Alexander Maclaren Quotes

110 Sourced Quotes

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

Alexander Maclaren
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.

Alexander Maclaren
He that has his trust set upon God does not need to dread anything except the weakening or the paralyzing of that trust.

Alexander Maclaren
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
Love Christ, and then the eternity in the heart will not be a great aching void, but will be filled with the everlasting life which Christ gives and is.

Alexander Maclaren
The sum of the whole matter is this — He who is one in will and heart with God is a Christian. He who loves God is one in will and heart with Him. He who trusts Christ loves God. That is Christianity in its ultimate purpose and result. That is Christianity in its means and working forces. That is Christianity in its starting-point and foundation.

Alexander Maclaren
If we truly feel that the Lord liveth, before whom we stand, we shall want nothing else for our work but His smile; and we shall feel that the light of His face is all we need. That thought should deaden our love for outward things. How the things that we fever our souls by pursuing, and fret our hearts when we lose, will cease to attract! How small and vulgar the " prizes " of life, as people call them, will appear!

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

Alexander Maclaren
The message of love can never come into a human soul, and pass away from it unreceived, without leaving that spirit worse, with all its lowest characteristics strengthened, and all its best ones depressed, by the fact of rejection.

Alexander Maclaren
The cross is the centre of the world's history; the incarnation of Christ and the crucifixion of our Lord are the pivot round which all the events of the ages revolve. The testimony of Christ was the spirit of prophecy, and the growing power of Jesus is the spirit of history.

Alexander Maclaren
If faith, then new birth; if new birth, then sonship; if sonship, then "an heir of God, and a joint-heir with Christ." But if you have not got your foot upon the lowest round of the ladder, you will never come within sight of the blessed face of Him who stands at the top of it, and who looks down to you at this moment, saying to you, "My child, wilt thou not at this time cry unto me, 'Abba, Father?'"

Alexander Maclaren
A living man must have a living God, or his soul will perish in the midst of earthly plenty, and will thirst and die whilst the water of earthly delights is running all around him. We are made to need persons not things.

Alexander Maclaren
Life should be a constant vision of God's presence. Here is our defense against being led away by the gauds and shows of earth's vulgar attractions.

Alexander Maclaren
Given a man full of faith, you will have a man tenacious in purpose, absorbed in one grand object, simple in his motives, in whom selfishness has been driven out by the power of a mightier love, and indolence stirred into unwearied energy.

Alexander Maclaren
Surely Scripture is right when it makes the sin of sins that unbelief, which is at bottom nothing else than a refusal to take the cup of salvation. Surely no sharper grief can be inflicted upon the Spirit of God than when we leave His gifts neglected and unappropriated.

Alexander Maclaren
If God sends us on stony paths, He will provide us with strong shoes.

Alexander Maclaren
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
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."

Alexander Maclaren
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
Duty is duty, conscience is conscience, right is right, and wrong is wrong, whatever sized type they may be printed in. " Large" or "small" are not words for the vocabulary of conscience.

Alexander Maclaren
Christ puts Himself at the head of the mystic march of the generations; and. like the mysterious aneel that Joshua saw in the plain by Jericho, makes the lofty claim, "Nay, but as the captain of the Lord's host am I come up."

Alexander Maclaren
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
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
Embrace in one act the two truths-thine own sin, and God's infinite mercy in Jesus Christ.

Alexander Maclaren
The vision of the Divine presence ever takes the form which our circumstances most require.

Alexander Maclaren
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
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
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
'The Church is an anvil which has worn out many hammers', and the story of the first collision is, in essentials, the story of all.

Alexander Maclaren
If you want to live in this world, doing the duty of life, knowing the blessings of it, doing your work heartily, and yet not absorbed by it, remember that the one power whereby you can so act is, that all shall be consecrated to Christ, and done for His sake.

Alexander Maclaren