The Loveliness of Christ: Selections from the Letters of Samuel Rutherford

Nevertheless, I think it the Lord's wise love that feeds us with hunger, and makes us fat with wants and desertion.

Ye will not get leave to steal quietly to heaven, in Christ's company, without a conflict and a cross. I find crosses Christ's carved work that He marketh out for us, and that with crosses He figureth and portrayeth us t…

The supreme and absolute Former of all things giveth not an account of any of His matters.

I am most gladly content that Christ breaketh all my idols in pieces: it hath put a new edge upon my blunted love to Christ. I see He is jealous of my love, and will have all to Himself.

Be content, ye are His wheat growing in our Lord's field. And if wheat, ye must go under our Lord's threshing instrument, in His barn-floor, and through His sieve, and through His mill to be bruised, as the Prince of you…

I find Christ to be Christ, and that He is far, far, even infinite heaven's height above man. And that is all our happiness. Sinners can do nothing but make wounds that Christ may heal them; and make debts, that He may p…

Ye would not go to heaven but with company, and ye may perceive that the way of those who went before you was through blood, suffering, and many afflictions; nay, Christ, the Captain, went in over the door-threshold of p…

Give Him leave to take His own way of dispensation with you; and though it be rough, forgive Him; He defieth you to have as much patience to Him, as He hath borne to you .

My shallow and ebb thoughts are not the compass Christ saileth by. I leave His ways to Himself, for they are far, far above me . . . There are windings and to's and fro's in His ways, which blind bodies like us cannot se…

When I look over beyond the line and beyond death, to the laughing side of the world, I triumph, and ride upon the high places of Jacob: howbeit, otherways I am a faint, deadhearted, cowardly man, oft borne down and hung…

O, that we could put our treasure in Christ's hand, and give Him our gold to keep, and our crown.

Faith is exceeding charitable, and believeth no evil of God.

Christ hath come, and run away to heaven with my heart and my love, so that neither heart nor love is mine.

To live on Christ's love is a king's life.

We love to carry heaven to heaven with us, and would have two summers in one year, and no less than two heavens; but this will not be for us: one, and such an one, may suffice us well enough. The Man Christ got but one o…

I think the sense of our wants, when withal we have a restlessness and a sort of spiritual impatience under them, and can make a din, because we want Him whom our soul loveth, is that which maketh an open door to Christ:…

There is as much in our Lord's pantry as will satisfy all His bairns, and as much wine in His cellar as will quench all their thirst. Hunger on; for there is meat in hunger for Christ: go never from Him, but fash6 Him (w…

find it most true, that the greatest temptation out of hell is to live without temptations; if my waters should stand, they would rot. Faith is the better of the free air, and of the sharp winter storm in its face. Grace…

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

Our best fare here is hunger.

O! for the long day, and the high sun, and the fair garden, and the King's great city up above these visible heavens!

I thought it had been an easy thing to be a Christian, and that to seek God had been at the next door, but oh, the windings, the turnings, the ups and the downs that He hath led me through! and I see yet much way to the…

However matters go, it is our happiness to win new ground daily in Christ's love, and to purchase a new piece of it daily, and to add conquest to conquest, till our Lord Jesus and we be so near each other, that Satan sha…

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

urge upon you . . . a nearer communion with Christ and a growing communion. There are curtains to be drawn by in Christ that we never saw, and new foldings of love in Him. I despair that ever I shall win to the far end o…

Your rock doth not ebb and flow, but your sea.

Go on, and faint not, something of yours is in heaven, beside the flesh of your exalted Saviour, and ye go on after your own.

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

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…

O, we love an unknown lover when we love Christ.

I verily judge, we know not how much may be had in this life: there is yet something beyond all we see, that seeking would light upon.

He cutteth off your love to the creature, that ye might learn that God only is the right owner of your love, sorrow, loss, sadness, death or the worst things that are, except sin:

Let not the Lord's dealings seem harsh, rough or unfatherly, because it is unpleasant. When the Lord's blessed will bloweth cross your desires, it is best in humility to strike sail to Him and to be willing to be laid an…

God knoweth that ye are His own. Wrestle, fight, go forward, watch, fear, believe, pray; and then ye have all the infallible symptoms of one of the elect of Christ within you.

I am just like a man who hath nothing to pay his thousands of debt; all that can be gotten of him, is to seize upon his person. Except Christ would seize upon myself, and make the readiest payment that can be of my heart…

dare not thank myself, but I dare thank God's depth of wise providence, that I have an errand in me, while I live, for Christ to come and visit me, and bring with Him His drugs and His balm.

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 o…

Now I will bless the Lord that ever there was such a thing as the free grace of God, and a free ransom given for sold souls; only, alas! guiltiness maketh me ashamed to apply to Christ, and to think it pride in me to put…

duties are ours, events are the Lord's.

dare avouch46 to all that know God, that the saints know not the length and largeness of the sweet earnest,47 and of the sweet green sheaves before the harvest, that might be had on this side of the water, if we should t…

Alas, that we should love by measure and weight, and not rather have floods and feasts of Christ's love! O, that Christ would break down the old narrow vessels of these narrow and ebb souls, and make fair, deep, wide, an…

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

what can ail faith, seeing Christ suffereth Himself (with reverence to Him be it spoken) to be commanded by it; and Christ commandeth all things.

Venture through the thick of all things after Christ, and lose not your Master, Christ, in the throng of this great market.

It were a well-spent journey, to creep hands and feet, through seven deaths and seven hells, to enjoy Him up at the well-head. Only let us not weary: the miles to that land are fewer and shorter than when we first believ…

I rather wish Him my heart than give Him it; except He take it and put Himself in possession of it (for I hope He hath a market-right to me, since He hath ransomed me), I see not how Christ can have me. O, that He would…

Not one ounce, not one grain-weight more is laid on me than He hath enabled me to bear . . . Faith hath cause to take courage from our very afflictions; the devil is but a whetstone to sharpen the faith and patience of t…

His cross is the sweetest burden that ever I bare: it is such a burden as wings are to a bird, or sails to a ship, to carry me forward to my harbour.

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 pa…

How soon will some few years pass away, and then when the day is ended, and this life's lease expired, what have men of the world's glory, but dreams and thoughts? O happy soul for evermore, who can rightly compare this…