Faith goes up the stairs that love has built and looks out the windows which hope has opened.
When your will is God’s will, you will have your will.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
O child of God, be more careful to keep the way of the Lord, more concentrated in heart in seeking His glory, and you will see the loving-kindness and the tender mercy of the Lord in your life.
Newspapers are the Bibles of worldlings.How diligently they read them!Here they find their law and profits,their judges and chronicles,their epistles and revelations.
Whether our days trip along like the angels mounting on Jacob’s ladder to heaven or grind along like the wagons that Joseph sent for Jacob, they are in each case ordered by God’s mercy.
The wide awake man seizes opportunities or makes them, and thus those who are widest awake usually come to the front.
A sense of the divine presence and indwelling bears the soul towards heaven as upon the wings of eagles.
A whetstone, though it cannot cut, may sharpen a knife that will.
Hope itself is like a star- not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity.
Care more for a grain of faith than a ton of excitement.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is not great faith, but true faith, that saves; and the salvation lies not in the faith, but in the Christ in whom faith trusts…It is not the measure of faith, but the sincerity of faith, which is the point to be considered.
The Christian should work as if all depended upon him, and pray as if it all depended upon God.
It is not great faith but true faith that saves. And the salvation lies not in the faith but in the Christ in whom faith trusts.
The mind of God is greater than all the minds of men, so let all men leave the gospel just as God has delivered it unto us.
When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon it he keeps a very small stock of it within.
Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own. You need to read.
The day we find the perfect church, it becomes imperfect the moment we join it.
if God spared not His own Son, how much less will He spare you!
A true prayer is an inventory of needs, a catalog of necessities, an exposure of secret wounds, a revelation of hidden poverty.
Thank God you have got a Father that can be angry, but that loves you as much when He is angry as when He smiles upon you.
Surely no rebel can expect the King to pardon his treason while he remains in open revolt. No one can be so foolish as to imagine that the Judge of all the earth will put away our sins if we refuse to put them away ourselves.
Dream of yoking a gnat with an archangel, and then imagine that you can help your Lord in the work of salvation.
It is the tendency of deep feeling to subdue the manner rather than to render it too energetic.
Jesus does not suffer so as to exclude your suffering. He bears a cross, not that you may escape it, but that you may endure it.
A graceless pastor is a blind man elected to a professorship of optics.
If we do not touch the heart, we will soon weary the ear.
Because their example is powerful, they’re somewhat responsible for the weaklings who copy them.
There will be no fear of your becoming lethargic if you are continually familiar with internal realities.
Give yourself to reading.’… You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works,especially the Puritanic writers, and expositions of the Bible.
We may rifle the treasures of antiquity and make the heathen contribute to the gospel even as Hiram of Tyre served under Solomon’s direction for the building of the Temple.
The most likely man to go to hell is the man who has nothing to do on earth. Idle people tempt the devil to tempt them.
Have you no wish for others to be saved? Then you’re not saved yourself, be sure of that!
A vigorous temper is not altogether an evil. Men who are as easy as an old shoe are generally of as lttle worth .
To rejoice in temporal comforts is dangerous, to rejoice in self is foolish, to rejoice in sin is fatal, but to rejoice in God is heavenly.
Socrates used to say, “Philosophers can be happy without music;” and Christians can be happier than philosophers when all outward causes of rejoicing are withdrawn.
Although the author dealt some of John Bunyan’s conclusions in spiritualizing the details of Solomon’s Temple, he attributes to Bunyan a “consecrated ingenuity”.
Even your little sorrows you may roll upon God, for He counteth the hairs of your head.
Jesus is in the tempest. His love wraps the night about itself as a mantle, but to the eye of faith the sable robe is scarce a disguise.
Winter in the soul is by no means a comfortable season: but there is this comfort, namely, that the Lord makes it.
Cast the burden of the present along with the sin of the past and the fear of the future upon the Lord.
The iron bolt which so mysteriously fastens the door of hope and holds our spirits in gloomy prison, needs a heavenly hand to push it back.
Groanings which cannot be uttered are often prayers which cannot be refused.
Revival begins by Christians getting right first and then spills over into the world.
Prayer bends the omnipotence of heaven to your desire. Prayer moves the hand that moves the world.
You will find it a stronghold in the day of trial to plead your adoption. You have no rights as a subject, you have forfeited them by your treason; but nothing can forfeit a child’s right to a father’s protection.
Faith is the angelic messenger between the soul and the Lord Jesus in glory.
If it pleases Him to bid our patience exercise itself, shall He not do as He wills with His own!
Worldlings pray to the Lord in times of need, when it serves their turn. They cry to Him in trouble, but forsake Him in prosperity.
See, loving heart, how He delights in you. When you lean your head on His bosom, you not only receive, but you give Him joy; when you gaze with love upon His all-glorious face, you not only obtain comfort, but impart delight.
We should pray when we are in a praying mood, for it would be sinful to neglect so fair an opportunity. We should pray when we are not in a proper mood, for it would be dangerous to remain in so unhealthy a condition.
Meditation puts the telescope to the eye, and enables us to see Jesus after a better sort than we could have seen Him if we had lived in the days of His flesh.
If we cannot prevail with men for God, we will at least endeavor to prevail with God for men.
The suppliant, whose fears prevent his words, will be well understood by the Most High.
The commencement of all labor consisted in the preparation of his own soul.
Most of us think too much of speech, which is but the shell of thought.
Our silence might be better than our voices if our solitude was spent with God.
We should all know more, live nearer to God, and grow in grace, if we were more alone. Meditation chews the cud and extracts the real nutriment from the mental food gathered elsewhere.
As artists give themselves to their models, and poets to their classical pursuits, so must we addict ourselves to prayer.
Groans that words cannot express are often prayers that God cannot refuse.
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.
If God be near a church, it must pray. And if he be not there, one of the first tokens of his absence will be a slothfulness in prayer.
If boys would think, it would be well to give them less classwork and more opportunity for thought.
God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart.
You shall find it greatly mitigates the sorrow of bereavements, if before bereavement you shall have learned to surrender every day all the things which are dearest to you into the keeping of your gracious God.
Jesus does not cherish an offense, loving us as well after the offense as before it.
Never go hungry while the daily bread of grace is on the table of mercy.
The Lord’s mercy often rides to the door of our hearts on the black horse of affliction. Jesus uses the whole range of our experiences to wean us from earth and woo us to Heaven.
Grace is the first and last moving cause of salvation; and faith, essential as it is, is only an important part of the machinery which grace employs. We are saved ‘through faith,’ but salvation is ‘by grace’.
Jesus loved manhood so much, that He delighted to honour it; and since it is a high honour, and indeed, the greatest dignity of manhood, that Jesus is the Son of man,
Many preachers are at home among books but quite at sea among men.
Jesus is persecuted in every injured saint, and He is mighty to avenge His beloved ones.
Martin Luther used to say temptation is the best teacher for a minister.
it is the general rule of the moral universe that those men prosper who do their work with all their hearts, while those are almost certain to fail who go to their labour leaving half their hearts behind them.
One good deed is more worth than a thousand brilliant theories. Let us not wait for large opportunities, or for a different kind of work, but do just the things we “find to do” day by day.
The voice of Jacob will do a little good if the hands be the hands of Essau.
The author says the pastor who does not pray is a “mere official” who gets into his office by the necessity of the bread it provides.
When you are molested for your piety; when your religion brings the trial of cruel mockings upon you, then remember it is not your cross, it is Christ’s cross
Thy faith never looks so grand in summer weather as it does in winter?
Learn to say no. It will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.
There is no balm in Gilead, but there is balm in God. There is no physician among the creatures, but the Creator is Jehovah-rophi.
If you are renewed by grace, and were to meet your old self, I am sure you would be very anxious to get out of his company.
I would love God even if he damned me, because he was so gracious to others.
My inward experience has often been a wilderness; but Thou hast owned me still as Thy beloved, and poured streams of love and grace into me to gladden me, and make me fruitful.
When thou art at thy worst and lowest, yet ‘underneath’ thee ‘are everlasting arms’. Sin may drag thee ever so low, but Christ’s great atonement is still under all.
The saints shall persevere in holiness, because God perseveres in grace.
One of these days you who are now a ‘babe’ in Christ shall be a ‘father’ in the church. Hope for this great thing; but hope for it as a gift of grace, and not as the wages of work, or as the product of your own energy.
If Christ has died for me, I cannot trifle with the evil that killed my best Friend.
We will go no place where we cannot take our Master with us. While others take their liberty to sin, We will not renounce our liberty to rebuke and confront them.
If we cannot all FEEL alike, we can all FEED alike on the Bread Life.
Here is the day for the man, where is the man for the day?
Do have a mind of your own. This is not just a spiritual matter only, but one which concerns ordinary manliness. I would do many things to please my friends, but to go to hell to please them is more than I would venture.
A man might as well hope to fight a swarm of flies with a sword as to master his own thoughts when they are set on by the devil.
You never require a teacher to lead you into the wrong path, but you do require a kindly word to conduct you aright.
If we never have headaches through rebuking our children, we shall have plenty of heartaches when they grow up.
It is foolish to be lavish in words and niggardly in truth.
Remember, you are not sent to whiten tombs, but to open them.
A Bible that’s falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn’t.
If any young man reads this Book aright, he becomes large-hearted. He cannot hold his soul within the narrow bound of his ribs, but his great heart looks out to see where it can scatter benefits.
God’s thoughts of you are many, let not yours be few in return.
No sooner is there a good thing in the world, than a division is necessary.
Throw away the servility of imitation, and rise to the manliness of originality.
Contentment is not a power that may be exercised naturally, but a science to be acquired gradually.
We lose much consolation by the habit of reading His promises for the whole church, instead of taking them directly home to ourselves.
If I were a blind man and were told by you that you possess a faculty called sight, I should be unreasonable if I railed at you as a conceited enthusiast.
Curses are like chickens, they always come home to roost.
The nearer a man lives to God, the more intensely has he to mourn over his own evil heart.” -Charles Spurgeon
There is no repentance where a man can talk lightly of sin, much less where he can speak tenderly and lovingly of it.
Evil things are easy things: for they are natural to our fallen nature. Right things are rare flowers that need cultivation.
Sin has sprung from a royal though evil stock, and if it be in the heart, it will struggle for the throne.
It is well for us when prayers about our sorrows are linked with pleas concerning our sins—when, being under God’s hand, we are not wholly taken up with our pain, but remember our offences against God.
Confession is the giving up of ALL self-righteousness.
The wings of the dove are as soft as they are swift. Gentleness is a sure result of the Sacred Dove’s transforming power: hearts touched by His benign influence are meek and lowly henceforth and for ever.
Alas! it is but little we have done for our Master’s glory. Our winter has lasted all too long. We are as cold as ice when we should feel a summer’s glow and bloom with sacred flowers.
It would be better to be deceived a hundred times than to live a life of suspicion.
Those that are too refined to be simple need to be refined again.
It is not great counts God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus.
My own spirit, soul, and body are my nearest machinery for sacred service.
The very precariousness of weather excites a large amount of earnest prayer.
We are never so free as when we own our sacred serfdom…
Spurgeon challenges us to go to the river of our experience, to pull up bulrushes, and to place them in the Ark of our memory, experiencing again the wonder that allowed our infant faith to flourish.
If God declares that all is well, ten thousand devils may declare it to be ill, but we laugh them all to scorn. Blessed be God for a faith which enables us to believe God when the creatures contradict Him.
To a great extent in spiritual things we get what we expect of the Lord. Faith alone can bring us to see Jesus.
This woman gained comfort in her misery by thinking GREAT THOUGHTS OF CHRIST.
Surely, if there could be regrets in heaven, the saints might mourn that they did not live longer here to do more good.
Who can be astonished at anything, when he has once been astonished at the manger and the cross? What is there wonderful left after one has seen the Saviour?
Your own opinion of your state is not worth much. Ask the Lord to search you.
When you speak of heaven, let your face light up… When you speak of hell well then, your everyday face will do.
A dash of humor will only add intense gravity to the proceedings, even as a flash of lightning only makes midnight dreariness all the more impressive.
One thought fixed upon the mind will be better than 50 thoughts flittering across the ear.
Weak hearts will be strengthened, and drooping saints will be revived as they listen to our “songs of deliverance.” Their doubts and fears will be rebuked, as we teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
A brother’s sympathy is more precious than an angel’s embassy.
The whitest robes, unless their purity be preserved by divine grace, will be defiled by the blackest spots.
More faults are created than cured by professional teachers.
If thou rememberest that thou art going to heaven, thou wilt not sleep on the road. If thou thinkest that hell is behind thee, and the devil pursuing thee, thou wilt not loiter.
A student will find that he is more affected by one book which he has truly mastered than by 20 books which he has merely skimmed.
Never was the victory of patience more complete than in the early church. The anvil broke the hammer by bearing all the blows that the hammer could place upon it. The patience of the saints was stronger than the cruelty of tyrants.
Marching and quick-marching are much easier to God’s warriors than standing still.
Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of everything else.
Faith is the road, but communion with Jesus is the well from which the pilgrim drinks.
The bottle of the creature cracks and dries up, but the well of the Creator never fails; happy is he who dwells at the well.
The only restorative for a guilty conscience is a sight of Jesus suffering on the cross.
The more loftily we see Christ enthroned, and the more lowly we are when bowing before the foot of the throne, the more truly shall we be prepared to act our part towards Him.
This child-like spirit soon perceives the grandeur of the Father “in heaven,” and ascends to devout adoration, “Hallowed be Thy name.” The child lisping, “Abba, Father,” grows into the cherub crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy.
It is the heaven-born instinct of a gracious soul to seek shelter from all ills beneath the wings of Jehovah. A hypocrite, when afflicted by God, resents the infliction, and, like a slave, would run from the Master who has scourged him
It was well to be Martha and serve, but better to be Lazarus and commune.
The intensity of the love of the upright is not so much to be judged by what it appears as by what the upright long for. It is our daily lament that we cannot love enough.
When grace has won the day, the worldling seeks the world to come.
Never was living beauty so enchanting as a dying Saviour.
I love a minister whose faces invite me to make him my friend.
In the sympathy of Christ we find a sustaining power.
Zeal is more often checked after long years in the same service than when novelty gives a charm to our work.
Stale godliness is ungodliness. Let our religion be as warm, and constant, and natural as the flow of the blood in our veins. A living God must be served in a living way.
Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strengths.
A man may follow vanity as truly in the counting-house as in the theatre. If he be spending his life in amassing wealth, he passes his days in a vain show.
Let your cares drive you to God. I shall not mind if you have many of them if each one leads you to prayer. If every fret makes you lean more on the Beloved, it will be a benefit.
All earth’s candles cannot make daylight if the Sun of Righteousness be eclipsed. He is the soul of our soul, the light of our light, the life of our life.
Think little of yourselves, but do not think too little of your calling.
Our gifts are very pleasant to Him. He loves to see us lay our time, our talents, our substance on the altar not for the value of what we give, but for the sake of the motive from which the gift springs.
Rest time is the waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength.
Let me be on my guard when the world puts on a loving face, for it will, if possible, betray me as it did my Master, with a kiss.
Purify our minds that we may be “first pure, then peaceable,” and fortify our souls, that our peaceableness may not lead us into cowardice and despair, when for Thy sake we are persecuted.
Down deep in His innermost soul Christ carried an inexhaustible treasury of refined and heavenly joy.
I had rather have God for my banker than all the Rothschilds.
Dost thou want another eye beside that of Him who sees every secret thing?
Almightiness and wisdom combined will make no failures.
Christ loved the sons of men before there were sons of men, and me before there was me. If he was going to get tired of me, he would have done so before now.
There is a wide distinction between confessing sin as a culprit, and confessing sin as a child. The Father’s bosom is the place for penitent confessions.
The obedience which God’s children yield to Him must be loving obedience. Do not go about the service of God as slaves to their taskmaster’s toil, but run in the way of His commands because it is your Father’s way.
A servile spirit you have nothing to do with: you are not a slave, but a child; and now, inasmuch as you are a beloved child, you are bound to obey your Father’s faintest wish, the least intimation of His will.
I serve,” should be the motto of all the princes of the royal family of heaven.
Carnal love is the love of table, not of the host.
I love the quaint saying of a dying man, who exclaimed, “I have no fear of going home; I have sent all before me; God’s finger is on the latch of my door, and I am ready for Him to enter.
God never loses sight of the treasure which He has placed in our earthen vessels.
He who grows not in the knowledge of Jesus, refuses to be blessed.
Be wise and attend to obeying. Let Christ manage the providing.
Peace between good and evil is an impossibility; the very pretence of it would, in fact, be the triumph of the powers of darkness.
You can leave the Word of God to wound and kill it need not be yourselves cutting in phrase in manner.
Better abolish pulpits then to appoint men who have no experiential knowledge of what they teach.
The minister is the parish clock. Many people take their time from him.
It is not a brave thing to trust God. To true believers, it is a sweet necessity.
It is a pity that we cannot persuade all ministers to be men, for it is hard to see how other was they can be truly men of God.
Dream not that worldlings will admire you, or that the more holy and the more Christ-like you are, the more peaceably people will act towards you. They prized not the polished gem, how should they value the jewel in the rough?
That which man doth, unaided by divine strength, God can never own. The mere fruits of the earth He casteth away
Let our liberty be practically exhibited by serving the Lord with gratitude and delight.
To give to others is but sowing seed for ourselves.
Backward we are naturally to all good things, and it is a lesson of grace to learn to go forward in the ways of God.
We entertain God’s Truth not as a guest but as master of the house.
When you cannot use your sword you may take to the weapon of all-prayer. Your powder may be damp, your bow-string may be relaxed, but the weapon of all-prayer need never be out of order.
The seed of acceptable devotion must come from heaven’s storehouse. Only the prayer which comes from God can go to God.
Why do we calculate our forces, and consult with flesh and blood to our grievous wounding? Jehovah has power enough without borrowing from our puny arm.
The Church, like her head, has a glory, but it is concealed from carnal eyes, for the time of her breaking forth in all her splendour is not yet come.
We reign over the united kingdom of time and eternity
It is ill to offer God one duty stained with the blood of another.
There is nothing Christ dislikes more than for His people to make a showpiece of Him and not to use Him.
Faith is as precious to die by as it is to live by.
The world commands our desire for purity but bids that we not be too precise about it.
All ministries, therefore, must be subjected to this test—if they do not glorify Christ, they are not of the Holy Spirit.
Faith never makes herself her own plea, she rests all her argument upon the blood of Christ.
There should be as much difference between the worldling and the Christian, as between hell and heaven, between destruction and eternal life.
The greatest joy of a Christian is to give joy to Christ.
When you enter heaven you shall find Him there bearing the dew of His youth; and through eternity the Lord Jesus shall still remain the perennial spring of joy, and life, and glory to His people.
The age can be impressed. Anything will be accepted by men if you will but preach it with tremendous enthusiasm, emotion, persuasionnergy and living earnestness.
Satan will make your own principles and inclinations to betray you.
I do not preach doubtingly, for I do not live doubtingly.
Every blossoming flower warns you that it is time to seek the Lord; be not out of tune with nature, but let your heart bud and bloom with holy desires.
The commonplace books of the old Puritans were invaluable to them. They would never have been able to compile such works as they did if they had not been careful in collecting and arranging their matter under different heads.
God has made all things that are in the world to be our teachers.
Watch for subjects as you go but the city or the country. Keep your eyes and ears open, and you will hear and see angels.
Be interested yourself, and you will interest others.
Christ’s vast benevolence must, from the very nature of things, have afforded Him the deepest possible delight, for benevolence is joy.
The author concedes that the body of Christ may often judge wrongly , but he says that the judgment of the body as a whole is more sound that is one’s ability to judge self objectively.
No art like the art displayed in our salvation, no cunning workmanship like that beheld in the righteousness of the saints. Justification has engrossed learned pens in all ages of the church, and will be the theme of admiration in eternity.
The usual tenor of a man’s life, the dwelling of his soul, is the true test of his state.
Said will be a little ahead, but done should follow at his heel.
Desire is insatiable as death, but He who fills all in all can fill it. The capacity of our wishes who can measure? But the immeasurable wealth of God can more than overflow it.
The Lord’s mercy often rides to the door of our heart upon the black horse of affliction.
There is no exception to this rule: “All the paths of the LORD are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant.” They say there is no rule without an exception, but there is an exception to that rule.
His mercy is so great that it forgives great sins to great sinners after great lengths of time and then gives great favors and great privileges and raises us up to great enjoyments in the great heaven of the great God!
If we would remember that all the trees of earth are marked for the woodman’s axe, we should not be so ready to build our nests in them.
As all the rivers run into the sea, so all delights centre in our Beloved.
Worldly ease is a great foe to faith; it loosens the joints of holy valour, and snaps the sinews of sacred courage. The balloon never rises until the cords are cut; affliction doth this sharp service for believing souls.
All providences are doors to trial. Men may be drowned in seas of prosperity as well as in rivers of affliction.
If some talents were withheld, the Withholder knows why. He has done all things well.
You say, ‘If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.’ You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.
In the Salem of our peaceful hearts, the name of Jesus is great beyond compare: He has won our love, and He shall wear it.
The weak mind is irritated at a little: the strong mind bears it like a rock which moveth not, though a thousand breakers dash upon it, and cast their pitiful malice in spray upon its summit.
Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties.
Learn to say ‘No’ it will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.
One night alone in prayer might make us new men changed from poverty of soul to spiritual wealth from trembling to triumphing.
Sometimes we think we are too busy to pray. That is a great mistake for praying is a saving of time.
The cry of a young raven is nothing but the natural cry of a creature but your cry if it be sincere is the result of a work of grace in your heart.
We cannot all argue but we can all pray we cannot all be leaders but we can all be pleaders we cannot all be mighty in rhetoric but we can all be prevalent in prayer.
Whether we like it or not asking is the rule of the Kingdom.
We ought not to tolerate for a minute the ghastly and grievous thought that God will not answer prayer.
Prayers are heard in heaven very much in proportion to your faith. Little faith will get very great mercies but great faith still greater.
Saints of the early church reaped great harvests in the field of prayer and found the mercy seat to be a mine of untold treasures.
The granting of prayer when offered in the name of Jesus reveals the Father’s love to him and the honor which he has put upon him.
Luck … taps once in a lifetime at everybody’s door but if industry does not open it luck goes away.
There are no crown-bearers in heaven who were not cross-bearers here below.
The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.
do you reckon to win the everlasting laurels without a conflict?
Do not commit spiritual suicide through a passion for discussing metaphysical subtleties.
Tale-bearing emits a threefold poison; for it injures the teller, the hearer, and the person concerning whom the tale is told.