Courage

Why should you fear to be stripped of that which you have resigned already to Christ? It is the first lesson you learn, if a Christian: to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow your Master, so that the enemy comes too late. You have no life to lose because you have given it already to Christ, nor can man take away that without God’s leave. All you have is insured, and though God has not promised you immunity from suffering in this kind, yet he has undertaken to bear the loss, indeed, to pay you a hundredfold, and you will not stay for it till another world.

Even preachers go about arranging their sermons so as to displease no one. They have a good intention, and their work is good; yet still few amend their lives. But how is it that they are not many who, in consequence of these sermons, abstain from public sins? Well, I think it is because the preachers are highly sensible men. They are not burning with the great fire of the love of God, as the apostles were, casting worldly prudence aside; and so their fire throws out but little heat.

He that would not die when he must, and he that would die when he must not, are both of them cowards alike. To desire to live when one is called to die is a sign of cowardice, for such a one is afraid to enter the list with the king of terrors. To desire to die when one is called to live speaks a faint-hearted creature, for such a man dares not look an affliction or disaster in the face; therefore would take shelter in death.