In every cup of sorrow given to us by God to drink there are mixed up in the ingredients fine precious seeds of a higher life, greater joy, and abiding peace to bloom everlastingly in heaven.
Those who dabble in sin stain their hands with indelible ink, which nothing but grace can remove.
Prayer is a pump-handle, and faith the rods and bucket that lift the clear spring of heavenly truth into our earthly vessels to refresh us on the way to Zion.
Hot-tempered and fiery-tempered Christians often expose the nakedness of their souls.
Those people who think that they can go to heaven by indulging in worldly pleasure and sin are travelling in a balloon of their own manufacture, which may carry them high up in the opinion of worldlings, but in reality they are soaring into the freezing atmosphere of God’s wrath, to come down with a terrible crash.
A man with a large heart, broad sympathy, but under the influence of a short temper, often burns his fingers; while the man with a narrow soul and an envious disposition has a fire within that will blister his tongue and singe the hair off his head.
Sacred poems and hymns are the million silver steps leading to the heavenly city from every quarter of the globe; and the tunes set to them are the lovely seraphs from the angel-land taking us by the hand to lead us onward and upward to the golden doors studded with diamonds and other precious stones, which are opened to all who have been sanctified and made ready for the indescribable kingdom within.
Death is the postman from the unknown land—except to those who have seen it by the eye of faith—knocking at our door.
Once or twice we passed several men with shovels in their hands and dressed in garbs that only required a very slight stretch of imagination to make us believe that they were in the Arctic regions searching for the bodies of Sir John Franklin and his noble crew. Suddenly we dropped upon Carlisle, and for a few minutes we pulled ourselves together. As there were no sandwiches to be got, I dined off a penny bun and a sour orange, the rind of which, owing to my benumbed fingers, sorely tried my patience, and in retaliation I set to it with my teeth in a most savage manner, and cast the remnants to the wind to perish in the mud.
We duly arrived at St. Boswell’s Station. I felt nearly “done up,” and at this place I slipped, rolled, and tumbled into an hotel for a warm rest and a feed. When it was dark I turned out again and made my way by train to Kelso, the place of fame, and noted for its public spirit. As I drew near to the town I could have said with Alfred Miles, in Young England, 1880—