C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
God
For God is love.
God’s glory is His goodness.
There is a God within us.
I am athirst for God, the living God.
God alone is true; God alone is great; alone is God.
God, from a beautiful necessity, is love.
Thou Great First Cause, least understood.
O Thou above all gods supreme.
God is the one great employer, thinker, planner, supervisor.
His steps are beauty, and His presence light.
God is truth, and light His shadow.
God’s will is the very perfection of all reason.
Space is the statue of God.
Where God is, all agree.
God is the only sure foundation on which the mind can rest.
Fear that man who fears not God.
The rolling year is full of Thee.
All but God is changing day by day.
We love Him, because He first loved us.
His eye is upon every hour of my existence.
Nothing with God can be accidental.
The divine essence itself is love and wisdom.
The Eternal Being is forever if He is at all.
Nothing reveals character more than self-sacrifice. So the highest knowledge we have of God is through the gift of His Son.
God is able to do more than man can understand.
Can we outrun the heavens?
Acquaint thyself with God, if thou wouldst taste His works.
God never made His work for man to mend.
Think of God oftener than you breathe.
God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.
These are Thy glorious works, Parent of good.
God deceiveth thee not.
A foe to God was never true friend to man.
History is the revelation of Providence.
By night an atheist half believes a God.
Let us think less of men and more of God.
There is a God to punish and avenge.
A God all mercy is a God unjust.
I believe the promises of God enough to venture an eternity on them.
As a man is, so is his God; therefore God was so often an object of mockery.
He who knows what it is to enjoy God will dread His loss; he who has seen His face will fear to see His back.
God said, “Let us make man in our image.” Man said, “Let us make God in our image.”
A God alone can comprehend a God.
One on God’s side is a majority.
God enters by a private door into every individual.
To attain the height and depth of Thy eternal ways, all human thoughts come short.
He mounts the storm and walks upon the wind.
God is as great in minuteness as He is in magnitude.
Philosophers call God “the great unknown.” “The great mis-known would be more correct.
God often visits us, but most of the time we are not at home.
Give me Thy light, and fix my eyes on Thee!
Heaven is above all yet; there sits a Judge that no king can corrupt.
There is no God but God, the living, the self-subsisting.
And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.
God’s power never produces what His goodness cannot embrace.
It is folly to seek the approbation of any being besides the Supreme.
God governs the world, and we have only to do our duty wisely, and leave the issue to Him.
The perfect love of God knoweth no difference between the poor and the rich.
God alone is entirely exempt from all want: of human virtues, that which needs least is the most absolute and divine.
Thy attributes, how endearing! how parental! all loving, all forgiving.
The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him.
God is absolutely good; and so, assuredly, the cause of all that is good.
Men sunk in the greatest darkness imaginable retain some sense and awe of the Deity.
If God were not a necessary being of Himself, He might almost seem to be made for the use and benefit of men.
How did the atheist get his idea of that God whom he denies?
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.
I fear God, and nest to God I chiefly fear him who fears Him not.
God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting.
There is no creature so small and abject, that it representeth not the goodness of God.
As long as we work on God’s line, He will aid us. When we attempt to work on our own lines, He rebukes us with failure.
God’s justice and love are one. Infinite justice must be infinite love. Justice is but another sign of love.
Can we be unsafe where God has placed us, and where He watches over us as a parent a child that he loves?
The great soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry.
The presence of God calms the soul, and gives it quiet and repose.
The God of merely traditional believers is the great Absentee of the universe.
God is all love: it is He who made everything, and He loves everything that He has made.
God wishes to exhaust all means of kindness before His hand takes hold on justice.
We know God easily, provided we do not constrain ourselves to define Him.
God is a being who gives everything but punishment in over measure.
Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it repose in Thee.
The vision of the Divine Presence ever takes the form which our circumstances most require.
God never makes us sensible of our weakness except to give us of His strength.
However wickedness outstrips men, it has no wings to fly from God.
God’s truth is too sacred to be expounded to superficial worldliness in its transient fit of earnestness.
Born of God, attach thyself to Him, as a plant to its root, that ye may not be withered.
God is like us to this extent, that whatever in us is good is like God.
God’s sovereignty is not in His right hand; God’s sovereignty is not in His intellect; God’s sovereignty is in His love.
O, there is naught on earth worth being known but God and our own souls!
We must be in some way like God in order that we may see God as He is.
I believe not only in “special providences,” but in the whole universe as one infinite complexity of “special providences.”
To be struck with His power, it is only necessary to open our eyes.
To attain the height and depth of Thy eternal ways, all human thoughts come short.
There is no god but God!—to prayer—lo! God is great!
Sometimes Providences, like Hebrew letters, must be read backwards.
But, oh, Thou bounteous Giver of all good, Thou art, of all Thy gifts, Thyself the crown!
Everyone is in a small way the image of God.
God can change the lowest to the highest, abase the proud, and raise the humble.
Nothing is so high and above all danger that is not below and in the power of God.
There is indeed a God that hears and sees whate’er we do.
God is a shower to the heart burned up with grief; God is a sun to the face deluged with tears.
The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discloses to me His existence.
God’s mercy is a holy mercy, which knows how to pardon sin, not to protect it; it is a sanctuary for the penitent, not for the presumptuous.
And now we beseech of Thee that we may have every day some such sense of God’s mercy and of the power of God above us, as we have of the fullness of the light of heaven before us.
It is as easy for God to supply thy greatest as thy smallest wants, even as it was within His power to form a system or an atom, to create a blazing sun as to kindle the fire-fly’s lamp.
Our God is a household God, as well as a heavenly one. He has an altar in every man’s dwelling; let men look to it when they rend it lightly, and pour out its ashes.
If God be infinitely holy, just, and good, He must take delight in those creatures that resemble Him most in these perfections.
Such was God’s original love for man, that He was willing to stoop to any sacrifice to save him; and the gift of a Saviour was the mere expression of that love.
The love of God ought continually to predominate in the mind, and give to every act of duty grace and animation.
It is highly convenient to believe in the infinite mercy of God when you feel the need of mercy, but remember also His infinite justice.
Mistrusts sometimes come over one’s mind of the justice of God. But let a real misery come again, and to whom do we fly? To whom do we instinctively and immediately look up?
There is nothing left to us but to see how we may be approved of Him, and how we may roll the weight of our weak souls in well-doing upon Him, who is God omnipotent.
To love God, which was a thing far excelling all the cunning that is possible for us in this life to obtain.
Thou sovereign power, whose secret will controls the inward bent and motion of our souls.
Be He nowhere else, God is in all that liberates and lifts, in all that humbles, sweetens, and consoles.
There is no worm of the earth, no spire of grass, no leaf, no twig, wherein we see not the footsteps of a Deity.
Remember that there is nothing in God but what is godlike; and that He is either not at all, or truly and perfectly good.
To escape from evil, we must be made as far as possible like God; and this resemblance consists in becoming just and holy and wise.
The Providence that watches over the affairs of men works out of their mistakes, at times, a healthier issue than could have been accomplished by their wisest forethought.
It is a most unhappy state to be at a distance with God; man needs no greater infelicity than to be left to himself.
The Omnipotent has sown His name on the heavens in glittering stars, but upon earth He planteth His name by tender flowers.
As the soul is the life of the body, so God is the life of the soul. As therefore the body perishes when the soul leaves it, so the soul dies when God departs from it.
Let us always remember that God has never promised to supply our wishes, but only our wants, and these only as they arise from day to day.
Contemplation of human nature doth by a necessary connection and chain of causes carry us up to the Deity.
The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not discovers to me His existence.
When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with His presence.
Take comfort, and recollect however little you and I may know, God knows; He knows Himself and you and me and all things; and His mercy is over all His works.
The moral perfections of the Deity, the more attentively we consider, the more perfectly still shall we know them.
Yet forget not that “the whole world is a phylactery, and everything we see an item of the wisdom, power, or goodness of God.”
When we attempt to define and describe God, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless as fools and savages.
As a countenance is made beautiful by the soul’s shining through it, so the world is beautiful by the shining through it of a God.
God has been pleased to prescribe limits to His own power, and to work His ends within these limits.
The glory of Him who hung His masonry pendent on nought, when the world He created.
I sought Thee at a distance, and did not know that Thou wast near. I sought Thee abroad, and behold, Thou wast within me.
There is nothing so small but that we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands.
If thou art fighting against thy sins so is God. On thy side is God who made all, and Christ who died for all, and the Holy Spirit who alone gives wisdom, purity, and nobleness.
If I make the seven oceans ink, if I make the trees my pen, if I make the earth my paper, the glory of God cannot be written.
As the sensation of hunger presupposes food to satisfy it, so the sense of dependence on God presupposes His existence and character.
Who can know heaven except by its gifts? and who can find out God unless the man who is himself an emanation from God?
When the Master of the universe has points to carry in His government He impresses His will in the structure of minds.
God should be the object of all our desires, the end of all our actions, the principle of all our affections, and the governing power of our whole souls.
We are never less alone than when we are in the society of a single, faithful friend; never less deserted than when we are carried in the arms of the All-Powerful.
It is a great truth, “God reigns,” and therefore grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord; and, therefore, no sinner on earth need ever despair.
God’s commandments are the iron door into Himself. To keep them is to have it opened and His great heart of love revealed.
It is one of my favorite thoughts that God manifests Himself to men in all the wise, good, humble, generous, great, and magnanimous men.
I know by myself how incomprehensible God is, seeing I cannot comprehend the parts of my own being.
We cannot think too oft there is a never, never-sleeping Eye, which reads the heart, and registers our thoughts.
In all God’s providences, it is good to compare His word and His works together; for we shall find a beautiful harmony between them, and that they mutually illustrate each other.
God governs in the affairs of men; and if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, neither can a kingdom rise without His aid.
Tell me how it is that in this room there are three candles and but one light, and I will explain to you the mode of the Divine existence.
God works in a mysterious way in grace as well as in nature, concealing His operations under an imperceptible succession of events, and thus keeps us always in the darkness of faith.
Not a sorrow, not a burden, not a temptation, not a bereavement, not a disappointment, not a care, not a groan or tear, but has its antidote in God’s rich and inexhaustible resources.
Converting grace puts God on the throne, and the world at His footstool; Christ in the heart, and the world under His feet.
The God of metaphysics is but an idea. But the God of religion, the Maker of heaven and earth, the sovereign Judge of actions and thoughts, is a power.
God is the light which, never seen itself, makes all things visible, and clothes itself in colors. Thine eye feels not its ray, but thine heart feels its warmth.
Amid so much war and contest and variety of opinion, you will find one consenting conviction, in every land, that there is one God, the King and Father of all.
He made little, too little of sacraments and priests, because God was so intensely real to him. What should he do with lenses who stood thus full in the torrent of the sunshine.
To God belongeth the east and the west; therefore, whithersoever ye turn yourselves to pray, there is the word of God; for God is omnipresent and omniscient.
They that deny a God destroy man’s nobility; for certainly man is like the beasts in his body; and if he is not like God in his spirit, he is an ignoble creature.
I can understand the things that afflict mankind, but I often marvel at those which console. An atom may wound, but God alone can heal.
He who bridles the fury of the billows knows also to put a stop to the secret plans of the wicked. Submitting with respect to His holy will, I fear God, and have no other fear.
He hath made the earth by His power, He hath established the world by His wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by His discretion.
The slender capacity of man’s heart cannot comprehend, much less utter, that unsearchable depth and burning zeal of God’s love towards us.
If we look closely at this earth, where God seems so utterly forgotten, we shall find that it is He, after all, who commands the most fidelity and the most love.
Since therefore all things are ordered in subserviency to the good of man, they are so ordered by Him that made both man and them.
Give God the margin of eternity to justify Himself in, and the more we live and know of our own souls and of spiritual experience generally, the more we shall be convinced that we have to do with one who is good and just.
God, so to speak, is myriad-minded. We cannot look, therefore, to put ourselves in accord with His plans any more than one man can run a line for a railroad which it requires a small army to survey.
Kircher lays it down as a certain principle, that there never was any people so rude which did not acknowledge and worship one supreme Deity.
God is not dumb that He should speak no more; if thou hast wanderings in the wilderness and find’st no Sinai, ’tis thy soul is poor.
He who can imagine the universe fortuitous or self-created is not a subject for argument, provided he has the power of thinking or even the faculty of seeing.
When we would think of God, how many things we find which turn us away from Him, and tempt us to think otherwise. All this is evil, yet it is innate.
Be an observer of providence; for God is showing you ever, by the way in which He leads you, whither He means to lead. Study your trials, your talents, the world’s wants, and stand ready to serve God now, in whatever He brings to your hand.
What must be the knowledge of Him, from whom all created minds have derived both their power of knowledge, and the innumerable objects of their knowledge! What must be the wisdom of Him, from whom all things derive their wisdom!
We never know through what Divine mysteries of compensation the great Father of the universe may be carrying out His sublime plan; but those three words, “God is love,” ought to contain, to every doubting soul, the solution of all things.
God is kind; but within the limits of inexorable law. He is good; but you can take no liberties with Him; for back of His pity and kindness is the righteousness that is so exact, and that must be satisfied to the uttermost farthing.
God’s highest gifts—talent, beauty, feeling, imagination, power—they carry with them the possibility of the highest heaven and the lowest hell. Be sure that it is by that which is highest in you that you may be lost.
God’s treasury where He keeps His children’s gifts will be like many a mother’s store of relics of her children, full of things of no value to others, but precious in His eyes for the love’s sake that was in them.
The mystery of the universe, and the meaning of God’s world, are shrouded in hopeless obscurity, until we learn to feel that all laws suppose a lawgiver, and that all working involves a Divine energy.
God hides nothing. His very work from the beginning is revelation—a casting aside of veil after veil, a showing unto men of truth after truth. On and on from fact Divine He advances, until at length in His Son Jesus He unveils His very face.
The man who forgets the wonders and mercies of the Lord is without any excuse; for we are continually surrounded with objects which may serve to bring the power and goodness of God strikingly to mind.
Think not thy love to God merits God’s love to thee; His acceptance of thy duty crowns His own gifts in thee; man’s love to God is nothing but a faint reflection of God’s love to man.
How calmly may we commit ourselves to the hands of Him who bears up the world—of Him who has created, and who provides for the joys even of insects, as carefully as if He were their father.
It takes something of a poet to apprehend and get into the depth, the lusciousness, the spiritual life of a great poem. And so we must be in some way like God in order that we may see God as He is.
Is there any other seat of the Divinity than the earth, sea, air, the heavens, and virtuous minds? why do we seek God elsewhere? He is whatever you see; He is wherever you move.
There are regions beyond the most nebulous outskirts of matter; but no regions beyond the Divine goodness. We may conceive of tracts where there are no worlds, but not of any where there is no God of mercy.
Since, in possessing You, we possess all if we had nothing else, and in not possessing You we have nothing if we had all the rest, oh, my God! I will love You that I may possess You upon earth; and I will possess You that I may love You one day in heaven.
A secret sense of God’s goodness is by no means enough. Men should make solemn and outward expressions of it, when they receive His creatures for their support; a service and homage not only due to Him, but profitable to themselves.
There never was a man of solid understanding, whose apprehensions are sober, and by a pensive inspection advised, but that he hath found by an irresistible necessity one true God and everlasting being.
Of what consequence is it that anything should be concealed from man? Nothing is hidden from God; He is present in our minds and comes into the midst of our thoughts. Comes, do I say?—as if He were ever absent!
If you wish to behold God, you may see Him in every object around; search in your breast, and you will find Him there. And if you do not yet perceive where He dwells, confute me, if you can, and say where He is not.
With God is terrible majesty. Touching the Almighty we cannot find Him out. He is excellent in power and in judgment, and in plenty of justice. He will not afflict. Men do therefore fear Him.
Though, in debating with regard to theories, it be lawful to say whether this or that is consistent with the Divine attributes, yet, when we find that God has actually done any thing, all question about its justice, wisdom, and benevolence is forever out of place.
The kingdom of God which is within us consists in our willing whatever God wills, always, in everything, and without reservation; and thus His kingdom comes; for His will is then done as it is in heaven, since we will nothing but what is dictated by His sovereign pleasure.
Whatever may be the mysteries of life and death, there is one mystery which the cross of Christ reveals to us, and that is the infinite and absolute goodness of God. Let all the rest remain a mystery so long as the mystery of the cross of Christ gives us faith for all the rest.
It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of Him; for the one is unbelief, and the other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity.
It never frightened a Puritan when you bade him stand still and listen to the speech of God. His closet and his church were full of the reverberations of the awful, gracious, beautiful voice for which he listened.
If you were to spend a month feeding on the precious promises of God, you would not be going about with your heads hanging down like bulrushes, complaining how poor you are; but you would lift up your heads with confidence, and proclaim the riches of His grace because you could not help it.
God is everywhere present by His power. He rolls the orbs of heaven with His hand; He fixes the earth with His foot; He guides all creatures with His eye, and refreshes them with His influence; He makes the powers of hell to shake with His terrors, and binds the devils with His word.
We are not to consider the world as a body of God: He is an uniform being, devoid of organs, members, or parts; and they are His creatures, subordinate to Him, and subservient to His will.
Because I believe in a God of absolute and unbounded love, therefore I believe in a loving anger of His which will and must devour and destroy all which is decayed, monstrous, abortive in His universe till all enemies shall be put under His feet, and God shall be all in all.
So long as the word “God” endures in a language will it direct the eyes of men upwards. It is with the Eternal as with the sun, which, if but its smallest part can shine uneclipsed, prolongs the day, and gives its rounded image in the dark chamber.
In all thy actions think God sees thee; and in all His actions labor to see Him; that will make thee fear Him; this will move thee to love Him; the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge, and the knowledge of God is the perfection of love.
Ah, my friends, we must look out and around to see what God is like. It is when we persist in turning our eyes inward and prying curiously over our own imperfections, that we learn to make God after our own image, and fancy that our own darkness and hardness of heart are the patterns of His light and love.
Whenever I think of God I can only conceive of Him as a Being infinitely great and infinitely good. This last quality of the divine nature inspires me with such confidence and joy that I could have written even a miserere in tempo allegro.
We worship unity in trinity, and trinity in union; neither confounding the person nor dividing the substance. There is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost; but the Godhead of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the glory equal, he majesty co-eternal.
The hand of God never tires, nor are its movements aimless. It makes all things subservient to its designs, and, at every turn, disappoints the calculations of man, causing the most insignificant events to expand to the mightiest consequences, while those that have the appearance of mountains vanish into nothing.
Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heaven and in the earth, is Thine; Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted as head above all.
Nothing is more ancient than God, for He was never created; nothing more beautiful than the world, it is the work of that same God; nothing more active than thought, for it flies over the whole universe; nothing stronger than necessity, for all must submit to it.
God’s truth and faithfulness “are a great deep.” They resemble the ocean itself; always there—vast, fathomless, sublime, the same in its majesty, its inexhaustible fullness, yesterday, to-day, and forever; the same in calm and storm, by day and by night; changeless while generations come and pass; everlasting while ages are rolling away.
The wisdom of the Lord is infinite as are also His glory and His power. Ye heavens, sing His praises; sun, moon, and planets, glorify Him in your ineffable language! Praise Him, celestial harmonies, and all ye who can comprehend them! And thou, my soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him and in Him that all exist.
While earthly objects are exhausted by familiarity the thought of God becomes to the devout man continually brighter, richer, vaster; derives fresh luster from all that he observes of nature and Providence, and attracts to itself all the glories of the universe.
However dark our lot may be, there is light enough on the other side of the cloud, in that pure empyrean where God dwells, to irradiate every darkness of this world; light enough to clear every difficult question, remove every ground of obscurity, conquer every atheistic suspicion, silence every hard judgment, light enough to satisfy, nay, to ravish the mind forever.
When my reason is afloat, my faith cannot long remain in suspense, and I believe in God as firmly as in any other truth whatever; in short, a thousand motives draw me to the consolatory side, and add the weight of hope to the equilibrium of reason.
The Christian will sometimes be brought to walk in a solitary path. God seems to cut away his props, that He may reduce him to Himself. His religion is to be felt as a personal, particular, appropriate possession. He is to feel that, as there is but one Jehovah to bless, so there seems to him as though there were but one penitent in the universe to be blessed by Him.
Day and night, and every moment, there are voices about us. All the hours speak as they pass; and in every event there is a message to us; and all our circumstances talk with us; but it is in Divine language, that worldliness misunderstands, that selfishness is frightened at, and that only the children of God hear rightly and happily.
O Thou, above all gods supreme! who broughtest the world out of darkness, and gavest man a heart to feel! By whatsoever name Thou art addressed—God, Father, or Jehovah; the God of Romulus or of Abraham—not the God of one man, but the Father and Judge of all!
Every created thing glorifies God in its place by fulfilling His will, and the great purposes of His providence; but man alone can give tongue to every creature, and pronounce for all a general orthodoxy.
God shows us in Himself, strange as it may seem, not only authoritative perfection, but even the perfection of obedience—an obedience to His own laws; and in the cumbrous movement of those unwieldiest of his creatures we are reminded, even in His divine essence, of that attribute of uprightness in the human creature “that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not.”
“God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good.”***Wheresoever I turn my eyes, behold the memorials of His greatness! of His goodness!***What the world contains of good is from His free and unrequited mercy; what it presents of real evil arises from ourselves.
There is a beauty in the name appropriated by the Saxon nations to the Deity, unequalled, except by His most venerated Hebrew appellation. They call him “God,” which is literally “The Good.” The same word thus signifying the Deity, and His most endearing quality.
We find in God all the excellences of light, truth, wisdom, greatness, goodness and life. Light gives joy and gladness; truth gives satisfaction; wisdom gives learning and instruction; greatness excites admiration; goodness produces love and gratitude; life gives immortality and insures enjoyment.
If we can keep our minds calm on the subject of the “Eternity of God,” if reason does not totter on her seat at the contemplation of underived existence, it will be strange if any other mystery relating to God should disturb us. He who can bring his reason to bow reverently at the idea of a Being who had no beginning, is well prepared to receive any communication of His will.
Not a step can we take in any direction without perceiving the most extraordinary traces of design; and the skill everywhere conspicuous is calculated in so vast a proportion of instances to promote the happiness of living creatures, and especially of ourselves, that we feel no hesitation in concluding that, if we knew the whole scheme of Providence, every part would appear to be in harmony with a plan of absolute benevolence.
Was it possible that Napoleon should win the battle of Waterloo? We answer, No! Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No! Because of God! For Bonaparte to conquer at Waterloo was not the law of the nineteenth century. It was time that this vast man should fall. He had been impeached before the Infinite! He had vexed God! Waterloo was not a battle. It was the change of front of the universe!
God is not to be worshiped with sacrifices and blood; for what pleasure can He have in the slaughter of the innocent? but with a pure mind, a good and honest purpose. Temples are not to be built for Him with stones piled on high; God is to be consecrated in the breast of each.
The moral government of God is a movement in a line onwards towards some grand consummation, in which the principles, indeed, are ever the same, but the developments are always new—in which, therefore, no experience of the past can indicate with certainty what new openings of truth, what new manifestations of goodness, what new phases of the moral heaven may appear.
Many people have their own God; and He is much what the French may mean when they talk of Le bon Dieu—very indulgent, rather weak, near at hand when we want anything, but far away, out of sight, when we have a mind to do wrong. Such a God is as much an idol as if He were an image of stone.
Whoever studies Divine providence, whether it be in relation to the events that concern us, our families, the cities and nations to which we belong; whoever studies the rise and fall of nations and empires, whoever looks at the clashing of armies, will perceive that these are only parts of one grand movement. God is marching on to the accomplishment of an appointed end; namely, the subjugation of the world to Himself.
A source of cheerfulness to a good mind is the consideration of that Being on whom we have our dependence, and in whom, though we behold Him as yet but in the first faint discoveries of His perfections, we see everything that we can imagine as great, glorious, or amiable. We find ourselves everywhere upheld by His goodness and surrounded by an immensity of love and mercy.
God is alpha and omega in the great world: endeavor to make Him so in the little world; make Him thy evening epilogue and thy morning prologue; practice to make Him thy last thought at night when thou sleepest, and thy first thought in the morning when then awakest; so shall thy fancy be sanctified in the night, and thy understanding rectified in the day; so shall thy rest be peaceful, thy labors prosperous, thy life pious, and thy death glorious.
Of old hast Thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; yea all of them shall wax old like a garment: as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed, but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.
Do you feel that you have lost your way in life? Then God Himself will show you your way. Are you utterly helpless, worn out, body and soul? Then God’s eternal love is ready and willing to help you up, and revive you. Are you wearied with doubts and terrors? Then God’s eternal light is ready to show you your way; God’s eternal peace ready to give you peace. Do you feel yourself full of sins and faults? Then take heart; for God’s unchangeable will is, to take away those sins, and purge you from those faults.
It is impossible for the mind which is not totally destitute of piety to behold the sublime, the awful, the amazing works of creation and providence—the heavens with their luminaries, the mountains, the ocean, the storm, the earthquake, the volcano, the circuit of the seasons, and the revolutions of empires—without marking in them all the mighty hand of God, and feeling strong emotions of reverence toward the Author of these stupendous works.
What an immense workman is God! in miniature as well as in the great. With the one hand, perhaps, He is making a ring of one hundred thousand miles in diameter, to revolve round a planet like Saturn, and with the other is forming a tooth in the ray of the feather of a humming-bird, or a point in the claw of the foot of a microscopic insect. When He works in miniature, everything is gilded, polished, and perfect, but whatever is made by human art, as a needle, etc., when viewed by a microscope, appears rough, and coarse, and bungling.
The same Being that fashioned the insect, whose existence is only discerned by a microscope, and gave that invisible speck a system of ducts and other organs to perform its vital functions, created the enormous mass of the planet thirteen hundred times larger than our earth, and launched it in its course round the sun, and the comet, wheeling with a velocity that would carry it round our globe in less than two minutes of time, and yet revolving through so prodigious a space that it takes near six centuries to encircle the sun!
God Himself—His thoughts, His will, His love, His judgments, are men’s home. To think His thoughts, to choose His will, to judge His judgments, and thus to know that He is in us, with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley of the shadow of death is the way home, but only thus, that as all changes have hitherto led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of God, so this greatest of all outward changes—for it is but an outward change—will surely usher us into a region where there will be fresh possibilities of drawing nigh in heart, soul, and mind to the Father of us all.
Running like a gulf-stream through the sea of times comes the affirmation that God has manifested Himself to man, and the best men have affirmed it most persistently. Wherever this affirmation has made its way, the icebergs of skepticism have disappeared, the temperature of virtue has risen, and the sweet fruits of charity have ripened. If the belief be false, then a lie has blessed the world, and the soul is so organized that it reaches its highest state of development in an atmosphere of deception; for it is a fact that man is purest and woman most virtuous where belief in God’s manifestations is most intense and real.
As Phidias contrived his mechanism so that his memory could never be obliterated without the destruction of his work, so the great name of God is interwoven in the texture of all that He has made. His goodness blooms in every flower; His glory beams in every star. There is a God! The sun speaks it in his splendor by day, and the moon in her radiance by night. There is a God! Inanimate nature, from the pebble upon the beach, to the orb that shines in the vaulted sky, declares it; and animate existence, from the tiniest insect, to Gabriel before the throne. The earth is full of Him. His majesty commands the cherubim; His temple is all space; His arm is around all worlds.
We have a friend and protector, from whom, if we do not ourselves depart from Him, nor power nor spirit can separate us. In His strength let us proceed on our journey, through the storms, and troubles, and dangers of the world. However they may rage and swell, though the mountains shake at the tempests, our rock will not be moved: we have one friend who will never forsake us; one refuge, where we may rest in peace and stand in our lot at the end of the days. That same is He who liveth, and was dead; who is alive forevermore; and hath the keys of hell and of death.
As a man exhibits himself in physical forms and actions, so there is one other Spirit, a great, wide, mighty, infinite, eternal Spirit back there in the depths of space, and in the present, and in the future, and in the abysses of space, who at His will wrestles into existence great globes, and keeps them in their position. He builds them, and places on them these mysterious forms of earth which are signals hung out over these abysses to tell coming spirits who He is, what He is, what He does, how high is His throne, and how vast is His power from eternity to eternity, from infinity to infinity through all ages of all time; He is holding forth to men and angels these external tokens of His almighty power, of His infinite skill, and of His everlasting love.