This is always the effect of sin; it destroys our peace, robs our joy and brings in its train a consciousness of guilt and a sense of shame.

The depravity of mankind makes evident the infinite patience of God. "The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power" (Nahum 1:3).

O unsaved reader, if a work of grace has already begun in your heart so that you realize your wretchedness and long for that peace and rest which this poor world is unable to give, fix it firmly in your mind that One only can give you what you seek.

There, but for the grace of God, goes God.

If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.

He was doctrinally convinced that there was a total absence of merit in himself; but that doctrinal conviction may be held without pain when the sense of demerit does not take a distinct shape in memory and revive the tingling of shame or the pang of remorse. Nay, it may be held with intense satisfaction when the depth of our sinning is but a measure for the depth of forgiveness, and a clenching proof that we are peculiar instruments of the divine intention.

Maggie actually forgot that she had any special cause of sadness this morning, as she stood on a chair to look at a remarkable series of pictures representing the Prodigal Son in the costume of Sir Charles Grandison, except that, as might have been expected from his defective moral character, he had not, like that accomplished hero, the taste and strength of mind to dispense with a wig.

Let no one flatter himself of himself he is Satan. Let man take sin, which is his own, and leave righteousness with God.

This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfection.

From the time of Cain until the last believer before Christ's return, we are all fundamentally in the same boat. We suffer the same spiritual afflictions and tendencies.

we are punished by our sins, not for them. Your mistakes, no matter how bad you might think they were, did not emanate from your self as He created you. Thats why remembering who you truly are is the key to deliverance from the flames of self condemnation.

The church should not be an assembly of the self-righteous but an assembly of people who admit that they are not righteous apart from God's grace.