"We must remember that to support a good cause is not enough; we must maintain it in a spirit equivalent to its dignity. Let no one touch the great interests of humanity who does not strive to sanctify himself for the work by cleansing his heart of all wrath and uncharitableness, who cannot hope that he is in a measure baptized into the spirit of universal love. Even sympathy with the injured and oppressed may do harm by being partial and exclusive and bitterly indignant." William Ellery Channing. 

I think this is such an important point! Sadly, I see and hear the gospel shared without this spirit of Universal love. Some share out of duty, some out of pride, some debate and make a contest of it; others share the precious truths with an exclusive spirit that separates and is permeated with a condescending air. And of course, some withdraw from sharing at all because they are repelled by the appearance or the life choices. 

The great teaching of Christianity is, that we must recognize and respect human nature in all its forms in the poorest, most ignorant, most fallen. We must look beneath "the flesh" to "the spirit". 

"Oh, that Christ's love should extend to the ungodly, to sinners, to enemies that were in arms of rebellion against him! Yea, not only so, but that He should hug them in His arms, lodge them in His bosom, dandle them upon His knees, and lay them to His breasts, that they may suck and be satisfied, is the highest improvement of love, Is. 64:11-13.

Christ's love is like His name, and that is Wonderful, yea, it is so wonderful that it is above all creatures, beyond all measure, contrary to all nature. It is beyond all measure, for time did not begin it, and time shall never end it; place does not bind it, sin does not exceed it, no estate, not age, no sex is denied it, tongues cannot express it, understandings cannot conceive it; and it is contrary to all nature; for what nature can love where it is hated? What nature can forgive where it is provoked? What nature can offer reconcilement where it receives wrong? What nature can heap up kindness upon contempt, favor on ingratitude, mercy upon sin? And yet Christ's love has led Him to all this; so that well may we spend our days in admiring and adoring this wonderful love, and be always ravished with the thoughts of it." Thomas Brooks.  

   

"Ah, friends! Christ left his Fathers bosom and all the glory of heaven for the good of souls; he assumed the nature of men for the happiness of the soul of man; he trod the wine-press of his Father's wrath for souls; he prayed for souls; he paid for souls, and he bled out his heart-blood for souls. The soul is the breath of God, the beauty of man, the wonder of angels, and the envy of devils. It is of an angelical nature; it is a heavenly spark, a celestial plant, and of a divine offspring." Thomas Brooks. 

    "The fifth word of comfort is this -- Be true to the light of your consciences, and maintain and keep up a constant tenderness in your conscience. 

A tender conscience is a mercy of more worth than a world. Conscience is God's spy in our bosoms: keep this clear and tender, and then all is well, Acts 24:16, 2 Cor. 1:12  Act nothing against the dictates of conscience, rebel not against the light of conscience. You were better that all the world should upbraid you and reproach you, than that your consciences should upbraid you and reproach you, Job 27:5-6. Beware of stifling your conscience, and of suppressing the warnings of conscience, lest a warning conscience prove a gnawing conscience, a tormenting conscience.  Thomas Brooks. 

 "No doubt there are some who would tell me that if Christianity were to be judged by its fruits, it deserves any description but that of rational. I might be told that no religion has borne a more abundant harvest of extravagance and fanaticism. I would be told that reason is a calm, reflecting, sober principle, and I should be asked whether such is the character of Christianity today. Perhaps some of you will remind me of the feverish, wild, passionate religion which is now systematically dispersed through our country, and I shall be asked whether a system under which such delusions prevail can be a rational one?

To these objections I answer, you say much that is true. I grant that reason is a calm and reflecting principle, and I see little calmness or reflection among many who take exclusively the name of Christ. But I say, you have no right to confound Christianity with its professors. This religion, as you know, has come down to us through many ages of darkness, during which it must have been corrupted and obscured. Common candor requires that you should judge it as it came from its Founder. Go then, to its original records; place yourselves near Jesus, and tell me if you ever found yourselves in the presence of so calm a teacher. We indeed discern in Jesus great earnestness, but joined with entire self-control. Sensibility breathes through His whole teaching and life, but always tempered with wisdom. Amidst His boldest thoughts and expressions, we discover no marks of ungoverned feeling or diseased imagination. Take, as an example, His longest discourse, the sermon on the Mount. How weighty the thoughts! How grave and dignified the style! You recollect that the multitude were astonished, not at the passionate vehemence, but at the authority, with which He spoke. Read next the last discourse of Jesus to His disciples in St. John's Gospel. What a deep yet mild and subdued tenderness mingles with conscious greatness in that wonderful address. Take what is called the Lord's Prayer, which Jesus gave as the model of all prayer to God. Does that countenance fanatical fervor or violent appeals to our Creator? Let me further ask, does Jesus anywhere place religion in tumultuous, ungoverned emotion? Does He not teach us that obedience, not feeling, marks and constitutes true devotion, and that the most acceptable offering to God is to exercise mercy to our fellow creatures? When I compare the clamorous preaching an passionate declamation too common in the Christian world, with the composed dignity, the deliberate wisdom, the freedom from all extravagance, which characterized Jesus, I can imagine no greater contrast; and I am sure that the fiery zealot is no representative of Christianity." William Ellery Channing.     

"Martin Luther discovered truth only after serious thought. We cannot expect to discover it while mindlessly scrolling though memes. What if Luther had decided he needed a mental break from deep thinking and, instead of continuing to meditate on the Word, opened a social-media account and began to scroll? Without Luther’s deep thinking, the Reformation may not have happened.

What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." Jeff Mingee

   The following quote is an answer to those who promote - Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), and in believing this, when our natural ability to reason, and the voice of our conscience and our rational understandings conflict with what we read in the Word, that we need not suspect what we have read in the Word, or that it needs to be studied further and reconciled to the inward voices of our human nature.  

  "I am aware that those who have spoken most contemptuously of human reason have acted from a good motive -- their aim has been to exalt revelation from the Bible. They have thought that by magnifying this as the only means of divine teaching, they were adding to its dignity. But truth gains nothing by exaggeration; and Christianity, as we have seen, is undermined by nothing more effectually than by the misunderstanding which would bring discredit on our rational powers. Revelation needs no such support. For myself, I do not find that to esteem Christianity, I must think it the only source of instruction to which I must repair. I need not make human nature dumb to give power or attraction to the teaching of Christ. 

Christ derives new interest and confirmation from its harmony with our human nature. Christianity would furnish a weapon against itself not easily repelled, should it claim the distinction of being the only light vouchsafed by God for men; for, in that case, it would represent a vast majority of the human race as left by their Creator without guidance or hope. I believe, and rejoice to believe, that a ray from heaven descends on the path of every fellow-creature. The heathen, though in darkness when compared with the Christian has still his light; and it comes from the same sources as our own, just as the same sun dispensed, now the faint dawn, and now the perfect day. Let not nature's teachings be disparage. It is from God as truly as His word. It is sacred, as truly as revelation. Both are manifestations of one infinite mind, and harmonious manifestations; and without this agreement the claims of Christianity could not be sustained." W. E. Channing.  

 

  "Nowhere, I fear, have men manifested such infatuated trust in their own infallibility, such over whelming fondness for their own conclusions, such positiveness, such impatience of contradiction, such arrogance towards the advocates of different opinions, as in the interpretation of the Scriptures; and yet these very men, who so idolize their own intellectual powers, profess as almost exclusively chargeable on others. The true defense against the pride of reason is, not to speak of it contemptuously, but to reverence it as God's inestimable gift to every human being, and as given to all for never ceasing improvements, of which we see but the dawn in the present acquisitions of the noblest mind." W. C. Channing. 

 

  "Whatever Jesus taught, you may see embodied in Himself. With His lips He taught the mercy of God to sinners; and of this attribute He gave a beautiful illustration in His own deep interest in the sinful, in His free intercourse with the most fallen, and in His patient efforts to recover them to virtue, and to a devoted reliance on their Father in heaven. So, His preaching turned much on the importance of raising the mind above the world; and His own life was a constant renunciation of worldly interests, a cheerful endurance of poverty that He might make many truly rich." W. E. Channing. 

 

"Jesus will not judge by what His eyes see,

Nor make a decision by what His ears hear." Isaiah 11:3

It's our nature to judge by what we see and hear; but not so with God; He reads the thoughts and the intentions of the heart, and He knows our past; and "with righteousness He will judge the poor and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth." Is. 11:4

Who do I judge? The addict? The homeless? The members of the LGBT community? The poor? The felon or gang member? 

I think we can look at those we invest in and minister too for our answer. 

 "Christianity has but one aim, which is not to exalt its teacher, but to improve the disciple; not to fasten Christ's name on mankind, but to breathe into them His spirit of universal love. Christianity is not a religion of forms. It has but two ceremonies, as simple as they are expressive; and these hold so subordinate a place in the New Testament that some of the best Christians question or deny their permanent obligation. Neither is it a narrow creed, or a mass of doctrines which find no support in our rational nature. It may be summed up in a few great, universal, unchangeable principles, which both reason and conscience, as far as they are unfolded, adopt and rejoice in as their own everlasting laws, and which open perpetually enlarging views to the mind. 

As far as I am a Christian, I am free. My religions lays on me not one chain. It does not prescribe a certain range for my mind, beyond which nothing can be learned. It speaks of God as the Universal Father, and sends me to all His works for instruction. It does not hem me round with a mechanical ritual, it doesn't join forms, attitudes, and hours of prayer, it doesn't descend into details of dress and food, it doesn't put on me one outward badge. It teaches and enkindles love to God, but commands no precise expressions of this sentiment. It prescribes prayer; but lays the chief stress on the prayer of the closet, and treats all worship as worthless but that of the mind and heart. It teaches us to do good, but leaves us to devise for ourselves the means by which we may best serve mankind. 

In a word, the whole religion of Christ may be summed up in the love of God and of mankind, and it leaves the individual to cherish and express this spirit by the methods most accordant with his own condition and peculiar mind. 

Christianity is eminently the religion of freedom. The views which it gives of the parental, impartial, goodness of God, and of the equal right of every human being to inquire into His will, and its instructions of candor, forbearance, and mutual respect, contribute alike to freedom of thought and enlargement of the heart. I repeat it, Christianity lays on me no chains. It is anything but a contrivance for spiritual domination.