God's way of answering the Christian's prayer for more patience, experience, hope and love often is to put him into the furnace of affliction.

Duties are ours; events are God's. This removes an infinite burden from the shoulders of a miserable, tempted, dying creature. On this consideration only, can he securely lay down his head, and close his eyes.

When a founder has cast a bell he does not presently fix it in the steeple, but tries it with his hammer, and beats it on every side to see if there be any flaw in it. So Christ doth not presently after he hath converted a man, convey him to heaven; but suffers him first to be beaten upon by many temptations and then exalts him to his crown.

In the midst of sorrow, faith draws the sting out of every trouble, and takes out the bitterness from every affliction.

All extremes are error. The reverse of error is not truth, but error still. Truth lies between extremes.

The Christian will find his parentheses for prayer even in the busiest hours of life.

The Old and New Testaments contain but one scheme of religion. Neither part of this scheme can be understood without the other.