William Mountford (1816 – 1885)
English Unitarian preacher and author.
I do not say the mind gets informed by action, — bodily action; but it does get earnestness and strength by it, and that nameless something that gives a man the mastership of his faculties.
A man who is not poor nor ill, nor about to be stoned to death, must not distress himself if he does not feel all through his life what faith Stephen had only in his last moments.
All noblest things are religious,— not temples and martyrdoms only, but the best books, pictures, poetry, statues, and music.
At ease in a world in which my Lord was such a sufferer!
Let a disciple live as Christ lived, and he will easily believe in living again as Christ does.
To understand at all what life means, one must begin with Christian belief. And I think knowledge may be sorrow with a man unless he loves.
The second childhood of a saint is the early infancy of a happy immortality, as we believe.
The years of old age are stalls in the cathedral of life in which for aged men to sit and listen and meditate and be patient till the service is over, and in which they may get themselves ready to say "Amen" at the last, with all their hearts and souls and strength.
Yes, what I am to be everlastingly, I am growing to be now — now in this present time so little thought of, this time which the sun rises and sets in, and the clock strikes in, and I wake and sleep in.
Where is the subject that does not branch out into infinity? For every grain of sand is a mystery; so is every daisy in summer, and so is every snow-flake in winter. Both upwards and downwards, and all around us, science and speculation pass into mystery at last.
Night by night I will lie down and sleep in the thought of God, and in the thought, too, that my waking may be in the bosom of the Father; and some time it will be, so I trust.
There is no burden of the spirit but is lightened by kneeling under it. Little by little, the bitterest feelings are sweetened by the mention of them in prayer. And agony itself stops swelling, if we can only cry sincerely, " My God, my God!"