The moral government of God is a movement in a line onwards towards some grand consummation, in which the principles, indeed, are ever the same, but the developments are always new - in which, therefore, no experience of the past can indicate with certainty what new openings of truth, what hew manifestations of goodness, what new phases of the moral heaven may appear.

Mark Hopkins

Categorized in : Past God Government

Language is the picture and counterpart of thought.

Mark Hopkins

counterparts language

Man can have strength of character only as he is capable of controlling his faculties; of choosing a rational end; and, in its pursuit, of holding fast to his integrity against al! the might of external nature.

Mark Hopkins

integrity character men

We are to regard the mind, not as a piece of iron to be laid upon the anvil and hammered into any shape, nor as a block of marble in which we are to find the statue by removing the rubbish, nor as a receptacle into which knowledge may be poured; but as a flame that is to be fed, as an active being that must be strengthened to think and to feel -- and to dare, to do, and to suffer.

Mark Hopkins

flames block thinking

Our prayer and God's mercy are like two buckets in a well; while the one ascends the other descends.

Mark Hopkins

mercy-of-god grace-and-mercy prayer

Certainly, no revolution that has ever taken place in society can be compared to that which has been produced by the words of Jesus Christ.

Mark Hopkins

revolution taken jesus

Man has wants deeper than can be supplied by wealth or nature or domestic affections. His great relations are to his God and to eternity.

Mark Hopkins

affection want men

We say then, that Christianity is adapted to the intellect, because its spirit coincides with that of true philosophy; because it removes the incubus of sensuality and low vice; because of the place it gives to truth; because it demands free inquiry; because its mighty truths and systems are brought before the mind in the same way as the truths and systems of nature; because it solves higher problems than nature can; and because it is so communicated as to be adapted to every mind.

Mark Hopkins

mind giving philosophy

The strength that we want is not a brute, unregulated strength; the beauty that we want is no mere surface beauty; but we want a beauty on the surface of life that is from the central force of principle within, as the beauty on the cheek of health is from the central force at the heart.

Mark Hopkins

principles want heart

Who will reach heaven? I do not know, but I am certain that no one will be there who does not feel at home.

Mark Hopkins

doe home heaven

The very act of faith by which we receive Christ is an act of the utter renunciation of self, and all its works, as a ground of salvation. It is really a denial of self, and a grounding of its arms in the last citadel into which it can be driven, and is, in its principle, inclusive of every subsequent act of self-denial by which sin is forsaken or overcome.

Mark Hopkins

principles self overcoming

Christianity is the greatest civilizing, moulding, uplifting power on this globe.

Mark Hopkins

good-christian uplifting christianity

Nothing but the cross of Christ can so startle the spiritual nature from its torpor, as to make it an effectual counterpoise to the debasing and sensual tendencies of the race. Favored by temperament and education, individuals may measurably escape; but if the race is to triumph in the conflict between the flesh and the spirit, between the lower propensities and the higher nature, they must, as Constantine is said to have done, see the cross, and on it the motto, "In hoc signo vinces." By this sign we conquer.

Mark Hopkins

sensual race spiritual

Christianity excludes malignity, subdues selfishness, regulates the passions, subordinates the appetites, quickens the intellect, exalts the affections. It promotes industry, honesty, truth, purity, kindness. It humbles the proud, exalts the lowly, upholds law, favors liberty, is essential to it, and would unite men in one great brotherhood. It is the breath of life to social and civil well-being here, and spreads the azure of that heaven into whose unfathomed depths the eye if faith loves to look.

Mark Hopkins

honesty eye kindness

Guided by His wisdom, strong in His strength, there maybe for you struggle and suffering, the darkness and the storm. "The disciple is not above His Master." There may be weeping that shall endure for a night, but joy shall come in the morning. If the night cometh, so also the morning, "a morning without clouds," the morning of an eternal day.

Mark Hopkins

strong struggle morning

Let the church come to God in the strength of a perfect weakness, in the power of a felt helplessness and a child-like confidence, and then, either she has no strength, and has no right to be, or she has a strength that is infinite. Then and thus, will she stretch out the rod over the seas of difficulty that lie before her, and the waters shall divide, and she shall pass through, and sing the song of deliverance.

Mark Hopkins

song lying children

In Christ we see the strength of achievement, and the strength of endurance. He moved with a calm majesty, like the sun. The bloody sweat, and the crown of thorns, and the cross, were full in His eyes; but He was obedient unto death. In His perfect self-sacrifice we see the perfection of strength; in the love that prompted it we see the perfection of beauty. This combination of self-sacrifice and love must be commenced in every Christian; and when it shall be in its spirit complete in him, then will he also be perfect in strength and beauty.

Mark Hopkins

sacrifice eye christian

Faith then, in its relation to salvation, is that confidence by which we accept it as a free gift from the Saviour, and is the only possible way in which the gift of God could be appropriated.

Mark Hopkins

free-gifts salvation way

To be energetic and firm where principle demands it, and tolerant in all else, is not easy. It is not easy to abhor wickedness, and oppose it with every energy, and at the same time to have the meekness and gentleness of Christ, becoming all things to all men for the truth's sake. The energy of patience, the most godlike of all, is not easy.

Mark Hopkins

energy principles men

Christianity alone inspires and guides progress; for the progress of man is movement toward God. and movement toward God wili ensure a gradual unfolding of all that exalts and adorns man.

Mark Hopkins

progress men inspire

But for us there are moments, O, how solemn, when destiny trembles in the balance and the preponderance of either scale is by our own choice.

Mark Hopkins

balance destiny choices