Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert

“ O Lord God, cleanse us from the infidelity of our every-day life, and bring us into the spirit of Jesus, that love may reign triumphant in us, and that we may glorify our Father in heaven.
Is it for the cultivated man, the man of broad and general views, to throw himself without reserve and with all his weight, into what, for aught he yet knows, may be only a cross-current and eddy, instead of the main stream of truth? ”

“ Earthly providence is a travesty of justice on any other theory than that it is a preliminary stage, which is to be followed by rectifications. Either there must be a future, or consummate injustice sits upon the throne of the universe. This is the verdict of humanity in all the ages.
—Bishop R. S. Foster. Without a belief in personal immortality, religion surely is like an arch resting on one pillar, like a bridge ending in an abyss. ”

“ Since He has put in my soul a germ that can grow to eternity, He means that it shall grow to eternity.
It is our souls which are the everlastingness of God's purpose in this earth.
—Wm. Mountford. May we be satisfied with nothing that shall not have in it something of immortality.
—H. W. Beecher. Heaven begun is the living proof that makes the heaven to come credible. Christ in you is "the hope of glory." It is the eagle eye of faith which penetrates the grave, and sees far into the tranquil things of death. He alone can believe in immortality who feels the resurrection in him already. ”

“ In my judgment, a great mistake has been made by well-meaning and zealous men, through treating error and infidelity with altogether too much respect. I believe that it is safe to say that Christianity is indebted for none of its progress in the world to rational conflicts with infidelity. I do not believe that a single great wrong has ever been overthrown by meeting the advocates of wrong in argument. ”

“ Industry doth not consist merely in action; for that is incessant in all persons, our mind being a restless thing, never abiding in a total cessation from thought or design; being like a ship in the sea, if not steered to some good purpose by reason, yet tossed by the waves of fancy, or driven by the winds of temptation somewhither. But the direction of our mind to some good end, without roving or flinching, in a straight and steady course, drawing after it our active powers in execution thereof, doth constitute industry. ”

“ Are ye stronger than God? Can ye contend with the Eternal One? Have ye the nerve which shall not tremble, and the flesh which shall not quiver, and the soul which shall not quail, when the sheet of fire is round the globe, and thousand times ten thousand angels line the sky, and call to judgment? ”

“ The only cure for indolence is work; the only cure for selfishness is sacrifice; the only cure for unbelief is to shake off the ague of doubt, by doing Christ's bidding; the only cure for timidity is to plunge into some dreaded duty before the chill comes on. ”

“ He that has no present Christ has a future, dark, chaotic, heaving with its destructive ocean; and over it there goes forever—black-pinioned, winging its solitary and hopeless flight, the raven of his anxious thoughts, and finds no place to rest, and comes back again to the desolate ark with its foreboding croak of evil in the present and evil in the future. ”

“ INFLUENCE.
The Bible calls the good man's life a light; and it is the nature of light to flow out spontaneously in all directions, and fill the world unconsciously with its beams. So the Christian shines it would say, not so much because he will, as because he is a luminous object. ”

“ It ceases to love, to sympathize, and diffuse the delicious tears that sanctify friendship's shrine. The whole countenance assumes an expression of obdurateness and repugnance. The features, marked with premature decay, proclaim that the source of gentle sentiments, pure emotions, and innocent joys, is exhausted, like a limpid fountain invaded by the scoria and flame of a volcano. ”

“ Whence comes the powerful impression that is made upon us by the tomb? Are a few grains of dust deserving of our veneration? Certainly not; we respect the ashes of our ancestors for this reason only—because a secret voice whispers to us that all is not extinguished in them. ”

“ Though a hundred crooked paths may conduct to a temporary success, the one plain and straight path of public and private virtue can alone lead to a pure and lasting fame and the blessings of posterity. ”

“ An idle man has a constant tendency to torpidity. He has adopted the Indian maxim—that it is better to walk than to run, and better to stand than to walk, and better to sit than to stand, and better to lie than to sit. He hugs himself into the notion, that God calls him to be quiet.
—Richard Cecil. Some temptations come to the industrious, but all temptations attack the idle. ”

“ Go to Jesus, O sinner, this day, this moment, with all thy sins about thee. Go just as thou art, for if thou wilt never apply to Him till thou art first righteous and holy, thou wilt never be righteous and holy at all. ”

“ There is not a single spot between Christianity and atheism, upon which a man can firmly fix his foot.
—Emmons. There is one single fact that one may oppose to all the wit and argument of infidelity; namely, that no man ever repented of being a Christian on his death-bed.
—Hannah More. The infidelity that springs from the heart is not to be reached by a course of lectures on the evidences of Christianity; argument did not cause, and argument will not remove it. ”

“ A brother in the Lord could never get a young lady to think about eternity until he quoted this text: "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." That word forget seemed to haunt her. ”

“ We pray for those that need prayer more than ever, that have fewer and fewer seasons even of thought, that grow hard with years, that are less and less troubled by sin, and that are more and more irreverent of religion. ”

“ Idleness is the great corrupter of youth, and the bane and dishonor of middle age. He who, in the prime of life, finds time to hang heavy on his hands, may with much reason suspect that he has not consulted the duties which the consideration of his age imposed upon him ”

“ There are few signs in a soul's state more alarming than that of religious indifference, that is, the spirit of thinking all religions equally true—the real meaning of which is, that all religions are equally false. ”

“ The gospel does not abolish industry, but changes its nature and chief design; it dignifies toil, mitigates the evils connected therewith, and creates new motives to diligence. The triumph achieved on Calvary never was designed to supersede the duty of close application to enterprising duty. Its first command compels us to some honorable and useful pursuit. Its language is, "Study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands as we commanded you." "If any man will not work, neither let him eat." ”

“ To accomplish only a mass of beginnings and attempts would be to make a total failure of life. Perfection is the heritage with which my Creator has endowed me, and since this short life does not give completeness, I must have immortal life in which to find it. ”

“ Not that the active influence of Christians is made of no account in the figure, but only that this symbol of light has its propriety in the fact that their unconscious influence is the chief influence, and has the precedence in its power over the world. The outward endeavors made by good men or bad to sway others, they call their influence; whereas it is, in fact, but a fraction, and, in most cases, but a very small fraction of the good or evil that flows out of their lives.
—Horace Bushnell. What we do is transacted on a stage of which all the Universe are spectators. ”

“ To get good is animal; to do good is human, to be good is Divine. The true use of a man's possessions is to help his work; and the best end of all his work is to show us what he is. The noblest workers of our world bequeath us nothing so great as the image of themselves. ”

“ Indolence is the worst enemy that the church has to encounter. Men sleep around her altar, stretching themselves on beds of ease, or sit idly with folded hands looking lazily out on fields white for the harvest, but where no sickle rings against the wheat. ”

“ Distracted by cravings as inexorable as they are base, and in their vileness perpetually reproduced,—tantalized by the impure fountains of a diseased imagination, and oppressed with its own effeminacy,—the mind loses its vigor and its productiveness. Every faculty rapidly deteriorates and decays ”

“ All the elements of life seem to have retreated into their abused organs only to perish there. Even the organs themselves are withered, and worse than dead; their infirmities, maladies, sufferings, rush in a multitude upon the degraded victim, and overwhelm him in awful retribution. ”

“ INDUSTRY.
The Lord's visitations of distinguished favor are always to the diligent. That great men may not be ashamed of honest vocations, the greatest that have ever lived have been contented, happy, and honored while in the pursuit of humble trades. ”

“ It is this that confers a sacred character on the funeral ceremony among all the nations of the globe; all are alike persuaded that the sleep, even of the tomb, is not everlasting, and that death is but a glorious transfiguration. ”

“ Amid the stirring and manifold activities of the age in which we live, to be neutral in the strife is to rank with the enemies of the Saviour. There is no greater foe to the spread of His cause in the world than the placid indifferentism which is too honorable to betray, while it is too careless or too cowardly to join Him. ”

“ Give us a man, young or old, high or low, on whom we know we can thoroughly depend—who will stand firm when others fail—the friend faithful and true, the adviser honest and fearless, the adversary just and chivalrous ”

“ I am not the only one that condemns the idle; for once when I was going to give our minister a pretty long list of the sins of one of our people that he was asking after, I began with, "He's dreadfully lazy." ”

“ INTELLECT.
The intellect has only one failing, which to be sure, is a very considerable one. It has no conscience. Napoleon is the readiest instance of this. If his heart had borne any proportion to his brain, he had been one of the greatest men of history. ”

“ But it is a work that makes the Saviour weep. I think when He comes to call some of you from your death in sin, He comes weeping and sighing for you. There is a stone that is to be rolled away—your bad and evil habits—and when that stone is taken away, a still small voice will not do for you ”

“ The passive idler of all men in the world is the most difficult to please. Those who do the least themselves are always the severest critics upon the noble achievements of others.
—E. L. Magoon. The idle man is the devil's cushion. ”

“ Let no time be spent in arguments. I believe that is a work of the devil, to take off attention, and cause delay. If a man comes to argue, we should go down on our knees, pray with him, and then let him go. ”