Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd Quotes

Don't turn your back upon your doctrinal doubts and difficulties. Go up to them and examine them. Perhaps the ghastly object which looks to you in the twilight like a sheeted ghost may prove to be no more than a table-cloth hanging upon a hedge.

There are little single things which men say and do, which give us a thorough insight into their character; and which enable us to construct a complete theory of what their nature is. And a thoughtful observer forms his estimate of those around him, often from remarking very little things: not so much by observing what men and women do when they are put on the alert, and think people are watching them, as observing their little sayings and doings when they are quite at their ease.

What is meant by believing in Christ but just going with trusting and loving hearts, and committing to His love and power ourselves, our souls, and all that concerns us for time and eternity?

Apart from the positive woes of perdition, an eternity of wretchedness grows from the want of love to Christ as naturally as the oak grows from the acorn, or the harvest from the scattered grain. It is not that love to Christ merits heaven; it does far better, it makes heaven. It is, as it were, the organ of sensation that takes note of heaven's blessedness.

... St. Paul was right. It is just here as it is in fifty other things; there is the use of a thing and its abuse. The love of anything may be the root of much evil. The love of orthodoxy, of sound doctrine, what can be better than that? And yet I have known it lead to misrepresentation, lying, slandering, malice, and all uncharitableness.

To trust God, as seen in the face of His Son, and to believe that He loves us, that is faith, that is what we must do to be saved. And to love God, as seen in the face of His Son, and to seek to testify our love by our whole life, — that is Christian duty; that is all we have to do.

... It is very natural, if we find a man grossly deficient in something about which we are able to judge, — and perhaps in the thing about which we able best to judge, — to conclude the he must be all bad. In the judgment of many, it is quite enough to condemn a man, to show the he is a low fellow, with an extremely vulgar accent. We forget how much good may go with these evil things; good more than enough to outweigh all these and more.

There is something touching, and something striking, in the thought, How naturally human beings, in times of deep feeling and of great extremity, whether of evil or good, are impelled by something within them to turn to God: — to use some words of prayers. In imminent danger, when all human help is vain, we involuntarily feel that prayer is the only thing. In crushing sorrow, when some stroke has fallen that seems too heavy to bear, what can man do but fall upon his knees and pray?

We have been here a little more than a week, all of us together. For if you be a man of more than five-and-thirty years, and if you have a wife and children, you have doubtless have found out that the true way to enjoy your autumn holidays, and to be better for them, is not to go away by yourself to distant regions where you may climb snowy Alps and traverse glaciers, in the selfish enjoyment of new scenes and faces. These things must be left to younger men, who have not yet formed their home-ties, and who know neither the happiness nor the anxieties of human beings, who spread a large surface of any part of which fortune may hit hard and deep. Let us find a quiet place where parents and children may enjoy the time of rest in company ...

... If God's intention be manifest anywhere in this world, it is in the Family and the Home. There are exceptive men and women who seem specially made for a lonely life: but, with most, surely the authoritative words hold true, 'It is not good that the man should be alone.' I say nothing of the happiness which the Creator has appointed should be in the union of hearts and lives: doubtless it is pure and deep.