I do not say the mind gets informed by action, — bodily action; but it does get earnestness and strength by it, and that nameless something that gives a man the mastership of his faculties.

This earth will be looked back on like a lowly home, and this life of ours be remembered like a short apprenticeship to duty.

Yes, death, — the hourly possibility of it, — death is the sublimity of life.

Duty reaches down the ages in its effects, and into eternity; and when the man goes about it resolutely, it seems to me now as though his footsteps were echoing beyond the stars, though only heard faintly in the atmosphere of this world.

Yes, what I am to be everlastingly, I am growing to be now — now in this present time so little thought of, this time which the sun rises and sets in, and the clock strikes in, and I wake and sleep in.

Yes, I live in God, and shall eternally. It is His hand upholds me now; and death will be but an uplifting of me into His bosom.

Faith is the inspiration of nobleness, it is the strength of integrity; it is the life of love, and is everlasting growth for it; it is courage of soul, and bridges over for our crossing the gulf between worldliness and heavenly-mindedness; and it is the sense of the unseen, without which we could not feel God nor hope for heaven.

A man who is not poor nor ill, nor about to be stoned to death, must not distress himself if he does not feel all through his life what faith Stephen had only in his last moments.

Day and night, and every moment, there are voices about us. All the hours speak as they pass; and in every event there is a message to us; and all our circumstances talk with us; but it is in Divine language, that worldliness misunderstands, that selfishness is frightened at, and that only the children of God hear rightly and happily.

Selfishness, eager for a heaven of enjoyment, is quite a different thing in the soul from love and purity and truth, yearning together for what is their natural element.