Quotes from Samuel Rutherford

Learn to believe Christ better than His strokes; Himself and His promises better than His glooms .

Blessed be my rich Lord Jesus, who sendeth not away beggars from His house with a toom dish. He filleth the vessels of such as will come and seek. We might beg ourselves rich (if we were wise), if we could but hold out our withered hands to Christ, and learn to suit and seek, ask and knock.

If you knew particularly what to do, it were not a spiritual exercise.

I never thought there had been need of so much wrestling to win to the top of that steep mountain as now I find.

Ye will not get leave to steal quietly to heaven, in Christ's company, without a conflict and a cross.

In all their afflictions He was afflicted." Then Christ bore the first stroke of this cross: it rebounded off Him upon you, and ye got it at the second hand, and He and ye are halvers in it. And I shall believe for my part, He mindeth to distil heaven out of this loss, and all others the like; for wisdom devised it, and love laid it on, and Christ owneth it as His own, and putteth your shoulder only beneath a piece of it.

If you were not strangers here, the dogs of the world would not bark at you.

Christ all the seasons of the year, is dropping sweetness; if I had vessels I might fill them, but my old riven, holey, and running-out dish, even when I am at the well, can bring little away. Nothing but glory will make tight and fast our leaking and rifty30 vessels . . . How little of the sea can a child carry in his hand; as little do I take away of my great sea, my boundless and running-over Christ Jesus. Sure

Christ all the seasons of the year, is dropping sweetness; if I had vessels I might fill them, but my old riven, holey, and running-out dish, even when I am at the well, can bring little away. Nothing but glory will make tight and fast our leaking and rifty30 vessels . . . How little of the sea can a child carry in his hand; as little do I take away of my great sea, my boundless and running-over Christ Jesus.

Let Christ's love bear most court in your soul, and that court will bear down the love of other things. Christ chargeth me to believe His daylight at midnight.

You live not upon men's opinion; gold may be gold and have the king's stamp upon it, when it is trampled upon by men. Happy are you if, when the world tramples upon you in your credit and good name, yet you are the Lord's gold, stamped with our King's image, and sealed by the Spirit unto the day of your redemption.

God hath called you to Christ's side, and the wind is now in Christ's face in this land; and seeing ye are with Him, ye cannot expect the lee-side or the sunny side of the brae.