Comfort in Trials
“In Samuel Rutherford, we find a rare combination of the precise mind of a theologian but also the passionate heart of a poet. When you read his descriptions of Christ, when you read his descriptions of the love of Christ for His Church and His Church for Him, his imagery reminds me of the Song of Solomon.”
― Dr. John Snyder, PURITAN: All of Life to the Glory of God
Samuel Rutherford was a seventeenth century Puritan pastor, theologian, author, and thinker.
Samuel Rutherford wrote hundreds of personal letters throughout his lifetime in which he speaks tenderly, warmly, and devotionally of Christ and of the Christian life.
Excerpts from these letters were later collected into a small devotional book, The Loveliness of Christ.
Who knoweth how needful winnowing is to us?
It is the Lord’s kindness that He will take the scum off us in the fire. Who knoweth how needful winnowing is to us, and what dross we must want ere we enter into the kingdom of God? So narrow is the entry to heaven, that our knots, our bunches and lumps of pride, and selflove, and idol-love, and world-love must be hammered off us, that we may throng in, stooping low, and creeping through that narrow and thorny entry.
O, what owe I to the file, to the hammer, to the furnace of my Lord Jesus!
O, what owe I to the file, to the hammer, to the furnace of my Lord Jesus!
Why should I start at the plough of my Lord, that maketh deep furrows on my soul? I know He is no idle husbandman, He purposeth a crop.
Crosses are proclaimed as common accidents to all the saints, and in them standeth a part of our communion with Christ.
How sweet a thing were it for us to learn to make… our Lord’s will a law.
How sweet a thing were it for us to learn to make our burdens light by framing our hearts to the burden, and making our Lord’s will a law.
It is not the sunny side of Christ that we must look to, and we must not forsake Him for want of that; but must set our face against what may befall us, in following on, till He and we through the briers and bushes on the dry ground. Our soft nature would be borne through the troubles of this miserable life in Christ’s arms. And it is His wisdom, who knoweth our mould, that His bairns (children) go wet-shod and cold-footed to heaven.