Quotes About Faith

Mere philanthropy and humanity ... are not religion. There must also be piety. The soul must live in the divine presence; must inhale the Spirit of God; must utter its contrition, its weaknesses, its wants, and its thanks-givings to its Heavenly Father.

Faith has not lost its power. The soul still enjoys this privilege of receiving inspiration from above. It is not the special prerogative of a few saints. It is the common right of all. It is not an occasional, exceptional gift. It is constant, continuous, the law of our being. It is not a miracle, interfering with the operations of the human soul. It is the condition of our soul's true life.

A miracle no longer seems to me a manifestation of extraordinary power, but an extraordinary manifestation of ordinary power. God is always showing himself.

Before Christ brought life and immortality to light, death was the slayer of man's hopes. It left love alive, but love without hope is poignant sorrow.

A bad God is worse than no God at all.

There are many men, and a large number, who, though they do not wish to be rid of God, do not very much care to have him.

Who would not chose to have been one of God's three hundred? But when he brings us to the Spring of Trembling, how rarely we covet the post of honor. How we shrink from the battle of the present, even while we honor the heroism that courted it in the past. Every era has its battle. God's trumpet calls to-day, as Gideon's did, for recruits. Enter the ranks.

It is true that even to the heathen death did not end all. They believed in something after death, but they knew not what--a vague, shadowy, unsatisfactory immortality.

So long as the creed is a window, and we see God through it, it is good ... but when men are content simply to believe in the creed, or in the church, or in the Bible, they are worshipping idols.

God ever does for us more abundantly than we can ask or think. Israel implores only the destruction of the serpents. God undoes their poisonous work.

If you and I have not seen God, we cannot bear witness to God.

God is in all nature; thank God for the scientists, for they are thinking the thoughts of God after him, whether they know it or not.

Let us get rid of this notion that we must always associate the thoughts of God with a spirit of great solemnity. Gayety and God are not mutually exclusive.

The power that is to redeem him must be a power working within, not without.

God is infinite and we are finite; and, at the best, we can only know him a very little.

God conducts all his campaigns upon analogous principles. The emancipation of mankind is always wrought out by a forlorn hope. God is not on the side of the strong battalions. In moral conflicts, at least, numbers never count. Only the few have faith in God and courage in his cause; and faith and courage alone gain the battle.

I do not believe that the laws of nature have ever been violated, for this would be to believe that God who dwells in nature and animates it has violated the laws of his own being.

He who looks for the worst in men will not be without belief in a personal devil; he who looks for the best in men will not be without faith in a personal God.

Of self-sacrifice the Cross is the sublimest of all illustrations. It has cost God something to love.

The years pass in review before me. Thank God for the dear wife who three years ago persuaded me that I was a Christian more than a Congregationalist. The years have not been unfruitful. The work has been, oh! so little, and the harvest so great!

My faith in miracles rests also on my faith in Christ -- he himself a greater miracle by far than any attributed to him.

The experience of personal communication with God is as universal as the human race. Appreciation of the divine presence is more common than appreciation of art, music, or literature. Men and women who do not respond to music, see no beauty in pictures, never read, and could not understand literature if it were read to them, yet find comfort in sorrow, strength in temptation, courage in danger, and added joy in their enjoyments from the sense of a Father's presence.

Carry your daily affairs to God. Ask his guidance in every emergency. Expect discoveries of his will. Let the promise of his help quicken all your faculties. Act for yourself energetically. Judge for yourself thoughtfully. Look unto God trustingly. Then will God both act and judge for you.

My God is in the hearts of those that seek Him ... And in my heart I carry an assurance of His love that life cannot disturb. I know His love as the babe knows its mother's love, lying upon her breast. It knows her love though it neither understands her nature nor her ways.