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.

Christ's miracles were vivid manifestations to the senses that He is the Saviour of the body--and now as then the issues of life and death are in His hands--that our daily existence is a perpetual miracle. The extraordinary was simply a manifestation of God's power in the ordinary.

Read a work on the "Evidences of Christianity," and it may become highly probable that Christianity, etc., are true. This is an opinion. Feel God. Do His will, till the Absolute Imperative within you speaks as with a living voice, "Thou shalt, and thou shalt not;" and then you do not think, you know that there is a God.

Life, like war, is a series of mistakes,he is the best who wins the most splendid victories by the retrieval of mistakes. Forget mistakes: organize victory out of mistakes.

Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule.

... religious controversy does only harm. It destroys humble inquiry after truth, and throws all the energies into an attempt to prove ourselves right-a spirit in which no man gets at truth.

What we mean by sentimentalism is that state in which a man speaks deep and true sentiments not because he feels them strongly, but because he perceives that they are beautiful, and that it is touching and fine to say them,-things which he fain would feel, and fancies that he does feel.