‘Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil, cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of love position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: It is the Lord’s to avenge; He will repay. If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if one is thirsty, give one something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. There is hardly a greater difference in intellect between angel and human, than there is between human and human.   

The World is in conspiracy to drive out what little wit God has given us. The causes of violence, like the causes of poor health, do not usually begin in the body. They pass through it, and the marks they leave are often subtle and vague. Sometimes the illusion of knowing is more dangerous than not knowing at all. For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Many the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow God, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the Lord. Not being reconciled to the fact of sin—not recognizing it and refusing to deal with it—produces all the disasters in life. In your human relationships and friendships, have you reconciled yourself to the fact of sin? If not, just around the next corner you will find yourself trapped and you will compromise with it. However, if you will reconcile yourself to the fact of sin, you will realize the danger immediately. I have the person in whom kindness produces no responsive affection, and injustice no swell, no glow of resentment. The knowledge of all law goes but a little way to the discerning the justice of the cause.  

The World, being in the constant commission of vast quantities of injustice, is a little too apt to comfort itself with the idea that if the victim of its falsehood and malice have a clear conscience, one cannot fail to be sustained under one’s trials, and somehow or other to come at last; in which case, though we certainly do not expect it—nobody will be better pleased than we. Whereas, the World would do well to reflect, that injustice is in itself, to every generous and properly constituted mind, an injury, of all others the most insufferable, the most torturing, and the most hard to bear; and that many clear consciences have gone to their account elsewhere, and many sound hearts have broken, because of this very reason; the knowledge of their own deserts only aggravating their sufferings, and rendering them the less endurable. Error and evil are not harmonious and hence are not real, but it is equally clear that they are not nothing. Although error and evil are discordant and hence not real, it is possible that they contribute to the harmony of the whole, and if this is possible then we must conclude that it is so even though we do not know how it is possible. For what is possible, and what a general principle compels us to say must be, that certainly is.   

The Winchester Mystery House

REPLETE with secrecy and evocative of dread, The Winchester Mystery House looms large in the field the of supernatural. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/