Earth Has Not A Spectacle More Glorious

That Friend, Given To You By Circumstances Over Which You Have Not Control, Was God's Own Gift.

As The Tree Is Fertilized By Its Own Broken Branches And Fallen Leaves, And Grows Out Of Its Own Decay, So Men And Nations Are Bettered And Improved By Trial, And Refined Out Of Broken Hopes And Blighted Expectations.

I Read Hard, Or Not At All; Never Skimming, Never Turning Aside To Merely Inciting Books; And Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Sterne, Jonathan Edwards, Have Passed Like The Iron Atoms Of The Blood Into My Mental Constitution.

My Christian Brethren, If The Crowd Of Difficulties Which Stand Between Your Souls And God Succeed In Keeping You Away, All Is Lost. Right Into The Presence You Must Force Your Way, With No Concealment, Baring The Soul With All Its Ailments Before Him, Asking, Not The Arrest Of The Consequences Of Sin, But The Cleansing Of The Conscience " From Dead Works To Serve The Living God," So That If You Must Suffer, You Will Suffer As A Forgiven Man.

For When Man Comes To Front The Everlasting God, And Look The Splendor Of His Judgments In The Face, Personal Integrity, The Dream Of Spotlessness And Innocence, Vanishes Into Thin Air: Your Decencies And Your Church-goings And Your Regularities And Your Attachment To A Correct School And Party, Your Gospel Formulas Of Sound Doctrine--what Is All That, In Front Of The Blaze Of The Wrath To Come?