What They Said

"Thanksgiving is never out of season, for we have always much to be thankful for. In everything we should give thanks, to that end view all things as arranged by His wisdom, dependant on His will, sanctified by His blessing, according with His promises, and flowing from His love."

"Though the business of piety at first seems hard—yet when once we are entered into it, it is pleasant. When the wheels of the soul are oiled with grace, now a Christian moves in piety with facility and delight, Romans vii. 22."

"Yet only as we learn to die to self, do we become like Christ. Unrenewed nature seeks all of self and none of Christ. Becoming a Christian is the taking of Christ into the life in the place of self. Then all is changed. Life has a new centre, a new aim. Christ comes first."

"If you try to imitate Christ, the world will praise you; if you become Christlike, the world will hate you."

“Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly.  We insist upon trying to modify Him and to bring Him nearer to our own image.”

"The providence that supplies us, is the wisdom, benevolence, and power of God in operation for us; as expressive of His infinite love and unmerited grace."

"Our lives, like the seas, are full of tempests. But in the kingdom of Heaven, there is nothing to give grief. There, all is serene and calm; nothing within to trouble, or without to molest."

"Think what patience Jesus had with his disciples, and then read, "As I have loved you." Think how he bore with their faults and failings, with their dulness and slowness, with their unbelief and unfaithfulness, with their denials and betrayals. "As I have loved you, that ye also love one another." How it shames our touchiness, our quick firing up when a brother seems to fail a little in courtesy, or speaks a little quickly ! Was that the way Jesus loved his friends?"

"Intellectual pride is the last citadel of self."

"A true prayer is an inventory of needs, a catalogue of necessities, a revelation of hidden poverty.  While it is an application to divine wealth, it is a confession of human emptiness."

“I do believe in Christianity, and my impression is that a system must be divine which has survived so much insane mismanagement.”

"The comforts here below, are checkered. Honor may be stained with disgrace; joy interwoven with sorrow. Our suns are mixed with clouds. But the delicacies of heaven are pure as well as pleasant."

"Plato expressed a desire that the moral law might become a living personage, that men seeing it thus incarnate, might be charmed by its beauty. Plato's wish was fulfilled in Jesus Christ."

"To divorce forgiveness of sins from the actual living of the Christian life is nothing but rank heresy!"

"The act of prayer teaches us our unworthiness, which is a very beneficial lesson for such proud beings as we are. If God gave us favors without constraining us to pray for them, we would never know how poor we are.”

"The ultimate test of our spirituality, is the measure of our amazement at the grace of God."

"Afflictions are the tools by which the Father does more and more carve, form, and fashion His precious saints into the similitude and likeness of His dearest Son."

“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”

"The man who has this hope in Him (Christ) goes about his work with vigor, for the joy of the Lord is his strength. "

“We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green.”

"Our hope in Christ for the future is the mainspring and the mainstay of our joy here. It will animate our hearts to think often of heaven, for all that we can desire is promised there. Here we are weary and toilworn, but yonder is the land of rest where the sweat of labour shall no more bedew the worker's brow, and fatigue shall be forever banished."

"Pride is probably the deadliest and the most subtle of all sins, and it can assume many forms; but as long as one realizes this al is well"

"The God of contemporary Christianity is only slightly superior to the gods of Greece and Rome, if indeed He is not actually inferior to them in that He is weak and helpless while they at least had power."

“God does not like to bestow his blessings where they will be hoarded, but he loves to put them into the hands of those who will do the most with them to bless their fellows. The central object of true living is to be helpful to others. The true life is one devoted to Christ, to be used then for him in blessing others."

"The ultimate test of our spirituality, is the measure of our amazement at the grace of God."

"A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well. It is to worship what the foundation is to the temple; where it is inadequate or out of plumb the whole structure must sooner or later collapse."

“We need to watch our inner spiritual state. The world may see no abatement in our zeal, in our religious activity, in our earnest advocacy of the truth, and yet there may be less prayerfulness, less love for Christ, less tenderness of conscience, less hunger for righteousness, less desire for holiness. Is Christ more to you now than ever he was before?"

“None but a theology that came out of eternity can carry you and me safely to and through eternity.”

"To behold the glory and the love of Jesus is the only effectual way to participate of His image.”

“A sermon in shoes is often more eloquent and soul-convincing than a sermon on paper.”