How many times has He delivered me! Yet, alas! How distrustful and ungrateful is my heart even until the present!
John NewtonBy affliction prayer is quickened, for our prayers are very apt to grow languid and formal in a time of ease.
John NewtonI am still in the land of the dying; I shall be in the land of the living soon. (his last words)
John NewtonI compare the troubles which we have to undergo in the course of the year to a great bundle of sticks, far too large for us to lift. But God does not require us to carry the whole at once. He mercifully unties the bundle, and gives us first one stick, which we are to carry today, and then another, which we are to carry tomorrow, and so on. This we might easily manage, if we would only take the burden appointed for us each day; but we choose to increase our troubles by carrying yesterday's stick over again today, and adding tomorrow's burden to our load, before we are required to bear it.
John Newton