A Book of Gems, or, Choice selections from the writings of Benjamin Franklin

We are all required to “speak the same thing,” to “teach no other doctrine,” to “preach the word,” to preach no “other gospel,” to teach the things that become “sound doctrine,”...

Declaim against foreign missions, and prepare to give the State Board twenty-five dollars if the Board will send them one hundred dollars worth of preaching. After they treat a...

The Jews were, as we have said, the _instigators_ of the crucifixion, but did not, therefore, have the sole responsibility, as the Gentiles, or the Roman court, had the power to...

The worst difficulty there is to encounter is the general state of indifference. There is a general state of don’t-careitiveness. The Galio feeling abounds. Of all the opponents...

The men who are meditating on union are now on trial, being put to the test, and will be compelled to show where they stand. Those who love union among christians more than deno...

As a religious body, the work we have undertaken has not changed, but is the same now as it was forty years ago, as manifestly right as ever. We have undertaken to restore the g...

We heard an illusion to the fanciful idea that some have conceived of preaching an “affirmative gospel,” or, as some have expressed it, “preaching the gospel _affirmatively_,” o...

When the British general found General Marion living _on roots_, and his men _fighting without pay_, he admitted that the prospect of overcoming such men was gloomy. So, when ou...

We find that there are many preachers in our time to whom the Lord puts the question, “Lovest thou me more than these?” Not, however these _fisheries_, but these _lands_, cattle...

Looking at the eternal benefits Christianity has conferred upon us, and the rich inheritance it proposes to confer in the world to come, the little a poor mortal can do in a sho...

Some men are guided by _reason_, others by _providences_, and others by spiritual _influences_, separate from, or without the word of God. In regard to all this, it is not neces...

But may not public opinion, or even the Church, decide wrong? It may, and, no doubt, does sometimes. So may any court, man can establish; and it may turn out that the world may...

All we have to do to stand right before the people, is to _be sound_ in heart, in the faith, in the life; true to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; honest and faithful in the...

When Paul wrote the letter to the church in Ephesus there remained but “one immersion,” the one of the last commission, connected with salvation, the remission of sin, or induct...

We want the protracted meeting then, to deliver an unbroken series of gospel discourses to the people—that we may be enabled to call off their attention from the ordinary cares...

We admit that the evidence is abundant “that pouring and sprinkling were used” from the beginning of the fourth century not only to the rise of the Anabaptists, but till now; bu...

Sceptics float in thin ether, if not some times in pure vacuum, in vast, unknown and unknowable regions of pure fancy and idle imagination. They roam in everlasting inquisitiven...

The Romish apostasy now has some forty _holy days_ in a year, and as many human laws about observing them, while those involved in it gormandize, drink, revel and gamble on the...

The conversation is about _one birth_ and entering into _one kingdom_. The whole is in the phrase, “You must be born again,” or the previous phrase, “Except a man be born again...

The people of God can find plenty of good preachers whom they know to be worthy, who are devoted to preaching the gospel, and not ruining or corrupting it, to whom they can appl...

The relation a thing believed sustains to the believer, is the main cause of its effect upon him. Robert Owen, who professed to have read, and traveled forty years, without bein...

We want no mere excitement about _a man_, nor _after a man_, who, as Simon the Sorcerer, induces the people to think that he is some _great one_. We want the clear, solid and te...

The people of the world look upon a member of the church, that enters the dance, as let down, degraded, and his profession trailed in the dust. “Look there,” he exclaims, “that...

We turn our eyes to the infant in a manger in Bethlehem, and place them upon the child of promise, born according to the divine purpose, to whom God had been pointing from the b...

The mere circumstance of a man being punished for his sins in this life, has nothing in it to purify his soul, purge his conscience, or prepare him for the enjoyment of God. The...

There is nothing in the Bible about the _resurrection of souls or spirits_. The resurrection has to do with _bodies_, not _souls_ nor _spirits_. It was the body of Jesus that ro...

The man that thinks of “eternal life” merely as eternal _conscious existence_, has no adequate conception of the meaning of the term. It is used to express the entire state of g...

He said: “I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel.” On account of this _little matter_, three thousand men were defeated, and Israel disgraced. “Joshua said, Why hast thou...

To make serious reply to this deceitful, deceptive and empty pretence, is a little hard to do. To see a person who can not go three squares to the house of God on foot, especial...

One of the most striking differences between the Mosaic and Christian institutions is, that the latter is a proselyting institution, while the former was not. Errorists among th...

DR. P.—No, Doctor, that would not be the case. The preacher we have is just as good as any man we can get. He is a man of unquestionable talents and piety and if we stand by him...

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