Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects.
I am disturbed when I see the majority of so-called Christians having such little understanding of the real nature of the faith they profess. Faith is a subject of such importance that we should not ignore it because of the distractions or the hectic pace of our lives.
It is the distinguishing glory of Christianity not to rest satisfied with superficial appearances, but to rectify the motives, and purify the heart.
The objects of the present life fill the human eye with a false magnification because of their immediacy.
Life as we know it, with all its ups and downs, will soon be over. We all will give an accounting to God of how we have lived.
Sulky labor, and the labor of sorrow are little worth: if you could only shed tranquility over the conscience and infuse joy into the soul, you would do more to make the man a thorough worker than if you could lend him the force of Hercules, or the hundred arms of Briareus.
This perpetual hurry of business and company ruins me in soul if not in body. More solitude and earlier hours!
Men of authority and influence may promote good morals. Let them in their several stations encourage virtue. Let them favor and take part in any plans which may be formed for the advancement of morality.
The shortening of devotions starves the soul, it grows lean and faint.
Servile, and base, and mercenary, is the notion of Christian practice among the bulk of nominal Christians. They give no more than they dare not with-hold; they abstain from nothing but what they must not practise.
When blessed with wealth, let them withdraw from the competition of vanity and be modest, retiring from ostentation, and not be the slaves of fashion.
Measure your progress by your experience of the love of God and its exercise before men.
Let true Christians then, with becoming earnestness, strive in all things to recommend their profession, and to put to silence the vain scoffs of ignorant objectors.
God has so made the mind of man that a peculiar deliciousness resides in the fruits of personal industry.
As much pains were taken to make me idle as were ever taken to make me studious.
Can you tell a plain man the road to heaven? Certainly, turn at once to the right, and then go straight forward.
The first years in Parliament I did nothing – nothing to any purpose. My own distinction was my darling object.
I continually find it necessary to guard against that natural love of wealth and grandeur which prompts us always, when we come to apply our general doctrine to our own case, to claim an exception.
Can one serve God and one’s nation in parliament?
The distemper of which, as a community, we are sick, should be considered rather as a moral than a political malady.
Surely the experience of all good men confirms the proposition that without a due measure of private devotions the soul will grow lean.