John McClellan Holmes

The only satisfactory manifestations of religious character and life are associated with the reciprocal influences of spiritual experience and aggressive activity.

— John McClellan Holmes

The Christian's life on this side and beyond the grave is essentially the same, differing only as a song which, at a certain point, changes from the minor to the major key, and thenceforth wells along with still more glorious harmonies.

— John McClellan Holmes

In the whole range of earthly experience, no quality is more attractive and ennobling than moral courage. Like that mountain of rock which towers aloft in the Irish Sea, the man possessed of this principle is unmoved by the swelling surges which fret and fume at his feet. And yet, unlike that same Ailsa Craig, he is sensitive beyond measure to every adverse influence — battling against it, and triumphing over it by a power which proceeds from God's throne, and pervades his entire being.

— John McClellan Holmes

Religion, as embodied in the character and conduct of its disciples, cannot survive without doctrinal purity. In the absence of this element, religious feeling inevitably decays; while even religious necessity becomes a thing of naught.

— John McClellan Holmes

The tree of human history, as it has grown from age to age, has been but the unfolding of a single germ — but the development of Christ and Him crucified.

— John McClellan Holmes

All true development tends ever to God. Its objective aim is the restoration by the second Adam of the Divine image forfeited by the first; and, incidentally, it transmutes grief into gladness and sighs into songs. But it is always a development in Christ, since it is only " in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God " that any of our race can come "unto a perfect man."

— John McClellan Holmes

Christ's gospel could never have been delivered by one who was diseased.

— John McClellan Holmes

True heroism is alike positive and progressive. It sees in right the duty which should dominate, and in truth the principle which should prevail. And hence it never falters in the faith that always and everywhere sin must be repressed, and righteousness exalted.

— John McClellan Holmes

Vital is the relation between earthly sorrow and eternal satisfaction. The travail to which God's saints are subjected results in the birth of nobler natures and more sanctified spirits. Pain always promotes progress, and suffering invariably ensures success.

— John McClellan Holmes

It is for all who are personally united to Christ to cultivate a contemplative and sanctified spirit. So far from being secular and sordid, they should be sacred and spiritual, having their lives hid with Christ in God, and their whole natures absorbed in the knowledge and love and service of the Saviour.

— John McClellan Holmes