If Christ Were Here Now Christ and the Cross Our Savior’s Earthly Home Christ of the People. Christ the Ruler of the Church A Church Without Zeal The Safety of the Church Church Unity.
PEARLS FROM MANY SEAS
INTRODUCTION
We want to keep back part of the price; and we continually talk of taking up our cross, as if the only harm in a cross was the weight of it — as if it was only a thing to be carried, instead of to be crucified upon. This world is given as a prize for the men in earnest; and that which is true of this world is truer still of the world to come.
AFFABILITY
When you want to ask your way in the street, you instinctively shun the stuck-up gentleman of importance; and you most readily put the question to the man with the smiling face and the open countenance. Commend me to the man who can avail himself of any conversation and any topic, to drive home saving truth upon the conscience and heart.
AFFLICTION
AMERICA
It may be not unreasonably said that the preservation of the States and the maintenance of their governments are as much within the design and care of the Constitution as the preservation of the Union or the maintenance of the National Government.
ANGER
But see, just bursting forth from bud to flower, A late, slow growth — the fairer Rose of Art. A Catholic priest who has spent thirty years in the temperance cause has said: “The saloon is the.
ASSURANCE
BELIEVING
If a person were to make a statement of something that happened this day I should not tell him that I would try to believe him. Now, when God declares there is salvation in Christ Jesus I must either believe Him at once or make Him.
BENEVOLENCE
The eye can not say to the foot: “I have no need of thee, and will not guide thee.” For if it does not perform its watchful office, the whole man will be in the ditch, and the eye will be covered with mire. If the members refuse to contribute to the general stock, the whole body will become poverty-stricken, and be given up to the bankruptcy of death.
THE BIBLE
And the reason why we have so little success in our teaching is because we know so little of the Word of God. All are wonderfully akin to our age, which sings the one hymn of the whole race,.
BOOKS
The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration and the poet’s dream”. Without stirring from our firesides, we may roam the remotest regions of the earth, or soar into realms where Spencer’s shapes of unearthly beauty flock to meet us, where Milton’s angels peal in our ears the choral hymns of Paradise.
BROTHERHOOD
H. C OBB , The Reign of Brotherhood
While piety imagined God as the Father of a few and the Judge of the rest, humanity was belittled and Pharisaism reigned; slavery was defended from the Bible, and missions were counted an impertinence. No class will regard itself as favored; no class will feel itself rejected, for all men everywhere will be embraced in the mission of Jesus and the love of the Father.
CHARACTER
The sculptor lay on his bed, with the statue before him in the center of the fireless room. Now, let us beware of distortion in the arrangement of the religious truths which we hold.
CHEERFULNESS
Let the light which puts gold on the gentian and spots the pansy pour into your dwellings. Do not cover up your walls with such pictures as West’s “Death on a Pale Horse,” or Tintoretto’s “Massacre of the Innocents.” Rather cover them, if you have pictures, with “The Hawking Party,” and “The Mill by the Mountain Stream,” and “The Fox Hunt,” and “The Children Amid the Flowers,” and.
CHILDREN
H. S PURGEON
The throngs in the street look upward, And every one, grave and gay, Has a nod and smile for the baby. The brightest flowers in all the earth are those which grow in the garden of a Christian household, clambering over the porch of a Christian Home.
CHRIST
L OTON
God in our nature — that is, Christ — the root of the new sap or eternal life in man, without which no man could have been righteous, and by the presence of which in our nature every man may be righteous. There is more of power to sanctify, elevate, strengthen and cheer in the word Jesus (Jehovah-Savior) than in all the utterances of man since the.
CHRISTMAS
In the story of the feeding of the multitude, there was more food after the feast than there was in its beginning; for the feast began with what one boy had in a basket, but it took twelve boys and twelve baskets to carry away the fragments left on the tables and the grass. The story illustrates well the multiplication of beauty when a great religion and a great philosophy repose beneath it, for what was one basketful when the hungry ones began to eat becomes afterward more basketfuls than many hands can carry away from the blessed field.
CHRISTIANITY
This religion is Spring — Spring in the spiritual world — with the irresistible charm of the quickening wind and the bursting bud. The Bible is found in the languages of three-fourths of the people of the globe.
THE CHURCH
We sadly need in the Church men to tell us what to do, and who go and do it. Another said the Presbyterians were, on the whole, cast in the best mold; and a third thought the English Church was made of the truest wax.
THE CITY
Six men are to be hanged on the morrow; their gallows must even now be a-building. The predominant political influence of the whisky ring in great and corrupt cities is incompatible with the success of American institutions, or with safety to life and property under universal suffrage in mismanaged municipalities.
COMMON THINGS
Then comes relief through some dear common thing — The voices of the children at their play,. Or, though their names appear not on the scroll Of martyrologists, laid down their life — Not less a martyrdom in Jesus’ eyes.
CONSCIENCE
But once it film over and remain so, it thickens over the surface, and it thickens still. At last it is so solid that a wagon might be drawn over the frozen water.
CONSECRATION
CONTENTMENT
Then you will grow strong and brave in the midst of seeming desolation, and you will be able to say with the apostle — a man who had to be looked after, or he might have perished for lack of earthly supplies — “I have all and abound; and I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith.
COURAGE
S TORY . Courage in Adversity
But it is not so, for in the long run the skill of the player predominates over the casualties of the game. He has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill.
THE CROSS
And we may behold them all, and even wear upon our breasts the Cross in gold or pearl; but not until we clasp hands in brotherhood of sorrow have we seen the real sign of the cross — not until we feel the pain, the joy, of loving sacrifice — do we know the deepest meaning of the Cross of Christ. Oh, that I might engrave on your souls ineffaceably the three crosses, and that if in your waking moments you will not heed, then that in your dream tonight you might see on the hill back of Jerusalem the three spectacles — the right-hand cross, showing unbelief and dying without Christ; the left-hand cross, showing what it is to be pardoned; while the central cross pours upon your soul the sunburst of Heaven as it says: “By all these wounds I plead for thy heart.
DEATH
M. C ONOVER
I am coming to that stage of my pilgrimage that is within sight of the River of Death, and I feel that now I must have all in readiness day and night for the messenger of the King. I have sometimes in my sleep strange perceptions of a vivid spiritual life near to and with Christ and multitudes of holy ones, and the joy of it is like no other joy; it can not be told in the language of the world.
L OTON . Dying Thoughts
Out yonder in the moonlight, wherein God’s Acre lies, Go angels walking to and fro, singing their lullabies. So through all time, whose flight the shepherd’s vigils glorify, God’s Acre slumbereth in the peace of that sweet lullaby.
DOUBT
Entreat him not to postpone life and his life’s usefulness until he has settled the problems of the universe. We ought to be deaf to its noise, and deaf to the roaring of the wave.
DUTY
When any duty is to be done, it is fortunate for you if you feel like doing it; but, if you do not feel like it, that is no reason for not doing it. The doing of things from duty is but a stage on the road to the kingdom of.
EARNESTNESS
Why, then, judge by a different law the great awakenings of men to the relations of eternity. It is a principle of war that when you can use the thunderbolt you must prefer it to the cannon.
EDUCATION
Therefore, if any young man has embarked his life in the pursuit of knowledge, let him go on without doubting or fearing the event. Let him not be intimidated by the cheerless beginnings of knowledge, by the darkness from which she springs, by the difficulties which hover around her, by the wretched habitations in which she dwells, by the want and sorrow which sometimes journey in her train; but let him ever follow her as the Angel that guards him, and as the Genius of his life.
ENGLAND
He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice.
EXTRAVAGANCE
Why, ten or twenty families could be reared in comparative comfort upon the amount thus expended in wastefulness; and as matters go with the agricultural laborers in many of the shires, forty of the families owned by Hodge and his companions, including all the father Hodges and their wives, could be decently provided for upon ten thousand a year. Yet many women professing godliness are shockingly extravagant, and can never be happy till their heads are tricked out with strange gear and their bodies with fashionable millinery.
FAITH
It is so believing God and so believing in Christ that we trust ourselves and our eternal destinies in the hands of a reconciled God. I believe there is no man in the world so constituted but he can believe in God’s word.
FAME
FAMILY
Each household, by following its own convictions and holding itself responsible to God, will, I think, be respected by the American people.
FAREWELL
Will it be the butterfly existence of pleasure, the mere life of science, a life of uninterrupted sin and selfish gratification. Or will it be: “Father, I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do?”.
FASHION
After a high class funeral, with silver handles at the sides of the coffin of extraordinary brightness, it will be found that the undertaker is cheated out of his legitimate expenses. It will decide the color of the dress; and the population of that country, by a beautiful law, will wear white.
FATE
If you are altogether undone by reason of your sin, you are the very person aimed at in the plan of salvation. But the most generous person can not forgive the debts of those who do not owe him anything.
FREEDOM
To Him who placed me there — Well pleased a prisoner to be, Because, my God, it pleases Thee.
FRIENDSHIP
He who can turn away from Christ is not a fit companion for any honest man. Perhaps the fellow is just now very fond of you; but beware of him, for he who barks at others today without a cause will one day howl at you for nothing.
GAMBLING
Benefit received does not imply effort put forth, and the happiness of the winner involves the misery of the loser. The victim was commanded to go up and embrace the virgin, and as he placed his lips against the cold lips of the marble a spring was touched, an internal machine was set in motion and the arms of the virgin, filled with sharp daggers, arose and encircled the poor sufferer, and, cutting into his flesh, mangled him in a most horrible manner and destroyed his life.
GENTLENESS
GIVING
You are not to look at me, and I am not to look at you; but each alone, each man and woman, is to look upward before God. How happy I would be if I could give unreservedly my two mites to God, according to His right in them and claim upon them, and not according to mine.
GLORY
Do not thunders extol Him when they roll like drums in the march of the God of armies. But every drop of that water in the pail is like the water of the ocean;.
