Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert

“ Teach us to submit ourselves to Thy chastenings, believing Thy love in them all. Thou hast given us Christ, and in Him eternal life. Oh, how can we think Thou wouldst withhold from us any thing else if it were good for us! Lord, let us not choose for ourselves. Choose Thou for us in Thy wisdom and love, and let our hearts approve Thy choice. Be Thou our portion, our light, and our joy in Christ Jesus. Help us ever watchfully to cherish a meek and quiet spirit, ever looking unto Him who was meek and lowly of heart, that we may find rest unto our souls. ”

“ In whatever light we view religion it appears solemn and venerable. It is a temple full of majesty, to which the worshiper may approach with comfort, in the hope of obtaining grace and finding mercy; but where they cannot enter without being inspired with awe. If we may be permitted to compare spiritual with natural things, religion resembles not those scenes of natural beauty where every object smiles. ”

“ You have respect for religion! How vastly condescending! How deeply humble! The creature has a respect for the service of the Creator! A grasshopper deigns to acknowledge that it has a respect for the King of kings and Lord of lords! Verily a subject of congratulation for the universe! A worm crawling in the dust confesses to its fellow worm that it has some respect for the government of the high and mighty One that inhabiteth eternity. ”

“ Beware of a religion of mere sentiment which gazes and sighs and wishes, but makes no sacrifice, which hides the cross with flowers, and wears it over, but not within the heart. Beware of a religion which costs you nothing, never rises an hour earlier, never denies itself a pleasure, never gives that which it will miss, for the sake of Christ and the soul. ”

“ Religion, in its purity, is not so much a pursuit as a temper; or rather it is a temper, leading to the pursuit of all that is high and holy. Its foundation is faith; its action, works; its temper, holiness; its aim, obedience to God in improvement of self, and benevolence to men.
—Jonathan Edwards. Religion is such a belief of the Bible as maintains a living influence on the heart. ”

“ It is the very nature and essence of religion to raise men, peoples, and nations above the common level of life, to break through its ordinary bounds, and express itself in a thousand ways, in poetry, painting, music, sculpture, and in every other form of ideal expression. The splendid monuments of the genius and greatness of by-gone ages are the monuments inspired by their religion. ”

“ There are men who stalk about the world gloomy and stiff and severe—self-righteous embodiments of the mischievous heresy that the religion of peace and good-will to all mankind—the religion of love and hope and joy, the religion that bathes the universal human soul in the light of paternal love, and opens to mankind the gates of immortality—is a religion of terror—men guilty of misrepresenting Christ to the world, and doing incalculable damage to His cause. ”

“ The true office of religion is to bring out the whole nature of man in harmonious activity.
—W. E. Channing. The true religion of Jesus Christ our Saviour is that which penetrates, and which receives all the warmth of the heart, and all the elevation of the soul, and all the energies of the understanding, and all the strength of the will.
—Dean Stanley. Religion is not mere truth, gained by study, and retained by watchfulness in the soul. It is truth translated into actions, embodied in life.
A religion that never suffices to govern a man, will never suffice to save him. ”

“ All noblest things are religious,—not temples and martyrdoms only, but the best books, pictures, poetry, statues, and music.
—Wm. Mountford. Other religions have risen and decayed; Christ's comes down the ages in the strength of youth, through the seas of popular commotion, like the Spirit of God on the face of the waters, through the storms of philosophy, like an apocalyptic angel, and through all the wilderness of human thought and action, like the pillar of fire before the camp of the Israelites. ”

“ How divinely full of glory and pleasure shall that hour be when all the millions of mankind that have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb of God shall meet together and stand around Him, with every tongue and every heart full of joy and praise! ”

“ It is the half-way religion that undoes the professing world. The heart can never be at unity with itself till it is wholly centered in God.
Religion gives to virtue the sweetest hopes, to unrepenting vice just alarms, to true repentance the most powerful consolations; but she endeavors above all things to inspire in men love, meekness, and piety.
—Montesquieu. Nothing exposes religion more to the reproach of its enemies than the worldliness and half-heartedness of the professors of it.
—Matthew Henry. Men use religion just as they use buoys and life-preservers ”

“ To judge religion we must have it—not stare at it from the bottom of a seemingly interminable ladder.
—George MacDonald. The spirit of true religion breathes gentleness and affability; it gives a native, unaffected ease to the behavior; it is social, kind, cheerful; far removed from the cloudy and illiberal disposition which clouds the brow, sharpens the temper, and dejects the spirit. ”

“ O, my God! withhold from me the wealth to which tears and sighs and curses cleave. Better none at all than wealth like that.
—Christian Scriver.
Riches got by deceit, cheat no man so much as the getter. Riches bought with guile, God will pay for with vengeance. Riches got by fraud, are dug out of one's own heart, and destroy the mine. Unjust riches curse the owner in getting, in keeping, in transmitting. ”

“ Religion is not a perpetual moping over good books. Religion is not even prayer, praise, holy ordinances,—these are necessary to religion—no man can be religious without them. But religion is mainly and chiefly the glorifying God amid the duties and trials of the world; the guiding of our course amid adverse winds and currents of temptation by the sunlight of duty and the compass of Divine truth, the bearing up manfully, wisely, courageously, for the honor of Christ, our great Leader, in the conflict of life. ”

“ The light of reason ever gleams on the margin of an unmeasured and unmeasurable ocean of mystery; and however far we push our discoveries, the line of light only moves on, and has infinite and unfathomable darkness beyond it.
—Henry Giles. Polished steel will not shine in the dark. No more can reason, however refined or cultivated, shine efficaciously but as it reflects the light of Divine truth shed from heaven. ”

“ Who does not know out of his own heart, that he never was reasoned into holy wonder, love, or reverence? and who can fail to observe that there is no fixed proportion between force of understanding and clearness or depth of religion? ”

“ Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to His throne.
—Daniel Webster. Religion is faith in an infinite Creator, who delights in and enjoins that rectitude which conscience commands us to seek. ”

“ It is only religion, the great bond of love and duty to God, that makes any existence valuable or even tolerable. Without this, to live were only to graze. Without this, the beauties of the world are but splendid gewgaws, the stars of heaven glittering orbs of ice, and, what is yet far worse and colder, the trials of existence profitless and unadulterated miseries. ”

“ Soon business, with all its cares and anxieties, the whole "unprofitable stir and fever of the world" will be to us a thing of the past. But religion does something better than sigh and moan over the perishableness of earthly things. It finds in them the seeds of immortality. ”

“ Rights are grand things, divine things, in this world of God; but the way in which we expound those rights, alas! seems to me to be the very incarnation of selfishness. I see nothing very noble in a man who is forever going about calling for his own rights. ”

“ Regeneration is the beginning of holiness in the soul, and admits of no progression; sanctification is carried on progressively in the heart of the renewed, and will be continued until it is completed in the concluding moment of life. ”

“ Repentance can never become a substitute for obedience, neither can it, of itself alone, constitute a just ground for pardon.
Repentance does not consist in one single act of sorrow, though that, being the first and leading act, gives denomination to the whole; but in doing works meet for repentance, in a sincere obedience to the law of Christ for the remainder of our lives.
—Locke. It will require more than a few hours of fasting and prayer to cast out such demons as selfishness, worldliness; and unbelief. Repentance, to be of any avail, must work a change of heart and of conduct. ”

“ What an awful event in the history of our universe will that be when the dispensation that cost so much, that lasted so long, when that shall cease, when that shall disappear and be no more at all in the universe of God Almighty! ”

“ Religion is no dry morality; no slavish, punctilious conforming of actions to a hard law. Religion is not right thinking alone, nor right emotion alone, nor right action alone. Religion is still less the semblance of these in formal profession, or simulated feeling, or apparent rectitude. Religion is not nominal connection with the Christian community, nor participation in its ordinances and its worship. ”

“ How admirable is that religion which, while it seems to have in view only the felicity of another world, is at the same time the highest happiness of this.
—Montesquieu. Religious faith and purpose are the only certain safeguards against the growing perils of life. So far as there has been among educated men a decline of loyalty to Christ and His gospel, there has been a decline in those qualities which claim confidence and honor, which insure unblemished reputation, which minister to social well-being, and to the integrity and purity of public life. ”

“ How great is your sin in rejecting Jesus Christ! You slight the glorious Person for whose coming God made such great preparation in such a series of wonderful providences from the beginning of the world, bringing to pass a thing before unknown, the union of the Divine nature with the human in one person. ”

“ The way to judge of religion is by doing our duty. Religion is rather a Divine life than a Divine knowledge. In heaven, indeed, we must first see, and then love; but here, on earth, we must first love, and love will open our eyes as well as our hearts, and we shall then see and perceive and understand. ”

“ It cannot be likened to the gay landscape or the flowery field. It resembles more the august and sublime appearances of Nature—the lofty mountain, the expanded ocean, and the starry firmament; at the sight of which the mind is at once overawed and delighted; and, from the union of grandeur with beauty, derives a pleasing but a serious devotion. ”

“ Hope falls like a sunbeam on the hoary head. I have seen the morning rise cold and gloomy, and the sky grow thicker, and the rain fall faster as the hours wore on; yet, ere he set in night, the sun, bursting through heavy clouds, has broken out to illumine the landscape and shed a flood of glory on the dying day. ”

“ True repentance consists in the heart being broken for sin and broken from sin.
—Thornton. Of all acts is not, for a man, repentance the most divine? The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none. ”

“ If you are seeking the comforts of religion rather than the glory of our Lord, you are on the wrong track. The Comforter meets us unsought in the path of duty.
There is something in religion, when rightly comprehended, that is masculine and grand. It removes those little desires which are the constant hectic of a fool.
—Richard Cecil. Let a man be firmly principled in his religion, he may travel from the tropics to the poles, it will never catch cold on the journey. ”

“ Is religion one of the fine arts, that it should consist simply in going to meeting in good clothes every Sunday, saying grace at table, and praying night and morning? Are we so literally a flock that we have nothing to do but to be fed all the year, yielding only the annual fleece which forms our pastor's salary? ”

“ Riches are the pettiest and least worthy gifts which God can give a man. What are they to God's word? Yea, to bodily gifts, such as beauty and health, or to the gifts of the mind, such as understanding, skill, wisdom? Yet men toil for them day and night, and take no rest. Therefore our Lord God commonly gives riches to foolish people to whom He gives nothing else. ”

“ The men that history enshrines in her pages, the men whose memories are embalmed in the hearts of their fellows for all ages, were men who placed unfaltering trust in the loftiest convictions of the soul, and consecrated life and death to their realization. ”

“ The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and an imitation of His perfections.
—Edmund Burke. The sum and substance of the preparation needed for a coming eternity is that you believe what the Bible tells you, and do what the Bible bids you.
—Chalmers. Carry religious principles into common life, and common life will lose its transitoriness. The world passes away. ”

“ We believe that repentance and faith are sacred duties, and also inseparable graces, wrought in our souls by the regenerating Spirit of God, whereby being deeply convinced of our guilt, danger, and helplessness, and of the way of salvation by Christ, we turn to God with unfeigned contrition, confession, and supplication for mercy; at the same time heartily receiving the Lord Jesus Christ as our Prophet, Priest, and King, and relying on Him alone as the only and all-sufficient Saviour. ”