C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Holiness
Holiness is an unselfing of ourselves.
The symmetry of the soul.
Holiness is the architectural plan upon which God buildeth up His living temple.
Holiness is happiness; and the more you have of the former, the more you will undoubtedly enjoy of the latter.
What Christianity in her antagonism with every form of unbelief most needs is holy living.
The most holy men are always the most humble men; none so humble on earth as those that live highest in heaven.
Remember that holiness is not the way to Christ, but Christ is the way to holiness.
Seek and possess holiness, and consolation will follow, as assuredly as warmth follows the dispensation of the rays of the sun.
Christ came to give us a justifying righteousness, and He also came to make us holy—not chiefly for the purpose of evidencing here our possession of a justifying righteousness—but for the purpose of forming and fitting us for a blessed eternity.
If it be heaven toward which we journey, it will be holiness in which we delight; for if we cannot now rejoice in having God for our portion, where is our meetness for a world in which God is to be all in all forever and forever?
It must be a prospect pleasing to God Himself to see His creation forever beautifying in His eyes, and drawing nearer Him by greater degrees of resemblance.
The inquirer after holiness should associate with those whose intelligence will instruct him; whose example will guide him; whose conversation will inspire him; whose cautions will warn him.
Blessed is the memory of those who have kept themselves unspotted from the world. Yet more blessed and more dear the memory of those who have kept themselves unspotted in the world.
Holiness consists of three things—separation from sin, dedication to God, transformation into Christ’s image. It is in vain that we talk about the last, unless we know something experimentally about the first.
If it be the characteristic of a worldly man that he desecrates what is holy, it should be of the Christian to consecrate what is secular, and to recognize a present and presiding divinity in all things.
The narrow way, the way of holiness, not only leads to life, but it is life. Walking there, serene are our days, peaceful our nights, happy—high above the disorders and miseries of a wretched world—shall be our hourly communion with God; happy—full of assurance, of calm and sacred triumph, shall be our dying hour.
Holiness is religious principle put into motion. It is the love of God sent forth into circulation, on the feet, and with the hands of love to men. It is faith gone to work. It is charity coined into actions, and devotion breathing benedictions on human suffering, while it goes up in intercession to the Father of all piety.
I make it my constant prayer that would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion; without a humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy nation.
Everything holy is before what is unholy; guilt presupposes innocence, not the reverse; angels, but not fallen ones, were created. Hence man does not properly rise to the highest, but first sinks gradually down from it, and then afterwards rises again; a child can never be considered too innocent and good.
It is of things heavenly and universal declaration, working in them whose hearts God inspireth with the due consideration thereof, and habit or disposition of mind whereby they are made fit vessels both for the receipt and delivery of whatsoever spiritual perfection.