Love and spite dwelling in the heart can no more make a perfect Christian than poisoned vinegar and cream can make pure honey.
Every huntsman who jumps a fence makes it easier for those who choose to follow; and so it is with wrongdoers who jump the bounds of sin and folly. They are teaching those who follow to shun the plain, open path, and to take to the walls, fences, and ditches, which end in a broken neck, amidst the applause of fools.
Hotbeds of envy and hatred, heated with burning passion, have been productive of more evil results, direful consequences, bloodshed, cruel deaths, and foul murders than all the poison extracted from fungi, hemlock, foxgloves, and deadly nightshade have done since the world began, or could do, even if envy and hatred were to die to-day and poisons worked death to the end of time.
The morals and good deeds of a wicked, sensual, selfish man are the artificial flowers of hell.
Some professing Christians have only sufficient Christianity to make a pocket mirror, which the possessor uses in company as a schoolboy would to make “Jack-a-dandies.”
Crowns of credit or renown lightly won sit lightly upon the head, and are easily puffed off by the first breath of public opinion.
A man who trusts to his own self-righteousness to get him to heaven is wheeling a heavily and unevenly laden wheelbarrow up a narrow, slippery plank over a deep ravine, with a wheel in the front of his wheelbarrow that is twisted, loose, and awry.
The devil plays most with those he means to bite the hardest.
Singing heavenly songs in earthly sorrows brings joy tinged with the golden light of heaven on the mourner.
To get the cold, poisonous water of selfishness from our hearts God has often to furrow and drain our nature and affections by afflictions and cross purposes.