Avoid works that jest with what is right or wrong, lest you unconsciously adopt a false test of truth and duty, namely, ridicule, and so become afraid to do right for right’s sake alone, dreading the world’s sneer and undervaluing a good conscience and the approving smile of God. Let your reading be always select; and whatever you read, begin with seeking God’s blessing on it. But see that your relish for the Bible be above every other enjoyment, and the moment you begin to feel greater relish for any other book, lay it down until you have sought deliverance from such a snare and obtained from the Holy Spirit an intenser relish, a keener appetite for the Word of God (Jer. 15:16; Psm. 19:7-10).

Topics: The Bible & the Word of God, Growth & Character

Horatius Bonar

Horatius Bonar (1808–1889) war ein schottischer presbyterianischer Pastor und Mitbegründer der Free Church of Scotland, der in Kelso und Edinburgh wirkte. Bekannt als produktiver Liederdichter und theologischer Autor, betonte er die stellvertretende Sühne Christi und geriet durch die Einführung von Kirchenliedern sowie seine Unterstützung für Dwight L. Moody in innerkirchliche Debatten. Heutigen Bibellesern begegnet er vor allem durch seine geistlichen Lieder sowie seelsorgerliche Schriften zur Rechtfertigung allein aus Gnade und zum Trost im Leiden.

All quotes by Horatius Bonar (32)

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A Bible that’s falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn’t.
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The Bible in the pulpit must never supersede the Bible at home.
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The Bible is almost bursting with good news for bad people.
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I read the Bible the way I harvest my apple tree: I shake it, and what falls down and is ripe, I take. The rest I leave hanging for now.
Martin Luther

The Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid.
Martin Luther

The law is divine and holy. Let the law have its glory, but yet no law, be it never so divine and holy, ought to teach me that I am justified, and shall live through it. I grant it may teach me that I ought to love God and my neighbor; also to live in love, soberness, patience, etc., but it ought not to show me how I should be delivered from sin, the devil, death, and hell. Here I must take counsel of the gospel. I must hearken to the gospel, which teaches me, not what I ought to do but what Jesus Christ the Son of God hath done for me: that He suffered and died to deliver me from sin and death. The gospel wills me to receive this, and to believe it. And this is the truth of the gospel. Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.
Martin Luther

Jesus was not a theologian. He was God who told stories.
Madeleine L'Engle

All quotes · lumen.bible