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Quotes by J. G. Holland
Aspiration, worthy ambition, desires for higher good for good ends - all these indicate a soul that recognizes the beckoning hand of the good Father who would call us homeward towards Himself - all these are the ground and justification for a Christian discontent; but a murmuring, questioning, fault-finding spirit has direct and sympathetic alliance with nothing but the infernal.— filed under Aspiration
Open your hands, ye whose hands are full! The world is waiting for you! The whole machinery of the Divine beneficence is clogged by your hard hearts and rigid fingers. Give and spend, and be sure that God will send; for only in giving and spending do you fulfill the object of His sending.— filed under Beneficence
Every man who becomes heartily and understandingly a channel of the Divine beneficence, is enriched through every league of his life. Perennial satisfaction springs around and within him with perennial verdure. Flowers of gratitude and gladness bloom all along his pathway, and the melodious gurgle of the blessings he bears is echoed back by the melodious waves of the recipient stream.— filed under Beneficence
What do you think God gave you more wealth than is requisite to satisfy your rational wants for, when you look around and see how many are in absolute need of that which you do not need? Can you not take the hint ?— filed under Beneficence
All that has been done to weaken the foundation of an implicit faith in the Bible, as a whole, has been at the expense of the sense of religious obligation, and at the cost of human happiness.— filed under Bible
I stand by my kind; and I thank God for the temptations that have brought me into sympathy with them, as I do for the love that urges me to efforts for their good. I hail the great brotherhood of trial and temptation in the name of humanity, and give them assurance that from the Divine Man, and some, at least, of His disciples, there goes out to them a flood of sympathy that would fain sweep them up to the firm footing of the rock of safety.— filed under Brotherhood
A life in any sphere that is the expression and outflow of an honest, earnest, loving heart, taking counsel only of God and itself, will be certain to be a life of beneficence in the best possible direction.— filed under Charity
Emotion, feeling - these are well enough if they feed the springs of power. Prayer, praise, preaching - these are all good and never to be dispensed with; but if the life to which they minister have no manifestation out of them, it is a failure.— filed under Christian Life
So I take my life as I find it, as a life full of grand advantages that are linked indissolubly to my noblest happiness and my everlasting safety. I believe that Infinite Love ordained it, and that, if I bow willingly, tractably, and gladly to its discipline, my Father will take care of it.— filed under Christian Life
Christianity must live and triumph as a system of reform, because it goes to the roots of things, and, because, by so doing it proves itself to be divinely and eternally true.— filed under Christmas
How long must the church live before it will learn that strength is won by action, and success by work, and that all this immeasurable feeding without action and work is a positive damage to it - that it is the procurer of spiritual obesity, gout, and debility.— filed under Church
There is a contemptibly quiet path for all those who are afraid of the blows and clamor of opposing forces. There is no honorable fighting for a man who is not ready to forget that he has a head to be battered and a name to be bespattered. Truth wants no champion who is not as ready to be struck as to strike for her. The best hearts are ever the bravest.— filed under Courage
Why will you be always sallying out to break lances with other people's wind-mills, when your own is not capable of grinding corn for the horse you ride?— filed under Criticism
And when, in the evening of life, the golden clouds rest sweetly and invitingly upon the golden mountains, and the light of heaven streams down through the gathering mists of death, I wish you a peaceful and abundant entrance into that world of blessedness, where the great riddle of life will be unfolded to you in the quick consciousness of a soul redeemed and purified.— filed under Death
Faith draws the poison from every grief, takes the sting from every loss, and quenches the fire of every pain; and only faith can do it.— filed under Faith
And behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow, Keeping watch above His own. The moment we recognize God as supreme in power and infinitely good and loving toward all His intelligent creatures, that moment we admit the doctrine of universal and special providence.— filed under God's Providence
There is something better for us in the world than happiness. We will take happiness as the incident of this, gladly and gratefully. We will add a thousand fold to the happiness of the present in the fearlessness of the future which it brings; but we will not place happiness first, and thus cloud our heads with doubts, and fill our hearts with discontent. In the blackest soils grow the richest flowers, and the loftiest and strongest trees spring heavenward among the rocks.— filed under Happiness
In the homes of America are born the children of America ; and from them go out into American life, American men and women. They go out with the stamp of these homes upon them; and only as these homes are what they should be, will they be what they should be.— filed under Home
The pleasant converse of the fireside, the simple songs of home, the words of encouragement as I bend over my schooltasks, the kiss as I lie down to rest, the patient bearing with the freaks of my restless nature, the gentle counsels mingled with reproofs and approvals, the sympathy that meets and assuages every sorrow, and sweetens every little success - all these return to me amid the responsibilities which press upon me now, and I feel as if I had once lived in heaven, and, straying, had lost my way.— filed under Home
The sweetest type of heaven is home-nay, heaven is the home for whose acquisition we are to strive the most strongly. Home, in one form and another, is the great object of life. It stands at the end of every day's labor, and beckons us to its bosom; and life would be cheerless and meaningless, did we not discern across the river that divides us from the life beyond, glimpses of the pleasant mansions prepared for us.— filed under Home
In my judgment, a great mistake has been made by wellmeaning and zealous men, through treating error and infidelity with altogether too much respect. I believe that it is safe to say that Christianity is indebted for none of its progress in the world to rational conflicts with infidelity. I do not believe that a single great wrong has ever been overthrown by meeting the advocates of wrong in argument.— filed under Infidelity
If we will measure other people's corn in our own bushel, let us first take it to the Divine standard, and have it sealed.— filed under Judging
It is intended that we shall accomplish all, through law, that we can accomplish for ourselves. God gives every bird its food, but does not throw it into the nest. He does not unearth the good that the earth contains, but He puts it in our way, and gives us the means of getting it ourselves.— filed under Labor
Life is before you, - not earthly life alone, but life - a thread running interminably through the warp of eternity.— filed under Life
The love that gushes for all is the real elixir of life - the fountain of bodily longevity. It is the lack of this that always produces the feeling of age.— filed under Love
God be thanked that there are some in the world to whose hearts the barnacles will not cling.— filed under Love
The most beautiful sight this earth affords is a man or woman so filled with love that duty is only a name, and its performance the natural outflow and expression of the love which has become the central principle of their life.— filed under Love
Power in its measure and degree is the measure of manhood.— filed under Manhood
Give us an age in which Christian manhood shall assert itself as the highest earthly thing and the noblest earthly estate. Give us an age that, instead of whining and groaning under the truth, shall rejoice in the truth. Give us an age which, lifted into identity with its highest possessions, shall be made by those possessions patient, pure, heroic, and honorable.— filed under Manhood
Think of a woman by the side of a dying sister, or a sick child, or a sorrowing friend, or a broken-hearted and brokenspirited man, without a word of heaven in her mouth - without so much as the ability to whisper "Our Father," or even to point her finger hopefully towards the stars.— filed under Pity
Is religion one of the fine arts, that it should consist simply in going to meeting in good clothes every Sunday, saying grace at table, and praying night and morning? Are we so literally a flock that we have nothing to do but to be fed all the year, yielding only the annual fleece which forms our pastor's salary?— filed under Religion
There are men who stalk about the world gloomy and stiff and severe - self-righteous embodiments of the mischievous heresy that the religion of peace and good-will to all mankind - the religion of love and hope and joy, the religion that bathes the universal human soul in the light of paternal love, and opens to mankind the gates of immortality - is a religion of terror - men guilty of misrepresenting Christ to the world, and doing incalculable damage to His cause.— filed under Religion
Religion may enter a pothouse as a minister of good, but it may not lay aside its dignity to argue its rights and claims there. The moment that it does this it is shorn of its power.— filed under Religion
The fact is that sin is the most unmanly thing in God's world. You never were made for sin and selfishness. You were made for love and obedience.— filed under Sin
Heaven is not gained by a single bound, But we build the ladder by which we rise From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies; And we mount to its summit round by round.— filed under Spiritual Progress
We often wonder that certain men and women are left by God to the commission of sins that shock us. We wonder how, under the temptation of a single hour, they fall from the very heights of virtue and of honor into sin and shame. The fact is that there are no such falls as these, or there are next to none. These men and women are those who have dallied with temptation - have exposed themselves to the influence of it, and have been weakened and corrupted by it.— filed under Temptation
The theological systems of men and schools of men are determined always by the character of their ideal of Christ, the central fact of the Christian system.— filed under Theology
The heart is wiser than the intellect.— filed under Wisdom