The only revenge which is essentially Christian is that of retaliating by forgiveness.

For when man comes to front the everlasting God, and look the splendor of His judgments in the face, personal integrity, the dream of spotlessness and innocence, vanishes into thin air: your decencies and your church-goings and your regularities and your attachment to a correct school and party, your gospel formulas of sound doctrine--what is all that, in front of the blaze of the wrath to come?

Defeat in doing right is nevertheless victory.

It is more true to say that our opinions depend upon our lives and habits, than to say that our lives and habits depend on our opinions.

We are too much haunted by ourselves, projecting the central shadow of self on everything around us. And then comes the Gospel to rescue us from this selfishness. Redemption is this, to forget self in God.

Cold hearts are not anxious enough to doubt. Men who love will have their misgivings at times; that is not the evil. But the evil is, when men go on in that languid, doubting way, content to doubt, proud of their doubts, morbidly glad to talk about them, liking the romantic gloom of twilight, without the manliness to say,--I must and will know the truth. That did not John. Brethren, John appealed to Christ.

It is a law of our humanity, that man must know both good and evil; he must know good through evil. There never was a principle but what triumphed through much evil; no man ever progressed to greatness and goodness but through great mistakes.