Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers/H
HABIT.
A large part of Christian virtue consists in right habits.
Give a child the habit of sacredly regarding the truth—of carefully respecting the property of others—of scrupulously abstaining from all acts of improvidence which can involve him in distress, and he will just as likely think of rushing into the element in which he cannot breathe, as of lying or cheating or stealing.
Centres, or centre-pieces of wood, are put by builders under an arch of stone while it is in the process of construction till the key-stone is put in. Just such is the use Satan makes of pleasures to construct evil habits upon; the pleasure lasts till the habit is fully formed; but that done, the habit may stand eternal. The pleasures are sent for firewood, and the hell begins in this life.
Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist, but by ascending a little you may often look over it altogether. So it is with our moral improvement; we wrestle fiercely with a vicious habit, which could have no hold upon us if we ascended to a higher atmosphere.
Habit if not resisted soon becomes necessity.
Every sinful act is another cord woven into that mighty cable of habit, which binds the spirit to the throne of darkness.
The diminutive chains of habit are seldom heavy enough to be felt, till they are too strong to be broken.
HAPPINESS.
Brethren, happiness is not our being's end and aim. The Christian's aim is perfection, not happiness; and every one of the sons of God must have something of that spirit which marked his Master.
There is something better for us in the world than happiness. We will take happiness as the incident of this, gladly and gratefully. We will add a thousand fold to the happiness of the present in the fearlessness of the future which it brings; but we will not place happiness first, and thus cloud our heads with doubts, and fill our hearts with discontent. In the blackest soils grow the richest flowers, and the loftiest and strongest trees spring heavenward among the rocks.
In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.
The sacrifices required in the Christian life are necessary to emancipate the soul, and raise it above its servile dependence on condition. They are losses of mere happiness, and for just that reason they are preparations of joy.
It is a great truth, wonderful as it is undeniable, that all our happiness—temporal, spiritual, and eternal—consists in one thing; namely, in resigning ourselves to God, and in leaving ourselves with Him, to do with us and in us just as He pleases.
Happiness is neither within us nor without us, it is the union of ourselves with God.
Happiness is not the end of duty, it is a constituent of it. It is in it and of it; not an equivalent, but an element.
When we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself—nay, even springs from the midst of a life of troubles and anxieties and privations.
So long as you do not quarrel with sin, you will never be a truly happy man.
Beware what earth calls happiness; beware
All joys, but joys that never can expire.
All that I have known of happiness has come to me through being made a child again. The efforts to find something to satisfy my inward longings, which were made through the intellectual nature, were as powerless to sustain me as a theory of bread-making would be to satisfy a hungry man. How far our sorrows and losses may help us in making us willing to receive what Heaven bestows, I know not; but when we find how fruitless our efforts are, we are as helpless as little children. Then, if humble and willing to wait, Jesus Christ will Himself come to us, a dear, human friend; and then we shall be surprised to find He was walking with us all the while when the path seemed so dark and lonely, and, dear me! how different every thing now appears. The world looks too beautiful to leave, yet, somehow, we were never so willing to leave it.
The soul's calm sunshine.
Happiness is not perfected until it is shared.
HATRED.
I will tell you what to hate. Hate hypocrisy, hate cant, hate indolence, oppression, injustice; hate Pharisaism; hate them as Christ hated them—with a deep, living, godlike hatred.
We ourselves also were sometimes living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.
HEALTH.
Health is the handle by which we can apprehend and perceive pleasures; and that sauce which alone makes life delicious.
Thank Him for health. Consecrate it as His trust to innocent enjoyment, manly effort, social usefulness, and preparation for an honorable and holy career.
Christ's gospel could never have been delivered by one who was diseased.
HEAVEN.
O rest of rests! O peace serene, eternal!
Thou ever livest, and Thou changest never!
And in the secret of Thy presence dwelleth
Fullness of joy, forever and forever.
We are born for a higher destiny than earth; there is a realm where the rainbow never fades, where the stars will be spread before us like islands that slumber on the ocean, and where the beings that pass before us like shadows will stay in our presence forever.
When this passing world is done,
When has sunk yon, glowing sun,
When we stand with Christ in glory,
Looking o'er life's finished story,
Then, Lord, shall I fully know—
Not till then how much I owe.
I cannot be content with less than heaven.
Heaven is attracting to itself whatever is congenial to its nature, is enriching itself by the spoils of earth, and collecting within its capacious bosom whatever is pure, permanent, and divine.
No wearisome days, no sorrowful nights; no hunger or thirst; no anxiety or fears; no envies, no jealousies, no breaches of friendship, no sad separations, no distrusts or forebodings, no self-reproaches, no enmities, no bitter regrets, no tears, no heartaches; "And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away."
No more fatigue, no more distress,
Nor sin nor death shall reach the place;
No groans shall mingle with the songs
That warble from immortal tongues.
Christ and His cross are not separable in this life, howbeit Christ and His cross part at heaven's door, for there is no house-room for crosses in heaven. One tear, one sigh, one sad heart, one fear, one loss, one thought of trouble cannot find lodging there.
"A little while," and the load
Shall drop at the pilgrim's feet,
Where the steep and thorny road
Doth merge in the golden street.
After the fever of life—after wearinesses, sicknesses, fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and failing, struggling and succeeding—after all the changes and chances of this troubled and unhealthy state, at length comes death—at length the white throne of God—at length the beatific vision.
No aching hearts are there,
No tear-dimmed eye, no form by sickness wasted,
No cheek grown pale through penury or care,
No spirits crushed beneath the woes they bear,
No sighs for bliss untasted.
And then, the quiet of the green, inland valleys of our Father's land, where no tempest comes any more, nor the loud winds are ever heard, nor the salt sea is ever seen; but perpetual calm and blessedness; all mystery gone, and all rebellion hushed and silenced, and all unrest at an end forever! "No more sea;" but, instead of that wild and yeasty chaos of turbulent waters, there shall be the river that makes glad the city of God, the river of water of life, that proceeds "out of the throne of God and of the Lamb."
An everlasting tranquillity is, in my imagination, the highest possible felicity, because I know of no felicity on earth higher than that which a peaceful mind and contented heart afford.
There fragrant flowers immortal bloom,
And joys supreme are given;
There rays Divine disperse the gloom;
Beyond the confines of the tomb
Appears the dawn of heaven.
Selfishness, eager for a heaven of enjoyment, is quite a different thing in the soul from love and purity and truth, yearning together for what is their natural element.
The redeemed shall walk there.
What tranquillity will there be in heaven! Who can express the fullness and blessedness of this peace! What a calm is this! How sweet and holy and joyous! What a haven of rest to enter, after having passed through the storms and tempests of this world, in which pride and selfishness and envy and malice and scorn and contempt and contention and vice are as waves of a restless ocean, always rolling, and often dashed about in violence and fury! What a Canaan of rest to come to, after going through this waste and howling wilderness, full of snares and pitfalls and poisonous serpents, where no rest could be found.
O, land of rest, how near thou art! O, judgment-seat of Jesus, how thin are the clouds that veil thee! Through the rifts of cloudland shine rays from this righteous crown. It is "laid up" for him whose hope can never be satisfied with less than the presence of the King.
Thither my weak and weary steps are tending;
Saviour and Lord! with Thy frail child abide;
Guide me toward home, where, all my wanderings ended
I there shall see Thee, and be satisfied.
One should go to sleep as homesick passengers do, saying "Perhaps in the morning we shall see the shore."
And looking back upon "the sea that brought us thither," we shall behold its waters flashing in the light of that everlasting morning, and hear them breaking into music upon the eternal shore. And then, brethren, when all the weary night- watchers on the stormy ocean of life are gathered together around Him who watched with them from His throne on the bordering mountains of eternity, where the day shines forever—then He will seat them at His table in His kingdom, and none will need to ask, "Who art Thou?" or, "Where am I?" "for all shall know it is the Lord," and the full, perfect, unchangeable vision of His blessed face will be heaven.
In our Father's house it will not be the pearl gate or the streets of gold that will make us happy. But oh, how transcendently glad shall we be when we see our Lord. Perhaps in that "upper room," also, He may show us His hands and His side, and we may cry out with happy Thomas, "My Lord and my God!"
Oh, heaven without my Saviour
Would be no heaven to me;
Dim were the walls of jasper—
Rayless the crystal sea.
He gilds earth's darkest valleys
With light and joy and peace;
What then must be the radiance
When night and death shall cease?
To be in heaven is to lean one's head upon the breast of Jesus. You have done it on earth. Then you know what heaven is. To be in heaven is to talk with Jesus, to sit at His feet, to let our heart beat against His breast.
There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.
Jerusalem! my happy home!
My soul still pants for thee.
Then shall my labors have an end,
When I thy joys shall see.
Perhaps heaven may not be so far away as we fancy; and if our eyes were not holden, we should see angels ascending and descending, and blessed spirits thronging all about us.
There is not such a great difference between grace and glory after all. Grace is the bud, and glory is the blossom. Grace is glory begun; and glory is grace perfected. It won't come hard to people that are serving God down here to do it when they go up yonder. They will change places, but they won't change employments.
I change my place, but not my company. While here I have sometimes walked with God, and now I go to rest with Him.
Every Christian that goes before us from this world is a ransomed spirit waiting to welcome us in heaven.
Beyond! beyond! oh, blest beyond!
Oh, heaven, eternal, peaceful, free!
Oh, home on high! I haste from bonds
To find God's boundless rest in thee;
And saints beyond
Shall crowd thy gates to welcome me.
What we sow here, we reap there! Can it be supposed that the soul will enjoy a reward or endure a retribution for deeds of which it has no recollection? Is the thing possible? Will it enjoy the bliss of heaven, praising Christ forever as its great Saviour, without any remembrance of the sins and sufferings from which He redeemed and saved it? The idea is absurd.
Death must obliterate all memories and affections and ideas and laws, or the awakening in the next world will be amid the welcomes, and loves and raptures of those who left us with tearful farewells, and with dying promises that they would wait to welcomes us when we should arrive. And so they do. Not sorrowfully, not anxiously, but lovingly, they wait to bid us welcome.
With Christ, and like Christ, and not love our friends! Impossible! when He loves them so tenderly. Going into the fuller presence of Him whose very name is "Love" can never make our hearts less loving.
I shall know the loved who have gone before,
And joyfully sweet will the meeting be,
When over the river, the peaceful river,
The angel of death shall carry me.
Then re-united to the friends with whom we took sweet counsel upon earth, we shall recount our toil, only to heighten our ecstasy; and call to mind the toil and the din of war, only that, with a more bounding throb and a richer song, we may feel and celebrate the wonders of redemption.
Blessed loves! how happy they have made us on the earth; what will they be when they have deepened through ages, with no alloy of envy or suspicion or selfishness or sorrow?
What delight will it afford to renew the sweet counsel we have taken together, to recount the toils, the combats, and the labor of the way, and to approach, not the house, but the throne of God, in company, in order to join in the symphonies of heavenly voices, and lose ourselves amidst the splendors and fruitions of the beatific vision.
God would never have let us long for our friends with such a strong and holy love, if they were not waiting for us.
They are kings and priests unto God. They wear crowns that flash in the everlasting light. They wear robes that are spotlessly white. They wave victorious palms. They sing anthems of such exceeding sweetness as no earthly choirs ever approach. They stand before the throne. They fly on ministries of love. They muse on the top of Mount Zion. They meditate on the banks of the river of life. They are rapturous with ecstasies of love. God wipes away all tears from their eyes.
Soon shall we meet again,
Meet ne'er to sever;
Soon shall peace wreathe her chain
Round us forever;
Our hearts will then repose
Secure from worldly woes
Our songs of praise shall close
Never—no, never!
In heaven, knowledge shall be commensurate with the enlarged powers of the glorified soul.
The joys of heaven are not the joys of passive contemplation, of dreamy remembrance, of perfect repose; but they are described thus: "They rest not day nor night." "His servants serve Him, and see His face."
Man has in his power, now developed, nothing more than a mere hint or initial sign of what is to be the real stature of his personality in the process of his everlasting development. We exist here only in the small, that God may have us in a state of flexibility, and bend or fashion us, at the best advantage, to the model of His own great life and character.
It doth not yet appear what we shall be. We lie here in our nest, unfledged and weak, guessing dimly at our future, and scarce believing what even now appears. But the power is in us, and that power is finally to be revealed. And what a revelation will that be!
Will not this be the description of our future being—"reaching forth unto those things which are before?" I believe that we shall thus live through all the eternities that are before us, growing wiser, nobler, stronger, greater; plunging deeper into God, and being more and more filled with more and more of Him. So we shall move forever as in ascending spirals that rise ever higher, and draw ever closer to the throne we compass and to Him that dwells alone; ever perfect, yet ever growing, for we have an inexhaustible Saviour to absorb into our hearts, and we have hearts that never reach the ultimate bound and term of their indefinite possibility of receiving.
Heaven is endless longing, accompanied with an endless fruition—a longing which is blessedness, a longing which is life.
As we look up into these glorious culminations, how grand life becomes! To be forever with the Lord, and forever changing into His likeness, and, still more, forever deepening in the companionship of His thought and bliss, "from glory to glory,"—could we desire more?
We should carry up our affections to the mansions prepared for us above, where eternity is the measure, felicity the state, angels the company, the Lamb the light, and God the inheritance and portion of His people forever.
Yes, it is a truth that for a good man,—honored, beloved, useful,—with all around him that God ever gives to His children here;—nay, with all that God could give him of earth, it would be "gain" to die. Heaven is a better, a happier, a more desirable world than this is or can be.
Beyond the smiling and the weeping,
I shall be soon;
Beyond the waking and the sleeping,
Beyond the sowing and the reaping,
I shall be soon!
Love, rest, and home—
Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come!
Heaven is my Fatherland,
Heaven is my home.
Oh, when shall the night be gone, the shadows flee away, and the morning of that long, long day, without cloud or night, dawn?
Rejoice, oh! grieving heart,
The hours fly past;
With each some sorrow dies,
With each some shadow flies,
Until at last
The red dawn in the east
Bids weary night depart,
And pain is past.
When the day of toil is done,
When the race of life is run,
Father, grant Thy wearied one
Rest for evermore!
When the heart by sorrow tried
Feels at length its throbs subside,
Bring us, where all tears are dried,
Joy for evermore!
HEAVENLY INFLUENCES.
Millions of spiritual beings walk the earth unseen,
Both when we wake, and when we sleep.
Hands of invisible spirits touch the strings
Of that mysterious instrument, the soul,
And play the prelude of our fate.
Do we not hear voices, gentle and great, and some of them like the voices of departed friends,—do we not hear them saying to us, "Come up hither?"
Yes, thank God! there is rest—many an interval of saddest, sweetest rest—even here, when it seems as if evening breezes from that other land, laden with fragrance, played upon the cheeks, and lulled the heart. There are times, even on the stormy sea, when a gentle whisper breathes softly as of heaven, and sends into the soul a dream of ecstasy which can never again wholly die, even amidst the jar and whirl of daily life. How such whispers make the blood stop and the flesh creep with a sense of mysterious communion! How singularly such moments are the epochs of life—the few points that stand out prominently in the recollection after the flood of years has buried all the rest, as all the low shore disappears, leaving only a few rock points visible at high tide.
There are times in the history of men and nations, when they stand so near the vail that separates mortals from the immortals, time from eternity, and men from their God, that they can almost hear the beatings, and feel the pulsations, of the heart of the Infinite.
It may be that at this moment every battlement of heaven is alive with the redeemed. There is a sainted mother watching for her daughter. Have you no response to that long hushed voice which has prayed for you so often? And for you, young man, are there no voices there that have prayed for you? And are there none whom you promised once to meet again, if not on earth, in heaven?
HELL.
What will you do in a world where the Holy Spirit never strives; where every soul is fully left to its own depravity; and where there is no leisure for repentance, if there were even the desire, but where there is too much present pain to admit repentance; where they gnaw their tongues with pain, and blaspheme the God of heaven?
An immortality of pain and tears; an infinity of wretchedness and despair; the blackness of darkness across which conscience will forever shoot her clear and ghastly flashes,—like lightning streaming over a desert when midnight and tempest are there; weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth; long, long eternity, and things that will make eternity seem longer,—making each moment seem eternity,—oh, miserable condition of the damned!
The Lamb is, indeed, the emblem of love; but what so terrible as the wrath of the Lamb? The depth of the mercy despised is the measure of the punishment of him that despiseth. No more fearful words than those of the Saviour. The threatenings of the law were temporal, those of the gospel are eternal. It is Christ who reveals the never-dying worm, the unquenchable fire, and He who contrasts with the eternal joys of the redeemed the everlasting woes of the lost. His loving arms would enfold the whole human race, but not while impenitent or unbelieving; the benefits of His redemption are conditional.
Many might go to heaven with half the labor they go to hell, if they would venture their industry the right way.
The longer men sin, the more easily they can; for every act of transgression weakens conscience, stupefies intellect, hardens hearts, adds force to bad habits, and takes force from good example. And, surely, there is nothing in such associations, as wicked affinities will insure to the sinner in the future state, to incline him to repentance.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
HEROISM.
True heroism is alike positive and progressive. It sees in right the duty which should dominate, and in truth the principle which should prevail. And hence it never falters in the faith that always and everywhere sin must be repressed, and righteousness exalted.
Never was there a time, in the history of the world, when moral heroes were more needed. The world waits for such, the providence of God has commanded science to labor and prepare the way for such. For them she is laying her iron tracks, and stretching her wires, and bridging the oceans. But where are they? Who shall breathe into our civil and political relations the breath of a higher life? Who shall touch the eyes of a paganized science, and of a pantheistic philosophy, that they may see God? Who shall consecrate to the glory of God, the triumphs of science? Who shall bear the life-boat to the stranded and perishing nations?
He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.
The courage of Daniel is true heroism. It is not physical daring, such as beneath some proud impulse will rush upon an enemy's steel; it is not reckless valor, sporting with a life which ill-fortune has blighted or which despair has made intolerable; it is not the passiveness of the stoic, through whose indifferent heart no tides of feeling flow; it is the calm courage which reflects upon its alternatives, and deliberately chooses to do right; it is the determination of Christian principle, whose foot resteth on the rock, and whose eye pierceth into heaven.
With quaint manners and quaint names these men had the hero's heart and the confessor's faith. Their faith was, indeed, their strength. Strong in the supremacy of conscience, in that real earnestness which springs from conviction, and which prompts to enterprise; far-sighted in political sagacity, because seeing Him that is invisible; shrewd enough to know that the truest policy for the life that now is, is a reverent recognition of the life that is to come, they were brave in endurance and patient under trial; and never losing sight of the principle for which they struggled, and of the purpose of their voyage afar, they "won the wilderness for God."
Don't aim at any impossible heroisms. Strive rather to be quiet in your own sphere. Don't live in the cloudland of some transcendental heaven; do your best to bring the glory of a real heaven down, and ray it out upon your fellows in this work-day world. Seek to make trade bright with a spotless integrity, and business lustrous with the beauty of holiness.
The grandest of heroic deeds are those which are performed within four walls and in domestic privacy.
The calm, tranquil energy of the Redeemer's soul; the deep strength of principle which nothing could shake; the serene courage which looked down upon menaces, clamor, contumely, sacrifice, death,—this is the temper which pours contempt upon the intrepidity of heroes, but which the Holy Spirit infuses into the humble Christian.
HOLINESS.
Holiness is an unselfing of ourselves.
Holiness is religious principle put into motion. It is the love of God sent forth into circulation, on the feet, and with the hands of love to men. It is faith gone to work. It is charity coined into actions, and devotion breathing benedictions on human suffering, while it goes up in intercession to the Father of all piety.
And now because you are His child, live as a child of God; be redeemed from the life of evil, which is false to your nature, into the life of goodness, which is the truth of your being. Scorn all that is mean; hate all that is false; struggle with all that is impure. Live the simple, lofty life which befits an heir of immortality.
The inquirer after holiness should associate with those whose intelligence will instruct him; whose example will guide him; whose conversation will inspire him; whose cautions will warn him.
Holiness is happiness; and the more you have of the former, the more you will undoubtedly enjoy of the latter.
I make it my constant prayer that God would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion; without a humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy nation.
How much better it is to see men live exactly than to hear them argue with subtlety!
A man's life is an appendix to his heart.
Just as sure as the days go by, Jesus will come to us, looking for fruit; and He will come in personal hunger, needing and longing for the fruit which we might have ready for Him.
God looketh upon any thing we say, or any thing we do, and if He seeth Christ in it, He accepteth it; but if there be no Christ, He putteth it away as a foul thing.
Harbor no thought, neither do any act you would be unwilling the whole world should know.
Must it come through trial—is suffering the only way in which holiness can be reached?
Seek and possess holiness, and consolation will follow, as assuredly as warmth follows the dispensation of the rays of the sun.
What Christianity in her antagonism with every form of unbelief most needs is holy living.
The narrow way, the way of holiness, not only leads to life, but it is life. Walking there, serene are our days, peaceful our nights, happy—high above the disorders and miseries of a wretched world—shall be our hourly communion with God; happy—full of assurance, of calm and sacred triumph, shall be our dying hour.
We must keep up the standard of Christian living in the Christian laborer. Clean hands are needed to do Christian work. Character is before co-operation, being before doing. "Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine."
Holiness is the architectural plan upon which God buildeth up His living temple.
Are angels my attendants? Then I should walk worthy of my companionship. Am I so soon to go and dwell with angels? Then I should be pure. Are these feet so soon to tread the courts of heaven? Is this tongue so soon to unite with heavenly beings in praising God? Are these eyes so soon to look on the throne of eternal glory, and on the ascended Redeemer? Then these feet and eyes and lips should be pure and holy; and I should be dead to the world, and live for heaven.
If it be heaven toward which we journey, it will be holiness in which we delight; for if we cannot now rejoice in having God for our portion, where is our meetness for a world in which God is to be all in all forever and forever?
O, for a voice of power to arouse the human spirit from its death in life of animality, to quicken it with a fit consciousness of its own nature, to lift it to an adequate comprehension of the purposes for which the sublime thoughts of God, of duty, of disinterested love, of heaven are opened within!
To sanctify God is to reverence Him in our hearts, and to represent Him in the glory of His holiness before men.
Christ came to give us a justifying righteousness, and He also came to make us holy—not chiefly for the purpose of evidencing here our possession of a justifying righteousness—but for the purpose of forming and fitting us for a blessed eternity.
Carefully purify your conscience from daily faults; suffer no sin to dwell in your heart; small as it may seem, it obscures the light of grace, weighs down the soul, and hinders that constant communion with Jesus Christ which it should be your pleasure to cultivate.
HOLY SPIRIT.
All that is divine in man comes from God. All that tends toward God in man is God's voice in the human heart.
Life, if we would mark it, is made up of thousands of suggestions from some unseen quarter, prompting us to duty; starting some thought of what is wise and right and just and good; inclining us to thoughtfulness, to meditation, to prayer; making the soul dissatisfied with its present course, and drawing it along in the path of duty, benevolence, and peace.
The work of the Spirit is to impart life, to implant hope, to give liberty, to testify of Christ, to guide us into all truth, to teach us all things, to comfort the believer, and to convict the world of sin.
The Bible is like a wide and beautiful landscape seen afar off, dim and confused; but a good telescope will bring it near, and spread out all its rocks and trees and flowers and verdant fields and winding rivers at one's very feet. That telescope is the Spirit's teaching.
The grandest operations, both in nature and in grace, are the most silent and imperceptible. The shallow brook babbles on its passage, and is heard by every one; but the coming on of the seasons is silent and unseen. The storm rages and alarms; but its fury is soon exhausted, and its effects are partial and soon remedied; but the dew, though gentle and unheard, is immense in quantity, and the very life of large portions of the earth. And these are pictures of the operations of grace in the church and in the soul.
A religion without the Holy Ghost, though it had all the ordinances and all the doctrines of the New Testament, would certainly not be Christianity.
Without the soul divinely quickened and inspired, the observances of the grandest ritualism are as worthless as the motions of a galvanized corpse.
I firmly believe that the moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness and ambition and self-seeking and every thing that is contrary to God's law, the Holy Ghost will come and fill every corner of our hearts; but if we are full of pride and conceit and ambition and self-seeking and pleasure and the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God; and I believe many a man is praying to God to fill him when he is full already with something else.
As the blood of Christ is the fountain of all merit, so the Spirit is the fountain of all spiritual life; and until He quickens us, imparts the principle of divine life to our souls, we can put forth no vital act of faith to lay hold upon Jesus Christ.
We are not saved on account of the Holy Ghost's work in us; we are saved by means of it. We are saved on account of Christ's work for us. The Spirit never tells us to look inward even to His own operations, for peace, but outward to Christ.
There is no reason to believe that the Holy Spirit ever leaves awakened sinners, only as they leave the truth of God for some error or sin.
Resist is the word applied to the unconverted. Grieve is that applied to the individual Christian. Quench is that which has reference to the saints when gathered together waiting on the Spirit.
Culture is good, genius is brilliant, civilization is a blessing, education is a great privilege; but we may be educated villains. The thing that we want most of all is the precious gift of the Holy Ghost.
A man may as well hew marble without tools, or paint without colors or instruments, or build without materials, as perform any acceptable service without the graces of the Spirit, which are both the materials and instruments in the work.
After regeneration the Spirit works upon a complying and willing mind—we work, and He assists. It is therefore an error that sanctified persons are not bound to strive in the way of duty without a sensible impulse of the Spirit.
"I have come a hundred miles," said a minister, "to get some of Mr. Moody's spirit." "You don't want my spirit," was the reply. "What you want is the Spirit of God."
Make us eternal truths receive,
And practice all that we believe;
Give us Thyself that we may see
The Father and the Son by Thee.
The believing man hath the Holy Ghost; and where the Holy Ghost dwelleth, He will not suffer a man to be idle, but stirreth him up to all exercises of piety and godliness, and of true religion, to the love of God, to the patient suffering of afflictions, to prayer, to thanksgiving, and the exercise of charity towards all men.
No enumeration of the fruits of the Spirit will be found which excludes peace and joy, much less love; and from these graces, if, indeed, not from the last alone, spring the various fruits which unitedly constitute righteousness.
When the blessed Spirit, that bloweth where it listeth, visits you and stirs the plumage of the soul, seek no cowardly shelter from it, but fling yourself upon it, and, though its sweep be awful, you shall be sustained. Only do this, do all, not in presumptuous daring, but in divine submission; in dependence, not on any strength that can be spent, but on the ever-living stay of all that trust in Him.
Whatever the Holy Spirit prompts a true Christian to do for the glory of God, He allures him to do in a modest way, and with a disposition of indescribable tenderness.
You will find that for a smoking flax there is no specific like heaven's oxygen; for a faint and flickering piety there is no cure comparable to the one without which all our own exertions are but an effort to light a lamp in a vacuum—the breath of the Holy Spirit.
Religion has never, in any period, sustained itself except by the instrumentality of the tongue of fire. Only where some men, more or less imbued with this primitive power, have spoken the words of the Lord, not with "the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth," have sinners been converted, and saints prompted to a saintlier life.
Consciously, distinctly, resolutely, habitually, we need to give ourselves, our business, our interests, our families, our affections, into the Spirit's hands, to lead and fashion us as He will. When we work with the current of that Divine will, all is vital, efficient, fruitful.
Thousands of pulpit orators have swayed their audiences as a wind sways standing corn; but in the result, those who were most affected differed nothing from their former selves. An effect of eloquence is sufficient to account for a vast amount of feeling at the moment; but to trace to this a moral power, by which a man, for his life long, overcomes his besetting sins, and adorns his name with Christian virtues, is to make sport of human nature.
Every accessory, every instrument of usefulness, the church has now in such a degree and of such excellence as was never known in any other age; and we want but a supreme and glorious baptism of fire to exhibit to the world such a spectacle as would raise ten thousand hallelujahs to the glory of our King.
On the day of Pentecost Christianity faced the world, a new religion, without a history, without a priesthood, without a college, without a people, and without a patron. She had only her two sacraments and her tongue of fire. The latter was her sole instrument of aggression.
Baptize the nations! far and nigh,
The triumphs of the cross record
The name of Jesus glorify,
Till every people call Him Lord.
Return, Power of the Pentecost, return to Thy people! Shed down Thy flame on many heads! To us, as to our fathers and to those of the old time before them, give fullness of grace! Without Thee we can do nothing; but filled with the Holy Ghost, the excellency of the power will be of Thee, O God! and not of us.
Come, then, with what voice Thou wilt come, Thou power-clad Messenger of my Redeemer! Come with thunder on Thy tongue, or with a sweet "harp of ten strings;" come to us simple as a little child, or wise as a scribe instructed of God; but, O! let us only feel that fire in Thy message which lies not in sentences nor in tones, but in a heart itself inflamed from above, and pouring fire into our hearts.
Oh, now to all mankind
"Let there be light!"
HOME.
A happy home is the single spot of rest which a man has upon this earth for the cultivation of his noblest sensibilities.
There is no happiness in life, there is no misery like that growing out of the dispositions which consecrate or desecrate a home.
When home is ruled according to God's word, angels might be asked to stay a night with us, and they would not find themselves out of their element.
In the homes of America are born the children of America; and from them go out into American life, American men and women. They go out with the stamp of these homes upon them; and only as these homes are what they should be, will they be what they should be.
The strength of a nation, especially of a republican nation, is in the intelligent and well-ordered homes of the people.
A Christian home! What a power it is to the child when he is far away in the cold, tempting world, and voices of sin are filling his ears, and his feet stand on slippery places.
The spirit and tone of your home will have great influence on your children. If it is what it ought to be, it will fasten conviction on their minds, however wicked they may become.
The simple pleasures of home are sweetest and last longest. Happy the man who is never so happy as when he opens the Bible to read and pray with his wife and children, or sits at his own table, the chief figure in the eyes of those who surround him. Happy, we say, is such a man, if, when he looks into the eyes of such a circle, he forgets himself in his love for them. The church life of such a family is really a part of its home life.
Woe be to that house on whose altar the fire of love has gone out! Woe be to those who have no longer the sweet perfume of burning incense, but only a stench from the remains of the victim heart that has been consumed.
The pleasant converse of the fireside, the simple songs of home, the words of encouragement as I bend over my schooltasks, the kiss as I lie down to rest, the patient bearing with the freaks of my restless nature, the gentle counsels mingled with reproofs and approvals, the sympathy that meets and assuages every sorrow, and sweetens every little success—all these return to me amid the responsibilities which press upon me now, and I feel as if I had once lived in heaven, and, straying, had lost my way.
I never heard my father's or mother's voice once raised in any question with each other; nor saw any angry or even slightly hurt or offended glance in the eyes of either. I never heard a servant scolded, nor even suddenly, passionately, or in any severe manner, blamed; and I never saw a moment's trouble or disorder in any household matter.
It is to Jesus Christ we owe the truth, the tenderness, the purity, the warm affection, the holy aspiration, which go together in that endearing word—home; for it is He who has made obedience so beautiful, and affection so holy; it is He who has brought the Father's home so near, and has taught us that love is of God.
The sweetest type of heaven is home—nay, heaven is the home for whose acquisition we are to strive the most strongly. Home, in one form and another, is the great object of life. It stands at the end of every day's labor, and beckons us to its bosom; and life would be cheerless and meaningless, did we not discern across the river that divides us from the life beyond, glimpses of the pleasant mansions prepared for us.
The home came from heaven. Modeled on the Father's house and the many mansions, and meant the one to be a training place for the other, the home is one of the gifts of the Lord Jesus—a special creation of Christianity.
Home and heaven are not so far separated as we sometimes think. Nay, they are not separated at all, for they are both in the same great building. Home is the lower story, and is located down here on the ground floor; heaven is above stairs, in the second and third stories; and, as one after another the family is called to come up higher, that which seemed to be such a strange place begins to wear a familiar aspect; and, when at last not one is left below, the home is transferred to heaven, and heaven is home.
Keep the home near heaven. Let it face toward the Father's house. Not only let the day begin and end with God, with mercies acknowledged and forgiveness sought, but let it be seen and felt that God is your chiefest joy, His will in all you do the absolute and sufficient reason.
It was Jesus Christ who, ever pointing to joys which do not perish in the using, wedded duty to delight, and re-opening to the Christian family a better paradise—the Father's house—placed the earthly home in the vestibule of heaven.
The ascension of Christ makes heaven seem homelike to us as we journey toward it; for Jesus wears our humanity at the right hand of the Father.
Home and Jesus! The two should be inseparable. Husband and wife need the clasp of that infinite love to keep their hearts true to each other. Parents need the guidance of that infinite wisdom and the power of that infinite strength, to keep them patient and long-suffering and gentle and wise in the training of immortal souls.
How rich this earth seems when we regard it—crowded with the loves of home! Yet I am now getting ready to go home—to leave this world of homes and go home. When I reach that home, shall I even then seek yet to go home? Even then, I believe, I shall seek a yet warmer, deeper, truer home in the deeper knowledge of God—in the truer love of my fellow men. Eternity will be—my heart and my faith tell me—a traveling homeward, but in jubilation and confidence and the vision of the beloved.
Then I said in my heart, "Come home with me, beloved—there is but one home for us all. When we find—in proportion as each of us finds that home, shall we be gardens of delight to each other—little chambers of rest—galleries of pictures—wells of water."
HOPE.
Hope proves man deathless. It is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.
If thy hope be any thing worth, it will purify thee from thy sins.
As the days of spring arouse all nature to a green and growing vitality, so when hope enters the soul it makes all things new. It insures the progress which it predicts. Rooted in faith, growing up into love; these make the three immortal graces of the gospel, whose intertwined arms and concurrent voices shed joy and peace over our human life.
Let the sweet hope that Thou art mine,
My life and death attend;
Thy presence through my journey shine,
And crown my journey's end.
With a mind not diseased, a holy life is a life of hope; and at the end of it, death is a great act of hope.
Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher, Death, and God adore;
What future bliss He gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Daughter of Faith, awake, arise, illume
The dread unknown, the chaos of the tomb.
I thought that the light-house looked lovely as hope,
That star on life's tremulous ocean.
HUMILITY.
Humility, that low, sweet root,
From which all heavenly virtues shoot.
True humility is a Christian grace and one of the fruits of the Spirit, originating in a deep consciousness of sin past and present, and leading us to discover our nothingness in the view of God, our insufficiency for any thing that is good, and prompting us, as we feel our infirmities, to strive after higher and yet higher attainments.
Humility is the root, mother, nurse, foundation, and bond of all virtue.
They that know God will be humble, they that know themselves cannot be proud.
Be sure that your soul is never so intensely alive as when in the deepest abnegation it waits hushed before God.
Teach me, Lord, my true condition;
Bring me childlike to Thy knee;
Stripped of every low ambition,
Willing to be led by Thee.
Humility is, of all graces, the chiefest when it does not know itself to be a grace at all.
The more we learn what humility is, the less we discover in ourselves.
Light-houses don't ring bells and fire cannon to call attention to their shining; they just shine on.
Humility is that simple, inner life of real greatness, which is indifferent to magnificence, and, surrounded by it all, lives far away in the distant country of a Father's home, with the cross borne silently and self-sacrificingly in the heart of hearts.
I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility.
Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being little. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation. Modest humility is beauty's crown.
Heaven's gates are not so highly arched as king's palaces; they that enter there must go upon their knees.
"He that humbleth himself shall be exalted." This great law of the kingdom of God is, in the teaching of Christ, inscribed over its entrance-gate.
They who know most of God on earth or heaven know that they know little after all; but they know that they may know more and more of Him throughout eternal ages.
Humility is the grace which lies prostrate at God's footstool, self-abasing and self-disparaging, amazed at God's mercy, and abhorring its own vileness.
Humility, wnat is it? It is a gracious gift of the Holy Ghost. It is the same disposition which the Psalmist called a "broken heart," and that consciousness of need which Jesus had in view when He said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." So far as it has respect to God, it is that docility which is willing to learn what God teaches; that conscious penury, which is willing to accept whatever God proffers; that submission which is willing to do what God desires, and to endure whatever God deems needful.
And so among the ruins of our pride, we grow to be loving children of the Most High.
I want to feel my own nothingness, I want to give myself up in absolute resignation to God, to lie prostrate and passive at His feet, with no other disposition in my heart than that of merging my will into His will, and no other language in my mouth than that of prayer for the perfecting of His strength in my weakness. I desire from the abyss of my own nothingness and vileness to cry unto God that He might cause me to do as I ought, and to be as I ought.
Confess your nothingness and ill-desert before God. Distrust yourself. Rely only upon God. Renounce all glory except from Him. Yield yourself heartily to His will and service. Avoid an aspiring, ambitious, ostentatious, assuming, arrogant, scornful, stubborn, willful, levelling, self-justifying behavior; and strive for more and more of the humble spirit that Christ manifested while He was here upon earth.
But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Abraham teaches us the right way of conversing with God: "And Abraham fell on his face, and God talked with him." When we plead with Him, our faces should be in the dust.
When thinking of God, when beholding His glorious perfections, when rejoicing in the perfection of His government, and in the excellence of His designs, the humble heart adopts the language of Job: "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
"O pity, great Father of light," then I cried,
"Thy creature who fain would not wander from Thee!
Lo, humbled in dust, I relinquish my pride;
From doubt and from darkness Thou only canst free."
Not as men of science, not as critics, not as philosophers, but as little children, shall we enter into the kingdom of heaven.
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself by now and then finding a smooth pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
O it is a happy thing to feel ourselves helpless and naught, for then the presence of God is felt to wrap us about so lovingly! Everlasting, infinite, almighty,—these are the words that strengthen us with speaking them.
Of all trees, I observe God hath chosen the vine, a low plant that creeps upon the helpful wall; of all beasts, the soft and patient lamb; of all fowls, the mild and guileless dove. Christ is the rose of the field, and the lily of the valley. When God appeared to Moses, it was not in the lofty cedar nor the sturdy oak nor the spreading palm; but in a bush, a humble, slender, abject shrub; as if He would, by these elections, check the conceited arrogance of man.
The wisely cultivated man, conscious how insignificant a drop he is in the vast stream of life, learns his limitation, and accepts events with modesty and equanimity.
I pray often to God that He would keep you in the hollow of His hand. The most essential point is lowliness. It is profitable for all things, for it produces a teachable spirit which makes every thing easy.
Now as they were going along and talking, they espied a boy feeding his father's sheep. The boy was in very mean clothes, but of a fresh and well favored countenance; and as he sat by himself he sang:
"He that is down, needs fear no fall;
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide."
Then said Mr. Great Heart, "Do you hear him? I will dare to say this boy lives a merrier life, and wears more of that herb called heart's-ease in his bosom than he that is clad in silk and velvet."
Then Christian began to go forward; but Discretion, Piety, Charity, and Prudence would accompany him down to the foot of the hill. Then said Christian, "As it was difficult coming up, so, so far as I can see, it is dangerous going down." "Yes," said Prudence, "so it is; for it is a hard master for a man to go down into the valley of Humiliation, as thou art now, and to catch no slip by the way;" "therefore," said they, "we are come out to accompany thee down the hill." So he began to go down, but very warily; yet he caught a slip or two.
My God, I ask not of Thee the leaves of external consequence; I will be content to continue simple, lowly, and plain, if Thou wilt only give me grace to serve Thee and my neighbor. Outward pomp withers like a flower, but inward worth lasts even after death.
Let me follow in Thy footsteps, O Jesus! I would imitate Thee, but cannot without the aid of Thy grace! O humble and lowly Saviour, grant me the knowledge of the true Christian, and that I may willingly despise myself; let me learn the lesson so incomprehensible to the mind of man, that I must die to myself by an abandonment that shall produce true humility.
The doctrines of grace humble man without degrading him, and exalt him without inflating him.
Make me like a little child,
Simple, teachable, and mild;
Seeing only in Thy light;
Walking only in Thy might!
The reason why the publican returned from the Temple justified was that he had got that lowly and self-emptied mind to which the grace of God is welcome. It was not his standing afar off merely, nor his dejected eyes, nor his smiting on his breast, but his despair of himself and his hope in God's mercy—"God be merciful to me a sinner." And you will be justified, too, when, losing all confidence in the flesh, you learn to rejoice in Jesus Christ.
The most of my sufferings and sorrows were occasioned by my own unwillingness to be nothing, which I am, and by struggling to be something.
HYPOCRISY.
Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy; affectation, part of the chosen trappings of folly! the one completes a villain, the other only finishes a fop. Contempt is the proper punishment of affectation, and detestation the just consequence of hypocrisy.
When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon it he keeps a very small stock of it within.
In sermon style he bought,
And sold, and lied; and salutations made
In Scripture terms. He prayed by quantity,
And with his repetitions long and loud,
All knees were weary.
Hypocrisy is a sort of homage that vice pays to virtue.
If you think that you can sin, and then by cries avert the consequences of sin, you insult God's character.
Men turn their faces to hell, and hope to get to heaven; why don't they walk into the horsepond, and hope to be dry?
Hypocrites do the devil's drudgery in Christ's livery.
Woe unto thee if after all thy profession thou shouldst be found under the power of ignorance, lost in formality, drowned in earthly-mindedness, envenomed with malice, exalted in an opinion of thine own righteousness, leavened with hypocrisy and carnal ends in God's service.
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.