Sanctification is not regeneration.
— Matthew Simpson
Passing into practical life, illustrations of this fact are found everywhere; the distant, or the unseen, steadies and strengthens us against the rapid whirl of things around us.
Mr. Lincoln's elevation shows that in America every station in life may be honorable; that there is no barrier against the humblest; but that merit, wherever it exists, has the opportunity to be known.
If an honest man is the noblest work of God, then Mr. Lincoln's title to high nobility is clear and unquestioned.
We shall see our friends again. We can lay them in the grave; we know they are safe with God.
Angels are spirits, flames of fire; they are higher than man, they have wider connections.
If, then, knowledge be power, how much more power to we gain through the agency of faith, and what elevation must it give to human character.
Of history, how little do we know by personal contact; we have lived a few years, seen a few men, witnessed some important events; but what are these in the whole sum of the world's past.
I do not purpose to discuss faith in its dogmatic sense today.
If you live for any joy on earth, you may be forsaken; but, oh, live for Jesus, and he will never forsake you!
If you live for fame, men may turn against you.
Another principle is, the deepest affections of our hearts gather around some human form in which are incarnated the living thoughts and ideas of the passing age.
Washington and the elder Napoleon. Both were brave men; both were true men; both loved their country and dared to expose their lives for their country's cause.
Nor was it only from the millions of slaves that chains had been removed; the whole nation had been in bondage; free speech had been suppressed.
If I know that I shall be as an angel, and more; if I shall behold all God has made; if he shall own me for his son and exalt me to honor in his presence, I shall not fear to die, nor shall I dread the grave where Christ once lay.
Human nature is the same now as when Adam hid from the presence of God; the consciousness of wrong makes us unwilling to meet those whom we have offended.
Not in purity or in holiness merely, for in Paradise man was holy, and he shall be holy when redeemed through the sacrifice of Christ and made an heir of heaven.
The realm of immediate or personal knowledge is a narrow circle in which these bodies move; the realm of knowledge derived through faith is as wide as the universe, and old as eternity.
If we look at the realm of knowledge, how exceedingly small and limited is that part acquired through our own senses; how wide is that we gain from other sources.
The temptations to wrong are many; they spring out of a corrupt nature.
If you live for your children, they may be smitten down and leave you desolate, or, what is far worse, they may desert you and leave you worse than childless in a cold and unfeeling world.
It is a principle of our nature that feelings once excited turn readily from the object by which they are excited to some other object which may for the time being take possession of the mind.
Napoleon was probably the equal at least of Washington in intellect, his superior in education. Both of them were successful in serving the state.
The name of Abraham Lincoln is imperishable.
We ourselves can die with comfort and even with joy if we know that death is but a passport to blessedness, that this intellect, freed from all material chains, shall rise and shine.
Man wants to be reconciled to God; wants to know that the past is forgiven.
If, then, faith widens the connections, it elevates the man.
We know the past and its great events, the present in its multitudinous complications, chiefly through faith in the testimony of others.
Taking it in its wider and generic application, I understand faith to be the supplement of sense; or, to change the phrase, all knowledge which comes not to us through our senses we gain by faith in others.
There is a contest old as Eden, which still goes on - the conflict between right and wrong, between error and truth. In this conflict every human being has a part.
If you live for pleasure, your ability to enjoy it may pass away and your senses grow dim.
