There is no university for a Christian, like that of sorrow and trial
Interpretation
Sorrow and trial are profound teachers for Christians, providing lessons that cannot be found in formal education.
Charles Spurgeon suggests that true growth and understanding in the Christian faith come not from traditional academic learning, but through the experiences of sorrow and trials. These challenges are likened to a university, where the hardships faced in life foster deep spiritual lessons and resilience. The idea is that suffering can enrich one's faith and character in ways that theoretical knowledge cannot.
In practice
This quote can be used in a sermon to encourage parishioners to find meaning in their struggles.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
When you sing that this country was founded on freedom, don't forget the duet of shackles dragging against the ground my entire life.
Remember: your bosses prefer to keep you in dependent positions. It is in their interest that you do not become self-reliant, and so they will tend to hoard information. You must secretly work against this and seize this information for yourself.
The goal of forecasting is not to predict the future but to tell you what you need to know to take meaningful action in the present
Kind words produce their own image in men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They soothe and quiet and comfort the hearer. They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings. We have not yet begun to use kind words in such abundance as they ought to be used.
We must use a good deal of economy in our wood, never cutting down new, where we can make the old do.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.