C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Christ
Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!
Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
In His love and in His pity he redeemed them.
Jesus Christ is, in the noblest and most perfect sense, the realized ideal of humanity.
Jesus Christ was more than man.
In Him dwelleth the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
How free from everything like art were the reasonings and language of Christ.
The absence of sentimentalism in Christ’s relations with men is what makes His tenderness so exquisitely touching.
At His birth a star, unseen before in heaven, proclaims Him come.
Rejecting the miracles of Christ, we still have the miracle of Christ Himself.
Christ came not to talk about a beautiful light, but to be that light—not to speculate about virtue, but to be virtue.
Christ wrought out His perfect obedience as a man, through temptation, and by suffering.
From first to last, Jesus is the same; always the same—majestic and simple, infinitely severe and infinitely gentle.
Certainly, no revolution that has ever taken place in society can be compared to that which has been produced by the words of Jesus Christ.
If you (to General Bertrand) do not perceive that Jesus Christ is God, very well; then I did wrong to make you a general.
In darkness there is no choice. It is light that enables us to see the differences between things; and it is Christ that gives us light.
Christ was either the grandest, guiltiest of impostors, by a marvelous and most subtle refinement of wickedness, or He was God manifest in the flesh.
I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and very beautiful; but I never read in either of them, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden.”
God be thanked for that good and perfect gift, the gift unspeakable: His life, His love, His very self in Jesus Christ.
If the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus were those of a God.
His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.
Whoever would fully and feelingly understand the words of Christ, must endeavor to conform his life wholly to the life of Christ.
Unlike all other founders of a religious faith, Christ had no selfishness, no desire of dominance.
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.
The name of Christ—the one great word well worth all languages in earth or heaven.
He that condescended so far, and stooped so low, to invite and bring us to heaven, will not refuse us a gracious reception there.
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.
Are we proud and passionate, malicious and revengeful? Is this to be like-minded with Christ, who was meek and lowly?
The best of men that ever wore earth about Him was a sufferer, a soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit; the first true gentleman that ever breathed.
In His death He is a sacrifice, satisfying for our sins; in the resurrection, a conqueror; in the ascension, a king; in the intercession, a high priest.
The Saviour of mankind Himself, in whose blameless life malice could find no act to impeach, has been called in question for words spoken.
God never gave man a thing to do concerning which it were irreverent to ponder how the Son of God would have done it.
Those who have minutely studied the character of the Saviour will find it difficult to determine whether there is most to admire or to imitate in it—there is so much of both.
He came, bringing with Him the knowledge that God is a Being of infinite goodness; that the service required of mankind is not a service of form or ceremony, but a service of obedience.
The sacrifice of Christ has rendered it just for Him to forgive sin; and whenever we are led to repent of and to forsake it, even the righteousness of God is declared in the pardon of it.
That image, or rather that Person, so human, yet so entirely divine, has a power to fill the imagination, to arrest the affections, to deepen and purify the conscience, which nothing else in the world has.
Poor shepherdless sheep! It was his delight, as the Good Shepherd, to lead them to rich pastures; and as they sat and stood around Him they forgot their bodily wants in the beauty and power of His words.
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.”
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 incarnation of God is a necessity of human nature. If we really and truly have a Father, we must be able to clasp His feet in our penitence, and to lean on His breast in our weary sorrowfulness.
Remember that vision on the Mount of Transfiguration; and let it be ours, even in the glare of earthly joys and brightnesses, to lift up our eyes, like those wondering three, and see no man any more, save Jesus only.
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals and His religion, as He left them to us, is the best the world ever saw, or is likely to see.
As human voice and instrument blend in one harmony, as human soul and body blend in each act of feeling, thought, or speech, so, as far as we can know, divinity and humanity act together in the thought and heart and act of the one Christ.
The Christian world has a Leader, the contemplation of whose life and sufferings must administer comfort in affliction, while the sense of His power and omnipotence must give them humiliation in prosperity.
The sages and heroes of history are receding from us, and history contracts the record of their deeds into a narrower and narrower page. But time has no power over the name and deeds and words of Jesus Christ.
He, the Holiest among the mighty, and the Mightiest among the holy, has lifted with His pierced hands empires off their hinges, has turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still governs the ages.
Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne and I myself have founded empires; but upon what do these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded His empire upon love; and to this very day millions would die for Him.
The nature of Christ’s existence is mysterious, I admit; but this mystery meets the wants of man. Reject it, and the world is an inexplicable riddle; believe it, and the history of our race is satisfactorily explained.
All the glory and beauty of Christ are manifested within, and there He delights to dwell; His visits there are frequent, His condescension amazing, His conversation sweet, His comforts refreshing; and the peace that He brings passeth all understanding.
Men who neglect Christ, and try to win heaven through moralities, are like sailors at sea in a storm, who pull, some at the bowsprit and some at the mainmast, but never touch the helm.
It was necessary for the Son to disappear as an outward authority, in order that He might reappear as an inward principle of life. Our salvation is no longer God manifested in a Christ without us, but as a “Christ within us, the hope of glory.”
Every unfulfilled aspiration of humanity in the past; all partial representation of perfect character; all sacrifices, nay, even those of idolatry, point to the fulfillment of what we want, the answer to every longing—the type of perfect humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Unlike all other founders of a religious faith, Christ had no selfishness, no desire of dominance; and His system, unlike all other systems of worship, was bloodless, boundlessly beneficent, and—most marvelous of all—went to break all bonds of body and soul, and to cast down every temporal and every spiritual tyranny.
No other fame can be compared with that of Jesus. He has a place in the human heart that no one who ever lived has in any measure rivaled. No name is pronounced with a tone of such love and veneration. All other laurels wither before His. His are ever kept fresh with tears of gratitude.
Christ’s whole life on earth was the assertion and example of true manliness—the setting forth in living act and word what man is meant to be, and how he should carry himself in this world of God—one long campaign in which the “temptation” stands out as the first great battle and victory.
Christ’s miracles were vivid manifestations to the senses that He is the Saviour of the body—and now as then the issues of life and death are in His hands—that our daily existence is a perpetual miracle. The extraordinary was simply a manifestation of God’s power in the ordinary.
You never get to the end of Christ’s words. There is something in them always behind. They pass into proverbs—they pass into laws—they pass into doctrines—they pass into consolations; but they never pass away, and, after all the use that is made of them, they are still not exhausted.
Christ is the Good Physician. There is no disease He cannot heal; no sin He cannot remove; no trouble He cannot help. He is the Balm of Gilead, the Great Physician who has never yet failed to heal all the spiritual maladies of every soul that has come unto Him in faith and prayer.
I find the life of Christ made up of two parts; a part I can sympathize with as a man, and a part on which I gaze; a beam sent down from heaven which I can see and love, and another beam shot into the infinite, that I cannot comprehend.
The most destructive criticism has not been able to dethrone Christ as the incarnation of perfect holiness. The waves of a tossing and restless sea of unbelief break at His feet, and He stands still the supreme model, the inspiration of great souls, the rest of the weary, the fragrance of all Christendom, the one divine flower in the garden of God.
Our Lord’s miracles were all essential parts of His one consistent life. They were wrought as evidences not only of His power, but of His mercy. They were throughout moral in their character, and spiritual in the ends contemplated by them. They were in fact embodiments of His whole character, exemplars of His whole teaching, emblems of His whole mission.
Christ pitied because He loved, because He saw through all the wretchedness, and darkness, and bondage of evil; that there was in every human soul a possibility of repentance, of restoration; a germ of good, which, however stifled and overlaid, yet was capable of recovery, of health, of freedom, of perfection.
It is the grandeur of Christ’s character which constitutes the chief power of His ministry, not His miracles or teachings apart from His character. The greatest triumph of the Gospel is Christ Himself—a human body become the organ of the Divine nature, and revealing, under the conditions of an earthly life, the glory of God.
The “wise men” were journeying to the manger—we to the throne. They to see a babe—we to look upon the King in His beauty. They to kneel and worship—we to sit with Him on His throne. That trembling star shone for them through the darkness of the night, lighting their way—Jesus is always with us, our star of hope; and the pathway is never dark where He leads; for He giveth “songs in the night.”
Great occasions rally great principles, and brace the mind to a lofty bearing, a bearing that is even above itself. But trials that make no occasion at all, leave it to show the goodness and beauty it has in its own disposition. And here precisely is the superhuman glory of Christ as a character, that He is just as perfect, exhibits just as great a spirit in little trials as in great ones.
On the head of Christ are many crowns. He wears the crown of victory; He wears the crown of sovereignty; He wears the crown of creation; He wears the crown of providence; He wears the crown of grace; He wears the crown of glory—for every one of His glorified people owes his honor, happiness and blessedness to Him.
Newton supposed that all matter attracted other matter inversely according to the square of the distance; and the hypothesis was found to account for the whole movements of the heavenly bodies; which all became verifications of what Newton supposed to be the law of the solar system. Adopt the hypothesis that Jesus was what He is represented, and the whole of the books and the history becomes a verification.
When has the world seen a phenomenon like this?—a lonely uninstructed youth, coming from amid the moral darkness of Galilee, even more distinct from His age, and from every thing around Him, than a Plato would be rising up in some wild tribe in Oregon, assuming thus a position at the head of the world and maintaining it, for eighteen centuries, by the pure self-evidence of His life and doctrine.
Christ’s divinity accounts for His exaltation to the right hand of God, justifies the worship of angels and the confidence of mankind. It makes clear His right to the throne of the universe, and enables the mind to understand why He is exalted in providence, in grace, and in judgment. It is the unifying truth that harmonizes all other teachings of Christianity, and renders the entire system symmetrical and complete.
From the moment of His self-dedication, when He threw His cares away, and went forth not knowing where to lay His head, the whole energy which others spend on interests of their own was poured into His human and Divine affections, and filled His life with an enthusiasm resistless and unique. However quiet His words, it is impossible not to feel the tender depths from which they come.
He walked into Judæa eighteen hundred years ago; His sphere melody, flowing in wild native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men, and, being of a truth sphere melody, still flows and sounds, though now with thousandfold accompaniments and rich symphonies, through all our hearts, and modulates and divinely leads them.
Across the chasm of eighteen hundred years Jesus Christ makes a demand which is beyond all others difficult to satisfy. He asks that for which a philosopher may often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, or a father of his children, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother. He asks for the human heart; he will have it entirely to himself; he demands it unconditionally, and forthwith his demand is granted. Wonderful!
It was before Deity embodied in a human form, walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices of the synagogue, and the doubts of the academy, and the pride of the portico, and the fasces of the lictor, and the swords of thirty legions were humbled in the dust.
Philosophical argument, especially that drawn from the vastness of the universe, in comparison with the insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith that is in me; but my heart has always assured and reassured me that the gospel of Jesus Christ must be a divine reality. The Sermon on the Mount cannot merely be a human production. This belief enters into the very depth of my conscience.
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.
Think of the majesty of that moment in this dying world’s history, when Jesus Christ declared that to the Christian death was only a sleep. Outside of that small dwelling in Capernaum, a great race of men rushed and toiled as they harassed continents and seas; mighty events marshaled themselves into annals and pageants. What was inside? In one inconspicuous chamber of a now forgotten house, man’s Redeemer, unobserved, martyred man’s final enemy. There Immanuel subdued death forever.
What is our hope but the indwelling Spirit of Christ, to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, to inspire every word and deed by His love? Then will “broken lights” blend in steady shining, the fractional be summed up in the integral, and life, unified and beautified by the central Christ, radiate God’s glory, and shine with divine effulgence.
Christ was placed midmost in the world’s history; and in that central position He towers like some vast mountain to heaven—the farther slope stretching backward toward the creation, the hither slope toward the consummation of all things. The ages before look to Him with prophetic gaze; the ages since behold Him by historic faith; by both He is seen in common as the brightness of the Father’s glory, and the unspeakable gift of God to the race.