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 BabcockThe 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 BabcockI agree with you that the communion with the invisible saints must be more of a dream than a reality. But we have a right to dream dreams, if they are not contradicted by the evident laws of God's word, or God's world.
Maltbie Davenport BabcockLoyalty to God is alone fundamental. Feelings, words, deeds, must be beads strung on the string of duty. Let the world tell you in a hundred ways what your life is for. Say you ever and only, "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O my God." Out of that dutiful root grows the beautiful life, the life radically and radiantly true to God--the only life that can be lived in both worlds.
Maltbie Davenport BabcockBe 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