Quotes by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

He who has two grounds of trust is lost! He who relies upon twosalvations, and cannot say of Christ, “He is all my salvation and all my desire,” that man is not only in danger of beinglost, but he is already condemned; because, in fact, he believes not on the Son of God! He is not alive to God at all, but rests partly on the Cross, and then in some measure on something else.

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.. . . We are quite persuaded that the very best way for you to be spending your leisure time, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master’s service. Paul cries, “Bring the books” — join in the cry.

The best books...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.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.The Book grows upon you: as you dive into its depthsyou have a fuller perception of the infinity which remainsto be explored. You are still sighing to enjoy more of thatwhich it is your bliss to taste.

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.

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.

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

Debarred from public worship, David was heartsick. Ease he did not seek, honour he did not covet, but the enjoyment of communion with God was an urgent need of his soul; he viewed it not merely as the sweetest of all luxuries, but as an absolute necessity, like water to a stag. Like the parched traveler in the wilderness, whose skin bottle is empty, and who finds the wells dry, he must drink or die – he must have his God or faint. His soul, his very self, his deepest life, was insatiable for a sense of the divine presence. . . . Give him his God and he is as content as the poor deer which at length slakes its thirst and is perfectly happy; but deny him his Lord, and his heart heaves, his bosom palpitates, his whole frame is convulsed, like one who gasps for breath, or pants with long running. Dear friend, dost thou know what this is, by personally having felt the same? It is a sweet bitterness. The next best thing to living in the light of the Lord’s love is to be unhappy till we have it, and to pant hourly after it – hourly, did I say? Thirst is a perpetual appetite, and not to be forgotten, and even thus continually is the heart’s longing after God. When it is as natural for us to long for God as for an animal to thirst, it is well with our souls, however painful our feelings

if God spared not His own Son, how much less will He spare you!

Though you wear your fingers to the bone with service, weep your eyes out with repentance, make your knees hard with kneeling, and dry your throat with shouting, if your heart does not beat with love, your religion falls to the ground like a withered leaf in autumn.

The things that are essential to salvation are so exceedingly simple that no child need sit down in despair of understanding the things which make for his peace. Christ crucified is not a riddle for sages, but a plain truth for plain people. True it is meat for men, but it is also milk for babes.

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.

There are enough in the novelty business without us; and we have something better to do. We have to give an account unto our God of what we do and say, and if we have been murderers of souls, it will be no excuse that we flourished the dagger well, or that when we gave them poison we mixed the draught cleverly, and presented it with poetical phrases.

Ah! If you have a self-will in your hearts, pray to God to uproot it. Have you self-love? Beseech the Holy Spirit to turn it out; for if you will always will to do as God wills, you must be happy. I have heard of some good old woman in a cottage, who had nothing but a piece of bread and a little water, and lifting up her hands, she said, as a blessing, What!? all this, and Christ too? What is all this, compared with what we deserve? And I have read of someone dying, who was asked if he wished to live or die; and he said, I have no wish at all about it. But if you might wish, which would you choose? I would not choose at all. But if God bade you choose? I would beg God to choose for me, for I would not know which to take. Oh happy state! to be perfectly acquiescent, to lie passive in His hand, and know no will but His.

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.