Aspects of Christian Character: A Study of the Beatitudes

Top Highlights

“It needs more courage to be meek than to be arrogant, it needs more strength to be merciful than to be vindictive; self-sacrifice is nobler than self-assertiveness; it is a manlier thing to serve with Jesus than to conquer with Thor.” (Page 26)

“We are impeached, not for presenting to men an inadequate ethical standard, but for not practising what we preach. Indeed, it was Jesus Himself who first warned His disciples that orthodoxy without moral effort was valueless.” (Pages 1–2)

“In all the other Beatitudes, Jesus is dealing, not with circumstance, but with character. Their whole significance depends on the fact that the characteristics that bring blessedness belong to the inner life, and can be cultivated by any man, whatever his outward circumstances may be.” (Pages 29–30)

“ ‘There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford.” (Page 78)

“It was in the prophets rather than in the Law that He found the framework for His ethical teaching. For while the Law looked back to the ideals of the past and the things that our fathers have told us, the prophets looked for the fruition of their hopes in the future, when the mountain of the Lord’s house should be established in the top of the mountains.” (Page 8)