Have you ever noticed how much of Christ’s life was spent in doing kind things?
– Henry Drummond
Kindness
The most obvious lesson in Christ’s teaching is that there is no happiness in having or getting anything, but only in giving.
– Henry Drummond
Giving
I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
– Henry Drummond
Kindness
Where Love is, God is.
– Henry Drummond
Love | God
The world is not a play-ground; it is a school-room. Life is not a holiday, but an education. And the one eternal lesson for us all is how better we can love.
– Henry Drummond
Life | Love
The greatest thing a man can do for his Heavenly Father is to be kind to some of His other children.
– Henry Drummond
Kindness
To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to live forever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up with love… Love must be eternal. It is what God is.
– Henry Drummond
Love | Eternal Life
Christ never failed to distinguish between doubt and unbelief. Doubt is can’t believe. Unbelief is won’t believe. Doubt is honesty. Unbelief is obstinacy. Doubt is looking for light. Unbelief is content with darkness.
– Henry Drummond
Doubt | Unbelief
Will power does not change men. Time does not change men. Christ does.
– Henry Drummond
Christ | Change | Time
No one can get Joy by merely asking for it. It is one of the ripest fruits of the Christian life, and, like all fruits, must be grown.
– Henry Drummond
Joy
The family circle is the supreme conductor of Christianity.
– Henry Drummond
Family | Christianity
You will find, if you think for a moment, that the people who influence you are the people who believe in you.
– Henry Drummond
Encouragement
What a noble gift it is, the power of playing upon the souls and wills of men, and rousing them to lofty purposes and holy deeds.
– Henry Drummond
Encouragement
Christ’s invitation to the weary and heavy-laden is a call to begin life over again upon a new principle–upon His own principle. “Watch My way of doing things,” He says. “Follow Me. Take life as I take it. Be meek and lowly, and you will find Rest.”
– Henry Drummond
Rest
Let man choose Life; let him daily nourish his soul; let him forever starve the old life; let him abide continuously as a living branch in the Vine, and the True-Vine Life will flow into his soul, assimilating, renewing, conforming to Type, till Christ, pledged by His own law, be formed in him.
– Henry Drummond
Restoration
The Reign of Law has gradually crept into every department of Nature, transforming knowledge everywhere into Science. The process goes on, and Nature slowly appears to us as one great unity, until the borders of the Spiritual World are reached.
– Henry Drummond
Nature
“Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself.” Get these ingredients into your life. Then everything that you do is eternal. It is worth doing. It is worth giving time to.
– Henry Drummond
Love | Eternity
The creation of a new heart, the renewing of a right spirit is an omnipotent work of God. Leave it to the Creator. “He which hath begun a good work in you will perfect it unto that day.”
– Henry Drummond
Renewal
No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianize society than evil temper.
– Henry Drummond
Anger
The Spiritual Life is the gift of the Living Spirit. The spiritual man is no mere development of the Natural man. He is a New Creation born from Above.
– Henry Drummond
The Holy Spirit | Renewal
Men tell us sometimes there is no such thing as an atheist. There must be. There are some men to whom it is true that there is no God. They cannot see God because they have no eye. They have only an abortive organ, atrophied by neglect.
– Henry Drummond
Atheism
With Nature as the symbol of all of harmony and beauty that is known to man, must we still talk of the supernatural, not as a convenient word, but as a different order of world, … where the Reign of Mystery supersedes the Reign of Law?
– Henry Drummond
Nature
More difficult still, apparently, is the life of ever upward growth. Most men attempt it for a time, but growth is slow; and despair overtakes them while the goal is far away.
– Henry Drummond
Growth
The entrance fee into the kingdom of heaven is nothing: the annual subscription is everything.
– Henry Drummond
Heaven | Surrender
It ought to be placed in the forefront of all Christian teaching that Christ’s mission on earth was to give men Life. “I am come,” He said, “that ye might have Life, and that ye might have it more abundantly.” And that He meant literal Life, literal spiritual and Eternal Life, is clear from the whole course of His teaching and acting.
– Henry Drummond
Eternal Life
There are some men and some women in whose company we are always at our best. While with them we cannot think mean thoughts or speak ungenerous words. Their mere presence is elevation, purification, sanctity. All the best stops in our nature are drawn out by their intercourse, and we find a music in our souls that was never there before.
– Henry Drummond
Relationships
The lilies grow, Christ says, of themselves; they toil not, neither do they spin. They grow, that is, automatically, spontaneously, without trying, without fretting, without thinking.
– Henry Drummond
Rest
If God is spending work upon a Christian, let him be still and know that it is God. And if he wants work, he will find it there–in the being still.
– Henry Drummond
Work | Rest
Is life not full of opportunities for learning love? Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them. The world is not a playground; it is a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday, but an education. And the one eternal lesson for us all is how better we can love.
– Henry Drummond
Achievement | Life | Learning
What is the essential difference between the Christian and the not-a-Christian, between the spiritual beauty and the moral beauty? It is the distinction between the Organic and the Inorganic. Moral beauty is the product of the natural man, spiritual beauty of the spiritual man.
– Henry Drummond
Beauty
If we try to influence or elevate others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to their belief of our belief in them.
– Henry Drummond
Success
We know but little now about the conditions of the life that is to come. But what is certain is that Love must last. God, the Eternal God, is Love. Covet, therefore, that everlasting gift.
– Henry Drummond
Eternity | Love
God, the Eternal God, is Love. Covet therefore that everlasting gift, that one thing which it is certain is going to stand, that one coinage which will be current in the universe when all other coinages of all the nations of the world shall be useless and unhonored.
– Henry Drummond
Love | Eternity
In the spiritual world … he will be wise who courts acquaintance with the most ordinary and transparent facts of Nature; and in laying the foundations for a religious life he will make no unworthy beginning who carries with him an impressive sense of so obvious a truth as that without Environment there can be no life.
– Henry Drummond
Wisdom
We fail to praise the ceaseless ministry of the great inanimate world around us only because its kindness is unobtrusive. Nature is always noiseless. All her greatest gifts are given in secret. And we forget how truly every good and perfect gift comes from without, and from above, because no pause in her changeless beneficence teaches us the sad lessons of deprivation.
– Henry Drummond
Nature
Character is a unity, and all the virtues must advance together to make the perfect man. This method of sanctification, nevertheless, is in the true direction. It is only in the details of execution that it fails.
– Henry Drummond
Character | Sanctification
Love is PATIENCE. This is the normal attitude of Love; Love passive, Love waiting to begin; not in a hurry; calm; ready to do its work when the summons comes, but meantime wearing the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.
– Henry Drummond
Love | Meekness
The soul, in its highest sense, is a vast capacity for God. It is like a curious chamber added on to being, and somehow involving being, a chamber with elastic and contractile walls, which can be expanded, with God as its guest, illimitably, but which without God shrinks and shrivels until every vestige of the Divine is gone.
– Henry Drummond
The Holy Spirit
There is a sense of solidity about a Law of Nature which belongs to nothing else in the world. Here, at last, amid all that is shifting, is one thing sure; one thing outside ourselves, unbiased, unprejudiced, uninfluenced by like or dislike, by doubt or fear… This more than anything else makes one eager to see the Reign of Law traced in the Spiritual Sphere.
– Henry Drummond
Nature
The ceaseless chagrin of a self-centered life can be removed at once by learning Meekness and Lowliness of heart. He who learns them is forever proof against it. He lives henceforth a charmed life.
– Henry Drummond
Meekness
If a man does not exercise his arm he develops no biceps muscle; and if a man does not exercise his soul, he acquires no muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigor of moral fiber, nor beauty of Spiritual growth.
– Henry Drummond
Growth
Men sigh for the wings of a dove, that they may fly away and be at Rest. But flying away will not help us. “The Kingdom of God is WITHIN YOU.” We aspire to the top to look for Rest; it lies at the bottom. Water rests only when it gets to the lowest place. So do men. Hence, be lowly.
– Henry Drummond
Rest
I wonder why it is that we are not all kinder to each other. How much the world needs it! How easily it is done!
– Henry Drummond
Kindness
The spiritual man having passed from Death unto Life, the natural man must next proceed to pass from Life unto Death. Having opened the new set of correspondences, he must deliberately close up the old. Regeneration in short must be accompanied by Degeneration.
– Henry Drummond
Renewal
There is no happiness in having and getting, but only in giving … half the world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness.
– Henry Drummond
Giving
Christianity, as Christ taught, is the truest philosophy of life ever spoken. But let us be quite sure when we speak of Christianity, that we mean Christ’s Christianity.
– Henry Drummond
Christianity
Make Christ your most constant companion. Be more under His influence than under any other influence. Ten minutes spent in His society every day, ay, two minutes if it be face to face, and heart to heart, will make the whole day different. Every character has an inward spring, let Christ be it. Every action has a key-note, let Christ set it.
– Henry Drummond
Christ
Only one thing truly need the Christian envy, the large, rich, generous soul which “envieth not.”
– Henry Drummond
Envy
The man who has no opinion of himself at all can never be hurt if others do not acknowledge him. Hence, be meek. He who is without expectation cannot fret if nothing comes to him. It is self-evident that these things are so. The lowly man and the meek man are really above all other men, above all other things.
– Henry Drummond
Meekness
With the demonstration of the naturalness of the supernatural, skepticism even may come to be regarded as unscientific. And those who have wrestled long for a few bare truths to ennoble life and rest their souls in thinking of the future will not be left in doubt.
– Henry Drummond
The Future | Skepticism
To become like Christ is the only thing in the world worth caring for, the thing before which every ambition of man is folly, and all lower achievement vain. Those only who make this quest the supreme desire and passion of their lives can even begin to hope to reach it.
– Henry Drummond
Holiness
Whatever rest is provided by Christianity for the children of God, it is certainly never contemplated that it should supersede personal effort. And any rest which ministers to indifference is immoral and unreal–it makes parasites and not men.
– Henry Drummond
Rest
Do not grudge the Hand that is molding the still too shapeless image within you. It is growing more beautiful, though you see it not, and every touch of temptation may add to its perfection.
– Henry Drummond
Temptation | Beauty
In the natural world we absorb heat, breathe air, draw on Environment all but automatically for meat and drink, for the nourishment of the senses, for mental stimulus, for all that, penetrating us from without, can prolong, enrich, and elevate life. But in the spiritual world we have all this to learn. We are new creatures, and even the bare living has to be acquired.
– Henry Drummond
Renewal
The truth is there are two great classes of sins – sins of the body, and sins of the disposition. The Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the first, the Elder Brother of the second.
– Henry Drummond
Sin
What is the creed of the Agnostic, but the confession of the spiritual numbness of humanity?
– Henry Drummond
Character
A photograph prints from the negative only while exposed to the sun. While the artist is looking to see how it is getting on he simply stops the getting on. Whatever of wise supervision the soul may need, it is certain it can never be over-exposed, or that, being exposed, anything else in the world can improve the result or quicken it.
– Henry Drummond
Worldliness
So cultivate the soul that all its powers will open out to God, and in beholding God be drawn away from sin.
– Henry Drummond
Godliness
The nescience of the Agnostic philosophy is the proof from experience that to be carnally minded is Death.
– Henry Drummond
Philosophy
To correspond with the God of Science, the Eternal Unknowable, would be everlasting existence; to correspond with “the true God and Jesus Christ,” is Eternal Life. The quality of the Eternal Life alone makes the heaven; mere everlastingness might be no boon. Even the brief span of the temporal life is too long for those who spend its years in sorrow.
– Henry Drummond
Eternal Life
On what does the Christian argument for Immortality really rest? It stands upon the pedestal on which the theologian rests the whole of historical Christianity–the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
– Henry Drummond
Resurrection
Under the right conditions it is as natural for character to become beautiful as for a flower; and if on God’s earth there is not some machinery for affecting it, the supreme gift to the world has been forgotten. This is simply what man was made for. With Browning: “I say that Man was made to grow, not stop.”
– Henry Drummond
Character
He lives who dies to win a lasting name.
– Henry Drummond
Faithful
The distinctions drawn between men are commonly based on the outward appearance of goodness or badness, on the ground of moral beauty or moral deformity–is this classification scientific? Or is there a deeper distinction between the Christian and the not-a-Christian as fundamental as that between the organic and the inorganic?
– Henry Drummond
Good and Evil
There is only one thing greater than happiness in the world, and that is holiness; and it is not in our keeping; but what God HAS put in our power is the happiness of those about us, and that is largely to be secured by our being kind to them.
– Henry Drummond
Happiness | Holiness
There are not two laws of Bio-genesis, one for the natural, the other for the Spiritual; one law is for both. Where-ever there is Life, Life of any kind, this same law holds.
– Henry Drummond
Creation
Earnest souls who are attempting sanctification by struggle, instead of sanctification by faith, might be spared much humiliation by learning the botany of the Sermon on the Mount.
– Henry Drummond
Sanctification
What is the Spiritual Environment? It is God. Without this, therefore, there is no life, no thought, no energy, nothing—“without Me ye can do nothing.”
– Henry Drummond
God
The religion of Jesus has probably always suffered more from those who have misunderstood than from those who have opposed it.
– Henry Drummond
Religion | Jesus
I shall never rise to the point of view which wishes to “raise” faith to knowledge. To me, the way of truth is to come through the knowledge of my ignorance to the submissiveness of faith, and then, making that my starting-place, to raise my knowledge into faith.
– Henry Drummond
Faith
To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to live forever.
– Henry Drummond
Love
Just because God worketh in him, as the evidence and triumph of it, the true child of God works out his own salvation–works it out having really received it–not as a light thing, a superfluous labor, but with fear and trembling as a reasonable and indispensable service.
– Henry Drummond
Salvation
Do not quarrel … with your lot in life. Do not complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, the vexations you have to stand, the small and sordid souls you have to live and work with.
– Henry Drummond
Worry
Where is the capacity for heaven to come from if it be not developed on earth? Where, indeed, is even the smallest appreciation of God and heaven to come from when so little of spirituality has ever been known or manifested here?
– Henry Drummond
Heaven
A man will often have to wrestle with his God–but not for growth. The Christian life is a composed life. The Gospel is Peace. Yet the most anxious people in the world are Christians–Christians who misunderstand the nature of growth. Life is a perpetual self-condemning because they are not growing.
– Henry Drummond
Growth
If a man could make himself humble to order, it might simplify matters, but we do not find that this happens. Hence we must all go through the mill. Hence death, death to the lower self, is the nearest gate and the quickest road to life.
– Henry Drummond
Self-denial
Each man has only a certain amount of life, of time, of attention–a definite measurable quantity. If he gives any of it to this life solely it is wasted. Therefore Christ says, Hate life, limit life, lest you steal your love for it from something that deserves it more.
– Henry Drummond
Life
One little weakness, we are apt to fancy, all men must be allowed, and we even claim a certain indulgence for that apparent necessity of nature which we call our besetting sin. Yet to break with the lower environment at all, to many, is to break at this single point.
– Henry Drummond
Weakness
Christianity removes the attraction of the earth; and this is one way in which it diminishes men’s burden. It makes them citizens of another world.
– Henry Drummond
Christianity | Worldliness
The sneer at the godly man for his imperfections is ill-judged. A blade is a small thing. At first it grows very near the earth. It is often soiled and crushed and downtrodden. But it is a living thing,… and “it doth not yet appear what it shall be.”
– Henry Drummond
Hypocrisy
It is a wonderful thing that here and there in this hard, uncharitable world, there should still be left a few rare souls who think no evil.
– Henry Drummond
Good and Evil
Love should be the supreme thing–because it is going to last; because in the nature of things it is an Eternal Life. It is a thing that we are living now, not that we get when we die; that we shall have a poor chance of getting when we die unless we are living now.
– Henry Drummond
Love | Eternal Life
Character grows in the stream of the world’s life. That chiefly is where men are to learn love.
– Henry Drummon
Character
It is not a strange thing for the soul to find its life in God. This is its native air. God as the Environment of the soul has been from the remotest age the doctrine of all the deepest thinkers in religion. How profoundly Hebrew poetry is saturated with this high thought will appear when we try to conceive of it with this left out.
– Henry Drummond
Life | God
There is no mystery about Happiness whatever. Put in the right ingredients and it must come out. He that abideth in Him will bring forth much fruit; and bringing forth much fruit is Happiness. The infallible receipt for Happiness, then, is to do good; and the infallible receipt for doing good is to abide in Christ.
– Henry Drummond
Happiness
The final test of religion at that great Day is not religiousness, but Love; not what I have done, not what I have believed, not what I have achieved, but how I have discharged the common charities of life.
– Henry Drummond
Love
The man whose blood is pure has nothing to fear. So he whose spirit is purified and sweetened becomes proof against these germs of sin. “Anger, wrath, malice and railing” in such a soil can find no root.
– Henry Drummond
Purity
There is a Sense of Sound. Neglect this, leave it undeveloped, and you never miss it. Develop it, and you hear God. And the line along which to develop it is known to us. Obey Christ.
– Henry Drummond
God
Neglect does more for the soul than make it miss salvation. It despoils it of its capacity for salvation.
– Henry Drummond
Apathy
If sin is estrangement from God, this very estrangement is Death. It is a want of correspondence. If sin is selfishness, it is conducted at the expense of life. Its wages are Death–“he that loveth his life,” said Christ, “shall lose it.”
– Henry Drummond
Sin
Life becomes fuller and fuller, richer and richer, more and more sensitive and responsive to an ever-widening Environment as we rise in the chain of being.
– Henry Drummond
Life
If the purification of Religion comes from Science, the purification of Science, in a deeper sense, shall come from Religion.
– Henry Drummond
Religion
“Perfect correspondence,” according to Mr. Herbert Spencer, would be “perfect Life.” To abolish Death, therefore, all that would be necessary would be to abolish Imperfection. But it is the claim of Christianity that it can abolish Death. And it is significant to notice that it does so by meeting this very demand of Science–it abolishes Imperfection.
– Henry Drummond
Death
The Christian life is the only life that will ever be completed. Apart from Christ the life of man is a broken pillar, the race of men an unfinished pyramid. One by one in sight of Eternity all human Ideals fall short, one by one before the open grave all human hopes dissolve.
– Henry Drummond
Christianity
Even to earnest minds the difficulty of grasping the truth at all has always proved extreme. Philosophically, one scarcely sees either the necessity or the possibility of being born again. Why a virtuous man should not simply grow better and better until in his own right he enter the Kingdom of God is what thousands honestly and seriously fail to understand.
– Henry Drummond
Virtue
Man is a moral animal, and can, and ought to arrive at great natural beauty of character. But this is simply to obey the law of his nature–the law of his flesh; and no progress along that line can project him into the spiritual sphere.
– Henry Drummond
Character
Except a mineral be born “from above”–from the Kingdom just ABOVE it–it cannot enter the Kingdom just above it. And except a man be born “from above,” by the same law, he cannot enter the Kingdom just above him.
– Henry Drummond
Salvation
On the last analysis, then, love is life. Love never faileth and life never faileth so long as there is love.
– Henry Drummond
Love | Life
Christ’s protest is not against work, but against anxious thought.
– Henry Drummond
Anxiety
This is Degeneration–that principle by which the organism, failing to develop itself, failing even to keep what it has got, deteriorates, and becomes more and more adapted to a degraded form of life.
– Henry Drummond
Rebellion