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In an hour of unutterable grief, we need the voice of infinite mercy to cheer us, and the arm of infinite love for our support

Many a man who might walk over burning ploughshares into heaven stumbles from the path because there is gravel in his shoes

Think for a moment of the great agents and engines of our civilization, and then think what shadowy ideas they all once were. The wheels of the steamship turned as swiftly as they do now, but as silent and unsubstantial as the motions of the inventor’s thought; and in the noiseless loom of his meditation were woven the sinews of the printing-press, whose thunder shakes the world

Some men exercise their religion for a little while in the morning, or in the evening; walk it out for a few moments and let it take the air, or give it a turn on Sundays; but this is all. What an emaciated, dyspeptic, valetudinarian sort of religion is this! This great gospel is not a cramped, feeble, narrow thing of times and seasons, but wherever God can be worshipped or humanity be served, or the spirit of love manifested, there is the work of true religion. And what glorious opportunities there are for thus serving our God in the every-day intercourse of the world! What opportunities for communing with Him in his infinite mercy, and feeling the hem of his garment in His daily providence! What an opportunity for seeing Him in the great Temple of Nature where all is loveliness and sublimity, and his glorious works above and around look down upon you, bearing the impress of the Father’s face. These are but the chances of a single day; but how numerous and how pregnant would they become if we would but set our hearts upon their discovery.

Religion is the most substantial thing in the world; it can take more hard knocks than anything else. Geology has jammed great boulders against it, and it is not even scratched; astronomy has assailed it, yet amid the bright spheres of heaven it lifts its glorious head. It has stood all the wear and tear of all sciences and all discussion; it is the most substantial thing you can think of; it is the most robust thing in existence. Do not think you can hurt it by taking it into your workshop. Let it out of your clothes pocket; it will suffer there. The only thing that religion dreads is lack of room, lack of freedom, lack of breath. Take it out of your pocket and bring it into everything. Do not fear that it will desecrate religion to bring it into contact with the world. It will consecrate the world; it will consecrate every deed and every act, and make them glorious.

If one’s conscience be as dead as stone, it is as heavy too

Our life is what we make it. An insignificant game or a noble trial; a dream or a reality; a play of the senses worn out in selfish use, and flying “swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,” or an ascension of the soul, by daily duties and unfaltering faith, to more spiritual relations and to loftier toils

No man knows the genuineness of his convictions until he has sacrificed something for them

It is not death to have the body called back to the earth, and dissolved into its kindred elements, and mouldered to dust, and, it may be, turn to daisies, in the grave. But it is death to have the soul paralyzed, its inner life quenched, its faculties dissipated; that is death.

No man knows the genuineness of his convictions until he has sacrificed something for them.