetting children, this bond is not to be broken in order to beget them.  A man might divorce a barren woman and marry a woman who would bear him children, but this is not allowed.  And in our time Roman custom forbids having more than one living wife by taking an additional wife.  To be sure, if a man or a woman were to abandon an adulterous spouse and marry another, more children would be produced.  But since the divine rule seems to forbid this, it makes very clear the strength of the marriage bond.  I do not think that it could ever have such great force unless there were attached to it the sacral power of something greater than this weak mortality of ours, a bond which, although people abandon it and desire to nullify it, still remains unshaken and able to bring them punishment.

Augustine of Hippo