Good habits are not made on birthdays, nor Christian character at the new year. The vision may dawn, the dream may waken, the heart may leap with a new inspiration on some mountain-top, but the test, the triumph, is at the foot of the mountain, on the level plain. The workshop of character is every-day life. The uneventful and commonplace hour is where the battle is won or lost.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Categorized in : Life Christian New Year

One of the commonest mistakes and one of the costliest is thinking that success is due to some genius, some magic - something or other which we do not possess. Success is generally due to holding on, and failure to letting go. You decide to learn a language, study music, take a course of reading, train yourself physically. Will it be success or failure? It depends upon how much pluck and perseverance that word decide contains. The decision that nothing can overrule, the grip that nothing can detach will bring success.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

perseverance letting-go mistake

Better to lose count while naming your blessings than to lose your blessings to counting your troubles.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

gratitude adversity blessing

The tests of life are to make, not break us. Trouble may demolish a man's business but build up his character. The blow at the outward man may be the greatest blessing to the inner man.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

encouragement religious life

Be strong! It matters not how deep entrenched the wrong, how hard the battle goes, the day how long, faint not, fight on! Tomorrow comes the song.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

fighting strong song

It will be hard for you not to ask why this must be. God knows why, and that may be as good to us as though we knew a thousand reasons. I pray God to hold you quiet and patient and uncomplaining, and help you bear the weight of this seemingly unintelligible sorrow. I hope you will remember that this is the only world in which a Christian can suffer, and suffer patiently and meekly. We cannot suffer by and by. God helps us to glorify Him now, when we can.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

suffering christian grieving

Life is what we are alive to. It is not length, but breadth. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, pride, money-making, and not to goodness and kindness, purity and love, history, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God and eternal hopes, it is to be all but dead.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

stars kindness life

A day dawns, quite like other days; in it, a single hour comes, quite like other hours; but in that day and in that hour the chance of a lifetime faces us.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

morning motivational inspirational

Salvation is not putting a man into heaven but putting heaven into a man.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

salvation men heaven

If God made no response except to perfect faith, who could hope for help? But God has regard for beginnings, and His eye perceives greatness in the germ. The hand of the woman in the crowd trembled as it was stretched toward Jesus, and the faith back of it was superstitiously reverent, trusting in the virtue of the robe, rather than in the One who wore it; yet the genuineness of that faith; feeble though it was, triumphed in God's loving sight. Real trust is real power, though the heart and hand be feeble.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

eye real jesus

Pay little attention to discouragement as possible. Plough ahead as a steamer does, rough or smooth - rain or shine. To carry your cargo and make your port is the point.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

perseverance shining rain

Be strong: we are not here to play, to dream, to drift, we have hard work to do and loads to lift, shun not the struggle, face it, 'tis god's gift. Be strong: say not the days are evil - who's to blame! And fold your hands and acquiesce - o shame! Stand up, speak out, and bravely in god's name. Be strong! It matters not how deep entrenched the wrong. How hard the battle goes, the day, how long! Faint not, fight on! Tomorrow comes the song.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

strong dream song

Lord, let me make this rule

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

heart running school

The only test of possession is use. The talent that is buried is not owned. The napkin and the hole in the ground are far more truly the man's property, because they are accomplishing something for him, slothful and shameful though it be. And what is a lost soul? Is it not one that God cannot use, or one that cannot use God? Trustless, prayerless, fruitless, loveless--is it not so far lost? So may a man have a soul that is lost and be dead while he lives.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

soul use men

The world is God's workshop; the raw materials are His; the ideals and patterns are His; our hands are "the members of Christ," our reward His recognition. Blacksmith or banker, draughtsman or doctor, painter or preacher, servant or statesman, must work as unto the Lord, not merely making a living, but devoting a life. This makes life sacramental, turning its water into wine. This is twice blessed, blessing both the worker and the work.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

wine blessed blessing

Be strong! We are not here to play, to dream, to drift; We have hard work to do and loads to lift; Shun not the struggle-face it; 'tis God's gift.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

strong struggle dream

Business is religion, and religion is business. The man who does not make a business of his religion has a religious life of no force, and the man who does not make a religion of his business has a business life of no character.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

business religious life

Dare we let children grow up with no vital contact with the Saviour, never intentionally and consciously put into His arms? Not to bring them to Him, not to teach them to walk toward Him, as soon as they can walk toward anyone, is wronging a child beyond words. The terrible indictment uttered by the Lord, "Them that were entering in ye hindered," and the millstone warning for offending little ones, are close akin to the deserts of those who ruin a man's whole day of life by wronging his morning hours. Not to help a child to know the saving power of Christ is to hold back a man from salvation.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

growing-up morning children

Unless we realize our sins enough to call them by name, it is hardly worth while to say anything about them at all. When we pray for forgiveness, let us say, "my temper," or "untruthfulness," or "pride," "my selfishness, my cowardice, indolence, jealousy, revenge, impurity." To recognize our sins, we must look them in the face and call them by their right names, however hard. Honesty in confession calls for definiteness in confession.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

honesty pride revenge

This is my Father's world: O let me ne'er forget That though the wrong Seems oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet.

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

strong father world

Don't let the good things of life rob you of the best things!

Maltbie Davenport Babcock

best-things good-things