Maltbie Davenport Babcock Quotes & Sayings

Spirituality is best manifested on the ground, not in the air. Rapturous day-dreams, flights of heavenly fancy, longings to see the Invisible, are less expensive and less expressive than the plain doing of duty. To have bread excite thankfulness and a drink of water send the heart to God is better than sighs for the unattainable. To plow a straight furrow on Monday or dust a room well on Tuesday or kiss a bumped forehead on Wednesday is worth more than the most ecstatic thrill under Sunday eloquence. Spirituality is seeing God in common things, and showing God in common tasks. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

The world is God's workshop; the raw materials are His; the ideals and patterns are His; our hands are "the members of Christ," our reward His recognition. Blacksmith or banker, draughtsman or doctor, painter or preacher, servant or statesman, must work as unto the Lord, not merely making a living, but devoting a life. This makes life sacramental, turning its water into wine. This is twice blessed, blessing both the worker and the work. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Pay little attention to discouragement as possible. Plough ahead as a steamer does, rough or smooth - rain or shine. To carry your cargo and make your port is the point. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Dare we let children grow up with no vital contact with the Saviour, never intentionally and consciously put into His arms? Not to bring them to Him, not to teach them to walk toward Him, as soon as they can walk toward anyone, is wronging a child beyond words. The terrible indictment uttered by the Lord, "Them that were entering in ye hindered," and the millstone warning for offending little ones, are close akin to the deserts of those who ruin a man's whole day of life by wronging his morning hours. Not to help a child to know the saving power of Christ is to hold back a man from salvation. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

If we show the Lord's death at Communion, we must show the Lord's life in the world. If it is a Eucharist on Sunday, it must prove on Monday that it was also a Sacrament. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

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

Our prayers must mean something to us if they are to mean anything to God. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Unless we realize our sins enough to call them by name, it is hardly worth while to say anything about them at all. When we pray for forgiveness, let us say, "my temper," or "untruthfulness," or "pride," "my selfishness, my cowardice, indolence, jealousy, revenge, impurity." To recognize our sins, we must look them in the face and call them by their right names, however hard. Honesty in confession calls for definiteness in confession. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

The kindness of Christmas is the kindness of Christ. To know that God so loved us as to give us His Son for our dearest Brother, has brought human affection to its highest tide on the day of that Brother's birth. If God so loved us, how can we help loving one another? — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Loyalty 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 Babcock

With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes satin. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

May death be no more than the bell that sounds when school is over, and going home, may I find that I had laid up my treasure in the right place. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Salvation is not putting a man into heaven but putting heaven into a man. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Opportunities do not come with their values stamped upon them ... To face every opportunity of life thoughtfully, and ask its meaning bravely and earnestly, is the only way to meet supreme opportunities when they come, whether open-faced or disguised. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Your love has a broken wing if it cannot fly across the sea. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Although there is nothing so bad for conscience as trifling, there is nothing so good for conscience as trifles. Its certain discipline and development are related to the smallest things. Conscience, like gravitation, takes hold of atoms. Nothing is morally indifferent. Conscience must reign in manners as well as morals, in amusements as well as work. He only who is "faithful in that which is least" is dependable in all the world. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Business is religion, and religion is business. The man who does not make a business of his religion has a religious life of no force, and the man who does not make a religion of his business has a business life of no character. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

We should care, not so much about being recognized, as about being worth recognition. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Is not this steadfastness to mark, to make, the character of your lives? Is it not God's will that we should press steadily on to our goal in obedience to Him, in channels of His choosing, whether in sunshine or shadow, in the cheer of spring or in the chill of winter, neither detained by pleasure nor deterred by pain? — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

If God made no response except to perfect faith, who could hope for help? But God has regard for beginnings, and His eye perceives greatness in the germ. The hand of the woman in the crowd trembled as it was stretched toward Jesus, and the faith back of it was superstitiously reverent, trusting in the virtue of the robe, rather than in the One who wore it; yet the genuineness of that faith; feeble though it was, triumphed in God's loving sight. Real trust is real power, though the heart and hand be feeble. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

It will be hard for you not to ask why this must be. God knows why, and that may be as good to us as though we knew a thousand reasons. I pray God to hold you quiet and patient and uncomplaining, and help you bear the weight of this seemingly unintelligible sorrow. I hope you will remember that this is the only world in which a Christian can suffer, and suffer patiently and meekly. We cannot suffer by and by. God helps us to glorify Him now, when we can. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

This is my Father's world: O let me ne'er forget That though the wrong Seems oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

If a friend is the one who summons us to our best, then is not Jesus Christ our best friend, and should we not think of the Communion as one of His chief appeals to us to be our best? The Lord's Supper looks not back to our past with a critical eye, but to our future, with a hopeful one. The Master appeals from what we have been to what we may be. He bids us come, not because we are better than we have been, but because He wants us to be. To stay away because our hearts are cold is to refuse to go to the fire till we are warm. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Better to lose count while naming your blessings than to lose your blessings to counting your troubles. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Remember to think of your departed mother always as living, just away in another room of our Father's house. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

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 Babcock

The root of honesty is an honest intention, the distinct and deliberate purpose to be true, to handle facts as they are, and not as we wish them to be. Facts lend themselves to manipulation. Many a butcher's hand is worth more than its weight in gold. What we want things to be, we come to see them to be; and the tailor pulls the coat and the truth into a perfect fit from his point of view. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

The 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 Babcock

Success is generally due to holding on, and failure to letting go. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

One of the commonest mistakes and one of the costliest is thinking that success is due to some genius, some magic - something or other which we do not possess. Success is generally due to holding on, and failure to letting go. You decide to learn a language, study music, take a course of reading, train yourself physically. Will it be success or failure? It depends upon how much pluck and perseverance that word decide contains. The decision that nothing can overrule, the grip that nothing can detach will bring success. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

The workshop of character is everyday life. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Suggestion is generally better than Definition. There is a seeming dogmatism about Definition that is often repellent, while Suggestion, on the contrary, disarms suspicion and summons to co-operation and experiment. Definition provokes discussion. Suggestion provokes to love and good works. Defining is limiting. Suggestion is enlarging. Defining calls a halt; Suggestion calls for an advance. Defining involves the peril of contentment: "I am here, I rest." "Thus far," says Definition, and draws a map. "Westward," cries Suggestion, and builds a boat. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Life is what we are alive to. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

A day dawns, quite like other days; in it, a single hour comes, quite like other hours; but in that day and in that hour the chance of a lifetime faces us. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

What is our hope but the indwelling Spirit of Christ, to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, to inspire every word and deed by His love? Then will "broken lights" blend in steady shining, the fractional be summed up in the integral, and life, unified and beautified by the central Christ, radiate God's glory, and shine with divine effulgence. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

If you can help anybody even a little, be glad. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Don't let the good things of life rob you of the best things! — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

God be thanked for that good and perfect gift, the gift unspeakable: His life, His love, His very self in Jesus Christ. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Present suffering is not enjoyable, but life would be worth little without it. The difference between iron and steel is fire, but steel is worth all it costs. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

It is the "where I am" that makes heaven. The life after death might become through its very endlessness a burden to our spirits, if it were not to be filled with the infinite variety and freshness of God's love. Some have shrunk from its very infinitude, because they have not realized what God's love can make of it. Human love helps us to understand this. When we have come to love any one with all our power of affection, then there is no monotony or weariness in the days and hours we spend with them. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Many a good intention dies from inattention. If, through carelessness or indolence, or selfishness, a good intention is not put into effect, we have lost an opportunity, demoralized ourselves, and stolen from the pile of possible good. To be born and not fed, is to perish. To launch a ship and neglect it is to lose it. To have a talent and bury it, is to be a "wicked and slothful servant." For in the end we shall be judged, not alone by what we have done, but by what we could have done. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

I 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 Babcock

Good habits are not made on birthdays, nor Christian character at the new year. The workshop of character is everyday life. The uneventful and commonplace hour is where the battle is lost or won. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Jesus does not want us to say, dead, for, He said, all live unto Him, though they seem dead to us. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

The tests of life are to make, not break us. Trouble may demolish a man's business but build up his character. The blow at the outward man may be the greatest blessing to the inner man. If God, then, puts or permits anything hard in our lives, be sure that the real peril, the real trouble, is that we shall lose if we flinch or rebel. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Worship demands the far distances of God; it protests against the little, the near, the material. It must love but it must look up. It cannot live without the note of spirituality and universality, if not mystery. The ascension, the passing of Christ within the veil, answers this need. So does a full-robed Christianity add to definiteness of knowledge the outreach of imagination and home. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

To have failed is to have striven, to have striven is to have grown. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

You are not responsible for the disposition you are born with, but you are responsible for the one you die with. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

The Christian life that is joyless is a discredit to God and a disgrace to itself. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Be 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. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock