William Garden Blaikie Quotes on Faith, Prayer, Sin and Grace
William Garden Blaikie (1820–1899) was a Scottish Free Church pastor and professor who wrote the Expositor's Bible volumes on Joshua, First Samuel and Second Samuel. He had a gift for summing up the lesson of a Bible story in one clear sentence. He wrote about faith with energy, about sin without flinching, and about God's grace with real warmth.
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 line in its setting. We've left out the many lines he quotes from other writers; these are his own words. For his life, see who was William Garden Blaikie, and for a guide to the books, see William Garden Blaikie books.
On faith and courage
Joshua, Caleb, Jonathan and David were Blaikie's heroes of faith. He wanted his readers to see that their faith rested on God's promise, not on their own strength.
In the partnership which faith establishes between God and you, the resources of the infinite Partner become available for the needs of the finite.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, Joshua's Call
It is God’s part to give orders, it is your part to execute them, and it is God’s part to strengthen you so to do.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, Joshua's Call
True faith is blind to everything except the Divine command.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, The Captain of the Lord's Host
Living faith in a living and loving Saviour can do all things.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, Rahab Saved
Courage is the ornament of Christianity, and the crown of the Christian youth.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, The Inheritance of Caleb
Fellowship with God, as our reconciled God and Father in Christ, is a source of perpetual strength.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, Joshua's Encouragement
What wonders cannot faith perform when it gets clear of all the entanglements of carnal feeling, and stands, firm and erect, on the promise of God!
The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Samuel, David at Keilah, Ziph, and Maon
On God's faithfulness and goodness
Blaikie believed God is generous by nature, and that when His promises seem to fail, the fault lies with us.
It is a delightful truth that God’s heart is large and liberal, and that He delights in large and bountiful gifts.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, Joshua's Call
Wherever the promises of God seem to fail, the fault is not His, but ours.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, No Failure of God's Promise
Man without God is like the earth without the sun, or the body without the soul.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, The Altar Ed
If God be terrible as an enemy, He is glorious as a friend.
The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Samuel, Samuel’s Dealings with the People
No one can tell what use God may not make of the poorest saint.
The Expositor's Bible: The Second Book of Samuel, The Two Books of Samuel
On prayer
The prayers of Hannah, Samuel and David fill the books of Samuel, and Blaikie wrote some of his best pages about them.
To pray is to ask an interview with God, and when we are alone with Him, to unburden our souls to Him.
The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Samuel, Repentance and Revival
To gabble over a form of prayer is not to pray.
The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Samuel, Repentance and Revival
Men say it is not right we should trouble God with trifles. … Nay, the living God knows not what trouble is, and in His scheme there are no trifles.
The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Samuel, Saul Brought to Samuel
To combine reverence and intimacy in our dealings with God, — the profoundest reverence with the closest intimacy, is to realise the highest ideal of worship.
The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Samuel, The Ark Among the Philistines
Nothing is better fitted to enlarge and warm the heart than intercessory prayer.
The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Samuel, Samuel’s Dealings with the People
How often, when His people are worrying and perplexing themselves about their prayers not being answered, is God answering them in a far richer way!
The Expositor's Bible: The Second Book of Samuel, Proposal to Build a Temple
On sin
Achan, Saul and David taught Blaikie how sin hides, spreads and blinds. He didn't soften any of it.
If he could only be hid in the crowd it would not matter, but that searching eye of God — who can stand before it?
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, Achan's Trespass
For it does not grieve us very much to sin when every one sins along with us.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, Achan's Trespass
Alas, my friends, how often is God slandered by our complaints!
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, Achan's Trespass
It is very seldom indeed that the consequences of any sin terminate with itself.
The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Samuel, The Death of Saul
Admit sin within the precincts of the imagination, and there is the utmost danger of its ultimately mastering the soul.
The Expositor's Bible: The Second Book of Samuel, David and Uriah
Nothing blinds men so much to the real character of a sin as the fact that it is their own.
The Expositor's Bible: The Second Book of Samuel, David and Nathan
On grace, repentance and Christ
Blaikie never left a sinner without hope. He pointed again and again to God's seeking love and to Christ.
For nothing becomes a sinner before God so well as when he breaks down.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, Achan's Punishment
The sight to be seen in this world has not been that of men seeking after God, but that of God seeking after men.
The Expositor's Bible: The Second Book of Samuel, David and Mephibosheth
When divine grace takes possession of the heart it does not annihilate sinful tendencies, but overcomes them.
The Expositor's Bible: The Second Book of Samuel, David and Uriah
What Christ saves from is not our misfortune but our guilt.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, The Cities of Refuge
The final benefit of Christ is the blessing of transformation.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, The Cities of Refuge
Each true Christian heart is a theocracy — a Christ-governed soul.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, Joshua's Work for Israel
On friendship and the whole of life
Two of Blaikie's favorite subjects were the friendship of David and Jonathan, and the conviction that faith reaches into every corner of life.
It is Jonathan that shines most in this friendship, for he was the one who had least to gain and most to lose from the other.
The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Samuel, David and Jonathan
But surely, of all qualities in a friend or companion who is to do us good, the most vital is, that he fears the Lord.
The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Samuel, David and Jonathan
All that is right is religious; all that is according to the will of God is spiritual.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua, The Distribution of the Land
God’s service is neither a form nor a sham; it is a great reality.
The Expositor's Bible: The Second Book of Samuel, The Numbering of Israel
On Thomas Chalmers
In his life of his old teacher, Blaikie described the change that came over Chalmers in his country parish of Kilmany, and the man he became.
He came to see that he had been living without God, and the discovery appalled him.
Thomas Chalmers
To get men impregnated with the spirit of Christ, and alive to the lessons of His Gospel was, one way or other, his continual aim.
Thomas Chalmers
The world, and even the church, hardly knew how near he lived to God — how much he had of the saint.
Thomas Chalmers
On faith and salvation
Saving Knowledge, which Blaikie wrote with Thomas Guthrie for young men, sets out the way of salvation step by step. These lines come from it.
It professes to deal with a ruined being, and its object is to recover him from ruin.
Saving Knowledge: Addressed to Young Men, chapter I
It is hard for a sinner to admit that he is a bankrupt before God, and cast himself, without one plea of his own, on the Divine mercy.
Saving Knowledge: Addressed to Young Men, chapter V
It is obvious at a glance that Faith is the pivot on which the whole system of divine truth turns.
Saving Knowledge: Addressed to Young Men, Faith
We get nothing apart from Christ; we get everything in Him and through Him.
Saving Knowledge: Addressed to Young Men, Faith
Faith is thus the hand that receives the righteousness of Christ.
Saving Knowledge: Addressed to Young Men, Faith
Indeed, there is no obstruction to the work of grace so serious as a state of self-satisfaction.
Saving Knowledge: Addressed to Young Men, The Spirit of Life
Read more
These lines are best read in their chapters, where Blaikie tells the story they come from. Start with The First Book of Samuel, then Second Samuel and Joshua. His life of Thomas Chalmers is short enough to finish in an evening, and so is Saving Knowledge. All five are on the William Garden Blaikie author page.