Your life cannot be frivolous or vulgar unless you are frivolous or vulgar. He who complains of his circumstances really complains of himself, and is his own accuser.
God is as willing that you should read your lesson in the sunlight as in the storm.
Heaven at last
will be the perfect
sight of Christ.
A life with no intention
of God in it must be
shallow.
The thoughtful trader believes that Trade, in its ideal, is generous and beautiful. It is the reality that he makes of it, by the way in which he does it, that seems to him sordid.
Character is the divinest thing on earth. It is the one thing that you can put into the shop or into the study, and be sure that the fire is going to burn.
Never does human nature seem so glorious and so wicked all at once as when we stand before the cross of Jesus! The most enthusiastic hopes, the most profound humiliation, have found their inspiration there.
The only way to run from God is to run to Him. The Infinite Knowledge is also the Infinite Pity.
Not simply His coming and His going, not simply His birth, or death, but the living, total life of Jesus is the world's salvation. And the Book in which His life shines orbed and distinct is the world's treasure.
Remember we are debtors to the Good by birth, but remember we may become debtors to the Bad by life; and both debts – of service and allegiance – must be paid alike.
Not merely a Voice to be heard, but a Friend to be loved, a Shepherd to be followed, a Bread to be eaten, – so does the Christ of the Gospels present Himself in word and sacrament and every presentation of His personality.
The tent-life is the true life until the building of God, the "house not made with hands," is reached.
The visionary is the man who has no present; the drudge is the man who has no future. To be saved from being either, – that can come only by joining a clear, sharp, solid work to large hopes and great ambitions.