Quote of the Day

 Fortunately for us, our faith does not entitle us to heaven anymore than our stupidity shuts us out of it; when we get there it will be through Him who loved us.

Elizabeth Prentiss

Quote of the Day

Lay down this principle as law - God does nothing arbitrary.  If He takes away your health, for instance, it is because He has some reason for doing so; and this is true of everything you value; and if you have real faith in Him, you will not insist on knowing the reason....You can will to prefer a religion of principle to one of mere feeling; in other words, to obey the will of God when no comfortable glow of emotion accompanies your obedience.

Elizabeth Prentiss
(from Stepping Heavenward)

Quote of the Day

I was somewhat encouraged by reading in my father's memoir, and in reflecting that he passed through far greater spiritual conflicts than will probably ever be mine….I see now that it is not always best for us to have the light of God's countenance.  Do not spend your time and strength in asking for me that blessing, but this -- that I may be transformed into the image of Christ in His own time, in His own way.

 

Elizabeth Prentiss

Quote of the Day

As she anticipated, the volume met in some quarters with anything but a cordial reception; the criticism upon it were curt and depreciatory.  It's representation of the Christian life was censured as gloomy and false.  It was even intimated that in her expressions of pain and sorrow, there was more or less poetical affectation.  Alluding to this in a letter to a friend, she writes:  "I have spoken of the deepest, sorest pain; not of trials, but of sorrow, not of discomfort, but of suffering.  And all I have spoken of, I have felt.  Never could I have known Christ, had I not had large experience of Him as a chastiser….You little know the long story of my life, nor is it necessary that you should;  but you must take my word for it that if I do not know what suffering means, there is not a soul on earth that does.  It has not been my habit to say much about this; it has been a matter between myself and my God; but the results I have told, that He may be glorified and that others may be led to Him as the Fountain of life and light.  I refer, of course, to the book of verses; I never called them poems.  You may depend upon it the world is brimful of pain in some shape or other; it is a 'hurt world'.  But no Christian should go about groaning and weeping; though sorrowing, he should be always rejoicing.  During twenty years of my life my kind and wise Physician was preparing me, by many bitter remedies, for the work I was to do; I can never thank or love Him enough for His unflinching discipline."

 

Elizabeth Prentiss

Quote of the Day

I am no stranger, I assure you, to the misgivings you describe in your last letter; I think them the result of the wish without the will to be holy.  We pray for sanctification and then are afraid God will sanctify us by stripping us of our idols and feel distressed lest we can not have them and Him too.

Elizabeth Prentiss

Quote of the Day

This evening I passed unavoidably through Miss ----'s room.  She was reading Byron as usual and looked so wretched and restless, that I could not help yielding to a loving impulse and putting my hand on hers and asking why she was so sad.  She told me.  It was just what I supposed.  She is trying to be happy, and can not find out how……I alluded to her religious history and present hopes.  She said she did not think continued acts of faith in Christ necessary; she had believed on Him once, and now He would save her whatever she did; and she was not going to torment herself trying to live so very holy a life, since, after all, she should get to heaven just as well through Him as if she had been particularly good (as she termed it).  I don't know whether a good or a bad spirit moved me at that minute, but I forgot that I was a mere child in religious knowledge, and talked about my doctrine and made it a very beautiful one to my mind, though I don't think she thought it so.  Oh, for what would I give up the happiness of praying for a holy heart -- of striving, struggling for it!  Yes, it is indeed true that we are saved simply, only, apart from our own goodness, through the love of Christ.  But who can believe himself thus chosen of God-- who can think of and hold communion with Infinite Holiness, and not long for the Divine image in his own soul?  It is a mystery to me-- these strange doctrines.  Is not the fruit of love aspiration after the holy?  Is not the act of the new-born soul, when it passes from death unto life, that of desire for assimilation to and oneness with Him who is its all in all?  How can love and faith be one act and then cease?  I dare not believe -- I would not for a universe believe -- that my sense of safety in the love of Christ is not to be just the sense that shall bind me in grateful self-renunciation wholly to His service.  Let be sure of final rest in heaven -- sure that at this moment I am really God's own adopted child; and I believe my prayers, my repentings, my weariness of sin, would be just what they now are; nay, more deep, more abundant.  Oh, it is because I believe -- fully believe that I shall be saved through Christ -- that I want to be like Him here upon earth.  It is because I do not fear final misery that I shrink from sin and defilement here.

Elizabeth Prentiss

Quote of the Day

…As to domestic cares, you know Mrs. Stowe has written a beautiful little tract on this subject -- "Earthly Care a Heavenly Discipline."  God never places us in any position in which we can not grow.  We may fancy that He does.  We may fear we are so impeded by fretting, petty cares that we are gaining nothing; but when we are not sending any branches upward, we may be sending roots downward.  Perhaps in the time of our humiliation, when everything seems a failure, we are making the best kind of progress.  God delights to try our faith by the conditions in which He places us.  A plant set in the shade shows where its heart is by turning towards the sun, even when unable to reach it.  We have so much to distract us in this world that we do not realize how truly and deeply, if not always warmly and consciously, we love Christ.  But I believe that this love is the strongest principle in every regenerate soul.  It may slumber for a time, it may falter, it may freeze nearly to death; but sooner or later it will declare itself as the ruling passion.  You should regard all your discontent with yourself as negative devotion, for that it really is.......I know all about these little domestic foxes that spoil the vines, and sympathize with you in yours.  But if some other trial would serve God's purposes, He would substitute it.

 Elizabeth Prentiss