The observant man recognizes many mysteries into which he can not pretend to see, and he remembers that the world is too wide for the eye of one man. But the modern sophists are sure of everything, especially if it contradicts the Bible.
I cannot tell you how much I owe to the solemn word of my good mother.
The whole Christ seeks after each sinner, and when the Lord finds it, he gives himself to that one soul as if he had but that one soul to bless. How my heart admires the concentration of all the Godhead and humanity of Christ in his search after each sheep of his flock.
Luck generally comes to those who look for it, and my notion is that it taps, once in a lifetime, at everybody’s door, but if industry does not open it luck goes away.
It is the burning lava of the soul that has a furnace within – a very volcano of grief and sorrow-it is that burning lava of prayer that finds its way to God. No prayer ever reaches God’s heart which does not come from our hearts.
It is well said that neglected prayer is the birth-place of all evil.
Methinks every true Christian should be exceedingly earnest in prayer concerning the souls of the ungodly; and when they are so, how abundantly God blesses them and how the church prospers!
Prayer girds human weakness with divine strength, turns human folly into heavenly wisdom, and gives to troubled mortals the peace of God. We know not what prayer can do.
Prayer is not a hard requirement – it is the natural duty of a creature to its creator, the simplest homage that human need can pay to divine liberality.
Remember, Christ’s scholars must study upon their knees.
There is a general kind of praying which fails for lack of precision. It is as if a regiment of soldiers should all fire off their guns anywhere. Possibly somebody would be killed, but the majority of the enemy would be missed.
We may expect answers to prayer, and should not be easy without them any more than we should be if we had written a letter to a friend upon important business, and had received no reply.
Trust in the person’s promise who dares to refuse what they fear they cannot perform.
The wishing gate opens into nothing.
Trials make room for consolation. There is nothing that makes man have a big heart like a great trial. I have found that those people who have no sympathy for their fellows, who never weep for the sorrows of others very seldom have any of their own. Great hearts could be made only by great troubles.
Day by day, we are becoming what we shall be eternally. The spirit who convicts us is also the spirit who consoles.
A father’s holy life is a rich legacy for his sons.
Most of the grand truths of God have to be learned by trouble; they must be burned into us with the hot iron of affliction, otherwise we shall not truly receive them.
I note that some whom I greatly love and esteem, who are, in my judgment, among the very choicest of God’s people, nevertheless, travel most of the way to heaven by night.
No sin is necessarily connected with sorrow of heart, for Jesus Christ our Lord once said, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.” There was no sin in Him, and consequently none in His deep depression.