An unbalanced mind controlled by a restless spirit, and however gifted the person be is like an unbalanced waggon of good hay driven by a restive horse—sooner or later horse, waggon and hay will be lying on the road.—Anon.
When Bishop Hooper was condemned to be burned at Gloucester in Queen Mary’s reign a person, with the view of making him recant, said to him: “Life is sweet and death is bitter.” Hooper replied: “The death to come is more bitter and the life to come more sweet.”
Extraordinary afflictions are not always the punishment of extraordinary sins but sometimes the trial of extraordinary graces for instance Job’s afflictions.—Matthew Henry.
The Christian never sleeps in the fire or grows drowsy in the water.—Berridge.
In times of affliction we commonly meet with the sweetest experiences of God’s love.—Bunyan.
Christ is the best physician He never takes down the wrong bottle.—Berridge.
Half-way to Christ is a dreadful place.—Rev. J. H. Evans.
I would not give one straw for that assurance that sin will not damp.—
John Newton.
Backsliding is generally gradual, like the ebbing tide, wave after wave breaks apparently on the same point and it seems impossible to tell by any two or three waves whether it is the ebb or flow but watch a few minutes and the outgoing waters soon tell their own tale.—Anon.
SIGNS OF APPROACHING ILL HEALTH.
ALL who value their health will be ready to note signs that plainly indicate the approach of ill health. These are loss of appetite, distaste for wholesome food that was once palatable followed by shunning it altogether. Whenever these signs show themselves in spiritual matters, the health requires instant attention. Neglect may prove serious.
A SIGHTLESS FAMILY.
ONE cannot fancy a sadder sight than a whole family blind—father, mother, and children. A home where they have never looked on each other’s faces. The father sits with a blind boy on his knees and a blind mother with a sightless child on her breast, a child which never gladdened its mother’s heart with its smile and which in turn never saw a mother’s smile cheer it in its infant years. Truly pathetic indeed and yet there are thousands of such homes up and down the land in which spiritual blindness reigns—a blindness like that of Egypt’s which might be felt.—Anon.