Quotes from Samuel Rutherford

She is not sent away, but only sent before, like unto a star, which, going out of your sight, doth not die and vanish, but shineth in another hemisphere: ye see her not yet, she doth shine in another country.

Madam, when you are come to the other side of the water, and set down your foot on the shore of glorious eternity, and look back to the water and to your wearisome journey, and shall see in that clear glass of endless glory nearer to the bottom of God's wisdom, you shall then be forced to say, "If God had done otherwise with me than He hath done, I had never come to the enjoying of this crown of glory.

Christ is a well of life, but who knoweth how deep it is to the bottom? This soul of ours hath love, and cannot but love some fair one; and O, what a fair One, what an only One, what an excellent, lovely, ravishing One is Jesus.

We would either have a silent, a soft, a perfumed cross, sugared and honeyed with the consolations of Christ, or we faint; and providence must either brew a cup of gall and wormwood, mastered in the mixing with joy and songs, else we cannot be disciples. But Christ's cross did not smile on him, his cross was a cross, and his ship sailed in blood, and his blessed soul was sea-sick, and heavy even to death.

Arbitrary governing hath no alliance with God.

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

It cost Christ and all His followers sharp showers and hot sweats ere they won to the top of the mountain. But still our soft nature would have heaven coming to our bedside when we are sleeping, and lying down with us, that we might go to heaven in warm clothes; but all that came there found wet feet by the way, and sharp storms that did take the hide off their face, and found tos and fros, and ups and downs, and many enemies by the way.

I know no sweeter way to heaven, than through free grace and hard trials together, and one of these cannot well want another.

Heaven is but a company of noble venturers for Christ. They are not worthy of Him who will not take a blow for the Master's sake.

Christ and His cross together are sweet company, and a blessed couple. My prison is my palace, my losses are rich losses, my pain easy pain, my heavy days are holy and happy days.

The good husbandman may pluck His roses and gather in His liles at midsummer, and, for ought I dare say, in the beginning of the first summer month; and He may transplant young trees out of the lower ground to the higher, where they have more of the sun, and a more free air, at any season of the year. What is that to you or me? The goods are his own.

Christ's cross is such a burden as sails are to a ship or wings to a bird.