T. L. Haines and L. W. Yaggy

“ It lures men away from the truth; wastes their energies on a shadow; wins their affections to fading follies, and gives them a disrelish for the real, the substantial, and enduring. Who can expect that God will not hide in every hollow show intended to deceive, a sharp two-edged sword that shall cut with disappointment, and pierce with inward wasting want? ”

“ How mournfully their organ chants of praise, bought with sordid gold, go up from the seats of worldliness and pride, and how reproachfully the tall steeples of cathedrals and synagogues and churches look down on the oppression and pride and selfishness which assemble below them, and the slavery, poverty, and intemperance which pass and repass their marble foundations! ”

“ No coin but the true one passes there. No gilding will hide the hollowness of a false soul. No tawdry displays will avail with that eye whose glance, like a sword, pierces to the heart. All is open there ”

“ There is no folly in the world so great as to be a hypocrite. The hypocrite is hated of the world for seeming to be a Christian; he is hated by God for not being one. He hates himself and is even despised by Satan for serving him and not acknowledging it. ”

“ Society, to be sure, is less injured by their latent existence than it would be by their overt forms. But the man himself is as much injured by the cherished thoughts of evil, in his own soul, as by the open commission of it, and sometimes even more. For evil brought out ceases to disguise itself, and seems as hideous as it is. ”

“ There are many good-seeming men who, if all their day's thoughts and feelings were to be suddenly developed into acts, visible to the eye, would run from themselves, as men in earthquakes run from the fiery gapings of the ground, and sulphurous cracks that open the way to the uncooled centre of perdition. ”

“ But men have sought to make it a world of show, to carry the deception and Pharisaism of this world up into the Redeemer's world, and palm them off there for the golden reality that shall be admitted to heaven. ”

“ Hypocrites are really the best followers and the greatest dupes that Satan has; they serve him better than any other, but receive no wages. And, what is more wonderful, they submit to greater mortifications to go to hell than the most sincere Christian to go to heaven. ”

“ If a man have murderous hate, he murders. If a man brood dishonest thoughts, he is a knave. If a man harbor sharp and bitter jealousies, envies, hatreds, though he never express them by his tongue, or shape them by his hand, they are there. ”

“ They desire more to seem good than to be so, while the Christian desires more to be so than to seem so. They study more to enter into religion than that religion should enter into them. They are zealous in little things but cold and remiss in the most important. ”

“ Men are afraid of slight outward acts which will injure them in the eyes of others, while they are heedless of the damnation which throbs in their souls in hatreds, and jealousies, and revenges.
They are more troubled by the outbursts of a sinful disposition, than by the disposition itself. It is not the evil, but its reflex effect upon themselves, that they dread. It is the love of approbation, and not the conscience, that enacts the part of a moral sense, in this case. If a man covets, he steals. ”