James Martineau Quotes
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Every man's highest, nameless though it be, is his 'living God'.
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The secret belief that the Lord of conscience loves and accepts each faithful sacrifice is the ultimate and sufficient support of all goodness; dispensing with the chorus of approving voices; replacing all vain self-reliance with a Divine strength; and with the peace of a reconciled nature consoling the inevitable sorrows of a devoted life.
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There is no room in the universe for the least contempt or pride; but only for a gentle and a reverent heart.
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All spiritual strength for ourselves, all noble ties to one another, have their real source in that inner sanctuary where God denies His lonely audience to none. Its secrets are holy; its asylum, inviolate; its consolations, sure; and all are open to the simple heart-word, 'Thou art my hiding-place.'
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Grief is only the memory of widowed affections.
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I bow in reverence before the emotions of every melted heart....The more intense the delight in their presence, the more poignant the impression of their absence....When the tears of bereavement have had their natural flow, they lead us again to life and love's generous joy.
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Religion is the belief in an ever-living God, that is, in a Divine Mind and Will ruling the Universe and holding moral relations with mankind.
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Religion is no more possible without prayer than poetry without language, or music without atmosphere.
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If we listen to our self-love, we shall estimate our lot less by what it is than by what it is not; shall dwell upon its hindrances and be blind to its possibilities; and, comparing it only with imaginary lives, shall indulge in flattering dreams of what we should do if we had but power, and give if we had but wealth, and be if we had no temptations.
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The incarnation is true, not of Christ exclusively, but of Man universally, and God everlastingly.
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The pinafore of the child will be more than a match for the frock of the bishop and the surplice of the priest.
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All that is noble in the world's past history, and especially the minds of the great and the good, are never lost.
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If it is permitted to the enlightened but baffled Statesman, when deserted and fallen from his place, to appeal from the voices of the moment to the judgment of more impartial times, with what right can we call in question the loftier form of the same prophetic trust which looks to a present God rather than to future men?
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The scepticism which men affect towards their higher inspirations is often not an honest doubt, but a guilty negligence, and is a sign of narrow mind and defective wisdom.
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One thing alone my heart requires, - one gleam of living light amid the ashes and the gloom; that into my cell of humiliation the flood of Divine pity should break, and keep aglow the openings of eternal hope, and sustain the hidden strength of an everlasting love.
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Human character is never found 'to enter into its glory,' except through the ordeal of affliction. Its force cannot come forth without the offer of resistance, nor can the grandeur of its free will declare itself, except in the battle of fierce temptation.
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It was in His parting sorrow - that Jesus asked His disciples to remember Him; and never was entreaty of affection answered so; for ever since has His name been breathed in morning and evening prayers that none can count, and has brought down some gift of sanctity and peace on the anguish of bereavement, and the remorse of sin.
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Trust arises from the mind's instinctive feeling after fixed realities, after the substance of every shadow, the base of all appearance, the everlasting amid change.
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We are each of us responsible for the evil we may have prevented.
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There is no surer mark of a low and unregenerate nature than this tendency of power to loudness and wantonness instead of quietness and reverence. To souls baptized in Christian nobleness the largest sphere of command is but a wider empire of obedience, calling them, not to escape from holy rule, but to its full impersonation.
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When the blessed Spirit, that bloweth where it listeth, visits you and stirs the plumage of the soul, seek no cowardly shelter from it, but fling yourself upon it, and, though its sweep be awful, you shall be sustained. Only do this, do all, not in presumptuous daring, but in divine submission; in dependence, not on any strength that can be spent, but on the ever-living stay of all that trust in Him.
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We cannot embrace His cross, and yet refuse our own. We cannot raise the cup of His remembrance to our lips, without a secret pledge to Him, to one another, to the great company of the faithful in every age that we, too, hold ourselves at God's disposal, that we will ask nothing on our own account, that we will pass simply into the Divine hand to take us whither it will.
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A mighty wind of resolution sets in strong upon him and freshens the whole atmosphere of his soul, sweeping down before it the light flakes of difficulty, till they vanish like snow upon the sea. He is imprisoned no more in a small compartment of time, but belongs to an eternity which is now and here. The isolation of his separate spirit passes away; and with the countless multitude of souls akin to God, he is but a wave of his unbounded deep. He is at one with Heaven, and hath found the secret place of the Almighty.
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All beneficent and creative power gathers itself together in silence, ere it issues out in might.