Sorrow vs. Impatience

It is important to make a distinction between sorrow and impatience. We may feel sorrow without sin; but we can never feel impatience without sin. Impatience always involves a want of submission; and he, who is wanting in submission, even in the smallest degree, is not perfect before God.

— Religious Maxims (1846) LXI.

Learning To Be Silent

It is a great art in the Christian life to LEARN TO BE SILENT. Under oppositions, rebukes, injuries, STILL BE SILENT. It is better to say nothing, than to say it in an excited or an angry manner, even if the occasion should seem to justify a degree of anger. By remaining silent, the mind is enabled to collect itself, and to call upon God in secret aspirations of prayer. And thus you will speak to the honor of your holy profession, as well as to the good of those who have injured you, when you speak from God.

— Religious Maxims (1846) LX.

A Great Protector

"Let not your heart be troubled." And in regard to those, who indulge the hope that they are sanctified in Christ Jesus, we may well inquire, why should their heart be troubled? Have they not a great protector? Must not the archers first hit Him, whom thy soul loveth, before they can hit thee? "What can harm thee," says archbishop Leighton, who spoke on these things from the fulness of his own pious spirit, "when all must first touch God, within whom thou hast enclosed thyself?"

— Religious Maxims (1846) LIX.

A Holy Imagination

How pleasant, how delightful is a holy imagination! It instinctively refuses and throws away every thing that can defile. It is a sort of inner sanctuary; or perhaps we may call it the bridal chamber of the soul, fitted up and adorned with every thing pure in earth and beautiful in heaven. And God himself is the bright light thereof.

— Religious Maxims (1846) LVIII.

Those Who Love Much Will Know Much

Sanctification consists in LOVE rather than in KNOWLEDGE. Nevertheless, it is a great and delightful truth, that those, who love much, shall know much. They shall be led to the very heights of knowledge. Love shall bring light. The great God himself will be their teacher.

— Religious Maxims (1846) LVII.

The Misery of Hell

In the opposite of pure love, that is to say, in selfishness, as it develops itself in a future life, we find the great principle of moral discord, and also that, which constitutes the essential basis of the misery of hell. The misery of hell is not an accident; but just to the extent it is experienced at all, it is a permanent and necessary truth. Like every thing else it has its philosophy. Its leading element is love, terminating in self as the supreme object; in other words, it is supreme selfishness. This principle, wherever it exists and wherever it is transferred, necessarily carries with it the grand element of the world of woe. A being, who is supremely selfish, is necessarily miserable. The result does not depend upon choice or volition, but upon the nature of things. Instead of the principle of unity, which tends to oneness of purpose with other beings, and naturally leads to happiness, he has within him the principle of exclusion and of eternal separation. In its ultimate operation, if it is permitted permanently to exist, it necessarily drives him from every thing else, and wedges him closer and closer in the compressed circumference of his own personality. So that he is not only at variance with God and with all holy beings; but he is not at unity even with the devils themselves. The principle of love, terminating in self as the supreme object and exclusive of other objects, in other words, supreme selfishness makes him at war with all other beings; and it is impossible for him to be happy but in their destruction, which is also an impossibility. This is the true hell and everlasting fire.

— adapted from The Interior of Hidden Life (1844) Part 1, Chapter 12.

Pure Love is the Basis of True Harmony

In the doctrine of pure love, existing in the highest degree, we find the true basis of Christian harmony. There never can be harmony among Christians without some common center of attraction. Without such a centre their principles of movement will vary, and they will be exposed to perpetual conflicts. What a delightful prospect would be presented, if all Christians could meet in this great centre! What unity of purpose! What mingling of affection! It is party and selfish interests which divide. A common interest unites. God, being loved with perfect love, and for his own sake, makes all hearts one. It is then, that we all drink, and are all nourished, at the same fountain. We unite in him and rejoice in him, as a principle of life-giving inspiration, having a common and universal efficacy, operating as the soul of each separate soul and the life of each separate life, and thus making what was before separate and self-interested but one life and one soul in himself.

We observe again, that we find in this doctrine the true principle, not only of union among Christians in this life, but of the permanent moral harmony of the universe. The universe must have a center. And it has. And that center is God. But there cannot be universal harmony, notwithstanding, unless all hearts are drawn to that center, as the supreme object of attraction and delight. This simple principle of pure love, always terminating in God as its center, and as its supreme object, excludes every jarring sound, and establishes universal concord. And as it is exercised without distrust and without fear, attaching itself to an object whose perfections never change, it naturally brings substantial joy; joy full as its fountain, which is God, and lasting as his existence, which is eternity.

— adapted from The Interior or Hidden Life (1844) Part 1, Chapter 12.

The Danger of Thinking More of Ourselves Than of God

It is a bad sign when Christians are thinking more of themselves than of God; in other words, when they are more taken up with their own joys and sorrows, than they are with God's will. When this is the case, they have not as yet learnt the great lesson of self-crucifixion; of doing and suffering the will of another. "The cup, which my Father giveth me, shall I not drink it?" These are the words of the Savior; and they convey deep and precious meaning. When we are fully delivered from the influence of selfish considerations, and have become conformed to the desires and purposes of the Infinite Mind, we shall drink the cup, and drink it cheerfully, whatever it may be. In a word, we shall necessarily be submissive and happy in all trials, and in every change and diversity of situation. Not because we are seeking happiness as a distinct object, or thinking of happiness as a distinct object, but because the glorious will of Him whom our soul loves supremely, is accomplished in us. To the purified mind, the sorrows and joys of this life, when contemplated in the light of God's providences, are alike. Whatever God sends is welcome to it. Hence we say, it shows a state of mind short of sanctification, or what is the same thing, short of evangelical perfection, when we think more of ourselves than we do of God, and more of our own happiness than we do of the divine glory.

— adapted from The Interior or Hidden Life, Part 1, Chapter 12.

Love Expands Itself

It is the nature of true love to react upon and to expand itself. It is satisfied with nothing but constant increase. It ever desires to love more; and is ever enlarging its own capability of loving. It can, therefore, rest firmly and quietly, and with entire satisfaction, only in an object. which has capacity and fulness enough to meet this tendency. As in God there is not only infinity of being but infinite loveliness, so the principle of love in men, though it should expand and increase itself through all eternity, will find in Him all its wants supplied. No other object can supply them; and it seeks no other. But in God it finds all that it needs. It has a home there, like no other home. It has no fear of failure in the beloved object; it has no desire of change. It exults triumphantly, and with ever increasing exultation, in the midst of the glories of the Infinite Mind. This is the true point of rest; the soul's eternal rock; the everlasting center; and it can be no where else.

— adapted from The Interior or Hidden Life (1844) Part 1, Chapter 12.

The Sciptures Teach Disinterested Love to God

The Scriptures require us to love God with disinterested or pure love. We say nothing here of the great command, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with ALL thy heart; which evidently implies the dethronement and exclusion of selfishness. There are various other passages of Scripture, which, if we rightly understand them, evidently look to this result, viz. that we should love Him for what he is in and of himself, independently of our own private interests. Accordingly it is said in Luke, chap. 14: 26: " If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." And again in the same chapter, " So likewise, whosoever he be of you, that FORSAKETH NOT ALL HE HATH, he cannot be my disciple." And again it is said in another place, " Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you." And perhaps still more directly and appositely to the subject under consideration, the inquiry is made in another passage, " If ye love them, which love you, what thanks have ye? for sinners also love those, that love them. And if ye do good to them, who do good to you, what thanks have ye? for sinners also do even the same." These are the declarations and precepts of the Savior himself. There are many others very similar, to be found in different parts of the Word of God. As when, for instance, the Apostle John says, " Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." How true it is, then, that charity, or the genuine love of God and our nelghbor SEEKETH NOT HER OWN. And how appropriate the direction, "Look not every man on his own things; but every man also on the things of others." — We have only to add, that passages, such as have now been referred to, evidently strike at the existence of that form of love, if such it can be called, which proposes to build itself on personal or selfish considerations.

But what shall be done, it will perhaps be said here, with that passage of Scripture, 1st John 4:19 [sic], which asserts, "We love God, because He first loved us." The difficulty here, as it seems to us, is easily explicable. We admit, that, in our present condition, we never should have loved God, if his love to us had not been antecedent. He formed the plan of salvation; He sent his beloved Son to make an atonement for our sins; He commissioned the Holy Spirit to open the eyes of our understandings, and to enable us to contemplate his glory. In a word, he has put us into a situation, utterly unattainable by our own unaided efforts, in which we can truly estimate his character in its whole extent of glory, not only as possessed of infinite mercy, but of infinite justice. It is in view of such procedures of the divine administration, that we can truly say, " we love God, because He first loved us." And at the same time can say with equal truth, and in a still more important and essential sense, we love Him for what He is in and of himself. His previous love to us, without which we never should have exercised any love towards Him of any kind whatever, has opened the way for the exercise on our part of that pure and holy love, which alone can be truly acceptable.

— adapted from The Interior or Hidden Life (1844) Part 1, Chapter 12.