Grace Withers Without Adversity
“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. He writes tenderly, warmly, and devotionally of Christ and of the Christian life.
In The Loveliness of Christ, Rutherford writes:
If your Lord call you to suffering, be not dismayed; there shall be a new allowance of the King for you when ye come to it. One of the softest pillows Christ hath is laid under his witnesses’ head, though often they must set down their bare feet among thorns.
God hath called you to Christ’s side, and the wind is now in Christ’s face in this land and seeing ye are with him, ye cannot expect the lee-side or the sunny side of the hill.
He delighteth to take up fallen children and to mend broken brows: binding up of wounds is his office.
Wants are my best riches, for I have those supplied by Christ. I hope to over-hope and over-believe my troubles.
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 for Christ: and when we think we are going backward, because we feel deadness, we are going forward; for the more sense the more life, and no sense argueth no life.
There is no sweeter fellowship with Christ than to bring our wounds and sores to him.
There is as much in our Lord’s pantry as will satisfy all his children, 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 ask him (who yet is pleased with the importunity of hungry desires, till he fill you; and if he delay yet come not ye away, albeit ye should fall a-swoon at his feet.
I find it most true, that the greatest temptation out of hell, it so 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 withereth without adversity. The devil is but God’s master fencer, to teach us to handle our weapons.
O, pity for evermore that there should be such an one as Christ Jesus, so boundless, so bottomless, and so incomparable in infinite excellency, and sweetness, and so few to take him! O, ye poor dry and dead souls, why will ye come hither with your empty vessels and your empty souls to this huge, and fair, and deep, and sweet well of life, and fill all your empty vessels? O, that Christ should be so large in sweetness and worth, and we so narrow, pinched, so ebb, and so void of all happiness, and yet men will not take him! They lose their love miserably, who will not bestow it upon this lovely One.
I know all created power should sink under me if I should lean down upon it, and. therefore it is better to rest on God than sink or fall; and we weak souls must have a bottom and being-place, for we cannot stand out alone. Let us then be wise in our choice and choose and wail our own blessedness, which is to trust in the Lord.