Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

13th Friday after Trinity (August 31st, 2007)

Let us, at all times, take each the burden of the other, and let us suffer for each other even as our Lord suffered for us; but let us examine our souls unceasingly.

The Paradise of the Fathers.

13th Thursday after Trinity (August 30th, 2007)

The things of God are not made ours, by a mere notion and speculation; but when they become in us a vital principle, when they establish in us a state or temper, when the things of God are grounds and principles of suitable operations.

Benjamin Whichcote: Works.

Religion makes us live like men.

Benjamin Whichcote: Aphorisms.

13th Wednesday after Trinity (August 29th, 2007)

Wonderful is the depth of thy words, whose surface, see, is before us, gently leading on the little ones: and yet a wonderful deepness, O my God, a wonderful deepness.  It is awe to look into it; even an awfulness of honour, and a trembling of love.

St. Augustine: Confessions.

It is imperfection in Religion to drudge in it, and every man drudges in Religion if he takes it up as a task and carries it as a burden.

Benjamin Whichcote: Discourses.

13th Tuesday after Trinity (August 28th, 2007)

Didst thou ever decry a glorious eternity in a winged moment of Time?  Didst thou ever see a bright Infinite in the narrow point of an Object?  Then thou knowest what Spirit means—that spire-top whither all things ascend harmoniously, where they meet and sit connected in an unfathomed Depth of Life.

Peter Sterry: Rise, Race, and Royalty of the Kingdom of God.

God giveth a man the opportunity to repent as long as he wisheth to do, and in proportion as he wisheth.

The Paradise of the Fathers.

13th Monday after Trinity (August 27th, 2007)

I live in Meshech which they say signifies Prolonging, in Kedar which signifies Blackness; yet the Lord forsaketh me not.  Though he do prolong, yet he will, I trust, bring me to his tabernacle, his resting-place.  My soul is with the congregation of the first-born, my body rests in hope, and if here I may honour my God, either by doing or suffering, I shall be most glad.

Oliver Cromwell: Letters.

We naturalize ourselves, to the employment of eternity.

Benjamin Whichcote: Aphorisms.

12th Sunday after Trinity (August 26th, 2007)

Love is a grace that loves God for Himself, and our neighbors for God.  The consideration of God's goodness and bounty, the experience of those profitable and excellent emanations from Him, may be and most commonly are, the first motive of our love; but when we are once entered, and have tasted the goodness of God, we loved the spring for its own excellency, passing from passion to reason, from thanksgiving to adoring, from sense to spirit, from considering ourselves to an union with God: and this is the image and little representation of heaven; it is beatitude in picture, or rather the infancy and beginnings of glory.

Jeremy Taylor: Holy Living.