Quotes About Devotion

What! thy stammering prayers make music in God's ear!

There is room for both; why should they fall out? Polanus (in his Syntag. de Terræmotu) tells us of a town in the territory of Berne in Switzerland, consis ting of ninety houses, that was in the year 1584 destroyed by an earthquake, except the half of one house, where the master of the family was earnestly praying with his wife and children upon their bended knees to God.

Love never thinks itself a loser so long as it keeps its beloved; yea, it is ambitious of any hazardous enterprise, whereby it may sacrifice itself in the service of its beloved, as we see in David, who put his life in his hands for Michal. How

Amor meus pondus meum—every man goes where his love carries him. If the world has your love, on it you will spend your lives; if truth has your hearts, you will catch the blow that is made at it in your own breasts, rather than let it fall on it.

Prayer is a solemn work as any thou canst go about in thy whole lifetime.

Pray often rather than very long at a time. It is hard to be very long in prayer and not slacken in our affections. Those watches which are made to go longer than ordinary at one winding do commonly lose towards the end.

Prayer, it is the very natural breath of faith.

Prayer is nothing but the promise reversed, or God's word formed into an argument, and retorted by faith upon God again. Know,

By 'praying always,' saith he, he exhorts us to pray in prosperity as well as adversity; and not then to intermit the practice of this duty because not driven to it by such outward pres sing necessities.

Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens,' Lam. 3:41. That is, saith Bernard, oremus et laboremus—let us pray and use the endeavour. The hypocrite's tongue wags, but the sincere soul's feet walk, and his hands work.

O, this persevering is a hard word! this taking up the cross daily, this praying always, this watching night and day, and never laying aside our clothes and armour, I mean indulging ourselves, to remit and unbend in our holy waiting on God, and walking with God. This sends many sorrowful away from Christ, yet this is a saint's duty, to make religion his every-day work, without any vacation from one end of the year to the other.

You see when a soul comes over from Satan's quarters unto Christ, and has but once the experience of that sweetness which is in his service, there is no getting him back to his old drudgery; as

Sincerity! it is the life of all our graces, and puts life into all our duties, and, as life makes beautiful and keeps the body sweet, so sincerity the soul and all it doth.

He is not a good subject, that is all for what he can get of his prince, but never thinks what he may do for him; nor he the true Christian, whose thoughts dwell more on his own happiness than on the honour of his God.

The Christian's armour will rust except it be furbished and scoured with the oil of prayer.

To say we love one, and not pray for him, is a solecism.

He is the best student in divinity that studies most upon his knees[26]

That prayer is a necessary duty to be performed by the Christian, and used with all other means in his spiritual warfare.

As it is impossible to please God without faith, so it is impossible not to desire to please God with faith.

so to make a good Christian, there is required a conscientious care to use all appointed means.

Sincerity makes the Christian sing when he hath nothing to his supper.

Bernard compares the study of the Word and the mere reading of it to the difference between a close friendship and a casual acquaintance. If you want genuine knowledge, he says, you will have to do more than greet the Word politely on Sundays or nod reverently when you chance to meet it on the street. You must walk with it and talk with it every day of the week. You must invite it into your private chambers, and forego other pleasures and worldly duties to spend time in its company.

That he who means to be a Christian indeed, must endeavour to maintain the power of holiness and righteousness in his life and conversation.

I could not shake my point of view, infected as it was, and I took up their study with a manly passion.