Augustus Hopkins Strong

“ And if some friend we love is lying low, Where human kisses cannot reach his face, O do not blame the loving Father so, But wear your sorrow with obedient grace; And you shall shortly know that lengthened breath Is not the sweetest gift God sends his friend, And that sometimes the sable pall of death Conceals the fairest boon his love can send. If we could push ajar the gates of life, And stand within, and all God's working see, We could interpret all this doubt and strife, And for each mystery find a key. ”

“ When we believe in an ascended Lord at God's right hand, the God of Creation, of Providence, and of Redemption, we have a faith that can conquer the world. Without such a faith in the omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent Christ, we are weak as water in the conflict with heathenism. We may set up Christ on a pedestal, in a pantheon like that of Mrs. Besant, with a statue of Krishna by his side, and the Hindu will laugh at the claims of the gospel. Only faith in Christ as very God can meet the demands of the hour. "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord." ”

“ Sometime, when all life's lessons have been learned, And suns and stars forevermore have set, And things which our weak judgments here have spurned, The things o'er which we grieved with lashes wet, Will flash before us through our life's dark night, As stars shine most in deepest tints of blue: And we shall see how all God's plans were right, And most that seemed reproof was love most true: And if sometimes commingled with life's wine We find the wormwood and rebel and shrink, Be sure a wiser hand than yours or mine Pours out this portion for our lips to drink. ”

“ Ruskin: “The divine mind is as visible in its full energy of operation on every lowly bank and mouldering stone as in the lifting of the pillars of heaven and settling the foundations of the earth; and to the rightly perceiving mind there is the same majesty, the same power, the same unity, and the same perfection manifested in the casting of the clay as in the scattering of the cloud, in the mouldering of dust as in the kindling of the day-star.” ”

“ Huge cars, in which images of the gods are carried about at times of festival, stand in the courtyard. Each car has its bejeweled beast for the god or goddess to ride—a wooden elephant, a wooden bull, a wooden rat—each with trappings of many-colored glass, to imitate rubies and diamonds, and each with its escort of dusky priests, not forgetting to follow the foreign visitor and hold out their hands for alms. Yet in these corridors there were prostrated many absorbed and eager worshipers, seeking protection or aid from a deity more demonlike than divine. ”

“ So that, when we are delighted with flowery meadows and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that we see only the emanations of the sweet benevolence of Jesus Christ. When we behold the fragrant rose and lily, we see his love and purity. So the green trees and fields, and singing of birds, are the emanations of his infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness of trees and vines are shadows of his beauty and loveliness. ”

“ For a cap and bells our lives we pay: Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking; 'T is heaven alone that is given away, 'T is only God may be had for the asking.” John G. Whittier: “The hour draws near, howe'er delayed and late, When at the Eternal Gate, We leave the words and works we call our own, And lift void hands alone For love to fill. Our nakedness of soul Brings to that gate no toll; Giftless we come to him who all things gives, And live because he lives.” ”

“ All the light of conscience is his light; all the progress of science is his revelation. It was he who led the children of Israel by a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, and who thundered and lightened from Sinai at the giving of the Law. "The Rock that followed" the chosen people through the wilderness and gave them drink "was Christ." Every reform within the bounds of heathenism has been due to him. Confucius and Buddha, so far as they uttered truth, were his messengers. He has never left humanity without a witness to the power and goodness of God. ”

“ Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 321, 322—“Hebrew poetry never deals with outward nature for its own sake. The eye never rests on beauty for itself alone. The heavens are the work of God's hands, the earth is God's footstool, the winds are God's ministers, the stars are God's host, the thunder is God's voice. What we call Nature the Jew called God.” ”

“ Japan is a land for poetry and song, a land to awaken the loftiest patriotism, a land to inspire and lead the world. Provided, ah yes! provided, it can be converted to Christ, and made his servant. The Japanese is a natural orator; he has organizing ability of the highest order; he is accessible, yet independent. Now is the time to make him a preacher of the gospel to all the East. China and India have already felt the influence of his military and political progress. Let us, by pouring in the light of Christianity, make him also their leader in true religion! ”

“ Complete atonement thou hast made, And to the utmost farthing paid Whate'er thy people owed; How then can wrath on me take place, If sheltered in thy righteousness And sprinkled with thy blood? Turn, then, my soul, unto thy rest; The merits of thy great High-priest Speak peace and liberty; Trust in his efficacious blood, Nor fear thy banishment from God, Since Jesus died for thee!”
Justification, however, is not eternal in the past. We are to repent unto the remission of our sins (Act 2:38) . Remission comes after repentance. Sin is not pardoned before it is committed. ”

“ Homer: “There is nothing whatever more wretched than man.” Seneca praises death as the best invention of nature. Byron: “Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, Count o'er thy days from anguish free, And know, whatever thou hast been, 'Tis something better not to be.” But it has been left to Schopenhauer and Hartmann to define will as unsatisfied yearning, to regard life itself as a huge blunder, and to urge upon the human race, as the only measure of permanent relief, a united and universal act of suicide. ”

“ The world has moved very fast during the past decade. Modern inventions have given new wings to thought, the nations have been coming to self-consciousness, freedom is in the air, even war is teaching the absurdity of committing the destiny of a whole people to the arbitrary rule of any single monarch. The success of Japan in her struggle with Russia aroused the whole East. China has awaked from the sleep of ages. And India is the scene of unrest, and will not be satisfied until her vast populations are given a larger share in her government. ”

“ Even the human judge, in passing sentence, commonly endeavors so to set forth the guilt of the criminal that he shall see his doom to be just. So God will awaken the consciences of the lost, and lead them to pass judgment on themselves. Each lost soul can say as Byron's Manfred said to the fiend that tortured his closing hour: “I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey, But was my own destroyer.” Thus God's final judgment will be only the culmination of a process of natural selection, by which the unfit are eliminated, and the fit are caused to survive. ”

“ No plan whatever of a finite creation can fully express the infinite perfection of God. Since God, however, is immutable, he must always have had a plan of the universe; since he is perfect, he must have had the best possible plan. As wise, God cannot choose a plan less good, instead of one more good. As rational, he cannot between plans equally good make a merely arbitrary choice. Here is no necessity, but only the certainty that infinite wisdom will act wisely. As no compulsion from without, so no necessity from within, moves God to create the actual universe. Creation is both wise and free. ”

“ The sending of missionaries is dependent upon the zeal and liberality of the churches in our land. But how can one who is not sure that Jesus ever uttered the words of the Great Commission urge the churches to fulfil that command of Christ? How can one who has never felt his own need of an atonement adjure his brethren, by Christ's death for their sins, not to let the heathen perish? How can one who has had no experience of Christ as a present and divine Saviour, have power to stand against the rationalism and apathy of the church? ”

“ When they shall die, then God himself shall die; They live, they live in blest eternity.” God could not let Christ die, and he cannot let us die. Southey: “They sin who tell us love can die. With life all other passions fly; All others are but vanity. In heaven ambition cannot dwell, Nor avarice in the vaults of hell; They perish where they had their birth; But love is indestructible.”
Emerson, Threnody on the death of his beloved and gifted child: “What is excellent, As God lives, is permanent: Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain; Heart's love will meet thee again.” ”

“ The pain and death of the finger is the reaction of the whole against the treason of the part. The finger suffers pain. But are there no results of pain to the body? Does not the body feel pain also? How plain it is that no such pain can be confined to the single part! The heart feels, aye, the whole organism feels, because all the parts are members one of another. It not only suffers, but that suffering tends to remedy the evil and to remove its cause. The body summons its forces, pours new tides of life into the dying member, strives to rid the finger of the ligature that binds it. ”

“ Evangelization makes men evangelical. When you tell the gospel to a heathen sinner, you must put it in the simplest terms, or he will fail to understand it. Your effort to reach his mind and heart clarifies your own. To one condemned and lost, no mere human example in Jesus will suffice; you need an atoning Saviour. To one struggling with demonic powers and helpless in their grasp, no mere man of Nazareth, no Jesus, according to the flesh, will answer; you need the Lord of Glory, who was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. ”

“ It is choice, not creation, that is our destiny—a drop of water that can choose whether it will go into the Rhine or the Rhone. Gravity carries it down,—it chooses only its direction. Impulses do not come from the will, but from the sensibility; but free will chooses between these impulses.” Bowne, Metaphysics, 169—“Freedom is not a power of acting without, or apart from, motives, but simply a power of choosing an end or law, and of governing one's self accordingly.” ”

“ Through blessing and through curse, For better and for worse, We will be one till that dread hour shall come. Life, with its myriad grasp, Our yearning souls shall clasp, By ceaseless love and still expectant wonder, In bonds that shall endure, Indissolubly sure, Till God in death shall part our paths asunder. ”

“ The months I have spent in these heathen lands have made deep impression upon me, and the problem of heathenism has loomed up before me as never before. When one sees thousands prostrating themselves in a Mohammedan mosque and chanting in unison their ascription of greatness to God, or when one sees a Hindu devotee so absorbed in his prayer to a senseless idol that he is unconscious of the kicks and shouts of the passers-by, one comes to realize that man must have a god. The religious instinct is a part of his nature. It is [202] more than a mere capacity for religion. ”

“ Seeking to be a god, man became a slave; seeking independence, he ceased to be master of himself. Once his intellect was pure,—he was supremely conscious of God, and saw all things also in God's light. Now he was supremely conscious of self, and saw all things as they affected self. This self-consciousness—how unlike the objective life of the first apostles, of Christ and of every loving soul! Once man's affections were pure,—he loved God supremely, and other things in subordination to God's will. ”

“ So the world is to be regarded as inflammable material to be set on fire from on high. Our Lord's life on earth is a burning-glass, concentrating rays of light and heat upon the souls of men. When the heating has gone on far enough, and the sparks of incipient conflagration have been sufficiently diffused, suddenly spiritual flame will burst up everywhere and will fill the earth. This is the second advent of him who kindled humanity to new life by his first advent. ”

“ That this is the true theology of missions, the history of missions is the best of all proofs. We need not only to touch the intellect, but also to touch the heart. We need to furnish a motive that will win to action the sluggish and selfish devotees of systems century-old that have enslaved them. One message, and one only, has accomplished this result, and that is the message of the Cross. Not the presentation of God's greatness and power, but the story of the personal Jesus and his giving up of his life for sinners, has moved men to give themselves to him. ”

“ The creatures who derive all from him can add nothing to him. All our worship is only the rendering back to him of that which is his own. He notices us only for his own sake and not because our little rivulets of praise add anything to the ocean-like fulness of his joy. For his own sake, and not because of our misery or our prayers, he redeems and exalts us. To make our pleasure and welfare his ultimate end would be to abdicate his throne. He creates, therefore, only for his own sake and for the sake of his glory. ”

“ Sin is a germ of infinite expansion. The single sin, left to itself, would never cease in its effects of evil,—it would dethrone God. “The idea of disproportion between sin and its punishment grows out of a belittling of sin and its guilt. One who regards murder as a slight offence will think hanging an outrageous injustice. Theodore Parker hated the doctrine of eternal punishment, [pg 1051] because he considered sin as only a provocation to virtue, a step toward triumph, a fall upwards, good in the making.” ”

“ There is no need of his being a third factor over and above the life of nature and the life of man.”Hartley Coleridge: “Be not afraid to pray,—to pray is right. Pray if thou canst with hope, but ever pray, Though hope be weak, or sick with long delay; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light. Far is the time, remote from human sight, When war and discord on the earth shall cease; Yet every prayer for universal peace Avails the blessed time to expedite. Whate'er is good to wish, ask that of heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see ”

“ The hymn “O sing to me of heaven, when I am called to die” is not true to Christian experience. In that hour the soul sings, not of heaven, but of Jesus and his cross. As houses on river-flats, accessible in time of flood by boats, keep safe only goods in the upper story, so only the treasure laid up above escapes the destroying floods of the last day. Dorner: “The soul will possess true freedom, in that it can no more become unfree; and that through the indestructible love-energy springing from union with God.” ”

“ Schopenhauer united Kant's thought, ‘The inmost life of all things is one,’ with the Hindoo insight, ‘The life of all these things, That art Thou.’ To him music shows best what the will is: passionate, struggling, wandering, restless, ever returning to itself, full of longing, vigor, majesty, caprice. Schopenhauer condemns individual suicide, and counsels resignation. That I must ever desire yet never fully attain, leads Hegel to the conception of the absolutely active and triumphant spirit. Schopenhauer finds in it proof of the totally evil nature of things. ”

“ So beliefs crystallize into institutions. But Christian faith is something more vital than the common beliefs of the world. Linking the soul to Christ, it brings Christians into living fellowship with one another before any bonds of outward organization exist; outward organization, indeed, only expresses and symbolizes this inward union of spirit to Christ and to one another. Horatius Bonar: “Thou must be true thyself, If thou the truth wouldst teach; Thy soul must overflow, if thou Another's soul wouldst reach; It needs the overflow of heart To give the lips full speech. ”

“ If the reform-theory of penalty is correct, then to punish crime, without asking about reformation, makes the state the transgressor; its punishments should be proportioned, not to the greatness of the crime, but to the sinner's state; the death-penalty should be abolished, upon the ground that it will preclude all hope of reformation. But the same theory would abolish any final judgment, or eternal punishment; for, when the soul becomes so wicked that there is no more hope of reform, there is no longer any justice in punishing it. The greater the sin, the less the punishment ”

“ And yet, while this view of the atonement exalts the holiness of God, it surpasses every other view in its moving exhibition of God's love—a love that is not satisfied with suffering in and with the sinner, or with making that suffering a demonstration of God's regard for law; but a love that sinks itself into the sinner's guilt and bears his penalty,—comes down so low as to make itself one with him in all but his depravity—makes every sacrifice but the sacrifice of God's holiness—a sacrifice which God could not make, without ceasing to be God ”

“ His own glory is an end which comprehends and secures, as a subordinate end, every interest of the universe. The interests of the universe are bound up in the interests of God. There is no holiness or happiness for creatures except as God is absolute sovereign, and is recognized as such. It is therefore not selfishness, but benevolence, for God to make his own glory the supreme object of creation. Glory is not vain-glory, and in expressing his ideal, that is, in expressing himself, in his creation, he communicates to his creatures the utmost possible good. ”

“ God breathes, not speaks, his verdicts, felt not heard—Passed on successively to each court, I call Man's conscience, custom, manners, all that make More and more effort to promulgate, mark God's verdict in determinable words, Till last come human jurists—solidify Fluid results,—what's fixable lies forged, Statute,—the residue escapes in fume, Yet hangs aloft a cloud, as palpable To the finer sense as word the legist welds. ”

“ Death becomes a curse, by being a fear and a torment. Animals have not this fear. But in man death stirs up conscience. Redemption takes away the fear, and death drops back into its natural aspect, or even becomes a gateway to life. Death is a curse to no animal but man. The retributive element to death is the effect of sin. When man has become perfected, death will cease to be of use, and will, as the last enemy, be destroyed. Death here is Nature's method of securing always fresh, young, thrifty life, and the greatest possible exuberance and joy of it. ”

“ Kant's “I ought, therefore I can” is the relic of man's original consciousness of freedom—the freedom with which man was endowed at his creation—a freedom, now, alas! destroyed by sin. Or it may be the courage of the soul in which God is working anew by his Spirit. For Kant's “Ich soll, also Ich kann,” Julius Müller would substitute: “Ich sollte freilich können, aber Ich kann nicht”—“I ought indeed to be able, but I am not able.” Man truly repents only when he learns that his sin has made him unable to repent without the renewing grace of God. ”

“ If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair, Ever the wonder waxeth more and more, So that we say ‘All this hath been before, All this hath been, I know not when or where.’ So, friend, when first I looked upon your face, Our thought gave answer each to each, so true—Opposed mirrors each reflecting each—That though I knew not in what time or place, Methought that I had often met with you, And either lived in either's heart and speech. ”

“ The whole Christian Church throughout the ages has been called the overflow of Jesus Christ, who is infinitely greater than it. Let Lake Erie be the symbol of Christ, the pre-existent Logos, the Eternal Word, God revealed in the universe. Let Niagara River be a picture to us of this same Christ now confined to the narrow channel of His manifestation in the flesh, but within those limits showing the same eastward current and downward gravitation which men perceived so imperfectly before. ”

“ How dare a man pluck from the Lord's hand, for his wild and reckless use, a soul and body for which he died? How dare he, the Lord's bondsman, steal his joy, carrying it off by himself into the wilderness, like an animal his prey, instead of asking it at the hands and under the blessing of the Master? ”

“ From this deeper depth, where man is rooted and grounded in God, rise aspirations for a better life. These are not due to the man himself, but to Christ, the immanent God, who ever works within him. Fanny J. Crosby: “Rescue the perishing, Care for the dying.... Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter, Feelings lie buried that grace can restore; Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness, Chords that were broken will vibrate once more.” ”

“ The great system is a harp all whose strings are in tune but one, and that one jarring string makes discord throughout the whole. The whole universe shall feel the influence, and shall be reduced to harmony, when that one string, the world in which we live, shall be put in tune by the hand of love and mercy”—freely quoted from Leitch, God's Glory in the Heavens, 327-330. ”

“ Says Dorner: ‘So long as the manhood is yet unconscious, the person of the Logos is not yet the central ego of this man. At the beginning, the Logos does not impart himself, so far as he is person or self-consciousness. He keeps apart by himself, just in proportion as the manhood fails in power of perception.’ At the beginning, then, this man is not yet the God-man; the Logos only works in him, and on him. ‘The unio personalis grows and completes itself,—becomes ever more all-sided and complete. Till the resurrection, there is a relative separability still.’ Thus Dorner. ”

“ What reasonable man but will yield that the being of the moral law hath no necessary connection with the being of God? That the actions of men not conformable to this law should be sin, that death should be the punishment of sin, these are the constitutions of God, proceeding from him not by way of necessity of nature, but freely, as effects and products of his eternal good pleasure.” This is to make God an arbitrary despot. We should not say that God makes law, nor on the other hand that God is subject to law, but rather that God is law and the source of law. ”

“ Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:131—“The union exalts the human, as light brightens the air, heat gives glow to the iron, spirit exalts the body, the Holy Spirit hallows the believer by union with his soul. Fire gives to iron its own properties of lighting and burning; yet the iron does not become fire. Soul gives to body its life-energy; yet the body does not become soul. The Holy Spirit sanctifies the believer, but the believer does not become divine; for the divine principle is the determining one. ”

“ The historical sacrifice was a burning-glass which focused the diffused rays of the Sun of righteousness and made them effective in the melting of human hearts. The sufferings of Christ take deepest hold upon us only when we see in them the two contrasted but complementary truths: that holiness must make penalty to follow sin, and that love must share that penalty with the transgressor. ”

“ Religion, 245—“The world of finite intelligences, though distinct from God, is still in its ideal nature one with him. That which God creates, and by which he reveals the hidden treasures of his wisdom and love, is still not foreign to his own infinite life, but one with it. In the knowledge of the minds that know him, in the self-surrender of the hearts that love him, it is no paradox to affirm that he knows and loves himself.” ”