Setting is preliminary to brighter rising; decay is a process of advancement; death is the condition of higher and more fruitful life.

The true Church is not an institution to be kept apart from the world because the world "is common and unclean," but a vital heart of truth and love, beating with the life of Jesus, and sending abroad its sanctifying pulsations until nothing shall be common and unclean.

Many a man who might walk over burning ploughshares into heaven stumbles from the path because there is gravel in his shoes.

Revolution does not insure progress. You may overturn thrones, but what proof that anything better will grow upon the soil?

Not only is music a beautiful and sublime science, the study of which ennobles and purifies the mind of its votary, but how many and excellent are its ministries to others!

The universe is a vast system of exchange. Every artery of it is in motion, throbbing with reciprocity, from the planet to the rotting leaf. The vapor climbs the sunbeam, and comes back in blessings upon the exhausted herb. The exhalation of the plant is wafted to the ocean. And so goes on the beautiful commerce of nature. And all because of dissimilarity--because no one thing is sufficient in itself, but calls for the assistance of something else, and repays by a contribution in turn.

Break up the institution of the family, deny the inviolability of its relations, and in a little while there would not be any humanity.