A world where everything was easy would be a nursery for babies, but not at all a fit place for men.

Our best performances are so stained with sin, that it is hard to know whether they are good works or bad works.

You cannot preach conviction of sin unless you have suffered it. You cannot preach repentance unless you have practiced it. You cannot preach faith unless you have exercised it. True preaching is artesian; it wells up from the great depths of the soul. If Christ has not made a well within us, there will be no outflow from us.

A man must have a stout digestion to feed upon some men's theology; no sap, no sweetness, no life, but all stern accuracy, and fleshless definition. Proclaimed without tenderness, and argued without affection, the gospel from such men rather resembles a missile from a catapult than bread from a Father's hand.

The distance between the glorified spirits in heaven and the militant saints on earth seems great; but it is not so. We are not far from home. Heaven... is just one sigh and we get there. Our departed friends are only in the upper room, as it were, of the same house; they have not gone far off; they are upstairs and we are down below.

Music is at its best when it is pleasingly melancholic.

There is no repentance where a man can talk lightly of sin, much less where he can speak tenderly and lovingly of it.