Men do hear the calls of Christ, but they are willfully deaf, because they think he wants them to do something. But he does not want anything of you; he wants you to receive what he has already done. He comes laden with mercy, with his hands full of blessing, and he knocks at your door. You have only to open it and he will enter in, and salvation will enter with him.
It’s a real struggle, since we earn everything else, for good or for ill, to accept free grace as free. But that’s the gospel—right there, summed up.
On Joy & Sorrow
Our joy is like the wave as it dashes on the shore—it throws us on the earth. But our sorrows are like that receding wave which sucks us back again into the great depth of godhead. We would have been stranded and left high and dry on the shore if it had not been for that receding wave, that ebbing of our prosperity, which carried us back to our Father and our God again.
Tacitus tells us that an amber ring was throught to be of no value among the Romans till the emperor took to wearing one, and then immediately an amber ring was held in high esteem. Bereavements might be looked on as very sad things, but when we recollect that Jesus wept over his friend Lazarus, they are choice jewels and special favors from God. Christ wore this ring. Then I must not blush to wear it.
Our sorrows are all, like ourselves, mortal. There are no immortal sorrows for immortal souls. They come, but blessed be God, they also go. Like birds of the air, they fly over our heads. But they cannot make their abode in our souls. We suffer today, but we shall rejoice tomorrow.
The Quaker was right who, when he saw a lady fretting on the sofa some year or so after her husband was dead, still harboring grief without a token of resignation, said to her, ‘Madam, I see you have not forgiven God yet.’ Sometimes, grief is not a sacred feeling, but only a murmur of rebellion against the Most High.
On Works:
Many Christians appear to think that if they are just believers, it is enough. We do not in business think it enough if we barely escape bankruptcy. A man does not say, if his dear child has been ill in bed for years, that it is quite enough so long as the child is alive. We do not think of our own bodies, that so long as we can breathe, it is enough.
I remember a story of one, who remarked to a minister what a wonderful thing it was to see so many people weeping. ‘No,’ said he, ‘I will tell you something more amazing still, that so many will forget all they wept about when they get outside the door.’
To be unfeeling is to be unfruitful. Prayer without desire, praise without emotion, preaching without earnestness–what are all these? Like the marble images of life, they are cold and dead.
A hard-hearted Christian—is not that a complete contradiction? Must not our hearts have been broken before we could ourselves be penitent? And he who bound them up and healed them did not harden them with his gentle touch. I reckon that he gave them an additional tenderness by the very act of binding them up with his own dear pierced hands.
On Salvation (or, “Wait, I Thought He Was Baptist”):
I believe there will be more in heaven than in hell. If you ask me why I think so, I answer, because Christ in everything is to have the preeminence, and I cannot conceive how he could have the preeminence if there are to be more in the dominions of Satan than in paradise.
I rejoice to know that the souls of all infants, as soon as they die, speed their way to paradise. Think what a multitude there is of them!
It is said there is to be a multitude that no man can number in heaven. I have never read that there is to be a multitude that no man can number in hell.
Some of you could not be happy if you were allowed to enter heaven. Shall I tell you why? It is a land of spirit, and you have neglected your spirit. Some of you even deny that you have a spirit.
These are some I found encouraging and challenging, sometimes one more than the other; though ultimately the two are inseparable.
