To look thus obliquely upon life is the very recipe for moral slumber.

Our intention and endeavour should be directed, not on some vague end of money or applause, which shall come to us by a ricochet in a month or a year, or twenty years, but on the act itself; not on the approval of others, but on the rightness of that act.

At every instant, at every step in life, the point has to be decided, our soul has to be saved, heaven has to be gained or lost.

At every step our spirits must applaud, at every step we must set down the foot and sound the trumpet.

'This have I done,' we must say; 'right or wrong, this have I done, in unfeigned honour of intention, as to myself and God.' The profit of every act should be this, that it was right for us to do it.