What, then, is the nature of petitionary prayer? It is, in essence, rebellion - rebellion against the world in all its falleness, the absolute and undying refusal to accept as normal what is pervasively abnormal.

Good men use the world in order to enjoy God, whereas bad men want to use God in order to enjoy the world.

The doctrine of the Second Coming is deeply uncongenial to the whole evolutionary or developmental character of modern thought. We have been taught to think of the world as something that grows slowly towards perfection, something that "progresses" or "evolves." Christian Apocalyptic offers us no such hope.

On board iron vessels it is a common thing to see a compass placed aloft, to be as much away from the cause of aberration as possible: a wise hint to us to elevate our affections and desires. The nearer to God, the less swayed by worldly influences.

The man of God was never meant to catch the spirit of the times, but to condemn and correct it.

The world is my parish.

Truly it is a misery even to live upon the earth. The more spiritual a man desires to be, the more bitter does his present life become to him; because he sees more clearly and perceives more sensibly the defects of human corruption.

He who everyday reminds himself that he is dying, despises the present and hastens to things to come. Much more he who feels himself to be in the very act of dying.

When the devil and the world combine to persecute a Christly soul, they put him on the throne of power.

It may take a crucified church to bring a crucified Christ before the eyes of the world.

This is God's universal purpose for all Christian suffering: more contentment in God and less satisfaction in the world.

Could a mariner sit idle if he heard the drowning cry? Could a doctor sit in comfort and just let his patients die? Could a fireman sit idle, let men burn and give no hand? Can you sit at ease in Zion with the world around you damned?

Without justice, what are kingdoms but great gangs of bandits?

To pray declares that God and his world are at cross-purposes; to "sleep," or "faint," or "lose heart" is to act as if they are not.

The followers of Jesus are to be different — different from both the nominal church and the secular world, different from both the religious and the irreligious. The Sermon on the Mount is the most complete delineation anywhere in the New Testament of the Christian value-system, ethical standard, religious devotion, attitude to money, ambition, life-style and network of relationships — all of which are totally at variance with those of the non-Christian world. And this Christian Counterculture is the life of the kingdom of God, a fully human life indeed but lived out under the divine rule.

The man who is content to sit ignorantly by his own fireside, wrapped up in his own private affairs, and has no public eye for what is going on in the church and the world, is a miserable patriot, and a poor style Christian. Next to our Bibles and our own hearts, our Lord would have us study our own times.

A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.

Marx and Freud are the two great destroyers of Christian civilization, the first replacing the gospel of love by the gospel of hate, the other undermining the essential concept of human responsibility.

The chief danger of the Church today is that it is trying to get on the same side as the world, instead of turning the world upside down. Our Master expects us to accomplish results, even if they bring opposition and conflict. Anything is better than compromise, apathy, and paralysis. God, give to us an intense cry for the old-time power of the Gospel and the Holy Ghost!