Religion gives to virtue the sweetest hopes, to unrepenting vice just alarms, to true repentance the most powerful consolations; but she endeavors above all things to inspire in men love, meekness, and piety.
Nothing exposes religion more to the reproach of its enemies than the worldliness and half-heartedness of the professors of it.
Men use religion just as they use buoys and life-preservers; they do not intend to navigate the vessel with them, but they keep just enough of them on hand to float into a safe harbor when a storm comes up and the vessel is shipwrecked; and it is only then that they intend to use them. I tell you, you will find air-holes in all such life-preservers as that.
There is a great deal too much in the world, of the "heavenly-mindedness" which expends itself in the contemplation of the joys of paradise, which performs no duty which it can shirk, and whose constant prayer is to be lifted in some overwhelming flood of Divine grace, and be carried, amidst the admiration of men and the jubilance of angels, to the very throne of God.
The religion of some people is constrained; like the cold bath when it is used, not for pleasure, but from necessity, for health, into which one goes with reluctance, and is glad when able to get out. But religion to the true believer is like water to a fish. It is his element. He lives in it, and could not live out of it.
