Austin Phelps Quotes

       Austin Phelps
       1820-1890
      
       Austin Phelps, American Congregational minister and educationalist, was born at West Brookfield, Massachusetts.
      
       He studied theology at Union Theological Seminary, at the Yale Divinity School, and later at Andover. Circa 1840, he was licensed to preach by the Third Presbytery of Philadelphia. During the Autumn of 1842, he married Elizabeth Phelps (nee Stuart, August 13, 1815 - December, 1852). Around the time he got married, he was pastor of the Pine Street (Congregational) Church in Boston. In the Spring of 1848 his family moved to Andover and from then till 1879 was professor of sacred rhetoric and homiletics at Andover Theological Seminary. Later to become president from 1869 to 1879, when his failing health forced him to resign.

Christianity is the only system of faith which combines religious beliefs with corresponding principles of morality. It builds ethics on religion.     Topics: Christianity, Morality Through its whole history the Christian religion has developed supreme affinities for best things.     Topics: Christianity A disciplined conscience is a man's best friend. It may not be his most amiable, but it is his most faithful monitor.     Topics: Conscience The tendency of Christian ideas is to mental growth. The mind must expand that takes them in with cordial sympathy. The conversion of Saul of Tarsus wrought in him an intellectual as well as a moral revolution.     Topics: Growth In the destiny of every moral being there is an object more worthy of God than happiness. It is character. And the grand aim of man's creation is the development of a grand character, and grand character is, by its very nature, the product of probationary discipline.     Topics: Happiness It has been said that no great work in literature or in science was ever wrought by a man who did not love solitude. We may lay it down as an elemental principle of religion, that no large growth in holiness was ever gained by one who did not take time to be often long alone with God.     Topics: Holiness, Prayer We are never more like Christ than in prayers of intercession.     Topics: Prayer, Intercession Prayer is the preface to the book of Christian living; the text of the new life sermon; the girding on of the armor for battle; the pilgrim's preparation for his journey. It must be supplemented by action or it amounts to nothing.     Topics: Prayer Are you living for the things you are praying for?     Topics: Prayer Genius is not essential to good preaching, but a live man is.     Topics: Preaching The most intelligent hearers are those who enjoy most heartily the simplest preaching. It is not they who clamor for superlatively intellectual or aesthetic sermons. Daniel Webster used to complain of some of the preaching to which he listened. "In the house of God" he wanted to meditate "upon the simple varieties, and the undoubted facts of religion;" not upon mysteries and abstractions.     Topics: Preaching, Meditation Vigilance in watching opportunity; tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement -- these are the martial virtues which must command success.     Topics: Virtue, Success