The good is always the enemy of the best.

Faith by its very nature must be tried, and the real trial of faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God's character has to be cleared in our own minds. Faith in its actual working out has to go through spells of unsyllabled isolation. Never confound the trial of faith with the ordinary discipline of life. Much that we call the trial of faith is the inevitable result of being alive.

Earnestness is not by any means everything; it is very often a subtle form of pious pride because it is obsessed with the method and not with the Master.

We do not pray at all until we are at our wits' end.

God never estimates what we give from impulse. We are given credit for what we determine in our hearts to give; for the giving that is governed by a fixed determination. The Spirit of God revolutionises our philanthropic instincts. Much of our philanthropy is simply the impulse to save ourselves an uncomfortable feeling. The Spirit of God alters all that. As saints our attitude towards giving is that we give for Jesus Christ's sake, and from no other motive.

Our Lord insists on the social aspect of our lives: He shows very distinctly that we cannot further ourselves alone.

If we simply preach the effects of redemption in the human life instead of the revealed, divine truth regarding Jesus Himself, the result is not new birth in those who listen. The result is {only} a refined religious lifestyle . . . we must make sure that we are living in such harmony with God that as we proclaim His truth He can create in others those things which He alone can do.