Scottish-American theologian (1868-1953)
Christianity does not condemn any natural human feeling, but it will not let these interfere with present duty and destroy future usefulness. It does not send men to search for the purpose of living in the graves of their dead hopes and pleasures. Its disciples must not attempt to live on the relics of even great incidents, among crucifixes and tombs. In the Desert, the heart must reach forward to the Promised Land, and not back to Egypt.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
As it is one of the greatest joys of life when a kindred soul is for the first time recognized and claimed, so it is one of the bitterest moments of life when the first rupture is made of the ties which bind us to other lives. Before it comes, it is hard to believe that it is possible, if we ever think of it at all. When it does come, it is harder still to understand the meaning of the blow. The miracle of friendship seemed too fair, to carry in its bosom the menace of its loss. We knew, of course, that such things had been, and must be, but we never quite realized what it would be to be the victims of the common doom of man.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
Fear as a motive can always be counted on to have its deterring, restraining force, but no life is safe which is only ruled by fear.
HUGH BLACK
Christ's Service in Love
All life is an argument for death.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
Problems abound, but the manly and healthy view is that they exist to be bravely faced, and if possible solved.
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
Death is the great argument for immortality. We cannot believe that the living, loving soul has ceased to be. We cannot believe that all those treasures of mind and heart are squandered in empty air. We will not believe it. When once we understand the meaning of the spiritual, we see the absolute certainty of eternal life; we need no arguments for the persistence of being.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
Is it the thought of a dreamer to imagine that yet the love of God will so grip men's hearts that the love of men will be the natural motive of all our action?
HUGH BLACK
Christ's Service in Love
Instead of being narrow and dismal, religion is the biggest and brightest thing that can come into a man's life, transforming every power and inspiring every energy, bathing it in peace and flooding it with joy.
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
It is even a common notion that duty is precisely what we do not like. If there is any doubt, the safe rule is to find out what will be pleasant, and do the opposite! It does often happen that duty asks for sacrifice and demands the hard thing rather than the easy one, but to make pain a test of duty is to turn the world topsy-turvy.
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
Sorrow rightly used may often give insight, forcing the mind to think and the eye to see; just as disease may read us many a lesson.
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
An uninterested spectator sees nothing; or, what is worse, sees wrongly.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
It is always a temptation, which grows stronger the longer we live, to look back instead of forward, to bemoan the past, and thus deride the present and distrust the future.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
Too often men have tried to shut the door of the world's beauty and truth and joy, as if these were evil in themselves.
HUGH BLACK
Happiness
It is more than a dream of youth that there may be here a satisfaction of the heart, without which, and in comparison with which, all worldly success is failure. In spite of the selfishness which seems to blight all life, our hearts tell us that there is possible a nobler relationship of disinterestedness and devotion. Friendship in its accepted sense is not the highest of the different grades in that relationship, but it has its place in the kingdom of love, and through it we bring ourselves into training for a still larger love. The natural man may be self-absorbed and self-centered, but in a truer sense it is natural for him to give up self and link his life on to others. Hence the joy with which he makes the great discovery, that he is something to another and another is everything to him. It is the higher-natural for which he has hitherto existed. It is a miracle, but it happens.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
The secret of friendship is just the secret of all spiritual blessing. The way to get is to give.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
The lesson of life is love: the test of life is love: the task of life is the perfecting of love. Life blossoms into its natural fruition in love, as a flower blossoms in light. To dwell in love is to dwell in God and to have God dwelling in us.
HUGH BLACK
Christ's Service in Love
Influence is the greatest of all human gifts, and we all have it in some measure. There are some to whom we are something, if not everything. There are some, who are grappled to us with hoops of steel. There are some, over whom we have ascendency, or at least to whom we have access, who have opened the gates of the City of Mansoul to us, some we can sway with a word, a touch, a look. It must always be a solemn thing for a man to ask what he has done with this dread power of influence.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
The spiritual world is not outside this earth of ours. It includes it and pervades it, finding a new centre for a new circumference in every loving soul that has eyes to see the Kingdom. So, to hold commerce with the dead is not a mere figure of speech. Heaven lies about us not only in our infancy, but all our lives. We blind ourselves with dust, and in our blindness lay hold feverishly of the outside of life, mistaking the fugitive and evanescent for the truly permanent. If we only used our capacities we would take a more enlightened view of death. We would see it to be the entrance into a more radiant and a more abundant life not only for the friend that goes first, but for the other left behind.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship
To every soul of man the way to freedom is through submission. We must obey before we can command.
HUGH BLACK
Christ's Service in Love
A man is known by the company he keeps. This is an infallible test; for his thoughts, and desires, and ambitions, and loves are revealed here. He gravitates naturally to his congenial sphere. And it affects character; for it is the atmosphere he breathes. It enters his blood and makes the circuit of his veins.
HUGH BLACK
Friendship