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There are no mile posts among the stars. Light and space quite sweep away our little measurements. So some day will our years be caught up in the Eternity to which we belong. How glorious to be forever the Lord's! — Maltbie D. Babcock
When the pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City, Maltbie D. Babcock, traveled to the Holy Land by ship in February 1901, he took the occasion to jot down bits of wisdom that are preserved for us in Thoughts for Every-Day Living from the Spoken and Written Words of Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1901), pp. 121-134. There are so many nuggets of wisdom in these pages that we wish to highlight a few and encourage our readers to read them all here. They are all the more profound when we remember that he left this mortal realm in May 1901.
Written on Shipboard, February, 1901.
No one can do anything to-morrow. If I live until to-morrow and do anything, it will have been done to-day; then, if it is right, do it to-day. To-morrow may not come. Fly your flag to-day for Jesus Christ, if you have given yourself to Him. You will be stronger to fight a good fight and keep the faith to-morrow, if to-morrow ever becomes to-day.
God has promised to satisfy — but He did not promise when. God has time enough, and so have you. God has boundless resources, and His resources are yours. Can you not trust him? Trust and wait. He knows what is best for you. He has reasons for denying you now, but in the end He will satisfy.
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.
The deeper men go into life, the deeper is their conviction that this life is not all. It is an “unfinished symphony.” A day may round out an insect’s life, and a bird or a beast needs no tomorrow. Not so with him who knows that he is related to God and has felt “the power of an endless life.”
There is no better way to show our trust than to busy ourselves with the things He asks us to do. Trusting Him to take care of his share leaves us, “at leisure from ourselves” to do our share of the “Father’s business.”
Do not let the good things of life rob you of the best things.
Evening meditation is less important than morning preparation. “Well begun is half done.”
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.
Salvation is going to Jesus for what he can give us — adoption, forgiveness, strength — and then going into the world with what he gives, to life his life and do his work.
If you do fall, if you are overcome, He is faithful and just to forgive, and to cleanse every day from all unrighteousness.
When I want to speak let me think first, Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? If not, let it be left unsaid.
We are like children learning to walk. We fall again and again. Sometimes we cry out; sometimes we look up and try to smile ; but we do get up again and try to go on.
Size is not strength. Reputation is not character. Outward success is not God's gauge.
What have you done to-day that nobody but a Christian would do?
Live with the light of God's love shining into your common day. Take old gifts and joys continued as though they were fresh gifts. So we can sing a new song unto the Lord every day.
