Those who disobey their parents will find that they are putting a noose round their necks, and tying the other end of the rope to a gate post; and when they have done this the words “love” and “duty” in letters of fire will spring up as from the ground, which will keep getting larger and hotter until the wrong-doers are strangled.
The devil’s butterfly is an unconverted clergyman, who gets upon the back of a horse to gallop a fox to death on the week day, dresses in fantastical colours on Sundays, dances before his congregation with incense in his hands, and with his face towards the east, tries to carry his congregation on his wings to a place he knows not where; hypocritically singing the Te Deum in Latin as they go from “pillar to post.”
Those landlords who object to the cultivation of their waste lands for food for man and beast will find that the scent of the gorse, perfume of the heather, contains the fragrance of the bankruptcy court, with the hares, rabbits, partridges, pheasants, woodcock and snipe flapping about the doors uttering horrible noises for their folly. The horrors of the court will be increased by hearing the cries of the children asking for bread with none to give.
Those people who, with the aid of a glib tongue, cunning, and deception, are weaving a cloak of soft words to cover a mass of iniquity, will find out too late, unless very careful, that the mass of corruption they have been hiding will burst out with a more horrible stench than that of a dead corpse.
Infidels and sceptics who rest entirely upon science and nature as a lever by which they hope to lift humanity into paradise, have only to look into a bright black earthenware teapot to discover what sort of wry and contortious faces they are pulling before the public.
The most powerful magnet in the world is the love of God. It can draw the sting of the devil, disarm enemies, and lift all the human beings in the universe into heaven. The more it is used the stronger and more powerful it gets.
Sceptics and infidels, seeking for the so-called errors in the Divine Word, may be compared to blind and foot-tied weasels, trying to catch “Jack Sharps” in a broad, deep, clear stream of pure water. They leave their sickening scent on their trail behind them, to be carried forward to be lost in the great stream of truth from whence all our blessings flow.
Children’s gifts to children produce more blessed, lasting, and Christ-like results than any other gifts in the universe. Children’s gifts to poor little outcast, forgotten, and neglected children are seeds of kindness that will live as long as this world endures, and they will then bloom in Paradise for ever.
Christians who receive their strength for the conflicts and trials of life from reading light books while sitting in drawing-room slippers, and under the sound of frothy conversation, instead of from closet prayer and faith, and the rain and sunshine of heaven, are like window plants, which derive their strength from cold and poisonous water put to their roots. Plants, whether in nature or grace, grown under such circumstances soon become unhealthy and drooping, and unable to stand the bare breath of opposition.
Christians living upon the church roll in name only, without the cheering and enlivening influence of the Holy Spirit, will become like plants grown in a dark room, pale and feeble. Some Christian lives are weeds, and may be known by their crotchets, tempers, and wrinkles.