He that is once “born of God shall overcome the world,” and the prince of this world too, by the power of God in him.  Holiness is no solitary, neglected thing; it hath stronger confederacies, greater alliances, than sin and wickedness.  It is in league with God and the universe; the whole creation smiles upon it; there is something of God in it, and therefore it must needs be a victorious and triumphant thing.—­Cudworth.

Regeneration is the ransacking of the soul, the turning of a man out of himself, the crumbling to pieces of the old man, and the new moulding of it into another shape; it is the turning of stones into children, and a drawing of the lively portraiture of Jesus Christ upon that very table that before represented only the very image of the devil....  Art thou thus changed?  Are all old things done away, and all things in thee become new?  Hast thou a new heart and renewed affections?  And dost thou serve God in newness of life and conversation?  If not,—­what hast thou to do with hopes of heaven?  Thou art yet without Christ, and so consequently without hope.—­Bishop Hopkins.

Regret.—­A wrong act followed by just regret and thoughtful caution to avoid like errors, makes a man better than he would have been if he had never fallen.—­Horatio Seymour.

The business of life is to go forward; he who sees evil in prospect meets it in his way, but he who catches it by retrospection turns back to find it.  That which is feared may sometimes be avoided, but that which is regretted to-day may be regretted again to-morrow.—­Dr. Johnson.

A feeling of sadness and longing
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain. 
—­Longfellow.

The present only is a man’s possession; the past is gone out of his hand wholly, irrevocably.  He may suffer from it, learn from it,—­in degree, perhaps, expiate it; but to brood over it is utter madness.  —­Miss MULOCK.

Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these:  “It might have been!”
—­Whittier.

Religion.—­A religion that never suffices to govern a man will never suffice to save him; that which does not sufficiently distinguish one from a wicked world will never distinguish him from a perishing world.—­Howe.

Religion crowns the statesman and the man,
Sole source of public and of private peace. 
—­Young.

A true religious instinct never deprived man of one single joy; mournful faces and a sombre aspect are the conventional affectations of the weak-minded.—­Hosea Ballou.

The source of all good and of all comfort.—­Burke.

You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world.  It will alone gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will alone.—­S.T.  Coleridge.