Elizabeth Prentiss Quotes

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.

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.

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.

Ah, what a life is theirs who live in Christ;
How vast the mystery!
Reaching in height to heaven, and in its depth
The unfathomed sea!

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

Some of His children must go into the furnace to testify that the Son of God is there with them.

I thought that prattling boys and girls
Would fill this empty room;
That my rich heart would gather flowers
From childhood's opening bloom.<p>One child and two green graves are mine,
This is God's gift to me;
A bleeding, fainting, broken heart—
This is my gift to Thee.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Not till I was shut up to prayer and to the study of God's word by the loss of earthly joys — sickness destroying the flavor of them all — did I begin to penetrate the mystery that is learned under the cross. And wondrous as it is, how simple is this mystery! To love Christ, and to know that I love Him — this is all.

"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!