Authors From England

"I would sooner walk in the dark, and hold hard to a promise of my God, than trust in the light of the brightest day that ever dawned."

"If you tell your troubles to God, you put them into the grave; they will never rise again when you have committed them to Him. If you roll your burden anywhere else, it will roll back again like the stone of Sisyphus."

"My trust is not that I am holy, but that, being unholy, Christ died for me. My rest is here, not in what I am or shall be or feel or know, but in what Christ is and must be,— in what Christ did and is still doing as He stands before yonder throne of glory."

"Can you by humble faith look to Jesus and say: "My substitute, my refuge, ray shield; Thou art my rock, my trust; in Thee do I confide? "Then, beloved, to you I have nothing to say, except this: " Never be afraid when you see God's power; for now that you are forgiven and accepted, now that by faith you have fled to Christ for refuge, the power of God need no more terrify you than the shield and sword of the warrior need terrify his wife and child.""

"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."

"The vendors of flowers in the streets of London are wont to commend them to customers by crying: "All a blowing and a growing." It would be no small praise to Christians if we could say as much for them."

"He that buildeth his nest upon a Divine promise shall find it abide and remain until he shall fly away to the land where promises are lost in fulfillments."

"Faith has a saving connection with Christ. Christ is on the shore, so to speak, holding the rope, and as we lay hold of it with the hand of our confidence, He pulls us to shore; but all good works having no connection with Christ are drifted along down the gulf of fell despair."

"The first thing in faith is knowledge. What we know we must also agree unto. What we agree unto we must rest upon alone for salvation. It will not save me to know that Christ is a Saviour; but it will save me to trust Him to be my Saviour."

"This is faith, receiving the truth of Christ; first knowing it to be true, and then acting upon that belief."

"Do not wade far out into the dangerous sea of this world's comfort. Take the good that God provides you, but say of it, "It passeth away;" for, indeed, it is but a temporary supply for a temporary need. Never suffer your goods to become your God."

"Losses and crosses are heavy to bear; but when our hearts are right with God, it is wonderful how easy the yoke becomes."

"The church may go through her dark ages, but Christ is with her in the midnight; she may pass through her fiery furnace, but Christ is in the midst of the flame with her."

"Doubts about the fundamentals of the gospel exist in certain churches, I am told, to a large extent. My dear friends, where there is a warm-hearted church, you do not hear of them. I never saw a fly light on a red-hot plate."

"I think I speak not too strongly when I say that a church in the land without the Spirit of God is rather a curse than a blessing. If you have not the Spirit of God, Christian worker, remember you stand in somebody else's way; you are a tree bearing no fruit, standing where another fruitful tree might grow."

"The greatest, strongest, mightiest plea for the church of God in the world is the existence of the Spirit of God in its midst, and the works of the Spirit of God are the true evidences of Christianity. They say miracles are withdrawn, but the Holy Spirit is the standing miracle of the church of God to-day."

"When men's hearts are melted under the preaching of the word, or by sickness, or the loss of friends, believers should be very eager to stamp the truth upon the prepared mind. Such opportunities are to be seized with holy eagerness."

"I believe that when Paul plants and Apollos waters, God gives the increase; and I have no patience with those who throw the blame on God when it belongs to themselves."

"Jesus was a great worker, and His disciples must not be afraid of hard work."

"God works, and therefore we work; God is with- us, and therefore we are with God, and stand on His side."

"It lies not in man's right nor in man's power truly to justify the guilty. This is a miracle reserved for the Lord alone. God, the infinitely just Sovereign, knows that there is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not, and therefore, in the infinite sovereignty of His divine nature and in the splendor of His ineffable love, He undertakes the task, not so much of justifying the just as of justifying the ungodly. God has devised ways and means of making the ungodly man to stand justly accepted before Him: He has set up a system by which with perfect justice He can treat the guilty as if he had been all his life free from offence, yea, can treat him as if he were wholly free from sin. He justifieth the ungodly."

"A child of God should be a visible Beatitude, for joy and happiness, and a living Doxology, for gratitude and adoration."

"In agony unknown He bleeds away His life; in terrible throes He exhausts His soul. "Eloi! Eloi! lama sabachthani?" And then see! they pierce His side, and forthwith runneth out blood and water! This is the shedding of blood, the terrible pouring out of blood, without which, for you and the whole human race, there is no remission."

"Many books in my library are now behind and beneath 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. Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years."

"There are believers who by God's grace, have climbed the mountains of full assurance and near communion, their place is with the eagle in his eyrie, high aloft; they are like the strong mountaineer, who has trodden the virgin snow, who has breathed the fresh, free air of the Alpine regions, and therefore his sinews are braced, and his limbs are vigorous; these are they who do great exploits, being mighty men, men of renown."

"It is a grand thing to see a man thoroughly possessed with one master-passion. Such a man is sure to be strong, and if the master-principle be excellent, he is sure to be excellent, too."

"Soul-serving requires a heart that beats hard against the ribs. It requires a soul full of the milk of human kindness. This is the sine qua non of success."

"I believe that much of the secret of soul-winning lies in having bowels of compassion, in having spirits that can be touched with the feeling of human infirmities."

"The preacher's work is to throw sinners down in utter helplessness, that they may be compelled to look up to Him who alone can help them."

"The gospel is a reasonable system, and it appeals to men's understanding; it is a matter for thought and consideration, and it appeals to the conscience and reflecting powers."

"Soul-winning is the chief business of the Christian minister; it should be the main pursuit of every true believer."

"Mind your till, and till your mind."

"We are all, at times, unconscious prophets."

"Of two evils choose neither."

"It needs more skill than I can tell To play the second fiddle well."

"Every generation needs regeneration."

"Don't rely too much on labels, For too often they are fables."

"By perseverance the snail reached the ark."

"A man who does nothing never has time to do anything."

"Do not close a single sermon without addressing the ungodly."

"Our great object of glorifying God is … to be mainly achieved by the winning of souls..."

"A vigorous temper is not always an evil. Men who are as easy as an old shoe are generally of as little worth."

"Care more for a grain of faith than a ton of excitement."

"The practice of truth is the most profitable reading of it."

"Is it not proven beyond all dispute that there is no limit to the enormities which men will commit when they are once persuaded that they are keepers of other men's consciences? To spread religion by any means, and to crush heresy by all means is the practical inference from the doctrine that one man may control another's religion. Given the duty of a state to foster some one form of faith, and by the sure inductions of our nature slowly but certainly persecution will occur. To prevent for ever the possibility of Papists roasting Protestants, Anglicans hanging Romish priests, and Puritans flogging Quakers, let every form of state-churchism be utterly abolished, and the remembrance of the long curse which it has cast upon the world be blotted out for ever."

"There are a few of us who could scarcely do more than we are doing of our own regular order of work, but there may yet be spare moments for little extra efforts of another sort which in the aggregate, in the run of a year, might produce a great total of real practical result. We must, like goldsmiths, carefully sweep our shops, and gather up the filings of the gold which God has given us in the shape of time. Select a large box and place in it as many cannon-balls as it will hold, it is after a fashion full, but it will hold more if smaller matters be found. Bring a quantity of marbles, very many of these may be packed in the spaces between the larger globes; the box is full now, but only full in a sense, it will contain more yet. There are interstices in abundance into which you may shake a considerable quantity of small shot, and now the chest is filled beyond all question, but yet there is room. You cannot put in another shot or marble, much less another cannon-ball, but you will find that several pounds of sand will slide down between the larger materials, and even then between the granules of sand, if you empty pondering there will be space for all the water, and for the same quantity several times repeated. When there is no space for the great there may be room for the little; where the little cannot enter the less can make its way; and where the less is shut out, the least of all may find ample room and verge enough."

"I would rather go to Heaven doubting all the way than be lost through self-confidence."

"Holiness is the architectural plan upon which God buildeth up His living temple."

"Hell itself does not contain greater monsters of iniquity than you and I might become. Within the magazine of our hearts there is powder enough to destroy us in an instant, if omnipotent grace did not prevent."

"I would not have you exchange the gold of individual Christianity for the base metal of Christian Socialism."