We shall never recover the true apostolic energy, and be endued with power from on high, as the first disciples were, ’till we recover the lost faith.
Jesus does not drive His followers on before, as a herd of unwilling disciples, but goes before Himself, leading them into paths that He has trod, and dangers He has met, and sacrifices He has borne Himself, calling them after Him and to be only followers.
Christ is known only by them that receive Him into their love, their faith, their deep want; known only as He is enshrined within, felt as a Divine force, breathed in the inspirations of the secret life.
Christianity is not so much the advent of a better doctrine as of a perfect character.
Faith is the act of trust by which one being, a sinner, commits himself to another being, a Saviour.
Live as with God; and, whatever be your calling, pray for the gift that will perfectly qualify you in it.
Christ commands you to take up His cross and follow Him, not that He may humble you, or lay some penance upon you, but that you may surrender the low self-will and the feeble pride of your sin, and ascend into the sublime patience of heavenly charity.
Christ wants to lead men by their love, their personal love to Him, and the confidence of His personal love to them.
Christ does not dress up a moral picture, and ask you to observe its beauty. He only tells you how to live; and the most beautiful characters the world has ever seen, have been those who received and lived these precepts without once conceiving their beauty.
Persecution has not crushed it, power has not beaten it back, time has not abated its force, and, what is most wonderful of all, the abuses and treasons of its friends have not shaken its stability.
A house without a roof would scarcely be a more different home, than a family unsheltered by God’s friendship, and the sense of being always rested in His providential care and guidance.
Forgiveness is man’s deepest need and highest achievement.
A true Christian man is distinguished from other men, not so much by his beneficent works, as by his patience.
Fashionable dances as now carried on are revolting to every feeling of delicacy and propriety and are fraught with the greatest danger to millions.
O, if there be any kind of life most sad, and deepest in the scale of pity, it is the dry, cold impotence of one, who has honestly set to the work of his own self-redemption.
The resurrection morning is a true sun-rising, the inbursting of a cloudless sky on all the righteous dead. They wake transfigured, at their Maker’s call, with the fashion of their countenance altered and shining like His own.
There never has been a great and beautiful character, which has not become so by filling well the ordinary and smaller offices appointed of God.
Nature has no promise for society, least of all, any remedy for sin.
By His trials, God means to purify us, to take away all our self-confidence, and our trust in each other, and bring us into implicit, humble trust in Himself.
We come, in our trust, unto God, and the moment we so embrace Him, by committing our total being and eternity to Him, we find every thing is transformed. There is life in us from God; a kind of Christ-consciousness is opened in us, testifying with the apostle, – Christ liveth in me.