Tantalizing if True

The one that loves God with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength would rather die than continue, even for a little while, in senseless or unprofitable thought. He would rather be silent than bring dishonor to God’s name through words and works of no value… Love like this brings about what God wants done, and makes faith alive. The one that puts it to practice is born of God.

Love is like a fire. If one puts too much wood on it right away, it goes out. But after it gets going, the more one puts on, the higher it burns – spreading easily to burn houses and surrounding woods. Only where there is no wood does the fire die and get cold.

That is how love works. When it begins to burn within us, any little trouble or anxiety may put it out. But when it burns in great eagerness for God, the more temptations and troubles that come upon it, the louder and higher it roars, until it devours all injustice and wickedness around it. Only if we do not practice love, and if we grow lazy or careless, does it flicker out again, and our hearts grow cold. Then faith dies out and good works come to an end. Then we stand like withered trees fit for the fire, like Jesus says.

The spark of love is faith. Without faith there can be no love. The two belong so closely together that one cannot please God without the other.

– Peter Rideman (16th century, southern Germany, Moravia)

“The misuse of meaningful songs, or even only a lack of understanding and feeling in singing them communally, has a devastating effect. When we sing them in real community with the Holy Spirit, we sense something of innermost holiness. Such songs should be sung only at very special moments, only at times of God-given experiences. To suggest songs that were once written in the Spirit, with the idea of producing an atmosphere that does not exist, to sing ‘God is present with us!’ when no one feels that God really is present, to dare to sing ‘Lord of all, to Thee we bow’ when there is no real honoring of God’s greatness in the atmosphere of the meeting is a misuse that borders on the sin against the Holy Spirit.”

– Eberhard Arnold, God’s Revolution: Justice, Community, and the Coming Kingdom

“Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God.”

- G.K. Chesterton, Christendom in Dublin, 1933

“The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings.”

- G.K. Chesterton, “The New House” Alarms and Discursions

“Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it.”

- G.K. Chesterton, Commonwealth, 1933

“The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic.”

- G.K. Chesterton, ILN, 5/29/26

“Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.”

- G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With The World, 1910

“Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision; instead we are always changing the vision.”

- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908

“The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are.”

- G.K. Chesterton, Introduction to The Defendant

“What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but an absence of self-criticism.”

- G.K. Chesterton, Sidelights on New London and Newer New York