What They Said

“The Christian soldier must avoid two evils – he must not faint or yield in the time of fight, and after a victory he must not wax insolent and secure.  When he has overcome, he is so to behave himself as though he were presently again to be assaulted. For Satan’s temptations, like the waves of the sea, do follow one in the neck of the other;  and when one is past another is ready to overwhelm us, if, like skillful pilots, we be not ready to break the violence of that which follows, as well as of that which went before.”

George Downame

"Troubled by the non-problem of pain, most people do not feel the real problem. The real difficulty is the problem of pleasure. While in a sinful world, pain is to be expected, and pleasure is not to be expected. We should be constantly amazed at the presence of pleasure in a world such as ours.

It is easy to understand why this confusion has come about. Pain is a painful subject. Pleasure is a pleasurable subject. People do not like pain. They do like pleasure. And people associate problems with what they do not like. Because they do not like pain, they call it a problem.

The fact is that pain is no problem, whereas pleasure is an excruciating problem; and if one ever begins to think about that it can become intolerable. How could there be pleasure in a sinful world? People do not like thinking about pleasure in such a light because then they must admit their own sinfulness."

John Gerstner