See that you buy the field where the Pearl is; sell all, and make a purchase of salvation. Think it not easy: for it is a steep ascent to eternal glory: many are lying dead by the way, slain with security.
Samuel RutherfordRead
I find it most true that the greatest temptation outside of hell is to live without temptations; if water stands, it rots; faith is the better for the sharp winter storm in its face and grace withers without adversity. The devil is but God's master fencer to teach us to handle our weapons.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Living without challenges can be detrimental, and adversity helps strengthen our faith and character.
In this quote, Samuel Rutherford expresses the idea that facing temptations and adversities is essential for personal growth and spiritual strength. He suggests that a life devoid of challenges leads to stagnation, much like standing water goes stale. The quote emphasizes that difficulties, represented as the 'sharp winter storm,' refine and strengthen faith, while the adversarial forces in life, personified as 'the devil,' can ultimately serve to sharpen our abilities and resilience.
Themes
TemptationAdversityFaithGrowthChallenges
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming life’s struggles, this quote can inspire listeners to embrace their challenges.
More from Samuel Rutherford
All quotes →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.
Samuel RutherfordRead
Oh thrice fools are we who like new-born princes weeping in the cradle know not that there is a kingdom before them then let our Lord's sweet hand square us and hammer us and strike off the knots of pride self-love and world-worship and infidelity that He may make us stones and pillars in His Father's house.
Samuel RutherfordRead
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 funisheth a fairfield to faith to put forth itself, and to exercise its fingers in gripping it seeth not what.
Samuel RutherfordRead
Those who can take that crabbed tree handsomely upon their back, and fasten it on cannily, shall find it such a burden as wings unto a bird, or sails to a ship.
Samuel RutherfordRead
You will not be carried to Heaven lying at ease upon a feather bed.
Samuel RutherfordRead
Similar quotes
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H. L. MenckenRead
The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
W. H. AudenRead
The traditional doctrine of man and not the measurement of skulls and footprints is the key for the understanding of that anthropos who, despite the rebellion of Promethean man against Heaven from the period of Renaissance and its aftermath, is still the inner man of every man, the reality which no human being can deny wherever and whenever he lives, the imprint of a theomorphic nature which no historical change and transformation can erase completely from the face of that creature called man.
Seyyed Hossein NasrRead
He, who survives his reputation, lives out of despite himself, like a man listening to his own reproach.
Thomas PaineRead
In a situation like this, of course you identify with everyone who's suffering. (But we must also think about) the terrorists who are creating such horrible future lives for themselves because of the negativity of this karma. It's all of our jobs to keep our minds as expansive as possible. If you can see (the terrorists) as a relative who's dangerously sick and we have to give them medicine, and the medicine is love and compassion. There's nothing better.
Richard GereRead
God does not know whether a skin is black or white, He sees only souls.
Katherine Anne PorterRead