Handley Moule Quotes on Holiness, Prayer, Christ and Comfort
Handley Moule (1841–1920) was a Cambridge scholar who became Bishop of Durham, and one of the best-loved speakers at the Keswick Convention. He wrote in long, careful sentences, but he had a gift for the short line that stays with you: a sentence about Christ, or prayer, or holiness that sums up a whole chapter.
Every quotation below is copied exactly from his books in TheWay Library, with the book and chapter it comes from, so you can read each one in its setting. For his life story, see who was Handley Moule. For a guide to all ten of his books here, see Handley Moule books.
On holiness
Holiness was Moule's great subject. He believed God means His people to be holy now, and he was just as clear that a Christian never outgrows his need of Christ's righteousness. These lines come mostly from Thoughts on Christian Sanctity.
It is nothing less than the supreme aim of the Christian Gospel, that we should be holy
Thoughts on Christian Sanctity, Aims, Limits, Possibilities
It is the insatiable desire of the soul, which has truly seen the Lord, to be made fully like Him by His grace.
Thoughts on Christian Sanctity, Aims, Limits, Possibilities
We cannot possibly rest short of a daily, hourly, continuous walk with God, in Christ, by the grace of the Holy Ghost.
Thoughts on Christian Sanctity, Aims, Limits, Possibilities
To the last, the soul's acceptance before the JUDGE is wholly and only in the righteousness, the merits, of Christ.
Thoughts on Christian Sanctity, Aims, Limits, Possibilities
He taught that the secret of a holy life is not a method but a Person, and that the believer belongs to Christ completely:
Realize deliberately, and in fact, that you are the slave of Jesus Christ.
Thoughts on Christian Sanctity, The Divine Keeper
Commit, O bond-servant of Christ Jesus, the keeping of thy spirit unto Him.
Thoughts on Christian Sanctity, The Divine Keeper
On faith and the daily life
In Thoughts on the Spiritual Life, Moule turned to how the surrendered life works out on an ordinary Tuesday. Faith rests, he said, but it isn't lazy.
The life of faith in Jesus Christ is indeed a life of liberty, but not an easy-going life.
Thoughts on the Spiritual Life, Work and Faith
Faith, in the view of Jesus Christ, is personal trust.
Thoughts on the Spiritual Life, Work and Faith
Faith is the hand that accepts the bread and the water of Life, the mouth that eats and that drinks them.
Thoughts on the Spiritual Life, Work and Faith
The mistakes of man were but the vehicle for the unerring touch of the love of God.
Thoughts on the Spiritual Life, The Will of God
He wrote this one for people busy in Christian work, and it may be the most useful line in the book:
We must live upon Jesus Christ, not upon energy, upon success, upon notice, upon praise; God forbid.
Thoughts on the Spiritual Life, Christian Service
On secret prayer
Secret Prayer began as talks to Cambridge students. It is plain and practical, and these lines show why it still helps people who struggle to pray alone.
Nothing, as the writer has attempted to show, can take the place of Secret Prayer.
Secret Prayer, Preface
Regular and real Secret Prayer is an absolute, a vital, necessity for the believer's life and walk.
Secret Prayer, The Difficulties, and the Necessity, of Secret Prayer
We ought not to need, when the prayer time comes, to do all the work of preparation then.
Secret Prayer, Methods and Helps
Let not good books, be they what they may, oust the Book.
Secret Prayer, Methods and Helps
Read it to reassure, to feed, to regulate, to kindle, to give to your Secret Prayer at once body and soul.
Secret Prayer, Methods and Helps
Intercessory prayer has regard to persons and to causes which are not at all ourselves.
Secret Prayer, Intercession
On Jesus Christ
Whatever book of the Bible Moule was explaining, he came back to Christ. His answer to a weak faith was always a fuller sight of the Lord.
Revelation comes to us — I will not say in Christianity, but in Christ, who is Christianity in person.
Christus Consolator, In Quest of Light (I)
The remedy is Christ; a deeper, fuller, always maturing sight of Christ.
Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews, Unto Perfection
Christ is the ultimate and only repose, alike for thought and for the soul.
Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews, A Heart of Faith
It gives us the certainty that, for every human heart which asks for God, this wonderful Christ, personal, eternal, human, Divine, is quite immediately accessible.
Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews, Our Great Melchizedek
We are not St Pauls; but the Jesus Christ of St Paul is absolutely the same, in Himself, for us.
Philippian Studies, The Apostle's Position and Circumstances
On either side of the veil, Jesus Christ is all things to him.
Philippian Studies, The Christian's Peace and the Christian's Consistency
On justification and peace with God
Moule's commentary on Romans explains justification by faith with great care, and then shows why it leads straight to a holy life.
Justification is the contemplation and treatment of the penitent sinner, found in Christ, as righteous, as satisfactory to the Law, not merely as one whom the Law lets go.
The Expositor's Bible: Romans, Abraham and David
Golgotha is the observatory from which you count and watch the lights of the moving heaven of His Being, His Truth, His Love.
The Expositor's Bible: Romans, The One Way of Divine Acceptance
He has peace with God, not in emotion, but in covenant, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Expositor's Bible: Romans, Justification and Holiness
Our justification is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.
The Expositor's Bible: Romans, Justification and Holiness
On the Holy Spirit
In Veni Creator, Moule wrote about the Spirit as a Person to be loved and trusted, whose joy is to make Christ real to us.
As to His saving operations, the Spirit lies hidden as it were behind Christ Jesus and in our own inner man.
Veni Creator, The Personality of the Holy Spirit
In proportion to the fulness of the Spirit's in-working Jesus Christ really occupies the throne usurped before by self.
Veni Creator, The Spirit in the Writings of St Paul: The Fruit of the Spirit
But the material, the essence, of the life and character thus governed and controlled is "love, joy, peace." Let the disciple remember this, and see that nothing hinders the manifestation of it.
Veni Creator, The Spirit in the Writings of St Paul: The Fruit of the Spirit
Contact, in humblest faith, with Christ implies reception of the Spirit, the Lord, the Life-giver, the Sanctifier.
Ephesian Studies, Greeting, and Praise for Divine Salvation
On joy, home and the Christian walk
A peculiar sort of joy, which is impossible without at least the experience, if not the presence, of sorrow, rests and shines over the whole.
Philippian Studies, Introductory
Nothing on earth is so beautiful as a perfect home; and it takes the Name of Christ and the grace of His Spirit to produce the full phenomenon.
Ephesian Studies, The Christian Home; Husband and Wife
No part of Holy Scripture is ever really out of date.
Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews, Consider Him
On suffering, death and heaven
Moule knew grief. He lost a grown daughter and then his wife, and he wrote Christus Consolator during the First World War for families who had lost loved ones in the war. These lines come from that book and from his studies on Paul's last letter.
Let me humbly affirm that in my own great grief Christ is the Consoler in deepest reality.
Christus Consolator, Note
Rapid lessons in the science of faith are often learnt in the school of suffering.
Christus Consolator, Until the Day Dawn
I can but pronounce the name of Jesus Christ, the Prince of sufferers, supremely intimate Partner with sufferers for ever.
Christus Consolator, Until the Day Dawn
Beyond the shadow there is not less life but more.
Christus Consolator, With Christ
JESUS was with him, in the court-house, at the bar, before the unjust judges.
The Second Epistle to Timothy, Alone, but with the Lord
Had it not been for free grace this man would never have been a believer, a worker, a witness at all.
The Second Epistle to Timothy, The Wreath of Victory
Where to read more
The best way to read Moule is a chapter at a time. If you want one book to start with, take Thoughts on Christian Sanctity: it's short and it holds the heart of his teaching. If prayer is where you're struggling, go to Secret Prayer. All ten of his books are on the Handley Moule author page.