Anna Robertson Brown Lindsay

“ So stands the Church athwart the landscape of our lives. In each community the church is like a living thing! How every stone grows significant and dear! How the lights and shadows of its arches, the dim, faint-tinted windows, the carvings and tracings, the atmosphere and coloring, all sink into the heart, and make a background for memories that never pass away! Who ever forgets the tones of the old organ, the voice of the choir, the accent, look, and bearing of one's early pastor, the rustle of the leaves without the window, the rush of the fresh summer air, the soft falling of the rain? ”

“ But do not the secular look upon growth as a sort of chase—a chase for more learning, more money, a bigger business, a higher degree, a better position, a brilliant marriage,—a struggle for wealth, renown, acclaim? These things are not in themselves growth, nor its real index. Growth is not a form of avarice. Growth is a vital state of being. Growth is the assimilation of experience. Growth is development in the line of eternal purpose. Growth is the combination of our souls with the things that are, in such a way as to make a perpetual progress toward the things that are to be. ”

“ What influences one most at college, and makes most for one's happiness, is not the fact of the work in recitation-rooms, out of books, laboratories, and under teachers. The glory of college life is, that wherever one goes, the eyes look out on beauty, and wherever one works, there are those whom we love who work beside us.
As one passes down the long college corridors, the eyes fall upon palm and statue, upon frieze and fresco, and the carbon copies of immortal paintings. Everywhere there are the inspirations of sculpture and architecture, of music, literature, and art. ”

“ It is meant to deal with the more heroic aspects of the Christian life.
What is environment? Is it the material horizon that bounds us? If so, where does it end? Our first environment is a crib, a room, our mother's eyes. Sensations of hunger, heat, and motion beat upon the baby-brain; there is a vague murmur of sound in the baby-ears. Yet it is this babe who, in after days, has all the universe for his soul's demesne! His environment stretches out to towns and rivers, shore and sea. Looking upward into space, he can view a star whose distance is a thousand times ten thousand miles. ”

“ When Adam's crook-stick turned over the brown earth to make it fertile, he began the industry of the world. The whole horizon of man's endeavor is spanned by one word, Work. It has built cities, bridged rivers, united continents, and sent the myriad spindles of trade whirring under a thousand changing skies.
Work is the open-sesame of success. It is curious to see how uneasily some men will roam from one end of the earth to the other, trying to find an easy place, a place where work will not be needed or required. There is no such place. The higher the honor, the harder the work. ”

“ He—who knows how to construe a few pages of the classics, who knows how to demonstrate a few mathematical problems, scan a few verses, recite a few odes, carry on a few scientific experiments, undertake a small research—how shall he compete with these rulers of the thought of men?
Then it is that the real rule of a university—its spirit of humility, and of reverence for antiquity—begins. The true university man, born and bred in the century, not in the years, in the race halls, not those alone in his Alma Mater, is neither a scoffer nor an atheist, nor a critic, sceptic, or cynic. ”

“ Mankind is weighted by every previous sin. Where am I free? How am I free? Can I do as I choose? Or are there bourns of conduct beyond which I can never go? Am I foreordained to sin? Do the stars in their courses lay limitations on free will?
There are in man two forces working: a human longing after God, and, in response, God inly working in the soul. The Victor is he who, in his own life, unites these two things: a great longing after the god-like, which makes him yearn for virtue,—and the divine power within him, through which and by which he is triumphant over time and death and sin. ”

“ As there flashes and thrills through all nature a subtle electric vibration which is the supreme form of physical energy, so there runs through the history of mankind a current of spiritual inspiration and power. To possess this magnetism of soul, this heroism of life, this flame-like flower of character, is to be Victor in the great combats of the race. It is the spirit of courage, energy, and love. Nothing is too hard for it, nothing too distasteful, nothing too insignificant. Through all the course of duty it spurs one to do one's best. ”

“ Jesus calls us by our sorrows, Jesus calls us by our dreams. He thrills us by each high aim that life inspires. His voice is one of understanding, of tenderness, of human appeal. How could we love Jesus if He did not sympathize with our ideals? But here is a Divine One in whose sight we are not visionary; who lovingly guards our least hope; who welcomes our faintest spiritual insight; who takes an interest in our social plans, and points out to us the great kingdom that is to be. Christ lays hold of the divine that is in us, and will not let us go. ”

“ A revival is something far different. A revival is an awakening of the community heart and mind. It is a quickening of dead, backsliding, or inattentive souls.
Man as an individual is quite a different person from the same man in a crowd. One is himself alone; the other is himself, plus the influence of the Social Mind. A revival is a social state, in which the social religious enthusiasm is stirred up. It is a lofty form of religion, just as the patriotism which breaks forth in tears and cheers as troops go out to war is a finer type than the mere excitement and fervor of one patriotic man. ”

“ No human authority can bind the conscience, nor set rules and regulations for the soul of man. The prerogative of final direction belongs to God alone. No man may arrogate it—no pastor for people, no husband for wife, no wife for husband, no parent for child. The sadness of the world has been, that men have not always been spiritually free. Freedom has been a social growth—a phase of progress. It has taken wars and persecutions, revolutions and reformations, the blood of saints and martyrs, the sorrow of ages, to plant this precept in the mind of man. ”

“ But in the world there are other men, no taller than I, no older than I—men born within a stone's throw of where I was born—whose hand is on the fate of nations, and whose decrees are universal law!
It is deeply impressive, the way in which one man, born not above myriads of his fellows, begins to rise until by and by he stands head and shoulders above his generation! What is the inner vitality which presses him upward? What is this hidden difference in men by which one remains in the by-eddies of life, and another sweeps out on the crest of the rising tide of history? ”

“ He is not a parasite to be fed by the capitalist, nor is the capitalist a parasite upon the working-power of the working-man. Both are men. The problem is, How shall the capitalist lead the noblest, most public-spirited, and helpful life in relation to those in his employ? How shall the working-man lay hold on the best that life can give? How shall he find a work which he is competent to do, and likes to do, and may be supported by doing—and at the same time have a chance to grow; to enter into the large, free culture-life of the world? ”

“ A congregation is a mysterious and subtle social force. Its effect on a minister he can neither analyze nor explain. But he knows that its power is mesmeric and cannot be escaped. He goes into its presence from an hour of exalted and uplifted prayer, serene, happy, strong, and prepared to speak words of power and life. Gazing at his people—he can never tell why—the words freeze on his lips. An icy hand seems laid upon his heart, and he makes a cold and formal presentation of his glowing theme, and wonders who or what has done it all. ”

“ Shall we give a liberty to a man's library which we refuse to his belief? Must he—and his church—have only his grandfather's ideas, standards, and decrees?
The tenets of a sect are the theological arrangement of belief which for the present seems best; it is the systematic arrangement of facts so far examined, determined, and classified. But no system of theology can be final. Thought is moving on. Experience is progressive. Providence is continually revealing. The race is a creed-builder, as well as a builder of pyramids, cathedrals, and triumphal arches. ”

“ Throughout the world there is being turned to the service of religion the highest training, the most intellectual power. Wars are being wrought for freedom; the Church and the university are joining hands; the rich and the poor are drawing near together for mutual help and understanding; industry is growing to be, not only a crude force, brutal and disregarding, but a high ministry to human needs; the home is becoming more and more the guardian of faith and the shrine of peace; business houses are taking upon them a religious significance; commerce and trade are perceiving ethical duties. ”

“ Jesus calls us by our latent gifts and powers. Which of us has ever exhausted his possibilities? Which of us is all that he might be?
It is an impressive thought, that nothing in the universe ever gets used up. It changes form, motion, semblance,—but the force, the energy, neither wastes nor dies away. Air—it is as fresh as the air that blew over the Pharaohs. Sun—it is as undimmed as the sun that looked down on the completion of Cheops. Earth—it is as unworn as the earth that was trodden by the cavemen.
No generation can ever bequeath to us a single new material atom. ”

“ Weary men and women bear their burdens thither; triumphant souls bring shining faces and uplifted brows; love and dreams cluster round the church, and the life of the soul, silent and hidden, is subtly acted upon by persuasions and convictions that rule the heart amid the fiercest storms and temptations of the world. The church is a sanctuary and shield; it is an emblem of strength and peace. Three angels stand before its altar: Life, Love, Death! Hither is brought the babe for the christening, hither comes the wedding procession, and here are laid, with farewell tears, the quiet dead. ”