Henry Benjamin Whipple

“ Sin, sorrow, and death are not the inventions of a Christian priest. "There is only one Name under heaven whereby any man can be saved." We have nothing to do with results. It is ours to work and pray, and pray and work and die. So falls the seed into the earth, and so God gives the harvest. When the Church sends out embassies commensurate with the dignity of our King, it will be time to talk of failure. Is the kingdom of Christ the only kingdom which has not the right to lay tribute on its citizens? The only failure is the failure to do God's work. ”

“ To thousands God is a name, the Bible a tradition, faith an opinion, and heaven and hell fables. But that which gives us the deepest sadness and makes all Christian work more difficult is that so many of those to whom the people look for example have given up the Bible, the Lord's Day, the house of God, and Christian faith. Alas! they are telling these weary toilers whose lives are clouded by anxiety and sorrow that there is no hereafter. "They know not what they do." They are sowing to the wind and will reap the whirlwind. May God show them the danger before if is too late! ”

“ We shall take care of the people or the people will take care of us. The people are the rulers; the power of the future is in their hands. Limit their horizon to this life, let penury, sickness, and sorrow change the man to a wolf, let him know no God and Father Who hears his cry, no Saviour to help, no brother to bind up his wounds, let there be on the one side wealth and luxury and wanton waste, and on the other side poverty, misery, and despair, and there will be, as there has been, a cry for blood. We wonder why men pass by the Church to found clubs and brotherhoods and orders. ”

“ There is but one Book which can bring light to homes of sorrow, one light to scatter clouds and darkness, one message to lead wandering folk unto God. This blessed Book will be to every soldier and lonely missionary what it was to Livingstone dying alone in Africa, or to Captain Gardiner dead on the desolate shores of Patagonia, whose finger pointed to the words, "The Blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." ”

“ All of us have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor. To that kind Providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means to establish our nation. Have we forgotten our powerful Friend? Do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance? I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live the more convinced I am that God governs in the affairs of men. If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? ”

“ The ever-blessed Comforter is quickening in Christian hearts the divine spirit of charity. Christians are learning more and more the theology which centres in the person of Jesus Christ. It is this which worldwide is creating a holy enthusiasm to stay the flood of intemperance, impurity, and sin at home, and gather lost heathen folk into the fold of Christ. In our age every branch of the Church can call over the roll of its confessors and martyr, and so link its history to the purest ages of the Church. ”

“ We must believe in our work; we cannot make others believe until we first believe ourselves. Our feet must be upon the rock; there is no question of success or failure there. It may be Athanasius against the world, but the Athanasius and the faith of Christ will conquer.
And lastly, brothers, never since man has lived on the earth has there been an hour when a Christian man might be so thankful to God that he can live and that he can work. In all the ages of this world's history there never have been such marvels before man's eyes as we see to-day. ”

“ It is ours to work and bide our time; so did our fathers, and so will God give the harvest. I should wrong my heart and yours to-day, if I forgot the daughters of the Revolution. We might have had no Washington but for the lessons he learned at that mother's knee, that his duty to God was to believe in Him, to fear Him and to love Him with all his heart, with all his mind, with all his soul and with all his strength, to worship Him, to give Him thanks, to put his whole trust in Him, to call on Him, to honor His holy name and His word and to love Him truly all the days of his life ”

“ We are perplexed by the unbelief and sin of our time. The Christian faith is assailed not only with scoffs of old as Celsus and Julian, but also with the keenest intellectual criticism of Divine revelation, the opposition of alleged scientific facts, and a Corinthian worldliness whose motto is "Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." In many places Christian homes are dying out. Crime and impurity are coming in as a flood, and anarchy raises its hated form in a land where all men are equal before the law. The lines between the Church and the world are dim. ”

“ It was a singular providence that this continent, laden with the bounty of God, was unoccupied by civilization for thousands of years. America was discovered by a devout son of the Latin Church, whose name— Christopher, Christ-bearer, and Columbus, the dove—ought to have been the prophecy that he would bear the Gospel to the New World. It was at a time when Savonarola, with the zeal of a prophet of God and the eloquence of a Chrysostom, was laboring to awaken the Church to a new life. No nation ever had a nobler mission than Spain. ”

“ No one that has walked this earth could use the words which every day rested upon His lips: "I and the God you worship are one." "I am the bread that is come down from heaven, and the bread I shall give you is My flesh, and I give it for the life of the world." "I am the resurrection and the life; if any man shall believe in Me, if he were dead he shall live"—unless he were God incarnate. The miracles of Jesus were not violations of the laws of nature ”

“ What other nation has come out of the horrors of civil war with victors and vanquished vieing with each other in love for one common country? Where has the hand of the assassin bowed the whole people by the leader's grave? ”

“ Permit us to be free as you are, and our union with you will be our greatest glory. But if your ministers sport with human rights, if neither the voice of justice, the principles of the constitution, nor humanity will restrain them from shedding human blood in an impious cause, 'we will never submit.' We ask peace, liberty and safety, and for this we have laid our prayer at the feet of the king as a loving father." The battles at Lexington, Concord and Ticonderoga preceded the second meeting of Congress in May, 1775. ”

“ Infidelity answers no questions, heals no wounds, fulfils no hopes. The Gospel will do, is doing, to-day what it has done through all the ages: leading men out of sin and darkness and despair to the liberty of sons of God.
In a day of division and unrest there will be many questions which perplex earnest souls. Some will dwell on the subjective side of the faith, others will think most of its manifestations in the life. These questions will affect organization for Christian work, public worship, and find expression in the ritual of the Church. ”

“ If I had time to-day, I would love to tell you the story that is inwrought in the history of our noble Missionary Bishops; men who have hazarded their lives for the Lord Jesus. I wish I could tell you of their ventures of faith, foundations for Christian schools which they have laid with prayers and watered with tears, and with a prophet's eye looked forward to a future when the land will swarm with millions of souls, that so by Christian nurture and Christian training the Church may fulfil the Master's words, "Feed my lambs." ”

“ Christian Work—We rejoice at every sign that Christians realize that wealth is a sacred trust, for which they shall give an account. We rejoice more that they are giving that personal service which is a law of His kingdom. Men and women of culture and gentle birth are going into the abodes of sickness and sorrow to comfort stricken homes and lead sinful folk to the Saviour. Brotherhoods, Sisterhoods, and deaconesses are multiplying. Never was there greater need for their holy work. Many of our own baptized children have drifted away from all faith. ”

“ SIN, sorrow and death have not been invented by Christian priests. They are world facts, they belong to every home, and are hid in every man's heart. There can be no design without a designer, no law without a lawgiver, no creation without a creator. So I say, with the leading scientist of England, "God is a necessity of human thought." Is this God an inexorable ruler, whose right is His infinite might? or is He an eternal Father, whose might is His infinite right? ”

“ Government is a delegated trust from God, who alone has the right to govern. He gives to every nation the right to say in what form this trust shall be clothed. No man has the right to be his brother's master. Take away the truth that government is a trust which comes from God, and you have left nothing between man and man but cunning and brute force. ”

“ An Apostolic Church has a graver work than discussion about its name or the amending of its canons and rubrics. I fear that some of this unbelief is a revolt from a caricature of God. These mechanical ideas about the universe are the outcome of a mechanical theology which has lost sight of the Fatherhood of God. There is much honest unbelief. In these yearnings of humanity, in its clubs, brotherhoods, and orders, in their readiness to share all things with their brothers, I see unconscious prophecies of the brotherhood of all men as the children of one God and Father. ”

“ Millions for whom Christ died have not so much as heard that there is a Saviour. It will heal no divisions to say, Who is at fault? The sin of schism does not lie at one door. If one has sinned by self-will, the other has sinned as deeply by lack of charity and love. ”

“ The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not a philosophy, it is not a dogma; it is the story of a Person, a real hand to grasp, a real Saviour to love, a real God to save. Marvelous as is this story that never can grow old and will be the burden of the songs of the redeemed, more wonderful is the Christ of history. Men ask for proof. You do not ask for proof of a sun when the world is bending low with golden harvests The other day there was a gathering of great men, scholars, philosophers. ”

“ We believe that ours is a pure branch of the apostolic Church; that it has a threefold ministry; that its two sacraments—Baptism and the Supper of the Lord—are of perpetual obligation, and are divine channels of grace; that the faith once delivered to the saints is contained in the Catholic creeds, and has the warrant of Holy Scripture which was written by inspiration of God. On this centennial day I shall speak of the history and mission of this branch of the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ. ”

“ You are living at a time when impenetrable barriers have been broken down; when God is fusing the nations of the earth into a common brotherhood; when there is not a place in the wide world, where, if you will, you may not carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Nay, more; you are part of a race that God in His Providence seems to have placed in the forefront of the nations of the earth. I am not speaking of Anglo-Saxons, but I am speaking of the race that God has been fusing out of every tongue, and tie, and kin of the earth ”

“ The providence of God has broken down impenetrable barriers—the doors of hermit nations have been opened; commerce has bound men in common interests, and so prepared "a highway for our God"—Japan, India, China, Africa, Polynesia, amid the solitudes of icy north, and in the lands of tropic suns, world-wide there are signs of the coming of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. The veil which has so long blinded the eyes of the ancient people, our Lord's kinsmen according to the flesh, is being taken away. ”

“ I say it reverently, brother, you cannot conceive of a God who could create a world like this, if He can feel one throb of pity for His children, unless you believe He has provided a remedy for sin, sorrow, and death. The coming of God into the family of man is an absolute necessity of the very being of God. The incarnation is the outcome of the possibility that God can love. I turn then to this record and I ask, is this Jesus the friend that the world has waited for and looked for? ”

“ In so grave a matter as the restoration of organic unity, we may not surrender anything which is of Divine authority, or accept terms of communion which are contrary to God's Word. We cannot recognize any usurpation of the rights and prerogatives of national Churches which have a common ancestry, lest we heal "the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly," and say "peace, where there is no peace;" but we do say that all which is temporary and of human choice or preference we will forego, from our love to our own kinsmen in Christ. ”

“ President, the small progress we have made after five weeks is a melancholy proof of the imperfection of human understanding—we have gone back to ancient history for models of government—we have viewed modern states—we find none of their constitutions suitable to our circumstances—we are groping in the dark to find political truth, and are scarcely able to distinguish it when presented to us. ”

“ We may fall in battle; we may sow the seed and die; but it will fall into the ground and God will give the harvest. When we reach the other home— not a place of bodiless shades; not a confused throng of nameless spirits, but a home of brothers in our Father's house—next to seeing the Saviour, next to having the old times re-united, will be the comfort of meeting some one that we have helped home. ”

“ Has the Gospel failed in Japan, where a nation is awakening into the life of Christian civilization? Never has God given His Church more blessed rewards. The century which has passed is only our school of preparation. The voice of God's Providence says: "Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward." We have some problems peculiar to ourselves. Twenty-five years ago four millions of slaves received American citizenship. The nation owes them a debt of gratitude. ”

“ Every invention of man ministers to the life that is between the cradle and the grave. Man has created nothing. The lightning would run its circuit in the Garden of Eden as well as when Morse made it man's messenger. The veil has been lifted so that man can look into God's storehouse and read laws as old as creation. But the body is not the man. ”