What They Said

“Christian humility does not consist in denying what there is of good in us; but in an abiding sense of ill-desert, and in the consciousness that what we have of good is due to the grace of God.”

Charles Hodge

“The is the point at issue between Christianity and all forms of mysticism and rationalism.  The dignity of the Christian is that, unlike the heathen, he is not a law unto himself.  He is “under orders.”  He lives unto the King and submits to his authority.  It is the mark of Christianity that it is a revealed religion and that Christians, therefore, march to the orders from without.  By contrast, the mystic or rationalist, seeking the knowledge of God from within his own psyche, has confused himself with God and has therefore left himself with no authoritative touchstone of truth - in which case truth itself becomes a merely relative, individual matter.  God then becomes many different things, and “the history of mysticism only too clearly shows that he who begins by seeking God within himself may end by confusing himself with God.””

B.B Warfield

“And what else is the cause of all transgression, but that man’s ignorant pride will have his will preferred to the will of God.”

William Cowper

“How much strength each man hath is best proved by occasions of adversity:  for such occasions do not make a man frail, but show of what temper he is”

Thomas a' Kempis

“It is a hard lesson to live above the law, and yet to walk according to the law.  But this is the lesson a Christian has to learn, to walk in the law in respect of duty, but to live above it in respect of comfort, neither expecting favour from the law in respect of his obedience nor fearing harsh treatment from the law in respect of his failings.”

Samuel Bolton

“The Christian is a person who makes it easy for others to believe in God.”

Robert Murray M'Cheyne

“Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God"

G.K. Chesterton

“Heaven and earth and all creatures, herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea and all things declare God. There is not an atom of the universe in which God’s power and divinity are not revealed.”

Herman Bavinck

“Eternity will be too short fully to recount His praise.  Let us not shorten our joy by neglecting to begin on earth.”

Henry Law

“I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk, when we remember the great sacrifice which He made who left His Father's throne on high to give Himself for us; 'who being the brightness of that Father's glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.’”

David Livingstone

“One thing I know assuredly, that in religion, of myself, I know nothing. I do not therefore sit down to the perusal of Scripture in order to impose a sense on the inspired writers; but to receive one, as they give it me. I pretend not to teach them, I wish like a child to be taught by them. When I come to a text which speaks of election, I delight myself in the doctrine of election. When the Apostles exhort me to repentance and obedience, and indicate my freedom of choice and action, I give myself up to that side of the question.”

Charles Simeon

“A Christian is one who recognizes Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, as God manifested in the flesh, loving us and dying for our redemption; a Christian is so affected by a sense of the love of this incarnate God as to be constrained to make the will of Christ the rule of his obedience and the glory of Christ the great end for which He lives.”

Charles Hodge

“The Holy Scriptures, given by inspiration of God, are of themselves sufficient toward the discovery of truth.”

Athanasius

“The virtue of a man ought to be measured, not by his extraordinary exertions, but by his everyday conduct.”

Blaise Pascal

“Biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world.”

Francis Schaeffer

“A church has no right to make anything a condition of membership which Christ has not made a condition of salvation.”

A.A. Hodge

“A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional or (as they would say) 'sentimental' values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process.”

C.S. Lewis

J.C. Philpot

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”

G.K. Chesterton

“When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.”

G.K. Chesterton

“Men are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern.”

G.K. Chesterton

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

G.K. Chesterton

“The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic.”

G.K. Chesterton

“If you come to Holy Scripture with growth in grace, and with aspirations for yet higher attainments, the book grows with you, grows upon you. It is ever beyond you, and cheerily cries, "Higher yet; Excelsior!" Many books in my library are now behind and beneath me; I read them years ago, with considerable pleasure; I have read them since, with disappointment; I shall never read them again, for they are of no service to me. They were good in their way once, and so were the clothes I wore when I was ten years old; but I have outgrown them I know more than these books know, and know wherein they are faulty. Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years. It is true, it cannot really grow, for it is perfect; but it does so to our apprehension. The deeper you dig into Scripture, the more you find that it is a great abyss of truth. The beginner learns four or five points of orthodoxy, and says, "I understand the gospel, I have grasped all the Bible." Wait a bit, and when his soul grows and knows more of Christ, he will confess, "Thy commandment is exceeding broad, I have only begun to understand it.””

Charles Spurgeon

“Today Jesus Christ is being dispatched as the Figurehead of a Religion, a mere example. He is that, but He is infinitely more; He is salvation itself, He is the Gospel of God.”

Oswald Chambers

“Providence may be defined as that continued exercise of the divine energy whereby the Creator preserves all His creatures, is operative in all that comes to pass in the world, and directs all things to their appointed end.”

Louis Berkhof 

“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”

G.K. Chesterton

“Certainly, then, it does make an enormous difference whether our lives be right. If our doctrine be true, and our lives be wrong, how terrible is our sin! For then, we have brought despite upon the truth itself. On the other hand, however, it is also very sad when men use the social graces which God has given them, and the moral momentum of a godly ancestry, to commend a message which is false. Nothing in the world can take the place of truth.”

J Gresham Machen

“Faith is to believe what we do not see, and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.”

Augustine

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”

G.K. Chesterton