The first thing in all progress is to leave something behind.

LET A MAN THINK AND CARE ever so little about God, he does not therefore exist without God. God is here with him, upholding, warming, delighting, teaching him-making life a good thing to him. God gives him himself, though the man knows it not.

I saw thee ne'er before; I see thee never more; But love, and help, and pain, beautiful one, Have made thee mine, till all my years are done.

A man may sink by such slow degrees that, long after he is a devil, he may go on being a good churchman or a good dissenter and thinking himself a good Christian.

He may delay because it would not be safe to give us at once what we ask: we are not ready for it. To give ere we could truly receive, would be to destroy the very heart and hope of prayer, to cease to be our Father. The delay itself may work to bring us nearer to our help, to increase the desire, perfect the prayer, and ripen the receptive condition.

Ah, what is it we send up thither, where our thoughts are either a dissonance or a sweetness and a grace?

But words are vain; reject them all— They utter but a feeble part: Hear thou the depths from which they call, The voiceless longing of my heart.