There are ever two ways of striving to fill one's place in the world: one is by seeking to prove one's self useful; the other, by striving to render one's self useless. The first way is the commoner and the more attractive; the second is the rarer and more noble.
A loving trust in the Author of the Bible is the best preparation for a wise study of the Bible.
Jesus has never slept for an hour while one of His disciples watched and prayed in agony.
It takes practice to use one's eyes, even when God has opened them. And there are some believers who never get beyond confounding a doctrinal statement of a truth with a living exemplification of that truth.
Here is where a great many professed disciples of Jesus fail of being real disciples. They have regularly enlisted, have put on their uniform, and there they stand before the recruiting office, with knapsacks and blankets on their backs, with muskets at "carry," marking time to the martial music — although some of them don't do even that; and there they have stood since their enlistment, never marching a rod.
If a man is unable to find the way to Jesus, he ought to be led. It is good work this bringing the blind to Him who alone can give them sight.
An over-readiness to criticise or to depreciate a minister of Christ is proof of a lack of devotion to Christ.
Attention is our first duty whenever we want to know what is our second duty. There is no such cause of confusion and worry about what we ought to do, and how to do it, as our unwillingness to hear what God would tell us on that very point.
Not prayer without faith, nor faith without prayer, but prayer in faith, is the cost of spiritual gifts and graces.
Just as sure as the days go by, Jesus will come to us, looking for fruit; and He will come in personal hunger, needing and longing for the fruit which we might have ready for Him.
The moment you accept God's ordering, that moment your work ceases to be a task, and becomes your calling; you pass from bondage to freedom, from the shadow-land of life into life itself.
"He commanded that something should be given her to eat." Has any body's daughter or any body's son been raised from spiritual death in your congregation, or in your class recently? If so, give the revived soul something to eat.
There is a great deal too much in the world, of the "heavenly-mindedness" which expends itself in the contemplation of the joys of paradise, which performs no duty which it can shirk, and whose constant prayer is to be lifted in some overwhelming flood of Divine grace, and be carried, amidst the admiration of men and the jubilance of angels, to the very throne of God.
In the time of Jesus the mount of transfiguration was on the way to the cross. In our day the cross is on the way to the mount of transfiguration. If you would be on the mountain. you must consent to pass over the road to it.