Samuel Rutherford Quotations

Millions of hells of sinners cannot come near to exhaust infinite grace.

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.

When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord's choicest wines.

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

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.

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

See that you buy the field where the Pearl is; sell all, and make a purchase of salvation. Think it not easy: for it is a steep ascent to eternal glory: many are lying dead by the way, slain with security.

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

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

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

My faith has no bed to sleep upon but omnipotence.

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

We take nothing to the grave with us, but a good or evil conscience... It is true, terrors of conscience cast us down; and yet without terrors of conscience we cannot be raised up again.

Oh my debt of praise, how weighty is it, and how far run up! Oh that others would lend me to pay, and teach me to praise!

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

After winter comes the summer. After night comes the dawn. After every storm, there comes clear, open slies.

Come all crosses, welcome, welcome! so I may get my heart full of my Lord Jesus.

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

They lose nothing who gain Christ.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Christ chargeth me to believe His daylight at midnight.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

How soon would faith freeze without a cross!

Grace grows best in winter.

The cross of Christ is the sweetest burden that I ever bore; it is such a burden as wings are to a bird, or sails to a ship, to carry me forward to my harbor.

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

There is no sweeter fellowship with Christ than to bring our wounds and our sores to him.

The bloom fell off my branches and joy did cast off its flower

We are as near to heaven as we are far from self, and far from the love of a sinful world.

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

Howbeit your faith seeth but the black side of Providence, yet it hath a better side, and God shall let you see it. We know that all things work together for good to 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.

I know you are in grief and heaviness; and if it were not so, you might be afraid, because then your way would not be so like the way that our Lord saith leadeth to the New Jerusalem. Sure I am, if you knew what were before you, or if you saw some glances of it, you would, with gladness, swim through the present floods of sorrow, spreading forth your arms out of desire to be at land.

Christ's enemies are but breaking their own heads in pieces, upon the Rock laid in Zion; and the stone is not removed out of its place. Faith hath cause to take courage from our very afflictions; the devil is but a whetstone to sharpen the faith and patience of the saints. I know that he but heweth and polisheth stones, all this time, for the new Jerusalem.

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.

The weightiest end of the cross of Christ that is laid upon you, lieth upon your strong Savior.

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.

Oh thrice fools are we who like new-born princes weeping in the cradle know not that there is a kingdom before them then let our Lord's sweet hand square us and hammer us and strike off the knots of pride self-love and world-worship and infidelity that He may make us stones and pillars in His Father's house.

O, what I owe to the file, the hammer, and the furnace of the Lord Jesus! I know that he is no idle husbandman - he purposes a crop.

I assure you by the Lord, your adversaries shall get no advantage against you, except you sin, and offend your Lord, in your sufferings.

The devil is but a whetstone to sharpen the faith and patience of the saints.-

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.

It is the Lord's kindness that he will take the scum off us in the fire. Who know how needful winnowing is to us and what dross we have before we enter the kingdom of God? So narrow is the entry to heaven that our knots, lumps of pride, self-love, idol-love, and world-love must be hammered off us, that we may stoop low and creep through into that narrow entry.

You must take a house beside the Physician. It will be a miracle if ye be the first sick that Christ hath put away uncured.

Take Christ in with you under your yoke, and let patience have her perfect work.

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.

There is nothing left to us but to see how we may be approved of Him, and how we may roll the weight of our weak souls in well-doing upon Him, who is God omnipotent.

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

Christ seeketh your help in your place; give Him your hand.

I perceive we postpone all our joys of Christ, till He and we be in our own house above, thinking that there is nothing of it here to be sought or found, but only hope and fair promises; and that Christ will give us nothing here but tears, sadness, crosses; and that we shall never feel the smell of the flowers of that high garden of paradise above, till we come there. Nay, but I find it possible to find young glory, and a young green paradise of joy even here. We dream of hunger in Christ's house, while we are here, although He alloweth feasts to all the bairns within God's household.

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.

I live no more, but Christ liveth in me!

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

I know that, as night and shadows are good for flowers, and moonlight and dews are better than a continual sun, so is Christ's absence of special use, and that it hath some nourishing virtue in it, and giveth sap to humility, and putteth an edge on hunger, and funisheth a fairfield to faith to put forth itself, and to exercise its fingers in gripping it seeth not what.

I exhort you and beseech you in the bowels of Christ, faint not, weary not. There is a great necessity of heaven; you must have it. All other things, as houses, lands, children, husband, friends, country, credit, health, wealth, honour, may be let go; but heaven is your one thing necessary, the good part that shall not be taken from you. See that you buy the field where the pearl is. Sell all, and make a purchase of salvation. Think it not easy; for it is a steep ascent to eternal glory; many are lying dead by the way, that were slain with security.

Keep God's covenant in your trials; hold you by His blessed word, and sin not; flee anger, wrath, grudging, envying, fretting; forgive a hundred pence to your fellow-servant, because your Lord hath forgiven you ten thousand talents: for, I assure you by the Lord, your adversaries shall get no advantage against you, except you sin, and offend your Lord, in your sufferings.

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

Since He looked upon me my heart is not my own. He hath runaway to heaven with it.

Live on Christ's love while ye are here, and all the way.

Your heart is not the compass that God steers by.

When the race is ended, and the play is either won or lost, and ye are in the utmost circle and border of time, and shall put your foot within the march of eternity, all the good things of your short nightdream shall seem to you like ashes of a blaze of thorns or straw.

Those who can take that crabbed tree handsomely upon their back, and fasten it on cannily, shall find it such a burden as wings unto a bird, or sails to a ship.

My dear friend, venture to take the wind on your face for Christ.

Be not cast down. If ye saw Him who is standing on the shore, holding out His arms to welcome you to land, ye would wade, not only through a sea of wrongs, but through hell itself to be with Him.

Faint not; the miles to heaven are but few and short.

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

Well's them who are under crosses, and Christ says to them, "Half Mine."

Every day we may see some new thing in Christ. His love hath neither brim nor bottom.

I think it is possible on earth to build a young, new Jerusalem, a little, new heaven of this surpassing love. God, either send me more of this love, or take me quickly over the water, where I may be filled with his love.

Christ has no velvet crosses.

He who duly esteemeth Christ, is a noble bidder, and so a noble and liberal buyer.

It is impossible to be submissive and religiously patient, if ye stay your thoughts down among the confused rollings and wheels of second causes, as, O, the place! O, the time! O, if this had been, this had not followed! O, the linking of this accident with this time and place! Look up to the master motion and the first wheel.

My dear brother, let God make of you what He will, He will end all with consolation, and shall make glory out of your suffering.

I see Christ's love is so kingly, that it will not abide a marrow it must have a throne all alone in the soul.

I bless the Lord that all our troubles come through Christ's fingers, and that He casteth sugar among them and casteth in some ounce withts of heaven and of the spirit of glory in our cup.

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

There is as much in our Lord's pantry as will satisfy all his children and as much wine in his cellar as will quench all their thirst. Hunger on, for there is meat in hungering for Christ; go never from him, but seek him who is yet pleased with the importunity of hungry souls until he fills you; if he delays, yet do not go away, even if you faint at his feet.

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.

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.

The hope of heaven under troubles is like wind and sails to the soul.

Desires going before conversion are not such as can calm a storming conscience.

Heaven is a house full of miracles; yea, of spectacles and images of free grace.

It is comfort to the believer that all things are possible.

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

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