Alexander Maclaren Quotes

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.

It was a deep true thought which the old painters had, when they drew John as likest to his Lord. Love makes us like.

If we truly feel that the Lord liveth, before whom we stand, we shall want nothing else for our work but His smile; and we shall feel that the light of His face is all we need. That thought should deaden our love for outward things. How the things that we fever our souls by pursuing, and fret our hearts when we lose, will cease to attract! How small and vulgar the " prizes " of life, as people call them, will appear!

Conflict, not progress, is the word that defines man's path from darkness into light. No holiness is won by any other means than this, that wickedness should be slain day by day, and hour by hour.

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.

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 wrought out His perfect obedience as a man, through temptation, and by suffering.

"Work out your own salvation." Work, as well as believe; and in the daily practice of faithful obedience, in the daily subjugation of your own spirits to His Divine power, in the daily crucifixion of your flesh with its affections and lusts, in the daily straining after loftier heights of godliness and purer atmospheres of devotion and love, — make more thoroughly your own what you possess. Work into the substance of your souls that which you hare. "Apprehend that for which you are apprehended of Christ;" and remember that not a past act of faith, but a present and continuous life of loving, faithful work in Christ, which is His and yet yours, is the holding fast the beginning of your confidence firm unto the end.

Nothing but Christian faith gives to the furthest future the solidity and definiteness which it must have if it is to be a breakwater for us against the fluctuating sea of present cares and thoughts.

As we look upon that agony and those tearful prayers, let us not only look with thankfulness; but lot that kneeling Saviour teach us that in prayer alone can we be forearmed against our lesser sorrows; that strength to bear flows into the heart that is opened in supplication; and that a sorrow which we are made able to endure is more truly cohijuered than a sorrow which we avoid.

The cross is the centre of the world's history; the incarnation of Christ and the crucifixion of our Lord are the pivot round which all the events of the ages revolve. The testimony of Christ was the spirit of prophecy, and the growing power of Jesus is the spirit of history.

I come to Thee, O Christ. Faint and perishing, defenceless and needy, with many a sin and many a fear, to Thee I turn, for Thou hast died for me, and for me Thou dost live. Be Thou my shelter and strong tower. Give me to drink of living water. Let me rest in Thee while in this weary land; and let Thy sweet love, my Brother and my Lord, be mine all on earth and the heaven of my heaven.

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.

If our faith in God is not the veriest sham, it demands, and will produce, the abandonment sometimes, the subordination always, of external helps and material good.

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.