Great Throughts Treasury

"It is impossible to conceive any contrast more entire and absolute than that which exists between a heart glowing with love to God, and a heart in which the love of money has cashiered all sense of God - His love, His presence, His glory; and which is no sooner relieved from the mockery of a tedious round of religious formalism than it reverts to the sanctuaries where its wealth is invested, with an intenseness of homage surpassing that of the most devout Israelite who ever, from a foreign land, turned his longing eyes toward Jerusalem."

"Life is passing; youth goes, strength decays. But duty performed, work done for God - this abides forever, this alone is imperishable."

"True religion is not what men see and admire; it is what God sees and loves... The cheerful consecration of all the powers of the soul; the worship which rising above all outward forms, ascends to God in the sweetest, dearest communion - a worship often too deep for utterance, and than which the highest heaven knows nothing more sublime."

"The narrow way, the way of holiness, not only leads to life, but it is life. Walking there, serene are our days, peaceful our nights, happy - high above the disorders and miseries of a wretched world - shall be our hourly communion with God; happy - full of assurance, of calm and sacred triumph, shall be our dying hour."

"We are all approaching that dread tribunal. However diversified our paths, they all converge toward that common centre. The young, with their elastic thread, are striding to the judgment; the old, with their tottering limbs are creeping to the judgment; the rich in their splendid equipages are driving to the judgment; the poor in rags and barefooted are walking to judgment."

"But no sympathy reached His convulsed spirit. He was alone; alone, enduring the curse for us; alone, "bearing our sins in His own body on the tree," and exhausting the fierceness of eternal justice; alone, without succor from man; alone, without one strengthening whisper from angel; above all, alone, without one ray from His Father's countenance. And that expiring cry, "My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken me?" was the bitter, dreary, dismal, piercing wail of a soul utterly deserted ? wrapped, shrouded in essential unmitigated desolation."

"Count not that thou hast lived that day, in which thou hast not lived with God."

"Everywhere He is present, everywhere revealing Himself. Now, as then, our eyes are holden by our own fault, so that we recognize not the merciful Presence which is all around us."

"Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them to the end. Often had they been faithless; and now, while addressing them, He knows that they will all in a few hours forsake Him. Yet He trusts them; He commits His cause to their keeping. And we must love as He loved."

"He is wisdom for your ignorance, strength for your weakness, righteousness for your guilt, sanctification for your corruption, redemption from all the thralldom of your apostasy."

"In our weakness, His strength is ours. In our conflicts, His victories are ours. In our bereavements and sorrows, His grace is ours. He had not where to lay His weary head, that we might have His bosom on which to lean our fevered brows. He endured the cross, and despised the shame, that, instead of weeping and wailing, we might share His immortal blessedness."

"It is when we unbosom ourselves to Him, and confide to Him all our cares and sorrows and temptations, that He walks with us, and abides with us, and opens to us the Scriptures concerning Himself ? His dignity, His suitableness, His loveliness. His truth, His tenderness, His faithfulness, revealing Himself in us; causing our hearts to burn within us ? to burn with love, gratitude, devotion, courage, joy ? to burn with a celestial fire, which consumes all selfishness and sin, and glows, a pure, perennial flame, upon pure, living altars."

"Today, let us rise and go to our work. Tomorrow, we shall rise and go to our reward."

"Yes, we have throned Him in our minds and hearts ? the cynosure of our wandering thoughts ? the monarch of our warmest affections, hopes, desires. This we have done. And the more we meditate upon His astonishing love, His amazing sacrifice, the more we feel that if we had a thousand minds, hearts, souls, we would crown Him Lord of all. Living we will live in Him, for Him, to Him. Dying, we will clasp Him in our arms, and, with Simeon, welcome death as the consummation of Miss."

"God's truth and faithfulness "are a great deep." They resemble the ocean itself; always there ? vast, fathomless, sublime, the same in its majesty, its inexhaustible fullness, yesterday, to-day, and forever; the same in calm and storm, by day and by night; changeless while generations come and pass; everlasting while ages are rolling away."

"The greatest truths are ever known through the heart; and this sublimest of all truths, the amazing sacrifice which Eternal Love has made for guilty man, can be comprehended only by the heart, ? by communion with that Love in its sorrows, sacrifices, triumphs, joys."

"Your salvation is His business; make His service your business and delight."