Best 67 quotes of William Barclay on MyQuotes

A man can be so busy making a living that he forgets to make a life.

A man may well be condemned, not for doing something, but for doing nothing.

A saint is someone whose life makes it easier to believe in God.

But the best definition of it is to say that heaven is that state where we will always be with Jesus, and where nothing will separate us from Him any more

Certainly Christianity is an experience, but equally clearly the validity of ane experience has to be tested. There are people in lunatic asylums who have the experience of being the Emperor Napoleon or a poached egg. It is unquestionably an experience, and to them a real experience, but for all that it has no kind of universal validity. It is necessary to go far beyond simply saying that something comes from experience. Before any such thing can be evaluated at all, the source and character of the experience must clearly be investigated.

Christian freedom does not mean being free to do as we like; it means being free to do as we ought.

Christianity does not think of man finally submitting to the power of God, it thinks of Him as finally surrendering to the love of God. It is not that man's will is crushed, but that man's heart is broken.

Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.

Every discouraging sermon is a wicked sermon... There could hardly be a more un-Christian way of living than to go about in such a way as to depress and to discourage other people.

Faith in God is the instrument which enables men and women to remove the hills of difficulty which block their path.

...for Paul faith is always faith in a person. Faith is not the intellectual acceptance of a body of doctrine; faith is faith in a person.

For the Christian, heaven is where Jesus is. We do not need to speculate on what heaven will be like. It is enough to know that we will be for ever with Him.

God does not choose a person for ease and comfort and selfish joy but for a task that will take all that head and heart and hand can bring to it. God chooses a man in order to use him.

God tested Abraham. Temptation is not meant to make us fail; it is meant to confront us with a situation out of which we emerge stronger than we were. Temptation is not the penalty of manhood; it is the glory of manhood.

Here is an eternal truth. Life cannot be divided into compartments in some which God is involved and in others of which he is not involved... The fact is that God does not need to be invited into certain departments of life, and kept out of others. He is everywhere, all through life and in every activity of life. He hears not only the words that are spoken in his name; he hears all words; and there cannot be any such thing as a form of words which evades bringing God into any transaction. We will regard all promises as sacred if we remember that all promises are made in the presence of God.

If a man fights his way through his doubts to the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, he has attained to a certainty that the man who unthinkingly accepts things can never reach.

If we are to accept the teaching of Jesus at all, then the only test of the reality of a man's religion is his attitude to his fellow men. The only possible proof that a man loves God is the demonstrated fact that he loves his fellow men.

If we find ourselves becoming critical of other people we should stop examining them, and start examining ourselves.

In the time we have it is surely our duty to do all the good we can to all the people we can in all the ways we can.

In the way of Christ the reward of work well done is more work to do.

I thank you for my friends, for those who understand me better than I understand myself. For those who know me at my worst, and still like me. For those who have forgiven me when I had no right to expect to be forgiven. Help me to be as true to my friends as I would wish them to be to me.

It is fatally easy to think of Christianity as something to be discussed and not as something to be experienced.

It is the simple truth to say that the New Testament books became canonical because no one could stop them doing so.

It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little. When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God's voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him.

It may well be a sign of the decadence of the Church and the failure of Christianity that gifts have to be coaxed out of people, and that often they will not give at all unless they get something for their money in the way of entertainment or of goods. Giving which is real giving has a certain recklessness in it.

Jesus’ coming is the final and unanswerable proof that God cares.

Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and to take up His Cross.

More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world.

One of the highest of human duties is the duty of encouragement...It is easy to laugh at men's ideals; it is easy to pour cold water on their enthusiasm; it is easy to discourage others. The world is full of discouragers. We have a Christian duty to encourage one another. Many a time a word of praise or thanks or appreciation or cheer has kept a man on his feet. Blessed is the man who speaks such a word.

Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us.

Pride is the ground in which all the other sins grow, and the parent from which all the other sins come.

Real repentance means coming not only to be sorry for the consequences of sin but to hate sin itself.

Religion fails if it cannot speak to men as they are.

Self-defense is a part of the law of nature; nor can it be denied the community, even against the king himself.

So long as we judge ourselves by human comparisons, there is plenty of room for self-satisfaction, and self-satisfaction kills faith, for faith is born of the sense of need. But when we compare ourselves with Jesus Christ, and through Him, with God, we are humbled to the dust, and then faith is born, for there is nothing left to do but to trust to the mercy of God.

So often we have a kind of vague, wistful longing that the promises of Jesus should be true. The only way really to enter into them is to believe them with the clutching intensity of a drowning man.

The best way to prepare for the coming of Christ is never to forget the presence of Christ.

The Christian is a [person] of joy... A gloomy Christian is a contradiction of terms, and nothing in all religious history has done Christianity more harm than its connection with black clothes and long faces.

The Christian man must aim at that complete obedience to God in which life finds its highest happiness, its greatest good, its perfect consummation, its peace.

The danger of prosperity is that it encourages a false independence.

The essential fact of Christianity is that God thought all men worth the sacrifice of his son.

The greatest thing is a life of obedience in the routine things of everyday life. No amount of fine feeling can take the place of faithful doing.

The only victory love can enjoy is the day when its offer of love is answered by the return of love. The only possible final triumph is a universe loved by God and in love with God.

There are certain things which are lost by being kept and saved by being used. Any individual talent is like that. If it is used, it will develop into something still greater. If someone refuses to use it, in the end that talent will be lost. Supremely so, life is like that.

There are two great days in a person's life - the day we are born and the day we discover why.

There is only one way to bring peace to the heart, joy to the mind, and beauty to the life; it is to accept and do the will of God.

The simple fact is that the World is too busy to give the Holy Spirit a chance to enter in.

The terrible importance of this life is that it determines eternity.

The tragedy of life and of the world is not that men do not know God; the tragedy is that, knowing Him, they still insist on going their own way.

The true, the genuine worship is when man, through his spirit, attains to friendship and intimacy with God. True and genuine worship is not to come to a certain place; it is not to go through a certain ritual or liturgy; it is not even to bring certain gifts. True worship is when the spirit, the immortal and invisible part of man, speaks to and meets with God, who is immortal and invisible.