The only test of possession ...

The only test of possession is use. The talent that is buried is not owned. The napkin and the hole in the ground are far more truly the man's property, because they are accomplishing something for him, slothful and shameful though it be. And what is a lost soul? Is it not one that God cannot use, or one that cannot use God? Trustless, prayerless, fruitless, loveless--is it not so far lost? So may a man have a soul that is lost and be dead while he lives.
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 Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Quotes from the same author

Remember to think of your departed mother always as living, just away in another room of our Father's house.
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 Maltbie Davenport Babcock
With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes satin.
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 Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Dare we let children grow up with no vital contact with the Saviour, never intentionally and consciously put into His arms? Not to bring them to Him, not to teach them to walk toward Him, as soon as they can walk toward anyone, is wronging a child beyond words. The terrible indictment uttered by the Lord, "Them that were entering in ye hindered," and the millstone warning for offending little ones, are close akin to the deserts of those who ruin a man's whole day of life by wronging his morning hours. Not to help a child to know the saving power of Christ is to hold back a man from salvation.
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 Maltbie Davenport Babcock
It is the "where I am" that makes heaven. The life after death might become through its very endlessness a burden to our spirits, if it were not to be filled with the infinite variety and freshness of God's love. Some have shrunk from its very infinitude, because they have not realized what God's love can make of it. Human love helps us to understand this. When we have come to love any one with all our power of affection, then there is no monotony or weariness in the days and hours we spend with them.
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 Maltbie Davenport Babcock