E. Stanley Jones
E. Stanley Jones
Eli Stanley Joneswas a 20th-century Methodist Christian missionary and theologian. He is remembered chiefly for his interreligious lectures to the educated classes in India, thousands of which were held across the Indian subcontinent during the first decades of the 20th century. According to his and other contemporary reports, his friendship for the cause of Indian self-determination allowed him to become a friend of leaders of the up-and-coming Indian National Congress party. He spent much time with Mohandas K. Gandhi, and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTheologian
CountryUnited States of America
When the depths are upheld by the Holy Spirit, then the reaction is Christian.
In the prayer time, the battle of the spiritual life is lost or won.
Grace is free, but when once you take it, you are bound forever to the Giver and bound to catch the spirit of the Giver.
The opponent strikes you on your cheek, and you strike him on the heart by your amazing spiritual audacity in turning the other cheek. You wrest the offensive from him by refusing to take his weapons, by keeping your own, and by striking him in his conscience from a higher level. He hits you physically, and you hit him spiritually.
Spiritual power comes out of inward fellowship with God and abandonment to his purposes.
If the Holy Spirit can take over the subconscious with our consent and cooperation, then we have almighty Power working at the basis of our lives, then we can do anything we ought to do, go anywhere we ought to go, and be anything we ought to be.
Prayer is commission. Out of the quietness with God, power is generated that turns the spiritual machinery of the world. When you pray, you begin to feel the sense of being sent, that the divine compulsion is upon you.
In our Ashrams of East and West, places of spiritual retreat, we begin with what we call "The Morning of the Open Heart," in which we tell our needs. . . . We give four or five hours to this catharsis. The reaction of one member, who listened to it for the first time, was: "Good gracious, have we all the disrupted people in the country here?" My reply was: "No, you have a cross section of the church life honestly revealed." In the ordinary church, it is suppressed by respectability, by a desire to a appear better than we really are.
When the Church listens to the Holy Spirit, it becomes fruitful. New movements are born.
When prayer fades out, power fades out. We are as spiritual as we are prayerful; no more, no less.
Here he tells us that the new birth is first of all 'not of blood'. You don't get it through the blood stream, through heredity. Your parents can give you much, but they cannot give you this.
When we think of the ideal, we do not add virtue to virtue, but think of Jesus Christ, so that the standard of human life is no longer a code, but a character.
To implant fear in the minds of children is a crime. If parents try to rule the child by fear, then fear rules the child.
If you don't surrender to God, don't think you don't surrender. Everybody surrenders -- to something.