a perfect contentment...

Off in a couple of hours to the annual Regatta hosted by one of our wonderful church families and just came across this from Ralph Waldo  in his "Spiritual Laws"...

"Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment. "

Blessings

truly ecumenical...

This from the "Notebooks" of William Ellery Channing...

"None can enjoy God's favor but by believing that he has no favorite."

Blessings

an interest in living...

A final excerpt from "Stand Upon Thy Feet" by William Henry Furness...

"O the blessedness of the man who, leaning on no human support, standing on his own feet, yields himself like a little child to the Divine Guide in the heart! In the sacred monitions that come to him from within, he hears the music of the Eternal Voice, majestic in its authority, unutterably tender in its love. Contradiction and violence cannot even ruffle the flow of his good will; for the Everlasting Mercy of God is in his bosom, and, as a bird gathereth her young under her wings, that would take under its protection the meanest and the most unworthy. He may be reviled, persecuted, crucified, but while his innocent blood is flowing away, the sacred stream of pity and forgiveness, at once human and divine, gushes forth from his inmost heart, only the more abundantly upon his destroyers. He never loses himself in a vague and barren ecstasy. He flings himself, heart and soul, into the dear cause of human welfare, even though every pleasant tie of life is sundered in the act. Though, at the Divine bidding, he is ready to give up his life at any moment, yet he has an interest in living, which we, who live only for some small purpose of our own, know not of. Standing on his own feet, seeing with his own eyes, hearing with his own ears the voice of God, he knows by his own experience, that such is the possible privilege of every living man ; and he cannot be silent or inactive when those who might hear God, who might know the Truth, are prostrate in the dust, under the weight of heavy chains, or weakly leaning upon others as weak as themselves. My friends, we may agonize to feel for our fellow-men the profound sympathy that we should, and from the depths of which we may draw strength to toil and suffer in their behalf: but it is all in vain. We shall continue hard and cold, until, by our own living experience, we know what man is, and how, if he will, he may hear God speaking to him."

Blessings

adore the Unsearchable...

   How science has swept us off our feet-and not in the good way...His "Stand Upon Thy Feet" continued...

"The old French Revolution, as has often been said, was owing in great part to the dying out of all religious awe in the heart of the nation. The men of science and philosophy of that day fancied they were going to analyze everything, pick all nature to pieces, and get within the clutch of their understanding the Original Cause. Science, they flattered themselves, would soon show how things were made, and what they were made of, and what for; and in the midst of impenetrable mysteries and miracles, they looked about almost with contempt, saw nothing that could not easily be set right, nothing more admirable than their own sagacity, which was soon to solve the mighty riddle, when it might possibly appear that the Universe was no very great things after all; that it was full of defects, and improvements might be suggested. Then all sense of sacredness, everything that could prompt men to walk humbly before God, vanished ; and the nation, being without God, plunged into an abyss of blood and crime, and men were stript of the common attributes of humanity. The same absence of a faith, that adores the Unsearchable, is always and everywhere followed by sin and woe: without faith in a holy and mysterious Presence, the world ceases to be sacred as a temple. It is only a quantity of matter, blindly obedient to certain laws impressed upon it, and man degenerates into an animal, living only for his own pleasure. He grovels. He no longer stands upon his feet. The mechanical theory of nature takes all life from us.

The inevitable consequence of our prostrate estate is, that God does not speak to us; or, when he speaks, we cannot hear. In other words—to drop the metaphor—we do not know what is True as a thing of complete personal conviction. We are never perfectly sure that it is Truth. It is not what it was to prophets and holy men of old, the word of the Lord, the voice of Almighty God, beyond every audible voice, and heard where no other voice can sound, in the heart, and to be obeyed instantly, let what may be the cost. So far are we from all authoritative conviction of this sort, that it is everywhere maintained that, without an interposing miracle, it is, and always has been, impossible for God to speak to man; in other words, that man cannot possibly know the truth as certainly as if God had spoken with him by a miracle; that the individuals who, from time to time, have appeared in the world speaking Truth with authority, were the subjects of miraculous illumination. Such being the almost universal belief, we never stand up to listen for the Divine Voice. We fold our arms and shut our eyes, or lie down and go to sleep, muttering in our dreams some unintelligible creed. And Religion, instead of being the recognition of man's immediate and intimate relationship to the Highest, becomes a phrase and a form; and, at the best, we only think, or fancy, or incline to believe, we do not know, the Truth. We cannot hear God when we have decided that it is impossible for Him to speak to us."

 Blessings

our most abundant prosperity...

William Henry Furness continues his sermon, "Stand Upon Thy Feet"...

"2. Again, all faith in God is destroyed within us, by our most abundant prosperity. We are heaped with the means and appliances of self-indulgence. The Giver is lost in his gifts. No observation is more common. Nothing does experience more abundantly attest. We are carried along by the rich full stream of the Divine Bounty, far away from its source; and we lose, as we go, all sensibility to generous emotions. Even natural affection and common humanity die away from our hearts. We lose faith in God and man. How little do the self indulgent care to quit their luxuries, and follow the guidance of self-denying duty! How deaf are we to the cry of our suffering brother! It is not of necessity that prosperity should have this effect upon us. But it does have this effect. It makes men so hard and selfish, that one feels as if he were committing an impertinence in suggesting to them the claims of humanity. The very stones in the streets, will cry out in answer to those claims as soon as they. Where common human sympathy has ceased to be, it is in vain to seek God."

Blessings

justified in our own eyes...

I found these words from William Henry Furness powerful today.  His sermon "Stand Upon Thy Feet" continued:

"There are various causes that conspire to alienate us from the Highest, and reduce us to a condition of lamentable weakness.

1. In the first place, there is an uncomfortable consciousness of a want of harmony with the Best. Fixed as we may be in our self-indulgent habits, and ingenious as we are in deceiving ourselves, we cannot wholly escape a misgiving that there is a better than we are, which we are not, and that it is our own fault that it is so. But let our minds misgive us as much as they may on this score, we must guard and keep our self-esteem as the apple of the eye. It will never do to part with that. We should have no comfort in life, were our self-satisfaction tumbled in the dust; it would embitter every drop of the poor peace that we contrive to maintain. Accordingly, we are afraid to deal honestly with ourselves. We are afraid to change the comfortable posture of our self-ignorance, and stand up upon our feet, and look, and hearken, for the True Voice. We fear lest, finding ourselves standing in the presence of God, with a clearer vision of his perfections, and a more vivid apprehension of the Holiness, Rectitude, and Love, which are the attributes of God, we should be forced to see with grief and shame how impure, unjust and selfish we are. And, therefore, that we may keep ourselves, as well as we can, justified in our own eyes, we preserve the greatest possible distance from what will wound and condemn us; and lie down and let the music of this world's enchantments fill our ears. We desire only to be let alone, that we may sleep and dream. We will harm nobody if we can help it. We want only our pleasurable sensations undisturbed. We do not desire to see God as He is, lest we should see ourselves as we are. And so, although a sense of obligations unfulfilled haunts and troubles us, we evade and put off, living at best very precariously, and yet satisfied on the whole so to live; having the countenance of so many, leaning on others, kneeling now and then, professing to pray, but, in reality, doing no such thing; only pretending and trying to persuade ourselves that our prayers are what they purport to be. Thus, a vital atheism is produced, and we cut ourselves off from the Supreme Good, by the love and pursuit of which the real life of man is nourished and matured. No wonder that our life, instead of power, becomes weakness, instead of honor, shame, instead of a triumphant conflict, a camp of vanity and sloth."

Blessings

we vegetate merely...

William Henry Furness (1802-1896) was born in Boston and attended Harvard Divinity School before becoming pastor of the then small Unitarian congregation in Philadelphia, a position he would hold for 50 years (followed by 21 as minister emeritus.)  More on Furness over the next few days.  Today, an excerpt from the sermon, "Stand Upon Thy Feet:"

"SON OF MAN, STAND UPON THY FEET, AND I WILL SPEAK UNTO THEE."  Ezekiel 2:1

Such is the word of the Lord that came to an ancient prophet. How truly is the same word addressed to every son of man! " Stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee."

Truth is the word of the Lord. To hear that word spoken to us by God himself, or, in other words meaning exactly the same thing, to know the Truth as clearly as if it were sounded in our ears by a supernatural voice, the indispensable condition is, that we stand upon our feet, upright.

Who is there that is thus standing ? Thousands lie bound hand and foot by those appetites that seek their food in the dust, and are deaf to everything but their own indulgence. And they hear not the voice of Truth, even when the very ground under them shakes and yawns at its thunders...

We are, or profess to be, greatly shocked by any speculations that so much as seem to bring into question the being and providence of God. Yet we are ourselves, to all vital purposes, fearfully atheistic. There is an atheism that infects us, which is the only kind of this form of unbelief that is worthy of any attention, or should cause any alarm. And this it is, alienation from the great Source of Life, that causes beings so rarely organized, so miraculously endowed, to live and die without exerting the power that we may. We vegetate merely. Or we are machines set in motion by external influences, or the abject victims, broken in spirit and strength, of low desires which use us at their will. We might be godlike spirits, in intimate communion with the Highest Power, victorious over all obstructions, and rendering all things subservient to our triumphs. But we are not. And the reason why we are not is, that we have not centred ourselves in God. We have no conviction of His being overpowering all other loves and fears. There is a superstitious reverence for His name; but He, whom even religious people profess to believe in, is scarcely anything more than a name, the tradition, the phantom, of a God."

Blessings