Horatius Bonar on Ones Character

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Thursday, October 31, 2013 at 6:30 AM

"No man can quench his thirst with sand, or with water from the Dead Sea; so no man can find rest from his own character, however good, or from his own acts, however religious.  Even were he perfect, what enjoyment could there be in thinking about his own perfection? What profit, then, can there be in thinking about his own imperfection?"

Horatius Bonar


J.C. Ryle on Parenting

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Wednesday, October 30, 2013 at 7:51 AM

"You will see many in this day who allow their children to choose and think for themselves, long before they are able, and even make excuses for their disobedience, as if it were a thing not to be blamed. To my eyes a parent always yielding, and a child always having its own way, are a most painful sight; – painful, because I see God’s appointed order of things inverted and turned upside down; – painful, because I feel sure the consequence to that child’s character in the end will be self-will, pride, and self-conceit. You must not wonder that men refuse to obey their Father which is in heaven, if you allow them, when children, to disobey their father who is upon earth."

J.C. Ryle


Thomas A'Kempis on the Comfort of God

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Tuesday, October 29, 2013 at 7:00 AM

"Nevertheless, when spiritual comfort is sent to you by God, take it humbly and give thanks meekly for it.  But know for certain that it is the great goodness of God that sends it to you, and not because you deserve it."
Thomas A'Kempis


Charles Spurgeon on Worldliness and the Church

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Monday, October 28, 2013 at 7:00 AM

"I believe that one reason why the Church of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is because the world has so much influence over the church."

Charles Spurgeon


John Owen on The Church and The Word

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , , | Posted On Friday, October 25, 2013 at 7:00 AM

"God speaks by the Church (the true Church we mean); but He speaks nothing by her but what He speaks in the Scriptures, which she does only ministerially declare to us; and therefore the authority of God and His law is above hers, who, though she publish, yet did not make it, but is herself subject to it." 
John Owen


George Whitefield on Faith and Idleness

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Thursday, October 24, 2013 at 7:00 AM

"He has begun and he will carry on, he will finish the good work in our souls.  We have nothing to do, but to lay hold on him by faith, and to depend on him for wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.  Not but we must be workers together with him; for a true faith in Jesus Christ will not suffer us to be idle.  No, it is an active, lively, restless principle; it fills the heart, so that it cannot be easy, till it is doing something for Jesus Christ."

George Whitefield


Richard Baxter on Not Sharing the Truth

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Wednesday, October 23, 2013 at 7:00 AM

"A foolish physician he is, and most unfaithful friend, that will let a sick man die for fear of troubling him; and cruel wretches are we to our friends, that will rather suffer them to go quietly to hell, than we will anger them, or hazard our reputation with them."   
Richard Baxter


Charles Spurgeon on Perfection

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Tuesday, October 22, 2013 at 7:59 AM

"I am not in love with that perfection which talks about itself. There is little virtue in the beauty which calls attention to itself; modest beauty is the last to extol its own charms. A number of persons, in company, were boasting of their graces and attainments, and only one brother sat silent. At last, one said to him, "Have you no holiness?" "Yes," he said, "but I never had any to boast of." All the holiness that can be had let us have, and let us press on toward perfection; but let us still recollect the fact that, when we are strong, then we are weak; that, when we think we have reached perfection, the blue mould of pride is coming over us. We have not afforded ourselves a complete inspection, or we should have found some fault to repent of, some evil yet to struggle against."

Charles Spurgeon




Alexis de Tocqueville on Religion and LIberty in America

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Monday, October 21, 2013 at 6:30 AM

"The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other." 
Alexis de Tocqueville


John Taylor on "Manufacturing Mania"

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , , | Posted On Friday, October 18, 2013 at 7:31 AM

    "Still more hopeless is the promise of the manufacturing mania, "that it will make us independent of foreign nations," when combined with its other promise of providing a market for agriculture.  The promise of a market, as we see in the experience of England, can only be made good, by reducing the agricultural class to a tenth part of the nation, and increasing manufacturers by great manufactural exportations.  This reduction can only be accomplished by driving or seducing above nine-tenths of the agricultural class, into other classes, and the increase by a brave and patriotic navy.  Discontent and misery will be the fruits of the first operation, and these would constitute the most forlorn hope for success in the second.  By exchanging hardy, honest and free husbandmen for the classes necessary to reduce the number of agriculturalists, low enough to raise the prices of their products shall we become more independent of foreign nations?  What!  Secure our independence by bankers and capitalists?  Secure our independence by impoverishing discouraging and annihilating none-tenths of our sound yeomanry?  By turning them into swindlers, and dependents on a master capitalist for daily bread?

    The manufacturing mania accuses the agricultural spirit of avarice and want of patriotism, whilst it offers to bribe it by  a prospect of better prices, whittles down independence into cargoes of fancy goods, and proposes to metamorphose nine-tenths of the hardy sons of the forest into everything but heroes, for the grand end of gratifying the avarice of a capitalist, monied or paper interest"
John Taylor
(Arator: Essay 4)


John Taylor on the Political State of Agriculture

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Thursday, October 17, 2013 at 7:33 AM

"The political causes which oppress agriculture have been considered, before domestic habits which vitiate it, to guard against the error of an opinion, that the latter may be removed, whilst the former continue.  So long as the laws make it more profitable to invest capital in speculations without labour, than in agriculture with labour; and so long as the liberty of pursuing one's own interest exist; the two strongest human propensities, a love of wealth, and a love of ease, will render it impossible"
John Taylor
(Arator: Essay 12)


John Taylor on the Pleasures of Agriculture

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 at 7:45 AM

"The capacity of agriculture for affording luxuries to the body, is not less conspicuous than its capacity for affording luxuries to the mind;  it being a science singularly possessing the double qualities of feeding with unbounded liberality, both the moral appetites of the one and the physical wants of the other.  It can even feed a morbid love of money, whilst it is habituating us to the practice of virtue; and whilst it provides for the wants of the philosopher, it affords him ample room for the most curious yet useful researches.  In short, by the exercise it gives both to the body and to the mind, it secures health and vigor to both; and by combining a thorough knowledge of the real affairs of life, with a necessity for investigating the arcana of nature, and the strongest invitations to the practice of morality, it becomes the best architect of a complete man."
John Taylor
(Arator: Essay 59)


John Taylor on "Protecting Duties", "Bounties" and "Protections" on Agriculture

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 at 6:30 AM

"Monarchies and aristocracies, being founded in the principle of distributing wealth by law, can only subsist by frauds and deceptions to dupe ignorance into an opinion, that such distributions are intended for its benefit;  but in genuine republics, founded on the principle of leaving wealth to be distributed by merit and industry, these treacheries of government are treasons against nations."
John Taylor 
(Arator: Essay 8 on The Political State of Agriculture)


John Taylor on Agriculture as an Art

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Monday, October 14, 2013 at 6:30 AM

"Arts improve the work of nature - when they injure it, they are not arts, but barbarous customs.  It is the office of agriculture, as an art, not to impoverish, but to fertilize the soil, and make it more useful than in its natural state.  Such is the effect of every species of agriculture, which can aspire to the character of an art.  It's object being to furnish man with articles of the first necessity, whatever defeats that object, is a crime of the first magnitude."
John Taylor (1753 - 1824)
(Arator: Essay 2)


John Calvin on Man and God's Majesty

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Friday, October 11, 2013 at 6:30 AM

"Thus it comes about that we see men who in his absence normally remained firm and constant, but who, when he manifests his glory, are so shaken and struck dumb as to be laid low by the dread of death - are in fact overwhelmed by it and almost annihilated.  As a consequence, we must infer that man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty."

John Calvin

Theodore Roosevelt on the Bible

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Thursday, October 10, 2013 at 6:30 AM

"A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education."

Theodore Roosevelt


J.C. Ryle on the Results of a Wrong View of Human Nature

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Wednesday, October 9, 2013 at 6:30 AM

"I believe there are very few errors and false doctrines of which the beginning may not be traced up to unsound views about the corruption of human nature.  Wrong views of the disease will always bring with them wrong views of the remedy.  Wrong views of the corruption of human nature will always carry with them wrong views of the grand antidote and cure of that corruption."

J.C. Ryle


William Bates on Pride

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Tuesday, October 8, 2013 at 6:30 AM

"A proud man is an enemy to the more excellent and worthy: he is pleased with the vices and infelicities of others, as they afford an advantage to exalt himself above them, and he is grieved at their virtues and happinesses which render them more valuable than himself." 
William Bates


Charles Spurgeon on Pride

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Monday, October 7, 2013 at 6:30 AM

"No matter how dear you are to God, if pride is harbored in your spirit, He will whip it out of you. They that go up in their own estimation must come down again by His discipline."

Charles Spurgeon


Horatius Bonar on Zeal

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Friday, October 4, 2013 at 6:30 AM

"A believing man will be a zealous man. Faith makes a man zealous. Faith shows itself by zeal. Not by zeal for a party or a system or an opinion; but by zeal for Christ – zeal for His church – zeal for the carrying on of His work on earth."

Horatius Bonar


J.R. Miller on Women and the Home

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , , | Posted On Thursday, October 3, 2013 at 5:20 AM

"Men with fine gifts think it worth while to live to paint a few great pictures which shall be looked at and admired for generations; or to write a few songs which shall sing themselves into the ears and hearts of men.  But the woman who makes a sweet, beautiful home, filling it with love and prayer and purity, is doing something better than anything else her hands could find to do beneath the skies."
J.R. Miller


Matthew Henry on Joy

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Wednesday, October 2, 2013 at 6:30 AM

"Holy joy will be oil to the wheels of our obedience."
Matthew Henry


Charles Spurgeon on Gluttony

Posted by Bluegrass Endurance | Labels: , | Posted On Tuesday, October 1, 2013 at 6:30 AM

"I believe that gluttony is as much a sin in the sight of God as drunkenness."

Charles Spurgeon