Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert

“ Faith then, in its relation to salvation, is that confidence by which we accept it as a free gift from the Saviour, and is the only possible way in which the gift of God could be appropriated.
—Mark Hopkins. We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.
—William James.
Faith is the act of trust by which one being, a sinner, commits himself to another being, a Saviour.
—Horace Bushnell. We are not saved by nations or by churches or by families, but as individuals, through a personal interest in a personal Saviour. ”

“ There is a grand fearlessness in faith. He who in his heart of hearts reverences the good, the true, the holy—that is, reverences God—does not tremble at the apparent success of attacks upon the outworks of faith. They may shake those who rest on those outworks—they do not move him whose soul reposes on the truth itself. He needs no prop or crutches to support his faith. Founded on a Rock, Faith can afford to gaze undismayed at the approaches of Infidelity. ”

“ True faith, by a mighty effort of the will, fixes its gaze on our Divine Helper, and there finds it possible and wise to lose its fears. It is madness to say, "I will not be afraid;" it is wisdom and peace to say, "I will trust and not be afraid."
—Alexander Maclaren. Faith that trusts on Jesus alone for salvation, and not on your respectable life, and the obedience that follows Him, are the indispensable steps to salvation. ”

“ When the sinner is brought to a consciousness of his lost condition, and realizes that there is no hope for him except in Christ Jesus, then is it that the soul believes "into" Christ. There is an entire self-surrender, to be saved by the Saviour, just as He will, and a complete subordination of the will to the supreme authority and sovereign will of his Lord and Master. Here is the true involution of the soul, the deepest root and highest reach of faith, whence spring its true life and fruitfulness and glory. ”

“ Live for something! Do good and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the storm of time can never destroy. Write your name in kindness, love, and mercy on the hearts of the thousands you come in contact with, year by year, and you will never be forgotten. ”

“ By faith take the promises. Live upon them, not upon emotions. Remember feeling is not faith. Faith grasps and clings to the promises. Faith says, "I am certain, not because feeling testifies to it, but because God says it." ”

“ True faith is not only a certain knowledge, whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in His word, but also an assured confidence, which the Holy Ghost works by the gospel, in my heart; that not only to others but to me also, remission of sin, everlasting righteousness, and salvation are freely given by God merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ's merits. ”

“ I expect eternal life, not as a reward of merit, but a pure act of bounty. Detesting myself in every view I can take, I fly to the righteousness and atonement of my great Redeemer for pardon and salvation ”

“ Fear is the preface to love; and if it be in thy soul, my brother, let it lead thee to the place where there shall dawn upon thy heart that great and Divine vision of a face all full of mercy, of a heart all full of love, of a Christ that hath died for thee, of a Father that bends down to bless thee:—and then cast thyself down there and say, "I trembled because I hated. ”

“ If we had strength and faith enough to trust ourselves entirely to God, and follow Him simply wherever He should lead us, we should have no need of any great effort of mind to reach perfection.
—Fenelon. The soul seeks God by faith, not by the reasonings of the mind and labored efforts, but by the drawings of love; to which inclinations God responds, and instructs the soul, which co-operates actively. God then puts the soul in a passive state where He accomplishes all, causing great progress, first by way of enjoyment, then by privation, and finally by pure love. ”

“ Tears never yet saved a soul. Hell is full of weepers weeping over lost opportunities, perhaps over the rejection of an offered Saviour. Your Bible does not say "Weep, and be saved." It says, "Believe, and be saved." Faith is better than feeling. ”

“ There is a power in the soul, quite separate from the intellect, which sweeps away or recognizes the marvelous, by which God is felt. Faith stands serenely far above the reach of the atheism of science. ”

“ Faith is the revealer of knowledge; it is the office of reason to defend that knowledge and to preserve it pure. Independent knowledge—the knowledge that comes not through faith—whether it be of things earthly or things heavenly, never can be ours. ”

“ Love is based upon the forgetfulness of self altogether. The very essence of love is that it looks away from itself, and to another.
Nothing so demoralizes the forces of the soul as fear. Only as we realize the presence of the Lord does fear give place to faith. ”

“ The highest greatness, surviving time and stone, is that which proceeds from the soul of man. Monarchs and cabinets, generals and admirals, with the pomp of court and the circumstance of war, in the lapse of time disappear from sight; but the pioneers of truth, though poor and lowly, especially those whose example elevates human nature, and teaches the rights of man, so that "a government of the people, by the people, for the people, may not perish from the earth;" ”

“ All blessing, all power, all efficiency belong to God alone. These He may communicate in manner and measure as seems best to His sovereign will; but He has constituted faith the nexus, or electric wire, by which we may be brought into connection with His inexhaustible fullness. The tree planted in rich soil, surrounded with a genial atmosphere, and basking under the light and heat of the sun, possesses an appropriating principle of life, by which it appropriates from all these surrounding elements, and assimilates to its own nature whatever is adapted to its healthy growth and fruitfulness. ”

“ Faith, then, generically, is confidence in a personal being. Specifically, religious faith is confidence in God, in every respect and office in which He reveals Himself. As that love of which God is the object, is religious love, so that confidence in Him as a Father, a Moral Governor, a Redeemer, a Sanctifier, in all the modes of His manifestation, by which we believe whatever He says because He says it, and commit ourselves and all our interests cheerfully and entirely into His hands, is religious faith. ”

“ Given a man full of faith, you will have a man tenacious in purpose, absorbed in one grand object, simple in his motives, in whom selfishness has been driven out by the power of a mightier love, and indolence stirred into unwearied energy. ”

“ Faith has in it the recognition of the certainty and the justice of a judgment that is coming down crashing on every human head; and then from the midst of these fears and sorrows and the tempest of that great darkness there rises up in the night of terrors the shining of one perhaps pale, quivering, distant, but divinely given hope, "My Saviour! ”

“ The faith of immortality gives to every mind that cherishes it a certain firmness of texture.
—Wilberforce. All the strength and force of man comes from his faith in things unseen. He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions. The man strongly possessed of an idea is the master of all who are uncertain and wavering. Clear, deep, living convictions rule the world. ”

“ There is a virtuous fear, which is the effect of faith; and there is a vicious fear, which is the product of doubt. The former leads to hope, as relying on God, in whom we believe; the latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe. Persons of the one character fear to lose God; persons of the other character fear to find Him. ”

“ If we bear an inward enmity to all sins because they are offensive to God, if we can say that it is the desire of our souls to love Christ above all things, and to be eternal debtors to free grace, reigning through His righteousness, then we may warrantably conclude, that our faith, however weak, is yet of a saving nature.
—Fisher's Catechism.
No man's salvation depends on his believing that he believes, but it does depend on his seeing and receiving Jesus Christ as his Saviour. ”

“ Saving faith is confidence in Jesus; a direct, confidential transaction with Him.
—Richard Fuller. When a miner looks at the rope that is to lower him into the deep mine, he may coolly say, "I have faith in that rope as well made and strong." But when he lays hold of it, and swings down by it into the tremendous chasm, then he is believing on the rope. Then he is trusting himself to the rope. It is not a mere opinion—it is an act. The miner lets go of every thing else, and bears his whole weight on those well braided strands of hemp. Now that is faith. ”

“ It is the finite and subdued will of the renewed man rolled inside the infinite will of the redeeming Lord, to be governed by, and to beat in unison with His will. Its nestling prayer is, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" ”

“ We believe that the very beginning and end of salvation, and the sum of Christianity, consists of faith in Christ, who by His blood alone, and not by any works of ours, has put away sin, and destroyed the power of death. ”

“ The first thing in faith is knowledge. What we know we must also agree unto. What we agree unto we must rest upon alone for salvation. It will not save me to know that Christ is a Saviour; but it will save me to trust Him to be my Saviour. ”

“ Orthodoxy can be learnt from others; living faith must be a matter of personal experience.
—Büchsel. The last decisive energy of a rational courage which confides in the Supreme Power, is very sublime. It makes a man who intrepidly dares every thing that can oppose or attack him within the sphere of mortality—who will press toward his object while death is impending over him—who would retain his purpose unshaken amidst the ruins of the world. ”

“ We must not think that faith itself is the soul's rest; it is only the means of it. We cannot find rest in any work or duty of our own, but we may find it in Christ, whom faith apprehends for justification and salvation. ”

“ Though there is nothing more dangerous, yet there is nothing more ordinary, than for weak saints to make their sense and feeling the judge of their condition. We must strive to walk by faith.
—Thomas Brooks.
FELLOWSHIP WITH CHRIST AND GOD.
The Christian's fellowship with God is rather a habit than a rapture.
—Richard Cecil. The greatest truths are ever known through the heart; and this sublimest of all truths, the amazing sacrifice which Eternal Love has made for guilty man, can be comprehended only by the heart,—by communion with that Love in its sorrows, sacrifices, triumphs, joys. ”

“ The friendship of high and sanctified spirits loses nothing by death but its alloy; failings disappear, and the virtues of those whose faces we shall behold no more appear greater and more sacred when beheld through the shades of the sepulchre. ”

“ So faith is the appropriating principle of spiritual life, by which, if properly exercised, we may appropriate to ourselves out of the Divine fullness. And, as in proportion to the healthy exercise of the appropriating principle in the tree, so will be its growth and fruitfulness, so in proportion as faith is in healthy, spiritual exercise, will be our spiritual growth, fruitfulness, and triumphs. The fullness of blessing is in God; we become partakers by faith.
—John James. Faith is a simple trust in a personal Redeemer. The simpler our trust in Christ for all things, the surer our peace. ”

“ Let it be ours to be self-reliant amidst hosts of the vacillating—real in a generation of triflers—true amongst a multitude of shams; when tempted to swerve from principle, sturdy as an oak in its maintenance; when solicited by the enticement of sinners, firm as a rock in our denial. ”

“ If you could once get away, my friends, from that sense of mediocrity and nothingness to which you are shut up, under the stupor of your self-seeking and your sin, how easy would it be for you to believe! ”

“ Oh! it irradiates all our days with lofty beauty, and it makes them all hallowed and divine, when we feel that not the apparent greatness, not the prominence nor noise with which it is done, nor the external consequences which flow from it, but the motive from which it flowed, determines the worth of our deed in God's eyes. Faithfulness is faithfulness, on whatsoever scale it be set forth. ”

“ Logically, faith comes first, and love next; but in life they will spring up together in the soul; the interval which separates them is impalpable, and in every act of trust, love is present; and fundamental to every emotion of love to Christ is trust in Christ. ”

“ Faith is the backbone of the social and the foundation of the commercial fabric; remove faith between man and man, and society and commerce fall to pieces. There is not a happy home on earth but stands on faith ”

“ A certain sober judgment ought to mark Christians. They should be like the needle in the mariner's compass, not like the pendulum which within its limited range is always going from one extreme to another. ”

“ I envy no quality of the mind or intellect in others; not genius, power, wit, nor fancy; but, if I could choose what would be most delightful, and, I believe, most useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing. ”

“ Providence has clearly ordained that the only path fit and salutary for man on earth is the path of persevering fortitude—the unremitting struggle of deliberate self-preparation and humble but active reliance on Divine aid. ”

“ Faith—saving faith—whatever other definition may be framed—is best described as that act of the soul by which the whole man is given over to the guardianship of the Mediator. He who thus resigns himself to Jesus avouches two things: first, his belief that he needs a protector ”