Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert

“ You cannot preach the gospel in its purity over the world, without proclaiming the doctrine of civil and religious liberty,—without overthrowing the barriers reared between nations and clans and classes of men,—without ultimately undermining the thrones of despots, and breaking off the shackles of slavery,—without making men everywhere free.
—Albert Barnes. I thank God that the gospel is to be preached to every creature. There is no man so far gone, but the grace of God can reach him; no man so desperate or black, but He can forgive him. ”

“ It is impossible for the mind which is not totally destitute of piety, to behold the sublime, the awful, the amazing works of creation and providence—the heavens with their luminaries, the mountains, the ocean, the storm, the earthquake, the volcano, the circuit of the seasons, and the revolutions of empires—without marking in them all the mighty hand of God, and feeling strong emotions of reverence toward the Author of these stupendous works. ”

“ When we come to tell the completed story of our lives, we shall have to record the fulfillment of all God's promises, and the accomplishment of all our prayers that were built on them.
God's truth and faithfulness "are a great deep." They resemble the ocean itself; always there—vast, fathomless, sublime, the same in its majesty, its inexhaustible fullness, yesterday, to-day, and forever; the same in calm and storm, by day and by night; changeless while generations come and pass; everlasting while ages are rolling away. ”

“ God Himself—His thoughts, His will, His love, His judgments are men's home. To think His thoughts, to choose His will, to judge His judgments, and thus to know that He is in us, with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley of the shadow of death is the way home, but only thus, that as all changes have hitherto led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of God, so this greatest of all outward changes—for it is but an outward change—will surely usher us into a region where there will be fresh possibilities of drawing nigh in heart, soul, and mind to the Father of us all. ”

“ Were a thousand million more creatures to crowd the earth, that sun has light and heat for them all; and in God there is a fullness of good infinitely greater than the whole creation or the most capacious of His creatures can require. He is a sun and shield; He will give grace and glory; "no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly."
How can man understand God, since he does not yet understand his own mind, with which he endeavors to understand Him?
The infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable—not concealed, but incomprehensible. ”

“ It is a distinguishing trait in the character of every good man that he grows in grace. Grace in the heart as certainly improves and advances, as a tree thrives in a kindly and well watered soil.
—Gardiner Spring.
It is not my strength that grows, so much as God's strength in me, which is given more abundantly as the days roll. It is so given on one condition. If my faith has laid hold of the infinite, the exhaustless, the immortal energy of God, unless there is something fearfully wrong about me, I shall be getting purer, nobler, wiser, more observant of His will ”

“ All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul.
—Pope. As a man exhibits himself in physical forms and actions, so there is one other Spirit, a great, wide, mighty, infinite, eternal Spirit back there in the depths of space, and in the present, and in the future, and in the abysses of space, who at His will wrestles into existence great globes, and keeps them in their position. ”

“ Did you ever think of the reason why the Psalms of David have come, like winged angels, down across all the realms and ages,—why they make the key-note of grateful piety in every Christian's soul, wherever he lives? Why? Because they are so full of gratitude. "Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His goodness and for His wonderful works to the children of men!" ”

“ On the threshold of that impenetrable mystery, a voice arrests our steps. From out the clouds and darkness that are round about God's throne, the question comes, "Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?"
—Thomas Guthrie. God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. ”

“ When ye are come to the other side of the water, and have set down your foot on the shore of glorious eternity, and look back again to the waters and to your wearisome journey, and shall see in that clear glass of endless glory, nearer to the bottom of God's wisdom, ye shall then be forced to say, "If God had done otherwise with me than He hath done, I had never come to the enjoyment of this crown of glory." ”

“ And if you ask what is the temper which is most fitted to be victorious over sin on earth, I answer that in it the warp of a sunny gentleness must be woven across the woof of a strong character. That will make the best tissue to stand the wear and tear of the world's trials. ”

“ God is love and goodness. Fill the soul with goodness, and fill the soul with love, that is the filling it with God. "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us." There is nothing else that can satisfy. ”

“ How many people would like to be good, if only they might be good without taking trouble about it! They do not like goodness well enough to hunger and thirst after it, or to sell all that they have that they may buy it; they will not batter at the gate of the kingdom of heaven; but they look with pleasure on this or that aerial castle of righteousness, and think it would be rather nice to live in it. ”

“ The law itself is under law; that is, it is under the necessity of its own nature; and therefore the only possible way whereby a transgressor can escape the penalty of the law, is for a substitute to endure it for him. The deep substrata and base of all God's ethical attributes are eternal law and impartial justice.
—Prof. Shedd. God is kind; but within the limits of inexorable law. He is good, but you can take no liberties with Him; for back of His pity and kindness is the righteousness that is so exact, and that must be satisfied to the uttermost farthing. ”

“ If I were to live to the world's end, and do all the good that man can do, I must still cry, "Mercy!" Why then should I be unwilling or afraid to die this moment, with a sense of God's pardoning love, when I can have no other claim to salvation if I were to live forever? ”

“ And it requires that between the Father's heart and the child's eart there shall pass, in blessed interchange and quick correspondence, answering love, flashing backwards and forwards, like the lightning that touches the earth, and rises from it again. ”

“ If you have nothing of the spirit of prayer, nothing of the love of the brotherhood, nothing of mortifying the spirit of the world, nothing of growth in grace, of cordial, habitual, persevering obedience to the Divine commands, how can it be that you have been brought nigh by the blood of Christ? ”

“ He who cannot see the workings of a Divine wisdom in the order of the heavens, the change of the seasons, the flowing of the tides, the operations of the wind and other elements, the structure of the human body, the circulation of the blood through a variety of vessels wonderfully arranged and conducted, the instinct of beasts, their tempers and dispositions, the growth of plants, and their many effects for meat and medicine; he who cannot see all these and many other things as the evident contrivance of a Divine wisdom is sottishly blind, and unworthy the name of man. ”

“ No one who has not examined patiently and honestly the other religions of the world can know what Christianity really is, or can join with such truth and sincerity in the words of St. Paul, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ."
—Max Müller. The main object of the gospel is to establish two principles, the corruption of nature, and the redemption by Jesus Christ.
—Pascal. Take Christ out of the gospel, and you take its very heart out. He has not only originated a system, but He has put Himself into it, as its very life and soul and power. ”

“ Running like a Gulf-stream through the sea of time, comes the affirmation that God has manifested Himself to man, and the best men have affirmed it most persistently. Wherever this affirmation has made its way, the icebergs of skepticism have disappeared, the temperature of virtue has risen, and the sweet fruits of charity have ripened. ”

“ We never know through what Divine mysteries of compensation the great Father of the universe may be carrying out His sublime plan; but those three words, "God is love" ought to contain, to every doubting soul, the solution of all things. ”

“ He builds them, and places on them these mysterious forms of earth which are signals hung out over these abysses to tell coming spirits who He is, what He is, what He does, how high is His throne, and how vast is His power from eternity to eternity, from infinity to infinity through all ages of all time ”

“ The distant scene; one step enough for me.
—John H. Newman. Do you feel that you have lost your way in life? Then God Himself will show you your way. Are you utterly helpless, worn out, body and soul? Then God's eternal love is ready and willing to help you up, and revive you. Are you wearied with doubts and terrors? Then God's eternal light is ready to show you your way; God's eternal peace ready to give you peace. Do you feel yourself full of sins and faults? Then take heart; for God's unchangeable will is, to take away those sins, and purge you from those faults. ”

“ Whatever may be the mysteries of life and death, there is one mystery which the cross of Christ reveals to us, and that is the infinite and absolute goodness of God. Let all the rest remain a mystery so long as the mystery of the cross of Christ gives us faith for all the rest. ”

“ In proportion as we "grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ," we shall grow in the desire that the Redeemer's sovereignty may be more widely and visibly extended.
—Henry Melvill. There is no such way to attain to greater measures of grace, as for a man to live up to that little grace he has.
—Thomas Brooks. It is the very nature of grace to make a man strive to be most eminent in that particular grace which is most opposed to his bosom sin.
—Thomas Brooks. All growth that is not towards God is growing to decay. ”

“ We can set our deeds to the music of a grateful heart, and seek to round our lives into a hymn—the melody of which will be recognized by all who come in contact with us, and the power of which shall not be evanescent, like the voice of the singer, but perenninal, like the music of the spheres. ”

“ Brother men, one act of charity will teach us more of the love of God than a thousand sermons—one act of unselfishness, of real self-denial, the putting forth of one loving feeling to the outcast and "those who are out of the way," will tell us more of the Epiphany than whole volumes of the wisest writers on theology. ”

“ If thou art fighting against thy sins, so is God. On thy side is God who made all, and Christ who died for all and the Spirit who alone gives wisdom, purity, and nobleness.
—Charles Kingsley.
As long as we work on God's line, He will aid us. When we attempt to work on our own lines, He rebukes us with failure.
—T. L. Cuyler. As a general rule, those truths which we highly relish, and which shed a degree of practical light upon the things which we are required to give up for God, are leadings of Divine grace, which we should follow without hesitation. ”

“ We worship unity in trinity, and trinity in unity; neither confounding the person nor dividing the substance. There is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost; but the Godhead of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal. ”

“ The same Being that fashioned the insect, whose existence is only discerned by a microscope, and gave that invisible speck a system of ducts and other organs to perform its vital functions, created the enormous mass of the planet thirteen hundred times larger than our earth, and launched it in its course round the sun, and the comet, wheeling with a velocity that would carry it round our globe in less than two minutes of time, and yet revolving through so prodigious a space that it takes near six centuries to encircle the sun! ”

“ Day and night, and every moment, there are voices about us. All the hours speak as they pass; and in every event there is a message to us; and all our circumstances talk with us; but it is in Divine language, that worldliness misunderstands, that selfishness is frightened at, and that only the children of God hear rightly and happily. ”