Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers/J
JOY.
"The joy of the Lord is your strength," my brother. Nothing else is. No vehement resolutions, no sense of your own sinfulness, nor even contrite remembrance of your own failures, ever made a man strong yet. It made him weak that he might become strong; and when it had done that, it had done its work. For strength there must be hope, for strength there must be joy.
When we speak of joy, we do not speak of something we are after, but of something that will come to us, when we are after God and duty. It is a prize unbought, and is freest, purest in its flow, when it comes unsought. No getting into heaven as a place will compass it. You must carry it with you, or else it is not there. You must have it in you, as the music of a well-ordered soul, the fire of a holy purpose, the welling up, out of the central depths, of eternal springs that hide their waters there. It is the rest of confidence, the blessedness of eternal light and outflowing benevolence,—the highest form of life and spiritual majesty. Being the birth of character, it has eternity in it. Rising from within, it is sovereign over all circumstances and hindrances.
God offers to fill our homes aud our hearts with joy and gladness if we will only let Him do it. We cannot create the canary-birds; but we can provide cages for them, and fill our dwellings with their music. Even so we cannot create the heavenly gifts which Jesus offers; but they are ours if we provide heart-room for them. The birds of peace and contentment and joy and praise will fly in fast enough if we will only invite Jesus Christ, and set the windows of our souls open for His coming.
God is merely tuning the soul, as an instrument, in this life. And these joys of the Christian, are only the notes and chords that are sounded out in the preparation—preludes to the perfect harmony that shall flood the soul—forerunners of the perfected and rapturous joy that shall bless the soul, in that exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
Joy in God is the strength of work for God; but work for God is the preparation of joy in God.
Nobody can commit his way unto the Lord who has not begun by delighting in the Lord; and nobody can rest in the Lord who has not committed his way to the Lord.
If a man is dying for want of bread, and you give him bread, is that to make him gloomy? That is what Christ is to the soul—the Bread of Life. You will never have true pleasure or peace or joy or comfort until you have found Christ.
Rejoice evermore in your Redeemer,—in His truth—His person—His almighty grace—His everlasting faithfulness—His precious blood whose efficacy reaches farther than the eye of your conscience ever penetrated, and cleanses you from a sinfulness more inveterate than you have ever conceived to be yours.
As the skillful artist, in making a good portrait, finds it essentially necessary to use the dark and bright colors alternately, so the Divine Artist dips His pencil, by turns, in Marah and Elim. In Marah first, and the background is laid in darkness black as midnight; and then in Elim, and the blackness is relieved with the colors of the rainbow.
These are the marks of a heart that is living in the joy of the resurrection. It lives out of itself; and living out of itself, by this unselfish joy, it has a joy in itself which comes from the presence of Jesus Christ; the overflow of His peace which passeth all sense, the consciousuess of that twofold relationship—His relation to us, our relation to Him, and our mutual and indissoluble love.
We ask God to forgive us for our evil thoughts and evil temper, but rarely, if ever, ask Him to forgive us for our sadness. Joy is regarded as a happy accident of the Christian life, an ornament and a luxury, rather than a duty.
JUDGING.
The Holy Spirit would lead us to think much upon our own sins. It is a dangerous thing for us to dwell upon the imperfections of others.
If we will measure other people's corn in our own bushel, let us first take it to the Divine standard, and have it sealed.
Be thyself blameless of what thou rebukest. He that cleanses a blot with blotted fingers makes a greater blot.
While the censorious man is most severe in judging others, he is invariably the most ready to repel any animadversions made upon himself; upon the principle well understood in medical circles, that the feeblest bodies are always the most sensitive.
Would that our harsh judgments could be restrained, our impatience checked, our selfishness broken down, our passions controlled, our waste of time and life in worthless or unworthy objects corrected, by the thought that there is One in whose hands we are, who cares for us with a parent's love, who will judge us hereafter without the slightest tinge of human infirmity, the All-Merciful and the All-Just.
JUDGMENT-DAY.
Standing on my watch-tower, I am commanded, if I see aught of evil coming, to give warning. I solemnly declare that I do discern evil approaching; I see a storm collecting in the heavens; I discover the commotion of the troubled elements; I hear the roar of a distant wind—heaven and earth seem mingled in the conflict—and I cry to those for whom I watch, "A storm! A storm! Get you into the ark or you are swept away." Oh! what is it I see? I see a world convulsed and falling to ruins—the sea burning like oil—nations rising from under ground—the sun falling—the damned in chains before the bar, and some of my poor hearers among them! I see them cast from the battlements of the judgment scene! My God! the eternal pit has closed upon them forever!
Meanwhile the globe begins to tremble on its axis; the moon is covered with a bloody veil, the threatening stars hang half detached from the vault of heaven, and the agony of the world commences. Then, all at once, the fatal hour strikes; God suspends the movements of the creation, and the earth has passed away like an exhausted river. Now resounds the trumpet of the angel of judgment; and the cry is heard, "Arise, ye dead!" The sepulchres burst open with a terrific noise, the human race issues all at once from the tomb, and the assembled multitudes fill the valley of Jehoshaphat. Behold, the Son of Man appears in the clouds; the powers of hell ascend from the depths of the abyss to witness the last judgment pronounced upon the ages; the goats are separated from the sheep, the wicked are plunged into the gulf, the just ascend triumphantly to heaven, God returns to His repose, and the reign of eternity commences.
Winds, storms, tempests, thunders, lightnings, raging flames, dissolving elements, the archangel's trump smiting the silence of the tomb, the universal air blazing with disastrous splendors, "the tribes of the earth mourning and beating their breasts," the wicked calling on rocks and hills to fall upon them and cover them, the shouts of the saved, the howlings of the damned—all, all will then utter one voice, all will pierce our very souls with their tones; all will repeat these words, "God alone is great, and God's salvation alone deserved the cares, toils, sacrifices of an immortal spirit."
Oh, on that day, that wrathful day,
When man to judgment wakes from clay,
Be Thou, Christ, the sinner's stay,
Though heaven and earth shall pass away.
Glorious transformation! glorious translation! I seem already to behold the wondrous scene. The sea and the land have given up their dead! the quickened myriads have been judged according to their works. And now, an innumerable company, out of all nations and tribes and tongues, ascend with the Mediator towards the kingdom of His Father. Can it be that these, who were born children of earth, who were long enemies to God by wicked works, are to enter the bright scenes of paradise? Yes, He who leads them has washed them in His blood; He who leads them has sanctified them by His Spirit.
Then, when the glorious end,
The day of God shall come,
The angel reapers shall descend,
And heaven sing, "Harvest-home!"
Now shall the promises made to Christ by God the Father before the foundation of the world, the promises of the covenant of redemption, be fully accomplished. Christ shall now have perfectly obtained the joy set before Him, for which He undertook those great sufferings in His state of humiliation. Now shall all the hopes and expectations of the saints be fulfilled. The state of the church before was progressive and preparatory; but now she is arrived at her most perfect state of glory. All the glory of the church on earth is but a faint shadow of this her consummate glory in heaven.
Oh, remember that as certain as the historical fact,—He died on Calvary; so certain is the prophetic fact, He shall reign, and you and I will stand there. I durst not touch that subject. Take it into your own hearts, and think about it,—a kingdom, a judgment-seat, a crown, a gathered universe; separation, decision, execution of the sentence.
We are all approaching that dread tribunal. However diversified our paths, they all converge toward that common centre. The young, with their elastic tread, are striding to the judgment; the old, with their tottering limbs are creeping to the judgment; the rich in their splendid equipages are driving to the judgment; the poor, in rags and barefooted, are walking to the judgment. The Christian making God's statutes his song, is a pilgrim to the judgment; the sinner, treading upon the mercy of Jesus, and trampling upon His blood, is hastening to the judgment. "We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ."
When God comes to us in judgment, if we are not in Christ, all will be alike. Learned or unlearned, high or low, priest or scribe—there will be no difference.
Truly at the day of judgment we shall not be examined as to what we have read, but as to what we have done; not as to how well we have spoken, but as to how religiously we have lived.
The deeds we do, the words we say,
Into still air they seem to fleet;
We count them ever past;
But they shall last
In the dread judgment they
And we shall meet.
JUSTICE.
Justice is a constant and perpetual will to render to every one that which is his own.
At some time, here or hereafter, every account must be settled, and every debt paid in full.
JUSTIFICATION.
We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings.
Justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein He pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in His sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.
Justification is the act of God as a Judge; adoption as a Father; by the former we are discharged from condemnation, and accepted as righteous; by the latter we are made the children of God and joint-heirs with Christ.
Justification is the work of Christ for us; sanctification the work of the Spirit in us; justification is perfect at once; sanctification is progressive; justification is before sanctification, and sanctification is the fruit of justification; consequently the evidence of our justification is our sanctification.
Justification by faith is the answer to that momentous question, "How shall man be just with God?" And the reply is, "Not by works of his own, but by faith in the work of another, that is Christ." He must have a righteousness in which to stand before a righteous and a holy, as well as a merciful God. He has no such righteousness of his own. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness unto him.
The thief upon the cross and the beloved John were alike complete in Christ.