Alexander Maclaren quotes - page 3
If faith, then new birth; if new birth, then sonship; if sonship, then "an heir of God, and a joint-heir with Christ." But if you have not got your foot upon the lowest round of the ladder, you will never come within sight of the blessed face of Him who stands at the top of it, and who looks down to you at this moment, saying to you, "My child, wilt thou not at this time cry unto me, 'Abba, Father?'"
Alexander Maclaren
And I think, dear friends, if we carried with us more distinctly than we do that one simple thought that in all human joys, in all the apparently self-forgetting tenderness, of that Lord, who had a heart for every sorrow, and an ear for every complaint, and a hand open as day and full of melting charity for every need - that in every moment of that life in the boyhood, in the dawning manhood, in the maturity of His growing power - there was always present one black shadow, toward which He ever went straight with the consent of His will and the clearest eye, we should understand something more of how the life as well as the death was a sacrifice for us sinful men.
Alexander Maclaren