C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
T. L. Cuyler
A large portion of Christ’s miracles of love were wrought at the urgent request of parents for their suffering children. Is that ear gone deaf to-day? Will He not do for our children’s souls what He did for the bodies of the ruler’s daughter, and the dead youth at Nain?
Any church which forsakes the regular and uniform for the periodical and spasmodic service of God, is doomed to decay; any church which relies for its spiritual strength and growth entirely upon seasons of “revival,” will very soon have no genuine revivals to rely on. Our holy God will not conform His blessings to man’s moods and moral caprice. If a church is declining, it may require a “revival” to restore it; but what need was there of its declining?
As a child walking over a slippery and dangerous path cries out, “Father, I am falling!” and has but a moment to catch his father’s hand, so every believer sees hours when only the hand of Jesus comes between him and the abysses of destruction.
As long as we work on God’s line, He will aid us. When we attempt to work on our own lines, He rebukes us with failure.
Blessed be the discipline which makes me reach out my soul’s roots into closer union with Jesus! Blessed be the dews of the Spirit which keep my leaf ever green! Blessed be the trials which shake down the ripe, golden fruits from the branches.
Conversion by the Holy Spirit is a spiritual illumination of the soul. God’s grace lights up the dark heart. And when a man has once been kindled at the cross of Christ, he is bound to shine.
Conversion is the act of joining our hands to the pierced hand of the crucified Saviour. The new life begins with the taking of Christ’s hand, and His taking hold, in infinite love, of our weak hands.
Every man or woman who turns to Christ must bear in mind that they are breaking with their old master, and enlisting under a new leader. Conversion is a revolutionary process.
Faith is trusting Jesus to lead us and going where He leads. What avails it to me to analyze Saratoga water, and to believe in its virtues? I must drink the water if I want its purifying power. And the soul that has not actually drunk of Christ can never be purged from sin.
Faith that trusts on Jesus alone for salvation, and not on your respectable life, and the obedience that follows Him, are the indispensable steps to salvation. You admit that you have not taken these decisive steps. Then, however near you are, you are not in Christ.
“Follow me!” The publican “rose up.” This implies immediate action. It was now or never with him. So you must act with prompt obedience. He did the first thing Jesus bade him do. Are you willing to do as much? If not, you are deciding against Christ, and that means death.
For a few brief days the orchards are white with blossoms. They soon turn to fruit, or else float away, useless and wasted, upon the idle breeze. So will it be with present feelings. They must be deepened into decision, or be entirely dissipated by delay.
God does not give us ready money. He issues promissory notes, and then pays them when faith presents them at the throne. Each one of us has a check-book.
God sometimes washes the eyes of His children with tears in order that they may read aright His providence and His commandments.
I have heard of a monk who in his cell had a glorious vision of Jesus revealed to him. Just then a bell rang, which called him away to distribute loaves of bread among the poor beggars at the gate. He was sorely tried as to whether he should lose a scene so inspiring. He went to his act of mercy; and when he came back the vision remained more glorious than ever.
I never yet have heard of a good man having fallen when he was trying to do Christ’s will and trusting on Christ’s help. Every fall without one exception came from venturing upon sinful ground or from venturing upon self-support.
In our father’s house it will not be the pearl gate or the streets of gold that will make us happy. But oh, how transcendently glad shall we be when we see our Lord. Perhaps in that “upper room,” also. He may show us His hands and His side, and we may cry out with happy Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”
It is the easiest thing in the world for us to obey God when He commands us to do what we like, and to trust Him when the path is all sunshine. The real victory of faith is to trust God in the dark, and through the dark. Let us be assured of this, that if the lesson and the rod are of His appointing, and that His all-wise love has engineered the deep tunnel of trial on the heavenward road, He will never desert us during the discipline. The vital thing for us is not to deny and desert Him.
It will require more than a few hours of fasting and prayer to cast out such demons as selfishness, worldliness, and unbelief. Repentance, to be of any avail, must work a change of heart and of conduct.
Know what your sin is and confess it; but do not imagine that you have approved yourself a penitent by confessing sin in the abstract.
Let him who would move and convince others, be first moved and convinced himself.
Never despair of a child. The one you weep the most for at the mercy-seat may fill your heart with the sweetest joys.
No boy is well prepared for rough climbing, unless he is well shod with Christian principles.
Oh, be assured fellow teachers, that there is no time in life so favorable to sound conversion as early childhood.
Oh, my soul! why art thou so often disquieted within thee? How is it that thou hast so little faith? Wilt thou never learn that Jesus has even the least of His little boats always under His watchful eye, and all the winds and the waves obey Him?
Precious Saviour! come in spirit, and lay Thy strong, gentle grasp of love on our dear boys and girls, and keep these our lambs from the fangs of the wolf.
Seek for a fresh invoice of grace. Unbelief can scoff or growl; faith is the nightingale that sings in the darkest hour. Faith can draw honey out of the rock and oil out of the flint. With Christ in possession and heaven in reversion, it marches to the time of the One-hundred-and-third Psalm over the roughest road, and against the most cutting blast.
Tears never yet saved a soul. Hell is full of weepers weeping over lost opportunities, perhaps over the rejection of an offered Saviour. Your Bible does not say, “Weep, and be saved.” It says, “Believe, and be saved.” Faith is better than feeling.
The Master will not keep His hand under our arms when we go on forbidden ground. Presumptuous Peter needed a sharp lesson, and he got it. That bitter cry at the foot of the stairs bespoke an awful fall. How many such are rising daily into God’s listening ears.
The most heaven-like spots I have ever visited have been certain rooms in which Christ’s desciples were awaiting the summons of death. So far from being a “house of mourning,” I have often found such a house to be a vestibule of glory.
The Princess Elizabeth, of England, was found dead with her head resting on her Bible, open at these words, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” So may we all fall asleep at last when the day’s work for Jesus is over, and wake up in heaven to find ourselves in the delicious rest that remaineth for the people of God.
When a miner looks at the rope that is to lower him into the deep mine, he may coolly say, “I have faith in that rope as well made and strong.” But when he lays hold of it, and swings down by it into the tremendous chasm, then he is believing on the rope. Then he is trusting himself to the rope. It is not a mere opinion—it is an act. The miner lets go of every thing else, and bears his whole weight on those well braided strands of hemp. Now that is faith.
When we read or hear how some professed Christian has turned defaulter, or lapsed into drunkenness, or slipped from the communion table into open disgrace, it simply means that a human arm has broken. The man has forsaken the everlasting arms.
You never will be saved by works; but let us tell you most solemnly that you never will be saved without works.