Christian Leaders

"We must reinstate Jesus in the rightful place which belongs to Him in the church; or the church will soon be driven into the wilderness."

"Man, being essentially active, must find in activity his joy, as well as his beauty and glory; and labor, like every thing else that is good, is its own reward."

"Jesus aimed to impregnate the natural with the spiritual, and to resolve all our avocations into a heavenly discipline."

"The introduction of the Christian religion into the world has produced an incalculable change in history. There had previously been only a history of nations — there is now a history of mankind; and the idea of an education of human nature as a whole, — an education the work of Jesus Christ Himself — is become like a compass for the historian, the key of history, and the hope of nations."

"Let the mantle of worldly enjoyments hang loose about you, that it may be easily dropped when death comes to carry you into another world."

"Yes, from the mountain of eternity we shall look down, and behold the whole plain spread before us. Down here we get lost and confused in the devious valleys that run off from the rdots of the hills everywhere, and we cannot make out where the streams are going, and what there is behind that low shoulder of the hill yonder. But when we get to the summit peak and look down, it will all shape itself into one consistent whole, and we shall see it all at once. None can comprehend eternity but the eternal God."

"So do men oftentimes find their greatest cross where they expected their greatest comfort."

"As fish in the water love deep places and wells and are most frequently found there, so wicked men have a great love to carnal security and have no will to strive against the stream. Fish love deep places best where there is least noise. Oh, how careful are natural men to keep all quiet, that there may be nothing to disturb them in their rest in sin! They love to be secure which is their destruction. O my soul, beware of carnal security, of being secure, though plunged over head and ears in sin."

"You are born supernaturally through faith, by the grace of God, into the kingdom of righteousness; but you are born a little babe, that is all; and if you make any progress from that point on, it must be by work, by sacrifice, by the practice of Christian virtues, by benevolence, by self-denial, by resisting the adversary, by making valiant war for God and against sin; and on no other basis, am I authorized in giving you a hope that you may come to manhood in Christ Jesus."

"Religions which depend upon arguments are failures. A religion, to be aggressive, must be experimental; men must be something and do something by means of it, which would be otherwise impossible; then they become both rhetoric and logic — persuasion and proof."

"The best teachers of humanity are the lives of great men."

"A man may make his way across the Atlantic in a skiff, for all I know; but if you are intending to cross the sea, take my advice, and secure passage in a first-class steamer, and you will be more likely to get there. So it is with these heathen millions. I do not know but some of them may drift, and we shall find them in the city of God. But I do know that by giving them the gospel, by building up and supporting among them a Christian church, we shall greatly multiply their chances for heaven."

"Be short in all religious exercises. Better leave the people longing than loathing. No conversion after the first half hour."

"The weakest spot in every man is where he thinks himself to be the wisest."

"Remember, there are only a few model preachers. We have read of only one perfect Model, and He was crucified many centuries ago."

"There is not a single spot between Christianity and atheism, upon which a man can firmly fix his foot."

"Style should be like window-glass, perfectly transparent, and with very little sash."

"The hand of God never tires, nor are its movements aimless. It makes all things subservient to its designs, and, at every turn, disappoints the calculations of man, causing the most insignificant events to expand to the mightiest consequences, while those that have the appearance of mountains vanish into nothing."

"God, who prepares His work for the ages, accomplishes it by the feeblest instruments. It is the method of His providence to produce great results from inconsiderable means. The law which prevades the kingdom of nature is discerned in the history of mankind. Truth makes silent progress, like the water that trickles behind the rocks, and loosens them from the mountain on which they rest. Suddenly the hidden operation is revealed, and a single day suffices to lay bare the work of years, if not of ages."

"All things are connected with all things throughout the universe, from the insect to the archangel; from the sand-grain to the mountain and the globe; from the dew-drop to the ocean; from the rain-drop to the rainbow; from the pebble on the shore to 'the sun that blazes in the firmament; from the zephyr that sings among the flowers of the field to the ocean that pours its wild bass in the great anthem of nature. Not only are all things connected with all things, but there is a concatenation of events, so that the character and effects of no one event can terminate in itself. As each event owes some portion of its nature to that which preceded it, so it imparts some of its nature to that which succeeds it, and thus perpetuates the blended good or evil of itself and its predecessors. The single event may thus live on in its influence along the line of all the ages, assuming new shapes, or if clothing itself in the drapery of new events, ever marching onward and upward in the continually growing affairs of time."

"In the study of such events we do well to remember that the hand once nailed to the tree holds the chain that binds the past, the present, and the future. His way is in the sea, His path is in the great waters, and His footsteps are not known. But wisdom marks His plans; truth and justice attend their development, and out of seeming evil He brings triumphant good."

"Says Oliver Cromwell: "What are all histories but God manifesting Himself, that He hath shaken down and trampled under foot whatsoever He hath not planted?" History is not a series of jumbled happenings. God is in the facts of history as truly as He is in the march of the seasons, the revolution of the planets, or the architecture of the worlds."

"The selfish man cuts away the sand from under his own feet, he digs his own grave; and every time, from the beginning of the world until now, God Almighty pushes him into the grave and covers him up."

"Moral conduct includes every thing in which men are active and for which they are accountable. They are active in their desires, their affections, their designs, their intentions, and in every thing they say and do of choice; and for all these things they are accountable to God."

"Apart from the positive woes of perdition, an eternity of wretchedness grows from the want of love to Christ as naturally as the oak grows from the acorn, or the harvest from the scattered grain. It is not that love to Christ merits heaven; it does far better, it makes heaven. It is, as it were, the organ of sensation that takes note of heaven's blessedness."

"... It is very natural, if we find a man grossly deficient in something about which we are able to judge, — and perhaps in the thing about which we able best to judge, — to conclude the he must be all bad. In the judgment of many, it is quite enough to condemn a man, to show the he is a low fellow, with an extremely vulgar accent. We forget how much good may go with these evil things; good more than enough to outweigh all these and more."

"... If God's intention be manifest anywhere in this world, it is in the Family and the Home. There are exceptive men and women who seem specially made for a lonely life: but, with most, surely the authoritative words hold true, 'It is not good that the man should be alone.' I say nothing of the happiness which the Creator has appointed should be in the union of hearts and lives: doubtless it is pure and deep."

"We have been here a little more than a week, all of us together. For if you be a man of more than five-and-thirty years, and if you have a wife and children, you have doubtless have found out that the true way to enjoy your autumn holidays, and to be better for them, is not to go away by yourself to distant regions where you may climb snowy Alps and traverse glaciers, in the selfish enjoyment of new scenes and faces. These things must be left to younger men, who have not yet formed their home-ties, and who know neither the happiness nor the anxieties of human beings, who spread a large surface of any part of which fortune may hit hard and deep. Let us find a quiet place where parents and children may enjoy the time of rest in company ..."

"... St. Paul was right. It is just here as it is in fifty other things; there is the use of a thing and its abuse. The love of anything may be the root of much evil. The love of orthodoxy, of sound doctrine, what can be better than that? And yet I have known it lead to misrepresentation, lying, slandering, malice, and all uncharitableness."

"I was never fit to say a word to a sinner, except when I had a broken heart myself."

"There is something touching, and something striking, in the thought, How naturally human beings, in times of deep feeling and of great extremity, whether of evil or good, are impelled by something within them to turn to God: — to use some words of prayers. In imminent danger, when all human help is vain, we involuntarily feel that prayer is the only thing. In crushing sorrow, when some stroke has fallen that seems too heavy to bear, what can man do but fall upon his knees and pray?"

"There are little single things which men say and do, which give us a thorough insight into their character; and which enable us to construct a complete theory of what their nature is. And a thoughtful observer forms his estimate of those around him, often from remarking very little things: not so much by observing what men and women do when they are put on the alert, and think people are watching them, as observing their little sayings and doings when they are quite at their ease."

"What is meant by believing in Christ but just going with trusting and loving hearts, and committing to His love and power ourselves, our souls, and all that concerns us for time and eternity?"

"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."

"As in poetry, so in prayer, the whole subject matter should be furnished by the heart, and the understanding should be allowed only to shape and arrange the effusions of the heart in the manner best adapted to answer the end designed. From the fullness of a heart overflowing with holy affections, as from a copious fountain, we should pour forth a torrent of pious, humble, and ardently affectionate feelings; while our understandings only shape the channel and teach the gushing streams of devotion where to flow, and when to stop."

"God's will is the very perfection of all reason."

"I think that if we would, every evening, come to our Master's feet, and tell Him where we have been, what we have done, what we have said, and what were the motives by which we have been actuated, it would have a salutary effect upon our whole conduct."

"Jesus knows that we had rather labor than suffer; and that we would rather labor.and suffer, too, than be laid aside. No man is fit to rise up and labor, until he is made willing to lie still and suffer as long as his Master pleases."

"Our public prayers too often consist almost entirely of passages of Scripture—not always judiciously chosen or well arranged — and common-place phrases, which have been transmitted down for ages, from one generation to another, selected and put together just as we would compose a sermon or essay, while the heart is allowed no share in the performance; so that we may more properly be said to make a prayer than to pray."

"Don't turn your back upon your doctrinal doubts and difficulties. Go up to them and examine them. Perhaps the ghastly object which looks to you in the twilight like a sheeted ghost may prove to be no more than a table-cloth hanging upon a hedge."

"Your only safety lies in placing yourself in circumstances which will make exertion necessary, and which will secure Divine assistance. Never mind your infirmities. You have nothing to do with them. Your business is to trust, and to go forward. If you wait till the sea becomes land, you will never walk on it. You must leave the ship, and, like Peter, set your feet upon the waves, and you will find them marble."

"The success of sainthood is the success attained by struggle and suffering and achieved by faith; a success of honor, of clean hands and pure heart, of service to man and glory to God."

"[L]ife has no smooth road for any of us. And in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim, the very roughness stimulates the climber to sturdier and steadier steps, till that other legend of the rough places fulfils itself at last; per aspera ad astra; over steep ways to the stars."

"Enthusiasm is the element of success in everything. It is the light that leads, and the strength that leads men on and up, in the great struggles of scientific pursuit, of professional labor. It robs endurance of difficulty and makes a pleasure of duty."

"To be a gentleman does not depend upon the tailor or the toilet. Good clothes are not good habits. A gentleman is just a gentle-man, — no more, no less; a diamond polished, that was first a diamond in the rough."

"Soon, for me, the light of day Shall for ever, pass away; Then, from sin and sorrow, free, Take me, Lord, to dwell with Thee."

"Make us mindful of Thy mercies in the past, and faithful to the memories and traditions of truth and justice, of religion and patriotism, in those that have gone before us."

"To trust God, as seen in the face of His Son, and to believe that He loves us, that is faith, that is what we must do to be saved. And to love God, as seen in the face of His Son, and to seek to testify our love by our whole life, — that is Christian duty; that is all we have to do."

""Not for ourselves, but for others," is the grand law inscribed on every part of creation."

"A wise man changes his mind sometimes, but a fool never. To change your mind is the best evidence you have one. The last redoubt holding out for me was the year-day principle (on which I had written a defense in 1972 for the Southern Publishing Association Daniel volume which was published in 1978). This collapsed when I handled hundreds of books of commentary on Revelation in the Library of Congress stacks and found that the respective authors had in many cases suggested dates that seemed appropriate for their own time but ridiculous later. It became clear that we, as Adventists, had done the same as our predecessors."