All natural results are spontaneous. The diamond sparkles without effort, and the flowers open impulsively beneath the summer rain. And true religion is a spontaneous thing,--as natural as it is to weep, to love, or to rejoice.

Honor to the idealists, whether philosophers or poets. They have improved us by mingling with our daily pursuits great and transcendent conceptions. They have thrown around our sensual life the grandeur of a better, and drawn us up from contacts with the temporal and the selfish to communion with beauty and truth and goodness.

A patient, humble temper gathers blessings that are marred by the peevish and overlooked by the aspiring.

Those old ages are like the landscape that shows best in purple distance, all verdant and smooth, and bathed in mellow light.

It is a great thing, when our Gethsemane hours come, when the cup of bitterness is pressed to our lips ... to feel that it is not fate, that it is not necessity, but divine love for good ends working upon us.

In the matter of faith, we have the added weight of hope to that of reason in the convictions which we sustain relating to a future state.

We do not compromise our own faith by admitting the honesty of another's doubt.