"Now, friends, you who want to be good, to be just, to be faithful, where lies your hope of deliverance? I do not speak to you-as a motive-of a hell, for I do not think you need it. But, do you know, I think from the extreme of the old-fashioned teaching that God made men on purpose to damn them, some modern theologians are much exposed to the going over to a very dangerous opposite extreme, and teaching that God will not damn men at all! I do not seek to drive you towards goodness with this fear of God's damnation, but let the man who persists in hardness and impenitence, and who goes on and on and out of the world scorning and neglecting the mercy of our Heavenly Father, be sure that there will be for him a future condemnation terrible to bear. But you, who are tender-hearted, and who want to be true, and are trying to be, learn these two things from our text: never to be discouraged because good things get on so slowly here, and never to fail to do daily that good which lies next to your hand. Do not be in a hurry, but be diligent. Enter into the sublime patience of the Lord! Be charitable in view of it. Be earnest in the faith of it. God can afford to wait, why cannot we-since we have Him to fall back upon! Let patience have her perfect work, and bring forth her celestial fruits. Trust God to weave your little thread into the great web, though the pattern show it not yet. When God's people are able and willing thus to labour and to wait, remembering that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, the grand harvest of the ages shall come to its reaping, and the day shall broaden itself to a thousand years, and the thousand years shall show themselves as a perfect and finished day!"

-----George MacDonald, "Sermons from the Pulpit"