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HITCHCOCK, Roswell Dwight Quotes
(1817-1887), American clergyman
Plato was right in calling atheism a disease.—The human intellect in its healthy action, holds it for certain that there is a Great Being over us, invisible, infinite, ineffable, but of real, solid personality, who made and governs us, and who made and governs all things.
Money spent on ourselves may be a millstone about the neck; spent on others it may give us wings like eagles.
More than one of the strong nations may shortly have to choose between a selfish secular civilization, whose God is science, and an unselfish civilization whose Cod is Christ.
Money spent on myself may be a millstone about my neck; money spent on others may give me wings like the angels.
Atheistic morality is not impossible, but it will never answer our purpose.—The morality that holds the great masses of sinewy people together must be very firmly rooted in an honest, downright personal faith and fear.
It is written in God's word, and in all the history of the race, that nations, if they live at all, live not by felicity of position, or soil, or climate, and not by abundance of material good, but by the living word of the living God.—The commandments of God are the bread of life for the nations.
Religion is not a dogma, not an emotion, but a service.—Our redemption is not of the head alone, nor of the heart alone, but preeminently of the life, as the only infallible criterion of what we really are.—Not belief, not emotion, but obedience is the test.—Mere belief would make religion a mere theology. Mere emotion would make it a mere excitement.—While the true divine of it is a life, begotten of grace in the depths of the human soul, subduing to Christ all the powers of the heart and life, and incarnating itself in patient, steady, sturdy service—doing the will of God.
The more pure and righteous a moral being is, the more squarely must he antagonize, the more intensely must he hate, the more surely must he punish impurity and unrighteousness. Volcanic fire inside the globe, and forked lightning outside of it, are faint emblems of holy wrath.—When a thoroughly bad man stands revealed only lightning is logical.—He that sows the wind ought to reap the whirlwind.
Twin-sister of natural and revealed religion, and of heavenly birth, science will never belie her celestial origin, nor cease to sympathize with all that emanates from the home. Human ignorance and prejudice may for a time seem to have divorced what God has joined together; but human ignorance and prejudice shall at length pass away, and then science and religion shall be seen blending their particolored rays into one beautiful bow of light, linking heaven to earth and earth to heaven.
Of all sorts of earthly good the price is self-denial.—The lower must be sacrificed for the greater; the coarser give place to the finer.—Every step of our progress toward success is a sacrifice.—We gain by losing; grow by dwindling; live by dying.
What is human sin but the abuse of human appetites, of human passions, of human faculties, in themselves all innocent?
Religious truth, touch what points of it you will, has always to do with the being and government of God, and is, of course, illimitable in its reach.
Wealth is not of necessity a curse, nor poverty a blessing.—Wholesome and easy abundance is better than either extreme; better for our manhood that we have enough for daily comfort; enough for culture, for hospitality, for Christian charity.—More than this may or may not be a blessing.—Certainly it can be a blessing only by being accepted as a trust.
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