Instruction, and advice, and commands will profit little, unless they are backed up by the pattern of your own life. Your children will never believe you are in earnest, and really wish them to obey you, so long as your actions contradict your counsel... Think not your children will practise what they do not see you do. You are their model picture, and they will copy what you are... will seldom learn habits which they see you despise, or walk in paths in which you do not walk yourself.

Let us beware of repentance without evidence.

Experience supplies painful proof that traditions once called into being are first called useful, then they become necessary. At last they are too often made idols, and all must bow down to them or be punished.

Infidelity and skepticism abound everywhere. In one form or another they are to be found in every rank and class of society. Thousands are not ashamed to say that they regard the Bible as an old obsolete Jewish book, which has no special claim on our faith and obedience, and that it contains many inaccuracies and defects. In a day like this, the true Christian should be able to set his foot down firmly, and to render a reason of his confidence in God's Word. He should be able by sound arguments to show good cause why he thinks the Bible is from heaven, and not of men.

Trials are intended to make us think, to wean us from the world, to send us to the Bible, to drive us to our knees.

If I never spoke of hell, I should think I had kept back something that was profitable, and should look on myself as an accomplice of the devil.

If you want to warm a church, put a stove in the pulpit.