Henry Ward Beecher Christian Quotations

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere.

A Christian is nothing but a sinful man who has put himself to school for Christ for the honest purpose of becoming better.

The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.

The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.

Death is the Christian's vacation morning. School is out. It is time to go home.

We never know how much one loves till we know how much he is willing to endure and suffer for us; and it is the suffering element that measures love. The characters that are great must, of necessity, be characters that shall be willing, patient and strong to endure for others. To hold our nature in the willing service of another is the divine idea of manhood, of the human character.

To be a Christian is to obey Christ no matter how you feel.

What could make me love my fellow Christian better than to see that God loves us all as we were all one soul?

Christians should be like a flower store: the odor of sanctity should betray them wherever they are.

If Christ is not divine, every impulse of the Christian world falls to a lower octave, and light and love and hope decline.

A coat that is not used, the moths eat; and a Christian who is hung up so that he shall not be tempted-the moths eat him; and they have poor food at that.

The test of Christian character should be that a man is a joy-bearing agent to the world.

Ordinarily rivers run small at the beginning, grow broader and broader as they proceed, and become widest and deepest at the point, where they enter the sea. It is such rivers that the Christian's life is like. But the life of the mere worldly man is like those rivers in Southern Africa, which, proceeding from mountain freshets, are broad and deep at the beginning, and grow narrower and more shallow as they advance. They waster themselves by soaking into the sands, and at last they die out entirely. The farther they run the less there is of them.

There ought to be such an atmosphere in every Christian church that a man going there and sitting two hours should take the contagion of heaven, and carry home a fire to kindle the altar whence he came.

I have known men who thought the object of conversion was to cleanse them as a garment is cleansed, and that when they are converted they were to be hung up in the Lord's wardrobe, the door of which was to be shut, so that no dust could get at them. A coat that is not used the moths eat; and a Christian who is hung up so that he shall not be tempted, the moths eat him; and they have poor food at that.

As flowers always wear their own colors and give forth their own fragrance every day alike, so should Christians maintain their character at all times and under all circumstances.

I will not say it is not Christian to make beads of others faults, and tell them over every day; I say it is infernal. If you want to know how the Devil feels, you do know, if you are such an one.

We pray for those who have ceased to pray. We pray for those that need prayer more than ever, that have fewer and fewer seasons even of thought, that grow hard with years, that are less and less troubled by sin, and that are more and more irreverent of religion. We pray for the children of Christian parents who sometimes weep at the memory of father and mother, but who never have thought of God.

Men judge of Christians by taking as fair samples those that lie rotten on the ground.

Like the cellar-growing vine is the Christian who lives in the darkness and bondage of fear. But let him go forth, with the liberty of God, into the light of love, and he will be like the plant in the field, healthy, robust, and joyful.

Religion is the fruit of the Spirit, a Christian character, a true life.

A week filled up with selfishness, and the Sabbath stuffed full of religious exercises, will make a good Pharisee, but a poor Christian. There are many persons who think Sunday is a sponge with which to wipe out the sins of the week. Now, God's altar stands from Sunday to Sunday, and the seventh day is no more for religion than any other. It is for rest. The whole seven are for religion, and one of them for rest.

It is a higher exhibition of Christian manliness to be able to bear trouble than to get rid of it.