C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
D. L. Moody
A man to be converted has to give up his will, his ways, and his thoughts.
As a dead man cannot inherit an estate, no more can a dead soul inherit heaven. The soul must be resurrected in Christ.
Christians should live in the world, but not be filled with it. A ship lives in the water; but if the water gets into the ship, she goes to the bottom. So Christians may live in the world; but if the world gets into them, they sink.
God has nothing to say to the self-righteous. Unless you humble yourself before Him in the dust, and confess before Him your iniquities and sins, the gate of heaven, which is open only for sinners, saved by grace, must be shut against you forever.
I firmly believe that the moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness and ambition and self-seeking and every thing that is contrary to God’s law, the Holy Ghost will come and fill every corner of our hearts; but if we are full of pride and conceit and ambition and self-seeking and pleasure and the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God; and I believe many a man is praying to God to fill him when he is full already with something else.
I never saw a useful Christian who was not a student of the Bible. If a man neglects his Bible, he may pray and ask God to use him in His work; but God cannot make much use of him, for there is not much for the Holy Ghost to work upon.
I never yet have known the Spirit of God to work where the Lord’s people were divided.
I thank God that the gospel is to be preached to every creature. There is no man so far gone, but the grace of God can reach him; no man so desperate or black, but He can forgive him.
If Jesus bore the cross, and died on it for me, ought I not to be willing to take it up for Him?
If you were to spend a month feeding on the precious promises of God, you would not be going about with your heads hanging down like bulrushes, complaining how poor you are; but you would lift up your heads with confidence, and proclaim the riches of His grace because you could not help it.
It may be that at this moment every battlement of heaven is alive with the redeemed. There is a sainted mother watching for her daughter. Have you no response to that long hushed voice which has prayed for you so often? And for you, young man, are there no voices there that have prayed for you? And are there none whom you promised once to meet again, if not on earth, in heaven?
Merely reading the Bible is no use at all without we study it thoroughly, and hunt it through, as it were, for some great truth.
My friends, does God invite you? If He does, why don’t you accept the invitation? If you want to come, just come along, and don’t be talking about feeling. Do you think Lazarus had any feeling when Christ called him out of the sepulchre?
My friends, there is one spot on earth where the fear of death, of sin, and of judgment need never trouble us, the only safe spot on earth where the sinner can stand—Calvary.
People, when asked if they are Christians, give some of the strangest answers you ever heard. Some will say if you ask them: “Well—well—well, I—I hope I am.” Suppose a man should ask me if I am an American. Would I say: “Well, I—well, I—I hope I am?”
The dying boy said: “Father, don’t you weep for me; when I get to heaven I will go straight to Jesus and tell Him that ever since I can remember you have tried to lead me to Him.” I would rather have my children say that of me after I am gone; or if they die before me, I would rather they should take that message to the Master than to have a monument over me reaching to the skies.
The grand question of life is, Is my name written in heaven?
The law stops every man’s mouth. God will have a man humble himself down on his face before Him, with not a word to say for himself. Then God will speak to him, when he owns that he is a sinner, and gets rid of all his own righteousness.
The work of the Spirit is to impart life, to implant hope, to give liberty, to testify of Christ, to guide us into all truth, to teach us all things, to comfort the believer, and to convict the world of sin.
“Verily I say unto you, he that heareth My word and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.” My friend, that is worth more than all the feeling you can have in a lifetime.
What we want is men with a little courage to stand up for Christ. When Christianity wakes up, and every child that belongs to the Lord is willing to speak for Him, is willing to work for Him, and, if need be, willing to die for Him, then Christianity will advance, and we shall see the work of the Lord prosper.
When a man is full of the Holy Ghost, he is the very last man to be complaining of other people.
You can always tell when a man is a great ways from God—he is always talking about himself, how good he is. But the moment he sees God by the eye of faith, he is down on his knees, and, like Job, he cries, “Behold I am vile.”
You cannot find, I believe, a case in the Bible where a man is converted without God’s calling in some human agency—using some human instrument.