Studdert Kennedy: confronting the world

Tuesday, March 8, 2016
    Commemoration of Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy, Priest, Poet, 1929
Meditation:
    For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
    —1 Corinthians 1:17-18 (ESV)
Quotation:
    The tremendous power of mass-suggestion, which we call the world, can only be confronted, and its victims cured, if they are received into a body which is filled with a vivid, vigorous, and conscious community life of the Spirit. Individuals are powerless to cope with a power so subtle and all-pervasive as this mass-suggestion is. If we are to save and rescue sinners, there must grow up in our Church a Spirit of Love and Brotherhood, a Christian community-life, transcending class and national distinctions, as pungent, as powerful, as impossible to escape as the Spirit of the world. No Apostolic Succession, no Ecclesiastical correctness, no rigidity of orthodox doctrine, can be themselves and in themselves give us this; it comes, and can only come, from a clearer vision of the Christ, a more complete surrender to His call and to the bearing of His Cross.
    ... G. A. Studdert Kennedy (1883-1929), The Wicket Gate, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923, p. 193 (see the book)
    See also 1 Cor. 1:17-18; Luke 14:27; Rom. 11:33; 1 Cor. 1:21-23; 2:4-5; 2 Cor. 2:15-16; 4:3
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I cannot save others, but You can and do. Send Your Spirit, Lord, so that _____ and _____ shall come to faith. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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