Elizabeth Prentiss Quotes
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It sweetens every bit of work to think that I am doing it in humble, far-off, yet real imitation of Jesus.
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People ask me how it happens that my children are all so promptly obedient and so happy. As if it chanced that some parents have such children or chanced that some have not! I am afraid it is only too true, as someone has remarked, that "this is the age of obedient parents!" What then will be the future of their children? How can they yield to God who have never been taught to yield to human authority? And how well fitted will they be to rule their own households who have never learned to rule themselves?
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...God notices the most trivial act, accepts the poorest, most threadbare little service, listens to the coldest, feeblest petition, and gathers up with parental fondness all our fragmentary desires and attempts at good works. Oh, if we could only begin to conceive how He loves us, what different creatures we should be!
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This is the testimony of all the good books, sermons, hymns, and memoirs I read--that God's ways are infinitely perfect; that we are to love Him for what He is and therefore equally as much when He afflicts as when He prospers us; that there is no real happiness but in doing and suffering His will; and that this life is but a scene of probation through which we pass to the real life above.
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I am amazed at the patience of my blessed Master and Teacher, but how I love His school!
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Our course heavenward is like the plan of the zealous pilgrim of old, who for every three steps forward, took one backward.
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During my long illness and confinement to my room, the Bible has been almost a new book to me; and I see that God has always dealt with His children as He deals with them now and that no new thing has befallen me. All these weary days so full of languor, these nights so full of unrest have had their appointed mission to my soul. And perhaps I have had no discipline so salutary as this forced inaction and uselessness at a time when youth and natural energy continually cried out for room and work.
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The question is not whether you ever gave yourself to God, but whether you are His now.
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...if I had been told what I was to learn through these protracted sufferings, I am afraid I should have shrunk back in terror and so have lost all the sweet lessons God proposed to teach me. As it is, He has led me on, step by step, answering my prayers in His own way; and I cannot bear to have a single human being doubt that it has been a perfect way. I love and adore it just as it is.
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Ah, what a life is theirs who live in Christ; How vast the mystery! Reaching in height to heaven, and in its depth The unfathomed sea!
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God does not give beforehand the grace with which to bear His blows; He does not heal before he smites. In your terror at the thought of parting with Horace, you left entirely out of account the sustaining power that would hold you up and bear you through those awful moments; you suffered in advance, and wholly in your own strength. But how many, how many persons I have heard say, ‘I am a marvel to myself! This blow, so long dreaded, has not slain me, as I ever believed it would; I stagger under it, but I live to wonder at the strength God gives me, and in which I bear it.
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One must either stop reading the Bible altogether, or else leave off spending one's whole time in just doing easy pleasant things one likes to do.
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Go home and say to yourself, ‘I am a wayward, foolish child. But He loves me! I have disobeyed and grieved Him ten thousand times. But He loves me! I have lost faith in some of my dearest friends and am very desolate. But He loves me! I do not love Him, I am even angry with Him! But He loves me!
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Some of His children must go into the furnace to testify that the Son of God is there with them.
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And it gives me positive personal pain to see heirs of the eternal kingdom, made such by the ignominious death of their Lord, go shrinking and weeping to the full possession of their inheritance.
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Bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Take what I cannot give: my heart, body, thoughts, time, abilities, money, health, strength, nights, days, youth, age, and spend them in Thy service, 0 my crucified Master, Redeemer, God. Oh, let not these be mere words! Whom have I in heaven but Thee and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee. My heart is athirst for God.
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I am not sure that it is best for us, once safe and secure on the Rock of Ages, to ask ourselves too closely what this and that experience may signify. Is it not better to be thinking of the Rock, not of the feet that stand upon it?
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Consenting to suffer does not annul the suffering.
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...if God chooses quite another lot for you, you may be sure that He sees that you need something totally different from what you want.
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Here is a little mouth to kiss; here are two more feet to make music with their pattering about my nursery. Here is a soul to train for God, and the body in which it dwells is worth all it will cost, since it is abode of a kingly tenant. I may see less of friends, but I have gained one dearer than them all. Yes, my precious baby, you are welcome to your mothers heart, welcome to her time, her strength, her health, to her most tender cares, to her life-long prayers! Oh how rich I am, how truly, how wondrously blest!
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But there is no use in trying to engraft an opposite nature on one’s own. What I am, that I must be, except as God changes me into His own image. And everything brings me back to that, as my supreme desire. I see more and more that I must be myself what I want my children to be and that I cannot make myself over even for their sakes. This must be His work, and I wonder that it goes on so slowly, that all the disappointments, sorrows, sicknesses I have passed through have left me still selfish, still full of imperfections!
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Joy emerges from sorrow, and soars on wings far more beautiful than any earthly analogy can paint.
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Nay then, but let me give to Him not what I value least, but what I prize and delight in most.
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I see that if I would be happy in God, I must give Him all. And there is a wicked reluctance to do that. I want Him--but I want to have my own way, too. I want to walk humbly and softly before Him and I want to go where I shall be admired and applauded. To whom shall I yield? To God? Or to myself?