Quote

To pursue joy is to lose it. The only way to get it is to follow steadily the path of duty, without thinking of joy, and then, like sheep, it comes most surely unsought, and we 'being in the way,' the angel of God, bright-haired joy, is sure to meet us.

Alexander MacLaren

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alexander MacLaren
Without
Follow
Haired
Way
Duty
Steadily
Thinking
Lose
Sheep
Like
Joy
Surely
Loses
Bright
Path
Pursue
Sure
Angel
Comes
Meet
Unsought

More quotes by Alexander MacLaren

Image
The act of faith, which separates us from all men, unites us for the first time in real brotherhood and they who, one by one, come to Jesus and meet Him alone, next find that they are come to the city of God and to an innumerable company.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
Ah, there is nothing more beautiful than the difference between the thought about sinful creatures which is natural to a holy being, and the thought about sinful creatures which is natural to a self-righteous being. The one is all contempt the other, all pity.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
You cannot put patience and experience into a parenthesis, and, omitting them, bring hope out of tribulation.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
The Gospel is not a mere message of deliverance, but a canon of conduct it is not a theology to be accepted, but it is ethics to be lived. It is not to be believed only, but it is to be taken into life as a guide.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
Remember that vision on the Mount of Transfiguration and let it be ours, even in the glare of earthly joys and brightnesses, to lift up our eyes, like those wondering three, and see no man any more, save Jesus only.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
The true confidence which is faith in Christ, and the true diffidence which is utter distrust of myself--are identical.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
If life has not made you by God's grace, through faith, holy--think you, will death without faith do it? The cold waters of that narrow stream are no purifying bath in which you may wash and be clean. No! no! as you go down into them, you will come up from them.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
Kindness does not require us to be blind to facts or to live in fancies, but it does require us to cherish a habit of goodwill, ready to show pity if sorrow appears, and slow to turn away even if hostility appears.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
If you would know Christ at all, you must go to Him as a sinful man, or you are shut out from Him altogether.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
If you want to live in this world, doing the duty of life, knowing the blessings of it, doing your work heartily, and yet not absorbed by it, remember that the one power whereby you can so act is, that all shall be consecrated to Christ, and done for His sake.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
Death is but a passage. It is not a house, it is only a vestibule. The grave has a door on its inner side.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
In such a world as this, with such hearts as ours, weakness is wickedness in the long run. Whoever lets himself be shaped and guided by any thing lower than an inflexible will, fixed in obedience to God, will in the end be shaped into a deformity, and guided to wreck and ruin
Alexander MacLaren
Image
I am satisfied, for I awake in Thy likeness.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
Unbelief is criminal because it is a moral act, an act of the whole nature.-Belief or unbelief is a test of a man's whole spiritual condition, because it is the whole being, affections, will, conscience, as well as the understanding, which are concerned in it.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
The root of all steadfastness is in consecration to God.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
The apostolic church thought more about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ than about death and heaven. The early Christians were looking, not for a cleft in the ground called a grave but for a cleavage in the sky called Glory.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
Man's course begins in a garden, but it ends in a city.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
If our faith in God is not the veriest sham, it demands, and will produce, the abandonment sometimes, the subordination always, of external helps and material good.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
Peace comes not from the absence of trouble, but from the presence of God.
Alexander MacLaren
Image
Every sin is a mistake, as well as a wrong and the epitaph for the sinner is, Thou fool!
Alexander MacLaren