Author: Fred Sanders
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Sovereign Beauty (Spenser’s Amoretti #3)
THE souerayne beauty which I doo admyre, witnesse the world how worthy to be prayzed: the light wherof hath kindled heauenly fyre, in my fraile spirit by her from basenesse raysed. That being now with her huge brightnesse dazed, base thing I can no more endure to view: but looking still on her I stand…
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Why C. S. Lewis Was Smarter Than Me Am
An excerpt from a letter that the 17-year-old C. S. Lewis wrote to his best friend: 12 October 1915 You ask me how I spend my time, and though I am more interested in thoughts and feelings, we’ll come down to facts. I am awakened up in the morning by Kirk splashing in his bath,…
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Unquiet Thought (Spenser’s Amoretti #2)
VNQUIET thought, whom at the first I bred, Of th’ inward bale of my loue pined hart: and sithens haue with sighes and sorrowes fed, till greater then my wombe thou woxen art. Breake forth at length out of the inner part, in which thou lurkest lyke to vipers brood: and seeke some succour both…
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Voting as a Spiritual Discipline: Ten Tips
How do you keep a healthy spiritual life during an intensely political time? The political season, after all, is about to begin in earnest: in only one week the Democrats will open their national convention in Denver, and shortly after that the Republicans will convene in Minneapolis – St. Paul. In short order, running mates…
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Leaves, Lines, and Rymes (Spenser’s Amoretti #1)
HAPPY ye leaues when as those lilly hands, which hold my life in their dead doing might shall handle you and hold in loues soft bands, lyke captiues trembling at the victors sight. And happy lines, on which with starry light, those lamping eyes will deigne sometimes to look and reade the sorrowes of my dying…
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The Gist of the Lesson
R. A. Torrey wrote dozens of books, oversaw academics at the two greatest Bible Institutes in America, and carried out a round-the-world preaching tour that made headlines in big cities on five continents. He was a busy man and he worked on a grand scale. But while serving as the international celebrity for evangelical Christianity,…
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R. A. Torrey’s Greatest Sermons
R. A. Torrey (1856-1928) was the most important evangelist between Dwight L. Moody and Billy Graham. In the eighty years since his death, his fame has declined, so that he is no longer a household name. But his name is still powerful: you can hardly find a Christian bookstore so vacuous that it doesn’t sell…
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“Permit Me, Then, to Address You as Dying Persons…”
It’s a phrase Charles Simeon used fairly often in his preaching career, usually toward the end of a sermon in order to double-underline his point. “Permit me, then, to address you as dying persons, and to ask what you will think of these things when standing on the bring and precipice of eternity?” He uses…
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All Three Reasons to Be Humble
“There are three great motives that urge us to humility,” says Andrew Murray in the Preface to his book Humility. The first is that we are creatures, the second is that we are fallen, and the third is that we are redeemed. First: Creatures have reason to be humble because they can compare themselves to…
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King David’s Personality
I figure King David was an ENFP. If David had taken the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator, he would have scored as an extrovert who thrives on contact with others, an intuitive person who sees meanings in everything, a heart-person who makes decisions based on feelings, and the kind of person who doesn’t have to resolve…
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Kit Smart: Crazy Praise
Christoper Smart (1722–71) , known to companions as Kit, was a learned poet who wrote plenty of poems which are mostly unreadable now by anybody outside the guild of English literature studies: Ode to the Earl of Northumberland, To Ethelinda, and Lines After Horace —that sort of thing. He edited a magazine and got into…
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Scream No More!!!
John Wesley, in a letter to the American Methodist preacher John King in 1778: Scream no more at peril of your soul. God now warns you by me, whom he has set over you. Speak as earnestly as you can, but do not scream. Speak with all your heart, but with a moderate voice. It…