For the second part of my tribute to the incredible literary awesomeness of A.W. Tozer and Frederick William Faber I'd like to post a few more bits from "Knowledge of the Holy". I spent several hours every Wednesday this past semester discussing this book with some awesome guys. Here were some of our favorite portions.
From Chapter 1 "Why we must think rightly about God"
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well.
I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.
All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to confront us together and at once, would be nothing compared with the overwhelming problem of God: That He is; what He is like; and what we as moral beings must do about Him.
Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them.
Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom is a libel on His character.
The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.
The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.
So necessary to the Church is a lofty concept of God that when that concept in any measure declines, the Church with her worship and her moral standards declines along with it.
The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him--and of her.
We do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God which we received from our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past.
O God of Bethel, by whose hand
Thy people still are fed;
Who through this weary pilgrimage
Hast all our fathers led!
Our vows, our prayers we now present
Before Thy throne of grace
God of our fathers! be the God
Of their succeeding race.
-- Philip Doddridge
Knowledge of the Holy #1
Knowledge of the Holy #3
