Alexander MacLaren Quotations | Page 2

He who has the Holy Spirit in His heart and the Scripture in his hands has all he needs.

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

Be sure that your soul is never so intensely alive as when in the deepest abnegation it waits hushed before God .

Fruitful and acceptable worship begins before it begins.

The manliness of Christian love, and the putting away from ourselves of all fear, because we are " perfected in love," is one of the highest lessons that the gospel teaches us, and one of the greatest things which the gospel gives us.

True peace comes not from the absence of trouble, but from the presence of God and will be deep and passing all understanding in the exact measure in which we live in and partake of the love of God.

We believe that the history of the world is but the history of His influence and that the center of the whole universe is the cross of Calvary.

The gospel is not speculation but fact. It is truth, because it is the record of a person who is the Truth.

Why should we live halfway up the hill and swathed in the mists, when we might have an unclouded sky and a radiant sun over our heads if we would climb higher and walk in the light of His face?

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.

Ah, my brother, it is a far harder thing, and it is afar higher proof of a thorough-going, persistent, Christian principle woven into the very texture of my soul, to go on plodding and patient, never taken by surprise by any small temptation, than to gather into myself the strength which God has given me, and, expecting some great storm to come down upon me, to stand fast, and let it rage. It is a great deal easier to die once for Christ than to live always for Him.

If God sends us on stony paths, He will provide us with strong shoes.

It is not my strength that grows, so much as God's strength in me, which is given more abundantly as the days roll. It is so given on one condition. If my faith has laid hold of the infinite, the exhaustless, the immortal energy of God, unless there is something fearfully wrong about me, I shall be getting purer, nobler, wiser, more observant of His will; gentler, like Christ; every way fitter for His service, and for larger service, as the days increase.

The prayer that begins with trustfulness, and passes on into waiting, will always end in thankfulness, triumph, and praise.

There is one thing that makes life mighty in its veriest trifles, worthy in its smallest deeds, that delivers it from monotony, that delivers it from insignificance. All will be great, nothing will be overpowering, when, living in communion with Jesus Christ, we say as He says, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me.

Only he who can say, "The Lord is the strength of my life" can say, "Of whom shall I be afraid?"

Peace comes not from the absence of trouble, but from the presence of God.

No man loveth God except the man who has first learned that God loves him.

The world takes its notions of God from the people who say that they belong to God's family. They read us a great deal more than they read the Bible. They see us; they only hear about Jesus Christ.

Transiency is stamped on all our possessions, occupations, and delights. We have the hunger for eternity in our souls, the thought of eternity in our hearts, the destination for eternity written on our inmost being, and the need to ally ourselves with eternity proclaimed by the most short-lived trifles of time. Either these things will be the blessing or the curse of our lives. Which do yon mean that they shall be for you?

Being in Christ, it is safe to forget the past; it is possible to be sure of the future; it is possible to be diligent in the present.

'The grace of God,'' says Luther, ''is like a flying summer shower.'' It has fallen upon more than one land, and passed on. Judea had it, and lies barren and dry. These Asiatic coasts had it, and flung it away.

''The grace of God,'' says Luther, ''is like a flying summer shower.'' It has fallen upon more than one land, and passed on. Judea had it, and lies barren and dry. These Asiatic coasts had it, and flung it away.

In heaven after ''ages of ages'' of growing glory, we shall have to say, as each new wave of the shoreless, sunlit sea bears us onward, ''It doth not yet appear what we shall be.''

All that this world knows of living lies in giving -- and more giving; He that keeps, be sure he loses -Friendship grows by what it uses.