RICHARD CECIL

Wisdom prepares for the worst, but folly leaves the worst for the day when it comes.

God's way of answering the Christian's prayer for more patience, experience, hope and love often is to put him into the furnace of affliction.

Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false.

The first step towards knowledge is to know that we are ignorant.

If I have made an appointment with you, I owe you punctuality, I have no right to throw away your time, if I do my own.

There is no such thing as a fixed policy, because policy like all organic entities is always in the making.

Self-will so ardent and active that it will break a world to pieces to make a stool to sit on.

The history of all the great characters of the Bible is summed up in this one sentence: They acquainted themselves with God, and acquiesced His will in all things.

The world looks at preachers out of church to know what they mean in it.

Abraham teaches us the right way of conversing with God : "And Abraham fell on his face, and God talked with him." When we plead with Him, our faces should be in the dust.

Providence is a greater mystery than revelation.

The spirit and tone of your home will have great influence on your children. If it is what it ought to be, it will fasten conviction on their minds, however wicked they may become.

The Christian's fellowship with God is rather a habit than a rapture.

In viewing the scheme of redemption, I seem like one viewing a vast and complicated machine of exquisite contrivance; what I comprehend of it is wonderful, what I do not, is, perhaps, more so still.

Time can take nothing from the BIBLE. It is the living monitor. Like the sun, it is the same in its light and influence to man this day which it was years ago. It can meet every present inquiry and console every present loss

Eloquence is vehement simplicity.

It is much easier to settle a point than to act on it.

Sin, without strong restraints, would pull God from His throne, make the world the minion of its lusts, and all beings bow down and worship.

The only instance of praying to saints, mentioned in the Bible, is that of the rich man in torment calling upon Abraham; and let it be remembered, that it was practised only by a lost soul and without success.

The Christian will find his parentheses for prayer even in the busiest hours of life.

Let family worship be short, savory, simple, plain, tender, heavenly.

Philosophy is a proud, sullen detector of the poverty and misery of man. It may turn him from the world with a proud, sturdy contempt; but it cannot come forward and say, here are rest, grace, pardon, peace, strength, and consolation.

Faith laughs at the shaking of the spear; unbelief trembles at the shaking of a leaf.

Every man will have his own criterion in forming his judgment of others. I depend very much on the effect of affliction. I consider how a man comes out of the furnace; gold will lie for a month in the furnace without losing a grain.

The Old and New Testaments contain but one scheme of religion. Neither part of this scheme can be understood without the other.