The whole gospel is contained in Christ.

The blood of Christ is necessary to purge the faults clinging to our best works.

At this day . . . the earth sustains on her bosom many monster minds, minds which are not afraid to employ the seed of Deity deposited in human nature as a means of suppressing the name of God. Can anything be more detestable than this madness in man, who, finding God a hundred times both in his body and his soul, makes his excellence in this respect a pretext for denying that there is a God? He will not say that chance has made him different from the brutes; . . . but, substituting Nature as the architect of the universe, he suppresses the name of God.

When a certain shameless fellow mockingly asked a pious old man what God had done before the creation of the world the latter aptly countered that he had been building hell for the curious.

Rejoicing refers to moderation of spirit when the mind keeps itself in calmness under adversity and does not give indulgence to grief. Constant praying is the way of 'rejoicing perpetually', for by this means we ask from God alleviation in connection with all our distresses.

There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence.

But as a heathen tells us, there is no nation so barbarous, no race so brutish as not to be imbued with the conviction that there is a God.