Samuel Rutherford Quotes

Believe God's love and power more than you believe your own feelings and experiences. Your rock is Christ, and it is not the rock that ebbs and flows but the sea.

They lose nothing who gain Christ.

Jesus Christ came into my prison cell last night, and every stone flashed like a ruby.

O my Lord Jesus Christ, if I could be in heaven without Thee, it would be hell; and if I could be in hell, and have Thee still, it would be heaven to me, for Thou are all the heaven I want.

Let your children be as so many flowers, borrowed from God. If the flowers die or wither, thank God for a summer loan of them.

I find it most true that the greatest temptation outside of hell is to live without temptations; if water stands, it rots; faith is the better for the sharp winter storm in its face and grace withers without adversity. The devil is but God's master fencer to teach us to handle our weapons.

In our fluctuations of feelings, it is well to remember that Jesus admits no change in His affections; your heart is not the compass Jesus saileth by.

I have been benefited by praying for others; for by making an errand to God for them I have gotten something for myself.

Humility is a strange flower; it grows best in winter weather, and under storms of affliction.

I pray God that I may never find my will again. Oh, that Christ would subject my will to His, and trample it under His feet.

No pen, no words, no image can express to you the loveliness of my only, only Lord Jesus.

The secret formula of the saints: When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord's choicest wines.

The great Master Gardener, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in a wonderful providence, with his own hand, planted me here, where by his grace, in this part of his vineyard, I grow; and here I will abide till the great Master of the vineyard think fit to transplant me.

You will not get to steal quietly into heaven, into Christ's company, without a conflict and a cross. I find crosses to be Christ's carved work that he marks out for us and that with crosses he portraits us to his own image, cutting away pieces of our ill and corruption. Lord cut - Lord carve - Lord wound - Lord do anything that may perfect thy Father's image in us and make us ready for glory.

Our little time of suffering is not worthy of our first night's welcome home to Heaven.

Christ chargeth me to believe His daylight at midnight.

Howbeit your faith seeth but the black side of providence, yet it hath a better side, and God shall let you see it. ... “For we know that all things work together for good to them that love God,” ergo, shipwreck, losses, &c., work together for the good of them that love God: hence I infer, that losses, disappointments, ill tongues, loss of friends, houses, or country, are God's workmen, set on work to work out good to you, out of everything that befalleth you.

My Lord Jesus has fully recompensed my sadness with his joys, my losses with his own presence. I find it a sweet and rich thing to exchange my sorrows with Christ's joys, my afflictions with that sweet peace I have with himself.

Grace grows best in winter.

Why should I tremble at the plough of my Lord, that maketh deep furrows on my soul? I know He is no idle husbandman, He purposeth a crop.

Set not your heart upon the world, since God hath not made it your portion.

Ye have lost a child--nay, she is not lost to you, who is found to Christ; she is not sent away, but only sent before; like unto a star, which going out of our sight, doth not die and vanish, but shineth in another hemisphere.

But the way to overcome is by patience, forgiving and praying for your enemies, in doing whereof you heap coals upon their heads, and your Lord shall open a door to you in your trouble: wait upon Him, as the night watch waiteth for the morning. He will not tarry. Go up to your watch-tower, and come not down, but by prayer, and faith, and hope, wait on.

My desire is that my Lord would give me broader and deeper thoughts, to feed myself with wondering at His love.

If Christ Jesus be the periode, the end and the lodging-home at the end of your journey, there is no fear ye go to a friend . . . ye may look death in the face with joy.

I urge you a nearer communion with Christ, and a growing communion. There are curtains to be opened in Christ that we have never seen before... Therefore dig deep, and sweat, and labor. Take pains for Him, and set aside as much time as you can in each day for Him.

My faith has no bed to sleep upon but omnipotence.

If so be that freewill were our tutor, and we had our heaven in our own keeping, then we would lose all. But because we have Christ for our tutor, and He has our heaven in His hand, therefore the covenant it must be perpetual.

Set no time to the Lord the creator of time, for His time is always best.

To believe Christ's cross to be a friend, as he himself is a friend, is also a special act of faith

Praise God for the hammer, the file, and the furnace. The hammer molds us, the file sharpens us, and the fire tempers us.

After winter comes the summer. After night comes the dawn. And after every storm, there comes clear, open skies.

Think it not hard if you get not your will, nor your delights in this life; God will have you to rejoice in nothing but himself.

It is certain that this is not only good which the Almighty has done, but that it is best; He hath reckoned all your steps to heaven.

Consider, it is impossible that your idol sins and you can go to heaven together; and that those who will not part with these do not indeed love Christ at the bottom, but only in word and show, which will not do the business.

Show yourself a Christian by suffering without murmuring. In patience possess your soul - they lose nothing who gain Christ.

Grace tried is better than grace, and more than grace; it is glory in its infancy

When the supreme magistrate will not execute the judgment of the Lord, those who made him supreme magistrate, under God, who have under God, sovereighn liberty to dispose of crowns and kingdoms, are to execute the judgment of the Lord, when wicked men make the law of God of none effect.

When I look to my guiltiness, I see that my salvation is one of our Saviour's greatest miracles, either in heaven or earth.

When we shall come home, and enter into the possession of our Brother's fair kingdom, and when our heads shall find the weight of the eternal crown of glory, then we shall look back to pains and sufferings and then we will see life and sorrow to be less than one step or stride from a prison to glory. Our little inch of time-suffering is not worthy of our first night's welcome-home to heaven.

How soon would faith freeze without a cross!

Build your nest in no tree here...for the Lord of the forest has condemned the whole woods to be demolished.

I wonder many times that ever a child of God should have a sad heart, considering what their Lord is preparing for them.

Verily, we know not what an evil it is to indulge ourselves, and to make an idol of our will.

There is nothing that will make you a Christian indeed, but a taste of the sweetness of Christ.

Christ has no velvet crosses.

The night will close the door & fasten my anchor within the veil and I shall go away to sleep.

Many are friends to the success of reformation, not to reformation.

Let us be faithful and care for our own part, which is to do and suffer for Him, and lay Christ's part on Himself, and leave it there; duties are ours, events are the Lord's.

You will not be carried to Heaven lying at ease upon a feather bed.