The world's esteem is but a bribe, to buy their peace you sell your own. - John Newton

We have sometimes escaped from grave dangers not by any wisdom or foresight of our own, but by the intervention of unforeseen circumstances. So both the revelation of Scripture and our own individual experiences confirm the wisdom and good providence of God. He watches over His people from the earliest moment of their lives. He overrules and guards them through all their blind wanderings and leads them in a way that they know not.

This is faith: a renouncing of everything we are apt to call our own and relying wholly upon the blood, righteousness and intercession of Jesus.

May the cheering contemplation of the glorious hope set before us — support and animate us to improve our short interval on earth, and fill us with a holy ambition of shining as lights in this evil world, to the praise and glory of His grace — who has called us out of darkness, into His glorious light!