Extracts from Letters
“I have been reading the first half of the Acts of the apostles lately, and have been much struck by the simplicity and diversity of the actings of the Holy Spirit. What a complete absence of form or system — Jerusalem, Samaria, the desert, Damascus, Lydda, Joppa, Caesarea, etc., each successively bring out some new feature or some varied display of the mighty power of the unseen Person who had come down to testify of Christ. Yet every acting is perfect in its place, and in divine beauty and order. The very contemplation of it has made one long with increased desire to be more in the power and current of the blessed Spirit, for His actings are as perfect today as in the days of old.”
“Be much with God, so that your service may be toned and matured by the secret intercourse of your soul with Him. I think this is where we most lamentably fail. The evangelists of a century ago had to lace intense opposition wherever they went, and were often entirely without human support or the fellowship of saints. But their very circumstances of isolation cast them upon God. They were men who knew what it was to travail in birth for souls. The midnight hour and the gray dawn often found them on their faces in an agony of prayer. They had power first with God, and, as a consequence, with the people. They learned the value of souls, and estimated the real worth of the world in the secret of the sanctuary, and when they came forth to preach they awed their listeners as they spoke out in burning words and with loving hearts the message of God. The divine truths they knew were tremendous realities to them, and they spoke of them as such to sinners.”
“I fear it is true of most of us that we are more familiar with the presence of men than with the presence of God. Oh! to have the apostolic spirit — ‘we will give ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word.’ Blessed self-surrender! To be altogether occupied in speaking to God and in speaking for Him! This is the servant’s business. As saints also we need to listen to His word and feed on it for ourselves.”
“One of the first converts in Europe was found in a prison (Acts 16), and was, possibly, addressed afterward by the apostle Paul as a ‘true yoke-fellow’ (Phil. 4:3). Alas! our poor cold hearts have very little idea of the depth to which grace stoops to find its objects, or the height of blessing to which it brings them. Yet, we might well know something of this when we think of ourselves — what we were in the flesh and what we are, through grace, in Christ and by the Holy Ghost.”
“It is good to have our hearts drawn out in prayer for others. How wretched self clings to us! How soon we find our hearts narrowed up from the wide and blessed circle of Christ’s service and glory, to the contracted circle of our service and our success Oh! for hearts expanded by divine affections to burn with ardent desire for His glory, while we ourselves are willing to be anything or nothing at His pleasure! This is the secret of joy, and liberty, and power in service. For when Christ alone is before the heart, and we have no thought of self, we are morally suited to be vessels of the power of the Holy Ghost. He is here for Christ, and if Christ is simply before us, we are in touch with all the blessed purposes in and for which the Holy Ghost is now on earth.”
“I am mere and more cheered by the thought that every bit of true service — that is, service in the power of the Holy Ghost — will be productive of eternal results. It is not given us to know all the results of our work, but we may be quite sure that so much of it as was God’s work and in the power of His Spirit will be for eternity: Whatsoever God doeth it shall be forever.’ This casts us wholly upon God, inasmuch that everything that we contribute is valueless, and it is only as our sufficiency is of God’ that we really succeed. It should therefore be our great object to have the power of God’ (2 Cor. 6:7) with us in service. Results may not always be manifest, but if God has wrought, something has been effected for eternity, and must be manifested sooner or later. Oh! to be more self-emptied, Christ-filled, and Holy Ghost possessed — earthen vessels, carrying the excellency of the power of God! It is no small thing to sink out of our own sight, to have the heart’s vision clear upon Christ, and to be sustained in every bit of service by the power of God.”
“The sternest things that have ever been said as regards sin’s penalty in the future, first passed the tenderest lips that ever proclaimed God’s love to man.”
“What a change comes over a man when Christ has truly conquered his heart. He will answer insult and abuse with magnanimity, patience, fortitude and gentleness. It is here that he has the advantage over the infidel; the infidel may be smarter in argument, he may have read more books, he may be more fluent in speech, he may be more audacious, impertinent, defiant; but when it comes to the real stress and tug of life the Christian has the advantage. When he is smitten on the one cheek he can turn the other also, and that is an argument that has never been answered. When he is mocked and reviled, he will not revile again; and that is a piece of theology that has never been written down by any of the Philistines who have sought to destroy and defile the heritage of God. By your holiness of life, sweetness of temper, love, meekness and humility you can magnify the gospel, and make men say ‘Well, after all, the gospel, come whence it may, that made that man what he is, is the true gospel.”
“He that cleaves unto the creature shall fall with the falling; he that cleaves to the Lord shall stand fast forever.”
“The apostles appear to represent prayer not so much as the practice of Christian life as its very breath and instinctive movement.”
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Our prayers often resemble the mischievous tricks of town children, who knock at their neighbors’ houses and then run away. We often knock at heaven’s door and then run off into the spirit of the world, instead of waiting for entrance and answer.
Satan seeks either to give confidence apart from Christ, or to hinder from confidence in Christ. He well knows that if a soul is looking to Jesus, he has no power over it, and so cannot use it for his own end; nay, that such an one has power over him.
A Pharisee is a man with plenty of divine light in his head, but no divine love in his heart.
One fatal hindrance to a heavenly walk and conversation is our too frequent disputes. A disputatious spirit is a sure sign of an unsanctified spirit. They are usually men least acquainted with the heavenly life who are the most violent disputers about the circumstantialities of religion. Yea, though you are sure that your opinions are true, yet when the chiefest of your zeal is turned to these things, the life of grace soon decays within.
It is a good thing to be so unsatisfied with self as to feel the, supreme need of Christ alone.
There is nothing too great for God to give — nothing too small to be beneath His care.