Elizabeth Prentiss

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

"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.

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!