J. Rendel Harris

“ He who has studied well his coming and his going, has written out two books of his Bible: the Genesis and Exodus of his book of life.
Birth and death are alike mysterious; they are something like the vails of the ancient tabernacle, each curiously wrought of purple and scarlet and fine twined linen, but the vail of the most holy place had in addition cunning work and tracery of cherubim. So with our birth and dying—we may learn much from either; but death has the greater wonders traced upon its vail, if we could but get into the right light to read them. ”

“ I am amazed to find how much of true religion may be resolved into that one word "dependence." I can remember the time when I could not enter into the Psalm, "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty, neither do I exercise myself in great matters, nor in things too high for me"; nor sing the verse, "I would be treated as a child, and guided where I go." Now it is, I hope, different. Moreover, we are sure that this spirit of dependence is one of the main features of the angelic life; we cannot imagine it otherwise; for the source of the river is the throne. ”

“ Jesus says, "My yoke is easy and My burden is light"; and I think to those who follow Him faithfully He says, "My yoke is easier and My burden lighter every day."
We learn to live with God until it becomes impossible to live without Him; we learn to lean on Him, until we acquire an instinctive abhorrence of all broken reeds. We begin with cherubim and a flaming sword that turns every way to keep the way of the tree of life; but we end with the same flashing armoury turning us from every path except that which leads to glory and honour and immortality and the city of God. ”

“ But perhaps you will say, "My light is so small that I cannot be a help or a witness to any; I have not light enough to show any the right way." Not so: a glow-worm in the hedge can tell a man which way to walk, if it will only shine. We may not all of us have the privilege of saying with John Wesley, "The world is my parish." Our parish may be small, and we may be lights indoors, shining for only one neglected soul in the house, or for young ones who have to be trained for the Lord, or for the men on our own staircase in college, or with whom we walk in afternoons. ”

“ He always chose thee to be with Him in special times when He went apart for prayer: to whom much is given, of them will much be required. Oh! how hast thou fallen!" and the spirits away in the darkness would say, "Thou art become even as one of us."
Then he would remember how in his own family, almost in his own flesh, he had received special mercy; and that work of healing would rise up to condemn him. Sin against mercy is sin without mercy; a thousand times thou art condemned, having sinned against such light and privilege and grace. ”

“ It seems almost impossible for us ever to become saints. When we get to understand a little about righteousness and holiness, we do feel utterly inadequate to choose such a righteousness, or to compel ourselves to live out such a holiness.
The only remedy is the Divine enlargement of heart which comes from the visitation of the Spirit. We carry our brokenness to God; we put our helpless will at His feet, and He energises it, and sends us back from the altar-steps, or from the glory where we have met with Him, able to say, "I delight to do Thy will, O my God." ”

“ If even He who said, 'Father, I thank Thee that Thou hearest Me always,' has been refused in His petition; even God is against thee, and the stars in their courses rule thee down, Simon, son of Jonas."
Another bitter shaft enters his heart: "Dost thou remember, Peter, how the Lord said of His own followers, 'I have kept them in Thy name, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition'? Thou hast not only made vain the Lord's prayers, but denied the Lord's faith, and caused Him to appear before heaven and earth as a false witness. ”

“ How eager we should all be to make the face of heaven sparkle! we should take every candle and lamp that we could lay hands on, light them up, and watch for the gleaming of the new wonder in the sky. Does that seem strange? Did you never read that "They that are wise shall shine as the sun, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever"? The lamps and candles in God's world do become suns and stars; the illumination that you will have by and by will depend on the little candle that you are to-day ”

“ The light of love will survive the light of enthusiasm, as Christ outlasts John the Baptist; enthusiasm must be swallowed up of love.
A lighted lamp is no respecter of persons; it shines in all directions and upon all people and things, being an imitation, within its measure, of the sun, concerning whom it is said, "There is nothing hid from the heat thereof." Is there this property of radiation about the light that God has given you? Have you learnt and practically entered into the truth that the supreme love is also the universal love, and that God is no respecter of persons? ”

“ The triumphant scenes of the Apocalypse are not all future; but even now we know something of living and reigning with Christ in a fellowship above sin and above sorrow. For it was of sorrow rather than of sin that the Apostle was speaking. Our principle is one of holy indifference—an experience far removed from mere apathy. We do not simply say with Buddha that sorrow drops off from him who has finished the path, as water drops from a lotus leaf. We are not sure whether the sorrows always do disappear from the burdened life like that. ”

“ The prophets of old days are like the flight of meteors across the sky—very bright while they last, but no settled and abiding glory. John the Baptist is a burning and a shining lamp; but he says of himself, "I must decrease"; and with the words, "He must increase," we are pointed on to Christ, the true Light of the world, which if any man follow he shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life; who gives His own name and character to those whom He receives as disciples, telling them, "Let your light shine." ”

“ We must not separate the life from the worship; in fact they are one: we learn that from the description of the ceaseless adoration of those nearest the throne; they rest not day nor night saying, "Holy, holy, holy." Are we to suppose from this that their existence is occupied in the mere repetition of an everlasting Trisagion; or that, as Beecher once said, "they stand like wax candles round the throne, uttering an occasional Hallelujah"? Is it not rather God's way of showing us how He is unceasingly glorified in those who live nearest Him, whose lives worship Him? ”

“ We are not to offer, either to God or man, of that which costs us nothing. The noblest thing in God's world is a lavished life; whereof God has given us plain proof in this—that "He so loved the world that He gave His Son"; and which Paul confirms as he says to some of those to whom he had been the means of bringing light, "I will most gladly spend and be spent for you." "I will burn up for you, and then when I am burnt out, I will be content with the mere candle-end of a life, extinct for the love of Jesus." ”

“ We use the words to convince people of the definite nature of conversion; we say it is as real as a passage from death to life, and as truly marked; it is the advent of a new life in the soul. But can we honestly go on to base the assertion on the fact of our own love to men, to—souls? Would we venture to stand or fall by this test, "I have loved, I love," and not be afraid that our good angels would rise up to bear witness against us as we said it? ”

“ And even if we had been pointed to this passage containing the revelation of God at the bush, we should probably only have seen in it another of the magnificent affirmations of the Divine self-existence, another of the grand "I Am's" which sound forth at times from the mount of cloud and vision. We might even have gone so far as to see how much more wonderful it is to have a faith in which, with wonderful simplicity, God says "I Am," than merely to have a religion which affirms "He is," and we should have been glad that at any time there were men to whom God spoke for Himself. ”

“ For instance: both the Spirit and the Scripture combine to assure us that God is Love. Is that merely a piece of theological information about God of which the universe is independent, or does He not in the revelation spread His wide pinions over all creatures that He has made and gather them together as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings? Out of such a revelation the willing soul discerns the New Jerusalem descend as a bride adorned for her husband; the eager soul receives, the wayward soul returns, the sorrowful soul is comforted. ”

“ But we believe that for those whom God enlarges, there is an unspeakable increase in the perceptive powers of the soul: they are taught things that no one else knows anything about, and that are hidden from the wise and prudent. There is knowledge for the simple and lowly ones; for those who, in the spiritual strength they have derived from God, run in the way of His commandments. Looking into the Father's face, and into the Saviour's heart, the soul can say, "This is life eternal, to know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." ”

“ And what is more than speech, even that which goes to the heart, is the action by which Thou, Lord, hast proved Thy speech. Thy life has given Thee the right to speak of what Thou givest as Thy peace. ”

“ It is not a life for which the world is too strong, and which cannot therefore be kept pure. It is not figured by a little brook, as Kidron, defiled with all the impurities of a city, and that an oriental city. And yet how many lives there are of which we have to say, "The world is too strong for them"; well-intentioned people, but feeble in grace, and who have received but little of the Life of God. ”

“ It is not a standstill life: no one can stand still who lives with God. If God is the fountain of your life, there will be no green mantle on the surface telling how long you have been in one place. Neither in earth nor in heaven do we stand still or stay where we are. ”

“ Not before, for God must have a man to quicken; He does not inspire skeletons or fragments; as at the first, when a man stands before Him, He breathes into him the breath of life and he becomes a living soul.
We may well be ashamed when we think of the way in which consecration to God is made. We are like the man who, because he was irritated at a claim made upon him for a sum of money, went and paid the bill in farthings. ”

“ I did not fear the act of dying, but the manner—away out of the Promised Land. But when I saw the will of my God in all its beauty, then even this bitter disappointment seemed bearable, and the kiss of my God at the last made up for all. Death is only a kiss to those who love God ”

“ And let us remember, too, that old proverb, that "You can't burn a candle at both ends." If our life has been lighted at one end for God, we must not burn it at the other for selfish enjoyments and ambitions. The work that God has called you to do is a burner that will take all the gas that you can supply. ”

“ Much of our faith, so-called, is only a beating of the air, and not really an advancement of the soul; we profess a great deal which has no practical bearing on our own lives. Yet all true believing is becoming, and a man cannot be a follower of the Lamb, in the real sense of the term, without his becoming moment by moment a different man; he alters his stature, not indeed by taking thought thereunto, but even as the lilies grow; and adding together the receiving and the becoming, we find that we are the children of God. ”

“ It seems to me painfully sad to hear people sorrowing: "I know it is my privilege, but I cannot make it real; and although one can sometimes do little acts of mercy, or even attain to humble acts of faith, the life does not flow on naturally and simply." ”

“ But we are not going to spend our time to-night in discussing sects, or deploring their divisions, although we cannot altogether refrain regret when we contemplate the seamless robe of Christ rent into more than twain, and dabbled in blood worse than Joseph's coat was when his father said, "Some evil beast hath devoured him"; and although it does seem to us sometimes, as we contemplate the havoc of schisms and strife of sects, as if some convulsion from beneath had shaken down the towers of the New Jerusalem, and streams from the nether fires had coursed down the channels of the river of life. ”

“ Neither is it like the pilgrimage up Pilate's staircase at Rome, in which the pain of going up on one's knees is only varied by the discomfort of coming down again and finding ourselves just about where we were before, as it must appear to some good people who live the up-and-down life. It is an upward and onward life; on our knees, if you will, but upward and upward and, like the stairs in Ezekiel's vision, still upward. ”