Don't Make Crosses of Your Own

It  is good to take up and to bear the cross, whatever it may be, which God sees fit to impose. But it is not good and not safe to make crosses of our own; and, by an act of our own choice, to impose upon ourselves burdens which God does not require, and does not authorize. Such a course always implies either a faith too weak or a will too strong; either a fear to trust God's way, or a desire to have our own way.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CXXXV.

Praise or Blame

It is one of the marks of a soul wholly given to God, when we find that we are able, viewing all things in God and God in all things, to receive both praise and blame with a quiet and equal spirit; neither unduly depressed on the one hand, nor elated on the other.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CXXXIV.

Laying Our Thoughts and Plans Before God

Whenever we propose to change our situation in life, by establishing some new relations, or by entering into some new business, it becomes, first of all, a most important religious duty, to lay all our thoughts and plans before our Heavenly Father for his approbation. Otherwise it is possible, and even probable, that we shall be found running the immense risk of moving in our own wisdom and out of God's wisdom, in our own order and out of God's order, for our own ends and out of God's ends.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CXXXIII.

No Separation

Oh, can I leave Thee! Can I go

Back  to the world that once was nigh?

And so debase me, as to know

The joys that only bloom to die?

Oh, can I quit celestial good,

The growth of life's immortal tree,

And feed, instead of Angel's food,

On earth's poor dust and vanity?

I sought Thee, that my soul might stay

In  endless unity of mind;

And dare not, cannot rend away

The golden links my heart that bind.

If others blindly choose to roam,

And find the path of tears and gloom;

Be MINE, in God's great heart, the home,

Where peace, and joy, and glory bloom.

— Christ in the Soul (1872) XXXVI.

Dying and Rising With Chirst

Without mentioning other devout men, we may properly repeat here, as being in harmony with some of the views hitherto given, the expressions of the learned and venerable John Arndt, whose name is deservedly dear to the Christian world. "If thou believest,” he says, "that Christ was crucified for the sins of the world, thou must with him be crucified to the same. If thou refusest  to comply with this, thou canst not be a living member of Christ, nor be united with him by faith. If thou believest that Christ is risen from the dead, it is thy duty to rise spiritually with Him. In a word, the birth, cross, passion, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, must, after a spiritual manner, be transacted in thee." And again he remarks in another place: — "Let us renounce wholly our own strength, our own wisdom, our own will and self-love, that, being thus resigned to God alone, we may suffer his power freely to work in us, so that nothing may, in the least, oppose the will and operations of the Lord."

I am aware that this is a hard doctrine to the natural heart. It strikes heavily upon that feeling of self-confidence, which is one of the evil fruits of our fallen condition. But, as it respects myself, if I may be allowed in humility of spirit to refer to my own feelings, it is a doctrine which is inexpressibly dear to me. I have been taught for many years, and by painful experience, that I can place no confidence in my own thoughts, feelings, or purposes. In none of these respects can I be my own keeper. On the contrary, I have seen, with the greatest clearness, that to be left to myself, either in these respects or in anything else, is always to be left in sin. And so great has been my anguish of spirit, in view of my entire inability to guide myself aright, that I could only pray that I might be struck out of existence and be annihilated, or that God would return and keep that which I could not keep myself. 

IF THOU, O GOD, WILT MAKE MY SPIRIT FREE.

If thou, O God, wilt make my spirit free,

Then will that darkened soul be free indeed;

I cannot break my bonds, apart from thee;

Without thy help I bow, and serve, and bleed.

Arise, O Lord, and in thy matchless strength,

Asunder rend the links my heart that bind,

And liberate, and raise, and save at length

My long enthralled and subjugated mind.

And then, with strength and beauty in her wings,

My quickened soul shall take an upward flight,

And in thy blissful presence, King of kings,

Rejoice  in liberty, and life, and light,

In renovated power and conscious truth,

In faith and cheerful hope, in love and endless youth.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 7, Chapter 3.

The Divine and the Human Are Made to go Together

It is obvious that thought, desire and volition, are essential to man's nature, and are in fact embraced in the very idea of man. It is a matter of necessity that the human mind shall act by thinking and desiring, and in other ways, in the appropriate time of its action. All this is true. And it is equally true that all human action, when it is what it ought to be, is divine action. And this is always the case, (namely, human action is what it ought to be and becomes divine,) when the power of action, which exists in man's nature, is brought out in its appropriate issues, not by human preference, but by the decisions of Providence.

The divine and the human are made, if we may so express it, to go together. Nothing is gained either by the exclusion of God or by the extinction of humanity. Undoubtedly man must act when the time of action comes. Action is his nature. It cannot be otherwise. But if the action is decided, not by subjective or personal preferences, not by a regard to himself, but by a regard to the whole,  including himself, — in other words, by the divine intimations of an overruling Providence, — then it is true, that the action, which is his own, is also God’s; and that by his own choice, which is to have no choice out of God, the thing done, which would otherwise merely human, comes to bear the radiant stamp of divinity.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 7, Chapter 3.

Choose God to Choose for You

Men have made a mistake in locating, if we may so express it, the action of man's free agency. The true action of man's moral agency is found, not in the choice of particulars, but in the choice of the universal; — not in deciding upon this particular thing or that particular thing, which he cannot do with certainty on account of his limited powers, but in committing his power of choice into God's hands, and choosing God to choose for him.

There are different degrees of union in the work of redemption, as there are different degrees of union in other things. But in the case of the man who fully unites with God in the work of his personal recovery, the choice which we have just mentioned is the choice which is actually made by him, — made for the present and made for the future, made now and made forever; — namely, the substitution, at the present time and in all time to come, of the divine choice for his own. His choice is to let God choose for him, — to cease to lead himself, that he may be led, not in some things merely, but in all things, by the Spirit of God. He alienates himself, that he may be possessed by another; and he does it, because he has in another that degree of confidence and hope, which he does not and cannot have in himself. He ceases from his own thoughts, that God may think in him and for him; — he ceases from his own desires, that God may inspire in him true and heavenly desires; — he relinquishes his own purposes, that he may fulfill the purposes of God and of God only. He is buried a dead Adam; and so renewed and beautified are the features of his nature, that he may be said, in a mitigated sense of the terms, to be raised again a living Christ.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 7, Chapter 3.