What They Said

"Always respond to every impulse to pray. The impulse to pray may come when you are reading or when you are battling with a text. I would make an absolute law of this – always obey such an impulse. Where does it come from? It is the work of the Holy Spirit (Phil 2:12-13). This often leads to some of the most remarkable experiences in the life of the minister. So never resist, never postpone it, never push it aside because you are busy. Give yourself to it, yield to it; and you will find not only that you have not been wasting time with respect to the matter with which you are dealing but that actually it has helped you greatly in that respect. You will experience an ease and a facility in understanding what you were reading, in thinking, in ordering matter for a sermon, in writing, in everything which is quite astonishing. Such a call to prayer must never be regarded as a distraction; always respond to it immediately, and thank God if it happens to you frequently."

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“The gospel of Christ admits of no compromise. It demands our all. If it required less, it would be unworthy of its great author and finisher. I rejoice that it requires all.  This is its glory.  When we are brought to yield to its claims, and give up all, then, and not till then, will it throw around us its arms of mercy.  And what is our all?  What do we give when we give our all?  A polluted soul,that might justly be cast into hell; a body, the miserable companion of that soul, and groaning under the dire effects of disobedience and guilt.  Our all consists, at last, in nothing more than a polluted and guilty nature. 

What a wonder is it that God will accept such an offering.  What a miracle of mercy,that raises us up from our pollution, bathes us in the laver of regeneration, and clothes us in the white linen of the saints.  And do we talk about self-denial?  Do we say, how hard to give up all? I am ashamed to use such language; ashamed to hear it used.  What did Christ give up for us?  Let that question blot out "self-denial" from the Christian's vocabulary.  When you think the Gospel makes severe requisitions by requiring all, go up to Mount Calvary and weep over such suggestions.  See the blood of your Immanuel so freely gushing from a heart that never exercised towards you any emotion but love; love unspeakable—love unsought—and love for the guilty.  Go hide your head in shame and penitence at such a thought.  It is a glorious privilege, my young friend, to give up all to Christ.  The soul that feels the constraining influence of his love, asks not how little may be given consistently with obtaining the heavenly reward—asks not for the lowest standard of discipleship; it burns with an ardent desire to devote all, and to aim at perfect "conformity to his death." 

It is melancholy to behold so many satisfied with a name in the church,and a seat at the sacramental board.  This appears to make up the sum of their religion.  Others go one step farther, and observe some decent regard to what may be termed the experimental part of religion, but aim not at that elevated standard which it is their privilege to attain.  They live in doubt, and they often die in darkness.  They enjoy neither religious consolations nor the peace which the world giveth. All this is in consequence of that miserable, half-way, compromising spirit, which seeks to perform the service, and enjoy the approbation of two masters.”

Jared Bell Waterbury

“Yet the cost is always high to carve the beauty God shows us—as an ideal for our lives.  It costs self-discipline, oftentimes anguish, as we must deny ourselves, and cut off the things we love. Self must be crucified if the noble manhood in us is ever to be set free to shine in its beauty—if the angel within the marble block is to be unimprisoned.”

J.R. Miller

“It is easier to put on canvas the artist's dreams—than to put upon our human lives the beautiful visions of Christlikeness which we find on the Gospel pages.  Yet that is the real problem of Christian living.  And though hard, it is not impossible.  If we but struggled and tried and worked, in our efforts to get our visions of character translated into reality, as artists do to paint their visions on canvas, or carve them in stone—we would all be very noble.  Never yet has an ideal been too high to be realized at last, through the help of Christ.  The heavenly visions God gives us—are prophecies of what we may become, what we are born to become.”

J.R. Miller

“Christ's character is the model, the ideal, for every Christian life.  In the end, we are to be altogether like Him; therefore all life's aiming and striving should be towards Christ's blessed beauty.  His image we find in the Gospels.  We can look at it every day.  We can study it in its details, as we follow our Lord in His life among men, in all the variations of experience through which He passed.”

J.R. Miller

“The history of the word 'character' is interesting.  Anciently, character was the stamp or make by which a brick-maker, an engraver, or other worker marked the thing he made.  Applied to life, character is that which one's experiences impress or print on his soul.  A baby has no character.  Its life is but a piece of white paper on which something is to be written, some song or story, perhaps a tragedy of sorrow.  Character grows as the baby passes into manhood.  Every day something is written here, some mark made.  The mother writes something; the teacher writes something; every day's experiences write some words; every touch or influence of other lives—leaves some mark; temptation and struggle do their part in filling the page; books, education, sorrow, joy, companions, friends—all of life touches and paints some line of beauty—or scratches some mark of damage.  Final character is the result of all these influences that work and interact upon the life. Character is the page fully written, the picture finished.”

J.R. Miller

“We ought to seek to gather in this world—treasure that we can carry with us through death's gates, and into the eternal world. We should strive to build into our lives—qualities that shall endure.  Men slave and work to get a little money, or to obtain honor, or power, or to win an earthly crown—but when they pass into the great vast forever, they take nothing of all this with them!”

J.R. Miller

"This Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them."

James Madison

"The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation." 

Alexander Hamilton

"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others."

Thomas Jefferson

“But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch." 

Thomas Jefferson

"The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated. The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments."

Alexander Hamilton

“The whole structural system of the suburban civilization is based on the case for having bathrooms and the case against having babies.”

G.K Chesterton

"The glory of heaven is ponderous and weighty; it is called 'a weight of glory,' 2 Cor. iv. 17.  God must make us able to bear it.  This weight of glory should make sufferings light: this weight should make us throw away the weights of sin out of our hands, though they be golden weights: who would for the indulging of a lust, forfeit so glorious an inheritance? lay the whole world in scales with it, it is lighter than vanity."

Thomas Watson

“The preaching of Christ crucified gives such a representation of the evil of sin, and the dreadful punishment due to it, as naturally tends to turn sinners from it, and bring them to repentance. In the Cross of Christ—the sinner may see what malignity there is in sin—when it brought such heavy vengeance on the head of the Surety.  There the sinner may see how God hates it—when he punished it so severely in his beloved Son. If the almighty Redeemer sunk under the load—then how shall the feeble sinner bear up under it?  If God spared not his own Son, who was but a surety—then how can the sinner escape, who was the original debtor!”

Samuel Davies

“Brethren, I do not think much of a conversion where it does not touch a man's substance—and those people who pretend to be Christ's people and yet live only for themselves and do nothing for Him or for His Church give sorry evidence of having been born again.  A love to the people of God has always been a distinguishing mark of the true convert.  Look, then, at Lydia, and remember that she is but a specimen of many.  Let her case rest before you and let the prayer go up, "Lord, bring in Lydias this morning, according to Your mighty Grace.””

Charles Spurgeon

“The whole lives of Christians ought to be a kind of aspiration after piety, seeing they are called unto holiness, (Eph. 1: 4; 1 Thess. 4: 5.) The office of the law is to excite them to the study of purity and holiness, by reminding them of their duty. For when the conscience feels anxious as to how it may have the favor of God, as to the answer it could give, and the confidence it would feel, if brought to his judgment-seat, in such a case the requirements of the law are not to be brought forward, but Christ, who surpasses all the perfection of the law, is alone to be held forth for righteousness.”

John Calvin

“The Gospel is the only preventive for war. “

Charles Spurgeon

“Truth is truth, and error, error, and that which is unlawful is unlawful, whether men think so or not. God has put an eternal difference between light and darkness, good and ill, which no creature's conceit can alter; and therefore no man's judgment is the measure of things further than it agrees to truth stamped upon things themselves by God. “

Richard Sibbes

“Every sane man recognises that unlimited liberty is anarchy, or rather is nonentity. The civic idea of liberty is to give the citizen a province of liberty; a limitation within which a citizen is a king.”

G.K. Chesterton

“In the domestic training of children and youth, there has been a gradual but very perceptible change from the system which was in vogue fifty years ago. There is more lenity, more liberty, and more indulgence, on the part of the parent; more insubordination, more self-confidence and more restlessness, on the part of the child.”

Jared Bell Waterbury

(1799 - 1876)