Strength & Perseverance
True Christianity is a fight.
The bitter must go before the sweet.
Weak as this true Church may appear to the eye of man, it is an anvil which has broken many a hammer.
No cross, no crown! No conflict, no saving Christianity!
He must fight the flesh. Even after conversion he carries within him a nature prone to evil, and a heart weak and unstable as water. That heart will never be free from imperfection in this world, and it is a miserable delusion to expect it.
It may cost much to be a Christian, but you may be sure it pays.
Here was a man of like passions with ourselves. He might have had as much greatness as earth can well give. Rank, power, place, honour, titles, dignities—all were before him, and within his grasp. These are the things for which many men are continually struggling.
The man who does not take pains about these three things must never expect to grow. Here are the roots of true Christianity. Wrong here, a man is wrong all the way through! Here is the whole reason why many professing Christians never seem to get on.
MannaScroll