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Quotes by F. W. Robertson
Christian life is action: not a speculating, not a debating, but a doing. One thing, and only one, in this world has eternity stamped upon it. Feelings pass; resolves and thoughts pass; opinions change. What you have done lasts - lasts in you. Through ages, through eternity, what you have done for Christ, that, and only that, you are.— filed under Action
Only what coronation is in an earthly way, baptism is in a heavenly way; God's authoritative declaration in material form of a spiritual reality.— filed under Baptism
A To believe is to be happy; to doubt is to be wretched. To believe is to be strong. Doubt cramps energy. Belief is power. Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do any thing that is worth the doing.— filed under Belief
Earth has not a spectacle more glorious or more fair to show than this- love tolerating intolerance; charity covering, as with a vail, even the sin of the lack of charity.— filed under Charity
Every unfulfilled aspiration of humanity in the past; all partial representation of perfect character; all sacrifices, nay, even those of idolatry, point to the fulfillment of what we want, the answer to every longing - the type of perfect humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ.— filed under Christ's Life and Ministry
But if there has been on this earth no real, perfect human life, no love that never cooled, no faith that never failed, which may shine as a loadstar across the darkness of our experience, a light to light amidst all convictions of our own meanness and all suspicions of other's littleness, why, we may have a religion, but we have not a Christianity. For if we lose Him as a Brother, we cannot feel Him as a Saviour.— filed under Christ's Life and Ministry
Christ's miracles were vivid manifestations to the senses that He is the Saviour of the body - and now as then the issues of life and death are in His hands - that our daily existence is a perpetual miracle. The extraordinary was simply a manifestation of God's power in the ordinary.— filed under Christ's Life and Ministry
It was necessary for the Son to disappear as an outward authority, in order that He might reappear as an inward principle of life. Our salvation is no longer God manifested in a Christ without us, but as a "Christ within us, the hope of glory."— filed under Christ's Life and Ministry
My Saviour! fill up the blurred and blotted sketch which my clumsy hand has drawn of a Divine life, with the fullness of Thy perfect picture. I feel the beauty I cannot realize; robe me in Thine unutterable purity.— filed under Christ's Resurrection and Exaltation
He in whose heart the law was, and who alone of all mankind was content to do it, His sacrifice alone can be the sacrifice all-sufficient in the Father's sight as the proper sacrifice of humanity; He who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, He alone can give the Spirit which enables us to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. He is the only High-Priest of the universe.— filed under Christ the Saviour
He is not affected by our mutability; our changes do not alter Him. When we are restless, He remains serene and calm; when we are low, selfish, mean or dispirited, He is still the unalterable I AM, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. What God is in Himself, not what we may chance to feel Him in this or that moment to be, that is our hope. My soul, "hope thou in God."— filed under Christ's Love
If we knew all our need, what a large want book we should require! How comforting to know that Jesus has a supply book which exactly meets our want book. We want the vision of a calmer and simpler beauty, to tranquillize us in the midst of artificial tastes - we want the draught of a pure spring to cool the flame of our excited life; we want, in other words, the spirit of the life of Christ, simple, natural, with power to soothe and calm the feelings which it rouses; the fullness of the spirit which can never intoxicate.— filed under Christ's Presence
Now see what a Christian is, drawn by the hand of Christ. He is a man on whose clear and open brow God has set the stamp of truth; one whose very eye beams bright with honor; in whose very look and bearing you may see freedom, manliness, veracity; a brave man - a noble man - frank, generous, true, with, it may be, many faults; whose freedom may take the form of impetuosity or rashness, but the form of meanness never.— filed under Christians
Brethren, are you in earnest? If so, though your faith be weak, and your struggles unsatisfactory, you may begin the hyinn of triumph now, for victory is pledged. "Thanks be to God, which "- not shall give, but "giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." دو— filed under Christian Conflict
- There is a mighty gulf between those who love and those who do not love God. To the one class we owe civility, courtesy, kindness, even tenderness. It is only those who love the Lord who should find in our hearts a home.— filed under Christian Fellowship
The Christian life is not knowing or hearing, but doing.— filed under Christian Life
Life, like war, is a series of mistakes; and he is not the best Christian nor the best general who makes the fewest false steps. Poor mediocrity may secure that; but he is the best who wins the most splendid victories by the retrieval of mistakes. Forget mistakes; organize victory out of mistakes.— filed under Christian Life
He who lives to God rests in his Redeemer's love, and is trying to get rid of his old nature - to him every sorrow, every bereavement, every pain, will come charged with blessings, and death itself will be no longer the "king of terrors," but the messenger of grace.— filed under Christian Life
Life passes; work is permanent. It is all going - fleeting and withering. Youth goes. Mind decays. That which is done remains. Through ages, through eternity, what you have done for God, that, and only that, you are. Deeds never die.— filed under Christian Service
Every day in this world has its work; and every day as it rises out of eternity keeps putting to each of us this question afresh, "What will you do before to-day has sunk into eternity and nothingness again?" And now what have we to say with respect to this strange, solemn thing - Time? That men do with it through life just what the apostles did for one precious and irreparable hour in the garden of Gethsemane - they go to sleep.— filed under Christian Service
Read a work on the "Evidences of Christianity," and it may become highly probable that Christianity, etc., are true. This is an opinion. Feel God. Do His will, till the Absolute Imperative within you speaks as with a living voice, "Thou shalt, and thou shalt not; " and then you do not think, you know that there is a God.— filed under Christianity
153 And, oh, the blessing of "exceeding joy," after following in vain - after inquiring of the great men and learning nothing of the religious men and finding little - to see the star at last resting over the place where "the young child" lies - after groping the way alone, to see the star stand still - to find that religion is a thing far simpler than we thought - that God is near us - that to kneel and adore is the noblest posture of the soul.— filed under Coming To Christ
However dreary we may have felt life to be here, yet when that hour comes - the winding up of all things, the last grand rush of darkness on our spirits, the hour of that awful sudden wrench from all we have ever known or loved, the long farewell to sun, moon, stars, and light-brother man, I ask you this day, and I ask myself humbly and fearfully, "What will then be finished? When it is finished, what will it be? Will it be the butterfly existence of pleasure, the mere life of science, a life of uninterrupted sin and self-gratification, or will it be, 'Father, I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do?'"— filed under Death
Every day His servants are dying modestly and peacefully - not a word of victory on their lips; but Christ's deep triumph in their hearts - watching the slow progress of their own decay, and yet so far emancipated from personal anxiety that they are still able to think and plan for others, not knowing that they are doing any great thing. They die, and the world hears nothing of them; and yet theirs was the completest victory. They came to the battle field, the field to which they had been looking forward all their lives, and the enemy was not to be found. There was no foe to fight with.— filed under Death
Only in the sacredness of inward silence does the soul truly meet the secret, hiding God. The strength of resolve, which afterward shapes life, and mixes itself with action, is the fruit of those sacred, solitary moments. There is a divine depth in silence. We meet God alone.— filed under Devotion
In You ask bitterly, like Pontius Pilate, "What is truth?" such an hour what remains? I reply, "Obedience." Leave those thoughts for the present. Act - be merciful and gentle honest; force yourself to abound in little services; try to do good to others; be true in the duty that you know. That must be right, whatever else is uncertain. And by all the laws of the human heart, by the word of God, you shall not be left to doubt. Do that much of the will of God which is plain to you, and "You shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God."— filed under Doubt
Cold hearts are not anxious enough to doubt. Men who love will have their misgivings at times; that is not the evil. But the evil is, when men go on in that languid, doubting way, content to doubt, proud of their doubts, morbidly glad to talk about them, liking the romantic gloom of twilight, without the manliness to say, "I must and will know the truth." That did not John the Baptist. Brethren, John appealed to Christ.— filed under Doubt
If the duties before us be not noble, let us ennoble them by doing them in a noble spirit; we become reconciled to life if we live in the spirit of Him who reconciled the life of God with the lowly duties of servants.— filed under Duty
Let a man begin in earnest with, "I ought," and he will end, by God's grace, if he persevere, with, "I will." Let him force himself to abound in all small offices of kindliness, attention, affectionateness, and all these for God's sake. By and by he will feel them become the habit of his soul.— filed under Duty
This world is given as a prize for the men in earnest; and that which is true of this world is truer still of the world to come.— filed under Earnestness
Every natural longing has its natural satisfaction. If we thirst, God has created liquid to gratify thirst. If we are susceptible of attachment, there are beings to gratify that love. If we thirst for life and love eternal, it is likely there are an eternal life and an eternal love to satisfy that craving.— filed under Eternal Life
God has given to us eternal life; and this life is in His Son. You reap what you sow - not something else, but that. An act of love makes the soul more loving. A deed of humbleness deepens humbleness. The thing reaped is the very thing sown, multiplied a hundred fold. You have sown a seed of life, you reap life everlasting.— filed under Eternal Life
Sow the seeds of life- humbleness, pure-heartedness, love; and in the long eternity which lies before the soul, every minutest grain will come up again with an increase of thirty, sixty, or a hundred fold.— filed under Eternal Life
You cannot undo your acts. If you have depraved another's will, and injured another's soul, it may be in the grace of God that hereafter you will be personally accepted, and the consequence of your guilt inwardly done away; but your penitence cannot undo the evil you have done. The forgiveness of God the blood of Christ itself - does not undo the past.— filed under Example
There is a power in the soul, quite separate from the intellect, which sweeps away or recognizes the marvelous, by which God is felt. Faith stands serenely far above the reach of the atheism of science. It does not rest on the wonderful, but on the eternal wisdom and goodness of God. The revelation of the Son was to proclaim a Father, not a mystery. No science can sweep away the everlasting love which the heart feels, and which the intellect does not even pretend to judge or recognize.— filed under Faith
There is a grand fearlessness in faith. He who in his heart of hearts reverences the good, the true, the holy - that is, reverences God - does not tremble at the apparent success of attacks upon the outworks of faith. They may shake those who rest on those outworks - they do not move him whose soul reposes on the truth itself. He needs no prop or crutches to support his faith. Founded on a Rock, Faith can afford to gaze undismayed at the approaches of Infidelity.— filed under Faith
Child of God, if you would have your thought of God something beyond a cold feeling of His presence, let faith appropriate Christ.— filed under Faith In Christ
By experience; by a sense of human frailty; by a perception of "the soul of goodness in things evil;" by a cheerful trust in human nature; by a strong sense of God's love; by long and disciplined realization of the atoning love of Christ; only thus can we get a free, manly, large, princely spirit of forgiveness.— filed under Forgiveness
God's highest gifts - talent, beauty, feeling, imagination, power-they carry with them the possibility of the highest heaven and the lowest hell. Be sure that it is by that which is highest in you that you may be lost.— filed under God's Goodness
- What we want is not infinitude, but a boundless One; not to feel that love is the law of this universe, but to feel One whose name is Love.— filed under God's Infinity
God's justice and love are one. Infinite justice must be infinite love. Justice is but another sign of love.— filed under God's Justice
Brother men, one act of charity will teach us more of the love of God than a thousand sermons - one act of unselfishness, of real self-denial, the putting forth of one loving feeling to the outcast and "those who are out of the way," will tell us more of the Epiphany than whole volumes of the wisest writers on theology.— filed under God's Love
God is love and goodness. Fill the soul with goodness, and fill the soul with love, that is the filling it with God. "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us." There is nothing else that can satisfy.— filed under God's Love
A consistent Christian may not have rapture; he has that which is much better than rapture - calmness - God's serene and perpetual presence.— filed under God's Presence
God's truth is too sacred to be expounded to superficial worldliness in its transient fit of earnestness.— filed under God's Trinity
Brethren, happiness is not our being's end and aim. The Christian's aim is perfection, not happiness; and every one of the sons of God must have something of that spirit which marked his Master.— filed under Happiness
I will tell you what to hate. Hate hypocrisy, hate cant, hate indolence, oppression, injustice; hate Pharisaism; hate them as Christ hated them - with a deep, living, godlike hatred.— filed under Hatred
How Yes, thank God! there is rest - many an interval of saddest, sweetest rest - even here, when it seems as if evening breezes from that other land, laden with fragrance, played upon the cheeks, and lulled the heart. There are times, even on the stormy sea, when a gentle whisper breathes softly as of heaven, and sends into the soul a dream of ecstasy which can never again wholly die, even amidst the jar and whirl of daily life. such whispers make the blood stop and the flesh creep with a sense of mysterious communion! How singularly such moments are the epochs of life - the few points that stand out prominently in the recollection after the flood of years has buried all the rest, as all the low shore disappears, leaving only a few rock points visible at high tide.— filed under Heavenly Influences
And now because you are His child, live as a child of God; be redeemed from the life of evil, which is false to your nature, into the life of goodness, which is the truth of your being. Scorn all that is mean; hate all that is false; struggle with all that is impure Live the simple, lofty life which befits an heir of immortality.— filed under Holiness
A happy home is the single spot of rest which a man has upon this earth for the cultivation of his noblest sensibilities.— filed under Home
Light-houses don't ring bells and fire cannon to call attention to their shining; they just shine on. Humility is that simple, inner life of real greatness, which is indifferent to magnificence, and, surrounded by it all, lives far away in the distant country of a Father's home, with the cross borne silently and self-sacrificingly in the heart of hearts.— filed under Humility
If you think that you can sin, and then by cries avert the consequences of sin, you insult God's character.— filed under Hypocrisy
Heaven begun is the living proof that makes the heaven to come credible. Christ in you is "the hope of glory." It is the eagle eye of faith which penetrates the grave, and sees far into the tranquil things of death. He alone can believe in immortality who feels the resurrection in him already.— filed under Immortality
There are few signs in a soul's state more alarming than that of religious indifference, that is, the spirit of thinking all religions equally true - the real meaning of which is, that all religions are equally false. -— filed under Indifference
Law, meaning obedience to a holy God, passes by a natural transition into the gospel; that is, reverential duty to a person, to the obedience of love at last, which obeys, because the beautifulness of obedience is perceived.— filed under Law
This is the true liberty of Christ, when a free man binds himself in love to duty. Not in shrinking from our distasteful occupations, but in fulfilling them, do we realize our high origin.— filed under Liberty
Learn the new commandment of the Son of God. Not to love merely, but to love as He loved. Go forth in this spirit to your life-duties; go forth, - children of the cross, to carry every thing before you, and win victories for God by the conquering power of a love like His.— filed under Love
Mourning after an absent God is an evidence of a love as strong, as rejoicing in a present one.— filed under Love To Christ And God
Nothing satisfies God but the voluntary sacrifice of love. The pain of Christ gave God no pleasure - only the love that was tested by pain - the love of perfect obedience.— filed under Love To Christ And God
Beware of that which becomes the slanderer's life, of magnifying every speck of evil and closing the eye to goodness, till at last men arrive at the state in which generous, universal love (which is heaven) becomes impossible, and a suspicious, universal hate takes possession of the heart, and that is hell.— filed under Malice
Many young ministers are poor men, but that is no reason, gentlemen, why you should be poor ministers. What is ministerial success? Crowded churches, full aisles, attentive congregations, the approval of the religious world, much impression produced? Elijah thought so; and when he discovered his mistake, and found out that the Carmel applause subsided into hideous stillness, his heart well-nigh broke with disappointment. Ministerial success lies in altered lives, and obedient, humble hearts, unseen worth recognized in the judgment-day.— filed under Ministers
This is the ministry and its work - not to drill hearts and minds and consciences into right forms of thought and mental postures, but to guide to the living God who speaks.— filed under Ministers
To avert national decay, then, the moral character must be guarded. The mighty heart of the nation must be kept sound, so that its pulses, when once roused, will, like the ocean in its strength, sweep all before it. So long as the moral tone is preserved, the sun of our glory will not set; there will come no national decay and death.— filed under National
My Christian brethren, if the crowd of difficulties which stand between your souls and God succeed in keeping you away, all is lost. Right into the Presence you must force your way, with no concealment, baring the soul with all its ailments before Him, asking, not the arrest of the consequences of sin, but the cleansing of the conscience "from dead works to serve the living God," so that if you must suffer, you will suffer as a forgiven man.— filed under Nearness To God And Christ
This is the secret of Christ's kingship - " He became obedient - wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him." And this is the secret of all obedience and all command. Obedience to a law above you subjugates minds to you who never would have yielded to mere will.— filed under Obstinacy
It is more true to say that our opinions depend upon our lives and habits than to say that our lives depend upon our opinions, which is only now and then true.— filed under Opinion
The mistake we make is to look for a source of comfort in ourselves: self-contemplation, instead of gazing upon God. In other words, we look for comfort precisely where comfort never can be.— filed under Peace
A life of prayer is a life whose litanies are ever fresh acts of self-devoting love.— filed under Prayer
The Divine Wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them ; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it.— filed under Prayer
Tell men that God is love; that right is right, and wrong, wrong; let them cease to admire philanthropy, and begin to love men; cease to pant for heaven, and begin to love God; then the spirit of liberty begins.— filed under Preaching
Do you want to learn holiness with terrible struggles and sore affliction and the plague of much remaining evil? Then wait before you turn to God.— filed under Procrastination
To grieve over sin is one thing, to repent is another.— filed under Repentance
- A heart renewed - a loving heart - a penitent and humble heart - a heart broken and contrite, purified by love that and only that is the rest of men. Spotlessness may do for angels, repentance unto life is the highest that belongs to man.— filed under Repentance
Perhaps yours is a very remorseful past - a foolish, frivolous, disgraceful, frittered past. Well, Christ says, "My servant, be sad," but no languor; there is work to be done for me yet rise up, be going! Oh, my brethren, Christ takes your wretched remnants of life - the feeble pulses of a heart which has spent its best hours not for Him, but for self and for enjoyment, and in His strange love He condescends to accept them.— filed under Repentance
It is not in understanding a set of doctrines; not in outward comprehension of the "scheme of salvation," that rest and peace are to be found, but in taking up, in all lowliness and meekness, the yoke of the Lord Jesus Christ.— filed under Rest
There is rest in this world nowhere except in Christ, the manifested love of God. Trust in excellence, and the better you become, the keener is the feeling of deficiency. Wrap up all in doubt, and there is a stern voice that will thunder at last out of the wilderness upon your dream.— filed under Rest
If you will be rich, you must be content to pay the price of falling into temptation and a snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in perdition; and if that price be too high to pay, then you must be content with the quiet valleys of existence, where alone it is well with us; kept out of the inheritance, but having instead God for your portion your all-sufficient and everlasting portion - peace and quietness and rest in Christ.— filed under Riches
Almost two thousand years ago there was One here on this earth who lived the grandest life that ever has been lived yet, a life that every thinking man, with deeper or shallower meaning has agreed to call Divine. I read little respecting His rights or of His claims of rights; but I have read a great deal respecting His duties. Every act He did He called a duty. Rights are grand things, divine things, in this world of God; but the way in which we expound those rights, alas! seems to me to be the very incarnation of selfishness. I see nothing very noble in a man who is forever going about calling for his own rights. Alas! alas! for the man who feels nothing more grand in this wondrous, divine world than his own rights!— filed under Rights
Sacrifice alone, bare and unrelieved, is ghastly, unnatural, and dead; but self-sacrifice, illuminated by love, is warmth and life; it is the death of Christ, the life of God, the blessedness and only proper life of man.— filed under Self-Denial
There is a sickly habit that men get of looking into themselves, and thinking how they are appearing. We are always unnatural when we do that. The very tread of one who is thinking how he appears to others becomes dizzy with affectation. He is too conscious of what he is doing, and self-consciousness is affectation. Let us aim at being natural. And we can only become natural by thinking of God and duty, instead of the way in which we are serving God and duty.— filed under Selfishness
We are too much haunted by ourselves; we project the central shadow of ourselves on every thing around us. And then comes in the gospel to rescue us from this selfishness. Redemption is this - to forget self in God.— filed under Selfishness
For when man comes to front the everlasting God, and look the splendor of His judgments in the face, personal integrity, the dream of spotlessness and innocence, vanishes into thin air; your decencies and your church-goings and your regularities and your attachment to a correct school and party, your gospel formulas of sound doctrine - what is all that, in front of the blaze of the wrath to come?— filed under Self-Righteousness
Simpler manners, purer lives; more self-denial; more earnest sympathy with the classes that lie below us, nothing short of that can lay the foundations of the Christianity which is to be hereafter, deep and broad.— filed under Simplicity
He who seeks truth must be content with a lonely, littletrodden path. If he cannot worship her till she has been canonized by the shouts of the multitude, he must take his place with the members of that wretched crowd who shouted for two long hours, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" till truth, reason, and calmness were all drowned in noise.— filed under Truth
There is an inward state of the heart which makes truth credible the moment it is stated. It is credible to some men because of what they are. Love is credible to a loving heart; purity is credible to a pure mind; life is credible to a spirit in which life beats strongly - it is incredible to other men.— filed under Truth
In all matters of eternal truth, the soul is before the intellect; the things of God are spiritually discerned. You know. truth by being true; you recognize God by being like Him.— filed under Truth
God planted the true seed, and He is confident that it will germinate and grow until its branches shall fill the whole earth. He has confidence in His truth; have you? Can you not be content, like Him, to plant and nourish and water and tenderly prune and trust for the issue ? It is perilous to separate thinking rightly from acting rightly. He is already half false who speculates on truth and does not do it. Truth is given, not to be contemplated, but to be done. Life is an action- not a thought. And the penalty paid by him who speculates on truth, is that by degrees the very truth he holds becomes a falsehood.— filed under Truth
What the world calls virtue is a name and a dream without Christ. The foundation of all human excellence must be laid deep in the blood of the Redeemer's cross, and in the power of His resurrection. *— filed under Virtue
> The question is, whether, like the Divine Child in the Temple, we are turning knowledge into wisdom, and whether, understanding more of the mysteries of life, we are feeling more of its sacred law; and whether, having left behind the priests and the scribes and the doctors and the fathers, we are about our Father's business, and becoming wise to God.— filed under Wisdom
Worldliness consists in these three: attachment to the outward attachment to the transitory - attachment to the unreal: in opposition to love for the inward, the eternal, the true: and the one of these affections is necessarily expelled by the other. Unworldliness is this - to hold things from God in the perpetual conviction that they will not last; to have the world, and not let the world have us; to be the world's masters, and not the world's slaves.— filed under Worldliness