Great trials seem to be a necessary preparation for great duties. It would seem that the more important the enterprise, the more severe the trial to which the agent is subjected in his preparation.

Go to the family where darkness and suspicion and jealousy and disorder reign, and if they will but receive Christ, mark how light and confidence and order and peace spring up. Go to the regions of superstition and idolatry, and see what transformations are effected by Jesus.

The world cannot bury Christ. The earth is not deep enough for His tomb, the clouds are not wide enough for His winding-sheet; He ascends into the heavens, but the heavens cannot contain Him. He still lives--in the church which burns unconsumed with His love; in the truth that reflects His image; in the hearts which burn as He talks with them by the way.

What are the sciences but maps of universal laws, and universal laws but the channels of universal power; and universal power but the outgoings of a universal mind?

All other great men are valued for their lives; He, above all, for His death, around which mercy and truth, righteousness and peace, God and man are reconciled; for the cross is the magnet which sends the electric current through the telegraph between earth and heaven, and makes both Testaments thrill, through the ages of the past and future, with living, harmonious, and saving truth.

One has said that Christ excelled all other moralists in this, that He puts the padlock not upon the hand, but upon the heart. But He does not use the padlock at all, He renders such a thing unnecessary. He takes the tiger from the heart, and replaces it with the lamb.

The longer men sin, the more easily they can; for every act of transgression weakens conscience, stupefies intellect, hardens hearts, adds force to bad habits, and takes force from good example. And, surely, there is nothing in such associations; as wicked affinities will insure to the sinner in the future state, to incline him to repentance.