The Passion Of Acquiring Riches In Order

No More Restless Uncertainties, No More Anxious Desires, No More Impatience At The Place We Are In; For It Is God Who Has Placed Us There, And Who Holds Us In His Arms. Can We Be Unsafe Where He Has Placed Us?

I Had Often Heard Mentor Say, That The Voluptuous Were Never Brave, And I Now Found By Experience That It Was True; For The Cyprians Whose Jollity Had Been So Extravagant And Tumultuous, Now Sunk Under A Sense Of Their Danger And Wept Like Women. I Heard Nothing But The Screams Of Terror And The Wailings Of Hopeless Distress. Some Lamented The Loss Of Pleasures That Were Never To Return; But None Had Presence Of Mind Either To Undertake Or Direct The Navigation Of The Menaced Vessel.

There Is A Set Of Religious, Or Rather Moral, Writings Which Teach That Virtue Is The Certain Road To Happiness, And Vice To Misery In This World. A Very Wholesome And Comfortable Doctrine, And To Which We Have But One Objection, Namely, That It Is Not True.

We Must Have Faith During The Period Of Our Grief. We Think That Our Afflictions Will Be Greater Than We Can Bear, But We Do Not Know The Strength Of Our Own Hearts, Nor The Power Of God. He Knows All. He Knows Every Folding Of The Heart And Also The Extent Of The Sorrow That He Inflicts. What We Think Will Overwhelm Us Entirely Only Subdues And Conquers Our Pride. Our Renewed Spirit Rises From Its Subjugation With A Celestial Strength And Consolation.

God Never Makes Us Sensible Of Our Weakness Except To Give Us Of His Strength.