C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Assurance
Immoderate assurance is perfect licentiousness.
Assurance never failed to get admission into the houses of the great.
Assurance of hope is more life. It is health, strength, power, vigor, activity, energy, manliness, beauty.
Assurance and intrepidity, under the white banner of seeming modesty, clear the way to merit that would otherwise be discouraged by difficulties.
True assurance makes a man more humble and self-denied, but presumptuous confidence puffs up with spiritual pride and self-conceit; the one excites to the practice of every commanded duty, but the other encourages sloth and indolence.
There are believers who by God’s grace, have climbed the mountains of full assurance and near communion, their place is with the eagle in his eyrie, high aloft; they are like the strong mountaineer, who has trodden the virgin snow, who has breathed the fresh, free air of the Alpine regions, and therefore his sinews are braced, and his limbs are vigorous; there are they who do great exploits, being mighty men, men of renown.
Let us rise into blest assurance that everywhere and forever we are enfolded, penetrated, guarded, guided, kept by the power of the Father and Friend, who can never forsake us; and that all spirits who have begun to seek, know, love, and serve the All-Perfect One on earth shall be reunited in a celestial home, and be welcomed together into the freedom of the universe, and the perpetual light of His presence.