Charles Spurgeon Christian Quotations

Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years.

The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.

If any of you should ask me for an epitome of the Christian religion, I should say that it is in one word - prayer. Live and die without prayer, and you will pray long enough when you get to hell.

There are some Christian people who taste and see and enjoy religion in their own souls, and who get at a deeper knowledge of it than books can ever give them, though they should search all their days.

Have we been going up and down in business, and are those round about us as yet unaware of our Christian character? Have we never spoken to them the Word of Life? Lord, arouse us to a deep concern for all with whom we come in contact from day to day.

The sovereign electing grace of God chooses us to repentance, to faith, and afterwards to holiness of living, to Christian service, to zeal, and to devotion.

There are few people who think what a solemn thing it is to be a Christian. I guess there is not a believer in the world who knows what a miracle it is to be kept a believer.

I believe that many professing Christians are cold and uncomfortable because they are doing nothing for their Lord; but if they actively served him, their blood would begin to circulate spiritually, and it would be well with them.

All places are places of worship to a Christian. Wherever he is, he ought to be in a worshiping frame of mind.

I am ashamed of some christians because they have so much dependence on Parliment and the law of the land. Much good may Parliment ever do to true religion except by mistake! As to getting the law of the land to touch our religion, we earnestly cry, `Hands off! Leave us alone.' Your Sunday bills and all other forms of the act-of-Parliment religion seem to me to be all wrong. Give us a fair field and no favor, and our faith has no cause to fear. Christ wants no help from Caesar.

I slew him-this right hand struck the dagger to his heart. My deeds slew Christ. Alas! I slew my best beloved; I killed him who loved me with an everlasting love. Oh eyes, why do you refuse to weep when you see Jesus' body mangled and torn? Give vent to your sorrow, Christians, for you have good reason to do so.

The waiting itself is beneficial to us: it tries faith, exercises patience, trains submission, and endears the blessing when it comes.

I do not know if there is a more dreadful word in the English language than that word "lost."

To throw the Christian into the furnace is to put him into Christ's parlor; for lo! Jesus Christ is walking with him.

Suffering times are a Christian's harvest time.

To Christ we are to be always coming; upon Him always relying; to His precious blood always looking.

It is not the bigness of the words you utter, but the force with which you deliver them.

There are two sins of men that are bred in the bone and that continually come out in the flesh. One is self-dependence and the other is self-exultation.

God promises to keep His people, and He will keep His promises.

I will not believe that thou hast tasted of the honey of the gospel if thou canst eat it all thyself.

Everything is a trifle to a man who is a Christian except the glorifying of Christ

The pleasures arising from a right understanding of the divine testimonies are of the most delightful order; earthly enjoyments are utterly contemptible if compared with them. The sweetest joys, yea, the sweetest of the sweetest falls to his portion who has God's truth to be his heritage.

The highest honor that God can confer upon his children is the blood-red crown of martyrdom. The jewels of a Christian are his afflictions. The regalia of the kings that God has made, are their troubles, their sorrows, and their griefs. Griefs exalt us, and troubles lift us.

The holiest of Christians, and those who understand best the gospel of Christ, find in themselves a constant inclination to look to the power of the creature, instead of looking to the power of God and the power of God alone.

Sleepy Christian, let me shout in thine ears: thou are sleeping while souls are being lost, sleeping while men are being damned, sleeping while hell is being peopled, sleeping while Christ is being dishonored, sleeping while the devil is grinning at thy sleepy face, sleeping while demons are dancing round thy slumbering carcass, and telling it in hell that a Christian is asleep. You will never catch the devil asleep; let not the devil catch you asleep. Watch, and be sober, that ye may be always up to do your duty.

Never fear dying, beloved. Dying is the last, but the least matter that a Christian has to be anxious about. Fear living...that is a hard battle to fight, a stern discipline to endure, a rough voyage to undergo.

We know of no cure for the love of evil in a Christian like daily communion with the Lord Jesus.

Christian, beware of thinking lightly of sin. Take heed in case you fall little by little.

The wicked man, when he dies, is driven to his grave, but the Christian comes to his grave.

The bounden duty of a true believer towards men who profess to be Christians, and yet deny the Word of the Lord, and reject the fundamentals of the Gospel, is to come out from among them

Bible study is the metal that forges a Christian.

Satan always hates Christian fellowship; it is his policy to keep Christians apart. Anything which can divide saints from one another he delights in. He attaches far more importance to godly intercourse than we do. Since union is strength, he does his best to promote separation.

I believe the hard heartest, most cross grained and most unloving Christians in all the world are those who have not had much trouble in their life. And those that are the most sympathizing, loving and Christlike are generally those who have the most affliction. The worse thing that can happen to any of us is to have a path made too smooth. One of the greatest blessings the Lord ever gave us was a cross.

To pray is to cast off your burdens, it is to tear away your rags, it is to shake off your diseases, it is to be filled with spiritual vigor, it is to reach the highest point of Christian health.

It is an unfortunate thing for the Christian to be melancholy. If there is any man in the world that has a right to have a bright, clear face and a flashing eye, it is the man whose sins are forgiven him, who is saved with God's salvation.

It seems to me that doubt is worse than trial. I had sooner suffer any affliction than be left to question the gospel or my own interest in it.

Providence is wonderfully intricate. Ah! You want always to see through Providence, do you not? You never will, I assure you. You have not eyes good enough. You want to see what good that affliction was to you; you must believe it. You want to see how it can bring good to the soul; you may be enabled in a little time; but you cannot see it now; you must believe it. Honor God by trusting Him.

The boundless stores of Providence are engaged for the support of the believer.

A Christian making money fast is just a man in a cloud of dust, it will fill his eyes if he be not careful.

Sympathy is especially a Christian duty.

A Christian is the gentlest of men; but then he is a man.

We Christians do not believe that Jesus Christ was the only one that ever rose from the dead. We believe that every death-bed is a resurrection; that from every grave the stone, is rolled away.

The vendors of flowers in the streets of London are wont to commend them to customers by crying: "All a blowing and a growing." It would be no small praise to Christians if we could say as much for them.

Death has no sting to a Believer. Once death was the penalty of sin-sin being forgiven, the penalty ceases and Christians do not die, now, as a punishment for their sin, but they die that they may be prepared to live!

I am no preacher of the old legal Sabbath. I am a preacher of the gospel. The Sabbath of the Jew is to him a task; the Lord's Day of the Christian, the first day of the week, is to him a joy, a day of rest, of peace, and of thanksgiving. And if you Christian men can earnestly drive away all distractions, so that you can really rest today, it will be good for your bodies, good for your souls, good mentally, good spiritually, good temporally, and good eternally.

I hope the doctrine that Christians ought to be gloomy will soon be driven out of the universe. There are no people in the world who have such a right to be happy, nor have such cause to be joyful as the saints of the living God.

Alas! Much has been done of late to promote the production of dwarfish Christians. Poor, sickly believers turn the church into an hospital, rather than an army. Oh, to have a church built up with the deep godliness of people who know the Lord in their very hearts, and will seek to follow the Lamb wherever he goes!

He will be the best Christian who has Christ for his Master, and truly follows Him. Some are disciples of the church, others are disciples of the minister, and a third sort are disciples of their own thoughts; he is the wise man who sits at Jesus' feet and learns of Him, with the resolve to follow His teaching and imitate His example. He who tries to learn of Jesus Himself, taking the very words from the Lord's own lips, binding himself to believe whatsoever the Lord hath taught and to do whatsoever He hath commanded-he I say, is the stable Christian.

The Christian is the most contented man in the world, but he is the least contented with the world.

When it can be proved that the observance of Christmas, Whitsuntide, and other Popish festivals was ever instituted by a divine statute, we also will attend to them, but not till then. It is as much our duty to reject the traditions of men, as to observe the ordinances of the Lord. We ask concerning every rite and rubric, "Is this a law of the God of Jacob?" and if it be not clearly so, it is of no authority with us, who walk in Christian liberty.

In seasons of severe trial, the Christian has nothing on earth that he can trust to, and is therefore compelled to cast himself on God alone. When no human deliverance can avail, he must simply and entirely trust himself to the providence and care of God. Happy storm that wrecks a man on such a rock as this! O blessed hurricane that drives the soul to God--and God alone!

There are some promises in the Bible which I have never yet used; but I am well assured that there will come times of trial and trouble when I shall find that poor despised promise, which I thought was never meant for me, will be the only one on which I can float. I know that the time is coming when every believer shall know the worth of every promise in the covenant.

Neither when we have chosen our way can we keep company with those who go the other way. There must come with the decision for truth a corresponding protest against error.

I always say to young fellows who consult me about the ministry, "Don't be a minister if you can help it," because if the man can help it, God never called him. But if he cannot help it, and he must preach or die, then he is the man.

They who seek Christ are already being sought of him.

Far better for a man that he had never been born than that he should degrade a pulpit into a show box to exhibit himself in.

He would have us like children who believe what their father tells them.

You will never be saved against your will; God drags nobody to heaven by the ears.

Our spiritual manhood in heaven will discard many things which we now count precious, as a full-grown man discards the treasures of his childhood.

Do you find it difficult to forgive one who has wronged you? Then you will find it difficult to get to heaven.

Ministers should be stars to give light, not clouds to obscure.

There is no physician like Him, none can save as He can; we love Him, and He loves us, and therefore we put ourselves into His hands.

To trifle with Scripture is to deprive yourself of its aid. Reverence it, and look up to God with devout gratitude for having given it to you.

The practical effect of Christianity is happiness, therefore let it be spread abroad everywhere!

Fiery trials make golden Christians.

All places are places of worship to a Christian.

A man who fears not God, will break all his laws with an easy conscience, but one who is the favorite of heaven, who has been indulged to sit at royal banquets, who knows the eternal love of God to him, cannot bear that there should be any evil way in him that might grieve the Spirit and bring dishonor to the name of Christ. A very little sin, as the world calls it, is a very great sin to a truly awakened Christian.

The stool of repentance and the foot of the cross are the favorite positions of instructed Christians.

It is a remarkable fact that all the heresies which have arisen in the Christian Church have had a decided tendency to dishonor God and to flatter man.

Christians are not so much in danger when they are persecuted as when they are admired.

We see his smile of love even when others see nothing but the black hand of death smiting our best beloved.

Be dogmatically true, obstinately holy, immovably honest, desperately kind, fixedly upright.

I believe that every Christian ought to be joined to some visible church; that is his plain duty, according to the Scriptures. God’s people are not dogs, else they might go about one by one; but they are sheep, and therefore they should be in flocks.

God looketh upon any thing we say, or any thing we do, and if He seeth Christ in it, He accepteth it; but if there be no Christ, He putteth it away as a foul thing.

We know so little about the future that to worry about it would be the height of foolishness.

Life is short and we have scarcely begun to live when we are called to die.

It is, perhaps, one of the hardest struggles of the Christian life to learn this sentence-- "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name be glory."

Prayer is the forerunner of mercy. Turn to sacred history, and you will find that scarecely ever did a great mercy come to this world unheralded by supplication.

There are some things that can be learned by the head, but Christ crucified can only be learned by the heart

My brethren, let me say, be like Christ at all times. Imitate him in "public." Most of us live in some sort of public capacity-many of us are called to work before our fellow-men every day. We are watched; our words are caught; our lives are examined-taken to pieces. The eagle-eyed, argus-eyed world observes everything we do, and sharp critics are upon us. Let us live the life of Christ in public. Let us take care that we exhibit our Master, and not ourselves-so that we can say, "It is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me."

There should be as much difference between the worldling and the Christian, as between hell and heaven, between destruction and eternal life.

The world will never be converted to God unitl Christians cry less and laugh and sing more.

Methinks every true Christian should be exceedingly earnest in prayer concerning the souls of the ungodly; and when they are so, how abundantly God blesses them and how the church prospers!

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.

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

Christ also takes from us all inclination or power to boast of our national prestige. To me, it is prestige enough to be a Christian--to bear the cross Christ gives me to carry and to follow in the footsteps of the great Crossbearer.

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

I have not much patience with a certain class of Christians nowadays who will hear anybody preach so long as they can say, 'He is very clever, a fine preacher, a man of genius, a born orator.' Is cleverness to make false doctrine palatable? Why, sirs, to me the ability of a man who preaches error is my sorrow rather than my admiration.

Soul-winning is the chief business of the Christian minister; it should be the main pursuit of every true believer.

I would not have you exchange the gold of individual Christianity for the base metal of Christian Socialism.

Every man needs a blind eye and a deaf ear, so when people applaud, you'll only hear half of it, and when people salute, you'll only see part of it. Believe only half the praise and half the criticism.

The faith which saves is not one single act done on a certain day: it is an act continued and persevered in throughout the life of man.

There is no university for a Christian, like that of sorrow and trial

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.

The Christian should take nothing short of Christ for his model.

A Christian man should so shine in his life, that a person could not live with him a week without knowing the gospel.

Dying is the last,but the least matter that a Christian has to be anxious about

Though you have changed a thousand times, He has not changed once.

When fathers are tongue tied religiously with their offspring, need they wonder if their children's hearts remain sin tied?

Faith is a principle which hath its root deeper than feelings. We believe, whether we see or not. We believe, whether we feel or not.