All true love to God is preceded in the heart by these two things — a sense of sin, and an assurance of pardon. There is no love possible — real, dee… - Alexander Maclaren

If you would know Christ at all, you must go to Him as a sinful man, or you are shut out from Him altogether.

Surely Scripture is right when it makes the sin of sins that unbelief, which is at bottom nothing else than a refusal to take the cup of salvation. Surely no sharper grief can be inflicted upon the Spirit of God than when we leave His gifts neglected and unappropriated.

As we look upon that agony and those tearful prayers, let us not only look with thankfulness; but lot that kneeling Saviour teach us that in prayer alone can we be forearmed against our lesser sorrows; that strength to bear flows into the heart that is opened in supplication; and that a sorrow which we are made able to endure is more truly cohijuered than a sorrow which we avoid.