Top 121 Quotes & Sayings by Alexander MacLaren

If you would have clear and irrefragable for a perpetual joy, a glory and a defense, the unwavering confidence, "I am Thy child," go to God's throne, and lie down at the foot of it, and let the first thought be, "My Father in heaven;" and that will brighten, that will establish, that will make omnipotent in your life, the witness of the Spirit that you are the child of God.

That which of all things unfits man for the reception of Christ as a Savior, is not gross profligacy and outward, vehement transgression, but it is self-complacency, fatal self-righteousness and self-sufficiency.

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.

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?

Love is the only fire that is hot enough to melt the iron obstinacy of a creatures's will.

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

God keeps giving Himself as long as we bring that into which He can pour Himself. And when we stop bringing, He stops giving.

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.

That is faith, cleaving to Christ, twining round Him with all the tendrils of our heart, as the vine does round its support.

Seek to cultivate a buoyant, joyous sense of the crowded kindnesses of God in your daily life.

True faith, by a mighty effort of the will, fixes its gaze on our Divine Helper, and there finds it possible and wise to lose its fears. It is madness to say, "I will not be afraid; "it is wisdom and peace to say, "I will trust and not be afraid.

The more we work the more we need to pray. In this day of activity there is great danger, not of doing too much, but of praying too little for so much work.

The root of all steadfastness is in consecration to God.

Duty is duty, conscience is conscience, right is right, and wrong is wrong, whatever sized type they may be printed in. " Large" or "small" are not words for the vocabulary of conscience.

Faith is the sight of the inward eye.

In making our decisions, we must use the brains that God has given us. But we must also use our hearts which He also gave us. A man who has not learned to say, No -who is not resolved that he will take God's way, in spite of every dog that can bay or bark at him, in spite of every silvery choice that woos him aside-will be a weak and a wretched man till he dies.

Love is the foundation of all obedience.

As we look upon that agony and those tearful prayers, let us not only look with thankfulness; but let that kneeling Saviour teach us that in prayer alone can we be forearmed against our lesser sorrows; that strength to bear flows into the heart that is opened in supplication; and that a sorrow which we are made able to endure is more truly conquered than a sorrow which we avoid

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

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

To pursue joy is to lose it. The only way to get it is to follow steadily the path of duty.

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.

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

Do not let the loud utterances of your own wills anticipate, nor drown, the still, small voice in which God speaks. Bridle impatience till He does. If you cannot hear His whisper, wait till you do. Take care of running before you are sent. Keep your wills in equipoise till God's hand gives the impulse and direction.

The Gospel is not a mere message of deliverance, but a canon of conduct; it is not a theology to be accepted, but it is ethics to be lived. It is not to be believed only, but it is to be taken into life as a guide.

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

Unless we are wedded to Jesus Christ by the simple act of trust in His mercy and His power, Christ is nothing to us.

As the flowers follow the sun, and silently hold up their petals to be tinted and enlarged by its shining, so must we, if we would know the joy of God, hold our souls, wills, hearts, and minds, still before Him, whose voice commands, whose love warns, whose truth makes fair our whole being. God speaks for the most part in such silence only. If the soul be full of tumult and jangling voices, His voice is little likely to be heard.

We must have the glory sink into us before it can be reflected from us. In deep inward beholding we must have Christ in our hearts, that He may shine forth from our lives.

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?

Death is but a passage. It is not a house, it is only a vestibule. The grave has a door on its inner side.

If you would win the world, melt it, do not hammer it.

Don't waste your sorrows

He that has his trust set upon God does not need to dread anything except the weakening or the paralyzing of that trust.

We must have Christ in our hearts, that He may shine forth from our lives.

Let me always remember that it is not the amount of religious knowledge which I have, but the amount which I use, that determines my religious position and character.

Let the current of your being set towards God, then your life will be filled and calmed by one master-passion which unites and stills the soul.

It is not the thinker who is the true king of men, as we sometimes hear it proudly said. We need one who will not only show, but be the Truth; who will not only point, but open and be the Way; who will not only communicate thought, but give, because He is the Life. Not the rabbi's pulpit, nor the teacher's desk, still less the gilded chairs of earthly monarchs, least of all the' tents of conquerors, are the throne of the true king. He rules from the cross.

If you would know Christ at all, you must go to Him as a sinful man, or you are shut out from Him altogether.

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.

The mystery of the universe, and the meaning of God's world, are shrouded in hopeless obscurity, until we learn to feel that all laws suppose a lawgiver, and that all working involves a Divine energy.

Every life has dark tracts and long stretches of somber tint, and no representation is true to fact which dips its pencil only in light, and flings no shadows on the canvas.

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.

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 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.

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

God is His own motive. His love is not drawn out by our loveableness, but wells up, like an artesian spring, from the depths of His nature.

Trust Christ! and a great benediction of tranquil repose comes down upon the calm mind and the tranquil heart.

Kindness does not require us to be blind to facts or to live in fancies, but it does require us to cherish a habit of goodwill, ready to show pity if sorrow appears, and slow to turn away even if hostility appears.

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

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

Faith refers to Christ. Holiness depends on faith. Heaven depends on holiness.

If you want to live in this world, doing the duty of life, knowing the blessings of it, doing your work heartily, and yet not absorbed by it, remember that the one power whereby you can so act is, that all shall be consecrated to Christ, and done for His sake.

Fruitful and acceptable worship begins before it begins.

The tears of Christ are the pity of God. The gentleness of Jesus is the long-suffering of God. The tenderness of Jesus is the love of God. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.

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

The apostolic church thought more about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ than about death and heaven. The early Christians were looking, not for a cleft in the ground called a grave but for a cleavage in the sky called Glory.

A living man must have a living God, or his soul will perish in the midst of earthly plenty, and will thirst and die whilst the water of earthly delights is running all around him. We are made to need persons not things.

There can be no faith so feeble that Christ does not respond to it.

Conflict, not progress, is the word that defines man's path from darkness into light. No holiness is won by any other means than this, that wickedness should be slain day by day, and hour by hour.