Alexander Maclaren Quotes

110 Sourced Quotes

If you would have clear and irrefragable for a perpetual joy, a glory and a defense, the unwavering confidence, "I am Thy child," go to God's throne, and lie down at the foot of it, and let the first thought be, "My Father in heaven; " and that will brighten, that will establish, that will make omnipotent in your life, the witness of the Spirit that you are the child of God.

Alexander Maclaren
In such a world as this, with such hearts as ours, weakness is wickedness in the long run. Whoever lets himself be shaped and guided by any thing lower than an inflexible will, fixed in obedience to God, will in the end be shaped into a deformity, and guided to wreck and ruin

Alexander Maclaren
Do not let the empty cup be your first teacher of the blessings you had when it was full. Do not let a bard place here and there in the bed destroy your rest. Seek, as a plain duty, to cultivate a buoyant, joyous sense of the crowded kindnesses of God in your daily life.

Alexander Maclaren
The cup which my Saviour giveth me, can it be anything but a cup of salvation?

Alexander Maclaren
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.

Alexander Maclaren
The gospel is not speculation but fact. It is truth, because it is the record of a person who is the Truth.

Alexander Maclaren
Oh, remember that as certain as the historical fact, He died on Calvary; so certain is the prophetic fact, He shall reign, and you and I will stand there. I durst not touch that subject. Take it into your own hearts, and think about it, a kingdom, a judgment-seat, a crown, a gathered universe; separation, decision, execution of the sentence.

Alexander Maclaren
God keeps giving Himself as long as we bring that into which He can pour Himself. And when we stop bringing, He stops giving.

Alexander Maclaren
If life has not made you by God's grace, through faith, holy--think you, will death without faith do it? The cold waters of that narrow stream are no purifying bath in which you may wash and be clean. No! no! as you go down into them, you will come up from them.

Alexander Maclaren
Peace comes not from the absence of trouble, but from the presence of God.

Alexander Maclaren
Be sure that your soul is never so intensely alive as when in the deepest abnegation it waits hushed before God.

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
We must have Christ in our hearts, that He may shine forth from our lives.

Alexander Maclaren
The manliness of Christian love, and the putting away from ourselves of all fear, because we are " perfected in love," is one of the highest lessons that the gospel teaches us, and one of the greatest things which the gospel gives us.

Alexander Maclaren
As the flowers follow the sun, and silently hold up their petals to be tinted and enlarged by its shining, so must we, if we would know the joy of God, hold our souls, wills, hearts, and minds, still before Him, whose voice commands, whose love warns, whose truth makes fair our whole being. God speaks for the most part in such silence only. If the soul be full of tumult and jangling voices, His voice is little likely to be heard.

Alexander Maclaren
Heaven is endless longing, accompanied with an endless fruition-a longing which is blessedness, a longing which is life.

Alexander Maclaren
True peace comes not from the absence of trouble, but from the presence of God and will be deep and passing all understanding in the exact measure in which we live in and partake of the love of God.

Alexander Maclaren
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.

Alexander Maclaren
God gives us power to bear all the sorrows of His making; but He does not give us power to bear the sorrows of our own making, which the anticipation of sorrow most assuredly is.

Alexander Maclaren
Transiency is stamped on all our possessions, occupations, and delights. We have the hunger for eternity in our souls, the thought of eternity in our hearts, the destination for eternity written on our inmost being, and the need to ally ourselves with eternity proclaimed by the most short-lived trifles of time. Either these things will be the blessing or the curse of our lives. Which do yon mean that they shall be for you?

Alexander Maclaren