The nurse of infidelity is sensuality.
—Richard Cecil
God’s way of answering the Christian’s prayer for more patience, experience, hope, and love, often is to put him into the furnace of affliction.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Prayer
The history of all the great characters of the Bible is summed up in this one sentence: They acquainted themselves with God, and acquiesced His will in all things.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: God
Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Beauty, Focus, Concentration
The religion of a sinner stands on two pillars; namely, what Christ did for us in the flesh, and what he performs in us by his Spirit. Most errors arise from an attempt to separate these two.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Religion
If a minister takes one step into the world, his hearers will take two.
—Richard Cecil
Recollection is the life of religion. The Christian wants to know no new thing, but to have his heart elevated more above the world by secluding himself from it as much as his duties will allow, that religion may effect its great end by bringing its sublime hopes and prospects into more steady action on the mind.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Religion
Solitude shows us what we should be; society shows us what we are.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Solitude
Hypocrisy is folly.—It is much easier, safer, and pleasanter to be the thing which a man aims to appear, than to keep up the appearance of what he is not.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Hypocrisy
Supreme and abiding self-love is a very dwarfish affection, but a giant evil.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Selfishness
God denies a Christian nothing but with a design to give him something better.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Prayer
The joy of religion is an exorcist to the mind; it expels the demons of carnal mirth and madness.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Religion
He who sows, even with tears, the precious seed of faith, hope, and love, shall doubtless come again with joy, bringing his sheaves with him, because it is the very nature of that seed to yield a joyful harvest.
—Richard Cecil
Think of the ills from which you are exempt, and it will aid you to bear patiently those which now you may suffer.
—Richard Cecil
The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at a time.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Focus, Concentration, Doing
Example is more forcible than precept.—People look at my six days in the week to see what I mean on the seventh.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Example
To love to preach is one thing—to love those to whom we preach, quite another.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Preaching
If there is any person whom you dislike, that is the one of whom you should never speak.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Hatred
As a man loves gold, in that proportion he hates to be imposed upon by counterfeits; and in proportion as a man has regard for that which is above price and better than gold, he abhors that hypocrisy which is but its counterfeit.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Hypocrisy
The way of every man is declarative of the end of every man.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Man
Wisdom prepares for the worst, but folly leaves the worst for the day when it comes.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Wisdom
Faith makes all evil good to us, and all good better; unbelief makes all good evil, and all evil worse. Faith laughs at the shaking of the spear; unbelief trembles at the shaking of a leaf, unbelief starves the soul; faith finds food in famine, and a table in the wilderness. In the greatest danger, faith says, “I have a great God.” When outward strength is broken, faith rests on the promises. In the midst of sorrow, faith draws the sting out of every trouble, and takes out the bitterness from every affliction.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Faith
The grandest operations, both in nature and grace, are the most silent and imperceptible.—The shallow brook babbles in its passage and is heard by every one; but the coming on of the seasons is silent and unseen.—The storm rages and alarms, but its fury is soon exhausted, and its effects are but partial and soon remedied; but the dew, though gentle and unheard, is immense in quantity, and is the very life of large portions of the earth.—And these are pictures of the operations of grace in the church and in the soul.
—Richard Cecil
An accession of wealth is a dangerous predicament for a man. At first he is stunned if the accession be sudden, and is very humble and very grateful. Then he begins to speak a little louder, people think him more sensible, and soon he thinks himself so.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Wealth
A man who puts aside his religion because he is going into society, is like one taking off his shoes because he is about to walk upon thorns.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Religion
Providence is a greater mystery than revelation. The state of the world is more humiliating to our reason than the doctrines of the Gospel. A reflecting Christian sees more to excite his astonishment, and to exercise his faith, in the state of things between Temple Bar and St. Paul’s, than in what he reads from Genesis to Revelations.
—Richard Cecil
Duties are ours, events are God’s. This removes an infinite burden from the shoulders of a miserable, tempted, dying creature. On this consideration only can he securely lay down his head and close his eyes.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Duty
There is something in religion, when rightly apprehended, that is masculine and grand. It removes those little desires which are “the constant hectic of a fool.”
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Religion
Philosophy is a proud, sullen detector of the poverty and misery of man. It may turn him from the world with a proud, sturdy contempt; but it cannot come forward and say, here are rest, grace, pardon, peace, strength, and consolation.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Philosophy
The only instance of praying to saints, mentioned in the Bible, is that of the rich man in torment calling upon Abraham; and let it be remembered, that it was practised only by a lost soul and without success.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Prayer