Horace Bushnell Quotes (1802-1876)

“Faith is the act of trust by which one being, a sinner, commits himself to another being, a Saviour.”

“Live as with God; and, whatever be your calling, pray for the gift that will perfectly qualify you in it.”

“Jesus is the true manifestation of God, and He is manifested to be the regenerating power of a divine life.”

“Trust in God for great things. With your five loaves and two fishes He will show you a way to feed thousands.”

“Christ wants to lead men by their love, their personal love to Him, and the confidence of His personal love to them.”

“We shall never recover the true apostolic energy, and be endued with power from on high, as the first disciples were, 'till we recover the lost faith.”

“O, if we could tear aside the vail, and see for but one hour what it signifies to be a soul in the power of an endless life, what a revelation would it be!”

“God listens for nothing so tenderly, as when His children help each other by their testimonies to His goodness and the way in which He has brought them deliverance.”

“We are to work after no set fashion of high endeavor; but to walk with Jesus, performing, as it were, a ministry on foot, that we may stop at the humblest matter, and prove our fidelity there.”

“Persecution has not crushed it, power has not beaten it back, time has not abated its force, and, what is most wonderful of all, the abuses and treasons of its friends have not shaken its stability.”

“Christ is known only by them that receive Him into their love, their faith, their deep want; known only as He is enshrined within, felt as a Divine force, breathed in the inspirations of the secret life.”

“O Thou Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, what Thou bearest in Thy blessed hands and feet I cannot bear; take it all away. Hide me in the depths of Thy suffering love, mold me to the image of Thy divine passion.”

“Be an observer of providence; for God is showing you ever, by the way in which He leads you, whither He means to lead. Study your trials, your talents, the world's wants, and stand ready to serve God now, in whatever He brings to your hand.”

“Be sure that Christ is not behind you, but before, calling and drawing you on. This is the liberty, the beautiful liberty of Christ. Claim your glorious privilege in the name of a disciple; be no more a servant, when Christ will own you as a friend.”

“Christ's sacrifice stands in glorious proportions with the work to be done. Nothing else or less would suffice. It is a work supernatural, transacted in the plane of nature; and what but such a work could restore the broken order of the soul under evil?”

“Jesus does not drive His followers on before, as a herd of unwilling disciples, but goes before Himself, leading them into paths that He has trod, and dangers He has met, and sacrifices He has borne Himself, calling them after Him and to be only followers.”

“Christ does not dress up a moral picture, and ask you to observe its beauty. He only tells you how to live; and the most beautiful characters the world has ever seen, have been those who received and lived these precepts without once conceiving their beauty.”

“We come, in our trust, unto God, and the moment we so embrace Him, by committing our total being and eternity to Him, we find every thing is transformed. There is life in us from God; a kind of Christ-consciousness is opened in us, testifying with the apostle,— Christ liveth in me.”

“The reason why those who are converted to Christ often make so poor a work of rectifying their old habits, is that they lay down their work in the very places where it needs to be prosecuted most carefully, that is, in their common employments. They do not live to God in that which is least.”

“Christianity is no mere scheme of doctrine or of ethical practice, but is instead a kind of miracle, a power out of nature and above, descending into it; a historically supernatural movement on the world, that is visibly entered into it, and organized to be an institution in the person of Jesus Christ.”

“It is the grandeur of Christ's character which constitutes the chief power of His ministry, not His miracles or teachings apart from. His character. The greatest truth of the gospel is Christ Himself — a human body become the organ of the Divine nature, and revealing, under the conditions of an earthly life, the glory of God.”

“My own experience is that the Bible is dull when I am dull. When I am really alive, and set in upon the text with a tidal pressure of living affinities, it opens, it multiplies discoveries, and reveals depths even faster than I can note them. The worldly spirit shuts the Bible; the Spirit of God makes it a fire, flaming out all meanings and glorious truths.”

“However dark our lot may be, there is light enough on the other side of the cloud, in that pure empyrean where God dwells, to irradiate every darkness of this world; light enough to clear every difficult question, remove every ground of obscurity, conquer every atheistic suspicion, silence every hard judgment, light enough to satisfy, nay, to ravish the mind forever.”