Top 100 Alexander Maclaren Quotes
#1. The longest way round is the shortest way home.
(Quoting Alexander MacLaren, The Wearied Christ and Other Sermons)
C.S. Lewis
#2. The tears of Christ are the pity of God. The gentleness of Jesus is the long-suffering of God. The tenderness of Jesus is the love of God. He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.
Alexander MacLaren
#3. 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
#5. Rich or poor, high or low, all men are equal in sin. There are surface differences and degrees, but a deep identity beneath. So on the same principle all souls are of the same value. Here is the true democracy of Christianity. So there is one ransom for all, for the need of all is identical. III.
Alexander MacLaren
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. If God sends us on stony paths, He will provide us with strong shoes.
Alexander MacLaren
#9. God is His own motive. His love is not drawn out by our loveableness, but wells up, like an artesian spring, from the depths of His nature.
Alexander MacLaren
#10. The true confidence which is faith in Christ, and the true diffidence which is utter distrust of myself
are identical.
Alexander MacLaren
#11. To pursue joy is to lose it. The only way to get it is to follow steadily the path of duty.
Alexander MacLaren
#12. There can be no faith so feeble that Christ does not respond to it.
Alexander MacLaren
#13. Brethren, understand that the gospel is a gospel which brings a present salvation; and try to feel that it is not presumption, but simply out of the very fundamental principle of it, when you are not afraid to say, I know that my Redeemer is yonder, and I know that He loves me.
Alexander MacLaren
#14. The gospel is not speculation but fact. It is truth, because it is the record of a person who is the Truth.
Alexander MacLaren
#15. 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
#16. He who has the Holy Spirit in His heart and the Scripture in his hands has all he needs.
Alexander MacLaren
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. Sorrow and loss are meant to prepare us for the vision of God to purge the inward eye that it may see Him.
Alexander MacLaren
#21. Remember that vision on the Mount of Transfiguration; and let it be ours, even in the glare of earthly joys and brightnesses, to lift up our eyes, like those wondering three, and see no man any more, save Jesus only.
Alexander MacLaren
#23. The more we work the more we need to pray. In this day of activity there is great danger, not of doing too much, but of praying too little for so much work.
Alexander MacLaren
#24. The world takes its notions of God from the people who say that they belong to God's family. They read us a great deal more than they read the Bible. They see us; they only hear about Jesus Christ.
Alexander MacLaren
#25. Here is the manliness of manhood, that a man has a good reason for what he does, and has a will in doing it.
Alexander MacLaren
#26. The mystery of the universe, and the meaning of God's world, are shrouded in hopeless obscurity, until we learn to feel that all laws suppose a lawgiver, and that all working involves a Divine energy.
Alexander MacLaren
#27. 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
#29. You must cast yourself on God's gospel with all your weight, without any hanging back, without any doubt, without even the shadow of a suspicion that it will give.
Alexander MacLaren
#30. 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
#32. The never-ceasing boom of the great ocean as it breaks on the beach, drowns all smaller sounds.
Alexander MacLaren
#33. Trust Christ! and a great benediction of tranquil repose comes down upon the calm mind and the tranquil heart.
Alexander MacLaren
#34. Embrace in one act the two truths-thine own sin, and God's infinite mercy in Jesus Christ.
Alexander MacLaren
#36. 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
#37. To-day is given us mainly that we may learn to know God better, and to love Him more, and to serve Him more joyfully.
Alexander MacLaren
#38. 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
#39. Seek to cultivate a buoyant joyous sense of the crowded kindnesses of God in your daily life.
Alexander MacLaren
#40. And so, in calm expectation of a blessed future and a finished work which will explain the past, in honest submission of out way to God, in supreme delight in Him who is the gladness of our joy, the secret of tranquillity will be ours.
Alexander MacLaren
#41. 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
#42. The cross is the centre of the world's history; the incarnation of Christ and the crucifiction 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
#43. The apostolic church thought more about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ than about death and heaven. The early Christians were looking, not for a cleft in the ground called a grave but for a cleavage in the sky called Glory.
Alexander MacLaren
#46. The prayer that begins with trustfulness, and passes on into waiting, will always end in thankfulness, triumph, and praise.
Alexander MacLaren
#47. We are only asking you to give to Christ that which you give to others, to transfer the old emotions, the blessed emotions, the exercise of which makes gladness in the life here below, to transfer them to Him, and to rest safe in the Lord. Faith is trust.
Alexander MacLaren
#48. All that this world knows of living lies in giving - and more giving; He that keeps, be sure he loses -Friendship grows by what it uses.
Alexander MacLaren
#49. Kindness does not require us to be blind to facts or to live in fancies, but it does require us to cherish a habit of goodwill, ready to show pity if sorrow appears, and slow to turn away even if hostility appears.
Alexander MacLaren
#50. The Gospel is not a mere message of deliverance, but a canon of conduct; it is not a theology to be accepted, but it is ethics to be lived. It is not to be believed only, but it is to be taken into life as a guide.
Alexander MacLaren
#51. The cup which my Saviour giveth me, can it be anything but a cup of salvation?
Alexander MacLaren
#52. You cannot put patience and experience into a parenthesis, and, omitting them, bring hope out of tribulation.
Alexander MacLaren
#53. True love is an intense desire for the presence of its object. God is only ours in reality when we are conscious of His nearness, and that is strange love of Him which is content to pass days without ever setting Him before itself.
Alexander MacLaren
#54. Love is the only fire that is hot enough to melt the iron obstinacy of a creatures will
Alexander MacLaren
#55. Heaven is endless longing, accompanied with an endless fruition-a longing which is blessedness, a longing which is life.
Alexander MacLaren
#56. 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
#57. That which of all things unfits man for the reception of Christ as a Savior, is not gross profligacy and outward, vehement transgression, but it is self-complacency, fatal self-righteousness and self-sufficiency.
Alexander MacLaren
#58. That is faith, cleaving to Christ, twining round Him with all the tendrils of our heart, as the vine does round its support.
Alexander MacLaren
#59. Trust yourselves, my brethren, to the immortal love and perfect work of the Divine Saviour, and by His dear might your days will advance by peaceful stages, whereof each gathers up and carries forward the blessings of all that went before, to a death which shall be a birth.
Alexander MacLaren
#60. We believe that the history of the world is but the history of His influence and that the center of the whole universe is the cross of Calvary.
Alexander MacLaren
#61. We must have Christ in our hearts, that He may shine forth from our lives.
Alexander MacLaren
#62. While the agent of renovation is the Divine Spirit, and the condition of renovation is our cleaving to Christ, the medium of renovation and the weapon which the transforming grace employs is "the word of the truth of the gospel," whereby we are sanctified.
Alexander MacLaren
#63. Self-confidence is not the temper which God uses for His instruments. He works with 'bruised reeds,' and breathes His strength into them. It is when a man says 'I can do nothing,' that he is fit for God to employ. 'When I am weak, then I am strong.' Moses
Alexander MacLaren
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. 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
#68. He who makes his needs known to God gains for immediate answer "the peace of God which passeth understanding," and can wait God's time for the rest.
Alexander MacLaren
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. Why should we live halfway up the hill and swathed in the mists, when we might have an unclouded sky and a radiant sun over our heads if we would climb higher and walk in the light of His face?
Alexander MacLaren
#72. The grace of God, says Luther, "is like a flying summer shower." It has fallen upon more than one land, and passed on. Judea had it, and lies barren and dry. These Asiatic coasts had it, and flung it away.
Alexander MacLaren
#73. 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
#75. If our thoughts are stretching across the sea to the landing at home, and the welcome there, we shall not fight with our fellow-passengers about our cabins or places at the table.
Alexander MacLaren
#76. Christ wrought out His perfect obedience as a man, through temptation, and by suffering.
Alexander MacLaren
#77. Being in Christ, it is safe to forget the past; it is possible to be sure of the future; it is possible to be diligent in the present.
Alexander MacLaren
#78. No man loveth God except the man who has first learned that God loves him.
Alexander MacLaren
#79. Seek to be the man that you are least likely to be, and aim at a comprehensive development of 'all righteousness and goodness and truth.
Alexander MacLaren
#81. Only he who can say, "The Lord is the strength of my life" can say, "Of whom shall I be afraid?"
Alexander MacLaren
#82. 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
#83. A picture without sky has no glory. This present, unless we see gleaming beyond it the eternal calm of the heavens, above the tossing tree tops with withering leaves, and the smoky chimneys, is a poor thing for our eyes to gaze at, or our hearts to love, or our hands to toil on.
Alexander MacLaren
#84. You have nothing to do but to receive the things that are freely given to you of God - the forgiveness, the cleansing, the life, that come from Christ by faith.
Alexander MacLaren
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. Conflict, not progress, is the word that defines man's path from darkness into light. No holiness is won by any other means than this, that wickedness should be slain day by day, and hour by hour.
Alexander MacLaren
#88. Be sure that your soul is never so intensely alive as when in the deepest abnegation it waits hushed before God .
Alexander MacLaren
#89. 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
#90. 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
#91. Let the current of your being set towards God, then your life will be filled and calmed by one master-passion which unites and stills the soul.
Alexander MacLaren
#92. 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
#93. Peace comes not from the absence of trouble, but from the presence of God.
Alexander MacLaren
#94. If you would know Christ at all, you must go to Him as a sinful man, or you are shut out from Him altogether.
Alexander MacLaren
#95. If our faith in God is not the veriest sham, it demands, and will produce, the abandonment sometimes, the subordination always, of eternal helps and material good.
Alexander MacLaren
#96. Unbelief is criminal because it is a moral act, an act of the whole nature.-Belief or unbelief is a test of a man's whole spiritual condition, because it is the whole being, affections, will, conscience, as well as the understanding, which are concerned in it.
Alexander MacLaren
#97. 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
#99. The vision of the Divine presence ever takes the form which our circumstances most require.
Alexander MacLaren
#100. True faith, by a mighty effort of the will, fixes its gaze on our Divine Helper, and there finds it possible and wise to lose its fears. It is madness to say, "I will not be afraid; "it is wisdom and peace to say, "I will trust and not be afraid.
Alexander MacLaren
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