The first step towards knowledge is to know that we are ignorant.
The nurse of infidelity is sensuality.
Prayer is faith passing into action.
The man who labors to please his neighbor for his good to edification has the mind that was in Christ. It is a sinner trying to help a sinner. Even a feeble, but kind and tender man, will effect more than a genius, who is rough and artificial.
Duties are ours; events are God’s. This removes an infinite burden from the shoulders of a miserable, tempted, dying creature. On this consideration only, can he securely lay down his head, and close his eyes.
If there is any person to whom you feel a dislike, that is the person of whom you ought never to speak.
The Christian’s fellowship with God is rather a habit than a rapture.
In viewing the scheme of redemption, I seem like one viewing a vast and complicated machine of exquisite contrivance; what I comprehend of it is wonderful, what I do not, is, perhaps, more so still.
Regeneration is God’s disposing the heart to Himself; conversion is the actual turning of the heart to God.
Religion is such a belief of the Bible as maintains a living influence on the heart.
Every man will have his own criterion in forming his judgment of others. I depend very much on the effect of affliction. I consider how a man comes out of the furnace; gold will lie for a month in the furnace without losing a grain.
It is much easier to settle a point than to act on it.
The world looks at ministers out of the pulpit to know that they mean in it.
Wisdom prepares for the worst, but folly leaves the worst for the day when it comes.
There is no such thing as a fixed policy, because policy like all organic entities is always in the making.
Nothing can be proposed so wild or so absurd as not to find a party, and often a very large party to espouse it.
In the midst of sorrow, faith draws the sting out of every trouble, and takes out the bitterness from every affliction.
Faith makes all evil good to us, and all good better; unbelief makes all good evil, and all evil worse.
Abraham teaches us the right way of conversing with God : “And Abraham fell on his face, and God talked with him.” When we plead with Him, our faces should be in the dust.
Providence is a greater mystery than revelation.
An idle man has a constant tendency to torpidity. He has adopted the Indian maxim that it is better to walk than to run, and better to stand than to walk, and better to sit than to stand, and better to lie than to sit. He hugs himself into the notion, that God calls him to be quiet.