C. H. Spurgeon

85 quotes

• All the devils in hell and tempters on earth could do us no injury if there were no corruption in our own natures.

• I take leave to contradict those who say that salvation is an evolution! All that ever can be evolved out of the sinful heart of man is sin and nothing else! Salvation is the free gift of God, by Jesus Christ, and the work of it is supernatural. It is done by the Lord Himself, and He has power to do it, however weak, no, however dead in sin, the sinner may be!

• The greatest joy of a Christian is to give joy to Christ.

• You cannot slander human nature; it is worse than words can paint it.

• The egg is white though the hen is black as coal...Out of evil comes good, through the great goodness of God.

• May every one of us believe Him better, and have greater thoughts of Him, and never let us be guilty henceforth of confining, as it were, within iron bonds the limitless One of Israel.

• Groanings which cannot be uttered are often prayers which cannot be refused.

• 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.

• O prejudice, prejudice, prejudice, how many hast thou destroyed! Men who might have been wise have remained fools because they thought they were wise. Many judge what the gospel ought to be, but do not actually enquire as to what it is. They do not come to the Bible to obtain their views of religion, but they open that Book to find texts to suit the opinions which they bring to it. They are not open to the honest force of truth, and therefore are not saved by it.

• Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strengths.

• With God, anywhere: without God, nowhere.

• Have your heart right with Christ, and he will visit you often, and so turn weekdays into Sundays, meals into sacraments, homes into temples, and earth into heaven.

• 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.

• All human books grow stale after a time- but with the Word of God the desire to study it increases, while the more you know of it the less you think you know.

• Conversion is a turning onto the right road. The next thing to do is to walk on it.

• The greatest joy of a Christian is to give joy to Christ.

• Begin as you mean to go on, and go on as you began, and let the Lord be all in all to you.

• We shall, as we ripen in grace, have greater sweetness towards our fellow Christians. Bitter-spirited Christians may know a great deal, but they are immature. Those who are quick to censure may be very acute in judgment, but they are as yet very immature in heart. He who grows in grace remembers that he is but dust, and he therefore does not expect his fellow Christians to be anything more; he overlooks ten thousand of their faults, because he knows his God overlooks twenty thousand in his own case. He does not expect perfection in the creature, and, therefore, he is not disappointed when he does not find it. ... I know we who are young beginners in grace think ourselves qualified to reform the whole Christian church. We drag her before us, and condemn her straightway; but when our virtues become more mature, I trust we shall not be more tolerant of evil, but we shall be more tolerant of infirmity, more hopeful for the people of God, and certainly less arrogant in our criticisms.

• Free will I have often heard of, but I have never seen it. I have always met with will, and plenty of it, but it has either been led captive by sin or held in the blessed bonds of grace.

• 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.

• 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.

• We shall not adjust our Bible to the age; but before we have done with it, by God’s grace, we shall adjust the age to the Bible.

• For my own part, my constant prayer is that I may know the worst of my case, whatever the knowledge may cost me. I know that an accurate estimate of my own heart can never be otherwise than lowering to my self-esteem; but God forbid that I should be spared the humiliation which springs from the truth! The sweet red apples of self-esteem are deadly poison; who would wish to be destroyed thereby? The bitter fruits of self-knowledge are always healthful, especially if washed down with the waters of repentance, and sweetened with a draught from the wells of salvation; he who loves his own soul will not despise them.

• Friendship is one of the sweetest joys of life. Many might have failed beneath the bitterness of their trial had they not found a friend.

• There is hardship in everything except eating pancakes.

• The gospel is preached in the ears of all men; it only comes with power to some. The power that is in the gospel does not lie in the eloquence of the preacher otherwise men would be converters of souls. Nor does it lie in the preacher’s learning; otherwise it could consists of the wisdom of men. We might preach till our tongues rotted, till we should exhaust our lungs and die, but never a soul would be converted unless there were mysterious power going with it – the Holy Ghost changing the will of man. O Sirs! We might as well preach to stone walls as preach to humanity unless the Holy Ghost be with the word, to give it power to convert the soul.

• If you give your soul up to anything earthly, whether it be the wealth, or the honours, or the pleasures of this world, you might as well hunt after the mirage of the desert or try to collect the mists of the morning, or to store up for yourself the clouds of the sky, for all these things are passing away.

• A thrifty housewife is better than a great income. A good wife and health are a man’s best wealth.

• Man’s wonder grows with his knowledge.

• Let eloquence be flung to the dogs rather than souls be lost. What we want is to win souls. They are not won by flowery speeches.

• I have a great need for Christ: I have a great Christ for my need.

• You cannot slander human nature; it is worse than words can paint it.

• I bear my witness that the worst days I have ever had have turned out to be my best days. And when God has seemed most cruel to me he has then been most kind. If there is anything in this world for which I would bless him more than for anything else it is for pain and affliction. I am sure that in these things the richest tenderest love has been manifested to me. Our Father’s wagons rumble most heavily when they are bringing us the richest freight of the bullion of his grace. Love letters from heaven are often sent in black-edged envelopes. The cloud that is black with horror is big with mercy. Fear not the storm. It brings healing in its wings and when Jesus is with you in the vessel the tempest only hastens the ship to its desired haven.

• As for His failing you, never dream of it -- hate the thought of it. The God who has been sufficient until now, should be trusted to the end.

• Repentance was never yet produced in any man’s heart apart from the grace of God. As soon may you expect the leopard to regret the blood with which its fangs are moistened,—as soon might you expect the lion of the wood to abjure his cruel tyranny over the feeble beasts of the plain, as expect the sinner to make any confession, or offer any repentance that shall be accepted of God, unless grace shall first renew the heart.

• Revival begins by Christians getting right first and then spills over into the world.

• Sincerity makes the very least person to be of more value than the most talented hypocrite.

• Have your heart right with Christ, and he will visit you often, and so turn weekdays into Sundays, meals into sacraments, homes into temples, and earth into heaven.

• If I am not today all that I hope to be, yet I see Jesus, and that assures me that I shall one day be like Him.

• 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.

• The best books of men are soon exhausted-- they are cisterns, and not springing fountains. You enjoy them very much at the first acquaintance, and you think you could hear them a hundred times over- but you could not- you soon find them wearisome. Very speedily a man eats too much honey: even children at length are cloyed with sweets.

• The Book grows upon you: as you dive into its depths you have a fuller perception of the infinity which remains to be explored. You are still sighing to enjoy more of that which it is your bliss to taste.

• If He had not known with certainty that He would be Master over sin and that out of evil would evolve the noblest display of His own glory, He would not have permitted it to enter the world.

• The Christian should work as if all depended upon him, and pray as if it all depended upon God.

• If you cut him, (John Bunyan) he’d bleed Scripture!

• Faith is not a blind thing; for faith begins with knowledge. It is not a speculative thing; for faith believes facts of which it is sure. It is not an unpractical, dreamy thing; for faith trusts, and stakes its destiny upon the truth of revelation.

• Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.

• Master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and reread them…digest them. Let them go into your very self. Peruse a good book several times and make notes and analyses of it. A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books he has merely skimmed. Little learning and much pride comes from hasty reading. Some men are disabled from thinking by their putting meditation away for the sake of much reading. In reading let your motto be ‘much not many.

• No stars gleam as brightly as those which glisten in the polar sky. No water tastes so sweet as that which springs amid the desert sand. And no faith is so precious as that which lives and triumphs through adversity. Tested faith brings experience. You would never have believed your own weakness had you not needed to pass through trials. And you would never have known God’s strength had His strength not been needed to carry you through.

• The day we find the perfect church, it becomes imperfect the moment we join it.

• 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.

• 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.

• Half our fears arise from neglect of the Bible.

• God has set apart His people from before the foundation of the world to be His chosen and peculiar inheritance. We are sanctified in Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit when he subdues our corruptions, imparts to us grace, and leads us onward in the divine walk and life of faith. Christian men are not to be used for anything but God. They are a set-apart people; they are vessels of mercy, they are not for the devil’s use, not for their own use, not for the world’s use, but for their Master’s use. He has made them on purpose to be used entirely, solely and wholly for Him. O Christian people, be holy, for Christ is holy. Do not pollute that holy Name wherewith you are named. Let your family life, your personal life, your business life, be as holy as Christ your Lord would have it to be. Shall saints be shams when sinners are so real?

• The only reason why anything virtuous or lively survives in us is this, ’the LORD is there’" (Ez. 35:10)

• If you will tell me when God permits a Christian to lay aside his armour, I will tell you when Satan has left off temptation. Like the old knights in war time, we must sleep with helmet and breastplate buckled on, for the arch-deceiver will seize our first unguarded hour to make us his prey. The Lord keep us watchful in all seasons, and give us a final escape from the jaw of the lion and the paw of the bear.

• Great hearts can only be made by great troubles. The spade of trouble digs the reservoir of comfort deeper, and makes more room for consolation.

• Evil things are easy things: for they are natural to our fallen nature. Right things are rare flowers that need cultivation.

• Care more for a grain of faith than a ton of excitement.

• Your emptiness is but the preparation for your being filled, and your casting down is but the making ready for your lifting up.

• I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the Rock of Ages

• ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎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.

• Is there nothing to sing about to-day? Then borrow a song from tomorrow; sing of what is yet to be. Is this world dreary? Then think of the next.

• Groanings which cannot be uttered are often prayers which cannot be refused.

• A sheep in the midst of wolves is safe compared with the Christian in the midst of ungodly men.

• We are not responsible to God for the soul that are saved, but we are responsible for the Gospel that is preached, and for the way in which we preach it.

• If we never have headaches through rebuking our children, we shall have plenty of heartaches when they grow up.

• 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.

• If Christ has died for me, I cannot trifle with the evil that killed my best Friend.

• Learn to say no. It will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.

• God’s thoughts of you are many, let not yours be few in return.

• All the devils in hell and tempters on earth could do us no injury if there were no corruption in our own natures.

• The nearer a man lives to God, the more intensely has he to mourn over his own evil heart.

• A little faith will bring your soul to heaven; a great faith will bring heaven to your soul.

• 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.

• Humility is to make a right estimate of oneself.

• An ounce of heart knowledge is worth more than a ton of head learning.

• Is not the gospel its own sign and wonder? Is not this a miracle of miracles, that ’God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish’? Surely that precious word, ’Whosoever will, let him come and take the water of life freely’ and that solemn promise, ’Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out,’ are better than signs and wonders! A truthful Saviour ought to be believed. He is truth itself. Why will you ask proof of the veracity of One who cannot lie?

• He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

• Six feet of dirt make all men equal.

• Music is at its best when it is pleasingly melancholic.

• There is no repentance where a man can talk lightly of sin, much less where he can speak tenderly and lovingly of it.

• Man is a fallen star till he is right with heaven: he is out of order with himself and all around him till he occupies his true place in relation to God. When he serves God, he has reached that point where he doth serve himself best, and enjoys himself most. It is man’s honour, it is man’s joy, it is man’s heaven, to live unto God.

• Bread is a second cause; the LORD Himself is the first source of our sustenance. He can work without the second cause as well as with it; and we must not tie Him down to one mode of operation. Let us not be too eager after the visible, but let us look to the invisible God.

• it seemed as if hell were put into His cup; He seized it, and at one tremendous draught of love, He drank damnation dry.