Maurice in Brief

God reveals not a doctrine but a Person.

That which is revealed is not a doctrine—not anything which can be expressed in terms—but a living Person.

Christ doesn’t break the world’s order; He restores it.

It seems to me that exactly the claim which the Evangelists put forth for Jesus is, that He was the revealer and assertor of the Divine order, that He entered into conflict with the anomalies which disturbed that order.

The sun warms people who know nothing of astronomy.

If you suppose the sun’s light and heat have only been felt by those who are acquainted with the right doctrine concerning the heavenly bodies, you may suppose also that Christ’s power has been limited by men’s acquaintance with the right doctrine concerning His relation to the visible or invisible world.

Truth isn’t an idea we hold, but Someone who holds us.

Truth, according to St. John, is not dead, but living; not a notion, or set of notions which we comprehend, but a Being who comprehends us; not a theory concerning God, but God Himself.

In Christ, God and humanity meet.

The Gospel is the news that God is reconciled to man in His Son, that in Him there is a meeting-point between God and man.

God speaks Himself not in words, but in a man.

We say that Christ has come to make known the Father; we say that in Him all may know Him, because He has revealed Himself, fully revealed Himself, not in words and letters, but in a Man.

The Word leads each of us from the seen to the unseen, from self to all.

The Divine and Everlasting Word is the teacher of each man; his guide through the sensible into the spiritual, through the individual into the universal.

The obedient Son shows us the Father.

The perfect Son, by His obedience, had revealed the perfect Father; the Absolute Goodness had come forth in all the relations and sympathies of the man.

The Church is the world come home to God.

The world is the Church without God; the Church is the world restored to its relation with God, taken back by Him into the state for which He created it.

The world is not our enemy; God loves it.

The world in itself is not our enemy: it is loved by God; it has been redeemed by Christ.

We say God reigns, and live as if He doesn’t.

We say that in a sense it is no doubt true that God reigns over the nations; meaning that in every practical and important sense it is not true.

The Church rests on God, and shows Him to the world.

The Church is that society which rests upon the Name and Unity of God, and through which they are made known to man.

The cross proves the world is God’s, not the Destroyer’s.

Christ bears death not in obedience to an inevitable fate, but to a loving will; not because the tyrant has conquered the earth and those who dwell upon it, but as an eternal testimony that he has not conquered it—that it belongs to the Creator, not to the Destroyer.

In every beggar, God sees His child.

Our Gospel is to the poor, only because there is a man in every beggar, whom the god of this world is trying to hold down in death, whom the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is speaking to as His child.

We don’t judge; we’re forgiven, and we pass it on.

We must confess that we are not gods; not able to pronounce on the condition of our fellows, needing forgiveness every day from our Father, and from each other, permitted to dispense what He sends us.

Knowing we’re no better than others lets us pray for all.

Thou showest us that we are not better, but worse, than other men, that so we may commend all men with ourselves to Thee.

Whoever lives beyond selfishness does good.

Everyone who lets the world see that selfishness is not his law, that he can obey a principle, that the arm of God is more to be trusted than the arm of flesh, will certainly do good.

Deny Christ in everyone, and people become property.

If Christ is not in every man, Christians can, Christians will, treat all as chattels, or worse than chattels, who do not bear their name.

Impurity begins with going it alone.

Impurity comes in with separation; with men choosing to have a way of their own, choosing to break loose from the law and principle of the divine fellowship.

A theology that doesn’t answer the human heart isn’t true.

I have maintained in these Essays that a Theology which does not correspond to the deepest thoughts and feelings of human beings cannot be a true Theology.

Trust Him, not your trust.

Our faith is not in itself, but in Him; if we think of it instead of Him, it perishes.

Full of ideas about God, and empty of God.

Notions about God, more or less occupied them; but God Himself was not in all their thoughts.

Ask for enough; let God decide what enough is.

What is enough we happily are not called to fix; the act of prayer throws the decision of that point upon a wiser judge.

An honest mind needs solid ground, and only God can give it.

The original man is fighting for his life; he must know whether he has any ground to stand upon; he must ask God to tell him, because man cannot.

The darkness is not from God.

Things may look very dark and black, but I am sure the darkness and blackness are not from God.

Eternal life is sharing in God’s own goodness.

The eternal life is the righteousness and truth and love of God which are manifested in Christ Jesus; manifested to men that they may be partakers of them, that they may have fellowship with the Father and with the Son.

God’s greatest gifts arrive through ordinary life.

The acts of life which are familiar to every peasant shall be the vehicle for conveying the greatest treasures of God to mankind.

Read faithfully, history is full of hope.

The past experiences of the world, in this and in all cases, are not warrants for discouragement; if we use them faithfully, they are full of hope.

All honest work is a calling, or it turns joyless.

We contend that every Christian should believe himself called to every work in which he engages; and that except he believe this, the work will be unholy and cheerless, pursued without confidence in God or any expectation of high and worthy fruit.

Goodness isn’t far away; it’s right beside you.

The righteousness in which a man believes, is not at a great distance from him, not far off in some heaven, not down in some abyss; it is close to him, it is with him.

Patience, hope and love are the clear eye that sees God’s kingdom.

If that kingdom of God is the kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy, patience and hope and love would seem to be the instruments whereby it is enjoyed or inherited, as a clear eye is the instrument by which any beautiful landscape is enjoyed or inherited.