Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Philip Henry

English Non-Conformist Divine and Diarist

"Holiness is the symmetry of the soul."

"Sorrow is sin’s echo, and as the echo answers the voice best where there are broken walls and ruined buildings to return it, so is sorrow when reverberated by a broken ruined heart."

"The person who thinks there can be any real conflict between science and religion must be either very young in science or very ignorant in religion."

"All grace grows as Love to the Word of God grows."

"Prayers not felt by us are seldom heard by God."

"Admit for a moment, as a hypothesis, that the Creator had before his mind a projection of the whole life-history of the globe, commencing with any point which the geologist may imagine to have been a fit commencing point, and ending with some unimaginable acme in the indefinitely distant future. He determines to call this idea into actual existence, not at the supposed commencing point, but at some stage or other of its course. It is clear, then, that at the selected stage it appears, exactly as it would have appeared at that moment of its history, if all the preceding eras of its history had been real. "

"I assume that each organism which the Creator educed was stamped with an indelible specific character, which made it what it was, and distinguished it from everything else, however near or like. I assume that such character has been, and is, indelible and immutable; that the characters which distinguish species now, were as definite at the first instant of their creation as now and are as distinct now as they were then. If any choose to maintain... that species were gradually bought to their present maturity from humbler forms... he is welcome to his hypothesis, but I have nothing to do with it. "

"All this, and Heaven too!"

"Holiness in us, is the copy or transcript of the holiness that is in Christ,- As the wax hath line for line from the seal, and the child feature for feature from the father, so is holiness in us from him."

"If the end of one mercy were not the beginning of another, we were undone."

"My purposes lie in the churchyard."

"Our journey is up-hill, with a dead body upon our backs, the devil doing what he can to pull us down."

"Remember the wheel of Providence in always in motion; and the spoke that is uppermost will be under; and therefore mix trembling always with your joy."

"Sins are like circles in the water when a stone is thrown into it; one produces another. When anger was in Cain's heart, murder was not far off."

"The happiness of heaven is the constant keeping of the Sabbath. Heaven is called a Sabbath, to make those who have Sabbaths long for heaven, and those who long for heaven love Sabbaths."

"It is easier to go six miles to hear a sermon, than to spend one quarter of an hour in meditating on it when I come home."

"It is not the actual differences of Christian men, that do the mischief, but the mismanagement of those differences."

"Many good purposes and intentions lie in the churchyard."

"The wheel is always in motion, and the spoke which is uppermost will soon be under; therefore mix trembling with all your joy."

"They are not amissi, but praemissi; Not lost but gone before."

"They are not lost, but gone before."