What They Said

"Our limitations and our ignorance reveal our need.  Man is in darkness concerning God.  Blot the Bible out of existence and what should we know about His character, His moral attributes, His attitude toward us, or His demands upon us?  As we have seen, nature is but an imperfect medium for revealing God.  The ancients had the same nature before them as we have, but what did they discover of His character?  Unto what knowledge of the one true God did they attain?  The seventeenth chapter of the Acts answers that question.  When the Apostle Paul was in the famous city of Athens, famous for its learning and philosophical culture, he discovered an altar, on which were inscribed the words, “To the unknown God”.  The same condition prevails today.  Visit those lands which have not been illumined by the light of the Holy Scriptures and it will be found that their peoples know no more about the character of the living God than did the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians”

A.W. Pink

"To be sanctified is just as requisite as to be justified. He that thinks to come to enjoyment of God without holiness, makes Him an unholy God, and puts the highest indignity imaginable upon Him. There is no other alternative: we must either leave our sins, or our God. We may as easily reconcile Heaven and Hell, as easily take away all difference between light and darkness, good and evil, as procure acceptance for unholy persons with God. While it be true that our interest in God is not built upon our holiness, it is equally true that we have none without it. Many have greatly erred in concluding that, because piety and obedience are not meritorious, they can get to Heaven without them. The free grace of God towards sinners by Jesus Christ by no means renders holiness needless and useless. Christ is not the minister of sin, but the Main-tamer of God’s glory. He has not purchased for His people security in sin, but salvation from sin.

According to our growth in likeness unto God are our approaches unto glory. Each day both writer and reader is drawing nearer the end of his earthly course, and we do greatly deceive ourselves if we imagine that we are drawing nearer to Heaven, while following those courses which lead only to Hell. We are woefully deluded if we suppose that we are journeying towards glory, and yet are not growing in grace. The believer’s glory, subjectively considered, will be his likeness to Christ (1 John 3:2), and it is the very height of folly for any to think that they shall love hereafter what now they hate. There is no other way of growing in the likeness of God but in holiness: thereby alone are we "changed into the same image from glory to glory" (2 Cor. 3:18)—that is, from one degree of glorious grace to another, until by one last great change shall issue all grace and holiness in eternal glory.”

A.W. Pink

“Brethren, Christ is so precious that He cannot be bought. If a man should give all the substance of his house to purchase an interest in Christ, it would be utterly condemned. Rich men might gather together all their goodly things, yes, India might be exhausted of its wealth, Peru drained of its silver, and California of its gold—but no part nor lot in Christ could be bought—even with sapphires and diamonds. He gives Himself away right freely, according to the riches of His Grace! But He cannot be purchased, for He is so precious that He cannot even be priced.

A whole world can never weigh against Him any more than a single grain of dust would weigh against the universe. There is no measuring line with which to form a unit for calculation, with which to measure Him. He is infinite, and finite judgments will never be able to comprehend His unutterable value. He is God's unspeakable gift. Heaven itself is nothing as compared with Him, and if a man had to wade breast-deep through a thousand Hells to come to Christ, it were well worth the venture, if at the last he might but say, "My Beloved is mine, and I am His.””

Charles Spurgeon

“The devil has seldom done a more clever thing, than hinting to the Church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them.  From speaking out the gospel, the Church has gradually toned down her testimony, then winked at and excused the frivolities of the day. Then she tolerated them in her borders. Now she has adopted them under the plea of reaching the masses!”

Archibald Brown

“Anyone who is not an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street; but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down the chimney or even under the bed.”

G.K. Chesterton

"If we and our posterity shall be true to the Christian religion, if we and they shall live always in the fear of God, and shall respect his commandments, if we and they shall maintain just moral sentiments, and such convictions of duty as shall control the heart and life, we have the highest hopes for the future of our country; and if we maintain those institutions of Government and political union, exceeding all praise, as much as it exceeds all former examples of political association, we may be sure of one thing, that while our country furnishes materials for a thousand masters of the Historic Art, it will afford no topic for a Gibbon. It will have no decline and fall; it will go on prospering and to prosper. But if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution, which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity. “

Daniel Webster

"Be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long."—Prov. ixiii. 17.

“The fear of the Lord—it is a grand and significant Old Testament word. It depicts a state of mind and heart which might well be more manifest to-day, and which I must seek to cherish and foster within my own soul.

It is fear felt towards the Lord.  Do I think, as much and as deeply as I should, of His dazzling and worshipful attributes?  His justice cannot be tarnished.  His holiness is without flaw.  Before the splendour and awfulness of His majesty the angels veil their faces with their wings; cherubim who know and seraphim who burn feel themselves unworthy as they stand adoring about His throne. He is a most pure Spirit, the old Confession says.  His is the sevenfold radiance of divinity. Ah, He merits my reverence and my fear.

But it is also fear felt by the Lord.  Many a year after Hebrew psalmists and prophets and sages had finished their course and borne their testimony, God lived and moved, laboured and wept and died, among men—God in the person of my Saviour Jesus Christ.  And, when He was here, He knew well this sober and seemly grace. He was heard, the New Testament tells me, for His eulabeia—His godly fear.  In my culture and habitual exercise of fear, I am in the best company. I hold fellowship with my Redeemer and my King.”

Alexander Smellie

"Holiness is not something we are called upon to do in order that we may become something; it is something we are to do because of what we already are."

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one’s grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past.”

G.K. Chesterton

“So all the while a darling sin lives and keeps the throne in the heart, grace and holiness will be kept exceeding weak and low; but when your darling sin is dethroned and slain by the power and the sword of the Spirit, grace and holiness will quickly grow stronger and stronger, and rise higher and higher.”

Thomas Brooks

“For the promise runs, “I will feed my flock.”  The only real food of the soul must be of God's own appointing, preparing, and communicating.  The babe on the mother’s lap must be fed spoonful by spoonful, and that by the hand of the parent.  The food must be put in the mouth, and such food only as is suitable for the growth of the babe.  You can never deceive a hungry child. You may give it a plaything to still its cries, it may serve for a few minutes; but the pains of hunger are not to be removed by a doll.  A windmill or toy horse will not allay the cravings after the mother's breast.  So with babes in grace.  A hungry soul cannot feed upon playthings.”

J.C. Philpot

"If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments."

G.K Chesterton

“The life of Christianity doth consists very much in our love to Christ. Without love to Christ, we are as much without spiritual life as a carcass when the soul is fled from it is without natural life.  Faith without love to Christ is a dead faith, and a christian without love to Christ is a dead christian; dead in sins and trespasses.  Without love to Christ we may have the name of Christians, but we are wholly without the nature;  we may have the form of godliness, but are wholly without the power. "Give me thine heart!" is the language of God to all the children of men, Proverbs 23:26; and "Give me thy love!" is the language of Christ to all His disciples.”

Thomas Vincent

“Sin is the most dark subject that can engage our attention — but we have become so familiar with it, that it scarcely affects us at all. Not so the Lord — he calls it 'that abominable thing which he hates.' Yes, God hates nothing but sin — and no one, but for sin. God never hated a sinless being — and he never can. If we could get rid of sin, we would have nothing to fear; therefore we bless God that deliverance from sin is promised.”

James Smith

“Afflictions are useful, and in a degree necessary, to keep alive in us a conviction of the vanity and unsatisfying nature of the present world and all its enjoyments; to remind us that this poor world is not our rest; and to call our thoughts upward, where our true treasure is, and where our hearts ought to be.”

John Newton

“Let us live more for our homes. Let us love one another more. Let us cease to complain, criticise, and contradict each other. Let us be more patient with each other's faults. Let us not keep back the warm, loving words that lie in our hearts, until it is too late for them to give comfort. Soon separations will come. One of every wedded pair will stand by the other's coffin and grave. Then every bitter word spoken, and every neglect of love's duty, will be as a thorn in the heart.”

J.R. Miller

“What are some of the secrets of happy homemaking? The answer might be given in one word — Christ. Christ at the marriage-altar; Christ on the bridal journey; Christ when the new home is set up; Christ when the baby is born; Christ when the baby dies; Christ in the pinching times; Christ in the days of plenty; Christ in the nursery, in the kitchen, in the parlor; Christ in the toil and in the rest; Christ along all the years; Christ when the wedded pair walk toward the sunset gates; Christ in the sad hour when fare wells are spoken, and one goes on before and the other stays, bearing the unshared grief. Christ is the secret of happy home life.”

J.R. Miller

“Among the blessings which make happiness are the children, who come with their sweet life and their holy gladness. Children bring care, and demand toil and sacrifice, ofttimes cost pain and grief; yet the blessing they bring to a true home a thousand times repays the care and the cost. It is a sacred hour in a home when a baby is born and laid in the arms of a young father and mother.”

J.R. Miller

“Religion is the great master-secret of all happy home-life. The spirit of Christ alone will enable us to live together in perfect peace and love. The presence of Christ in a home is a perpetual benediction. We cannot be selfish, we cannot wrangle and strive, we cannot be bitter and unkind, we cannot be irritable and unreasonable, when conscious of the presence of Christ. If only we can make Christ an abiding guest in our home, and if we can keep ourselves aware of his being with us, our household life cannot but grow wondrously sweet.”

J.R. Miller

“Few things we can do in this world are so well worth doing as the making of a beautiful and happy home. He who does this builds a sanctuary for God and opens a fountain of blessing for men. Far more than we know do the strength and beauty of our lives depend upon the home in which we dwell. He who goes forth in the morning from a happy, loving, prayerful home, into the world's strife, temptation, struggle,and duty, is strong — inspired for noble and victorious living.”

J.R. Miller