What They Said

"It is only the atheist who adopts success as the criterion of right."  

Robert Lewis Dabney

“Christian, let God's distinguishing love to you be a motive to you to fear Him greatly. He has put His fear in your heart, and may not have given that blessing to your neighbor, perhaps not to your husband, your wife, your child, or your parent. Oh, what an obligation should this thought lay upon your heart to greatly fear the Lord! Remember also that this fear of the Lord is His treasure, a choice jewel, given only to favorites, and to those who are greatly beloved.”

John Bunyan

“Train them [your children] up in the fear of God, in an acquaintance with his word, and all such useful knowledge as your abilities will allow, and they will soon know how to provide for themselves, perhaps may take care of their aged parents, and fill the various stations in life with honor and advantage.”

Samuel Langdon

(1723 –1797)

“A patient must know that he is sick, before he will take a physick. A collection of a very few facts, to ascertain the ill health of agriculture, is necessary to invigorate our efforts towards a cure. One, apparent to the most superficial observer, is, that our land has diminished in fertility. Arts improve the work of nature–when they injure it, they are not arts but barbarous customs. It is the office of agriculture as, 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. Had men the power to obscure or brighten the light of the sun, by obscuring it, they would imitate the morality of diminishing the fertility of the earth. Is not one as criminal as the other?”

John Taylor (1753-1824)

“By which it appears, that to fix our dependence upon any other beside the divine Being, and to pursue any method beside his directions, to obtain the necessaries and comforts of life, is whoredom; and does not the chief sin of the mother of harlots lie in her fixing this dependence upon the kings of the earth? Rev. 18. 3–13.”

"They say: "It costs less money to build schoolhouses than jails."  But what if it turns out that the state's expenditure is one of the things which necessitates the expenditure in jails?"

Robert Lewis Dabney