God's School

Affliction is God's school in which holy virtues are acquired, and Christian character is formed.

[Hannah More]

Isaiah 48:10 ... Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. 

Psalm 119:71 ... It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes. 

Hebrews 12:11 ... Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. ❤

The Golden Pipe!!

It is the indispensable duty of every Christian to pray in private. Private prayer has many advantages. Private prayer sweetly inclines and disposes a person to a cheerful performance of every other religious duty and service. The power of godliness in the soul flourishes or decays as the private duties of the closet are attended to or neglected. 

In secret we may more freely, fully, and safely Un bosom our souls to God, than we can do in the presence of others. Private prayer is a privilege of which a Christian may at all times avail himself. No time is unseasonable for such a purpose and no place is unfit for such devotions. There is no corner so dark no place so secret, but God is there! 

He never lacks an eye to see, an ear to hear the cries and groans, nor a heart to grant the request of the one who sincerely prays to Him in secret. There are no desires so confused no requests so broken no effort so feeble as to escape His notice. The eye that God has upon His people in secret, is such a special tender eye of love as opens His ear, His heart, and His hand, for their good. Should their petitions be feeble and faint and seem to them scarcely to reach the heavens He will graciously bow down His ear and attend to the prayer from sincere lips. He knows the intentions of the heart. He perceives the motions of the soul. He records them all in the book of His remembrance and will one day openly reward all these secret transactions! 

He who would have his soul a thirst for God, public ordinances delightful to his soul, his drooping spirits refreshed, his weak faith strengthened, his strong corruptions subdued, and his affections set on heavenly things should be frequent and fervent in secret prayer. How strong in grace, how victorious over sin, how dead to the world, how alive to Christ, how fit to live, how prepared to die might many a Christian have been had he more diligently, seriously, and conscientiously discharged the duties of the closet! 

The true Christian loves to pray secretly and values such exercises for the effect they have on him in humbling the soul, mortifying pride, debasing self, weaning the heart from the world, embittering sin, rendering the mind more spiritual, and exalting the Savior in the affections. There is no means of grace more enriching to the soul than private prayer. It is the golden pipe, through which the Lord is graciously pleased to convey all spiritual blessings to the soul. 

Thus, the Christian, withdrawn for a season from the world, and realizing the immediate presence of God, the solemness of eternity, and the vast importance of heavenly things prays to his Father, who sees in secret. He gets more humbling views of himself and makes fresh discoveries of the exceeding sinfulness of his sin, of the super-abounding of Divine grace, of the boundless patience of the Lord, of the unfathomable grace He has bestowed on him, of the astonishing deliverances He has wrought for him, and of the abundant mercy which is treasured up in Christ Jesus for all true believers. 

How lamentable it is, that a duty so obvious, a privilege so great, a means of grace so enriching to the soul should ever be neglected! 

[Hannah More] 

Psalm 34:15 ... The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry.

Matthew 6:6 ... But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

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Common Mercies

That sun which shines unremittingly every day, is a stupendous exertion of God's power an astonishing exhibition of His omnipotence! In adoring the providence of God, we are apt to be struck with what is new and out of the usual course, while we often overlook long, habitual, and uninterrupted mercies. But common mercies, if less striking, are more valuable because we always have them. 

The ordinary blessings of life are overlooked for the very reason for which they ought to be most prized because they are Divinely bestowed every moment. Common mercies are most essential to our being. And when once they are withdrawn, we then find that they are also most essential to our comfort. 

Nothing raises the price of a blessing like its removal, whereas it was its continuance which should have taught us its value. Novelties usually awaken our gratitude, not considering that it is the duration of the common mercies which enhances their value. We desire fresh excitements. 

We take for granted common mercies, as things to which we have a sort of presumptive claim; as if God had no right to withdraw what He has once bestowed, as if He were obliged to continue what He has once been pleased to confer. 

[Hannah More]

Acts 14:17 ... Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.

Psalm 103:1-2 ... Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:

Psalm 116:12 ... What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me? ❤

A Worldly Spirit

Do not consider a worldly spirit as a little infirmity; as a natural, and therefore a pardonable weakness; as a trifling error, which will be overlooked for the sake of our many good qualities. A worldly spirit is, in fact the essence of our other faults, the temper that stands between us and our salvation, the spirit which is in direct opposition to the Spirit of God. 

Individual sins may more easily be cured, but a worldly spirit is the principle of all spiritual disease. A worldly spirit, where it is rooted and cherished, runs through the whole character, insinuates itself in all we say, and think, and do. It is this which makes us so dead in religion, so averse to spiritual things, so forgetful of God, so unmindful of eternity! 

[Hannah More]

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1 John 2:15-17 ...  Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

James 4:4 ... Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

Acts 15:29 ... That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.❤

Saws and Hammers!!

Isaiah 10:5 ... O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation.

Dear Mrs. Hannah More, 

I consider all second causes and instruments as mere saws and hammers in the Divine Workman's hands! They can neither give us pleasure nor pain but as our Lord and Savior is pleased to employ them.  I am firmly assured that He has done, still does, and will do all things well. 

How little can we judge of this great drama of this world by a single scene! But when we see the glorious outcome how we shall love and praise and wonder! As for myself, this old man of seventy-six is still favored with perfect health, and can still preach as loud, as long, and as often as formerly. He is still heard with acceptance and has cause to hope that the Lord blesses his ministry. 

"Oh to grace how great a debtor" is the poor African blasphemer and profligate!

I am, my dear madam, your much obliged friend,

John Newton

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More Quotes 3

It is a part of Christianity to convert every natural talent to a holy use.

   
Affliction is a sort of moral gymnasium in which the disciples of Christ are trained to robust exercise, hardy exertion, and severe conflict.

Troubles rather fix, than unsettle the Christian just as tempests only serve to root the oak faster, while an inward canker will gradually rot and decay it.

 
A faint endeavor ends in a sure defeat.

The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation may produce the effect of a lamp inverted, which is extinguished by the very excess of that oil, whose property is to feed it.

My plan of instruction is extremely simple and limited. My object is to train up the lower classes in habits of industry and piety.

The artful insult, whose envenomed dart scarcely wounds the hearing while it stabs the heart.

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation. There is an eloquence in silence.

Our infinite obligations to God do not fill our hearts, half as much as a petty uneasiness of our own. Nor do His infinite perfections fill our hearts half as much as our smallest wants.

Proportion and propriety are among the best secrets of domestic wisdom.

People talk as if the act of death made a complete change in the nature, as well as in the condition of man. Death is the vehicle to another state of being, but it possesses no power to qualify us for that state. In conveying us to a new world death does not give us a new heart.

[Hannah More]

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Make Time for God!!

He who cannot find time to study his Bible will one day find he has time to be sick.

He who has no time to pray must find time to die.

He who can find no time to reflect is most likely to find time to sin.

He who cannot find time for repentance will find an eternity in which repentance will be of no avail.

He who cannot find time to work for others may find an eternity in which to suffer for himself.

[Hannah More]

Matthew 6:33 ... But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

1 Thessalonians 5:17 ...  Pray without ceasing.

Hosea 10:12 ...  Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.

Mark 1:15 ...  And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.

Colossians 4:5 ... Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time.

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More Quotes 2

Idleness among children, as among men is the root of all evil, and leads to no other evil more certain than ill temper.

Indeed, I have, alas! outlived almost every one of my contemporaries.
One pays dear for living long.

The present education of females is not very favorable to domestic happiness. For my own part, I call education, not that which smothers a woman with academic accomplishments but that which tends to consolidate a firm and regular system of character; that which tends to form a friend, a companion, a mother and a wife.


There is scarcely any fault in another which offends us more than vanity though perhaps there is none that really injures us so little.

It is an excellent sign, that after the cares and labors of the day you can return to your pious exercises and meditations with undiminished attention.

Nothing raises the price of a blessing like its removal, whereas its continuance should have taught us its value.

There are three requisitions to the proper enjoyment of earthly blessings:  a thankful reflection on the goodness of the Giver, a deep sense of our unworthiness,
a recollection of the uncertainty of long possessing them. The first would make us grateful them. The second would make us humble them. The third would make us moderate.

He who has wasted money may by diligence, hope to fetch it back again. But no repentance or industry can ever bring back one wasted hour!

What ascends up in prayer descends to us again in blessings. It is like the rain which just now fell, and which had been drawn up from the ground in vapors to the clouds before it descended from them to the earth in that refreshing shower.

It is a sober truth that people who live only to amuse themselves, work harder at the task than most people do in earning their daily bread.

Commending a right thing is a cheap substitute for doing it. We are too apt to satisfy ourselves with simply commending good things.

We do not really know how to forgive others until we know what it is to be forgiven by God.

[Hannah More]

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More Quotes

 Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness.

A corrupt practice may be abolished but a soiled imagination is not easily cleansed.

Affliction is the school in which great virtues are acquired and in which great characters are formed.

All men desire the gifts of God but few desire God Himself.

Eternity is a depth which no geometry can measure, no arithmetic calculate, no imagination conceive, and no rhetoric describe.

Luxury and dissipation as soft and gentle as their approaches are, and as silently as they throw their silken chains about the heart enslave it more than the most active and turbulent vices!

The ingenuity of self-deception is inexhaustible!

If I wished to punish my enemy, I would make him hate somebody!

There is one single fact that one may oppose to all the wit and argument of infidelity namely, that no man ever repented of being a Christian on his deathbed.

Pride never sleeps it is always awake. An intemperate man is sometimes sober but a proud man is never humble.

Anger is a violent act while envy is a constant habit. No one can be always angry, but he may be always envious.

Those who lack nothing are apt to forget how many there are who lack everything.

Expectation quickens desire. Possession deadens it.

We live in an age which must be amused!

After all that corrupt poets, and more corrupt philosophers, have told us of the blandishments of pleasure, and of its tendency to soften the temper and humanize the affections it is certain, that nothing hardens the heart like excessive and unbounded luxury.

Going to the theater, like getting drunk is a sin that carries its own punishment with it.

It is the large aggregate of small things perpetually occurring which robs me of all my time.

Our merciful Father has no pleasure in the sufferings of His children. He chastens them in love. He never inflicts a stroke He could safely spare. He inflicts it to purify as well as to punish, to caution as well as to cure, to improve as well as to chastise.

When we read of Christian martyrs, we imagine that we could be one. When we come to act we cannot even bear a provoking word.

[Hannah More]

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Smaller Virtues and Lesser Vices

It is important for the Christian to practice the smaller virtues, to avoid scrupulously the lesser vices, and to bear patiently with minor trials. Smaller virtues and lesser vices make up a large part of human life, and fix and determine our moral character. 

The smaller virtues are the threads and filaments which gently but firmly tie the Christian graces together. The acquisition of even the smallest virtue, is actually a conquest over the opposite vice, and doubles our moral strength. Faults which we are accustomed to consider as small, are apt to be repeated without reservation. The habit of committing them is strengthened by the repetition. 

Frequency renders us at first indifferent, and then insensible. The hopelessness attending a long-indulged habit generates carelessness, until the power of resistance is first weakened, then destroyed. The Christian knows of no small faults. He considers sins, whatever their magnitude, as an offense against his Maker. Nothing that offends God can be insignificant. Nothing can be trifling that makes a bad habit fasten itself to us! 

Do small faults, continually repeated, always retain their original weakness? Is a bad temper which is never repressed, not worse after years of indulgence, than when we first gave the reins to it? Does the habit of exaggeration never lead to falsehood, or never move into deceit? Before we determine that our small faults are innocent, we must try to prove that they shall never outgrow their initial dimensions. We must make certain that the infant shall never become a giant! 

 [Hannah More] 

Romans 12:9 ... Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.

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Proper Enjoyment

There are three requirements to our proper enjoyment of every earthly blessing which God bestows on us:

1. A thankful reflection on the goodness of the Giver.

2. A deep sense of the unworthiness of the receiver.

3. A sober recollection of the precarious tenure by which we hold it.

The first would make us grateful, the second humble, the last moderate.

[Hannah More]

James 1:17 ...Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

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Pilfering of Another's Time

Christians should especially be on their guard against a spirit of idleness, and a slovenly habitual wasting of time. We must guard against a habitual frivolousness at home; and an abundance of unprofitable small-talk, idle reading, inane drowsiness, and a dull frittering away of time.

We must seriously consider: what a large portion of life we have unwisely squandered; what days and nights we have wasted, if not sinfully yet selfishly; if not loaded with evil yet destitute of good. In the day of judgment, the thin disguise which our treacherous heart now casts over indolence and sloth, will then be torn off.

We are guilty of the strange inconsistency of being most wasteful of what we best love and of throwing away what we most fear to lose that TIME of which life is made up. It is not so much a lack of time as a wasting of our time which prevents life from answering all the ends for which God has given it to us. Few things make us so useful in the world, as the prudent use of our precious time.

We should not only be careful not to waste our own time but that others do not rob us of it! The "stealing of our purse" is a serious wrong to us. But the "stealing of our time" should grieve us even more! Pilfering of another's time is a felony for which no restitution can be made for time is not only invaluable, but irrecoverable!

Every particle of time is valuable. No day can be insignificant--when every day is to be accounted for. Each one possesses weight and importance. What a scene will open upon us, when, from our eternal state we shall look back on the use we have made of time when we shall take a clear retrospect of all we have done, and all we ought to have done!

[Hannah More]

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Psalm 90:12 …  So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Ephesians 5:16 … Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.❤

A New Life

The sacred writings frequently point out the analogy between natural and spiritual things. The same Spirit, which in the creation of the world moved upon the face of the waters, operates on the human character to produce a new heart and a new life. By this operation the affections and faculties of the man receive a new impulse, his dark understanding is illuminated, his rebellious will is subdued, his irregular desires are rectified; his judgment is informed, his imagination is chastised, his inclinations are sanctified; his hopes and fears are directed to their true and adequate end. Heaven becomes the object of his hopes, and eternal separation from God the object of his fears. His love of the world is transformed into the love of God. The lower faculties are pressed into the new service. The senses have a higher direction. The whole internal frame and constitution receive a nobler bent; the intents and purposes of the mind, a sublimer aim; his aspirations, a loftier flight; his vacillating desires find a fixed object; his vagrant purposes a settled home; his disappointed heart a certain refuge. That heart, no longer the worshiper of the world, is struggling to become its conqueror. Our blessed Redeemer, in overcoming the world, bequeathed us his command to overcome it also; but as he did not give the command without the example, so he did not give the example without the offer of a power to obey the command.


Genuine religion demands not merely an external profession of our allegiance to God, but an inward devotedness of ourselves to his service. It is not a recognition, but a dedication. It puts the Christian into a new state of things, a new condition of being. It raises him above the world, while he lives in it. It disperses the illusions of sense, by opening his eyes to realities, in the place of those shadows which he has been pursuing. It presents this world as a scene whose original beauty sin has darkened and disordered; man as a helpless and dependent creature; Jesus Christ as the repairer of all the evils which sin has caused, and as our restorer to holiness and happiness. Any religion short of this, any at least which has not this for its end and object, is not that religion which the Gospel has presented to us, which our Redeemer came down on earth to teach us by his precepts, to illustrate by his example, to confirm by his death, and to consummate by his resurrection.

[Hannah More]

 

 

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Ezekiel 36:26 ...  A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

 

 

 

2 Corinthians 5:17 ... Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

 

 

 

 

Colossians 3:1-3 ... If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.  Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.


1 John 5:4 ... For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
 

 

 

1 Peter 1:3 ... Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,❤