The essential elements of giving are power and love—activity and affection—and the consciousness of the race testifies that in the high and appropriate exercise of these is a blessedness greater than any other.
MAYALINES CATEGORY
Love Quotes
Explore love quotes about affection, connection, devotion, friendship and human relationships.
Be still, sad heart, and cease repining, Behind the clouds the sun is shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all; Into each life some rain must fall,— Some days must be dark and dreary.
It is the best thing for a stricken heart to be helping others.
The truly great and good, in affliction, bear a countenance more princely than they are wont; for it is the temper of the highest hearts, like the palm tree, to strive most upward when they are most burdened.
What He tells thee in the darkness, Weary watcher for the day, Grateful lip and heart should utter When the shadows flee away.
Ambition is a gilded misery, a secret poison, a hidden plague, the engineer of deceit, the mother of hypocrisy, the parent of envy, the original of vices, the moth of holiness, the blinder of hearts, turning medicines into maladies, and remedies into diseases.
Any pleasure which takes and keeps the heart from God is sinful, and unless forsaken, will be fatal to the soul.
Whatever we do to please ourselves, and only for the sake of the pleasure, not for an ultimate object, is "play," the "pleasing thing," not the useful thing. The first of all English games is making money. That is an all-absorbing game; and we knock each other down oftener in playing at that than at football, or any other rougher sport; and it is absolutely without purpose; no one who engages heartily in that game ever knows why. Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money—he never knows. He doesn't make it to do any thing with it. He gets it only that he may get it. "What will you make of what you have got?" you ask, "Well, I'll get more," he says. Just as at cricket you get more runs. There is no use in the runs; but to get more of them than other people is the game. And there is no use in the money; but to have more of it than other people is the game.
There is not a heart but has its moments of longing,— yearning for something better, nobler, holier than it knows now.
Father! forgive the heart that clings Thus trembling to the things of time, And bid my soul, on angel's wings Ascend into a purer clime.
The best assurance any one can have of his interest in God, is doubtless the conformity of his soul to Him. When our heart is once turned into a conformity with the mind of God, when we feel our will conformed to His will, we shall then presently perceive a spirit of adoption within ourselves, teaching us to say, "Abba, Father."
"Compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses," let us with firm and cheerful trust endure all trials, discharge all duties, accept all sacrifices, fulfill the law of universal and impartial love, and adopt as our own that cause of truth, righteousness, humanity, liberty, and holiness,—which being the cause of the All-Good, cannot but triumph over all powers of evil. Let us rise into blest assurance that everywhere and forever we are enfolded, penetrated, guarded, guided, kept by the power of the Father and Friend, who can never forsake us; and that all spirits who have begun to seek, know, love, and serve the All-Perfect One on earth shall be reunited in a celestial home, and be welcomed together into the freedom of the universe, and the perpetual light of His presence.
Atheism is rather in the life than in the heart of man.
No one is so much alone in the universe as a denier of God. With an orphaned heart, which has lost the greatest of fathers, he stands mourning by the immeasurable corpse of nature, no longer moved and sustained by the Spirit of the universe.
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.
What is meant by believing in Christ but just going with trusting and loving hearts, and committing to His love and power ourselves, our souls, and all that concerns us for time and eternity?
Open your hands, ye whose hands are full! The world is waiting for you! The whole machinery of the Divine beneficence is clogged by your hard hearts and rigid fingers. Give and spend, and be sure that God will send; for only in giving and spending do you fulfill the object of His sending.
Every day should be distinguished by at least one particular act of love.
Every man who becomes heartily and understandingly a channel of the Divine beneficence, is enriched through every league of his life. Perennial satisfaction springs around and within him with perennial verdure. Flowers of gratitude and gladness bloom all along his pathway, and the melodious gurgle of the blessings he bears is echoed back by the melodious waves of the recipient stream.
The life-boat may have a tasteful bend and beautiful decoration, but these are not the qualities for which I prize it; it was my salvation from the howling sea! So the interest which a regenerate soul takes in the Bible, is founded on a personal application to the heart of the saving truth which it contains.
The Bible is the treasure of the poor, the solace of the sick, and the support of the dying; and while other books may amuse and instruct in a leisure hour, it is the peculiar triumph of that book to create light in the midst of darkness, to alleviate the sorrow which admits of no other alleviation, to direct a beam of hope to the heart which no other topic of consolation can reach; while guilt, despair, and death vanish at the touch of its holy inspiration.
This Bible, then, has a mission, grander than any mere creation of God; for in this volume are infinite wisdom, and infinite love. Between its covers are the mind and heart of God; and they are for man's good, for his salvation, his guidance, his spiritual nourishment. If now I neglect my Bible, I do my soul a wrong; for the fact of this Divine message is evidence that I need it.
Throw away the Old Testament! What part of it will you throw away? That which I do not understand? Take down then yonder blood-stained cross; for there is a love there "which passeth knowledge," and a Divine hatred of sin which shook the solid earth.
Let your daughter have first of all the book of Psalms for holiness of heart, and be instructed in the Proverbs of Solomon for her godly life.
I am heartily glad to witness your veneration for a Book which to say nothing of its holiness or authority, contains more specimens of genius and taste than any other volume in existence.
If there be any thing in my style or thought to be commended, the credit is due to my kind parents in instilling into my mind an early love of the Scriptures.
Wherever God's word is circulated, it stirs the hearts of the people, it prepares for public morals. Circulate that word, and you find the tone of morals immediately changed. It is God speaking to man.
The main condition is that the spiritual ear should be open to overhear and patiently take in, and the will ready to obey that testimony which, I believe, God bears in every human heart, however dull, to those great truths which the Bible reveals. This, and not logic, is the way to grow in religious knowledge, to know that the truths of religion are not shadows, but deep realities.
The reason why we find so many dark places in the Bible is, for the most part, because there are so many dark places in our hearts.
Parents, I urge you to make the Bible the sweetest, the dearest book to your children; not by compelling them to read so many chapters each day, which will have the effect of making them hate the Bible, but by reading its pages with them, and by your tender parental love, so showing them the beauty of its wondrous incidents, from the story of Adam and Eve to the story of Bethlehem and Calvary, that no book in the home will be so dear to your children as the Bible; and thus you will be strengthening their minds with the sublimest truths, storing their hearts with the purest love, and sinking deep in their souls solid principles of righteousness, whose divine stones no waves of temptation can ever move.
I delight to do Thy will, O my God; yea, Thy law is within my heart.
God has taught in the Scriptures the lesson of a universal brotherhood, and man must not gainsay the teaching. Shivering in the ice-bound or scorching in the tropical regions; in the lap of luxury or in the wild hardihood of the primeval forest; belting the globe in a tired search for rest, or quieting through life in the heart of ancestral woods; gathering all the decencies around him like a garment, or battling in fierce raid of crime against a world which has disowned him, there is an inner humanness which binds me to that man by a primitive and indissoluble bond. He is my brother, and I cannot dissever the relationship. He is my brother, and I cannot release myself from the obligation to do him good.
I stand by my kind; and I thank God for the temptations that have brought me into sympathy with them, as I do for the love that urges me to efforts for their good. I hail the great brotherhood of trial and temptation in the name of humanity, and give them assurance that from the Divine Man, and some, at least, of His disciples, there goes out to them a flood of sympathy that would fain sweep them up to the firm footing of the rock of safety.
Jesus throws down the dividing prejudices of nationality, and teaches universal love without distinction of race, merit, or rank. A man's neighbor, henceforth, was every one who needed help, even an enemy. All men, from the slave to the highest, were sons of one Father in heaven, and should feel and act toward each other, as brethren. No human standard of virtue would suffice; no imitations of the loftiest examples among men. Moral perfection had been recognized alike by heathen and Jews, as found only in likeness to the Divine, and that Jesus proclaims as, henceforth, the one ideal for all humanity. With a sublime enthusiasm and brotherly love for the race, He rises above His age, and announces a common Father of all mankind, and one grand spiritual ideal in resemblance to Him.
Despatch necessities; life hath a load Which must be carried on—and safely may; Yet keep these cares without thee; let the heart Be God's alone; and choose the better part.
Why art thou troubled and anxious about many things? One thing is needful—to love Him and to sit attentively at His feet.
If thou neglectest thy love to thy neighbor, in vain thou professest thy love to God; for by thy love to God, the love to thy neighbor is begotten, and by the love to thy neighbor, thy love to God is nourished.
A life in any sphere that is the expression and outflow of an honest, earnest, loving heart, taking counsel only of God and itself, will be certain to be a life of beneficence in the best possible direction.
We may not substitute charity for godliness; but there is room for the Divine love in the heart which has been touched by the human.
Earth has not a spectacle more glorious or more fair to show than this—love tolerating intolerance; charity covering, as with a vail, even the sin of the lack of charity.
I praise Thee while my days go on; I love Thee while my days go on! Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost, With emptied arms and treasure lost, I thank Thee while my days go on.
Never despair of a child. The one you weep the most for at the mercy-seat may fill your heart with the sweetest joys.
Precious Saviour! come in spirit, and lay Thy strong, gentle grasp of love on our dear boys and girls, and keep these our lambs from the fangs of the wolf.
Johnny is but gone an hour or two sooner to bed as children are wont to do, and we are undressing to follow. And the more we put off the love of this present world, and all things superfluous beforehand, we shall have the less to do when we lie down.
How can a mother's heart feel cold or weary Knowing her dearer self safe, sheltered, warm? How can she feel her road too dark or dreary, Who knows her treasure sheltered from the storm? How can she sin? Our hearts may be unheeding, Our God forgot, our holy saints defied; But can a mother hear her dead child pleading, And thrust those little angel hands aside?
Jesus! How does the very word overflow with sweetness, and light, and love, and life; filling the air with odors, like precious ointment poured forth; irradiating the mind with a glory of truths on which no fear can live, soothing the wounds of the heart with a balm that turns the sharpest anguish into delicious peace, shedding through the soul a cordial of immortal strength. Jesus! the answer to all our doubts, the spring of all our courage, the earnest of all our hopes, the charm omnipotent against all our foes, the remedy for all weakness, the supply of all our wants, the fullness of all our desires. Jesus! at the mention of whose name every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. Jesus! our power; Jesus! our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption—Jesus! our elder brother, our blessed Lord and Redeemer. Thy name is the most transporting theme of the church, as they sing going up from the valley of tears, to their home on the mount of God; Thy name shall ever be the richest chord in the harmony of heaven, while the angels and the redeemed unite their exulting, adoring songs around the throne of God.
But if there has been on this earth no real, perfect human life, no love that never cooled, no faith that never failed, which may shine as a loadstar across the darkness of our experience, a light to light amidst all convictions of our own meanness and all suspicions of other's littleness, why, we may have a religion, but we have not a Christianity. For if we lose Him as a Brother, we cannot feel Him as a Saviour.
He stands alone in unapproachable grandeur. Nineteen centuries roll away, and His character so lives that He inspires millions of men with impassioned love. Other men may seem to be children of their surroundings; He became what He was despite His surroundings, and is the only one who can say in truth and holiness, "Do as I have done." He, the ideal, the perfect one of our race, appears in an age when such an ideal could not have been developed in act—could not have been conceived in thought. In the theory of development the perfection of humanity is the final result of man's history ages hence. Christ therefore is the great miracle which more than any other establishes the fact of miracles. Christ Himself is proof of His own miracles.
If Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God in the experience of those who trust and love Him, there needs no further argument of His divinity.
Whatever Jesus is, the glorious Godhead is; and to have fellowship with the Son is to have fellowship with the Father. To know the love of Christ is to be filled with all the fullness of God.
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."
In His love and in His pity He redeemed them.
In Christ we see the strength of achievement, and the strength of endurance. He moved with a calm majesty, like the sun. The bloody sweat, and the crown of thorns, and the cross, were full in His eyes; but He was obedient unto death. In His perfect self-sacrifice, we see the perfection of strength; in the love that prompted it, we see the perfection of beauty. This combination of self-sacrifice and love must be commenced in every Christian; and when it shall be in its spirit complete in him, then will he also be perfect in strength and beauty.
This it is that gives a majesty so pure and touching to the historic figure of Christ; self-abandonment to God, uttermost surrender, without reserve or stipulation, to the guidance of the Holy Spirit from the Soul of souls; pause in no darkness, hesitation in no perplexity, recoil in no extremity of anguish; but a gentle unfaltering hold of the invisible Hand, of the Only Holy and All Good;—these are the features that have made Jesus of Nazareth the dearest and most sacred image to the heart of so many ages.
Other sages have spoken to me of God. But from whom could I have learned the essence of Divine perfection, as from Him, who was in a peculiar sense the Son, representative, and image of God—who was especially an incarnation of the unbounded love of the Father? And from what other teacher could I have learned to approach the Supreme Being with that filial spirit, which forms the happiness of my fellowship with Him? From other seers I might have heard of heaven; but when I behold in Jesus the spirit of heaven, dwelling actually on earth, what a new comprehension have I of that better world!
Christ's method is divine. His words have the charm of antiquity with the freshness of yesterday; the simplicity of a child with the wisdom of a God; the softness of kisses from the lip of love, and the force of the lightning rending the tower. His parables are like groups of matchless statuary; His prayers like an organ peal floating round the world and down the ages, echoed by the mountain-peaks and plains into rich and varied melody, in which all devout hearts find their noblest feelings at once expressed, sustained, refined. His truths are self-evidencing. They fall into the soul as seed into the ground, to rest and germinate. He speaks, and all nature and life become vocal with theology.
What Jesus spoke was Truth; the way He spoke was gracious. He spoke the truth in love. God is love, and the Son of God spoke lovingly.
The miracles of Christ were studiously performed in the most unostentatious way. He seemed anxious to veil His majesty under the love with which they were wrought.
A large portion of Christ's miracles of love were wrought at the urgent request of parents for their suffering children. Is that ear gone deaf to-day? Will He not do for our children's souls what He did for the bodies of the ruler's daughter, and the dead youth at Nain?
Not only do we witness on the Holy Mount the installation of the royal lawgiver, but of the great high-priest. It is a grand valedictory service in which He is re-ordained to duty—as the banners are blessed before the army marches to the field. And the voice speaks from heaven as a sovereign gives audience to a chosen commander, and cheers him with the encouragement of royal favor. With what reverence, brethren, should we, sinners, look upon the scene! As we see Him standing alone upon the mountain—fresh from His ordination of glory—calm and kingly in His heaven-imparted strength; and then as we see Him, with firm step, treading the dark avenue which, through desertion, agony, insult, abandonment, terminates in His death upon the cross—surely our distrust should vanish, and in reliance on such a champion we should have "joy in believing." Surely our indignation against the vile sin which made all this suffering necessary should be roused within us. Surely our hearts should bound with a fervor of devotion and gratitude which the obedience of a lifetime can only inadequately express.