Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers/N
NATIONAL
With the exception of the writ of habeas corpus, a privilege not required under the Jewish government, simply because it did not allow of imprisonment, there is not a single feature of free government that is not distinctly developed in the Bible.
It is when the hour of conflict is over that history comes to a right understanding of the strife, and is ready to exclaim, "Lo, God is here, and we knew Him not!"
No advanced thought, no mystical philosophy, no glittering abstractions, no swelling phrases about freedom, not even science with its marvelous inventions and discoveries, can help us much in sustaining this republic; still less can godless theories of creation, or any infidel attempt to rule out the Redeemer from His rightful supremacy in our hearts, afford any hope of security. That way lies despair.
In the study of such events we do well to remember that the hand once nailed to the tree holds the chain that binds the past, the present, and the future. His way is in the sea, His path is in the great waters, and His footsteps are not known. But wisdom marks His plans; truth and justice attend their development, and out of seeming evil He brings triumphant good.
Human society reposes on religion. Civilization without it would be like the lights that play in the northern sky—a momentary flash on the face of darkness ere it again settles into eternal night. Wit and wisdom, sublime poetry and lofty philosophy, cannot save a nation, else ancient Greece had never perished. Valor, law, ambition, cannot preserve a people, else Rome had still been mistress of the world. The nation that loses faith in God and man loses not only its most precious jewel, but its most purifying and conserving force.
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert those pillars of human happiness, those firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.
It must never be forgotten that religion gave birth to Anglo-American society. In the United States, religion is therefore commingled with all the habits of the nation and all the feelings of patriotism; whence it derives a peculiar force.
Make us mindful of Thy mercies in the past, and faithful to the memories and traditions of truth and justice, of religion and patriotism, in those that have gone before us.
Says Oliver Cromwell: "What are all histories but God manifesting Himself, that He hath shaken down and trampled under foot whatsoever He hath not planted?" History is not a series of jumbled happenings. God is in the facts of history as truly as He is in the march of the seasons, the revolution of the planets, or the architecture of the worlds.
The whole track of history is marked with the ruin of empires which having been founded in injustice, or perpetuated by wrong, were ultimately destroyed.
Sow but one seed of primal evil in the moral soil of a nation, it will grow to be a tree as broad as the sky,—to take fruitfulness from the earth wherein it is rooted, and to cover it instead with barrenness and gloom.
To avert national decay, then, the moral character must be guarded. The mighty heart of the nation must be kept sound, so that its pulses, when once roused, will, like the ocean in its strength, sweep all before it. So long as the moral tone is preserved, the sun of our glory will not set; there will come no national decay and death.
If the great questions of the beginning of this century were mainly political, those which will convulse the world at its close will be social.
NATURE.
Every object in nature is impressed with God's footsteps, and every day repeats the wonders of creation. There is not an object, be it pebble or pearl, weed or rose, the flower-spangled sward beneath, or the star-spangled sky above, not a worm or an angel, a drop of water or a boundless ocean, in which intelligence may not discern, and piety adore, the providence of Him who took our nature that He might save our souls.
He hath made every thing beautiful in his time.
If we can hear the voice of God in all sounds, see the sweep of His will in all motions, catch hints of His taste in all beauty, follow the reach of His imagination in all heights and distances, and trace the delicate ministry of His love in all the little graces and utilities that spring and blossom about us as thick as the grass, we shall tread God's world with reverent feet as if it were a temple. The pure and solemn eyes of the indwelling soul will look forth upon us from every thing which His hands have made. Nature will be to us, not some dark tissue of cloth of mystery flowing from some unseen loom, but a vesture of light in which God has enrobed Himself; and with worshipful fingers we shall rejoice to touch even the hem of His garment.
When I consider the multitude of associated forces which are diffused through nature—when I think of that calm balancing of their energies which enables those most powerful in themselves, most destructive to the world's creatures and economy, to dwell associated together and be made subservient to the wants of creation, I rise from the contemplation more than ever impressed with the wisdom, the beneficence, and grandeur, beyond our language to express, of the Great Disposer of us all.
We might almost accuse nature of falsehood. One sees himself behind a mirror when nothing is there. A straight pole leaning in a pool is bent to appearance. The sun seems to rise and set, but moves not at all. We see it before it rises and after it sets. These and numberless other cases might be adduced to prove the deceitfulness of nature. Nay, they prove rather that education is the law of our being, and that here, as elsewhere, he who would not be self-deceived, must study nature's laws, must become educated.
Vast chain of being! which from God began,
Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach, from infinite to Thee,
From Thee to nothing.
I hold that we have a very imperfect knowledge of the works of nature till we view them as works of God,—not only as works of mechanism, but works of intelligence, not only as under laws, but under a Lawgiver, wise and good.
So distinguished by a Divine wisdom, power, and goodness, are God's works of creation and providence, that all nature, by the gentle voices of her skies and streams, of her fields and forests, as well as by the roar of breakers, the crash of thunder, the rumbling earthquake, the fiery volcano, and the destroying hurricane, echoes the closing sentences of this angel hymn, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is full of His glory!"
There's nothing bright above, below,
From flowers that bloom, to stars that glow,
But in its light my soul can see
Some feature of Thy Deity.
All things and all acts and this whole wonderful universe proclaim to us the Lord our Father, Christ our love, Christ our hope, our portion, and our joy. Oh, brethren, if you would know the meaning of the world, read Christ in it. If you would see the beauty of earth, take it for a prophet of something higher than itself.
These, as they change, Almighty Father! these
Are but the varied God. The rolling year
Is fiill of Thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring
Thy beauty walks, Thy tenderness and love.
It is good for any man to be alone with nature and himself, or with a friend who knows when silence is more sociable than talk,—
"In the wilderness alone
There where nature worships God."
It is well to be in places where man is little, and God is great,—where what he sees all around him has the same look as it had a thousand years ago, and will have the same, in all likelihood, when he has been a thousand years in his grave. It abates and rectifies a man, if he is worth the process.
The best thing is to go from nature's God down to nature; and if you once get to nature's God, and believe Him, and love Him, it is surprising how easy it is to hear music in the waves, and songs in the wild whisperings of the winds; to see God everywhere in the stones, in the rocks, in the rippling brooks, and hear Him everywhere, in the lowing of cattle, in the rolling of thunder, and in the fury of tempests. Get Christ first, put Him in the right place, and you will find Him to be the wisdom of God in your own experience.
Only let us love God, and then nature will compass us about like a cloud of Divine witnesses; and all influences from the earth, and things on the earth, will be ministers of God to do us good. Only let there be God within us, and then every thing outside us will become a godlike help.
The very voices of the night, sounding like the moan of the tempest, may turn out to be the disguised yet tender "voices of God," calling away from all earthly footsteps, to mount with greater singleness of eye and ardor of aim the alone ladder of safety and peace—upward, onward, heavenward, homeward.
God is infinite; and the laws of nature, like nature itself, are finite. These methods of working, therefore,—which correspond to the physical element in us,—do not exhaust His agency. There is a boundless residue of disengaged energy beyond.
Nature—faint emblem of Omnipotence!
Shaped by His hand—the shadow of His light—
The veil in which He wraps His majesty.
Call nature the grand revelation! Is it more to go to nature and know it than to know God? Are there deeper depths in nature, higher sublimities, thoughts more captivating and glorious? In the mineral and vegetable shapes are there finer themes than in the life of Jesus? In the storms and glorious pilings of the clouds, are there manifestations of greatness and beauty more impressive than in the tragic sceneries of the cross? Nature is the realm of things, the supernatural is the realm of powers.
NEARNESS TO GOD AND CHRIST.
Still, still with Thee, when purple morning breaketh,
When the bird waketh, and the shadows flee;
Fairer than morning, lovelier than the daylight,
Dawns the sweet consciousness,—I am with Thee.
My Christian brethren, if the crowd of difficulties which stand between your souls and God succeed in keeping you away, all is lost. Right into the Presence you must force your way, with no concealment, baring the soul with all its ailments before Him, asking, not the arrest of the consequences of sin, but the cleansing of the conscience "from dead works to serve the living God," so that if you must suffer, you will suffer as a forgiven man.
Seekest thou a place at my right hand? Nay, I give thee a more wondrous dignity. "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne."
Thou wilt draw nigh!
Father—it is no dream that Thou art near—
No dream that, in my sin and misery,
I may look up to Thee,—
May hide beneath the shadow of Thy wings,
From all the restlessness of outward things,
And from my own heart's self-accusing fears—
For Thou art nigh.
O, to have the soul bathed all day long in this thought, "as the pebble in the willow brook" until the words come like the tears, because the heart is full, and we cannot help it; to feel, in the darkest hour, that there is an unseen Spectator whose eyes rest on us like morning on the flowers; and that in the severest sorrow, we can sink into a presence full of love and sympathy, deeper than ever breathed from earth or sky or loving hearts—a presence in which all fears and anxieties melt away as ice-crystals in the warm ocean. This is heaven.
Let us keep to Christ, and cling to Him, and hang on Him, so that no power can remove us.
Nearer, O Christ, to Thee. Nearer to the open side; nearer to the eyes that wept in love because I was a sinner; nearer to the scarred hand that wields the sceptre of dominion.
It is not by change of place that we can come nearer to Him who is in every place, but by the cultivation of pure desires and virtuous habits.
With Thee in shady solitudes I walk,
With Thee in busy, crowded cities talk;
In every creature own Thy forming power,
In each event Thy providence adore.
When you have honestly and penitently sought out Christ, and confessed your sins to Him, and put yourself wholly in His hands, then stay there. Follow Him. Keep close to Him and Him alone. In your store, in your shop, in your field, in your home, or wherever you are, be ever saying, "Now, Jesus, Lead me! Teach me Thy way! Hold fast to my hand!"
Blessed God, pity the soul whose extremest horror is the doom of an eternal departure from Thee. Draw my spirit into the holiest and the nearest union with Thyself that is possible while it dwells in this flesh! And let me here commence that delightful residence and converse with God, which nor death, nor judgment shall ever destroy, nor shall a long eternity ever put a period to it.
Thus while I journey on, my Lord to meet,
My thoughts and meditations are so sweet,
Of Him on whom I lean, my strength, my stay,
I can forget the sorrows of the way.
NEGLIGENCE.
Negligence is the rust of the soul that corrodes through all her best resolves.
How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?