Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert

“ The calm, tranquil energy of the Redeemer's soul; the deep strength of principle which nothing could shake; the serene courage which looked down upon menaces, clamor, contumely, sacrifice, death,—this is the temper which pours contempt upon the intrepidity of heroes, but which the Holy Spirit infuses into the humble Christian.
—Richard Fuller.
HOLINESS.
Holiness is an unselfing of ourselves.
—F. W. Faber. Holiness is religious principle put into motion. It is the love of God sent forth into circulation, on the feet, and with the hands of love to men. It is faith gone to work. ”

“ Brethren, happiness is not our being's end and aim. The Christian's aim is perfection, not happiness; and every one of the sons of God must have something of that spirit which marked his Master.
—F. W. Robertson. There is something better for us in the world than happiness. We will take happiness as the incident of this, gladly and gratefully. We will add a thousand fold to the happiness of the present in the fearlessness of the future which it brings; but we will not place happiness first, and thus cloud our heads with doubts, and fill our hearts with discontent. ”

“ All that I have known of happiness has come to me through being made a child again. The efforts to find something to satisfy my inward longings, which were made through the intellectual nature, were as powerless to sustain me as a theory of bread-making would be to satisfy a hungry man. How far our sorrows and losses may help us in making us willing to receive what Heaven bestows, I know not; but when we find how fruitless our efforts are, we are as helpless as little children. Then, if humble and willing to wait, Jesus Christ will Himself come to us, a dear, human friend ”

“ An immortality of pain and tears; an infinity of wretchedness and despair; the blackness of darkness across which conscience will forever shoot her clear and ghastly flashes,—like lightning streaming over a desert when midnight and tempest are there; weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth; long, long eternity, and things that will make eternity seem longer,—making each moment seem eternity,—oh, miserable condition of the damned! ”

“ They wear crowns that flash in the everlasting light. They wear robes that are spotlessly white. They wave victorious palms. They sing anthems of such exceeding sweetness as no earthly choirs ever approach. They stand before the throne. They fly on ministries of love. They muse on the top of Mount Zion. They meditate on the banks of the river of life. They are rapturous with ecstasies of love. God wipes away all tears from their eyes. ”

“ The believing man hath the Holy Ghost; and where the Holy Ghost dwelleth, He will not suffer a man to be idle, but stirreth him up to all exercises of piety and godliness, and of true religion, to the love of God, to the patient suffering of afflictions, to prayer, to thanksgiving, and the exercise of charity towards all men.
—Martin Luther.
No enumeration of the fruits of the Spirit will be found which excludes peace and joy, much less love; and from these graces, if, indeed, not from the last alone, spring the various fruits which unitedly constitute righteousness. ”

“ I desire from the abyss of my own nothingness and vileness to cry unto God that He might cause me to do as I ought, and to be as I ought.
—Chalmers. Confess your nothingness and ill-desert before God. Distrust yourself. Rely only upon God. Renounce all glory except from Him. Yield yourself heartily to His will and service. Avoid an aspiring, ambitious, ostentatious, assuming, arrogant, scornful, stubborn, willful, levelling, self-justifying behavior; and strive for more and more of the humble spirit that Christ manifested while He was here upon earth. ”

“ As we look up into these glorious culminations, how grand life becomes! To be forever with the Lord, and forever changing into His likeness, and, still more, forever deepening in the companionship of His thought and bliss, "from glory to glory,"—could we desire more?
—Bishop R. S. Foster. We should carry up our affections to the mansions prepared for us above, where eternity is the measure, felicity the state, angels the company, the Lamb the light, and God the inheritance and portion of His people forever. ”

“ What a haven of rest to enter, after having passed through the storms and tempests of this world, in which pride and selfishness and envy and malice and scorn and contempt and contention and vice are as waves of a restless ocean, always rolling, and often dashed about in violence and fury! ”

“ As the days of spring arouse all nature to a green and growing vitality, so when hope enters the soul it makes all things new. It insures the progress which it predicts. Rooted in faith, growing up into love; these make the three immortal graces of the gospel, whose intertwined arms and concurrent voices shed joy and peace over our human life. ”

“ And then, brethren, when all the weary night- watchers on the stormy ocean of life are gathered together around Him who watched with them from His throne on the bordering mountains of eternity, where the day shines forever—then He will seat them at His table in His kingdom, and none will need to ask, "Who art Thou?" ”

“ The strength of a nation, especially of a republican nation, is in the intelligent and well-ordered homes of the people.
—Mrs. Sigourney. A Christian home! What a power it is to the child when he is far away in the cold, tempting world, and voices of sin are filling his ears, and his feet stand on slippery places.
—A. E. Kittredge. The spirit and tone of your home will have great influence on your children. If it is what it ought to be, it will fasten conviction on their minds, however wicked they may become.
—Richard Cecil. The simple pleasures of home are sweetest and last longest. ”

“ There are times, even on the stormy sea, when a gentle whisper breathes softly as of heaven, and sends into the soul a dream of ecstasy which can never again wholly die, even amidst the jar and whirl of daily life. ”

“ Strive rather to be quiet in your own sphere. Don't live in the cloudland of some transcendental heaven; do your best to bring the glory of a real heaven down, and ray it out upon your fellows in this work-day world. Seek to make trade bright with a spotless integrity, and business lustrous with the beauty of holiness. ”

“ In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.
—Horace Mann. The sacrifices required in the Christian life are necessary to emancipate the soul, and raise it above its servile dependence on condition. They are losses of mere happiness, and for just that reason they are preparations of joy. ”

“ I firmly believe that the moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness and ambition and self-seeking and every thing that is contrary to God's law, the Holy Ghost will come and fill every corner of our hearts; but if we are full of pride and conceit and ambition and self-seeking and pleasure and the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God; and I believe many a man is praying to God to fill him when he is full already with something else. ”

“ It is not physical daring, such as beneath some proud impulse will rush upon an enemy's steel; it is not reckless valor, sporting with a life which ill-fortune has blighted or which despair has made intolerable; it is not the passiveness of the stoic, through whose indifferent heart no tides of feeling flow; it is the calm courage which reflects upon its alternatives, and deliberately chooses to do right; it is the determination of Christian principle, whose foot resteth on the rock, and whose eye pierceth into heaven. ”

“ There are times in the history of men and nations, when they stand so near the vail that separates mortals from the immortals, time from eternity, and men from their God, that they can almost hear the beatings, and feel the pulsations, of the heart of the Infinite. ”

“ The work of the Spirit is to impart life, to implant hope, to give liberty, to testify of Christ, to guide us into all truth, to teach us all things, to comfort the believer, and to convict the world of sin. ”

“ I make it my constant prayer that God would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion; without a humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy nation. ”

“ The narrow way, the way of holiness, not only leads to life, but it is life. Walking there, serene are our days, peaceful our nights, happy—high above the disorders and miseries of a wretched world—shall be our hourly communion with God; happy—full of assurance, of calm and sacred triumph, shall be our dying hour.
—Richard Fuller. We must keep up the standard of Christian living in the Christian laborer. Clean hands are needed to do Christian work. ”

“ Keep the home near heaven. Let it face toward the Father's house. Not only let the day begin and end with God, with mercies acknowledged and forgiveness sought, but let it be seen and felt that God is your chiefest joy, His will in all you do the absolute and sufficient reason. ”

“ The Bible is like a wide and beautiful landscape seen afar off, dim and confused; but a good telescope will bring it near, and spread out all its rocks and trees and flowers and verdant fields and winding rivers at one's very feet. ”

“ Death must obliterate all memories and affections and ideas and laws, or the awakening in the next world will be amid the welcomes, and loves and raptures of those who left us with tearful farewells, and with dying promises that they would wait to welcomes us when we should arrive. ”

“ After the fever of life—after wearinesses, sicknesses, fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and failing, struggling and succeeding—after all the changes and chances of this troubled and unhealthy state, at length comes death—at length the white throne of God—at length the beatific vision. ”

“ Happy the man who is never so happy as when he opens the Bible to read and pray with his wife and children, or sits at his own table, the chief figure in the eyes of those who surround him. Happy, we say, is such a man, if, when he looks into the eyes of such a circle, he forgets himself in his love for them. The church life of such a family is really a part of its home life.
—The Christian Advocate. ”

“ As the blood of Christ is the fountain of all merit, so the Spirit is the fountain of all spiritual life; and until He quickens us, imparts the principle of divine life to our souls, we can put forth no vital act of faith to lay hold upon Jesus Christ. ”

“ I want to feel my own nothingness, I want to give myself up in absolute resignation to God, to lie prostrate and passive at His feet, with no other disposition in my heart than that of merging my will into His will, and no other language in my mouth than that of prayer for the perfecting of His strength in my weakness. ”

“ Christ came to give us a justifying righteousness, and He also came to make us holy—not chiefly for the purpose of evidencing here our possession of a justifying righteousness—but for the purpose of forming and fitting us for a blessed eternity.
—Chalmers. Carefully purify your conscience from daily faults; suffer no sin to dwell in your heart; small as it may seem, it obscures the light of grace, weighs down the soul, and hinders that constant communion with Jesus Christ which it should be your pleasure to cultivate. ”

“ True humility is a Christian grace and one of the fruits of the Spirit, originating in a deep consciousness of sin past and present, and leading us to discover our nothingness in the view of God, our insufficiency for any thing that is good, and prompting us, as we feel our infirmities, to strive after higher and yet higher attainments. ”

“ When we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself—nay, even springs from the midst of a life of troubles and anxieties and privations.
—Humboldt. So long as you do not quarrel with sin, you will never be a truly happy man. ”

“ Yes, it is a truth that for a good man,—honored, beloved, useful,—with all around him that God ever gives to His children here;—nay, with all that God could give him of earth, it would be "gain" to die. Heaven is a better, a happier, a more desirable world than this is or can be. ”

“ I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility.
—John Ruskin. Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being little. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation. Modest humility is beauty's crown. ”

“ I believe that we shall thus live through all the eternities that are before us, growing wiser, nobler, stronger, greater; plunging deeper into God, and being more and more filled with more and more of Him. ”