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In the isolation of his clear, cold intellect, the sceptic abides in a glacial and spectral universe. No glow from the affections lights up the frost and shadow of the grave. He feels no prophecy in the thrill of the human heart-in the incompleteness of nature. He believes merely in things tangible, and sees only in the daytime. He will not confess the authenticity of that paler light of faith which was meant to shine when the sunshine of reason falls short, and the firmament of mystery is over our heads.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
The city an epitome of the social world. All the belts of civilization intersect along its avenues. It contains the products of every moral zone. It is cosmopolitan, not only in a national, but a spiritual sense.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin
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The individual and the race are always moving, and as we drift into new latitudes new lights open in the heaven more immediately over us.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
The minister should preach as if he felt that although the congregation own the church, and have bought the pews, they have not bought him. His soul is worth no more than any other man's, but it is all he has, and he cannot be expected to sell it for a salary. The terms are by no means equal. If a parishioner does not like the preaching, he can go elsewhere and get another pew, but the preacher cannot get another soul.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
The gospel has but a forced alliance with war. Its doctrine of human brotherhood would ring strangely between the opposed ranks. The bellowing speech of cartoon and the baptism of blood mock its liturgies and sacraments. Its gentle beatitudes would hardly serve as mottoes for defiant banners, nor its list of graces as names for ships-of-the-line.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
God's work is freedom. Freedom is dear to his heart. He wishes to make man's will free, and at the same time wishes it to be pure, majestic, and holy.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged the chance; conquered the chance; and made chance the servitor.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
O, how much those men are to be valued who, in the spirit with which the widow gave up her two mites, have given up themselves! How their names sparkle! How rich their very ashes are! How they will count up in heaven!
Edwin Hubbell Chapin
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God's beneficence streams out from the morning sun, and his love looks down upon us from the starry eyes of midnight. It is his solicitude that wraps us in the air, and the pressure of his hand, so to speak, that keeps our pulses beating. O! it is a great thing to realize that the Divine Power is always working; that nature, in every valve and every artery, is full of the presence of God.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
We move too much in platoons; we march by sections; we do not live in our vital individuality enough; we are slaves to fashion, in mind and in heart, if not to our passions and appetites.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
Certainly, truth should be strenuous and bold; but the strongest things are not always the noisiest, as any one may see who compares scolding with logic.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
The loss of fortune to a true man is but the trumpet challenge to renewed exertion, not the thunder stroke of destruction.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
Heaven never defaults. The wicked are sure of their wages, sooner or later.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
A man that simply loads himself down with possessions of which he has no actual need, when he dies slips out of them--as a little insect might slip out of some parasite shell into which it has ensconced itself--into the grave, and is forgotten.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin
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God is the explanation of all things.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
Public feeling now is apt to side with the persecuted, and our modern martyr is full as likely to be smothered with roses as with coals.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
The downright fanatic is nearer to the heart of things than the cool and slippery disputant.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
In the matter of faith, we have the added weight of hope to that of reason in the convictions which we sustain relating to a future state.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
It is as bad to clip conscience as to clip coin; it is as bad to give a counterfeit statement as a counterfeit bill.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
It is a most fearful fact to think of, that in every heart there is some secret spring that would be weak at the touch of temptation, and that is liable to be assailed. Fearful, and yet salutary to think of; for the thought may serve to keep our moral nature braced. It warns us that we can never stand at ease, or lie down in this field of life, without sentinels of watchfulness and campfires of prayer.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin
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Let every man be free to act from his own conscience; but let him remember that other people have consciences too; and let not his liberty be so expansive that in its indulgence it jars and crashes against the liberty of others.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
Genius is the accumulated wealth of our humanity--its most intense development concentrated at one point, and then with clearer expression and with mysterious power shot back to us across the galvanic lines of thought and feeling.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
Do not judge men by mere appearances; for the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over the depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that covers a divine peace and joy.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin -
A patient, humble temper gathers blessings that are marred by the peevish and overlooked by the aspiring.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin