church

But whate'er you are That in this desert inaccessible, Under the shade of melancholy boughs, Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time; If you have ever looked on better days, If ever been where bells knoll'd to church, If ever sat at any good man's feast, If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear, And know what 'tis to pity and be pitied, Let gentleness my strong enforcement be. . . .

Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world, and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary. You may argue against it but you should no more treat it with disrespect than a perfectly cultivated writer would treat (say) the Catholic Church or the Church of Luther no matter how much he disliked them.

Our government has become too responsive to trivial or ephemeral concerns, often at the expense of more important concerns or an erosion of our liberty, and it has made policy priorities more dependent on where TV journalists happen to point their cameras. . . . As a nation we have lost our sense of tragedy, a recognition that bad things happen to good people. A nation that expects the government to prevent churches from burning, to control the price of bread or gasoline, to secure every job, and to find some villain for every dramatic accident, risks an even larger loss of life and liberty.

For here the religion that languishes in crowded cities or steals shame-faced to hide itself in dim churches, flourishes greatly, filling the soul with a solemn joy. Face to face with Nature on the vast hills at eventide, who does not feel himself near to the Unseen?

I suppose a fellow can worship on the golf course - but it's almost as unhandy as playing golf in church.

As Easter time approaches, let me share with you the tender story of an eleven-year-old boy named Philip, a Down's syndrome child who was in a Sunday School class with eight other children. Easter Sunday the teacher brought an empty plastic egg for each child. They were instructed to go out of the church building onto the grounds and put into the egg something that would remind them of the meaning of Easter. All returned joyfully. As each egg was opened there were exclamations of delight at a butterfly, a twig, a flower, a blade of grass. Then the last egg was opened. It was Philip's, and it was empty! Some of the children made fun of Philip. "But, teacher," he said, "teacher, the tomb was empty." A newspaper article announcing Philip's death a few months later noted that at the conclusion of the funeral eight children marched forward and put a large empty egg on the small casket. On it was a banner that said, "The tomb was empty."

Be prepared spiritually for things that will interrupt your spirituality . . . at home, at church meetings . . . in any situation.

The Church is for the perfecting of the members not a rest home for the perfect.

Church ain't over till the fat lady sings.

Men don't believe in the devil now, as their fathers used to do? They've forced the door of the broadest creed to let his majesty through; There isn't a print of his cloven foot, or a fiery dart from his brow, To be found in the earth or air today, for the world has voted so. But who is mixing the fatal draught that palsies heart and brain, And loads the earth of each passing year with ten hundred thousand slain? Who blights the bloom of the land today with the fiery breath of hell. If the devil isn't and never was? Won't somebody rise and tell? Who dogs the steps of the toiling saint, and digs the pits for his feet? Who sows the tares in the field of Time wherever God sows his wheat? The devil is voted not to be, and of course the thing is true; But who is doing the kind of work the devil alone should do? We are told he does not go about as a roaring lion now. But whom shall we hold responsible for the everlasting row To be heard in home, in church, in state, to the earth's remotest bound, If the devil, by a unanimous vote. is nowhere to be found? Won't somebody step to the front forthwith and make his bow and show How the frauds and crime of the day spring up, for surely we want to know. The devil was fairly voted out, and of course the devil's gone; But simple people would like to know who carries his business on.