One proud, ungracious word, one needless contention, one covetous action may cut the throat of many a sermon and blast the fruit of all that you have been doing!
If you seek first to please God and are satisfied therein you have but one to please instead of multitudes. A multitude of masters are harder to please than one.
Love Christ and you will hate that which caused His death. Love Him, and you will love to be made like Him and hate that which is so contrary to Him.
Parents! It is in your hands to do your children the greatest kindness, or cruelty, in all the world! Help them to know God and to be saved and you do more for them than if you helped them to be kings or princes. If you neglect their souls, and breed them in ignorance, worldliness, ungodliness, and sin you betray them to the devil, the enemy of souls, even as truly as if you sold them to him! You sell them to be slaves to Satan! You betray them to him who will deceive them and abuse them in this life, and torment them in eternity!
O what a blessed day that will be, when I shall stand on the shore and look back on the raging seas I have safely passed when I shall review my pains and sorrows, my fears and tears and possess the glory which was the end of all!
Do not waste your time on light, weak, trivial books. Make careful choice of the books which you read and let the holy Scriptures ever have the preeminence.
Lay siege to your sins and starve them out by keeping away the food and fuel which is their maintenance and life. The longer you delay, the more your sin gets strength and rooting. If you cannot bend the twig, how will you be able to bend it when it is a tree?
Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of; you might not pray for the blessing of God; you could not review with a quiet conscience on your dying bed; you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should surprise you in the act!
O spend your time as you would account of it in the day of Judgment!
Holiness is nothing else but the habitual and predominant devotion and dedication of soul, and body, and life, and all that we have to God; and esteeming, and loving, and serving, and seeking Him, before all the pleasures and prosperity of the flesh and the world.
He is a foolish physician, and a most unfaithful friend who will let a sick man die for fear of troubling him. In the same way, we are cruel wretches to our friends if we will rather allow them to go quietly to Hell than anger them or hazard our friendship with them.
Prayer is the vital breath of the Christian.
Before and after you read the Scripture, pray earnestly that the Spirit who wrote it may interpret it for you, keep you from unbelief and error, and lead you into the truth.
It is as hard a thing to maintain a sound understanding, a tender conscience, a lively, gracious, heavenly spirit, and an upright life in this poor world as to keep your candle lit in the midst of a great storm.
It is not the reading of many books which is necessary to make a man wise or godly but well reading of a few.
The churchyard is the marketplace where all things are rated at their true value and those who are approaching it, talk of the world and its vanities with a wisdom unknown before.
Every time we look upon our congregations let us remember that they are the purchase of Christ's blood, and therefore should be regarded by us with the deepest interest and the most tender affection!
Oh, that Christians would learn to live with one eye on Christ crucified, and the other on his coming!
Luxury and gluttony are a sin exceeding contrary to the love of God it is idolatry! It has the heart, which God should have; and therefore, gluttons are commonly and well called belly-gods, and god-bellies, because that love, that care, that delight, that service and diligence which God should have been given by the glutton to his belly and his throat.
[Richard Baxter]
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