The smallest things are as absolutely necessary as the great things.
An arm of flesh never brings power.
Half the world's sorrow comes from the unwisdom of parents.
Obedience brings health,
Blessed the man and woman who is able to serve cheerfully in the second
rank--a big test,
What they were weary of was the punishment, not the sin that brought
it.
Slavery never pays; the slave is spoiled as a man, and the master not
less so.
It were worth while to die, if thereby a soul could be born again._
She was deeply interested in the earlier books, for the reason that the
moral and social conditions depicted there were analogous to those she
had to deal with in Calabar. Every now and then we come across such
remarks as these: "a Calabar palaver," "a chapter of Calabar history,"
"a picture of Calabar outside the gospel area," "this happens in
Okoyong every day." Her own experience helped her to understand the
story of these primitive civilisations, and her annotations on this
part of the Bible have always the sharpest point. To the sentence, "The
Lord watch between me and thee," she appends, "Beautiful sentiment, but
a _mbiam_ oath of fear." Jacob she terms in one place a "selfish
beggar." Of Jael she says, "Not a womanly woman, a sorry story; would
God not have showed her a better way if she had asked?" and of part of
Deborah's song she remarks, "Fine poetry, poor morality." Her opinion
of Jezebel is thus expressed: "A vain, heartless woman; one of the most
revolting stories in history, and she might have been such a queen! A
good woman is the most beautiful thing on earth, but a bad woman is a
source of corruption.... Had only her soul been clean, dogs might have
been welcome to her body."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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