Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers/G
GENTLENESS.
And if you ask what is the temper which is most fitted to be victorious over sin on earth, I answer that in it the warp of a sunny gentleness must be woven across the woof of a strong character. That will make the best tissue to stand the wear and tear of the world's trials. Our Lord was divinely gentle, but He was also strong with a wondrous strength and firmness.
Seek to mingle gentleness in all your rebukes; bear with the infirmities of others; make allowance for constitutional frailties; never say harsh things, if kind things will do as well.
GLORY.
True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, in writing what deserves to be read, and in so living as to make the world happier and better for our living in it.
—Pliny.
True glory is a flame lighted at the skies.
Real glory
Springs from the silent conquest of ourselves.
GOD.
What is God? The telescope by which we hold converse with the stars, the microscope which unveils the secrets of nature, the crucible of the chemist, the knife of the anatomist, the reflective faculties of the philosopher, all the common instruments of science, avail not here. On the threshold of that impenetrable mystery, a voice arrests our steps. From out the clouds and darkness that are round about God's throne, the question comes, "Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?"
God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.
—Westminster Catechism.
Ah, my friends, we must look out and around to see what God is like. It is when we persist in turning our eyes inward, and prying curiously over our own imperfections, that we learn to make God after our own image, and fancy that our own darkness and hardness of heart are the patterns of His light and love.
God said, "Let us make man in our image." Man said, "Let us make God in our image."
God Himself—His thoughts, His will, His love, His judgments are men's home. To think His thoughts, to choose His will, to judge His judgments, and thus to know that He is in us, with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley of the shadow of death is the way home, but only thus, that as all changes have hitherto led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of God, so this greatest of all outward changes—for it is but an outward change—will surely usher us into a region where there will be fresh possibilities of drawing nigh in heart, soul, and mind to the Father of us all.
God should be the object of all our desires, the end of all our actions, the principle of all our affections, and the governing power of our whole souls.
God is the only sure foundation on which the mind can rest.
From Thee, great God: we spring, to Thee we tend,
Path, motive, guide, original, and end.
Brethren, the Deity was not revealed to gratify our curiosity, or to increase our pride of intellect, but to bring us into relations of affection, submission, and communion with Him.
Running like a Gulf-stream through the sea of time, comes the affirmation that God has manifested Himself to man, and the best men have affirmed it most persistently. Wherever this affirmation has made its way, the icebergs of skepticism have disappeared, the temperature of virtue has risen, and the sweet fruits of charity have ripened. If the belief be false, then a lie has blessed the world, and the soul is so organized that it reaches its highest state of development in an atmosphere of deception; for it is a fact that man is purest and woman most virtuous where belief in God's manifestations is most intense and real.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul.
—Pope.
As a man exhibits himself in physical forms and actions, so there is one other Spirit, a great, wide, mighty, infinite, eternal Spirit back there in the depths of space, and in the present, and in the future, and in the abysses of space, who at His will wrestles into existence great globes, and keeps them in their position. He builds them, and places on them these mysterious forms of earth which are signals hung out over these abysses to tell coming spirits who He is, what He is, what He does, how high is His throne, and how vast is His power from eternity to eternity, from infinity to infinity through all ages of all time; He is holding forth to men and angels these external tokens of His almighty power, of His infinite skill, and of His everlasting love.
As Phidias contrived his mechanism so that his memory could never be obliterated without the destruction of his work, so the great name of God is interwoven in the texture of all that He has made. His goodness blooms in every flower; His glory beams in every star. There is a God! The sun speaks it in his splendor by day, and the moon in her radiance by night. There is a God! Inanimate nature, from the pebble upon the beach, to the orb that shines in the vaulted sky, declares it; and animate existence, from the tiniest insect, to Gabriel before the throne. The earth is full of Him. His majesty commands the cherubim; His temple is all space; His arm is around all worlds.
The mystery of the universe, and the meaning of God's world, are shrouded in hopeless obscurity, until we learn to feel that all laws suppose a lawgiver, and that all working involves a Divine energy.
If we can keep our minds calm on the subject of the "Eternity of God," if reason does not totter on her seat at the contemplation of underived existence, it will be strange if any other mystery relating to God should disturb us. He who can bring his reason to bow reverently at the idea of a Being who had no beginning, is well prepared to receive any communication of His will.
O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be Thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home!
—Watts.
Fatherhood! what does that word itself teach us? It speaks of the communication of a life, and the reciprocity of love. It rests upon a Divine act, and it involves a human emotion. It involves that the Father and the child shall have kindred life—the Father bestowing, and the child possessing a life which is derived; and because derived, kindred; and because kindred, unfolding itself in likeness to the Father that gave it. And it requires that between the Father's heart and the child's eart there shall pass, in blessed interchange and quick correspondence, answering love, flashing backwards and forwards, like the lightning that touches the earth, and rises from it again.
God of my fathers! holy, just, and good!
My God, my Father! my unfailing hope!
—Pollock.
There is all the difference in the world between searching for evidences of my sonship, and seeking to get the conviction of God's fatherhood. The one is an endless, profitless, soul-tormenting task; the other is the light and liberty, the glorious liberty of the children on God.
What another being is life when we have found out our Father; and if we work, it is beneath His eye, and if we play, it is in the light and encouragement of His smile. Earth's sunshine is heaven's radiance, and the stars of night as if the beginning of the beatific vision; so soft, so sweet, so gentle, so resposeful, so almost infinite have all things become, because we have found our Father in our God.
When we come to tell the completed story of our lives, we shall have to record the fulfillment of all God's promises, and the accomplishment of all our prayers that were built on them.
God's truth and faithfulness "are a great deep." They resemble the ocean itself; always there—vast, fathomless, sublime, the same in its majesty, its inexhaustible fullness, yesterday, to-day, and forever; the same in calm and storm, by day and by night; changeless while generations come and pass; everlasting while ages are rolling away.
If you were to spend a month feeding on the precious promises of God, you would not be going about with your heads hanging down like bulrushes, complaining how poor you are; but you would lift up your heads with confidence, and proclaim the riches of His grace because you could not help it.
I believe the promises of God enough to venture an eternity on them.
—Watts.
There is no creature so small and abject, that it representeth not the goodness of God.
Not a step can we take in any direction without perceiving the most extraordinary traces of design; and the skill everywhere conspicuous is calculated in so vast a proportion of instances to promote the happiness of living creatures, and especially of ourselves, that we feel no hesitation in concluding that, if we knew the whole scheme of Providence, every part would appear to be in harmony with a plan of absolute benevolence.
There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world.
Whatever may be the mysteries of life and death, there is one mystery which the cross of Christ reveals to us, and that is the infinite and absolute goodness of God. Let all the rest remain a mystery so long as the mystery of the cross of Christ gives us faith for all the rest.
Let me, O my God, stifle forever in my heart every thought that would tempt me to doubt Thy goodness. I know that Thou canst not but be good. O merciful Father, let me no longer reason about grace, but silently abandon myself to its operation.
—Fenelon.
His goodness stands approved,
Unchanged from day to day;
I'll drop my burden at His feet,
And bear a song away.
God's treasury where He keeps His children's gifts will be like many a mother's store of relics of her children, full of things of no value to others, but precious in His eyes for the love's sake that was in them.
—Fenelon.
God's highest gifts—talent, beauty, feeling, imagination, power—they carry with them the possibility of the highest heaven and the lowest hell. Be sure that it is by that which is highest in you that you may be lost.
When He bears us along in His tender and paternal bosom, then it is that we forget Him; in the sweetness of His gifts we forget the Giver; His ceaseless blessings, instead of melting us into love, distract our attention, and turn it away from Him.
The sun by the action of heat makes wax moist and mud dry, hardening the one while it softens the other, by the same operation producing exactly opposite results; thus, from the long-suffering of God, some derive benefit, and others harm; some are softened, while others are hardened.
Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah,
Pilgrim through this barren land;
I am weak, but Thou art mighty;
Hold me with Thy powerful hand;
Bread of heaven!
Feed me till I want no more.
"I will guide thee with mine eye"—a glance, not a blow—a look of directing love that at once heartens to duty, and tells duty. We must be very near Him to catch that look, and very much in sympathy with Him to understand it; but when we do, we must be swift to obey.
Whosoever is really earnest for Divine direction, more anxious to know what the Lord would have him do than to know what is for his own present ease or worldly interest, and who confides the case to Him who giveth wisdom liberally, and upbraideth not, may count on it very confidently that the Lord will send forth His light.
If thou art fighting against thy sins, so is God. On thy side is God who made all, and Christ who died for all and the Spirit who alone gives wisdom, purity, and nobleness.
As long as we work on God's line, He will aid us. When we attempt to work on our own lines, He rebukes us with failure.
As a general rule, those truths which we highly relish, and which shed a degree of practical light upon the things which we are required to give up for God, are leadings of Divine grace, which we should follow without hesitation.
—Fenelon.
There is nothing so small but that we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands.
Joy is like restless day; but peace divine
Like quiet night.
Lead me, O Lord, till perfect day shall shine
Through peace to light!
The Christian will sometimes be brought to walk in a solitary path. God seems to cut away his props, that He may reduce him to Himself. His religion is to be felt as a personal, particular, appropriate possession. He is to feel, that, as there is but one Jehovah to bless, so there seems to him as though there were but one penitent in the universe to be blessed by Him.
"My Father, it is dark!" "Child, take my hand,
Cling close to me; I'll lead thee through the land,
Trust my all-seeing care, so shalt thou stand
'Midst glory bright above."
Can we be unsafe where God has placed us, and where He watches over us as a parent a child that he loves?
—Fenelon.
When ye are come to the other side of the water, and have set down your foot on the shore of glorious eternity, and look back again to the waters and to your wearisome journey, and shall see in that clear glass of endless glory, nearer to the bottom of God's wisdom, ye shall then be forced to say, "If God had done otherwise with me than He hath done, I had never come to the enjoyment of this crown of glory."
Lead, kindly Light! amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on;
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on;
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.
Do you feel that you have lost your way in life? Then God Himself will show you your way. Are you utterly helpless, worn out, body and soul? Then God's eternal love is ready and willing to help you up, and revive you. Are you wearied with doubts and terrors? Then God's eternal light is ready to show you your way; God's eternal peace ready to give you peace. Do you feel yourself full of sins and faults? Then take heart; for God's unchangeable will is, to take away those sins, and purge you from those faults.
O, shall I ever learn
The lesson grand,
That I should never spurn
The offered hand
Reached out to guide my way
Through life's dark land?
Day and night, and every moment, there are voices about us. All the hours speak as they pass; and in every event there is a message to us; and all our circumstances talk with us; but it is in Divine language, that worldliness misunderstands, that selfishness is frightened at, and that only the children of God hear rightly and happily.
My faith is, that there is a greater amount of revelation given to guide each man by the principles laid down in the Bible, by conscience, and by providence, than most men are aware of. It is not the light which is defective, it is an eye to see it.
Show me what I have to do,
Every hour my strength renew;
Let me live a life of faith,
Let me die Thy people's death.
—Newton.
Guide us, Love, Peace, and Grace!
Guide us divinest Light!
Through all our work and care and woe;
Through all the dizzy joys we know,
Through the "dark valley" where we go,
Guide us Love's dearest light,
To-day, to-night.
Like His emblem the sun, He has a fullness of light in Himself. Were a thousand million more creatures to crowd the earth, that sun has light and heat for them all; and in God there is a fullness of good infinitely greater than the whole creation or the most capacious of His creatures can require. He is a sun and shield; He will give grace and glory; "no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly."
How can man understand God, since he does not yet understand his own mind, with which he endeavors to understand Him?
The infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable—not concealed, but incomprehensible. It is a clear infinity—the darkness of the pure, unsearchable sea.
The human mind may know God, and learn of God, though it has no terms by which to explain Him; it may think of Him as Absolute, as Infinite, as Personal, while it may never in this life be able to fathom the full meaning of these sublime ideas.
What we want is not infinitude, but a boundless One; not to feel that love is the law of this universe, but to feel One whose name is Love.
The law is obligated to punish the transgressor as much as the transgressor is obligated to obey the law—law has no option. Justice has but one function. The necessity of penalty is as great as the necessity of obligation. The law itself is under law; that is, it is under the necessity of its own nature; and therefore the only possible way whereby a transgressor can escape the penalty of the law, is for a substitute to endure it for him. The deep substrata and base of all God's ethical attributes are eternal law and impartial justice.
God is kind; but within the limits of inexorable law. He is good, but you can take no liberties with Him; for back of His pity and kindness is the righteousness that is so exact, and that must be satisfied to the uttermost farthing.
Because I believe in a God of absolute and unbounded love, therefore I believe in a loving anger of His which will and must devour and destroy all which is decayed, monstrous, abortive in His universe till all enemies shall be put under His feet, and God shall be all in all.
God's justice and love are one. Infinite justice must be infinite love. Justice is but another sign of love.
Justice is but the perseverance of God's wisdom, the determination of His power, and the victory of His love.
Though, in debating with regard to theories, it be lawful to say whether this or that is consistent with the Divine attributes, yet, when we find that God has actually done any thing, all question about its justice, wisdom, and benevolence, is forever out of place.
How far from here to heaven?
Not very far, my friend;
A single hearty step
Will all thy journey end.
Hold there! where runnest thou?
Know heaven is in thee!
Seekest thou for God elsewhere?
His face thou'lt never see.
I sought Thee at a distance, and did not know that Thou wast near. I sought Thee abroad, and behold Thou wast within me.
The kingdom of God which is within us consists in our willing whatever God wills, always, in every thing, and without reservation; and thus His kingdom comes; for His will is then done as it is in heaven, since we will nothing but what is dictated by His sovereign pleasure.
—Fenelon.
Were it not well, then, to begin with the substance, to learn to apprehend the reality of that kingdom which is all around us now, whether we recognize it or not,—to take our aims and endeavors into it, that they may be made part of it, however small,—to surrender ourselves to it, that our lives may do something towards its advancement, and that we may become fellow-workers, however humble, with all the wise and good who have gone before us, and with Him who made them what they are?
If you want to work for the kingdom of God, and to bring it, and enter into it, there is just one condition to be first accepted. You must enter into it as children, or not at all.
The only way to hasten the kingdom is to hasten growth; to hasten work, and that, too, along the very lines in which the "resounding loom of time" is weaving in its various-colored threads.
But I am unable to reach the lofty theme;—yet I do not think that the smallest fish that swims in the boundless ocean ever complains of the immeasurable vastness of the deep. So it is with me, I can plunge with my puny capacity, into a subject, the immensity of which I shall never be able fully to comprehend.
We never know through what Divine mysteries of compensation the great Father of the universe may be carrying out His sublime plan; but those three words, "God is love" ought to contain, to every doubting soul, the solution of all things.
This is the love that does all things; that brings to pass even the evils we suffer; so shaping them that they are but instruments of preparing the good which, as yet, has not arrived.
—Fenelon.
It is no small comfort that God hath written some Scriptures to you which He hath not to others. Read these, and think God is like a friend who sendeth a letter to a whole house and family, but who speaketh in His letter to some by name that are dearest to Him in the house.
Brother men, one act of charity will teach us more of the love of God than a thousand sermons—one act of unselfishness, of real self-denial, the putting forth of one loving feeling to the outcast and "those who are out of the way," will tell us more of the Epiphany than whole volumes of the wisest writers on theology.
We may be sure that it is the love of God only that can make us come out of self. If His powerful hand did not sustain us, we should not know how to take the first step in that direction.
—Fenelon.
Let us meditate on the love of God, who being supremely happy Himself, communicateth perfect happiness to us. Supreme happiness doth not make God forget us; shall the miserable comforts of this life make us forget Him?
God is love and goodness. Fill the soul with goodness, and fill the soul with love, that is the filling it with God. "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us." There is nothing else that can satisfy.
Perchance—He knows—canst thou not trust His love?
Pause, fellow-sinner, fellow man, before that wonderful Being that you find now in the manger, now on the cross; follow His wonderful footsteps; dwell on His words; hear His prayers; gaze on His tears,—nay, on His flowing blood, until you fully and firmly believe, never to doubt it, or forget that God loves us when we do not love Him.
Thou lovest like an infinite God when Thou lovest; Thou movest heaven and earth to save Thy loved ones. Thou becomest man, a babe, the vilest of men, covered with reproaches, dying with infamy and under the pangs of the cross; all this is not too much for an infinite love.
—Fenelon.
He weeps! the falling drop puts out the sun;
He sighs! the sigh earth's deep foundation shakes.
If in His love so terrible, what then
His wrath inflamed?
—Young.
Nothing reveals character more than self-sacrifice. So the highest knowledge we have of God is through the gift of His Son.
We love Him, because He first loved us.
Such was God's original love for man, that He was willing to stoop to any sacrifice to save him; and the gift of a Saviour was the mere expression of that love.
You have nothing to do but simply to receive the everlasting love of God in Christ His Son, which was without you, which began before you, which flows forth independent of you, which is unchecked by all our sins, which triumphs over all our transgressions, and which will make us—loveless, selfish, hardened, sinful men—soft and tender and full of Divine perfection, by the communication of its own self.
Chance and change are busy ever;
Man decays, and ages move;
But His mercy waneth never;
God is wisdom, God is love.
—Bowring.
As the Creator and Preserver of men, Thou art gloriously manifest; but O! how much more gloriously art Thou revealed as reconciling ungrateful enemies to Thyself by the blood of Thy eternal Son. Here Thy beneficence displays its brightest splendor; here Thou dost fully display Thy most magnificent titles; The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness. How unsearchable are Thy ways, and Thy paths past finding out!
If I were to live to the world's end, and do all the good that man can do, I must still cry, "Mercy!" Why then should I be unwilling or afraid to die this moment, with a sense of God's pardoning love, when I can have no other claim to salvation if I were to live forever?
Depth of mercy!—can there be
Mercy still reserved for me?
Can my God His wrath forbear?
Me, the chief of sinners, spare?
God's mercy is a holy mercy, which knows how to pardon sin, not to protect it; it is a sanctuary for the penitent, not for the presumptuous.
And now we beseech of Thee that we may have every day some such sense of God's mercy and of the power of God about us, as we have of the fullness of the light of heaven before us.
The cry of distress lays hold of our Lord's omnipotence.
It is as easy for God to supply thy greatest as thy smallest wants, even as it was within His power to form a system or an atom, to create a blazing sun as to kindle the fire-fly's lamp.
It is impossible for the mind which is not totally destitute of piety, to behold the sublime, the awful, the amazing works of creation and providence—the heavens with their luminaries, the mountains, the ocean, the storm, the earthquake, the volcano, the circuit of the seasons, and the revolutions of empires—without marking in them all the mighty hand of God, and feeling strong emotions of reverence toward the Author of these stupendous works.
The Divine work, because it is such work, is rest—tranquil in its energy, quiet in its intensity; because so mighty, therefore so still.
The same Being that fashioned the insect, whose existence is only discerned by a microscope, and gave that invisible speck a system of ducts and other organs to perform its vital functions, created the enormous mass of the planet thirteen hundred times larger than our earth, and launched it in its course round the sun, and the comet, wheeling with a velocity that would carry it round our globe in less than two minutes of time, and yet revolving through so prodigious a space that it takes near six centuries to encircle the sun!
There is nothing left to us but to see how we may be approved of Him, and how we may roll the weight of our weak souls in well-doing upon Him, who is God omnipotent.
Oh, when His wisdom can mistake,
His might decay, His love forsake,
Then may His children cease to sing,—
"The Lord omnipotent is King!"
—Conder.
God is everywhere present by His power. He rolls the orb of heaven with His hand; He fixes the earth with His foot. He guides all creatures with His eye, and refreshes them with His influence; He makes the powers of hell to shake with His terrors, and binds the devils with His word.
There are regions beyond the most nebulous outskirts of matter; but no regions beyond the Divine goodness. We may conceive of tracts where there are no worlds, but not of any where there is no God of mercy.
He knoweth all; the end
Is clear as the beginning to His eye;
Then wait in peace, secure though storms roll by,
He knoweth all, O friend!
—Sunday School Times.
What must be the knowledge of Him, from whom all created minds have derived both their power of knowledge, and the innumerable objects of their knowledge! What must be the wisdom of Him, from whom all things derive their wisdom!
However dark our lot may be, there is light enough on the other side of the cloud, in that pure empyrean where God dwells, to irradiate every darkness of this world; light enough to clear every difficult question, remove every ground of obscurity, conquer every atheistic suspicion, silence every hard judgment, light enough to satisfy, nay, to ravish the mind forever.
God nothing does nor suffers to be done
But thou wouldst do thyself if thou couldst see
The end of all things here as well as He.
He who cannot see the workings of a Divine wisdom in the order of the heavens, the change of the seasons, the flowing of the tides, the operations of the wind and other elements, the structure of the human body, the circulation of the blood through a variety of vessels wonderfully arranged and conducted, the instinct of beasts, their tempers and dispositions, the growth of plants, and their many effects for meat and medicine; he who cannot see all these and many other things as the evident contrivance of a Divine wisdom is sottishly blind, and unworthy the name of man.
The wisdom of the Lord is infinite as are also His glory and His power. Ye heavens, sing His praises; sun, moon, and planets, glorify Him in your ineffable language! Praise Him, celestial harmonies, and all ye who can comprehend them! And thou, my soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him and in Him that all exist.
—Kepler.
It is certain that this is not only good which the Almighty has done, but that it is best; He hath reckoned all your steps to heaven.
Let us ask ourselves seriously and honestly, "What do I believe after all? What manner of man am I after all? What sort of show would I make after all, if the people around me knew my heart and all my secret thoughts?" What sort of show then do I already make in the sight of Almighty God, who sees every man exactly as he is?
Take comfort, and recollect however little you and I may know, God knows; He knows Himself and you and me and all things; and His mercy is over all His works.
I need Thy presence every passing hour;
What, but Thy grace, can foil the tempter's power?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, oh, abide with me!
The presence of God calms the soul, and gives it quiet and repose.
—Fenelon.
Life should be a constant vision of God's presence. Here is our defense against being led away by the gauds and shows of earth's vulgar attractions.
The never-ceasing boom of the great ocean as it breaks on the beach, drowns all smaller sounds.
Do we vividly feel that He is near us as our everlasting Friend, to guide, cheer, and bless our aspirations and our efforts? And in this confidence do we watch, pray, strive, press forward, and seek resolutely for ourselves and fellow-beings the highest end of existence, even the perfection of our immortal souls?
He who knows what it is to enjoy God will dread His loss; he who has seen His face will fear to see His back.
I know that as night and shadows are good for flowers, and moonlight and dews are better than a continual sun, so is Christ's absence of special use, and that it hath some nourishing virtue in it, and giveth sap to humility, and putteth an edge on hunger, and furnisheth a fair field for faith to put forth itself.
The vision of the Divine presence ever takes the form which our circumstances most require.
As the soul is the life of the body, so God is the life of the soul. As therefore the body perishes when the soul leaves it, so the soul dies when God departs from it.
We may search long to find where God is, but we shall find Him in those who keep the words of Christ. For the Lord Christ saith, "If any man love me, he will keep my words; and we will make our abode with him."
A consistent Christian may not have rapture; he has that which is much better than rapture—calmness—God's serene and perpetual presence.
I believe that into the weakest, saddest heart that opens to receive this Divine Guest, the Father and the Son will come and abide; and the exalted joy that abiding brings, what words can express! The Divine dwelling in the human, the Infinite in the finite, how marvelous! how glorious! This must be the real foretaste of heavenly joy the truest heaven we can know on earth.
—A. H. K..
Nothing with God can be accidental.
History is the revelation of providence.
—Kossuth.
The Providence that watches over the affairs of men works out of their mistakes, at times, a healthier issue than could have been accomplished by their wisest forethought.
There's a divinity that shapes our ends
Rough-hew them how we will.
God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above His own.
The moment we recognize God as supreme in power and infinitely good and loving toward all His intelligent creatures, that moment we admit the doctrine of universal and special providence.
Whoever studies Divine providence, whether it be in relation to the events that concern us, our families, the cities and nations to which we belong; whoever studies the rise and fall of nations and empires, whoever looks at the clashing of armies, will perceive that these are only parts of one grand movement. God is marching on to the accomplishment of an appointed end; namely, the subjugation of the world to Himself.
God! Thy arm was here.
And not to us, but to Thy arm alone,
Ascribe we all.
God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
—Cowper.
I believe not only in "special providences," but in the whole universe as one infinite complexity of "special providences."
My bark is wafted to the strand
By breath Divine;
And on the helm there rests a hand
Other than mine.
O, lonely tomb in Moab's land,
O, dark Bethpeor's hill,
Speak to these curious hearts of ours,
And teach them to be still!
God hath His mysteries of grace—
Ways that we cannot tell;
He hides them deep, like the secret sleep,
Of him He loved so well.
Let us always remember that God has never promised to supply our wishes, but only our wants, and these only as they arise from day to day.
The sentences in the book of providence are sometimes long, and you must read a great way before you understand their meaning.
Sometimes providences, like Hebrew letters, must be read backwards.
God works in a mysterious way in grace as well as in nature, concealing His operations under an imperceptible succession of events, and thus keeps us always in the darkness of faith.
—Fenelon.
In all God's providences, it is good to compare His word and His works together; for we shall find a beautiful harmony between them, and that they mutually illustrate each other.
Be an observer of providence; for God is showing you ever, by the way in which He leads you, whither He means to lead. Study your trials, your talents, the world's wants, and stand ready to serve God now, in whatever He brings to your hand.
We are never less alone than when we are in the society of a single, faithful friend; never less deserted than when we are carried in the arms of the All-Powerful.
—Fenelon.
All spiritual strength for ourselves, all noble ties to one another, have their real source in that inner sanctuary where God denies His lonely audience to none. Its secrets are holy; its asylum, inviolate; its consolations, sure; and all are open to the simple heart-word, "Thou art my hiding-place."
It was a touching answer of a Christian sailor, when asked why he remained so calm in a fearful storm, when the sea seemed ready to devour the ship. He was not sure that he could swim. "But," he said, "though I sink I shall only drop into the hollow of my Father's hand; for He holds all these waters there."
There is many a thing which the world calls disappointment: but there is no such thing in the dictionary of faith. What to others are disappointments are to believers intimations of the will of God.
God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late,
They touch the shining hills of day;
The evil cannot brook delay,
The good can well afford to wait.
Not a sorrow, not a burden, not a temptation, not a bereavement, not a disappointment, not a care, not a groan or tear, but has its antidote in God's rich and inexhaustible resources.
As yonder tower outstretches to the earth
The dark triangle of its shade alone
When the clear day is shining on its top;
So, darkness in the pathway of man's life
Is but the shadow of God's providence,
By the great Sun of wisdom cast thereon;
And what is dark below is light in heaven.
He sendeth sun, He sendeth shower,—
Alike they're needful to the flower;
And joys and tears alike are sent
To give the soul fit nourishment.
As comes to me or cloud or sun,
Father! Thy will, not mine, be done.
God's plans, like lilies pure and white, unfold;
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart—
Time will reveal the calyxes of gold.
And, if through patient toil we reach the land
Where tired feet with sandals loose may rest,
When we shall clearly know, and understand,
I think that we shall say: "God knows the best."
God never makes us sensible of our weakness except to give us of His strength.
—Fenelon.
Even when the shadows of trial are falling around us, let us "pass through the cloud" with the sustaining motive—"All my wish, O God, is to please and glorify Thee!"
God governs in the affairs of men; and if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, neither can a kingdom rise without His aid.
Thou art! directing, guiding all, Thou art!
Direct my understanding then to Thee;
Control my spirit, guide my wandering heart:
Though but an atom midst immensity.
Can we outrun the heavens?
God's will is the very perfection of all reason.
Converting grace puts God on the throne, and the world at His footstool; Christ in the heart, and the world under His feet.
However wickedness outstrips men, it has no wings to fly from God.
Was it possible that Napoleon should win the battle of Waterloo? We answer, No! Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No! Because of God! For Bonaparte to conquer at Waterloo was not the law of the nineteenth century. It was time that this vast man should fall. He had been impeached before the Infinite! He had vexed God! Waterloo was not a battle. It was the change of front of the Universe!
It is a great truth, "God reigns," and therefore grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord; and, therefore, no sinner on earth need ever despair.
The moral government of God is a movement in a line onwards towards some grand consummation, in which the principles, indeed, are ever the same, but the developments are always new,—in which, therefore, no experience of the past can indicate with certainty what new openings of truth, what new manifestations of goodness, what new phases of the moral heaven may appear.
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.
Have faith! where'er thy bark is driven,—
The calm's disport, the tempest's mirth,—
Know this! God rules the host of heaven,
The inhabitants of earth.
—Schiller.
We worship unity in trinity, and trinity in unity; neither confounding the person nor dividing the substance. There is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost; but the Godhead of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.
Tell me how it is that in this room there are three candles and but one light, and I will explain to you the mode of the Divine existence.
Snow is water, and ice is water, and water is water; these three are one.
God hides nothing. His very work from the beginning is revelation,—a casting aside of veil after veil, a showing unto men of truth after truth. On and on from fact Divine He advances, until at length in His Son Jesus He unveils His very face.
Time that weakens all things else has but strengthened the impregnable position of the believer's faith and hope and confidence. And as, year by year, the tree adds another ring to its circumference, every age has added the testimony of its events to this great truth. "The grass withereth, and the flower fadeth, but the word of the Lord shall endure forever."
God's truth is too sacred to be expounded to superficial worldliness in its transient fit of earnestness.
GOODNESS.
Goodness consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are. To be is the great thing.
How many people would like to be good, if only they might be good without taking trouble about it! They do not like goodness well enough to hunger and thirst after it, or to sell all that they have that they may buy it; they will not batter at the gate of the kingdom of heaven; but they look with pleasure on this or that aerial castle of righteousness, and think it would be rather nice to live in it.
Great hearts alone understand how much glory there is in being good.
—Michelet.
Be good my child, and let who will be clever;
Do noble deeds, not dream them all day long;
And so make life, death, and that vast forever
One grand, sweet song.
Be not simply good; be good for something.
—Thoreau.
No good thing is ever lost. Nothing dies, not even life which gives up one form only to resume another. No good action, no good example dies. It lives forever in our race. While the frame moulders and disappears, the deed leaves an indelible stamp, and moulds the very thought and will of future generations.
For ever and ever, my darling, yes—
Goodness and love are undying;
Only the troubles and cares of earth
Are winged from the first for flying.
Our way we plough
In the furrow "now;"
But after the tilling and growing the sheaf;
Soil for the root, but the sun for the leaf—
And God keepeth watch forever.
Nothing that man ever invents will absolve him from the universal necessity of being good as God is good, righteous as God is righteous, and holy as God is holy.
He who believes in goodness has the essence of all faith. He is a man "of cheerful yesterdays and confident to-morrows."
We cannot rekindle the morning beams of childhood; we cannot recall the noontide glory of youth; we cannot bring back the perfect day of maturity; we cannot fix the evening rays of age in the shadowy horizon; but we can cherish that goodness which is the sweetness of childhood, the joy of youth, the strength of maturity, the honor of old age, and the bliss of saints.
GOSPEL.
The gospel is the fulfillment of all hopes, the perfection of all philosophy, the interpretation of all revelation, the key to all the seeming contradictions of the physical and moral world.
It is the grand endeavor of the gospel to communicate God to men.
O, marvelous power of the Divine seed, which overpowers the strong man armed, softens obdurate hearts, and changes into divine men those who were brutalized in sin, and removed to an infinite distance from God.
No one who has not examined patiently and honestly the other religions of the world can know what Christianity really is, or can join with such truth and sincerity in the words of St. Paul, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ."
The main object of the gospel is to establish two principles, the corruption of nature, and the redemption by Jesus Christ.
—Pascal.
Take Christ out of the gospel, and you take its very heart out. He has not only originated a system, but He has put Himself into it, as its very life and soul and power.
The gospel breathes the spirit of love. Love is the fulfilling of its precepts, the pledge of its joys, and the evidence of its power.
Lincoln did but pour the soul of the nation into the monumental act of universal liberty; and that soul was inspired by the gospel.
The sweetness of the gospel lies mostly in pronouns, as me, my, thy. "Who loved me, and gave Himself for me." "Christ Jesus my Lord." "Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee."
Just as in the Father's house there are many mansions, so to suit the various moods and divers cases of anxious souls, there are many chambers and compartments in the gospel citadel; but the very lowest and simplest, if you can only reach it, is Salvation. The nearest to the level, but still cleft in the Rock, is called "The Faithful Saying;" and above its doorway you read, "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners."
The idea of preaching the gospel to all nations alike, regardless of nationality, of internal divisions as to rank and color, complexion and religion, constituted the beginning of a new era in history. You cannot preach the gospel in its purity over the world, without proclaiming the doctrine of civil and religious liberty,—without overthrowing the barriers reared between nations and clans and classes of men,—without ultimately undermining the thrones of despots, and breaking off the shackles of slavery,—without making men everywhere free.
I thank God that the gospel is to be preached to every creature. There is no man so far gone, but the grace of God can reach him; no man so desperate or black, but He can forgive him.
The vengeance of the gospel is heavier than the vengeance of the law.
Assertion of truths known and felt, promulgation of truth from the high platform of truth itself, declaration of faith by the mouth of moral conviction—this is the New Testament method, and the true one.
GRATITUDE.
Gratitude is the memory of the heart.
We can set our deeds to the music of a grateful heart, and seek to round our lives into a hymn—the melody of which will be recognized by all who come in contact with us, and the power of which shall not be evanescent, like the voice of the singer, but perenninal, like the music of the spheres.
Thankfulness is the tune of angels.
Did you ever think of the reason why the Psalms of David have come, like winged angels, down across all the realms and ages,—why they make the key-note of grateful piety in every Christian's soul, wherever he lives? Why? Because they are so full of gratitude. "Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His goodness and for His wonderful works to the children of men!"
Do not let the empty cup be your first teacher of the blessings you had when it was full. Do not let a hard place here and there in the bed destroy your rest. Seek, as a plain duty, to cultivate a buoyant, joyous sense of the crowded kindnesses of God in your daily life.
GRAVE.
The grave is a very small hillock, but we can see farther from it, when standing on it, than from the highest mountain in all the world.
Dark lattice! letting in eternal day!
—Young.
For ages the world has been waiting and watching; millions, with broken hearts, have hovered around the yawning abyss; but no echo has come back from the engulfing gloom—silence, oblivion, covers all. If indeed they survive; if they went away whole and victorious, they give us no signals. We wait for years, but no messages come from the far-away shore to which they have gone.
The earth doth not cover our beloved, but heaven hath received him; let us tarry for a while, and we shall be in his company.
It is sweet to hold converse with the pious dead. A holy influence emanates from their blissful home, and fills the soul with a feeling of sacred and solemn awe. The spirit whispers peace, and fills the waiting caverns of the soul with the bright hope of again meeting those whom we believe to be in the abode of redeemed and happy spirits.
Is there ever a time when the sense of desolation caused by death rolls over one so like a flood as when returning from the grave to a lonely home?
There is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song. There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living. O, the grave! the grave! It buries every error, covers every defect, extinguishes every resentment. From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.
The grave has a door on its inner side.
GREATNESS.
The greatest man is he who chooses the right with the most invincible resolution; who resists the sorest temptation from within and without; who bears the heavest burdens cheerfully; who is calmest in storms, and most fearless under menaces and frowns; whose reliance on truth, on virtue, and on God is most unfaltering.
—Seneca.
Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the using of strength.
True greatness does not consist so much in doing extraordinary things, as in conducting ordinary affairs with a noble demeanor and from a right motive. It is necessary and most profitable to remember the advice to Titus, "Showing all good fidelity in all things."
A solemn and religious regard to spiritual and eternal things is an indispensable element of all true greatness.
He who does the most good is the greatest man. Power, authority, dignity; honors, wealth, and station,—these are so far valuable as they put it into the hands of men to be more exemplary and more useful than they could be in an obscure and private life. But then these are means conducting to an end, and that end is goodness.
A great man, I take it, is a man so inspired and permeated with the ideas of God and the Christly spirit as to be too magnanimous for vengeance, and too unselfish to seek his own ends.
He is truly great that is great in charity. He is truly great that is little in himself, and maketh no account of any height of honor. And he is truly learned that doeth the will of God, and forsaketh his own will.
It is, in a great measure, by raising up and endowing great minds that God secures the advance of human affairs, and the accomplishment of His own plans on earth.
There is but one method, and that is hard labor.
GROWTH IN GRACE.
The highest point of Christian experience is to press forward. It is a distinguishing trait in the character of every good man that he grows in grace. Grace in the heart as certainly improves and advances, as a tree thrives in a kindly and well watered soil.
It is not my strength that grows, so much as God's strength in me, which is given more abundantly as the days roll. It is so given on one condition. If my faith has laid hold of the infinite, the exhaustless, the immortal energy of God, unless there is something fearfully wrong about me, I shall be getting purer, nobler, wiser, more observant of His will; gentler, like Christ; every way fitter for His service, and for larger service, as the days increase.
Grow as a palm-tree on God's Mount Zion; howbeit shaken with winds, yet the root is fast.
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.
In proportion as we "grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ," we shall grow in the desire that the Redeemer's sovereignty may be more widely and visibly extended.
There is no such way to attain to greater measures of grace, as for a man to live up to that little grace he has.
It is the very nature of grace to make a man strive to be most eminent in that particular grace which is most opposed to his bosom sin.
All growth that is not towards God is growing to decay.
If you have nothing of the spirit of prayer, nothing of the love of the brotherhood, nothing of mortifying the spirit of the world, nothing of growth in grace, of cordial, habitual, persevering obedience to the Divine commands, how can it be that you have been brought nigh by the blood of Christ?
May we grow more and more like God and heaven, more gracious, helpful, and sweet-minded; and when at last Thou hast served Thyself by us, may we fall asleep in Jesus, and find it no sleep, but everlasting waking in Jesus.