To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes, and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition. Th...e word "nude," on the other hand, carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone. The vague image it projects into the mind is not of a huddled and defenseless body, but of a balanced, prosperous, and confident body: the body re-formed. In fact, the word was forced into our vocabulary by critics of the early eighteenth century to persuade artless islanders that, in countries where painting and sculpture were practiced and valued as they should be, the naked human body was the central subject of art.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Through spontaneity we are re-formed into ourselves. It creates an explosion that for the moment frees us from handed- down frames... of reference, memory choked with old facts and information and undigested theories and techniques of other people's findings. Spontaneity is the moment of personal freedom when we are faced with reality, and see it, explore it and act accordingly. In this reality the bits and pieces of ourselves function as an organic whole. It is the time of discovery, of experiencing, of creative expression.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When the Church of Jesus Shuts its outer door,... Lest the roar of traffic Drown the voice of prayer: May our prayers, Lord, make us Ten times more aware That the world we banish Is our Christian care.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Soon, in all parts of our country, in each neglected village, or new settlement, the Christian female teacher will quietly take he...r station, collecting the ignorant children around her, teaching them habits of neatness, order and thrift; opening the book of knowledge, inspiring the principles of morality, and awakening the hope of immortality. Soon her influence in the village will create a demand for new laborers, and then she will summon from among her friends at home, the nurse for the young and sick, the seamstress and the mantuamaker; and these will prove her auxiliaries in good moral influence, and in sabbath school training. And often as the result of these labors, the Church will arise, and the minister of Christ be summoned to fill up the complement of domestic, moral and religious blessing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I hate Science. It denies a man's responsibility for his own deeds, abolishes the brotherhood that springs from God's fatherhood. ...It is a hectoring, dictating expertise, which makes the least lovable of the Church Fathers seem liberal by contrast. It is far easier for a Hitler or a Stalin to find a mock- scientific excuse for persecution than it was for Dominic to find a mock-Christian one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A few years ago, the liberal churches complained that the Calvinistic church denied to them the name of Christian. I think the com...plaint was confession; a religious church would not complain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Even of old the Christian world, so bitterly antagonistic to any ideas not specifically contained in their creeds and dogmas, made... an exception in Socrates' case. They recognized his likeness to Christ. He was the example that a soul could be Christlike not through grace, but by nature. Erasmus said, "Holy Socrates, pray for us." To know him is a help to knowing Christ, and it is not hard to know him. We can see him quite clearly. Plato who drew his portrait, could not, of course, keep himself out of it, any more than Christ's recorders could, but at least magic did not dog Plato's footsteps as it did everyone's footsteps when the Gospels were written. In the fourth century B.C. Greeks had no leaning to marvels. Also in the centuries that followed no one founded a church on Socrates and built up around him a theology and hung creeds and ceremonials upon him. To see what he was we do not have to brush anything away except a bit of Plato. We can use him as a stepping stone to Christ, a first aid in realizing what Christ was.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The slow-witted approach to the HIV epidemic was the result of a thousand years of Christian malpractice and the childlike approac...h of the church to sexuality. If any single man was responsible, it was Augustine of Hippo who murdered his way to sainthood spouting on about the sins located in his genitals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spo...ken with intentional disrespect of religion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »