Matthew Simpson
Matthew Simpson
Matthew Simpson, was an American bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, elected in 1852 and based mostly in Chicago. During the Reconstruction Era after the Civil War, most evangelical denominations in the North, especially the Methodists, were strong supporters of radical policies that favored the Freedmenand distrusted the Southern whites. Bishop Simpson played a leading role in mobilizing the Northern Methodists for the cause. His biographer calls him the "High Priest of the Radical Republicans."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth21 June 1811
CountryUnited States of America
Human nature is the same now as when Adam hid from the presence of God; the consciousness of wrong makes us unwilling to meet those whom we have offended.
I do not purpose to discuss faith in its dogmatic sense today.
If you live for any joy on earth, you may be forsaken; but, oh, live for Jesus, and he will never forsake you!
We ourselves can die with comfort and even with joy if we know that death is but a passport to blessedness, that this intellect, freed from all material chains, shall rise and shine.
I rejoice that the reign of Christ is such, while it thrills the soul with emotions, and opens before the highest intellect the most ooundless conceptions, we are left at the same time ready, though our hearts be thrilled, to have our hands filled for deeds of benevolence and love. The happiest moments may be the busiest moments.
Wherever public worship has been established and regularly aintained, idolatry has vanished from the face of the earth. There is not now a temple to a heathen god where the word of God is read.
Wherever God's word is circulated, it stirs the hearts of the people, it prepares for public morals. Circulate that word, and you find the tone of morals immediately changed. It is God peaking to man.
It is a principle of our nature that feelings once excited turn readily from the object by which they are excited to some other object which may for the time being take possession of the mind.
We shall see our friends again. We can lay them in the grave; we know they are safe with God.
The temptations to wrong are many; they spring out of a corrupt nature.
The name of Abraham Lincoln is imperishable.
Man wants to be reconciled to God; wants to know that the past is forgiven.
Passing into practical life, illustrations of this fact are found everywhere; the distant, or the unseen, steadies and strengthens us against the rapid whirl of things around us.
Nor was it only from the millions of slaves that chains had been removed; the whole nation had been in bondage; free speech had been suppressed.