there is a God above who inspires them.  It is the glory of God that they should be so; it is His delight.  This world must become heaven.  This is its destiny; and our destiny, under God, is to make it so.  Prophecy is given to encourage and nourish our hopes and feed our joys, so that we may say with Job, ’I know that although worms shall eat this flesh, and my bones become dust, yet at the latter day I shall see my Redeemer face to face.’”

The sentences which follow can be paralleled by words taken from all who have truly interpreted the doctrine of Christ by their lives or their writings: 

“To him that has faith all things are possible, for faith is an act of the soul; thy faith is the measure of thy power.”

“If men would act from the present inspiration of their souls they would gain more knowledge than they do by reading or speculating.”

“No man in his heart can ask for more than he has.  Think of this deeply.  God is just.  We have what we ought to have, even according to our own sense of justice.”

“The desire to love and be beloved, to have friends with whom we can converse, to enter society which we enjoy—­is it not best to deny and sacrifice these desires?  It may be said that, gratified, they add to life, and the question is how to increase life, not how to diminish it.  But by denying them, would not our life gain by flowing in a more heavenly direction?”

“We are daily feeding the demons that are in us by our wicked thoughts and sinful acts; these are their meat and drink.  I make them gasp sometimes.  My heart laughs quite merrily to think of it.  When I am hungry, and there is something tempting on the table, hunger, like a serpent, comes creeping up into my throat and laps its dry tongue with eagerness for its prey, but it often returns chagrined at its discomfiture.”

“That which tempts us we should deny, no matter how innocent it is in itself.  If it tempts, away with it, until it tempts no more.  Then partake of it, for it is then only that you can do so prudently and with temperance.”

“All our thoughts and emotions are caused by some agent acting on us.  This is true of all the senses and the spiritual faculties.  Hence we should by all possible means purify and refine our organism, so that we may hear the most delicate, the sweetest, the stillest sounds and murmurings of the angels who are about us.  How much fuller and richer would be our life if we were more acutely sensitive and finely textured!  How many exquisite delights nature yields which we are not yet aware of!  What a world surrounds us of which none but holy men, prophets, and poets have had a glimpse!”

“The soul is a plate on which the senses daguerreotype indelibly pictures of the outer world.  How cautious should we be where we look, what we hear, what smell, or feel, or taste!  And how we should endeavor that all around us should be made beautiful, musical, fragrant, so that our souls may be awakened to a divine sense of life without a moment’s interruption!”