Saturday, January 21, 2012

Gems #4

“Great leaders, great statesmen, great poets, great teachers, great inventors, great philosophers are gifts of God to the nations. The service they have rendered cannot be computed. We are all indebted to God for them more than we can tell. But above them all stands our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, his unspeakable gift to men. He spared not his own Son, but delivered Him up freely for us all. Love is a great gift. Take love away and the world would be darker and drearier than it would be if the sun were blotted out. All these great gifts, and many more, God has given unto us." Selected.

"There is too much truth, we fear, in the suggestion that the reason we shrink from the furnace that is to try us is our consciousness that there is so little gold and so much dross in us." (1913.)

"As everybody knows fashions in America are dictated by the imperious edicts issuing out of Paris. Many of these fashions are not only grotesque and ridiculous, but what is worse, are positively indecent..." (1914.)

"Is it not a glorious thing to die at exactly the right time? Not one of us knows perhaps just when that is; but now and then a man outlives his usefulness or at last kicks over the pail full of the good deeds of his best years. Said Joseph Cook concerning an eminent American preacher: `He would have lived longer if he had died sooner.' How true is the paradox in many a life." (1915.)

DARWIN'S RELIGIOUS LIFE, Zion's Herald. From the article: "I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment, the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them." (1915.)

"As the flowers carry dewdrops trembling on the edge of the petals, and ready to fall at the first waft of the wind, or brush of the wing of a bird, so the heart should carry its beaded words of thanksgiving, and at the first breath of heavenly favor let down the shower, perfumed with the heart's gratitude." Beecher. (1916.)

"No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle, pure, and good without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness." Phillips Brooks. (1916.)

"I felt once that I was responsible for the conduct of universal affairs, but I have recently come to believe otherwise. So long as I tried to run the world I was miserable; it makes me happy now to trust in God." Lyman Beecher. (1916.)

"The tomb is not a blind alley. It is a thoroughfare." Victor Hugo.

"Why do men try to account for Jesus Christ and to give a satisfactory explanation on natural grounds of all that He was and did? Men do not try to prove that Shakespeare was a mere man, or Socrates, or Luther, or Washington. That is only too obvious. But Jesus Christ has never been accounted for except as the Living Bread which came down from heaven." Anonymous. (1916.)

The old are hungering for love more than bread.

If you can help the poor on with a garment of praise, they will appreciate it as much as a woolen blanket on a winter's night.

If you can win the straying from the error of his way and bring him to Christ for salvation, you will indeed hide a multitude of sins through their forgetfulness.

If you can maintain a cheerful and patient spirit toward your enemies, you will have presented Jesus to a needy heart and won for yourself a place of gratitude in the life and thought of him who was your enemy.

If you would be a light bearer, you must have the light in your own heart and life, for then only can you take it to others and so assist in winning them from the ways of darkness and ruin to the realms of light and everlasting joy. Selected.

An infidel once taunted a minister with this question..."What right has such a man as that to enter the pearly gates?" "I don't know, when I get there, I will ask him," replied the minister. "But suppose he is not there?" "In that case, you ask him," replied the minister. (1916.)

"If the pastor does not move his church, his church will move him." J.T. McGlothlin.

"As a further indignity to Belgium, Germany has deported 30,000 Belgians to Germany for labor purposes. This was done without their consent. They were simply huddled in freight cars like so many cattle, and scattered throughout Germany, and may never again see their families or their native land. Germany continued to commit outrages against civilization." Shades of Nazi Germany years later! (1916.)

"It has been said that an American tramp can live on what an American family wastes, and that a European tramp can live on what an American tramp throws away." (1917.)

"Better leave your money in your child than to your child."

"Every thought you entertain is a force that goes out, and every thought comes back laden with its kind."

"Away with your sleeveless, manicured, befuddled, be powdered, society dames, and give us back the old time, bread making, stocking darning, trousers minding, praying mothers, and our homes will be saved." Biederwolf.

"The man who builds a fence around himself, fences out more than he fences in." Dr. E.M. Poteat.

"It is a comfort to know that the real strength of men like that of tea, is only drawn out by being in hot water." Anonymous.

Dr. Len G. Broughton, in a Chautaqua lecture: "The greatest peril that threatens the American people today is not the danger of war, but the danger that lurks in the lack of respect to constituted authority. A majority of our young [people] are not under proper parental authority. Our public schools cannot administer disciplinary measures; the very laws of our land are lax, and in too many instances the violator of the law goes unpunished." (1917!)

"Any thought persistently indulged in will find its way to the motor track of the brain." J.R. Miller.

"The opinion of the Bible bred in me not only by the teaching of my home when I was a boy, but also by every turn and experience of my life and every step of study, is that it is the one supreme source of revelation, the revelation of the meaning of life, the nature of God, and the spiritual nature and needs of men. It is the only guide of life which leads the spirit in the way of peace and salvation." Woodrow Wilson.

"There is something radically wrong when a prize fighter can earn more money in fifteen minutes than a preacher can in fifteen years." Billy Sunday. (1917.)

"The Biblical Recorder calls our attention to the fact that a leaning tree is a menace to the forest. Its own foundation being insecure, it leans on it neighbor for support. So also the leaning trees of humanity. So we might also say concerning those who are leaning on others in the churches. Stand erect, and have your own opinions and be able to give a reason for the hope with you." (1917.)

"Before you refrain from doing a good deed for one who may not appreciate it, and justify your course in that passage ‘Give not that which is holy unto dogs, and cast ye not pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you;’ but be reasonably sure of two things: 1. That what you are casting is "pearls," and 2. that those to whom you are casting them are ‘swine.’ Before you quote this passage in justification, just be sure of these two points." Anonymous.

"I find that there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good to the world. Some do it with their society, some with their wit, some with benevolence, some with a sort of power of conferring pleasure and good humor on all they meet." John Keats. (1917.)

Lloyd George's reply to someone who complained about his small size: "I am grieved to find that our chairman is disappointed in my size. But his is owing to the way you have here of measuring a man. In North Wales we measure a man from his chin up, but you evidently measure him from his chin down."

TWELVE THINGS TO REMEMBER: 1. The value of time. 2. The success of perseverance. 3. The pleasure of working. 4. The dignity of simplicity. 5. The worth of character. 6. The power of kindness. 7. The influence of example. 8. The obligation of duty. 9. The wisdom of economy. 10. The virtue of patience. 11. The improvement of talent. 12. The joy of originating.

"We cannot serve God and mammon, but we can serve God with mammon." Robert E. Speer.

"Try to be happy in this very present moment, and not put off being so to a time to come, as though that time should be of another man from this which is already come and is ours." Fuller.

"If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet smelling herbs that is your success." Maeterlinck.

"One may not be bound to do more than his duty, but he is bound to do up to the extent of his duty." Rev. J. Clark.

"There are continually things to be forgiven. Intended and unintended, by forethought and for lack of thought, for things said and done, and for things not said or done. We are to have the spirit and attitude of forgiveness at all times for all things. On our part, and as far as is possible for us, it is always already done. As heart action is the real action and this is always already done. It may not be appreciated by others, but it is already freely forgiven. Tenderness of heart and kindness of act are related as the fountain to the stream. The movement bears the conditions which impel it. Where the heart is full of confidence, tenderness springs indigenous into activity. For this there is one all sufficient cause, the remedial blood of Jesus which gives ‘a heart in every thought renewed, and full of love divine.’ This is the pattern shown us in the heavenlies. In our prayers we say "forgive as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." How rich and full the forgiveness of infinite love in atoning blood. As we appropriated it, how free and full we found it. So with us, it is to flow to all who will.” Selected.

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