God has often given His people favor in the sight of heathen masters (as Joseph and Daniel), and has magnified the sufficiency of His grace by preserving their souls in the midst of the most unpromising environments. His saints are found in very unlikely places.

Prayer is not designed for the furnishing of God with the knowledge of what we need, but it is designed as a confession to him of our sense of need.

It is not the absence of sin but the grieving over it which distinguishes the child of God from empty professors.

Prayer is the way and means God has appointed for the communication of the blessings of His goodness to His people.

Were God to show grace to all of Adam's descendants, men would at once conclude that He was righteously compelled to take them to heaven as meet compensation for allowing the human race to fall into sin. But the great God in under no obligation to any of his creatures, least of all to those who are rebels against him.

God was under no constraint, no obligation, no necessity to create. That He chose to do so was purely a sovereign act on His part, caused by nothing outside Himself, determined by nothing but His own mere good pleasure.

To realize that the Holy Scriptures are a revelation from the Most High, communicating to us His mind and defining for us His will, is the first step toward practical godliness. To recognize that the Bible is God's Word, and that its precepts are the precepts of the Almighty, will lead us to see what an awful thing it is to despise and ignore them.