Work is always healthier for us than idleness; it is always better to wear out shoes
than sheets. PP128

There’s no shame about any honest calling; don’t be afraid of soiling your hands,
there’s plenty of soap to be had. PT142

God sends every bird its food, but he does not throw it into the nest: he gives us our
daily bread, but it is through our own labour. PT143

To live a life of comparative ease and enjoyment shames me. To work to weariness
seems nothing. After all, what are we doing compared with what he has done? 1128.479

Man was not made for an idle life, labour is evidently his proper condition. Even
when man was perfect he was placed in the garden, not to admire its flowers, but to
keep it and to dress it. If he needed to work when he was perfect, much more does he
require the discipline of labour now that he is fallen. 1670.398

Amongst the sanitary and salutary regulations of the moral universe there is none
much better than this—that men must work. 1948.99

The religion of mere brain and jaw does not amount to much. We want the religion of
hands and feet. 2195.163

God sent the manna from heaven; but the people had to go out every morning, and
get it in; and when they had gathered it, we read that they used to beat it in mortars,
or grind it in mills, and bake it in pans, and make it into cakes. God is not the patron
of idleness. 2332.523

We cannot have any drones; we must have all working bees in the hive. I think it
would be a good resolution for the Tabernacle to expel every member that is not
doing something or other for the Lord Jesus Christ. 3551.82

Immediate fruit may come, for God worketh marvellously, but whether it does or not,
your plain duty is to sow. Reap you shall, but meanwhile you must be satisfied to go
on sowing, sowing, sowing, even to the end. Reaping is your reward, but sowing is
your work. WCo93

The law of God is no more than God might most righteously ask of us. If God were
about to give us a more tolerant law, it would be an admission on his part that he
asked too much at first. Can that be supposed? 1660.283

Once more: the entrance of the law makes the offence to abound in this sense, that
the rebellious will of man rises up in opposition to it. Because God commands, man
refuses; and because he forbids, man desires. 2012.134

Listen to me a moment, and quit your fancied strength: you, my hearer, cannot keep
the law of God, for you have already broken it. How can you preserve a crystal vase
entire when you have already dashed it to atoms? 2050.591

Depend upon it, there is nothing wrong but the law condemns it, and there is nothing
right but the law approves it. 2228.533

And inasmuch as we had broken all God’s laws, and did not wish to own it, we hated
the law itself, we kicked against it, and tried to persuade ourselves that it was the
root of the offence, instead of our own wilful hearts being the source of the evil. 2587.434

Even Moses could not carry those tables in his hand without breaking them, nor can
I do any better than he did. 2992.291

Dost thou think that Christ would have come all the way from heaven to keep the
law for thee if thou couldst keep it for thyself? 2992.292

Terrible is the plight of the man who has to depend upon what Sinai can give him; he
is wretched in life, he shall be troubled in death, he shall be lost for ever in eternity. 3206.337

The law is such a law that Adam failed to keep it, though innocent; how, then, shall
you keep it while imperfect? 3355.244

The law is also very useful, because it shows us our defections and stains. It is like
the looking-glass which my lady holds up to her face, that she may see if there be any
spot on it. But she cannot wash her face with the looking-glass. When the mirror has
done its utmost, then there are the same stains. It cannot take away a single spot, it
can only show where one is. And the law, though it reveals our sin, our shortcomings,
our transgressions, it cannot remove the sin or the transgression. It is weak for that
purpose, because it was never intended to accomplish such an end. BA267

Take away all thought that God sees and hears, and you have removed the
underlying basis upon which morality itself is to be built up. A godless world is a
lawless world. Anarchy comes in when the fear of God goes out; and all the mischiefs
that you can imagine, and much more, rush in like a flood. 2118.664

Little is got by law, but much is lost by it. PP85

Don’t go to law unless you have nothing to lose: lawyers’ houses are built on fools’
heads. PT56

I would much rather not fall into the jaws of a crocodile or the hands of a lawyer: the
only suit that lasts too long is a lawsuit, and that would not suit me at all. PT159

If somebody were to assert that I am not here, and that I am not speaking, I have no
doubt that, with proper pay, a lawyer could be found to prove it; and what a lawyer
could do, a great many, who are not learned in the law, could do as well. 2304.186

Satan is a very old lawyer, he has been in the profession for many centuries, and he
knows how to raise all manner of quibbles and difficulties, and he can argue and
reason in a very crafty fashion; so, your best plan is not to answer him at all, except
just to say, “I have put my case into the hands of my great Advocate, the Lord Jesus
Christ. If you have anything to say, you must say it to him.” 2883.236

I wonder whether we shall ever have a day such as the bees celebrate in its due
season. You may, perhaps, have seen them dismissing the unproductives. It is a
remarkable sight. They say to themselves, “Here are a lot of drones eating our honey,
but never making any; let us turn them out.” There is a dreadful buzz, is there not?
But out they go. I do not propose to turn you out, or to make a buzz; but if ever those
who do work for Christ should burn with a holy indignation against do-nothings,
some of you will find the place too hot for you. BA60

If you are idle in Christ’s work, you are active in the devil’s work. TN77

The manna which the children of Israel kept till morning bred worms and stank: idle
grace would soon become active corruption. WWi55

Some temptations come to the industrious, but all temptations attack the idle. WWi57

The men who escape without abuse in this world are the men who do nothing at all. WWi105

The iniquity of doing nothing is a sin not so often spoken of as it should be. WWi134

The sin of doing nothing is about the biggest of all sins, for it involves most of the
others. WWi136

Samson would have scarcely slept on Delilah’s lap if he had foreseen that his hair
would be cut, and his eyes put out by the Philistines. Up then, ye drowsy professors,
for the Philistines are upon you! 996.342

Among the do-nothings all mischief begins. 1349.218

He who does little dreams much. 1670.399

Alas, the loiterers are many, but the labourers are few. 1602.320

It is very seldom that a sluggard is honest: he owes at least more labour to the world
than he pays. 1948.99

In the cause and kingdom of Christ, although the race is not to the swift, it is
certainly not to the sluggish; and although salvation is not of him that willeth nor of
him that runneth, it is certainly not of him that does not will and does not run. 1979.470

A brother prayed, recently, for those who were detained on beds of sickness and
arm-chairs of laziness; and I am afraid there are a good many of the second sort. 3082.114

Idle persons can scarcely be said to be in danger, they are a stage beyond that, and
are already overcome. 3143.217

The Book of Proverbs deals very hard blows against sluggards, and Christian
ministers do well frequently to denounce the great sin of idleness, which is the
mother of a huge family of sins. 3149.293

Idle Christians are often unhappy Christians. 3499.80

Many a man can bear affliction, but few men can endure prosperity; and I have
marked it, and you must have marked it too, that the most perilous thing in all the
world is to step suddenly from obscurity to power. 1277.78

Here is a good searching question for a man to ask himself as he reviews his past
life:—Have I written in the snow? Will my life-work endure the lapse of years and the
fret of change? Has there been anything immortal in it, which will survive the
speedy wreck of all sublunary things? The boys inscribe their names in capitals in the
snow, and in the morning’s thaw the writing disappears; will it be so with my work,
or will the characters which I have carved outlast the brazen tablets of history?
Have I written in the snow? FA134

Let us be banded together as one man; let us contend earnestly for the faith once
delivered to the saints; let us pray with fervour, let us live in holiness, let us preach
constantly, and preach with fire, and let us so live, that we may impress our age, and
leave our footprints on the sands of time. 639.397

I believe that there are numbers of people who call themselves Christians, who might
be tied hand and foot, and flung into the Atlantic, and nobody would miss them
beyond the two or three members of their own families. They do nothing; they live for
nothing. 2491.547

Your deeply lying character—I will not say that it is beyond the power of grace to
save him, but I will say this, it is the rarest thing under heaven for a man who has
long been a liar ever to be converted. 1517.64

I would not wish to assert as a general rule that which happens to be the result of my
personal observation; but be the rule what it may, all the world over, this one thing
is a statement of my own personal experience,—I have constantly seen almost all
sorts of people converted—great blasphemers, pleasure-seekers, thieves,
drunkards, unchaste persons, and hardened reprobates, but rarely have I seen a man
converted who has been a thorough-paced liar. I might have been still more correct
if I had said never to my knowledge have I seen a wily, crafty man of cunning become
a disciple of Jesus. 1585.113

How well should those live who are to live so little! TD39:5

Here is the history of the grass—sown, grown, blown, mown, gone; and the
history of man is not much more. TD90:6

Remember you are a part of a great procession which is always moving by; others
come and go before your own eyes, you see them, and they disappear, and you
yourself are moving onward to another and more real world. 1175.301

Some men number their cattle, number their acres, number their pounds, but do not
number their days, or, if they do, they fail to draw the inference from them which
both reason and grace suggest—that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. 1179.349

Who among us can reckon upon a single hour? We talk of being living men: let us
correct ourselves, and feel from this moment that we are dying men, whose every
breath brings them nearer to the grave. We are and are not; we walk in a vain show,
and are disquieted in vain. 1258.565

Our crowded cemeteries supply ten thousand arguments why each one of us may
expect to die in due time. 1719.257

Yes, we admit that we shall die, but not so soon as to make it a pressing matter; we
imagine that we are not within measurable distance of the tomb. Even the oldest
man gives himself a little longer lease, and when he has passed his four-score years
we have seen him hugging life with as much tenacity as if he had just commenced it.
Brethren, in this we are not wise; but death will not spare us because we avoid him. 1773.182

St. Augustine used to say he did not know whether to call it a dying life or a living
death, and I leave you the choice between those two expressions. This is certainly a
dying life; its march is marked by graves. Nothing but a continuous miracle keeps
any one of us from the sepulchre. Were omnipotence to stay its power but for a
moment, earth would return to earth, and ashes to ashes. It is a dying life: and
equally true is it that it is a living death. We are always dying. Every beating pulse
we tell leaves but the number less: the more years we count in our life, the fewer
remain in which we shall behold the light of day. 1773.185

We are all moving, and yet we do not perceive it; even so while you are listening to
this sermon you are all being borne onward towards eternity at lightning speed. 1773.186

Yesterday I was born: to-day I live: to-morrow I must die. 1870.627

There are some of us who believe that there is a spot on this earth where our mortal
remains are to lie, and it is possible that the tree, of which the planks will form our
coffin, has already been cut down. 2951.424

Do not think that you are stable, fixed in one position; fancy not that you are
standing still; you are not. Your pulses each moment beat the funeral marches to
the tomb. You are chained to the chariot of moving time; there is no bridling the
steeds, or leaping from the chariot; you must be constantly in motion. 3126.15

You are nearer home than you thought you were, and every moment you are getting
nearer still. 3355.251

It is not dying that is the great difficulty; it is living. 2285.583

The spider’s line is a cable compared with the thread of thy life. Dreams are
substantial masonry compared with the bubble structure of thy being. TN15

Our time is fixed and settled by eternal decree. Let us not be anxious about it, but
wait with patience till the gates of pearl shall open. ME255

It is almost a misuse of language to talk about life insurance, for we cannot insure
our lives; they must for ever remain uninsured as to their continuance here. 1363.395

May it not involve more sin to have the light and not to act upon it than to be in the
dark altogether? 1093.59

People in deep trouble like somebody to hear them all through: even little children
are comforted by telling mother all about it. We are in such a hurry with poor
troubled spirits that we hasten them on to the end of the sentence, and try to make
them skip the dreary details. But to them this seems unkind, for their story is sacred;
and, therefore, they go slowly on with it, till we are quite tired. I have often hurried
on a poor despondent creature till I have seen the uselessness of it: it is always best
to let them spin on. It does them good. 1819.45

Emotions are not fired by logic; and yet reasons furnish fuel for the flame. 2146.292

God has, in great mercy, given us a day, one day in seven, wherein to rest, and to
think of holy things. There were seven days that God had in the week. He said,
“Take six, and use them in your business.” No, we must have the seventh as well. It
is as if one, upon the road, saw a poor man in distress, and having but seven
shillings, the generous person gave the poor man six; but when the wretch had
scrambled on his feet, he followed his benefactor to knock him down, and steal the
seventh shilling from him. How many do this! The Sabbath is their day for sport, for
amusement, for anything but the service of God. They rob God of his day, though it
be but one in seven. This is base unthankfulness. 2257.245

You have but one day in the week, as it were, devoted to these things; one day of
building, and six of pulling down. With many it is one day’s storing, and six days
scattering. It is but a slight advance that we make towards heaven. 3353.224

I know that certain brethren say that the Lord’s prayer is not for believers; but their
dictum in such a case is not worth the breath they waste in delivering it. I am quite
satisfied, for one, to pray as my Lord taught me, and if they prefer to pray as their
whims teach them it is at their own risk. 1492.498

I do trust, dear friends, that in a very short time we shall celebrate the Lord’s
Supper every Sabbath-day. I am convinced that a weekly celebration is Scriptural,
and I see more and more the need of it. 532.549

There can be no doubt about the death of Christ, because through long ages all
history bears record that Christian men and women have met together, and have
eaten bread, and have drunk wine, to keep up the memory of his sufferings and
death. This is better than if there had been a statue erected, or than if a document
had been written, or than if a brass tablet had been inscribed. 2307.218

I love to come every Lord’s-day to the communion table; I should be very sorry to
come only once a month, or, as some do, only once a year. I could not afford to come
as seldom as that. I need to be reminded, forcibly reminded, of my dear Lord and
Master very often. 2307.220

It is not a converting ordinance, nor a saving ordinance; it is an establishing
ordinance and a comforting ordinance for those who are saved. 2865.15

So, when centuries have followed centuries, and Time himself shall have become
bald, and his scythe shall have lost its edge;—when yon sun shall have grown dim
with age, and the moon shall be pale with fading weakness;—even then shall this
ordinance be as fresh and as new as ever. 2872.102

What does this supper mean? It means communion: communion with Christ,
communion with one another. 3295.146

He has received God to be his treasure, and his heart and his treasure too he has sent
on ahead. On the other side of the river all his joys and all his treasures are to be
found. Here he looks upon his earthly joys as things that are lent him—borrowed
comforts. If his children die, he does not wonder: he knew that they were not
immortal. If his friends are taken away, he is not astonished: he understood that
they were born of women, and therefore would die like the rest. If his wealth takes to
itself wings, he does not marvel: he knew that it was a bird of passage, and he is not
astonished when, like the swallows, it flies elsewhere. 764.437

Oh sheep, there is no wool on your back but what will come off; child of God, there is
no comfort in your possession but what will either leave you, or you will leave it.
Nothing is our own except our God. 1543.355

So now let us refresh ourselves with the thoughts of what we have, and forget what
we have lost. Let us think of what is laid up for us, and forget the penury of our
estate below. 1825.111

The tremendous fact of man’s utter ruin is the underlying cause of the necessity for
grace to seek out its object. If the fall had not been so complete in its ruin, there had
been no need to seek us, for we should have sought the Lord. This, however, is the
gloomy truth, that we are altogether become abominable, and all flesh hath
perverted its way. Of this fact there can be no doubt, for you and I, who have been
saved by grace, know right well that we were lost; hopelessly and for ever lost, had
not Jesus sought us out. Many of the chosen seed are suffered to indulge in sin until
they are lost even to the pretence of virtue and morality; lost to the hopes of the most
earnest friends, and the most affectionate entreaties of anxious relatives. Lost we all
were in our federal head, by imputation of his sin; lost, effectually, by infusion of his
corrupt nature; lost, afterwards, actually, by our practice; lost, manifestly, by an
accumulation of evil habits, and the growing force of depraved appetites. 525.458

It is a very remarkable fact that no inspired preacher of whom we have any record
ever uttered such terrible words concerning the destiny of the lost as our Lord Jesus
Christ. You may search the Scriptures through, but you will not find more solemnly
alarming expressions than those which the loving Jesus employed. 682.172

How many have made the dread compact with the Prince of Darkness! They have
gained the world but lost their soul. They have sold their birth-right for a mess of
pottage, and bartered heaven for hell; time has been taken and eternity rejected. The
honour of men has been esteemed more than the praise of God; they have grasped
the gold and it has been a mill-stone around their neck, and into the deepest depths
of woe it has dragged them, lost! lost! lost for ever! 691.285

However much men may rebel against the doctrine, it is a truth of inspiration that
we are lost even when we are born, and that the word “lost” has to do, not only with
those who have gone into sin grossly and wickedly, but even with all mankind. 1100.134

If you do get lost, some of you will have to wade through your mother’s tears and leap
over your father’s prayers, and your minister’s entreaties; you will have to force a
passage through the warnings of godly people and the examples of pious relatives.
Why this effort to destroy your own souls? Why so desperately set on self-destruction?
1551.441

For a little sin, or for a sin, however great, which had but little of evil in its
consequences, we might have been saved by some finite being; but if God himself
must quit his high abode, and sojourn here to be our Saviour, then was our ruin
terrible in the extreme. 2416.266

It is a dreadful thing for anyone to be lost; I do not know if there is a more dreadful
word in the English language than that word “lost.” 3288.67

They are so lost that they need saving, but they are also so lost that they need
seeking. 3309.319

What is meant by “the lost”? Well, “lost” is a dreadful word. I should need much time
to explain it; but if the Spirit of God, like a flash of light, shall enter into your heart,
and show you what you are by nature, you will accept that word “lost” as descriptive
of your condition, and understand it better than a thousand words of mine could
enable you to do. Lost by the fall; lost by inheriting a depraved nature; lost by your
own acts and deeds; lost by a thousand omissions of duty, and lost by countless deeds
of overt transgression; lost by habits of sin; lost by tendencies and inclinations which
have gathered strength and dragged you downward into deeper and yet deeper
darkness and iniquity; lost by inclinations which never turn of themselves to that
which is right, but which resolutely refuse divine mercy and infinite love. We are lost
wilfully and willingly; lost perversely and utterly; but still lost of our own accord,
which is the worst kind of being lost that possibly can be. We are lost to God, who has
lost our heart’s love, and lost our confidence, and lost our obedience; lost to the
church, which we cannot serve; lost to truth, which we will not see; lost to right,
which cause we do not uphold; lost to heaven, into whose sacred precincts we can
never come; lost—so lost that unless almighty mercy shall intervene, we shall be
cast into the pit that is bottomless to sink for ever. “LOST! LOST! LOST!” The very
word seems to me to be the knell of an impenitent soul. “Lost! Lost! Lost!” I hear the
dismal tolling! A soul’s funeral is being celebrated. Endless death has befallen an
immortal being! It comes up as a dreadful wail from far beyond the boundaries of life
and hope, forth from those dreary regions of death and darkness where spirits dwell
who would not have Christ to reign over them. “Lost! Lost! Lost!” Ah me, that ever
these ears should hear that doleful sound! Better a whole world on fire than a single
soul lost! Better every star quenched and yon skies a wreck than a single soul to be
lost! 3309.317

Love not clay as if it were undying—love not dust as though it were eternal. 349.11

We are sure he loves who dies for love. 1128.471

Love and self-denial for the object loved go hand-in-hand. If I profess to love a certain
person, and yet will neither give my silver nor my gold to relieve his wants, nor in
any way deny myself comfort or ease for his sake, such love is contemptible; it wears
the name, but lacks the reality of love: true love must be measured by the degree to
which the person loving will be willing to subject himself to crosses and losses, to
suffering and self-denials. After all, the value of a thing in the market is what a man
will give for it, and you must estimate the value of a man’s love by that which he is
willing to give up for it. 1128.471

That love which would lead its beloved into sin is lust; it deserves not the name of
love; but true love will ever seek the highest health and wholeness (which is holiness)
of its object. Pure affection will grieve to see a fault, mourn over a folly, and seek to
remove a blot. Perfect love seeks the perfection of the thing it loves. 1575.2

Perhaps some of you do not feel that there is anything very remarkable in this love of
the Lord to the loveless. I should like you to try if you could love somebody who has
nothing about him that is at all lovable. 2394.3

Love cannot endure a doubt. If love is crossed with doubt it becomes jealousy, and
that is cruel as the grave. 3161.435

We shall not long have love to man if we do not first and chiefly cultivate love to God. GS314

You are no lover of Christ if you do not love his children. As soon as ever the heart is
given to the master of the house it is given to the children of the house. Love Christ
and you will soon love all that love him. 533.562

I am told that Christians do not love each other. I am very sorry if that be true, but I
rather doubt it, for I suspect that those who do not love each other are not Christians. 668.6

Now no man is a Christian who does not love Christians. He, who, being in the
church, is yet not of its heart and soul, is but an intruder in the family. 1008.483

Christians, you are to love one another, not because of the gain which you get from
one another, but rather because of the good you can do to one another. 2936.246

Love to God will help a man to persevere in service when otherwise he would have
given up his work. AM195

Nothing gives Christ greater delight than the love of His people. GS200

Love is an exotic; it is not a plant which will flourish naturally in human soil, it must
be watered from above. Love to Jesus is a flower of a delicate nature, and if it
received no nourishment but that which could be drawn from the rock of our hearts
it would soon wither. ME326

Your Lord is very jealous of your love, O believer. Did He choose you? He cannot bear
that you should choose another. ME512

You know the Master might have said to Peter, had he appealed to his works, “Yes,
thou mayest preach, and yet not love me; thou mayest pray, after a fashion, and yet
not love me; thou mayest do all these works, and yet have no love to me. I did not ask
thee what are the evidences of thy love, I asked thee the fact of it.” 117.85

I could not help saying once, I remember, that I would love God even if he damned
me, because he was so gracious to others. 535.588

I once knew a good woman who was the subject of many doubts, and when I got to
the bottom of her doubt, it was this: she knew she loved Christ, but she was afraid he
did not love her. “Oh!” I said, “that is a doubt that will never trouble me; never, by
any possibility, because I am sure of this, that the heart is so corrupt, naturally, that
love to God never did get there without God’s putting it there.” You may rest quite
certain, that if you love God, it is a fruit, and not a root. 762.413

You cannot love a thing without becoming something like it, in proportion to the force
of love; and just in proportion as you love Jesus you must get like him. 1280.118

But if you feel that everything that has to do with God you love—his work, his
service, his people, his day, his book—and that you do all that in you lies to spread
his kingdom, both by prayer, by word of mouth, by your liberality, and by your
example; if you do love you can easily see it, I think, and there are many ways by
which you can test yourself. 1782.299

Ah! if that question, “If ye love me,” needed to be raised in the sacred college of the
twelve, much more must it be allowed to sift our churches, and to test ourselves. 1932.654

Perhaps, they who love the Master best are the very people who will be the most
likely to have such a high opinion of the love which he deserves, that they will often
chide themselves that they do not love him at all, when they see how little their love
is compared with that perfection of affection which he deserves. 2478.386

Here is the strength of the saints, here is the glory which God getteth out of true
believers,—that they cannot and will not be soured against their God. 2557.86

I cannot bear it—that we should love Jesus little. It seems to me horrible. Not to
have your heart all on fire for Christ—this is execrable! Let us love him to the
utmost. Let us ask him to give us larger hearts, and to fire them with the flame that
is his own, that we may love him to the utmost possibilities of affection. 3301.221

Some persons say, “We went to such-and-such a place, and the people there love their
minister too much.” That would be very dreadful, but it is not so. As for ministers
being in danger of being ruined by too much love, it very seldom falls to their lot.
Very generally, they get quite as many kicks as anything else; and if they do get too
much love in any particular place, they get too much of the reverse somewhere else. 3133.102

Now, sometimes, there is a foundation for this kind of fear, for men do act in a very
hectoring manner to their fellow-men, and the very persons who talk most about
being liberal in their views are generally the greatest persecutors. If I must have a
religious enemy, let me have a professed and avowed bigot, but not one of your “free
thinkers” or “broad churchmen” as they are called, for there is nobody who can hate
as they do; and the lovers of liberal-mindedness who have no creed at all think it to
be their special duty to be peculiarly contemptuous to those who have some degree
of principle, and cannot twist and turn exactly as they can. 3098.303

Julius Cæsar coming towards Rome with his army, and hearing that the senate and
people had fled from it, said, “They that will not fight for this city, what city will they
fight for?” If we will not take pains for the kingdom of heaven, what kingdom will we
take pains for? FA105

The Lord would not have us follow him for the sake of what we get from him. He
would have us men, against whom even Satan could not say, “Hast thou not set a
hedge about him, and all that he has?” Our Lord desires followers who will cling to
him at all risks, for no other reason but their value of himself and his truth. 2188.79

Right and wrong vanish at once. Loyalty to your leader—that is the point. Never
mind where he leads you, follow him blindly. You are even told that you may do
wrong because it is politically right. I hate such an argument! 2217.424

Philip Henry’s advice to his daughter: “If you would keep warm in this cold season
(January, 1692), take these four directions: 1. Get into the sun; under his blessed
beams there are warmth and comfort. 2. Go near the fire. ‘Is not my word like a fire?’
How many cheering passages are there! 3. Keep in motion and action—stirring up
the grace and gift of God that is in you. 4. Seek Christian communion. ‘How can one
be warm alone?’” FA237

My graces languish, my corruptions rage, my faith is weak, my devotion is cold; all
these are reasons why His healing hand should be laid upon me. ME13

It is remarked that Joshua never grew weary in the fighting, but Moses did grow
weary in the praying; the more spiritual an exercise, the more difficult it is for flesh
and blood to maintain it. ME215

It is the loss of your first love that makes you seek the comfort of your bodies instead
of the prosperity of your souls. 217.419

It seems to me that everybody is enthusiastic except Christians, and that men can
get their blood hot on any subject except religion; that in these days the ice has been
given to the Church of God, and the fire has been cast upon the world. 569.274

Shall an agony of bloody sweat be recompensed by heavy eye-lids and yawning
mouths? 793.63

Cold makes us shiver, and great heat causes us pain, but a tepid bath is comfort
itself. Such a temperature suits human nature. The world is always at peace with a
lukewarm church, and such a church is always pleased with itself. 1185.424

Religion cannot long be lukewarm; it will either die out or it will kindle and set you
all on fire. 1400.117

Two conditions will help us to escape lukewarmness. The one is to be really rich in
grace; for they that have much grace will not be lukewarm. Grace is as a fire in the
soul, and he that hath much of it, so as to become an advanced Christian, cannot but
have a heart boiling with earnestness. The other way is to have but little grace, but
to be painfully aware of it, to be deeply conscious of soul-poverty, to sigh and cry
because you are not what you should be. 1677.482

Have you been getting cold in heart? Still, Christ is your Brother, and he owns it. As
I have reminded you, the Master did not call his disciples “brethren” till after they
had all forsaken him. What! does his grace seem to grow as our sin grows? It seems
so: “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” 2561.139

I am bold to say, “There is no cure for lukewarmness like a good supper with Christ.”
If he enters in, and sups with you, and you with him, your lukewarmness will
disappear at once. 2577.320

Let the minister be as earnest as ever he may, the lukewarmness of professors to a
large extent neutralizes any effect which his ministry produces, because the world
will judge the church, not so much by the pulpit as by the pew. 2802.509

I believe that many professing Christians are cold and uncomfortable because they
are doing nothing for their Lord; but if they actively served him, their blood would
begin to circulate spiritually, and it would be well with them. 3136.140

My soul, see here the danger of gratified passions; they are the janitors of hell. TD78:30

He who tells little lies, will soon think nothing of great ones, for the principle is the
same. PT155

Grace makes men truthful, and creates in them an utter horror of everything
approaching to falsehood. If David would not have a liar in his sight, much less will
the Lord; neither he that loves nor he who makes a lie shall be admitted into heaven.
Liars are obnoxious enough on earth; the saints shall not be worried with them in
another world. TD101:7

Show me a man that is habitually or frequently a liar, and you show me a man who
will have his portion in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. I do not care
to what denomination of Christians he may belong, if a man speaks the thing that is
not, I am sure he is none of Christ’s; and it is very sad to know that there are some in
all fellowships who have this great and grievous fault, that you cannot trust them in
what they say. God deliver us from that! 640.403

When we begin to be believers we cease to be liars. 1346.182

Lies cannot be easily made to pair with each other, whereas truths are cut to the
same pattern. 1643.77

Some persons are so warped that nothing is straight to them; their minds seem to see
things crookedly; long practice in untruthfulness has given them an evil bias.
1986.559

I have heard of men who mark a hundred as a hundred and twenty, and who mark
goods as of certain lengths when they know they are not of such lengths; and they
say, “It is the custom of the trade.” Well, if it be the custom of your trade to lie,
remember that it is God’s custom to send all liars to hell.
3152.333

Liars have need of good memories. 3500.88