Sublime

Besides, this mind restrains itself from sinning, not out of dread of punishment alone; but, because it loves and reveres God as Father, it worships and adores him as Lord. Even if there were no hell, it would still shudder at offending him alone.

As industrialization took hold, we needed pastors to check our secular excesses and to encourage us to live upright lives, particularly now that most of us were living in new urban centers, where temptation was ripe. We needed pastoral exhortation not to keep us from hell (as Edwards would believe) but to allow us to flourish, as an end in itself.

He proudly and most often called himself a “son of man,”

Beeley provides much discussion and several examples from the church fathers in his Unity of Christ, esp. 39, 134, 164, 193.

Song of Songs is a love poem or compilation of love poems written to God’s people to honor and celebrate his gift of romantic, sexual love within the context of a marital relationship.

The Christian gospel, it is often said, is designed to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

‘I’m uncommonly glad to be here – I was never so proud and happy in my life – never so happy, you know.’ This was a bold figure of speech, but not exactly the right thing; for, unhappily, the pat opening had slipped away – even couplets from Pope may be but ‘fallings from us, vanishings’,215 when fear clutches us, and a glass of sherry is hurrying

what caused the pastor I was talking with to have a stomachache and overall feeling of malaise was the unexpressed realization that the very God he preached had become unnecessary.