Quotations for May, 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Ascension
Feast of Philip & James, Apostles
I come in the little things,Saith the Lord:Not borne on morning wingsOf majesty, but I have set My FeetAmidst the delicate and bladed wheatThat springs triumphant in the furrowed sod.There do I dwell, in weakness and in power;Not broken or divided, saith our God!In your strait garden plot I come to flower:About your porch My VineMeek, fruitful, doth entwine;Waits, at the threshold, Love’s appointed hour.
I come in the little things,Saith the Lord:Yea! on the glancing wingsOf eager birds, the softly pattering feetOf furred and gentle beasts, I come to meetYour hard and wayward heart. In brown bright eyesThat peep from out the brake, I stand confest.On every nestWhere feathery patience is content to broodAnd leaves her pleasure for the high empriseOf motherhood—There doth My Godhead rest.
I come in the little things,Saith the Lord:My starry wingsI do forsake,Love’s highway of humility to take:Meekly I fit My Stature to your need.In beggar’s partAbout your gates I shall not cease to plead—As man, to speak with man—Till by such artI shall achieve My Immemorial Plan,Pass the low lintel of the human heart.
... Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), included in The Questing Spirit, Halford E. Luccock & Frances Brentano, New York: Coward-McCann, 1947, p. 294 
(see the book; see also Matt. 10:29-31; 1 Kings 19:11-12; Ezek. 36:26; John 15:5; 2 Cor. 12:9; more at Attitudes, Gentleness, God, Heart, Humility, Love, Meekness, Morning, Power, Weakness)
Friday, May 2, 2008
Feast of St. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, Teacher, 373
Both from the confession of the evil spirits and from the daily witness of His works, it is manifest, then, and let none presume to doubt it, that the Savior has raised His own body, and that He is very Son of God, having His being from God as from a Father, Whose Word and Wisdom and Whose Power He is. He it is Who in these latter days assumed a body for the salvation of us all, and taught the world concerning the Father. He it is Who has destroyed death and freely graced us all with incorruption through the promise of the resurrection, having raised His own body as its first-fruits, and displayed it by the sign of the cross as the monument to His victory over death and its corruption.
... St. Athanasius (293?-373), The Incarnation of the Word of God [4th century], St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996, XXXII, p. 63
(see the book; see also John 10:17-18; Ps. 16:10; Isa. 25:7-8; John 2:19-21 ;Acts 2:31-32; 13:34-35; 1 Cor. 15:20-26,54-55; Heb. 2:14-15; more at Cross, Death, God, Jesus, Salvation, Son, Victory, Witness, World)
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Never undertake anything for which you wouldn’t have the courage to ask the blessing of heaven.
... G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
(see the book; see also Ps. 104:24; more at Attitudes, Blessing, Courage, Heaven)
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Feast of English Saints & Martyrs of the Reformation
God is always present, always available. At whatever moment in which one turns to him the prayer is received, is heard, is authenticated, for it is God who gives our prayer its value and its character, not our interior dispositions, not our fervor, not our lucidity. The prayer which is pronounced for God and accepted by him becomes, by that very fact, a true prayer.
... Jacques Ellul (1912-1994), Prayer and Modern Man, New York: The Seabury Press, 1973, p. 17
(see the book; see also Ps. 65:2; 46:1; 91:1-2; Rom. 8:26-27; more at Authenticity, God, Omnipresence, Prayer)
Monday, May 5, 2008
Barrie tells us how, in the little house at Thrums, they used to tiptoe to and fro when his mother was upon her knees, awed by the knowledge that she was praying for them. And here and there in the New Testament, we blunder in on Christ and find Him on His knees; and, once at least, ere we can escape, cannot but overhear Him pleading our names. “Neither pray I for these alone,” that is, for Peter and John and the rest, “but for those who will believe through them”—that is, for you and me. Hush! the Lord Christ is praying for you! And what is it He asks for us? That we be given such a spirit of unity and brotherliness and Christlikeness that people, coming upon us, will look at us, and look again, and then from us to Jesus Christ, seeking the explanation of us there.
... A. J. Gossip (1873-1954), Experience Worketh Hope, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1945, p. 39
(see the book; see also John 17:20-21; Ps. 22:30-31; Rom. 15:18-19; 16:25-27; Gal. 3:28; Eph. 4:3-6; Phil. 2:1-5; Col. 3:11-14; more at Christ, Christlikeness, Jesus, Prayer, Spirit, Unity)
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Every day the church here [in Antioch] feeds 3000 people. Besides this, the church daily helps provide food and clothes for prisoners, the hospitalized, pilgrims, cripples, churchmen, and others. If only ten [other groups of] people were willing to do this, there wouldn’t be a single poor man left in town.
... St. John Chrysostom (345?-407)
(see the book; see also 1 John 3:17; Luke 3:11; 2 Cor. 8:9; 1 Tim. 6:17-18; Heb. 13:16; more at Charity, Church, Historical, People, Pilgrim, Poverty, Prisoner)
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
To believe Christ’s cross to be a friend, as he himself is a friend, is also a special act of faith.
... Samuel Rutherford (1600-1664), Letters of Samuel Rutherford, Edinburgh: William Whyte & Co., 1848, letter, Feb 13, 1640, p. 611
(see the book; see also 1 Cor. 1:18; Rom. 6:4-6; 1 Cor. 1:22-23; Gal. 2:20; 5:24; 6:14; more at Attitudes, Belief, Christ, Cross, Faith, Friend)
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Feast of Juliana of Norwich, Mystic, Teacher, c.1417
Commemoration of Dallas Willard, Teacher, Spiritual Writer, 2013
If afore us were laid together all the pains in Hell... and in Earth—death and the rest—and by itself, sin, we would rather choose all that pain than sin. For sin is so vile and so greatly to be hated that it may be likened to no pain that is not sin. To me was shown no harder hell than sin.
... Juliana of Norwich (1342?-1417), Revelations of Divine Love, Grace Harriet Warrack, ed., Methuen, 1901, ch. XL
(see the book; see also Matt. 18:8-9; 5:29-30; Mark 9:43-48; Rom. 4:8; 6:2; more at Choices, Death, Earth, Hell, Pain, Sin)
Friday, May 9, 2008
I suppose every age has its own particular fantasy: ours is science. A seventeenth-century man like [Blaise] Pascal, though himself a mathematician and scientist of genius, found it quite ridiculous that anyone should suppose that rational processes could lead to any ultimate conclusions about life, but easily accepted the authority of the Scriptures. With us, it is the other way ’round.
... Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990), Jesus Rediscovered, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969, p. 95
(see the book; see also Eccl. 1:10-11; Ps. 14:1-3; Pr. 1:7,22; Rom. 1:18-21; 2 Tim. 4:3-4; more at Historical, Reason, Science, Scripture)
Saturday, May 10, 2008
We must sometimes get away from the Authorized Version, if for no other reason, simply because it is so beautiful and so solemn. Beauty exalts, but beauty also lulls. Early associations endear but they also confuse. Through that beautiful solemnity, the transporting or horrifying realities of which the Book tells may come to us blunted and disarmed, and we may only sigh with tranquil veneration when we ought to be burning with shame or struck dumb with terror or carried out of ourselves by ravishing hopes and adorations.
... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), included in Letters to young churches, J. B. Phillips, Macmillan, 1960, preface, p. vii
(see the book; see also Isa. 55:10-11; Deut. 32:2; Matt. 24:35; John 6:63; Rom. 10:17; 1 Thess. 2:13; 5:19; 2 Pet. 1:20-21; more at Beauty, Bible, Confusion, Devotion, Dumbness, Hope, Shame, Terror, Tranquility)
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Pentecost
Obedience to Christ includes obedience to his commission to go into the world, to preach the good news, and to make disciples. But we cannot do this without taking account of the context in which people live their lives or of the alternatives to the gospel which they find attractive. Some of our evangelism has been very superficial on this account. We need to develop new strategies of evangelistic penetration that will take seriously the cultural bondage in which people are held and the need to soak ourselves in their culture in order to interpret the gospel to them from inside.
... John R. W. Stott (1921-2011), “Obeying Christ in a Changing World”, in The Lord Christ [1980], John Stott, ed., vol. 1 of Obeying Christ in a Changing World, John Stott, gen. ed., 3 vol., London: Fountain, 1977, p. 14
(see the book; see also Matt. 28:18-20; Ps. 22:27-28; 98:2-3; Isa. 49:6; 66:18-19; Luke 24:46-48; Acts 1:8; 13:47; Rom. 10:18-20; more at Bondage, Christ, Culture, Disciple, Evangelization, Gospel, Mission, Obedience, Preach)
Monday, May 12, 2008
Commemoration of Aiden Wilson Tozer, Spiritual Writer, 1963
Because the role of the Christian leader is to preach, teach, act as a shepherd, [and] be an example in personal and family life, the New Testament properly insists that he must not be a new convert nor a young man. He must have proved himself [and] demonstrated his God-given charisma for leadership, before he looks to the Church for recognition of it through ordination. Here once again we stand in marked contrast to the New Testament... The early Christians laid great stress on quality of life. A leader must merit respect, with his sexual, drinking [and] financial habits beyond reproach, a man of experience, a family man, someone who has led others to the faith and built Christians up in it. We go, on the whole, for untried men whose degree matters more than their lives, and who may never have led anyone to belief in Christ, or may even regard the whole idea as distasteful.
... Michael Green (1930-2019), “Mission and Ministry”, E. M. B. Green, in The People of God, Ian Cundy, ed., vol. 2 of Obeying Christ in a Changing World, John Stott, gen. ed., 3 vol., London: Fountain, 1977, p. 72-73
(see the book; see also 1 Tim. 3:1-4,6-7; Amos 2:11; 7:14-15; Tit. 1:6-9; 1 Pet. 5:5; more at Bible, Church, Experience, Faith, Leader, Man, Minister, Ordination, Preach, Teach)
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
To live in a fully predictable world is not to be a true man, and Christ was a true man. His prayer in Gethsemane, his sweat of blood, show that the preceding anxiety is a part of human affliction, which we must try to accept with some sort of submission.
... Kathryn Lindskoog (1934-2003), C. S. Lewis, Mere Christian, Glendale, Cal.: G/L Publications, 1973, reprint, Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1981, p. 141
(see the book; see also Matt. 26:37-39; Ps. 116:3-5; Isa. 53:3-10; Rom. 8:32; 1 Pet. 2:24; 3:18; more at Affliction, Anxiety, Blood, Jesus, Man, Prayer, Submission)
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Feast of Matthias the Apostle
Much of the present dilemma and chaotic condition of both the secular and religious worlds today finds its cause with the setting aside of the “thus saith the Lord” by the clergy. A long series of rejections and subsequent attendant conditions follow the rejections of the Bible as God’s Word. Next to that rejection has come the rejection of the God of the Bible. Next, there usually follows a rejection of the Bible’s presentation of man as a lost rebel against God, [and then] comes the rejection of biblical morality and ethics. [After] all of these, the next step is a short one—the rejection of biblical obedience to the laws of God and man. And, of course, many more items of rejection can be added to the list. But the crucial point here is that all of these can be traced back to the initial rejection of the absolute authority of Holy Writ.
... Robert P. Lightner (1931-2018), The God of the Bible [1973], Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1978, formerly published as The First Fundamental: God, p. 31-32
(see the book; see also Isa. 45:22-23; 55:10-11; 1 Kings 22:8; Isa. 45:19; Jer. 6:16-17; 18:18; Gal. 4:16; 2 Tim. 3:16; 4:3; more at Bible, God, Law, Minister, Morality, Obedience)
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Commemoration of Charles Williams, Spiritual Writer, 1945
Come [to the Bible], not to study the history of God’s divine action, but to be its object; not to learn what it has achieved throughout the centuries and still does, but simply to be the subject of its operation.
... Jean-Pierre de Caussade (1675-1751), The Sacrament of the Present Moment, Harper & Row, 1982, p. 73
(see the book; see also Acts 6:7; Matt. 22:29; John 5:39-40,46; Acts 8:32-35; Col. 3:16; 2 Tim. 3:14-17; 2 Pet. 1:19-21; more at Achievement, Action, Bible, God, Historical, Submission)
Friday, May 16, 2008
Commemoration of Caroline Chisholm, Social Reformer, 1877
In church, question marks straighten out into exclamation points, the baffling day-by-day complexity of things becomes simple, the stubborn world falls into step with man and his aspirations, his individual efforts become significant as part of a larger plan.
... Robert Staughton Lynd (1892-1970) & Helen M. Lynd (1896-1982), Middletown, a study in American culture, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1929, p. 370
(see the book; see also Col. 3:13-16; more at Church, Question, Simplicity, World)
Saturday, May 17, 2008
O Christ, my life, possess me utterly.Take me and make a little Christ of me.If I am anything but thy father’s son,’Tis something not yet from the darkness won.Oh, give me light to live with open eyes.Oh, give me life to hope above all skies.Give me thy spirit to haunt the Father with my cries.
... George MacDonald (1824-1905), Diary of an Old Soul, London: by the author, 1880, p. 103
(see the book; see also 1 John 3:2; Ps. 88:1; John 1:4; Rom. 8:26; Col. 3:4; more at Christ, Christlikeness, Father, Hope, Jesus, Light, Possession)
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Trinity Sunday
The true way to be humble is not to stoop till thou art smaller than thyself, but to stand at thy real height against some higher nature that will show thee what the real smallness of thy greatness is.
... Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), Sermons, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1878, Sermon XIX, p. 341
(see the book; see also 2 Cor. 3:3-4; Matt. 20:25-28; Mark 9:35; 10:42-45; 12:41-44; Luke 13:30; 14:10-11; 18:14; Jas. 4:6; 1 Pet. 5:5; more at Greatness, Humility, Weakness)
Monday, May 19, 2008
Feast of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 988
In coming to know Jesus, you have come to know yourself, too: naturally, this is more pleasant for some than for others, but to see yourself as you really are can never be entirely pleasant. And when a Christian fails at something he ought to have done, it isn’t just the failure that hurts—there is also the knowledge that he has let Jesus down. And those little shortcomings of ours, that used to matter so little, compared with the glaring faults of others: we know now that our temper, or our gloom, or our selfishness, reflects on Jesus; and knowing that people are judging your Lord by you is not always a joyous thought to live with. Even the growing up to His measure is hard on a man: we have so little aptitude for such a transformation that it always means conflict, and often rebellion. And temptations hurt as they never did before: not just in the conscience, but in the heart. The assaults of temptation are not on our prudence now, or even on our morals, but on the love for Jesus. His love for us has made Him quite defenseless against our hurting Him, and so temptation is no longer an urge to do a bad thing but an urge to hurt a loving Person.
... Robert MacColl Adams (1913-1985), “Of Rice and Men”
(see the book; see also Luke 13:34-35; Neh. 9:30; Ps. 81:11-14; Jer. 7:23-24; Hos. 11:7-9; Matt. 22:1-14; more at Failure, Growth, Jesus, Knowing God, Knowledge, Love, Morality, Selfish, Temptation)
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Because it lacks [the] element of outrage, the modern church needs to be reminded that, if her life and institutions are being strangled by a dying culture, then she is choking on the very truths which she has herself betrayed.
... Os Guinness (b. 1941), The Dust of Death, Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1973, p. 386-387
(see the book; see also 1 Cor. 2:7-8; Matt. 11:25; John 7:48; 1 Cor. 1:26-28; 2:6; more at Betrayal, Church, Culture, Truth)
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Feast of Commemoration of Helena, Protector of the Faith, 330
The Spirit of Christ can set men free and enable them to become their true selves without requiring their dependence on any particular religious organization.
... Alec R. Vidler (1899-1991), “Religion and the National Church”, in Soundings, Alec R. Vidler, ed., Cambridge University Press, 1966, p. 249
(see the book; see also John 8:31-34; Isa. 52:15; Acts 10:45-48; 15:11; Rom. 15:21; 2 Cor. 4:13-14; Heb. 11:1; more at Christ, Dependence, Freedom, Gospel)
Thursday, May 22, 2008
To live is nothing, unless to live be to know Him by whom we live.
... John Ruskin (1819-1900), Modern Painters, v. II, New York: John Wiley, 1852, p. 7
(see the book; see also Phil. 3:7-9; Job 19:25; John 11:25-26; Acts 17:27-28; Col. 1:15-17; 2 Tim. 1:12; more at Knowing God, Knowledge, Life)
Friday, May 23, 2008
Commemoration of Petroc, Abbot of Padstow, 6th century
The man who has never had religion before, no more grows religious when he is sick, than a man who has never learned figures can count when he has need of calculation.
... Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., v. IV [1791], James Boswell, New York: Derby & Jackson, 1858, p. 302
(see the book; see also Luke 13:24; Matt. 11:12; John 6:27; Phil. 2:12-13; Heb. 4:11-12; more at Man, Religion, Sickness, Worship)
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Feast of John and Charles Wesley, Priests, Poets, Teachers, 1791 & 1788
I met the society and explained to them ... the original design of the Methodists, viz., not to be a distinct party, but to stir up all parties, ... to worship God in spirit and in truth; but the Church of England in particular, to which they belonged from the beginning. With this view I have uniformly gone on for fifty years, never varying from the doctrine of the Church at all; nor from her discipline, of choice, but of necessity.
... John Wesley (1703-1791), The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, v. IV, New York: J. & J. Harper, 1826, entry for Sunday, April 12, 1789, p. 264
(see the book; see also John 4:23-24; Isa. 60:1; Matt. 10:34-36; 25:6; John 4:31-34; Eph. 5:13-14; more at Choices, Church, Discipline, God, Historical, Spirit, Truth, Worship)
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Feast of the Venerable Bede, Priest, Monk of Jarrow, Historian, 735
Commemoration of Aldhelm, Abbot of Mamsbury, Bishop of Sherborne, 709
In the way of virtue, there is no standing still; anyone who does not daily advance, loses ground. To remain at a standstill is impossible; he that gains not, loses; he that ascends not, descends. If one does not ascend the ladder, one must descend; if one does not conquer, one will be conquered.
... François de Sales (1567-1622), Treatise on the Love of God, Newman Press, 1953, p.128
(see the book; see also 2 Pet. 1:5-7,10; 3:18; John 6:27; Phil. 2:12; Heb. 11:6; more at Journey, Obedience, Progress, Victory, Virtue)
Monday, May 26, 2008
Feast of Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, 605
Commemoration of Arthur John Gossip, Spiritual Writer, 1954
Incarnate Word! Thou Word of God alone!To live of love, ’tis to abide with Thee.Thou knowest I love Thee, Jesus Christ, my Own!Thy Spirit’s fire of love enkindleth me.By loving Thee, I draw the Father hereDown to my heart, to stay with me always.Blest Trinity! Thou art my prisoner dear,Of love, to-day.
... Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), Poems of St. Teresa, Carmelite of Lisieux, Boston, Angel Guardian Press, 1907, “To Live of Love”, n. 2
(see the book; see also John 1:14; 3:16; Rom. 5:8; Tit. 3:4-7; 1 John 3:16,24; 4:9-10,19; more at Christ, Father, Holy Spirit, Incarnation, Jesus, Love, Trinity)
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Commemoration of John Calvin, renewer of the Church, 1564
To pious and peaceable persons [Augustine] gives this advice: that they should correct in mercy whatever they can; that what they cannot, they should patiently bear, and affectionately lament, till God either reform and correct it, or, at the harvest, root up the tares and sift out the chaff. All pious persons should study to fortify themselves with these counsels, lest, while they consider themselves as valiant and strenuous defenders of righteousness, they depart from the kingdom of heaven, which is the only kingdom of righteousness. For since it is the will of God that the communion of his Church should be maintained in this external society, those who, from an aversion to wicked men, destroy the token of that society, enter on a course in which they are in great danger of falling from the communion of saints.
... John Calvin (1509-1564), The Institutes of the Christian Religion, v. II, tr. John Allen, Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work, 1921, IV.i.16, p. 238
(see the book; see also 2 John 1:9; Matt. 13:24-30; 25:32; Rom. 12:18; 1 Cor. 4:5; 12:18-20,25; Phil. 2:1-2; more at Church, Communion, Harvest, Kingdom, Mercy, Patience, Righteousness, Social, Weakness, Will of God)
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Commemoration of Lanfranc, Prior of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1089
Fundamentalism is widely spoken against because many assume that an adequate doctrine of evolution is available, and is the truth, and that any protest against it is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit who is speaking to us through the doctrine of evolution. Many also take it as proven that the criticism of the Bible has produced certain assured results which in fact destroy the old Christian orthodoxy, and in particular the catastrophic view of history which is the background of the Biblical imagery. It is therefore supposed that the Biblical criticism has unearthed a simple humanist or humanitarian history behind the Biblical narratives, and that the Bible, as it stands, needs a radical reinterpretation which will bring it into line with other discoveries in other branches of knowledge. Now, of course, to all who are thus persuaded, the appearance of Fundamentalism, or a return to the old Biblical language taken at its face value, is just a blasphemy against modern knowledge and a return to the pre-critical, and is therefore quite hopelessly reactionary.If Fundamentalism were no more than a protest against the tyranny of a rather superficial doctrine of evolution claiming the right to interpret and remould the truths of the Christian religion, and if it were no more than a criticism of the intolerable dogmatism of a very influential section of Biblical critics, it would be exceedingly difficult for us not to side wholly and convincedly with the Fundamentalists in their insistence on the necessity of a return to the Bible, and to refrain from pointing out that the Church is inevitably Fundamentalist in this sense.
... Sir Edwyn C. Hoskyns (1884-1937), We are the Pharisees, London: SPCK, 1960, p. 65-66
(see the book; see also Jude 1:3-5; Acts 17:32; Rom. 1:21-22; 1 Cor. 1:19-23; 2 Cor. 10:5; Col. 2:8; 1 Tim. 6:20-21; more at Bible, Blasphemy, Church, Criticism, Discovery, Forebear, Historical, Holy Spirit, Knowledge, Religion, Truth, Tyranny)
Thursday, May 29, 2008
The problem of evil assumes the existence of a world-purpose. What, we are really asking, is the purpose of suffering? It seems purposeless. Our question of the why of evil assumes the view that the world has a purpose, and what we want to know is how suffering fits into and advances this purpose. The modern view is that suffering has no purpose because nothing that happens has any purpose. The world is run by causes, not by purposes.
... W. T. Stace (1886-1967), Religion and the Modern Mind, Lippincott, 1952, p. 168
(see the book; see also 1 Pet. 2:21; Ps. 89:30-32; John 13:15; 1 John 2:6; 3:16; Rev. 12:11; more at Affliction, Evil, Purpose, Suffer, Weakness, World)
Friday, May 30, 2008
Feast of Josephine Butler, Social Reformer, 1906
Commemoration of Joan of Arc, Visionary, 1431
Commemoration of Apolo Kivebulaya, Priest, Evangelist, 1933
[In nineteenth-century America] religion became a matter of conduct, of good deeds, of works, with only a vague background of faith. It became highly functional, highly pragmatic; it became a guarantee of success, moral and material... “The proper study of mankind is man,” [Alexander Pope (1688-1744), An Essay on Man] was the evasion by which many American divines escaped the necessity for thought about God.
... Denis Brogan (1900-1974), The American Character, New York: A. A. Knopf, 1944, p. 102
(see the book; see also Lam. 3:25-26; Ps. 1:1-3; 104:34; 119:11,15,97-99; Josh. 1:8; more at Conduct, Deed, Faith, God, Goodness, Man, Morality, Religion, Success, Work)
Saturday, May 31, 2008
If the prophecies of the Old Testament are not rightly interpreted of Jesus our Christ, then there is no prediction whatever contained in it of that stupendous event—the rise and establishment of Christianity—in comparison with which all the preceding Jewish history is as nothing. With the exception of the book of Daniel, which the Jews themselves never classed among the prophecies, and an obscure text of Jeremiah, there is not a passage in all the Old Testament which favours the notion of a temporal Messiah. What moral object was there, for which such a Messiah should come? What could he have been but a sort of virtuous [Napoleon]?
... Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Table Talk, 2nd ed., London: John Murray, 1836, April 13, 1830, p. 49
(see the book; see also Isa. 53:5; 9:6-7; Dan. 7:13-14; Zech. 9:9; John 18:36; more at Bible, Historical, Jesus, Messiah, Prophecy)
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