Wikiquote:Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers/John James

John James

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Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

Let it be borne in mind, however, that the merit or efficiency of all this is not in us, or in faith itself. All blessing, all power, all efficiency belong to God alone. These He may communicate in manner and measure as seems best to His sovereign will; but He has constituted faith the nexus, or electric wire, by which we may be brought into connection with His inexhaustible fullness. The tree planted in rich soil, surrounded with a genial atmosphere, and basking under the light and heat of the sun, possesses an appropriating principle of life, by which it appropriates from all these surrounding elements, and assimilates to its own nature whatever is adapted to its healthy growth and fruitfulness. These things do not dwell in the tree, nor in the appropriating principle itself. They may abound in all their fullness and richness; but let the tree be without this appropriating principle, and it stands in the midst of them all, bare, barren, dead. So faith is the appropriating principle of spiritual life, by which, if properly exercised, we may appropriate to ourselves out of the Divine fullness. And, as in proportion to the healthy exercise of the appropriating principle in the tree, so will be its growth and fruitfulness, so in proportion as faith is in healthy, spiritual exercise, will be our spiritual growth, fruitfulness, and triumphs. The fullness of blessing is in God; we become partakers by faith.
- P. 224.

When the sinner is brought to a consciousness of his lost condition, and realizes that there is no hope for him except in Christ Jesus, then is it that the soul believes "into" Christ. There is an entire self-surrender, to be saved by the Saviour, just as He will, and a complete subordination of the will to the supreme authority and sovereign will of his Lord and Master Here is the true involution of the soul, the deepest root and highest reach of faith, whence spring its true life and fruitfulness and glory. It is the finite and subdued will of the renewed man rolled inside the infinite will of the redeeming Lord, to be governed by, and to beat in unison with His will. Its nestling prayer is, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"
- P. 227.

We are not saved by nations or by churches or by families, but as individuals, through a personal interest in a personal Saviour.
- P. 226.

When there is a clear reception of truth as revealed, declared, or testified to, the soul believes in that truth. There is here the idea of transfer. The truth has been received through or from an accredited witness. " It is revealed from faith to faith." When the soul, conscious of weakness or want, looks to, trusts in, or waits upon, another for help and strength, this is resting on, relying on, acting faith on, that other for the desired blessing. And when the soul believes or acts faith into another, there is an entire self-surrender to the authority and sovereign will of that other to rule. There is here the idea of the soul going out to rest on the power, and to be subordinate to, the authority of another. Thus the Israelites "were all baptized unto or into Moses in the cloud and in the sea."
- P. 226.