Alexander Maclaren: Use

“Unless we are wedded to Jesus Christ by the simple act of trust in His mercy and His power, Christ is nothing to us.”

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 608.

Wedding , Christ

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

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 104.

Love

“Let me always remember that it is not the amount of religious knowledge which I have, but the amount which I use, that determines my religious position and character.”

Alexander Maclaren

Quote reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) p. 365.

Knowledge

“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.”

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 131.

God

“Christ's voice sounds now for each of us in loving invitation; and dead in sin and hardness of heart though we be, we can listen and live. Christ Himself, my brother, sows the seed now. Do you take care that it falls not on, but in, your souls.”

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 85.

Love , Soul , Heart , Christ

“The disciples seem alone; but up yonder, in some hidden cleft of the hills, their Master looks down on all the weltering storm, and lifts His voice in prayer. Then when the need is sorest, and the hope least, He comes across the waves, making their surges His pavement, and using all opposition as the means of His approach; and His presence brings calmness; and immediately they are at the land.”

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 110.

Hope

“As we look upon that agony and those tearful prayers, let us not only look with thankfulness; but lot that kneeling Saviour teach us that in prayer alone can we be forearmed against our lesser sorrows; that strength to bear flows into the heart that is opened in supplication; and that a sorrow which we are made able to endure is more truly cohijuered than a sorrow which we avoid.”

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 71.

Tear , Heart

“Let us learn how the love of Christ, received into the heart, triumphs gradually but surely over all sin, transforms character, turning even its weakness into strength, and so, from the depths of transgression and the very gates of hell, raises men to God.”

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 398.

Love , Men , God , Hell

“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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 237.

Men , God , Faith , Time

“Let us imitate Him who sought the mountain-tops as His refreshment after toil, but never left duties undone or sufferers unrelieved in pain. Let us imitate Him who turned from the joys of contemplation to the joys of service without a murmur when His disciples broke in on His solitude with, "All men seek Thee; " but never suffered the outward work to blunt His desire for, nor to encroach on, the hour of still communion with His Father. Lord, teach us to work; Lord, teach us to pray.”

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 124.

Men , Pain , Mountain , Solitude

“So for us, the condition and preparation on and by which we are sheltered by that great hand, is the faith that asks, and the asking of faith. We must forsake the earthly props, but we must also believingly desire to be upheld by the heavenly arms. We make God responsible for our safety when we abandon other defense, and commit ourselves to Him.”

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 239.

God , Faith

“And I think, dear friends, if we carried with us more distinctly than we do that one simple thought that in all human joys, in all the apparently self-forgetting tenderness, of that Lord, who had a heart for every sorrow, and an ear for every complaint, and a hand open as day and full of melting charity for every need — that in every moment of that life in the boyhood, in the dawning manhood, in the maturity of His growing power — there was always present one black shadow, toward which He ever went straight with the consent of His will and the clearest eye, we should understand something more of how the life as well as the death was a sacrifice for us sinful men.”

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 68.

Life , Death , Men , Understanding

“Christ has given us, not only the ritual of an ordinance, but the pattern for our lives, when He took the cup, and gave thanks. So common joys become sacraments, enjoyment becomes worship, and the cup which holds the bitter or the sweet skillfully mingled for our lives becomes the cup of blessing and salvation drank in remembrance of Him.”

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 373.

Joy , Christ

“Many shall seek; do you strive. For wishing is one thing, and willing is another, and doing is yet another. And in regard to entrance into Christ's kingdom, our "doing" is trusting Him who has done all for us. " This is the work of God, that ye should believe on Him whom He hath sent." Does your wish lead to the acceptance of the condition? Then it will be fulfilled.”

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 619.

God , Christ

“There is no long interval between the sense of thirst and the trickling of the stream over the parched lip; but ever it is flowing, flowing past us, and the desire is but the opening of the lips to receive the limpid, and life-giving waters. No one ever desired the grace of God, really and truly desired it, but just in proportion as he desired it, he got it; just in proportion as he thirsted, he was satisfied.”

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 390.

Life , God , Sense , Water

“As in mysterious and transcendent union the Divine takes into itself the human in the person of Jesus, and eternity is blended with time; we, trusting Him, and yielding our hearts to Him, receive into our poor lives an incorruptible seed, and for us the soul-satisfying realities that abide forever mingle with and are reached through the shadows that pass away.”

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 610.

Soul , Reality , Time , Heart

“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.”

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 235.

Faith , Future , Sea

“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 mountain-side with its thick-ribbed ice.”

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 82.

Love , God , Mountain , Christ

“Christ by His intercession is able to save thee beyond the horizon and largest compass of thy thoughts, even to the utmost. In danger Christ lashes us to Himself, as Alpine guides do when there is perilous ice to get over.”

Alexander Maclaren

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 88.

Christ