12 Austin Phelps Quotes

Genius is not essential to good preaching, but a live man is.

In the destiny of every moral being there is an object more worthy of God than happiness. It is character. And the grand aim of man's creation is the development of a grand character, and grand character is, by its very nature, the product of probationary discipline.

We are never more like Christ than in prayers of intercession.

Christianity is the only system of faith which combines religious beliefs with corresponding principles of morality. It builds ethics on religion.

Are you living for the things you are praying for?

Through its whole history the Christian religion has developed supreme affinities for best things.

Prayer is the preface to the book of Christian living; the text of the new life sermon; the girding on of the armor for battle; the pilgrim's preparation for his journey. It must be supplemented by action or it amounts to nothing.

It has been said that no great work in literature or in science was ever wrought by a man who did not love solitude. We may lay it down as an elemental principle of religion, that no large growth in holiness was ever gained by one who did not take time to be often long alone with God.

The most intelligent hearers are those who enjoy most heartily the simplest preaching. It is not they who clamor for superlatively intellectual or aesthetic sermons. Daniel Webster used to complain of some of the preaching to which he listened. "In the house of God" he wanted to meditate "upon the simple varieties, and the undoubted facts of religion;" not upon mysteries and abstractions.

A disciplined conscience is a man's best friend. It may not be his most amiable, but it is his most faithful monitor.

The tendency of Christian ideas is to mental growth. The mind must expand that takes them in with cordial sympathy. The conversion of Saul of Tarsus wrought in him an intellectual as well as a moral revolution.

Vigilance in watching opportunity; tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement -- these are the martial virtues which must command success.