Guidance & Wisdom
We stand oft in our own light; if we should sort, or parcel out our own comforts, we should hit upon the wrong.
If men are poor, they learn to be envious; they malign those that are above them.
God’s word must be the star that guides, and his will the weight that moves our obedience.
A man may know much of Christ, and yet not learn Christ: the devils knew Christ. A man may preach Christ, and yet not learn Christ, as Judas and the pseudo-apostles. A man may profess Christ, and yet not learn Christ.
Riches are thorns; art thou angry because God hath pulled away a thorn from thee? Perhaps thy affections, which are the feet of the soul, might have stuck so fast in this golden clay that they could not have ascended up to heaven.
To learn Christ is to be made like Christ, to have the divine characters of his holiness engraven upon our hearts: we all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image.
Men can be content to be anything but what God would have them.
If men are rich, they learn to be covetous; thirsting insatiably after the world, and by unjust means scraping it together.
A man may read the figure on the dial, but he cannot tell how the day goes, unless the sun shines upon the dial: we may read the Bible over, but we can not learn the purpose, till the Spirit of God shines into our hearts.
It is an easy thing to be wicked; hell will be taken without storm.
A drop or two of vinegar will sour a whole glass of wine. Let a man have the affluence and confluence of worldly comforts, a drop or two of discontent will embitter and poison all.
A man had better be at the trouble of setting a bone, than to be lame, and in pain all his life.
The world is like a shadow that declineth; it is delightful, but deceitful; it promiseth more than we find, and it fails us when we have most need of it.
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