The following piece by Dickens, in my estimation, is about how the privileged who espouse a prosperity message, if I may use a current term, but see not the struggles of the common man.

  "O Moralists, who treat of happiness and self-respect, innate in every sphere of life, and shedding light on every grain of dust in God's highway, so smooth below your carriage-wheels, so rough beneath the tread of naked feet, bethink yourselves in looking on the swift descent of men who have lived in their own esteem, that there are scores of thousands breathing now, and breathing thick with painful toil, who in that high respect have never lived at all, nor had a chance of life! Go ye, who rest so placidly upon the sacred bard who had been young, and when he strung his harp was old, and had never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging their bread; go, teachers of content and honest pride, into the mine, the mill, the forge, the squalid depths of deepest ignorance and uttermost abyss of man's neglect, and say can any hopeful plant spring up in air so foul that it extinguishes the soul's bright torch as fast as it is kindled! And, oh! Ye Pharisees of the nineteen hundredth year of Christian knowledge, who soundingly appeal to human nature, see that it be human first. Take heed it has not been transformed, during your slumber and the sleep of generations, into the nature of beasts." Charles Dickens.

"When a captain finds his vessel is out of the right channel, carried by negligence, by adverse winds or by blundering through a fog, from the true course, he wastes no time in bemoaning his mistake but at the fist sunburst, takes new bearings, changes his course, steers bravely towards his harbor with renewed courage to make up the time he has lost. The mistake means -- increased care and greater speed." William George Jordan.

"What a man is at any moment of life does not fix what he may become. It is not necessarily a destination; it may be merely a station; a chapter, not the complete story. It is not results that are the true test of living, for they may lie outside the individual's power to control, but it is ever the moral and mental qualities he puts into the struggle." William George Jordan.

I love this photo of a 13 year old girl, so full of life, silliness and imagination; so rich in promise and potential if guided with time, wisdom and love. Neglect that: allow her to feed and feast on the dainties of this world, and sorrow will doubtless follow.

   

 "Do not try to make the Bible relevant. It's relevance is self-evident. Do not defend God's word, but 
testify to it. Trust the Word. It is a ship loaded to the very limits of its capacity. 
Bonhoeffer. 

  "If therefore, "there be any virtue, if there be any praise," whoever would complete the circle of the Christian life will "think on these things:' and will thrust aside the worthless swarm of competitors on his attention; and in his reading will exclusively retain, and in his living associations will never wholly lose, his close communion with the few lofty and faithful spirits that glorify our world: and above all, will at once quench and feed his thirst for the highest wisdom, by trustful and reverent resort to God in whom sanctity and sorrow, the divine and the human, mingled in a combination to sacred to be uttered, and to great to be expressed in words."  Martineau.

 In our pursuit of godliness, I like the line that says, "thrust aside the worthless swarm of competitors on our attention." Great description. I also love the last line where he describes the heart of Christianity as a world of sanctity and sorrow, the divine and the human, mingled in ineffable combination.   

"The sages of antiquity understood and proclaimed many moral truths of the highest value, some of them the same as those of the New Testament. The moral precepts of Seneca were given to the Romans at the same time with those of Christ. In an age when the highest intelligence coexisted in the empire with the most evil. Seneca's morals had no more influence upon the character of those who received and believed them than they had on the statues in the Pantheon. Seneca himself was accused of profligacy; and he was both the instructor and the victim of the worst of the Romans. The people believed his precepts and grew worse, while those who believed the teachings of the gospel in the same ages grew better and spread over the world. This is the vital point."    Walker.