The Nearer One Gets to God

1907

The nearer one gets to God the more good one can and will do for his fellow men.

Not One
There's not a heath, however rude,
But hath some little flower
To bright up its solitude
And scent the evening hour.

There's not a heart, however cast
By care and sorrow down,
But hath some memory of the past
To love and call its own.

The loudest prayers don't always carry the furthest.

Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others can not keep it from themselves.

We can only overcome the winds and flood which are against us so long as the Divine Power animates and sustains us.

God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers,
And thrusts the things we have prayed for in our face,
A gauntlet with a gift in't,
Every wish is like a prayer, with God.
— E. B. Browning.

Never be afraid to doubt if you only have the disposition to believe, and doubt in order that you may end in believing the truth.

"Deepen thy work in me, O Lord," was the prayer of one who was afraid of shallow views of sin and Christ. Let that prayer be ours!

We must be set on doing good, for goodness' sake and God's sake, apart from any thought of our own glory in the doing on it; apart from self-complacency that we have done so well.

We set up monumental stones over the graves of our joys, but who thinks of erecting monuments of praise for mercies received? We write four books of Lamentations and only one of Canticles, and are far more at home in wailing out a Miserere than in chanting a Te Deum. — C. H. Spurgeon.