Alexander Maclaren

"The more we work the more we need to pray. In this day of activity there is great danger, not of doing too much, but of praying too little for so much work."

"Christ has given us, not only the ritual of an ordinance, but the pattern for our lives, when He took the cup, and gave thanks. So common joys become sacraments, enjoyment becomes worship, and the cup which holds the bitter or the sweet skillfully mingled for our lives becomes the cup of blessing and salvation drank in remembrance of Him."

"A man may call himself a Christian—but the measure of his Christianity is the occupation of his mind and heart with the truth as it is in Jesus."

"Duty is duty, conscience is conscience, right is right, and wrong is wrong, whatever sized type they may be printed in. " Large" or "small" are not words for the vocabulary of conscience."

"There is no long interval between the sense of thirst and the trickling of the stream over the parched lip; but ever it is flowing, flowing past us, and the desire is but the opening of the lips to receive the limpid, and life-giving waters. No one ever desired the grace of God, really and truly desired it, but just in proportion as he desired it, he got it; just in proportion as he thirsted, he was satisfied."

"A living man must have a living God, or his soul will perish in the midst of earthly plenty, and will thirst and die whilst the water of earthly delights is running all around him. We are made to need persons not things."

"All true love to God is preceded in the heart by these two things — a sense of sin, and an assurance of pardon. There is no love possible — real, deep, genuine, worthy of being called love of God — which does not start with the belief of my own transgression, and with the thankful reception of forgiveness in Christ."

"Love Christ, and then the eternity in the heart will not be a great aching void, but will be filled with the everlasting life which Christ gives and is."

"Let us learn how the love of Christ, received into the heart, triumphs gradually but surely over all sin, transforms character, turning even its weakness into strength, and so, from the depths of transgression and the very gates of hell, raises men to God."

"No man loveth God except the man who has first learned that God loves him."

"Love is the foundation of all obedience. Without it, morality degenerates into mere casuistry. Love is the foundation of all knowledge. Without it religion degenerates into a chattering about Moses and doctrines and theories; a thing that will neither kill nor make alive, that never gave life to a single soul or blessing to a single heart, and never put strength into any hand in the conflict and strife of daily life."

"Seekest thou a place at my right hand? Nay, I give thee a more wondrous dignity. "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne.""

"And so, in calm expectation of a blessed future and a finished work which will explain the past, in honest submission of out way to God, in supreme delight in Him who is the gladness of our joy, the secret of tranquillity will be ours."

"The message of love can never come into a human soul, and pass away from it unreceived, without leaving that spirit worse, with all its lowest characteristics strengthened, and all its best ones depressed, by the fact of rejection."

"Brethren, understand that the gospel is a gospel which brings a present salvation; and try to feel that it is not presumption, but simply out of the very fundamental principle of it, when you are not afraid to say, "I know that my Redeemer is yonder, and I know that He loves me.""

"Trust Christ! and a great benediction of tranquil repose comes down upon the calm mind and the tranquil heart."

"Trust yourselves, my brethren, to the immortal love and perfect work of the Divine Saviour, and by His dear might your days will advance by peaceful stages, whereof each gathers up and carries forward the blessings of all that went before, to a death which shall be a birth."

"We are only asking you to give to Christ that which you give to others, to transfer the old emotions, the blessed emotions, the exercise of which makes gladness in the life here below, to transfer them to Him, and to rest safe in the Lord. Faith is trust."

"You must cast yourself on God's gospel with all your weight, without any hanging back, without any doubt, without even the shadow of a suspicion that it will give."

"Turn your confidence and your fears alike into prayer."

"Surely Scripture is right when it makes the sin of sins that unbelief, which is at bottom nothing else than a refusal to take the cup of salvation. Surely no sharper grief can be inflicted upon the Spirit of God than when we leave His gifts neglected and unappropriated."

"Why does a man refuse to believe? Because he has confidence in himself; because he has not a sense of his own sins; because he has not love in his heart to his Lord and Saviour. Unbelief men are responsible for. Unbelief is criminal because it is a moral act — an act of the whole nature. Belief or unbelief is a test of a man's whole spiritual condition, just because it is the whole being, affections, will, conscience, and all, as well as the understanding, which are concerned in it."

"Unless we are wedded to Jesus Christ by the simple act of trust in His mercy and His power, Christ is nothing to us."

"As in mysterious and transcendent union the Divine takes into itself the human in the person of Jesus, and eternity is blended with time; we, trusting Him, and yielding our hearts to Him, receive into our poor lives an incorruptible seed, and for us the soul-satisfying realities that abide forever mingle with and are reached through the shadows that pass away."

"Many shall seek; do you strive. For wishing is one thing, and willing is another, and doing is yet another. And in regard to entrance into Christ's kingdom, our "doing" is trusting Him who has done all for us. " This is the work of God, that ye should believe on Him whom He hath sent." Does your wish lead to the acceptance of the condition? Then it will be fulfilled."