Thomas Fuller

Pride calls me to the window, gluttony to the table, wantonness to the bed, laziness to the chimney-corner; ambition commands me to go upstairs, and covetousness to come down. Vices, I see, are as well contrary to themselves as to virtue. Free me, Lord, from this distracted case; fetch me from being sin’s servant to be Thine, whose “service is perfect freedom,” for Thou art but one, and ever the same.

Arthur John (A. J.) Gossip

But, you object, a heart like mine can offer Christ so little – at best, so poor and pinched and stingy a hospitality and such meagre fare; for I have nothing worthy of Him to set before Him, only a kind of affection, real enough at times, but which, at others, can and does so easily forget; only a will, quite unreliable, deplorably unstable; only a faith that is the merest shadow of what His real friends mean when they speak about faith, I know. But, there was once a garret up under the roof, a poor, bare place enough. There was a table in it, and there were some benches, and a water-pot; a towel, and a basin in behind the door, but not much else- a bare, unhomelike room. But the Lord Christ entered into it. And, from that moment, it became the holiest of all, where souls innumerable ever since have met the Lord God, in High glory, face to face. And, if you give Him entrance to that very ordinary heart of yours, it too He will transform and sanctify and touch with a splendour of glory.

Clement

For Christ is of those who are humble-minded and not of those who exalt themselves over His flock. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Scepter of the majesty of God, did not come in the pomp of pride or arrogance, although He might have done so. But He came in a lowly condition, as the Holy Spirit had declared regarding Him…You see, beloved, the example which has been given us. If the Lord so humbled Himself, what shall we do who have through Him come under the yoke of His grace?

Ruth Harms Calkin

You know, Lord, how I serve you with great emotional ferver in the limelight. You know how eagerly I speak for you at a Women’s Club. You know my genuine enthusiasm at a Bible study. But how would I react, I wonder, if you pointed to a basin of water and asked me to wash the calloused feet of a bent and wrinkled old woman day after day, month after month, in a room where nobody saw and nobody knew?