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Christian Quotes by Evelyn Underhill
October 13, 2001
If we do not at least try to manifest something of Creative Charity in our dealings with life, whether by action, thought, or prayer, and do it at our own cost - if we roll up the talent of love in the nice white napkin of piety and put it safely out of the way, sorry that the world is so hungry and thirsty, so sick and so fettered, and leave it at that: thou, even that little talent may be taken from us. We may discover at the crucial moment that we are spiritually bankrupt.
Evelyn Underhill
Evelyn Underhill Association
March 12, 2002
Christianity is a religion which concerns us as we are here and now, creatures of body and soul. We do not follow the footsteps of His most holy life by the exercise of a trained religious imagination, but by treading the firm, rough earth, up hill and down dale.
Evelyn Underhill
June 6, 2002
If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshiped.
Evelyn Underhill
August 6, 2002
Spiritual reading is a regular, essential part of the life of prayer, and particularly is it the support of adoring prayer. It is important to increase our sense of God's richness and wonder by reading what his great lovers have said about him.
Evelyn Underhill
January 14, 2003
Have you ever noticed that Jesus is never recorded as taking a holiday? He retired for the purposes of his mission, not from it. He was never destroyed by his work; he was always on top of it. He moved among people as the Master of every situation. He was busier than anyone; the multitudes were always at him, yet he had time, for everything and everyone. He was never hurried, or harassed, or too busy. He had complete supremacy over time; he never let it dictate to him. He talked of "my time;" "my hour." He knew exactly when the moment had come for doing something and when it had not... a life lived in God is a life that masters time. One can see the distractions for what they are and centre down on the things that really matter. But of course this doesn't mean that Christians do less than other people. (Look at Jesus again, and think of those people - many of the busiest you have known - who have something of this quality.)
Evelyn Underhill
November 25, 2003
"He that believeth shall not make haste." Isaiah 28:16 That is to say, he won't get rattled or hustled; he won't let time get on top of him or dictate to him. Doesn't that speak to all of us of something which deep down we wish were true of ourselves? Time, the enemy... How often do you hear people saying, - how often do you hear yourself saying, "Oh, I haven't got time!" I haven't got time... No, we haven't, for time has got us, or most of us.
Evelyn Underhill
August 13, 2004
As the genuine religious impulse becomes dominant, adoration more and more takes charge. "I come to seek God because I need Him," may be an adequate formula for prayer. "I come to adore His splendour, and fling myself and all that I have at His feet," is the only possible formula for worship.
Evelyn Underhill
September 16, 2004
"I come to seek God because I need Him," may be an adequate formula for prayer. "I come to adore His splendour, and fling myself and all that I have at His feet," is the only possible formula for worship.
Evelyn Underhill
February 12, 2005
The spiritual life is a stern choice. It is not a consoling retreat from the difficulties of existence, but an invitation to enter fully into that difficult existence, and there apply the Charity of God, and bear the cost.
Evelyn Underhill
May 30, 2005
Most of our conflicts and difficulties come from trying to deal with the spiritual and practical aspects of our life separately instead of realizing them as parts of one whole. If our practical life is centred on our own interests, cluttered up by possessions, distracted by ambitions, passions, wants and worries, beset by a sense of our own rights and importance, or anxieties for our own future, or longings for our own success, we need not expect that our spiritual life will be a contrast to all this. The soul's house is not built on such a convenient plan; there are few soundproof partitions in it. Only when the conviction -- not merely the idea -- that the demand of the Spirit, however inconvenient, rules the whole of it, will those objectionable noises die down which have a way of penetrating into the nicely furnished little oratory and drowning all the quieter voices by their din.
Evelyn Underhill
February 18, 2006
After all it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.
Evelyn Underhill
October 6, 2006
...being a disciple means living a disciplined life, and it is not very likely that you will get other disciples unless you are one first.
Evelyn Underhill
April 27, 2007
Those who complain that they make no progress in the life of prayer because they "cannot meditate" should examine, not their capacity for meditation, but their capacity for suffering and love. For there is a hard and costly element, a deep seriousness, a crucial choice, in all genuine religion.
Evelyn Underhill
April 26, 2008
We must get rid of the pestilent, deadly notion that the amount of things we get through is the standard. The steadiness with which we radiate God is the standard.
Evelyn Underhill
August 9, 2008
You can also offer your prayers, obedience, and endurance of dryness to Our Lord, for the good of other souls, and then you have practiced intercession. Never mind if it all seems for the time very second-hand. The less you get out of it, the nearer it approaches to being something worth offering; and the humiliation of not being able to feel as devout as we want to be, is excellent for most of us. Use vocal prayer...very slowly, trying to realize the meaning with which it is charged and remember that...you are only a unit in the Chorus of the Church, so that the others will make good the shortcomings you cannot help.
Evelyn Underhill
December 30, 2008
The Christian is the person who sees every time and every situation, however dreary and repetitive, as God sees it - a fresh creation from his hand, demanding its own response in perhaps a wholly new and creative way. Under God he is free over it. He has won through to a purchase over events; he has risen with Christ.
Evelyn Underhill
March 16, 2009
Living in the present means squarely accepting and responding to it as God's moment for you now while it is called "today" rather than wishing it were yesterday or tomorrow.
Evelyn Underhill
April 28, 2009
This is the secret of joy. We shall no longer strive for our own way; but commit ourselves, easily and simply, to God's way, acquiesce in His will, and in so doing find our peace.
Evelyn Underhill
May 16, 2009
Many a congregation when it assembles in church must look to the angels like a muddy, puddly shore at low tide; littered with every kind of rubbish and odds and ends - a distressing sort of spectacle. And then the tide of worship comes in, and it's all gone: the dead sea-urchins and jelly-fish, the paper and the empty cans and the nameless bits of rubbish. The cleansing sea flows over the whole lot. So we are released from a narrow, selfish outlook on the universe by a common act of worship. Our little human affairs are reduced to their proper proportion when seen over against the spaceless Majesty and Beauty of God.
Evelyn Underhill
July 3, 2009
Christian history looks glorious in retrospect; but it is made up of constant hard choices and unattractive tasks, accepted under the pressure of the Will of God.
Evelyn Underhill
October 31, 2009
A wise man has said: "Only a Christian can live wholly in the present, for to him the past is pardoned and the future is safe in God." The past is pardoned: the Christian life must be a life without regrets, without remorse. If you have made a decision, and you still feel, taking it all in all, it was the right one, then don't look over your shoulder on what might have been. If it was wrong, ask for forgiveness and accept the present consequences, happily and without remorse. Nothing is more corrosive of the powers you should be using to meet the present.
Evelyn Underhill
February 17, 2011
Faith is not a refuge from reality. It is a demand that we face reality, with all its difficulties, opportunities, and implications. The true subject matter of religion is not our own little souls, but the Eternal God and His whole mysterious purpose, and our solemn responsibility to Him.
Evelyn Underhill
Evelyn Underhill Association
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