You reap what you sow — not something else, but that. An act of love makes the soul more loving. A deed of humbleness deepens humbleness. The thing reaped is the very thing sown, multiplied a hundred fold. You have sown a seed of life, you reap life everlasting.

Defeat in doing right is nevertheless victory.

What we are, and where we are, is God's providential arrange ment — God's doing, though it may be man's misdoing; and the manly and the wise way is to look your disadvantages in the face, and see what can be made out of them.

To turn water into wine, and what is common into what is holy, is indeed the glory of Christianity.

To grieve over sin is one thing, to repent is another.

On earth we have nothing to do with success or with results, but only with being true to God, and for God; for it is sincerity, and not success, which is the sweet savor before God. The defeat of the true-hearted is victory.

By experience; by a sense of human frailty; by a perception of "the soul of goodness in things evil;" by a cheerful trust in human nature; by a strong sense of God's love; by long and disciplined realization of the atoning love of Christ; only thus can we get a free, manly, large, princely spirit of forgiveness.