English theologian (1829-1890)
If Christianity has really come from heaven, it must renew the whole life of man; it must govern the life of nations no less than that of individuals; it must control a Christian when acting in his public and political capacity as completely as when he is engaged in the duties which belong to him as a member of a family circle.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
Prayer is the act by which man, detaching himself from the embarrassments of sense and nature, ascends to the true level of his destiny.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
Poverty ... is already half-Christian by its very nature; it has everything to gain by a doctrine which makes so little of the present and the visible, and so much of the future and the unseen.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
Worship is the earthly act by which we most distinctly recognize our personal immortality; men who think that they will be extinct a few years hence do not pray. In worship we spread out our insignificant life, which yet is the work of the Creator's hands, and the purchase of the Redeemer's blood, before the Eternal and All-Merciful, that we may learn the manners of a higher sphere, and fit ourselves for companionship with saints and angels, and for the everlasting sight of the face of God.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
It is some disaster for any mind to hold any one thing for truth that is untrue, however insignificant it be, or however honestly it be held. It is a greater disaster when the false prejudice bars the way to some truth behind it, which, but for it, would find an entrance to the soul; and the greatness of the disaster will in this case be measured by the importance of the excluded truth.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
If man looks within himself he must perceive two things: a law of right, and that which it condemns.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
We may rightly shrink from saying that any given individual is certainly so unfaithful to light and grace as to incur the eternal loss of God, we do know that many are so. God knows who they are.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
letter to the Editor of the Times, November 30, 1874
My brethren, the Bible is like nature in its immense, its exhaustless variety; like nature, it reflects all the higher moods of the human soul, because it does much more; because it brings us face to face with the infinity of the Divine Life.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
Certainly, envy is no monopoly of the poor; it makes itself felt in all sections of society; it haunts the court, the library, the barrack-room, even the sanctuary; it is provoked in some unhappy souls by the near neighbourhood of any superior rank or excellence whatever.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
The great laws of the moral world do not vary, however different, under different dispensations, may be the authoritative enunciation of truth, or the means of propagating and defending it.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
The reality of a life after death is nowadays discussed, and indeed disputed, in popular reviews and in general society; and one consequence of such indiscriminate discussion, upon a not inconsiderable number of minds, is too patent and too serious to be overlooked. Men are endeavouring to persuade themselves that, whether true or false, the doctrine of a life to come may be treated as a purely speculative question, which has no necessary or indispensable relation to our present life and its duties. Whether we exist after death or not, this life at any rate, they argue, may be viewed as a thing complete in itself: we may live it, and make the most of it, without committing ourselves too definitely to any hypothesis as to what will or will not follow it.... The question of a future life may be postponed; it cannot be considered urgent; although, no doubt, it will always be interesting to speculative minds of a certain type, and will at least take rank with the inquiry whether the planets are inhabited, and by what kind of creatures.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
It may occur to you that we had better wait until the Bill is drafted, and can be then criticised in detail and on its merits. But it is, on the other hand, easier to destroy such a creature in the embryonic stage than after birth. Its emergence into print, as a serious legislative proposal, endorsed (unless I am misinformed) by the active or passive concurrence of the entire Episcopate, would of itself be a scandal to our Church of the gravest kind.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
letter to C. L. Wood regarding the "Public Worship Regulation Bill", March 14, 1874
If we look to the historical influences which have actually enacted human codes, and which have governed their administration, it is at first difficult to understand the sanctity which is thus attributed to the law and its ministers. And if, further, we examine the contents of human codes, and observe how far short they fall of enforcing, even within the limits that must bound all attempts at such enforcement, anything like an absolute morality, this difficulty is not diminished. Between law and equity there is, perhaps there must always be, a considerable interval. Between law and absolute morality there is at times patent contradiction. The undue protection of class interests, the neglect of interests of large classes; the legislation which consults, chiefly and above all else, the profit of the legislator, whether he be king, or noble, or popular assembly; the legislation which postpones moral to material interests, and which makes havoc of man's highest good in order to gratify his lower instincts, his passing caprice, his unreasoning passion -- all this and much else appears to forbid enthusiasm for human law.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
If we might reverently imagine ourselves scheming beforehand what kind of book the Book of God ought to be, how different would it be from the actual Bible! There would be as many Bibles as there are souls, and they would differ as widely. But in one thing, amid all their differences, they would probably agree: they would lack the variety, both in form and substance, of the Holy Book which the Church of God places in the hands of her children.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
So long as men die, life will reassert its tragic interest from time to time with fresh energy, and to this interest Christianity alone can respond. If the scientific people could rid us of death, they might indeed hope to win over the heart and conscience of the world, permanently, to some form of non-theistic speculation. As it is, the tide ebbs, as I believe, only that it may flow again.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
letter to C. T. Redington, June 27, 1877
No Legislature can really destroy a religious conviction, except by exterminating its holders. It is historically too late to do that, and we shall live to see the drowned Egyptians on the seashore even yet.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
letter to C. L. Wood regarding the "Public Worship Regulation Bill", June 21, 1874
Worship is the common sense of faith in a life to come; and the hours we devote to it will assuredly be among those upon which we shall reflect with most thankful joy when all things here shall have fallen into a very distant background, and when through the Atoning Mercy our true home has been reached at last.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
No light privilege is it to have a hand in building up the moral life of these new communities; no common honour surely to help to lay side by side with the foundations of their free political institutions the broad and deep foundations of the Church of God.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
I get some very fierce anonymous letters about the Athanasian Creed, which would amuse you, if they were not so sad as to what they imply on the part of the writers. The last tells me that I am a Pharisee, and should have helped to crucify our Lord. It is very odd that people should think, much more write, such things; but the passion of unbelief is a very serious thing while it lasts.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
letter to Miss Mirehouse, February 12, 1873
If a religious principle is worth anything, it applies to a million of human beings as truly as to one; and the difficulty of insisting on its wider application does not furnish any proof that it ought not to be so applied.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford