Top 90 Alexander MacLaren Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Peace comes not from the absence of trouble, but from the presence of God.”

— Alexander MacLaren

Featured in: Blessed Quotes, Sunday Morning Quotes, Sunday Quotes

2. “True peace comes not from the absence of trouble, but from the presence of God and will be deep and passing all understanding in the exact measure in which we live in and partake of the love of God.”

— Alexander MacLaren

3. “If God sends us on stony paths, He will provide us with strong shoes.”

— Alexander MacLaren

4. “He who has the Holy Spirit in His heart and the Scripture in his hands has all he needs.”

— Alexander MacLaren

5. “The root of all steadfastness is in consecration to God.”

— Alexander MacLaren

6. “Only he who can say, “The Lord is the strength of my life” can say, “Of whom shall I be afraid?””

— Alexander MacLaren

7. “The tears of Christ are the pity of God. The gentleness of Jesus is the long-suffering of God. The tenderness of Jesus is the love of God. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.”

— Alexander MacLaren

8. “The cross is the centre of the world’s history; the incarnation of Christ and the crucifiction of our Lord are the pivot round which all the events of the ages revolve. The testimony of Christ was the spirit of prophecy, and the growing power of Jesus is the spirit of history.”

— Alexander MacLaren

9. “The apostolic church thought more about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ than about death and heaven. The early Christians were looking, not for a cleft in the ground called a grave but for a cleavage in the sky called Glory.”

— Alexander MacLaren

10. “Faith is the sight of the inward eye.”

— Alexander MacLaren

11. “Kindness does not require us to be blind to facts or to live in fancies, but it does require us to cherish a habit of goodwill, ready to show pity if sorrow appears, and slow to turn away even if hostility appears.”

— Alexander MacLaren

12. “Do not let the empty cup be your first teacher of the blessings you had when it was full. Do not let a bard place here and there in the bed destroy your rest. Seek, as a plain duty, to cultivate a buoyant, joyous sense of the crowded kindnesses of God in your daily life.”

— Alexander MacLaren

13. “Don’t waste your sorrows.”

— Alexander MacLaren

14. “Here is the manliness of manhood, that a man has a good reason for what he does, and has a will in doing it.”

— Alexander MacLaren

15. “Embrace in one act the two truths-thine own sin, and God’s infinite mercy in Jesus Christ.”

— Alexander MacLaren

16. “The world takes its notions of God from the people who say that they belong to God’s family. They read us a great deal more than they read the Bible. They see us; they only hear about Jesus Christ.”

— Alexander MacLaren

17. “Fruitful and acceptable worship begins before it begins.”

— Alexander MacLaren

18. “If you would win the world, melt it, do not hammer it.”

— Alexander MacLaren

19. “Death is but a passage. It is not a house, it is only a vestibule. The grave has a door on its inner side.”

— Alexander MacLaren

20. “Being in Christ, it is safe to forget the past; it is possible to be sure of the future; it is possible to be diligent in the present.”

— Alexander MacLaren

21. “Conflict, not progress, is the word that defines man’s path from darkness into light. No holiness is won by any other means than this, that wickedness should be slain day by day, and hour by hour.”

— Alexander MacLaren

22. “To pursue joy is to lose it. The only way to get it is to follow steadily the path of duty.”

— Alexander MacLaren

23. “Remember that vision on the Mount of Transfiguration; and let it be ours, even in the glare of earthly joys and brightnesses, to lift up our eyes, like those wondering three, and see no man any more, save Jesus only.”

— Alexander MacLaren

24. “Our work, abiding, shall bring to us the endless glory with which God at last overpays the toils, even as now He overanswers the poor prayers of His laboring servants.”

— Alexander MacLaren

25. “Trust Christ! and a great benediction of tranquil repose comes down upon the calm mind and the tranquil heart.”

— Alexander MacLaren

26. “Christ wrought out His perfect obedience as a man, through temptation, and by suffering.”

— Alexander MacLaren

27. “If life has not made you by God’s grace, through faith, holy – think you, will death without faith do it? The cold waters of that narrow stream are no purifying bath in which you may wash and be clean. No! no! as you go down into them, you will come up from them.”

— Alexander MacLaren

28. “Love Christ, and then the eternity in the heart will not be a great aching void, but will be filled with the everlasting life which Christ gives and is.”

— Alexander MacLaren

29. “There can be no faith so feeble that Christ does not respond to it.”

— Alexander MacLaren

30. “Man’s course begins in a garden, but it ends in a city.”

— Alexander MacLaren

31. “To pursue joy is to lose it. The only way to get it is to follow steadily the path of duty, without thinking of joy, and then, like sheep, it comes most surely unsought, and we ‘being in the way,’ the angel of God, bright-haired joy, is sure to meet us.”

— Alexander MacLaren

32. “Seek to cultivate a buoyant, joyous sense of the crowded kindnesses of God in your daily life.”

— Alexander MacLaren

33. “God gives us power to bear all the sorrows of His making; but He does not give us power to bear the sorrows of our own making, which the anticipation of sorrow most assuredly is.”

— Alexander MacLaren

34. “The more we work the more we need to pray. In this day of activity there is great danger, not of doing too much, but of praying too little for so much work.”

— Alexander MacLaren

35. “Every life has dark tracts and long stretches of somber tint, and no representation is true to fact which dips its pencil only in light, and flings no shadows on the canvas.”

— Alexander MacLaren

36. “Let the current of your being set towards God, then your life will be filled and calmed by one master-passion which unites and stills the soul.”

— Alexander MacLaren

37. “Heaven is endless longing, accompanied with an endless fruition-a longing which is blessedness, a longing which is life.”

— Alexander MacLaren

38. “Love is the only fire that is hot enough to melt the iron obstinacy of a creatures’s will.”

— Alexander MacLaren

39. “The mystery of the universe, and the meaning of God’s world, are shrouded in hopeless obscurity, until we learn to feel that all laws suppose a lawgiver, and that all working involves a Divine energy.”

— Alexander MacLaren

40. “The prayer that begins with trustfulness, and passes on into waiting, will always end in thankfulness, triumph, and praise.”

— Alexander MacLaren

41. “Every sin is a mistake, as well as a wrong; and the epitaph for the sinner is, “Thou fool!””

— Alexander MacLaren

42. “The grave has a door on its inner side.”

— Alexander MacLaren

43. “Love is the foundation of all obedience.”

— Alexander MacLaren

44. “God is His own motive. His love is not drawn out by our loveableness, but wells up, like an artesian spring, from the depths of His nature.”

— Alexander MacLaren

45. “Logically, faith comes first, and love next; but in life they will spring up together in the soul; the interval which separates them is impalpable, and in every act of trust, love is present; and fundamental to every emotion of love to Christ is trust in Christ.”

— Alexander MacLaren

46. “And so, in calm expectation of a blessed future and a finished work which will explain the past, in honest submission of out way to God, in supreme delight in Him who is the gladness of our joy, the secret of tranquillity will be ours.”

— Alexander MacLaren

47. “The gospel is not speculation but fact. It is truth, because it is the record of a person who is the Truth.”

— Alexander MacLaren

48. “The cup which my Saviour giveth me, can it be anything but a cup of salvation?”

— Alexander MacLaren

49. “That is faith, cleaving to Christ, twining round Him with all the tendrils of our heart, as the vine does round its support.”

— Alexander MacLaren

50. “While the agent of renovation is the Divine Spirit, and the condition of renovation is our cleaving to Christ, the medium of renovation and the weapon which the transforming grace employs is “the word of the truth of the gospel,” whereby we are sanctified.”

— Alexander MacLaren