Samuel Rutherford

How soon would faith freeze without a cross!

Samuel Rutherford (1600?–1661) was a Scottish Presbyterian theologian and author. He was one of the Scottish Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly.

Quotes

• Last words: "I bless the Lord that he gave me counsel."

Sketch of Life of Samuel Rutherford (Andrew Bonar)

• Like a fool as I was , I suffered my sun to be high in the heavens and near afternoon before I ever took the gate by the end.

Letters of Samuel Rutherford (Andrew Bonar)

• I see grace growth best in winter
  • Letter 74 to Lady Culross Aberdeen 1837
• ye and I might meet with joy up in the rainbow
  • Letter 180 to John Gordon, Laird of Cardoness Castle
• I hang by a thread, but it is (if I may so speak) of Christ's spinning
  • Letter 56 to Lady Kenmure
• I had but one joy, the apple of the eye of my delights , to preach Christ my Lord
  • Letter 225 (to his parishioners) Aberdeen 1837
• The bloom fell off my branches and joy did cast off its flower
  • Letter 185 (to Marion M' Naught) Aberdeen , 1837
• The good Husbandman may pluck His rose & gather in His lily.
  • Letter 310 to Mistress Taylor's on her son's death
• The night will close the door & fasten my anchor within the veil and I shall go away to sleep.
  • Letter 333

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

• Grace will ever speak for itself and be fruitful in well-doing; the sanctified cross is a fruitful tree.
  • P. 10.

• Ye have lost a child — nay, she is not lost to you, who is found to Christ; she is not sent away, but only sent before; like unto a star, which going out of our sight, doth not die and vanish, but shineth in another hemisphere.
  • P. 53.

• Let your children be as so many flowers, borrowed from God. If the flowers die or wither, thank God for a summer loan of them.
  • P. 51.

• Dearest wife, let us go on and faint not; something of ours is in heaven besides the flesh of our exalted Saviour, and we go on after our own.
  • P. 53.

• My desire is that my Lord would give me broader and deeper thoughts, to feed myself with wondering at His love.
  • P. 93.

• In our fluctuations of feeling, it is well to remember that Jesus admits no change in His affections; your heart is not the compass Jesus saileth by.
  • P. 93.

• Every day we may see some new thing in Christ. His love hath neither brim nor bottom.
  • P. 95.

• I find my Lord Jesus cometh not in the precise way that I lay wait for Him. He hath a manner of His own. Oh, how high are His ways above my ways
  • P. 97.

• Take Christ in with you under your yoke, and let patience have her perfect work.
  • P. 98.

• There is nothing that will make you a Christian indeed, but a taste of the sweetness of Christ.
  • P. 105.

• Christ, in that place He hath put you, hath intrusted you with a dear pledge, which is His own glory, and hath armed you with His sword to keep the pledge, and make a good account of it to God.
  • P. 106.

• Christ seeketh your help in your place; give Him your hand.
  • P. 124.

• You must take a house beside the Physician. It will be a miracle if ye be the first sick that Christ hath put away uncured.
  • P. 154.

• Welcome, welcome, cross of Christ, if Christ be with it.
  • P. 171.

• How soon would faith freeze without a cross!
  • P. 171.

• Build your nest upon no tree here, for ye see that God hath sold the forest to death.
  • P. 206.

• Be not cast down. If ye saw Him who is standing on the shore, holding out His arms to welcome you to land, ye would wade, not only through a sea of wrongs, but through hell itself to be with Him.
  • P. 253.

• When ye are come to the other side of the water, and have set down your foot on the shore ot glorious eternity, and look back again to the waters and to your wearisome journey, and shall see in that clear glass of endless glory, nearer to the bottom of God's wisdom, ye shall then be forced to say, " If God had done otherwise with me than He hath done, I had never come to the enjoyment of this crown of glory."
  • P. 265.

• It is no small comfort that God hath written some Scriptures to you which He hath not to others. Read these, and think God is like a friend who sendeth a letter to a whole house and family, but who speaketh in His letter to some by name that are dearest to Him in the house.
  • P. 270.

• There is nothing left to us but to see how we may be approved of Him, and how we may roll the weight of our weak souls in well-doing upon Him, who is God omnipotent.
  • P. 274.

• It is certain that this is not only good which the Almighty has done, but that it is best; He hath reckoned all your steps to heaven.
  • P. 276.

• I know that as night and shadows are good for flowers, and moonlight and dews are better than a continual sun, so is Christ's absence of special use, and that it hath some nourishing virtue in it, and giveth sap to humility, and putteth an edge on hunger, and furnisheth a fair field for faith to put forth itself.
  • P. 277.

• Grow as a palm-tree on God's Mount Zion; howbeit shaken with winds, yet the root is fast.
  • P. 294.

• I pray God that I may never find my will again. Oh, that Christ would subject my will to His, and trample it under His feet.
  • P. 513.

• It is in some respect greater love in Jesus to sanctify than to justify, for He maketh us most like Himself, in His own essential portraiture and image in sanctifying us.
  • P. 530.

• If ye never had a sick night and a pained soul for sin, ye have not yet lighted upon Christ.
  • P. 594.

• Make not Christ a liar in distrusting His promise.
  • P. 594.

Misattributed

• If you should see a man shut up in a closed room, idoizing a set of lamps and rejoicing in their light, and you wished to make him truly happy, you would begin by blowing out all his lamps; and then throw open the shutters to let in the light of heaven.
  • Was falsely attributed to Rutherford by Joni Eareckson-Tada in Heaven: Your Real Home (2010), p. 259
    • From Edward Payson in "Momentos of Rev. Edward Payson D.D., ed. Edwin L. Janes (New York: Nelson & Phillips, 1873), p. 87. The Original version reads: "... for if you should see a man shut up in a close room, idolizing a set of lamps, and rejoicing in their light, and you wished to make him truly happy, you would begin by blowing out all his lamps, and then throw open the shutters, to let in the light of heaven."

External links

• A short biography and selected writings
• Selected writings
• A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience by Rutherford
• Free eBook of Samuel Rutherford by Alexander Whyte at Project Gutenberg
• Christ Above All, a collection of works by and about Rutherford and other Second Reformation leaders
• Lex, Rex, in its entirety (PDF download)
• Rutherford's Letters (ed Andrew Bonar), in its entirety (PDF download)