This is where we can and must talk about Christianity and politics, Christianity and the social order. We are commanded to glorify God in these departments of life. We are not to think of ourselves as our own. A sermon is not the place to work this out in the details of economics and I don’t propose to lower my office as a minister of the Word. But it is well within my office to ask whether a system, whatever... Read more

Check out this article. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/04/liberal-churches-are-dying-but-conservative-churches-are-thriving/?utm_term=.2f63afc7ee06 Thanks to alert reader Jim for the heads up. BW3 Read more

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The only really convincing explanation of the world must assume that it was made by God, but that raises difficulties. What about the evil in the world? So, the only God that satisfies the conditions is the God whose Son was incarnate and by taking upon himself human nature and suffering and dying makes atonement for human beings and so redeems them from the bondage of corruption. God is true, and God is living. That is to say, he is... Read more

Patriot’s Day is a holiday pretty much unique to Boston and Massachusetts. You have the Boston Marathon, and always a Red Sox home game, usually early in the day. Over a half million people in the greater Boston area come out to watch the race which ends on Boylston St. near the Prudential Center. Unlike many marathons, the Boston marathon is not an out and back race or a circular race, it is a race from the little towns just... Read more

The whole Bible is a book about Jesus Christ, who is the Word of God. This does not mean that it is an Old Moses’ Almanac, nor need we suppose that the prophets always knew how these words would be fulfilled. It is probable that there were some initial disappointments. This may well have been true about Isa. 53 (in a small way a preacher sometimes finds this). See also Jer. 31.31ff. The root fact is that the prophets are... Read more

On one of his visits to Oxford, Dr. Johnson heard the official sermon preached for the benefit of those criminals who had been condemned to die at the assizes. A week or two later, the same learned preacher, preached the University sermon before the University of Oxford. He did a thing which is evidently not restricted to Methodists. He preached the same sermon. Dr. Johnson commented on this and received the usual reply. It was a good sermon and therefore... Read more

The situation we have to deal with, when we confront the situation in which human nature exists, is not rightly thought of as parallel to that of a bud which has to be developed, so that we may hope to watch the human race, as a school of Christian teachers think they can watch children open like flowers to the sun (why not like a cabbage, said a friend of mine). The real situation would be more aptly compared to... Read more

“A learned Jew in Cambridge, Mr. Loewe whose death a few years ago was certainly hastened by his labors for and his passionate sympathy with Jewish refugees once said ‘The trouble with the world today is there is not enough righteous indignation in it.’ Well, how do you expect to find righteous indignation in it if even God is not allowed to have any? Especially in these days when science can make possible so many social sins without social consequences... Read more

‘Having gifts differing according to the grace give to us’. Gifts are acts of grace. In Greek, they are nearly the same word grace is χάρις and gift is χάρισμα. Gifts are not grace, but they are a parable of it, a sign that it is at work. A wedding ring is not a marriage, but it is a sign that a marriage has taken place. A book is not a brain, but it is a sign that a brain... Read more