William Barclay Quotes

26 Sourced Quotes

If a man fights his way through his doubts to the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, he has attained to a certainty that the man who unthinkingly accepts things can never reach.

William Barclay
Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and to take up His Cross.

William Barclay
When we believe that God is Father, we also believe that such a father's hand will never cause his child a needless tear. We may not understand life any better, but we will not resent life any longer.

William Barclay
Christian freedom does not mean being free to do as we like; it means being free to do as we ought.

William Barclay
So long as we judge ourselves by human comparisons, there is plenty of room for self-satisfaction, and self-satisfaction kills faith, for faith is born of the sense of need. But when we compare ourselves with Jesus Christ, and through Him, with God, we are humbled to the dust, and then faith is born, for there is nothing left to do but to trust to the mercy of God.

William Barclay
There are certain things which are lost by being kept and saved by being used. Any individual talent is like that. If it is used, it will develop into something still greater. If someone refuses to use it, in the end that talent will be lost. Supremely so, life is like that.

William Barclay
Strict orthodoxy can cost too much if it has to be bought at the price of love. All the orthodoxy in the world will never take the place of love.

William Barclay
Faith in God is the instrument which enables men and women to remove the hills of difficulty which block their path.

William Barclay
The only victory love can enjoy is the day when its offer of love is answered by the return of love. The only possible final triumph is a universe loved by God and in love with God.

William Barclay
The only way to get our values right is to see, not the beginning, but the end of the way, to see things not only in the light of time but in the light of Eternity.

William Barclay
God does not choose a person for ease and comfort and selfish joy but for a task that will take all that head and heart and hand can bring to it. God chooses a man in order to use him.

William Barclay
It may well be that the world is denied miracle after miracle and triumph after triumph because we will not bring to Christ what we have and what we are. If, just as we are, we would lay ourselves on the altar of service of Jesus Christ, there is no saying what Christ could do with us and through us.

William Barclay
We are chosen for joy. However hard the Christian way, it is both in the traveling and in the goal, the way of joy.

William Barclay
God tested Abraham. Temptation is not meant to make us fail; it is meant to confront us with a situation out of which we emerge stronger than we were. Temptation is not the penalty of manhood; it is the glory of manhood.

William Barclay
There is only one way to bring peace to the heart, joy to the mind, and beauty to the life; it is to accept and do the will of God.

William Barclay
The Christian is called upon to be the partner of God in the work of the conversion of men.

William Barclay
We reverence God and we hallow God's name when our life is such that it brings honor to God and attracts others to Him.

William Barclay
The essential fact of Christianity is that God thought all men worth the sacrifice of his son.

William Barclay
It is fatally easy to think of Christianity as something to be discussed and not as something to be experienced.

William Barclay
Prayer will never do our work for us; what it will do is to strengthen us for work which must be done.

William Barclay
All life is based on the fact that anything worth getting is hard to get. There is a price to be paid for anything. Scholarship can only be bought at the price of study, skill of craft or technique can only be bought at the price of practice, and eminence in any sport can only be bought at the price of training and discipline.

William Barclay
The word grace emphasizes at one and the same time the helpless poverty of man and the limitless kindness of God.

William Barclay
It is the simple truth to say that the New Testament books became canonical because no one could stop them doing so.

William Barclay
The true, the genuine worship is when man, through his spirit, attains to friendship and intimacy with God. True and genuine worship is not to come to a certain place; it is not to go through a certain ritual or liturgy; it is not even to bring certain gifts. True worship is when the spirit, the immortal and invisible part of man, speaks to and meets with God, who is immortal and invisible.

William Barclay
Pride is the ground in which all the other sins grow, and the parent from which all the other sins come.

William Barclay
More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world.

William Barclay