Pastor's Blog

The following is from the pen of St. Athanasius (ca. 293-373), the great champion and defender of the deity of Christ at the Council of Nicaea. It's from his work entitled De Incarnatione Verbi Dei ( On the Incarnation of the Word of God ). In the following passage, he speaks of the power of Christ over all the forces of evil. When did people begin to abandon the worship of idols, unless it were since the very Word of God came among men? When have oracles ceased and become void of meaning, among the Greeks and everywhere, except since the Saviour has revealed Himself on earth? When did those whom the poets call gods and heroes begin to adjudged as mere morals, except when the Lord took the spoils of death and preserved incorruptible the body He had taken, raising it from among the dead? Or when did the deceitfulness and madness of daemons fall under contempt, save when the Word, the Power of God, the Master of all these as well, condescended on account of the weakness of mankind ...

Princeton theologian A. A. Hodge (1823-1886), in his Evangelical Theology writes, The kingdom of God on earth is not confined to the mere ecclesiastical sphere, but aims at absolute universality, and extends its supreme reign over every department of human life. It follows that it is the duty of every loyal subject to endeavour to bring all human society, social and political, as well as ecclesiastical, into obedience to its law of righteousness... It is our duty, as far as lies in our power, immediately to organize human society and all its institutions and organs upon a distinctively Christian basis. Indifference or impartiality here between the law of the kingdom and the law of the world, or of its prince, the devil, is utter treason to the King of Righteousness. The Bible, the great statute-book of the kingdom, explicitly lays down principles which, when candidly applied, will regulate the action of every human being in all relations. There can be no compromise. The King said, wi...

Some good words from my son, James. Heroes are not made in a moment, but often heroes are defined by a moment. Often a moment where all others abandon hope. Heroes are not born into greatness but often greatness follows them. Heroism is never thrust on someone, though often trying events are thrust on a hero. It is never events that create a hero, though it is often events that allow someone to be heroic. Heroes are always looking out for the good of others even when others are not looking out for them. Heroes are not arrogant or proud, though many will be proud of a hero. Not everyone is a hero, but everyone could be a hero. It's not every day you see or meet a hero, but many heroes are everyday heroes. A wise son makes a glad father (Prov. 15:20).

From Theodore Dalrymple's Our Culture, What's Left Of It: Tocqueville understood, as few modern writers do, that pauperism is above all a psychological, not an economic, condition. And he saw in the English system of social assistance to the poor the same insidious threat to men’s independence of character that he saw, only as a potentiality in American democracy. Tocqueville’s Memoir on Pauperism was published in 1835, shortly after the first volume of Democracy in America. He had visited England, then by far the most prosperous country in Europe, if not the world. But there was a seeming paradox; a sixth of the population of England were – or had made themselves – paupers, completely reliant upon handouts from public charity. This was a proportion greater than in any other country in Europe, even in such incomparably poorer ones as Spain and Portugal. In the midst of what was then the utmost prosperity, Tocqueville found not only physical squalor, but moral and emotional deg...

R. L. Dabney was a Southern Presbyterian theologian who had remarkable insights into the consequences of ideas. In an article entitled "Women's Rights Women" he chastened Northern conservatism as being wholly ineffective at conserving anything. This is a party [Northern conservatism] which never conserves anything. It history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is to-day one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting [pretending] to resist the next innovation, which will to-morrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to t o be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but nev...

Thanks to George Grant for this timely reminder of the wisdom of our Founders. "In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress." -- John Adams

Thomas Jefferson nailed it. "I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." This is no argument against banks per se , of course, but only an argument against the banking practices that modern banks are built upon...thanks to the Fed.