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I live by miracle.
Our life is a warfare.
I am a riddle to myself.
'None but Jesus' is my motto.
O precious, irrecoverable time!
The object of faith must be truth.
Lord, save us from our golden calves.
What cannot be cured must be endured.
We cannot be so evil as [Jesus] is good.
Dread whatever grieves the Spirit of God.
He who called *us* can easily call others.
Too much of my time passes in busy idleness.
Every drop of rain hits its appointed target.
Grace cherishes the smoking flax into a flame.
Faith can realize the presence of an unseen Savior.
Reproof should be in season, in secret, and in love.
My soul is very sick, but my Physician is infallible.
There is but one Physician / Can cure a sin-sick soul!
Trials no less than comforts are the tokens of his love.
May Christ be our theme in the pulpit and in the parlor.
The Lord is my strength; yet I am prone to lean on reeds.
Talk to children about God abstractly, and it is all in vain.
A cold, corrupt heart is uncomfortable company in the pulpit.
The life of a Christian is a life of faith in the Son of God.
We should never grow weary of writing and reading about Jesus.
Colleges can never make up for a lack of the knowledge of Christ.
A proneness to idolatry is our bosom sin - I have smarted for it.
I number my Christian correspondents among my principal blessings.
The storms are guided by the hands which were nailed to the cross.
There is one political maxim which comforts me: 'The Lord reigns.'
While you are unfit to die, you can have no true enjoyment of life.
Self-righteousness can feed upon doctrines - as well as upon works!
Though His medicines are all beneficial - they are not all pleasant.
For though we can fall of ourselves, we cannot rise without his help!
Disappointment is the grumblings of self-will against the will of God.
If we could hear all that is said of us, it would not flatter us much.
The spirit of prayer is the fruit and token of the Spirit of adoption.
The glory of God and the good of his people are inseparably connected.
How seldom do we think how much we are indebted to Christ living in us!
We have a mighty Savior, a compassionate Friend, a prevailing Advocate.
That monster Self has as many heads as Hydra, and as many lives as a cat.
It is the triumph of grace to make the rich humble and the poor thankful.
But the exercise of gifts and of grace are different and distinct things.
It is the triumph of grace to make the rich humble, and the poor thankful.
The cross of Christ is the tree of life and the tree of knowledge combined.
Oh! to be little in our own eyes! This is the ground-work of every grace...
I am so totally depraved; but not discouraged. (hint: 1 Corinthians 1:30-31)
I could not live comfortably a day, or an hour, without the doctrines of grace.
It behooves us to keep a clear distinction in our minds between gifts and grace.
I know I am engaged in the cause against which the gates of hell cannot prevail.
My spiritual coldness and stupidity when I am retired out of sight—is amazing!
I am neither whig nor tory, but a friend to both. I am a stranger, and a pilgrim.
The converse I have with my people, usually suggests what I am to preach to them.
It is happy for us if we have suffered enough to make us desire a better country.
I hope to die like the thief upon the cross. I have no hope, no comfort in myself.
The Lord Christ, and the world that crucified him, are competitors for our hearts.
Let me endeavor to lead you out of yourself: let me invite you to look unto Jesus.
Sovereignty is but another name for the unlimited exercise of wisdom and goodness.
There is a peace passing understanding of which the politicians cannot deprive us.
Opposition has hurt its thousands. Careless popularity has slain its ten thousands.
There is a peace passing understanding, of which the politicians cannot deprive us.
Blessed be my Lord and Savior, who saved me from destruction in defiance of myself.
Christ is not only the object, but the author, and finisher of faith (Hebrews 12:2).
Where would we have wandered if he had not stopped us, and led us into his own fold?
I have often wished we had more female pens employed in the service of the sanctuary.
Even now, while I write, and while you read, they are praising the Lamb that was slain.
To see him as he is, and to be like him! This is worth dying for, and worth living for.
It is never ill with us but when our evil hearts doubt or forget the plainest of truths.
Yes, madam, though every stream must fail, the fountain is still full and still flowing.
All my hopes and comforts may be summed up by saying, I have a rich and gracious Savior.
Gifts are like riches: if well improved, they give a man fairer opportunities of service.
Methinks, if we might go to heaven without suffering, we would be unwilling to desire it.
There is often too much self in our zeal, and too much of the fear of man in our prudence.
Oh! to be little in our own eyes! ... This is the spirit which He has promised to bless...
The best advice I can give you: Look unto Jesus, beholding his beauty in the written word.
Let us strive and pray for a habitual resignation to his will; for He does all things well.
Everything is necessary that God sends our way; nothing can be necessary that he withholds.
My heart is like a country but half subdued. Mutinies and insurrections are daily happening.
We are never more safe than when we are most sensible that we can do nothing without Christ.
I write not to remind you of what you have lost, but of what you have which you cannot lose.
Error is like poison; the subtlety, quickness, and force of its operation, is often amazing.
I have felt impatience in my spirit, utterly unsuitable to my state as a sinner and a beggar.
Sin cannot be hated for itself, till we have seen the malignity of it in Christ's sufferings.
To pastors: Our work is great; our time is short; the consequences of our labors are infinite.
My hope is built, not upon frames and feelings, but upon the atonement and mediation of Jesus.
The fear of man, under the name of prudence, like a chilling frost nips everything in the bud.
My course of study, like that of a surgeon, has principally consisted in walking the hospital.
Trouble excites prayer, prayer brings deliverance, deliverance produces praise (Psalm 116:1-2).
Though my disease is grievous, it is not desperate. I have a gracious and infallible Physician.
Oh! to be little in our own eyes! ... This conciliates us good-will and acceptance among men...
To behold the glory and the love of Jesus is the only effectual way to participate of his image.
Dangerous and inveterate diseases are seldom cured by cakes and candies. #sanctification #trials
The Lord does not give us our arms and regimentals only to strut about in. We must expect blows.
Oh! to be little in our own eyes! ... This leads to a continual dependence upon the Lord Jesus...
We are too much attached to our own petty concerns, and too little concerned for the glory of God.
Cold as I feel this heart of mine, / Yet since I feel it so, / It yields some hope of life divine.
May your faith anticipate the joyful and glorious meeting you will shortly have in a better world.
How bitter that cup, / No heart can conceive, / Which he drank quite up, / That sinners might live!
May he be our theme in the pulpit and in the parlor, living and dying. Let the world take the rest.
My heart is vile, and even my prayers are sin. My soul is very sick, but my Physician is infallible.
The atonement, power, and grace of Christ, is a sufficient answer for all. You only lack more faith.
He found us when we sought him not. Then we began to seek him, and he was pleased to be found by us.
Prosperity may cause us to rise in the world, but affliction is needful to raise us above the world.
Every new day is filled up with new things, new mercies on the Lord's part, new ingratitude on mine.
The same power which humbled me, can undoubtedly bring down the most haughty infidel upon the earth.
But man cannot know, love, trust, or serve his Maker, unless he be renewed in the spirit of his mind.
How different were Christ's sufferings from ours? There is no sting in our rod, nor wrath in our cup.
I have reason to praise him for my trials, for, most probably, I would have been ruined without them.
I have reason to praise him for my trials, for, most probably, I should have been ruined without them.
Blessed be God for the news of a better world, where there will be no sin, change, nor defect forever.
One 'Thus saith the Lord,' ought to have more weight and authority with us, than a thousand arguments.
But that we are so totally depraved, is a truth which no one ever truly learned by being only told it.
When we first enter into the Divine life, we propose to grow rich; God's plan is to make us feel poor.
When we burden ourselves with our many sins, we are apt to overlook the very greatest of them-unbelief.
It is your great and singular mercy, my dear miss, that He has taught you to seek him so early in life.
The Babe of Bethlehem, the Man who once hung dead and forsaken upon the cross, is now the Lord of glory.
Oh, what manner of love, that we, who were like others by nature, should be thus distinguished by grace!
I mean it not to your praise. May all the praise be to Him, from whom every good and perfect gift cometh.
Like the sun, Christ has sufficiency to fill innumerable millions of eyes with light in the same instant.
Alas! how difficult is it to draw the line exactly between undervaluing and overvaluing the gifts of God.
The cross of Jesus Christ, my Lord, / Is food and medicine, shield and sword. / Take that for your motto.
The great secret of the Christian life—is to be looking unto Jesus! (Oh, that I could learn it better!)
We serve a gracious Master who knows how to overrule even our mistakes to His glory and our own advantage.
The Lord, who can exempt us from troubles, can do much more; he can support and can comfort us under them.
If you walk closely with God forty years, you will have a much lower opinion of yourself than you have now.
As desirable and precious as sanctification is, it is not, I trust it never will be, the ground of my hope.
One view of the brazen serpent (Christ) will do you more good than poring over your own wounds for a month.
If millions of millions of distressed sinners seek to Christ for relief, he has a sufficiency for them all.
O what a mercy to see all power in heaven and earth exercised by Him who was nailed to the cross for sinners.
My usefulness was the last idol I was willing to part with, but the Lord has enabled me to give even this up.
If the evils we feel were not capable of being overruled for good - He would not permit them to remain in us.
It is no great matter where we are, provided we see that the Lord has placed us there, and that He is with us.
Hungry, and faint, and poor, / Behold us, LORD, again / Assembled at thy mercies door, / Thy bounty to obtain.
The garden of Gethsemane, / The second Adam saw, / Oppressed with woe, to set us free / From the avenging law.
Yet the Lord, who is the only Comforter, is often pleased to use us as His instruments to comfort one another.
Though faint my prayers, and cold my love, / My stedfast hope shall not remove, / While Jesus intercedes above.
Deuteronomy 32:9-12 is a passage which exhibits the history of a believer in miniature, an Iliad in a nutshell.
What will it profit a man if he silences his adversary and loses that humble spirit in which the Lord delights?
There are abominations which, like nests of vipers, lie quietly within, till the rod of affliction rouses them.
[Richard Baxter] appears to me, notwithstanding some mistakes, to have been one of the greatest men of his age.
For about six weeks I have had occasion to spend several hours of almost every day with the sick and the dying.
I not only sinned with a high hand myself, but made it my study to tempt and seduce others upon every occasion.
If the evils we feel were not capable of being overruled for good — He would not permit them to remain in us.
The men of this world are children. Offer a child an apple and a bank note, he will doubtless choose the apple.
Hearers are disposed to be pleased with the preacher if he says nothing to make them displeased with themselves.
A minister's hands are strengthened when he can point to his people as living proofs of the doctrine he preaches.
I have seldom, if ever, been five minutes late for anything, unless unavoidably prevented, for the past 50 years.
He does all things well. It is never ill with us but when our evil hearts doubt or forget this plainest of truths.
Be cautious you do not degenerate into a mere hearer, so as to place your chief stress on running after preachers.
How are the graces of patience, resignation, meekness, and faith, to be discovered and increased, but by exercise?
I'm a slow scholar, and make bungling work at my lessons to apply the gospel to the common concerns of every hour.
God formed us for himself, and has given the human such a vastness of thirst for happiness as He alone can answer.
He will put his silver into the fire to purify it; but he sits by the furnace as a refiner, to direct the process.
May we sit at the foot of the cross; and there learn what sin has done, what justice has done, what love has done.
[Troubles] are necessary, because we would miss the meaning and comfort of a great part of the Bible without them.
You will do well to guard against every appearance of evil. If you are heartily for Jesus, Satan owes you a grudge.
It will not be laid to my charge that I thought too highly of Jesus or expected too much from him. On the contrary.
The God whom we serve does not see it good for us to be rich, but I trust He will give us what is needful and best.
If I was not a Calvinist, I think I should have no more hope of success in preaching to men, than to horses or cows.
The Savior, whom I then shall see / With new admiring eyes, / Already has prepared for me, / A mansion in the skies.
What a privilege to possess God in all things while we have them, and all things in God when they are taken from us.
Oh, he gives bountifully - like a king! A little is too much for our deserts; but much is too little for his bounty.
By thee my prayers acceptance gain, / Although with sin defiled, / Satan accuses me in vain, / And I am owned a child.
O the excellency of the knowledge of Christ! It will be growing upon us through time, yea, I believe through eternity.
I advise you by all means to keep close to the atonement. The doctrine of the cross is the sun in the system of truth.
I am afraid we have been, and still are, too guilty of idolatry; and the Lord might justly blast our boasted paradise.
Satan will preach free grace when he finds people willing to believe the notion as an excuse and a cloak for idleness.
O for more of His gracious influence, which in a moment can make my wilderness-soul rejoice and blossom like the rose!
Overlong sermons... call off the thoughts from the sermon to the pudding at home that is in danger of being overboiled.
Rejoice in Christ and resist every temptation to doubt his love as you would resist a temptation to adultery or murder.
If believing and repenting are proper condition of my salvation, I can no more fulfill them than I can touch the stars.
I want nothing of that 'knowledge' that has not a tendency to make sin more hateful and Jesus more precious to my soul.
O, may the word of gospel truth / Your chief desires engage / And JESUS be your guide in youth, / Your joy in hoary age.
But Jesus all our guilt foresaw, / And shed his precious blood / To satisfy the holy law, / And make our peace with GOD.
In him my weary soul has rest, / Though I am weak and vile / I read my name upon his breast, / And see the Father smile.
The more we are convinced of our utter depravity and inability from first to last, the more excellent will Jesus appear.
As Jesus appears in your view, / As he is beloved or not; / So God is disposed to you, / And mercy or wrath are your lot.
I am often favored with liberty in public, which sometimes amazes me - when I consider what I am conscious of in private.
The gospel is a dispensation for sinners, and we have an Advocate with the Father. *There* is the unshaken ground of hope.
Self likes to do great things; but grace teaches us to do little things with a great spirit - that is, for the Lord's sake.
To pastors: We have work to do in the world, more to do in the Church and in our homes, but most of all, in our own hearts.
Let me always rejoice in him, or mourn after him. I will leave the alternative to him, who knows best how to suit my state.
To take a glimpse within the veil, / To know that God is mine, / Are springs of joy that never fail, / Unspeakable! divine!
He who is duly sensible of the importance and difficulty of winning souls, will find but little leisure for sorting shells.
Sin has undone our wretched race, / But JESUS has restored / And brought the sinner face to face / With his forgiving LORD.
Until we are reconciled to God by the blood of Jesus everything to which we look for satisfaction will fully disappoint us.
He will not let me seek in vain, / For all, who trust his word, / Shall everlasting life obtain, / And favor from the LORD.
Once perishing in blood I lay, / Creatures no help could give, / But Jesus passed me in the way, / He saw, and bid me live.
A Christian is not of hasty growth, like a mushroom - but rather like the oak, the progress of which is hardly perceptible.
Your letter is a curiosity in its kind, for you have not found room for a single line respecting either health or sickness.
The doctrine of Jesus Christ, and him crucified, is the Sun of the intellectual world. It can only be seen by its own light.
If communion with God affords the greatest happiness we are capable, whatever indisposes us for this must be our great loss.
Every semblance of religion that is not derived from Christ, by faith in his name, is, at the best, like a lamp without oil.
In London I'm in a crowd of temptations, but in the country there is a crowd of temptations in me. My mind is a Vanity Fair.
The Lord is so rich that he easily can, so good that he certainly will - give his children more than he ever will take away.
We need to bring our hard hearts into sympathy with those who suffer, lest we be too busy or too happy to attend their moans.
I feel like a man who has no money, but is allowed to draw from one infinitely rich. I am at once both a beggar and rich man.
Some persons are so weak, that, if their favorite minister is absent, they hardly think it worth their while to hear another.
Only when the way is rough, / And the coward flesh would start, / Let thy promise and thy love, / Cheer and animate my heart.
Experience and observation proves that no doctrine but Jesus Christ and him crucified will withstand the stream of the world.
What a privilege is this, to possess God in all things while we have them, and all things in God when they are taken from us!
None are so bad but the gospel affords them a ground of hope: none are so good as to have any just ground of hope without it.
Seeing the blood which JESUS spilt, / To save his soul from woe, / His hatred, unbelief, and guilt, / All melt away like snow.
O Lord, my best desire fulfill / And help me to resign, / Life, health, and comfort to thy will, / And make thy pleasure mine.
I am prone to puzzle myself over twenty things which are out of my power, and equally unnecessary, if the Lord be my Shepherd.
He rules and manages all things; but in so secret a way, that most people think he does nothing, when in reality, he does all.
Many serious people, who are burdened with a sense of other sins, leave this radical evil, unbelief, out of their list of sin.
The love I bear him is but a faint and feeble spark, but it is an emanation from himself; he kindled it, and he keeps it alive.
A man learns to preach by learning to acquire confidence, not in himself, but in his cause, and in him in whose name he speaks.
Look unto Jesus. The duty, privilege, safety, the unspeakable happiness, of a believer, are all comprised in that one sentence.
I want to deliver up that rebel Self in chains, but the rogue, like Proteus, puts on so many forms he slips through my fingers.
Fulfill thy promise, gracious LORD, / On us assembled here, / Put forth thy Spirit with the word, / And cause the dead to hear.
It will be vain for ministers to declare the doctrines of grace unless our testimony is supported by the conduct of our people.
We are debtors, great debtors to the sovereign grace of God, which alone makes us to differ from the perishing world around us!
A minister full of comforts and free from failings as an angel, though he would be happy, wouldn't be a good or useful preacher.
People do their country more service by pleading for it in prayer than by finding fault with things they have no power to alter.
A knock at the door, a turning a corner, may be events which lead to important consequences. There's no such thing as accidents.
If I'm redeemed from misery by the blood of Jesus; and if he is preparing a mansion that I may drink rivers of pleasure forever!
Dear Lord accept a sinful heart, / Which of itself complains / And mourns, with much and frequent smart, / The evil it contains.
My soul, ask what thou wilt, / Thou canst not be too bold; / Since his own blood for thee he spilt, / What else can he withhold?
With pleasing grief and mournful joy / My spirit now is fill'd, / That I should such a life destroy, / Yet live by him I kill'd.
The blood, which as a Priest he bears / For sinners, is his own / The incense of his prayers and tears / Perfume the holy throne.
All wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and happiness, which does not spring from and center in Christ, my soul desires to renounce.
This is the worst enemy we have to deal with-self-will-self-wisdom-self-righteousness-self-seeking-self-dependence-self-boasting.
This is God's way: you are not called to buy, but to beg; not to be strong in yourself, but in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
How happy is it to know the Lord, the Fountain of living waters! Every other acquisition without him will prove a broken cistern.
The firmament of Scripture is spangled with promises as the sky is with stars, perceptible to us only in the night of affliction.
He has given us a capacity and thirst for happiness which, both experience and observation demonstrate, the world cannot satisfy.
Dear Lord, the idol self dethrone / And from our hearts remove / And let no zeal by us be shown/ But that which springs from love
Gladly would I receive more of comforts, but it is more necessary for me now, both as a Christian and minister, that I be humbled.
Wonderful are the effects when a crucified, glorious Savior is presented to the eye of Faith. This sight destroys the love of sin.
Abominations, like nests of vipers, lie quietly in us, til the rod of affliction rouses them; then they hiss and show their venom.
It's unnecessary to raise a hurricane to destroy us. Were he to withdraw his arm for a moment some unthought evil would overwhelm.
Dear Lord, the idol self dethrone / And from our hearts remove / And let no zeal by us be shown / But that which springs from love
The more simply we commit the how, when, and where, to God's wisdom and will, the more we shall be free from heart-eating anxiety.
[God] is the all-sufficient good. He alone is able to satisfy the vast capacity he has given us; for he has formed us for himself.
So ready are we - at least, so ready am I - to want to recall the day that is past and correct the disposals of Divine Providence.
Sooner shall a tender mother sit inattentive to her crying infant than Jesus be an unconcerned spectator of his suffering children.
Abominations, like nests of vipers, lie quietly in us, till the rod of affliction rouses them; then they hiss and show their venom.
Come, my soul, thy suit prepare, / Jesus loves to answer prayer, / He himself has bid thee pray, / Therefore will not say thee nay.
My body, as I said, is, through mercy, free from considerable ailments, but I have a soul that requires surgeon's work continually.
When we've said all we can say of the abounding of sin in us-grace still more abounds in Jesus. We cannot be so evil as he is good.
I like that path best which is well beaten by the footsteps of the flock, though it is not always pleasant and strewed with flowers.
Lord, help us to obey thy call, / That from our sins set free / When like the grass our bodies fall, / Our souls may spring to thee.
Now may He who from the dead / Brought the Shepherd of the sheep, / JESUS CHRIST, our King and Head, / All our souls in safety keep!
A man always in society is one always on the spend; on the other hand, a mere solitary is at his best but a candle in an empty room.
Except Jesus dwells in our hearts, and fills them with his power and presence, they will be filled with folly, vanity, and vexation.
His righteousness, to faith revealed, / Wrought out for guilty worms, / Affords a hiding place and shield, / From enemies and storms.
Ye fearful saints fresh courage take, / The clouds ye so much dread / Are big with mercy, and shall break / In blessings on your head.
Though pressed, we will not yield, / But shall prevail at length, / For Jesus is our sun and shield, / Our righteousness and strength.
The lions roar but cannot kill, / Then fear them not, my friends, / They bring us, though against their will, / The honey JESUS sends.
Ignorance and obstinacy are in themselves sinful, and no plea of sincerity will exempt from the danger of being under their influence.
Nothing more habitually reconciles a child of God to the thought of death than the wearisomeness of...warfare with sin and temptation.
In secret, I am for the most part dull and heartless as usual; but He is pleased to enable me and permit me to speak for Him in public.
Looking unto Jesus. The duty, the privilege, the safety, the unspeakable happiness of a believer are all comprised in that one sentence.
Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail, / And mortal life shall cease, / I shall possess, within the veil, / A life of joy and peace.
Here in the fair gospel field, / Wells of free salvation yield / Streams of life, a plenteous store, / And my soul shall thirst no more.
In my judgment they are the happiest, who have the lowest thoughts of themselves, and in whose eyes Jesus is most glorious and precious.
As the Lord brings you out a people, witnesses for you to the truth of his word, you will find advantage in bringing them often together.
Oh! how should I rejoice to see my wise brother to be suspected for a fool. This must be before you will be truly wise in the best sense.
In effect, the knowledge of God cannot be attained by studious discussion on our parts; it must be by a revelation on his part, Matt. xi.
We have mny and great mercies as individuals and as a family; and a few of these mercies come in disguise-under the appearance of trials.
I have such a low opinion of man in his depraved state, that I believe no one has real sincerity in religious matters till God bestows it.
However dissatisfied with ourselves, we ought... to be thankful... He has begun his work in us, and to believe that He will... make an end.
The interval from sabbath to sabbath is a good while... Intermediate meetings for prayer, etc, when properly conducted, are greatly useful.
It is a shame for a Christian... to say he has no subject at hand, when the inexhaustible theme of redeeming love is ever pressing upon [us].
The longer I live, the more I pity those who, when deprived of their earthly comforts, can find no cheering resources in the sure Word of God.
I hope it will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.
People will find fault as they please, and it is a mercy to sit loose to their opinions, and let them talk on — provided we can do it in a right spirit.
The prayers of some good men are more like preaching than praying. They rather express the Lord's mind to the people, than the desires of the people to the Lord.
...come up as soon as possible... I long for the time. How snugly shall we sit and smoke our pipes, while we settle the affairs of the state and of the churches!
But I believe that it sometimes happens, both in praying and in preaching, that we spin out our time to the greatest length, when we have in reality the least to say.
And he can so manifest himself to the soul, and cause his goodness to pass before it, that the hour of affliction shall be the golden hour of the greatest consolation.
There are [sermon] hearers who make themselves, and not the Scripture the standard of their judgment. They attend not so much to be instructed, as to pass their sentence.
If the Lord has any children who are not exercised with spiritual temptations, I am sure they are but poorly qualified to "speak a word in season to them that are weary."
Warm affections, without knowledge, can rise no higher than superstition; and that knowledge which does not influence the heart and affections, will only make a hypocrite.
If every man was compelled to speak all that he thinks—there would be an end of human society; and man would no more venture to dwell with man, than with tigers and bears!
In the hour, when death shall open the door into eternity—many things which now assume an 'air of importance', will be found as light and unsubstantial as a child's dream!
That light of God's countenance, which can pervade the walls and dissipate the gloom of a dungeon, is unspeakably preferable to all that can be enjoyed in a palace without it.
There is an amazing and humbling difference btwn the conviction we have of the beauty and excellence of divine truths, and our actual experience of their power ruling in our hearts.
If our zeal is embittered by expressions of anger, invective, or scorn—we may think we are doing service of the cause of truth, when in reality we shall only bring it into discredit!
The exceeding sinfulness of sin is manifested, not so much by its breaking thru the restraint of threatening and commands, as by its being capable of acting against light and against love.
I can see no reason why the Lord singled me out for mercy, but this, 'that so it seemed good to him;' unless it was to show, by one astonishing instance, that with him 'nothing is impossible.'
His power likewise in maintaining his own work notwithstanding our infirmities, temptations, and enemies, is hereby displayed in the clearest light, his strength is manifested in our weakness.
There is a principle of self, which disposes us to despise those who differ from us; and we are often under its influence when we think we are only showing a becoming zeal in the cause of God.
The religion of a sinner stands on two pillars; namely, what Christ did for us in his flesh and what he performs in us by his Spirit... Most errors arise from an attempt to separate these two.
While he is God, and we are creatures, in every possible or supposable change of state or circumstances, he must have an unrivalled claim to our reverence, love, trust, service, and submission.
A single ox, you see, can hurt the shell of a believer; but, blessed be God — all the bulls of Bashan, if collected, cannot touch his kernel. He is safe, for his life is hid with Christ in God.
Ah, what a poor cold, confused, inconsistent creature! I am a poor servant, indeed! and my only comfort springs from thinking (which yet I do too seldom and faintly) what a wondrous Master I serve.
We cannot deny that a great part of our knowledge is...like the light of the moon, destitute of heat and influence; and yet we can hardly help thinking of ourselves too highly upon the account of it.
Experience is the Lord's school, and they who are taught by him usually learn that they have no wisdom, by the mistakes they make, and that they have no strength, by the slips and falls they meet with.
When he enables you to do all things, you are no better in urselves than you were before; and when you feel you can do nothing, you are no worse. Your experiences will vary; but his love and promises are always unchangeable.
Self righteousness can feed upon doctrines, as well as upon works; and a man may have the heart of a Pharisee, while his head is stored with orthodox notions of the unworthiness of the creature, and the riches of free grace.
It is of grace that any are saved, & in the distribution of that grace, he does what he will with his own: a right which many are ready enough to claim in their own concerns, though they are so unwilling to allow it to the Lord of all.
It is of grace that any are saved, and in the distribution of that grace, he does what he will with his own: a right which many are ready enough to claim in their own concerns, though they are so unwilling to allow it to the Lord of all.
It is an eminent part of [God's] government, to restrain the depravity of human nature, and in various ways to check its effects, which if left to itself, without his providential control, would presently make earth the very image of hell.
How could you speak properly upon the deceitfulness of the heart, if you did not feel the deceitfulness of your own, or adapt yourself to the changing experiences through which your hearers pass, if you yourself were always alike, or nearly so?
I believe nothing more habitually reconciles a child of God to the thought of death, than the wearisomeness of this warfare [with sin]. Death is unwelcome to nature; - but then, and not till then, the conflict will cease. Then we shall sin no more.
The Scripture cannot deceive us, if rightly understood; but it may, if perverted, prove the occasion of confirming us in a mistake. The Holy Spirit cannot mislead those who are under his influence; but we may suppose that we are so, when we are not.
The firmament of Scripture is spangled with promises as the sky is with stars, perceptible to us only in the night of affliction.A knock at the door, a turning a corner, may be events which lead to important consequences. There's no such thing as accidents.
Further, by what believers feel in themselves they learn by degrees how to warn, pity, and bear with others. A soft, patient, and compassionate spirit, and a readiness and skill in comforting those who are cast down, is not perhaps attainable in any other way.
I readily believe that the leading points of Arminianism spring from, and are nourished by, the pride of the human heart; but I should be glad if the reverse was always true; and that to embrace what are called the Calvinistic doctrines was an infallible token of an humble mind.
Early prejudices and long habits are not easily overcome. Systems and parties squeeze some people into a narrowness of thinking — which they can never outgrow. If we have more liberty and comprehension of mind, we may be thankful — but we have no right to be angry with them.
Let us pray for each other.
I long to have a more entire submission to his will, and a more steadfast confidence in his word, to trust him and wait on him, to see his hand and praise his name in every circumstance of life great and small.