Injury From a Neighbor

If our neighbor injures us by improper words or in any other way, it is as much an event in divine providence, considered in its relation to ourselves, as any event could be, by which we might be afflicted. God's hand is really in it, although it may require a higher faith to see it. Happy is the man who has the requisite faith, and who has those patient and acquiescent dispositions, which such a faith is calculated to produce.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CLXXIII.

Human Dispositions in the Providence of God

The providence of God includes not only events but dispositions. In other words, there are moral providences as well as natural providences. God knows the tempers of men; the feelings whether good or evil, which predominate in their hearts. And whether they shall exhibit those tempers at one time rather than another, on one occasion rather than another, is a matter, which is left hidden in the divine providences alone.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CLXXII.

Love Without Truth

That love, which is not according to the truth, when the truth is capable of being known, in other words, that love, which is not precisely conformed to its object, will always be found to be vitiated by some human imperfection; by unwarrantable indolence, or by interested fear, or by selfish complaisance.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CLXXI.

Holiness, Love and Truth

Holiness is but another name for love.  But that love, which constitutes the essence of holiness, is a love, which by its very nature conforms itself to the truth. It loves only that which ought to be loved; and it loves, not in defect or excess, not periodically and violently, but precisely according to the truth.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CLXX.

Forgiveness and God's Acceptance

"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against  us." If we rightly understand these and other passages of similar import, no person can regard himself as accepted of God, who has not the spirit of forgiveness towards his neighbor.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CLXIX.

Rest From the Constraints of Conscience

There is a rest, in holy persons, not only from the reproofs or condemnations of conscience, (a view which naturally arrests our attention in the first instance,) but also, with proper explanations of the remark, from the compulsory or constraining power of conscience.

The constraints of conscience, (which is only another expression for those coercive feelings of obligation which require us to pursue a right course,) precede action; while the reproofs of conscience, on the other hand, follow action. The holy soul, the soul which has passed from a mixed state to a state where holy love becomes the exclusive principle of action, does not appear to experience, and certainly not to be conscious of, those compulsory influences to which we have referred. It does not feel the reproofs of conscience, because it does not do wrong. It does not feel the compulsions or constraints of conscience, because, being moved by perfect love, it fulfills the will of God, and does right without constraint.

Help in Sorrow

Fear not, poor, weary one;
But struggle bravely yet;
Toil on, until thy task is done,
Until thy sun is set.

Though many are thy cares,
And many are thy fears,
The loving Christ thy burden shares,
And wipes away thy tears.

No distant Christ is He,
And one that doth not know;
But watches close and constantly,
The path which thou dost go.

'Tis when thy heart is tried,
'Tis in thine hour of grief,
He standeth ever at thy side,
And ever brings relief.

— Christ in the Soul (1872) LI.