Plaque in the chapel of Ridley Hall. Chapter x, continued. This leads me to say a little, in closing, of the all-importance to the servant of Jesus Christ of the maintenance of his own personal joy and glory in his Master. The sad secret of the spirit I have just sought to deprecate lies in the subtle substitution, somewhere and somehow, of self for Jesus Christ. It is calling the work “mine” instead of “His.” It is working for my credit rather than for His glory. It is attracting, or trying to attract, to me, not altogether to Him. And where shall we go for the remedy? It must be to Him. It must be found in the renewal of our sight of Him, without one cloud between, even the cloud of our own restless activities. We must get a new view of “the fair beauty of the Lord,” and of the blessedness and pleasantness of our lot and part in Him. “From the loss of our glory in Thee, preserve and keep us, gracious Lord and God.” Such is one response in a solemn Litany of t

Almighty God, as our brother, St. George, feared not the wrath of man and fought the fight of faith as your good soldier, grant us that same courage of faith, with such oneness of mind and heart, that we may faithfully serve you after his example, and finally come to those unspeakable joys which you have prepared for those who sincerely love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

My main task, as a pastor, is the care of your souls; to watch over your hearts. And the most blessed and healthy condition of your hearts is that they fervently love the Lord Jesus with a sense of safe and happy abandon. This is the primary fruit of the Gospel and the ordinances of the Church. To that end, I want us this evening to reflect upon a most comforting aspect of Jesus’ dealing with us, that we might be inspired to love him more than ever. I refer to a verse in our Gospel reading for the day, where St. John , in his 16 th chapter, records Jesus saying these words: 12: I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. These words were a way of introducing the disciples to the promise that he would send to them the Holy Spirit, who, in his absence, would teach them all the rest of the things that they needed to know. It is this promise which is one of the keystones to the doctrine of the inspiration of the New Testament, for, in the New Te

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Handley Moule. Image: http://web.mac.com/brian.douglas/Anglican_Eucharistic_Theology/Welcome.html Chapter x, continued. To turn to another point, which is, after all, but one point of special brightness in the bright circle of consistency. I refer to that great qualification for Christian Service on which we have already dwelt in a previous chapter – an honest and unaffected self-forgetfulness, let me call it selflessness, in the worker’s soul, with reference to the work. Deep in our nature, in the Fall, lies the sin of which this is the blessed contrary; and alas for the manifestations of that sin in the circles of Christian service! It appears all too often in just the most energetic, the most versatile, the most clever, of the servants of Christ those, perhaps, gifted with most capacity to originate and direct. Their capacities are the Master’s golden talents, and are certainly meant to be employed, in His time. But then, as the solemn associations of the misused word

There is perhaps no psalm better known than the 23 rd psalm. There is good reason for that. People have always needed such words as these, because all our lives are full of trouble and cares are all around us. Never give into the lie that no one else knows the troubles you have seen. Self-pity robs us of the abundant comfort that we can find in such a passage as this from God’s Word. Instead of saying “Woe is me!” let us confess these words with our brother, King David: 1: The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. When I read these words, I always remember the story of a woman who sought out a minister who had just preached on this psalm. She was in deep trouble and despairing. He asked her simply: “Do you believe the LORD is your shepherd, right now?” She said, “Yes, I do.” Then he said, “Then you can say, not only that you will not lack what you need, but that you do not want now , for He is your Shepherd now.” David is not saying, “Everything will be all

Durham Cathedral Chapter x, continued. Such, briefly indicated, is Christian Service. It is for all always. And the conditions to its true exercise are the same for all; a walk with God in the secret of the soul; a renunciation of all thought of intermittancy in the service; a simple and expectant reliance on the heavenly Master’s will to accept it and power to use it. For our present purpose, however, we will consider Christian Service under a limitation. We will think of it as meaning the service rendered by any of the great multitude of “Christian workers” as such. It may be the service of the commissioned pastor of the flock; it may be that of the visitor of the sick, of the rescuer of the fallen, of the teacher of the Bible class or the Sunday School, of the lay worker in mission-room or open air. It may be any one who seeks definitely to influence others for Christ. If such is service, what then are the qualifications for it, or more properly, some of the chief