THE
SPIRIT OF CHARLES SPURGEON
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The greatest joy of a Christian is to give joy to Christ.
We shall be likely to accomplish most when we are in the best spiritual condition.
Do not begin to teach others until the Lord has taught you.
Bad times are famous times for Christ.
He will not be a wise man who does not study the human heart.
I know of no better thermometer to your spiritual temperature than the intensity of your prayer.
Many of the trials which are experienced by Christians are sent as an education in the art of sympathy.
There is the sun; I do not know how many thousands of times the sun is bigger than the earth, and yet the sun can come into a little room. And what is more, the sun can get in through a chink. So Christ can come in through a little faith, a mere chink of confidence.
When your will is God’s will, you will have your will.
Every Christian man has a choice between being humble and being humbled.
God helps those who cannot help themselves.
What the sun is to the day, what the moon is to the night, what the dew is to the flower, such is Jesus Christ to us. What bread is to the hungry, clothes to the naked, the shadow of a great rock to the traveler in a weary land, such is Jesus Christ to us. What the husband is to his spouse, what the head is to the body, such is Jesus Christ to us.
As the river seeks the sea, so Jesus, I seek thee! O let me find three and melt my life into thine forever!
There are three stages of the human soul in connection with Christ. The first is “without Christ.” This is the state of nature. The next is “in Christ.” This is the state of grace. The third is “with Christ.” That is the state of glory.
There never was a sinner half as big as Christ is as a Savior.
He who does not love sinners cannot pray aright for them.
Everything is a trifle to a man who is a Christian except the glorifying of Christ.
We are not what we ought to be, we are not what we want to be, we are not what we shall be. But we are something very different from what we used to be.
It is the will of God that saves. It is the will of man that damns.
Depend upon it, there is no pain in dying. The pain is in living.
Nothing puts life into men like a dying Savior.
Never fear dying, beloved. Dying is the last, but the least, matter that a Christian has to be anxious about. Fear living—that is a hard battle to fight, a stern discipline to endure, a rough voyage to undergo.
To be prepared to die is to be prepared to live. To be ready for eternity is in the best sense to be ready for time. Who is so fit to live on earth as the man who is fit to live in heaven?
Hell itself does not contain greater monsters of iniquity than you and I might become. Within the magazine of our hearts there is power enough to destroy us in an instant, if omnipotent grace did not prevent.
Remember, he that believes shall be saved, be his sins ever so many. And he that believes not must perish, be he sins ever so few.
When a man who professes to be converted says that he goes into the world and into sin for pleasure, it is as if an angel went to hell for enjoyment.
I have now concentrated all my prayers into one, and that one prayer is this, that I may die to self, and live wholly to him.
Repentance is to leave
The
sin we loved before,
And
show that we in earnest grieve
By
doing so no more.
What we mean by salvation is this—deliverance from the love of sin, rescue from the habit of sin, setting free from the desire to sin.
I think no servant of God is tired of serving his Master. We may be tired in the service, though not tired of it.
Is sin so luscious that you will burn in hell forever for it?
There is no water so deep but fish will swim in it, no pond so foul but frogs will live in it, no mire so filthy but swine will wallow in it, and no sin so damnable but man will commit it.
A mouse was caught by its tail in a trap the other day, and the poor creature went on eating the cheese. Many men are doing the same. They know that they are guilty, and they dread their punishment, but they go on nibbling at their beloved sins.
Sin is Christicide.
Better to be taught by suffering than to be taught by sin! Better to lie in God’s dungeon than to revel in the devil’s palace.
The Christian gains by his losses. He acquires health by his sickness. He wins friends through his bereavements, and he becomes a conqueror through his defeats. Nothing therefore, can be injurious to the Christian, when the very worst things that he has are but rough waves to wash his golden ships home to port and enrich him.
You cannot see the stars while the sun shines. Wait till it is dark, and then you shall behold them. And many a Christian grace is quite imperceptible until the time of trial, and then it shines out with great luster.
Unbelief will destroy the best of us. Faith will save the worst of us.
The Christian is the most contented man in the world, but he is the least contented with the world. He is like a traveler in an inn, perfectly satisfied with the inn and its accommodation, considering it as an inn, but putting quite out of all consideration the idea of making it his home.
Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people.
Jesus is a great giver, and my utter lack of goodness fit fits me to receive from him, since the emptier the vessel the more it can receive.
In nothing shall the glory of God be marred.
Always give that look upward before you begin your work.
A man never believes in Jesus till he knows himself to be nothing.
Thinking is a kind of work which the mass of the present race abhor. They will no more think than butterflies will make honey; they flit from flower to flower, but gather nothing.
How foolish to go on adding sin to sin, increasing the hardness of the heart, increasing the distance between the soul and Christ, and all the while fondly dreaming of some enchanted hour in which it will be more easy to yield to the divine call and part with sin.
I seem to have been climbing a series of mysterious staircases, light as air and yet as solid as granite. I cannot see a single step before me. I look down and wonder how I came where I am, but I still climb on, and he who has brought me so far supplies me with confidence for that which lies before me.
Abraham lived in God, and on God, and with God. Such a sublime life recompensed a thousand fold all the sacrifice he was led to make.
If God be God tomorrow, he is God today; if Christ be worth having next week, he is worth having today.
Never did a poor sinner trust Christ too much.
Plunge into this river of confidence in Christ. The waters are waters to swim in, not to drown in.
There is something for us to do in the wilderness, and so we are kept out of the heavenly garden for now.
The Lord Jesus fills out every type, figure, and character. Creation is too small a frame in which to hang his likeness. Human thought is too contracted, human speech too feeble, to set him forth to the full. He is inconceivably above our conceptions, inutterably above our utterances.
There is a goodness, a willingness, a powerfulness, a force, an energy in all that Jesus does that makes him to be the best possible Shepherd that can be.
That such a stupid, blind, deaf, dead soul as mine should ever know him, and should know him as he knows the Father, is ten thousand miracles in one.
We know Christ by union with him and by communion with him. We know him by love and by trusting in him. And we know him also by a deep sympathy with him, for Christ loves loves to do, we also long to do.
Nothing makes us so glad as that Jesus Christ is a savior.
If the
The sins of disciples of Christ are a thousand times worse than the sins of unbelievers, because they sin against a gospel of love, a covenant of mercy, against a sweet experience and against precious promises.
Our blessed Lord reveals himself to his people more in the
valleys, in the shades, in the deeps, than he does anywhere else. He has
a way and an art of showing himself to his children at
You cannot see the beauty of certain gems unless you place them on black velvet.
When I declare God's truth, I claim infallibility not for myself, but for God's word. I do not choose to believe in free grace, I believe in it because I cannot help it.
We are not now at our own disposal, neither can we hire ourselves out to inferior objects, mercenary aims, or selfish ambitions. For we are engaged by solemn contract to the service of our God. We have lifted up our hand unto the Lord, and we cannot draw back. Neither do we wish to withdraw from the delightful compact and covenant; we desire to keep it even unto the end. We ought to reach unto a life and a kingdom of which the mass of mankind know nothing, and care less.
The
When the Lord turns the light strong upon us, we soon see the spots in our raiment. How shall an unholy God send out unholy messengers? An unsanctified minister is an unsent minister. An unholy missionary is a pest to the tribe he visits. An unholy teacher is an injury rather than a blessing to his students.
Our infirmities of judgment are aggravated by our imperfections of character, and by our walking at a distance from God.
All that befalls us on our road to heaven is meant to fit us for the journey's end. Our way through the wilderness is meant to try us, and to prove us, that our evils may be discovered, repented of, and overcome, and that thus we may be without fault before the throne at the last. We are being educated for the skies, meetened for the assembly of the perfect.
Faith expects to hear the voice behind it saying, "This is the way, walk ye in it." Trusting our own judgment often means following our own whims; but faith seeks direction from infallible wisdom, and so it is led in a right way. God knows your capacity better than you do; entreat him to choose your inheritance for you.
When the Lord makes us feel that we are poor, undeserving creatures, we do not mind taking the lowest room, or doing the meanest work, for we feel that as long as we are out of hell and have a hope of heaven, the meanest service is an honor to us. We are glad enough to where God would have us be, seeing Christ has loved us and given himself for us.
Many a man has reached the summit of a life-long ambition and found it to be mere vanity. In gaining all he has lost all; wealth has come, but the power to enjoy it has gone; life has been worn out in the pursuit, and no strength is left with which to enjoy the game. It shall not be so with the man who lives by faith, for his chief joys are above, and his comfort lies within. To him God is joy so rich that other joy is comparatively flavorless.
True faith sets loose worldly things and is ready to haul up the anchor and make sail at the divine bidding. Retirement from work will be a release from care and no source of distress. The evening of advanced age maybe spent as joyfully as the noontide of manhood if the mind be staid on God. Our Master has taught us how to die as well as how to live. What is there here in this life that should make us wait? What is there on this poor earth to detain a heaven-born and heaven-bound spirit? Nay, let go, for he is gone in whom our treasure is, whose beauties have engrossed our love. Since he is not here, why should we desire to linger? He has risen, let us rise.
When a man gives himself up to a deceitful heart he gets to be a destroyer of others. Not content with being lost themselves, they become the servants of Satan to destroy others. A man catcher sets traps to catch men, aiming to pervert, to corrupt, to mislead, to be guile. Such fiends in human form have surely reached the last stage of corruption when they not only sin themselves, but are the creators of sin in others.
God sees you in your spiritual death to be nothing but naked corruption.
Everything about you and me that is unreal God hates, and hates it more in his own people than anywhere else.
Let a man begin to tamper with his conscious, to play tricks with words, and especially to trifle with religion, and there is no knowing what he will be. I have constantly seen almost all sorts of hardened reprobates, but rarely have I seen a man converted who has been a thorough-paced liar. The heart which is crammed with craft and treachery seems as if it will have passed out of the reach of grace.
No doubt many a state has been preserved by the Godly remnant in it, whom the majority would have exterminated had it been in their power. Hence, the value of good men in bad localities. When you, my dear friend, go into a place where there is no religion, do not be so very sorry at your position, for God may have great ends to be served by you.
God never saved a city simply because there was a millionaire in it.
Go and live with God, and be not afraid to live with men. Whoever they may be, God will give you power over them, and power with himself on their behalf.
The church triumphant, it shall be a right royal abode, the metropolis of the universe, the palace of the great King. Everything that is lustrous, pure, precious, majestic shall be there. The church shall be no longer despised, but shall sit as a queen among the nations, while at her feet they shall heap up all their glory and honor. Everything about the perfected church shall be the best of the best; she shall be recognized as the fairest among women, the bride, the Lamb's wife, the crown and flower of the universe.
Nothing can enter heaven which is not real; nothing erroneous, mistaken, conceited, hollow, professional, pretentious, insubstantial, can be smuggled through the gates. Only truth can dwell with the God of truth.
Great minds love the simple gospel of God, for they find rest in it from all the worry and the weariness of questions and of doubt.
Our own hearts are deceitful, so that truth lies not on the surface, but must be drawn up from the deepest well.
The life of the Christian should be a magnet to draw people to Christ.
If there be no melting of the glacier high up on the ravines of the mountain, there will be no descending rivulets to cheer the plain.
The strong are not always vigorous, the wise not always ready, the brave not always courageous, and the joyous not always happy.
Excess of job or excitement must be paid for by subsequent depressions. When the trial lasts, the strength to the emergency; but when it is over, natural weakness claims the right to show itself. Secretly sustained, Jacob can wrestle all night, but he must limp in the morning when the contest is over. Paul may be caught up to the third heaven, and hear unspeakable things, but a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him, must be the inevitable sequel. Men cannot bear unalloyed happiness; even good men are not yet fit. The bow cannot be always bent without fear of breaking. Rest is as needed to the mind as sleep to the body. If we do not rest, we will break down.
Frost-bitten men, it is as though an angel were confined in an iceberg.Where one man has been ruined by adversity, ten thousand men have been destroyed by prosperity.
Sin and hell are married unless repentance proclaims the divorce.
I would rather go to heaven doubting all the way, than be lost through self-confidence.
God is more ready to forgive me than I am ready to offend.
The holier a man becomes, the more he mourns over the unholiness which remains in him.
The preacher who neglects to pray much must be very careless about his ministry. He cannot have comprehended his calling. He cannot have computed the value of a soul, or estimated the meaning of eternity.
We are not called to proclaim philosophy and metaphysics, but the
simple gospel.
Man's
fall, his need of a new birth, forgiveness through atonement, and salvation as
the result of faith, these are our battle-ax and weapons of war.
If a man would speak without any present study, he must study much.
Men may well be slow of speech in discussing themes beyond the range of their experience. But you, warmed with love towards the King, and enjoying fellowship with him, your tongues will be as the pens of ready writers.
Live by the day—aye, by the hour. Put no trust in frames and feelings. Care more for a grain of faith than a ton of excitement. Trust in God alone, and lean not on the needs of human help. Be not surprised when friends fail you; it is a failing world. Never count on immutability in man.
Do not spare yourself and become self-satisfied; but on the other hand, do not slander yourself and sink into despondency. Your own opinion of your state is not worth much; ask the Lord to search you.
It must never be forgotten that the flesh is weak and naturally inclined to slumber.
We need a constant renewal of the divine impulse which first started us in the way of service.
The world is full of grinding poverty and crushing sorrow; shame and death are the portion of thousands, and it needs a great gospel to meet the dire necessities of people's souls.
All the water in the sea will not hurt the vessel one thousandth part as much as that which comes into it. Are you God's servant or not? If you are, how can your heart be cold?
Ten minutes praying is better than a year’s murmuring.
As weeds multiply in the soil, so do sins spring up in our hearts.
If there be anything I know, anything that I am quite assured of beyond all question, it is that praying breath is never spent in vain.
The Christian should work as if all depended on him, and pray as if it all depended on God.
The more we pray, the more we shall want to pray. The more we pray, the more we can pray. The more we pray, the more we shall pray. He who prays little will pray less, but he who prays much will pray more. And he who prays more, will desire to pray more abundantly.
Only that prayer which comes from our heart can get to God’s heart.
We must get rid of the icicles that hang about our lips. We must ask the Lord to thaw the ice caves of our soul and to make our hearts like a furnace of fire heated seven times hotter. If our hearts do not burn within us, we may well question whether Jesus is with us. Those who are neither cold nor hot he has threatened to spew out of his mouth. How can we expect his favor if we fall into a condition so obnoxious to him?
They hear the gospel but they have no idea of allowing it to enter their inmost souls. The ground of their hearts is too much occupied already, other feet will tread there and speedily obliterate the sower's footprints.
The light of the law is but moonlight compared with the light of the gospel, which is the light of the sun.
Why should I disbelieve my God? How dare I doubt him who cannot lie? How can I mistrust the faithful promiser who has added to his promise his oath, and over and above his promise and his oath has given his own blood as a seal?
We ought no more to excuse doubting than lying, for doubting slanders God and makes him a liar.
Our Savior used no force, neither did he use any means which might enlist man's lower nature on his side. When I have heard of large congregations gathered together by the music of a fine choir, I have remembered that the same thing is done at the opera house and the music hall, and I have felt no joy.
If darkness be a preparation for light, I grant you the world did prepare itself for Christ.
The Lord open your eyes, poor blind bats, for if there is anything
that stares in the face of man who is willing to see it, it is God, and God at
work in providence, in nature, in grace, and in all sorts of ways!
The dog hole of selfishness can never afford you any comfort. When the first and last concern of a man is simply his own feelings, or his own enjoyment, he cannot get any good feelings or any enjoyment either.
Our places will be empty soon. Cheer the aged, console the desponding, help the poor, for they will soon be beyond your reach.
Real conversion by the Holy Spirit is as distinct and radical a change as though an old man were placed in a mill and ground young again.
The Lord's portion must not be spoiled, the King's private garden must not be trodden under the stranger's foot, his bride must not be for others.
There is no happiness comparable to a complete submergence of self into the glory of God.
Has some beloved child been borne away like a seraph beyond the stars?
Nothing can bring a man into a state of life so well as a feeling of death.
We are speeding onwards through our brief life like an arrow shot from a bow, and we feel that we shall not drop down at the end of our flight into the dreariness of annihilation, but we shall find a heavenly target far across the flood of death.
Some men of little faith are perpetually enshrouded with fears; their faith seems only strong enough to enable them to doubt.
To know what men have already done is a light matter compared with knowing what men will yet do.
When God looks at a man's life, he sees infinitely more in it than
the man ever saw in it himself, or that all his fellow creatures have seen.
As
when a man looks on a map and the whole of the country is before him, so does
God look down upon our life as it is spread out for his inspection, and he sees
it all at once.
Up from the graves of forgetfulness where you have buried them, your sins perpetually rise and confront the judgment seat of God.
Sirs, as far as you can, you do kill God, for you put him out of your thoughts, you make nothing of him, and what is that but the crucifixion of God? You despise him so much that his presence has no effect upon you.
I do not know any subject that so much depresses me, humbles me, and lays me in the dust, as the thought of my omissions.
A sense of satisfaction with yourself will be the death of your progress.
Men are microcosms, or little worlds. Each man has his distinct sphere, wherein he dwells apart. We are so many worlds, and no one world of man exactly overlaps another. You cannot completely know your fellowman.
The keenest griefs cut a narrow but deep channel, and as they wear into the inmost soul they flow without noise.
Especially judge not the sons and daughters of sorrow. Allow no ungenerous suspicions of the afflicted, the poor, and the despondent. We cannot diminish the pain of another's wound, even though we should be wounded ourselves.
We cling with dreadful tenacity to this poor life, and the little pleasures which we foolishly call our all.
We occupy a house, which is evidently not our own, and therefore there must be some rent to pay. The rent that God asks of his tenants is that they should praise him as long as they live.
I believe that our God is best praised in common things. He who molds a shoe with a right motive is praising God as much as the seraph who pours forth his celestial sonnet.
When a man who is right with God dies, he wishes that he may not leave here on earth no truce of injury done to God, but many memorials of service rendered.
Let us not act as if we expected to remain in these lowlands forever. It is a dreadful thing to see men who profess to be Christians unwilling to die.
You are the creature of the Almighty. In every vein and sinew and nerve of your body, there are traces of the Divine Embroiderer's skill. Day by day you are a commoner at the table of divine bounty, a pensioner hour by hour upon the infinite mercy of God. You have nothing and are nothing but as God pleases. You owe all you have and all you are to him.
Everything the Spirit of God does is substance, not shadow. The baseless fabric of a vision is the work of man.
We hold the scales of justice with a very unsteady hand when our character is in the balance.
He bids me come, and come I will. He is a great giver; I can only be a receiver, and my utter lack of all goodness fits me to receive from him, since the emptier the vessel the more it can receive.
When the book of God's purposes shall be all unfolded in actual history there will be found no blots, mistakes and blunders there. He knows the end from the beginning and his purposes shall be fulfilled in every jot and tittle, and in nothing shall the glory of God be marred. Though Satan may be laughing now, and every now and then the men of the world may boast against the people of God, it shall not be so in the close of the affair.
He that rightly handles the Word of God will never use it to defend men in their sins, but to slay their sins.
Great God! How could you love that which we ourselves hated?
We know our Shepherd from all others. We know him from a statue covered with his clothes. We know the living Christ, for we have come into living contact with him, and we cannot be deceived anymore than Jesus Christ himself can be deceived about the Father. We know him by union with him and by communion with him. We know him by love; we know him by trusting him. And we know him also by a deep sympathy with him, for what Christ desires to do, we also long to do. Nothing makes us so glad as that Jesus Christ is a Savior.
If the
We have a large class of poor creatures, who, while not discontent with others, are discontent with themselves. They are not what they like to be, and they are not what they wish to be, and they don't feel as they should feel, and they don't think as they would like to think. They are always plunging their finger into their own eyes, because they cannot see as well as they wish, always ripping up the wounds they have, making themselves miserable in order that they may be happy, and at last, crying themselves into an inconsolable state of misery, they acquire a habit of mourning, until that mourning seems to be the only bliss they know.
God will not have his people eat the fat and drink the sweet unless they are prepared to carry their burden and give a portion to others, as well as seek meat for themselves.
If your faith is not fixed in Jesus, your best works will be but splendid sins. All the performance of duties will not affect your salvation.
Whenever you have much joy, be cautious; there is sorrow down the
road. But when you have much sadness be hopeful; there is a joy on the
way to you, be sure of that. Our blessed Lord reveals himself to his
people more in the valleys, in the shades, in the deeps, than he does anywhere
else. He has a way and an art of showing himself to his children at
The things I preach are part and parcel of myself. I am sure that they are true. When I declare God's truth, I claim infallibility not for myself, but for God's Word.
I would rather lay my soul asoak in half a dozen verses all day long than I would, as it were, rinse my hands in several chapters. Oh, to bathe in a text of Scripture and to let it be sucked up into your very soul til it saturates your heart. The man who has read many books it not always a learned man, but he is a strong man who has read three or four books over and over til he has mastered them. Set your heart upon God's Word! It is the only way to know it thoroughly; let your whole nature be plunged into it as cloth into a dye. Try to follow the Lord fully, even though it should cause the revision of cherished sentiments, or even the alteration of your denomination connections.
Jesus poured out his soul in life before he poured it out unto death.
We are not the world's, else might we be ambitious; we are not our own, else might we be selfish. We belong to Jesus, and he presents us to his Father and begs him to accept us and sanctify us to his own purposes.
The
Ours should be a purpose and an aim far higher than the best of the unregenerate can understand. We ought to reach unto a life and a kingdom of which the mass of mankind know nothing and care less.
Without sanctification we cannot enjoy the innermost sweets of our holy faith. The unsanctified are full of doubts and fears, and what wonder? The unsanctified often say of the outward exercise of religion, "what a weariness it is?" and no wonder, for they know not the internal joys of it, having never learned to delight themselves in God.
When the Lord turns the light strong upon us we soon see the spots upon our raiment. How shall a holy God send out unholy messengers? An unsanctified minister is an unsent minister. An unholy missionary is a pest to the tribe he visits; an unholy teacher in a school is an injury rather than a blessing to the class he conducts. Only in proportion as you are sanctified unto God can you hope for the power of the Holy Spirit to rest upon you. How much may each of us have been hampered and hindered by want of holiness! God will not use unclean instruments, and he will not even have his holy vessels borne by unclean hands.
Our infirmities of judgment are aggravated by our imperfections of character, and our walking at a distance from our God.
All that befalls us on our road to heaven is meant to fit us for our journey's end. Our way through the wilderness is meant to try us, and to prove us, that our evils may be discovered, repented of, and overcome and that thus we may be without fault before the throne at the last. We are being educated for the skies and for the assembly of the perfect. What we shall be does not yet appear because we are struggling up towards it.
Only he is fit to preach who cannot avoid preaching, who feels that woe is upon him unless he preach the gospel.
God knows your capacity better than you do; entreat him to choose your inheritance for you. If the flowers were to revolt against the gardener, and each one should select its own soil, most of them would pine and die through their unsuitable position. But he who has studied their nature knows that this flower needs shade and damp; and another needs sunlight and a light soil; and so the gardener puts his plants where they are most likely to flourish. God does the same with us. He has made some to be kings, thought few of those plants flourish much. He has made many to be poor, and the soil of poverty, though damp and cold, has produced many a glorious harvest for the great Reaper. The Lord has set some in places of peril, places from which they would gladly escape, but they are preserved by his hand. He has planted many others in the quiet shade of obscurity, and they blossom to the praise of the great Husbandman.
We should be glad enough to be where God would have us be, since Christ loved us and gave himself for us.
What is there here that we should wait? What is there on this poor earth to detain a heaven-born and heaven-bound spirit? If Jesus is not here, why should we desire to linger? He has risen, let us rise.
Cast off a pure God and you want a god of some sort, and so every man to his liking manufactures a god for himself. The earthly mind of the heathen makes a god of mud. The man whose soul is bound up in his bags makes the golden calf his deity. The free-liver invents a god who has no justice and consequently takes no vengeance upon sin. Man looks for God and thinks he sees him when he sees himself in a mirror. By nature, every man is his own deity; he worships his own image. It is only the man that is pure in heart that sees God.
It is an awful thing to live untruthfully. A worm in a ring of fire could not wriggle more painfully.
We are all inclined to shuffle with God. It is hard work to bring us up to confession of sin at the first, and to make us pull off our pretty, cheating righteousness. We like to wear a rag or two of our own as long as we can. That base money of our own merit, those counterfeit farthings of supposed excellence, we do not like giving them all up. It is hard to get the last penny out of us, and make us bankrupt in the court of heaven, and yet to this we must surely come.
Your reputation may be dead and buried, but if you have not killed it by your own conduct, it will have a resurrection; and when it rises again it will be much more fair and beautiful than it was before. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him, for he will do the justice in due time for thou art his own, and he will not forget thee.
In every well-ordered congregation there are seats emptied by holy service. Many Christians appear to think that their entire religious duty begins and ends with attending church, but no village station receives their ministry, no ragged school enjoys their presence, no street corner hears their voice--but their pew is filled with commendable constancy. We do not condemn such, yet we show them a more excellent way.
Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and
depends with our years.
Grace puts its hand on the boasting mouth, and shuts it once for all.
If He bids us carry a burden, He carries it also.
It will greatly comfort you
if you can see God’s hand in both your losses and your crosses.
It’s a good thing God chose
me before I was born, because he surely would not have afterwards.
The Christian’s battle is
first of all with sin.
I believe a very large
majority of churchgoers are merely unthinking, slumbering worshipers of an
unknown God.
Get men converted, and a
thousand foolish ideas are destroyed.
This change is radical—it
gives us new natures, it makes us love what we hated and hate what we loved, it
sets us in a new road; it makes our habits different, it makes our thoughts
different, it makes us different in private, and different in public.
There is not a spider
hanging on the wall that doesn’t have an errand; there is not a weed growing in
the corner of the church lot hat doesn’t have a purpose; there is not a single
insect fluttering in the breeze that does not accomplish some divine
decree. And I will never believe that God created any man, especially any
Christian man, to be a blank, and to be a nothing.
This will deliver you from
clinging to the present world, and make you long for those eternal things which
are so soon to be revealed to you.
Two educated doctors are
angrily discussing the nature of food, and allowing their meal to lie untasted,
while a simple countryman is eating as heartily as he can of that which is set
before him. The religious world is full of faultfinders, critics, and
skeptics, who, like the doctors, fight over Christianity without profit either
to themselves or others; and those are far happier who imitate the farmer and
feed upon the Word of God, which is the true food of the soul. Luther’s
prayer was, “From nice questions the Lord deliver us.”
I would rather believe a
limited atonement that is efficacious for all men for whom it was intended,
than a universal atonement that is not efficacious for anybody, except the will
of men be added to it.
