Quotes from Alexander MacLaren

Here is the manliness of manhood, that a man has a good reason for what he does, and has a will in doing it.

If you would know Christ at all, you must go to Him as a sinful man, or you are shut out from Him altogether.

Man's course begins in a garden, but it ends in a city.

The more we work the more we need to pray. In this day of activity there is great danger, not of doing too much, but of praying too little for so much work.

In heaven after ages of ages of growing glory, we shall have to say, as each new wave of the shoreless, sunlit sea bears us onward, It doth not yet appear what we shall be.

Our work, abiding, shall bring to us the endless glory with which God at last overpays the toils, even as now He overanswers the poor prayers of His laboring servants.

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.

That which of all things unfits man for the reception of Christ as a Saviour, is not gross profligacy and outward, vehement transgression, but it is self-complacency, fatal self-righteousness and self-sufficiency.

The true confidence which is faith in Christ, and the true diffidence which is utter distrust of myself--are identical.

Death is but a passage. It is not a house, it is only a vestibule. The grave has a door on its inner side.

Faith refers to Christ. Holiness depends on faith. Heaven depends on holiness.

Faith is the sight of the inward eye.

Nothing but Christian faith gives to the furthest future the solidity and definiteness which it must have if it is to be a breakwater for us against the fluctuating sea of present cares and thoughts.

All that this world knows of living lies in giving - and more giving; He that keeps, be sure he loses -Friendship grows by what it uses.

Grieve not the Christ of God, who redeems us; and remember that we grieve Him most when we will not let Him pour His love upon us, but turn a sullen, unresponsive unbelief towards His pleading grace, as some glacier shuts out the sunshine from the mountainside with its thick-ribbed ice.

You have to live with Him day by day, and year by year, and to learn to know Him as we learn to know husbands and wives, by continual experience of a sweet and unfailing love, by many a sacred hour of interchange of affection and reception of gifts and counsels.

It was a deep true thought which the old painters had, when they drew John as likest to his Lord. Love makes us like.

The tears of Christ are the pity of God. The gentleness of Jesus is the long-suffering of God. The tenderness of Jesus is the love of God. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.

Love is the only fire that is hot enough to melt the iron obstinacy of a creatures' will.