"If you could find a better way, Jesus would be the first to tell you to take it. And if you don't believe that about Him, you don't have faith in him, because what you're really saying is that He would encourage you to believe something that is false."

"After hearing me give a talk on abortion, eugenics, and teenage pregnancy, my oldest daughter, with whom I had not initiated a talk about birds and bees, looked up at me and said frankly, 'Mom, if God gives me a baby before I am married, I won't worry.  I know that you and Dad would take care of it so that I could stay in school'.

"After taking a deep breath and squeezing back tears of sheer parental terror, I agreed that she was right, that we would help her and her baby no matter what.  I pray that the situation will not arise, but I also pray that should it arise, her father and I, as well as the congregation into which she has been baptized, will be worthy of her confidence, for to fail her would be contrary to who we hope to be.  To fail her would be the true shame."

"From that hour, whenever he thought upon the Passion of Christ, he could scarcely restrain his tears and sighs; for he then understood that these words of the Gospel were addressed to him:  'If thou wilt come after Me, deny thyself, and take up thy cross and follow Me'.  And from that day forth he clothed himself with the spirit of poverty, the sense of humility, and the affection of interior piety.

"And in as much as heretofore he had greatly abhorred the company of lepers, and could not endure even the distant sight of them, now - for the love of Christ crucified, who, in the Profit's words, was despised as a leper - he, in contempt of himself, sought out and served lepers with great humility and piety, and aided them in all their necessities.

"For he often visited them in their houses, giving them bountiful alms, and with affectionate compassion he would kiss their hands and their faces; and he desired to bestow upon poor beggars not only his money but even himself, oftentimes taking off his own clothes to cover them, tearing or cutting them in pieces for them when he had nothing else to give."

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.  If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud.  Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing."

"People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, 'If you keep a lot of rules I'll reward you, and if you don't I'll do the other thing.'  I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you than chooses, into something a little different from what it was before.  And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, with its fellow-creatures, and with itself.

"To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power.  To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness.  Each of us each moment is progressing to the one state or the other."

"We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity - like perfect charity - will not be obtained by any merely human efforts.  You must ask for God's help.  Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given.  Never mind.  After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again.  Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.

"For however important chastity (or courage or truthfulness or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still.  It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God.  We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven.  The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection"

"... a servant of God should burn and shine in such a way by his own life and holiness that he rebukes all wicked people by the light of his example and the devoutness of his conversion; in this way the brightness of his life and the fragrance of his reputation will make all men aware of their own wickedness."

"To say that men and women shouldn't inject their 'personal morality' into public debates is a practical absurdity; our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition."

"To rejoice in our forgiveness, teach right doctrine, and yearn for Heaven are wonderful things... but God has much bigger things in mind for us...He wants people like us to become fit enough to follow Jesus inside 'the infinite rule of God,' becoming searchers for his kingdom, agents within it, witnesses to it, and models for it."

Loving Thy Enemy...

"Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him?  No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment - even to death.  If you had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and be hanged.  It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an enemy.  I have always thought so, ever since I became a Christian...  It is no good quoting 'Thou shalt not kill.'  There are two Greek words: the ordinary word to kill and the word to murder.  And when Christ quotes that commandment He uses the murder one in all three accounts, Matthew, Mark and Luke.  And I am told there is the same distinction in Hebrew.

"All killing is not murder any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery.  When soldiers came to St. John the Baptist asking what to do, he never remotely suggested that they ought to leave the army: nor did Christ when He met the Roman sergeant-major - what they call a centurion.  The idea of the knight - the Christian in arms for the defense of a good cause - is one of the great Christian ideas.

"War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect an honest pacifist, though I think he is entirely mistaken.  What I cannot understand is this sort of semi-pacifism you get nowadays which gives people the idea that though you have to fight, you ought to do it with a long face and as if you were ashamed of it.  It is that feeling that robs lots of magnificent young Christians in the Services of something they have a right to, something which is the natural accompaniment of courage - a kind of gaiety and wholeheartedness...

"Even while we kill and punish we must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves - to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good.  That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him:  wishing him good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not."

"...the whole point of the Christian story, at the climax of the Jewish story, is that the curtain has been pulled back, the door has been opened from the other side, and like Jacob we have glimpsed a ladder between heaven and earth with messengers going to and fro upon it.  'The kingdom of heaven is at hand,' says Jesus in Matthew's gospel, not offering a new way of getting to heaven hereafter, but announcing that the rule of heaven, the very life of heaven, is now overlapping with earth in a new way - a way which sweeps together all the moments from Jacob's ladder to Isaiah's vision, all the patriarchal insights and prophetic dreams, and turns them into a human form, a human voice, a human life, a human death...

"Christian prayer is about standing at the fault line, being shaped by the Jesus who knelt in Gethsemane, groaning in travail, holding heaven and earth together like someone trying to tie two pieces of rope with people tugging at the other ends to pull them apart.

"In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself.  Unless you know God as that - and therefore know yourself as nothing in comparison - you do not know God at all.  As long as you are proud you cannot know God.  A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you...

"Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel good [pious] - above all, that we are better than someone else - I think we may be sure that we are being acted on. not by God, but by the devil.  The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object.  It is better to forget about yourself altogether."

"There is always a suspicion that creeps into discussions of this kind, a niggling worry that the call to worship God is rather like the order that goes out from a dictator whose subjects may not like him but have learned to fear him.  He wants a hundred thousand people to line the route for his birthday parade?  Very well, he shall have them, and they will be cheering and waving as their lives depended on it - because, in fact, they do.  Turn away in boredom, or don't turn up at all, and it will be the worse for you.

"If it has crossed your mind that worshipping the true God is like that, let me offer you a very different model... I have been in the audience for some great [musical] performances that have moved me and fed me and satisfied me richly.  But only two or three times in my life have I been in an audience which, the moment the conductor's baton came down for the last time, leaped to its feet in electrified excitement, unable to contain its enthusiastic delight and wonder at what it had just experienced...

"What happens when you're at a concert like that is that everyone present feels that they have grown in stature.  Something has happened to them:  They are aware of things in a new way; the whole world looks different...   That sort of response is pretty close to genuine worship."

"Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about.  Christian Love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will.  If we are trying to do His will, we are obeying the commandment: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.'  He will give us feelings of love if he pleases.  We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must not demand them as a right.  But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not.  It is not worried by our sins, or our indifference; and, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him."

"Of all the elements, the Sage should take water as his preceptor.  Water is yielding but all-conquering.  Water extinguishes Fire or, finding itself likely to be defeated, escapes as steam and re-forms.  Water washes away soft Earth or, when confronted by rocks, seeks a way around.  Water corrodes Iron till it crumbles to dust; it saturates the atmosphere so that Wind dies.  Water gives way to obstacles with deceptive humility, for no power can prevent its destined course to the sea.  Water conquers by yielding; it never attacks but always wins the battle.  The Sage who makes himself as water is distinguished for his humility; he embraces passivity; acts from nonaction and conquers the world."

The road to wisdom?
Well it's plain
and simple to express:

Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less

"Decent, without vain, show thy way of life.  Bear what thou canst: power cometh at man's need.  Know this for truth, and learn to conquer these: thy belly first; then sloth, luxury and rage.  Give your body food and drink in measure; that is, to cause it no distress.  Do nothing base with others or alone, and, above all others things, think well of thyself.  Practice justice in word and deed.  Do that which cannot not harm thee. Consider, then act.

"When first thou dost from soothing sleep arise, hasten about thy day's intended work.  Allow not sleep to fall on thy soft lids till thrice thou hast each act of the day recalled:  How have I sinned?  What done?  What duty missed?  Go through them first to last; and, if they seem evil, reproach thyself; if good, rejoice.  Toil at and practice this; this must thou love; this to the Path of Heavenly Virtue leads.

"Self-chosen are the woes that fall on men - how wretched, for they see not good so near, nor hearken to its voice:  the wonders you seek are within thyself; the ultimate revenge is a happy life; time heals what reason cannot."

"And for myself, the worst death, and therefore the greatest test, the one for which I had prepared myself for ever since I passed through the secret door, was the one that was upon me now: to have my uncertain courage tested on the rack; to be reduced mentally and physically to my last component of endurance, knowing I had within me the power to stop the dying with a word - that what was going on inside me was mortal combat between my spirit and my body, and that those who were applying the pain were merely hired mercenaries in this secret war within myself."

"Truth is like a river that is always splitting up into arms that reunite.  Islanded between the arms, the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the main river."

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs, the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are-

One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield