The grand obstacle to the salvation of the scribes and Pharisees was their pride, vanity and self-love. They lived on each other's praise. If they had acknowledged Christ as the only good teacher, they must have given up the good opinion of the multitude; and they chose rather to lose their souls than to forfeit their reputation among men!
If you go forward in the spirit of the original apostles and followers of Jesus Christ, trusting not in man but in the living God, he will enable you to pull down the strong holds of sin and Satan, and that work by which he is pleased will prosper in your hands.
Man may be considered as having a twofold origin - natural, which is common and the same to all - patronymic, which belongs to the various families of which the whole human race is composed.
We communicate happiness to others not often by great acts of devotion and self-sacrifice, but by the absence of fault-finding and censure, by being ready to sympathize with their notions and feelings, instead of forcing them to sympathize with ours.
But this Christ or Redeemer took not upon him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham, that is, human nature, that in the nature which sinned he might make the expiation required.
Matthew being a constant attendant on our Lord, his history is an account of what he saw and heard; and, being influenced by the Holy Spirit, his history is entitled to the utmost degree of credibility.
This is the case with thousands: they appear desirous of knowing the truth, but have not patience to wait in a proper way to receive an answer to their question.
Now it would be as absurd to deny the existence of God, because we cannot see him, as it would be to deny the existence of the air or wind, because we cannot see it.
It is to be regretted that few persons who have arrived at any degree of eminence or fame, have written Memorials of themselves, at least such as have embraced their private as well as their public life.
It is strictly and philosophically true in Nature and reason that there is no such thing as chance or accident; it being evident that these words do not signify anything really existing, anything that is truly an agent or the cause of any event; but they signify merely men's ignorance of the real an immediate cause.
Many talk much, and indeed well, of what Christ has done for us: but how little is spoken of what he is to do in us! and yet all that he has done for us is in reference to what he is to do in us.
Death to a good man is but passing through a dark entry, out of one little dusky room of his Father's house into another that is fair and large, lightsome and glorious, and divinely entertaining.