Elizabeth Prentiss

"Ah, what a life is theirs who live in Christ; How vast the mystery! Reaching in height to heaven, and in its depth The unfathomed sea!"

"O happy life! life hid with Christ in God! So making me, At home, and by the wayside, and abroad, Alone with Thee!"

"Sleep, baby, sleep! Thy father's watching the sheep. Thy mother's shaking the dreamland tree, And down drops a little dream for thee. Sleep, baby, sleep!"

"You cannot prove to yourself that you love God by examining your feelings towards Him. They are indefinite and they fluctuate. But just so far as you obey Him, just so far, depend upon it, you love Him."

"You cannot will to possess the spirit of Christ; that must come as His gift, but you can choose to study His life, and to imitate it."

"We must be wise task-masters, and not require of ourselves what we can not possibly perform. Recreation we must have. Otherwise, the strings of our soul, wound up to an unnatural tension, will break."

"It sweetens every bit of work to think that I am doing it in humble, far-off, yet real imitation of Jesus."

"The question is not whether you ever gave yourself to God, but whether you are His now."

""Cheerfully and gratefully I lay myself and all I am or own at the feet of Him who redeemed me with His precious blood, engaging to follow Him, bearing the cross He lays upon me." This is the least I can do, and I do it while my heart lies broken and bleeding at His feet."

"And as to carrying religion into everything, how can one help it if one's religion is a vital part of one's-self, not a cloak put on to go to church and hang up out of the way against next Sunday."

"It is a religion of principle that God wants from us, not one of mere feeling."

"Not till I was shut up to prayer and to the study of God's word by the loss of earthly joys — sickness destroying the flavor of them all — did I begin to penetrate the mystery that is learned under the cross. And wondrous as it is, how simple is this mystery! To love Christ, and to know that I love Him — this is all."

"Much of my experience of life has cost me a great price and I wish to use it for strengthening and comforting other souls."

"I thought that prattling boys and girls Would fill this empty room; That my rich heart would gather flowers From childhood's opening bloom.One child and two green graves are mine, This is God's gift to me; A bleeding, fainting, broken heart— This is my gift to Thee."

"Some of His children must go into the furnace to testify that the Son of God is there with them."

"I am not sure that it is best for us, once safe and secure on the Rock of Ages, to ask ourselves too closely what this and that experience may signify. Is it not better to be thinking of the Rock, not of the feet that stand upon it?"

"Lay hold on Christ with both your poor, empty hands."

"The longer I live the more conscious I am of human frailty, and of the constant, overwhelming need we all have of God's grace."

"No truth can be said to be seen as it is until it is seen in its relation to all other truths. In this relation only is it true."