Metaphysicians can unsettle things, but they can erect nothing. They can pull down a church, but they cannot build a hovel.
—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
The Christian will find his parentheses for prayer even in the busiest hours of life.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Prayer
Method is like packing things in a box; a good packer will get in half as much again as a bad one.
—Richard Cecil
The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at a time.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Focus, Concentration, Doing
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
Wisdom prepares for the worst, but folly leaves the worst for the day when it comes.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Wisdom
To love to preach is one thing—to love those to whom we preach, quite another.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Preaching
Aversion from reproof is not wise. It is a mark of a little mind. A great man can afford to lose; a little, insignificant fellow is afraid of being snuffed out.
—Richard Cecil
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
There are three things which the true Christian desires in respect to sin: Justification, that it may not condemn; sanctification, that it may not reign; and glorification, that it may not be.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Sin
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
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
If a minister takes one step into the world, his hearers will take two.
—Richard Cecil
We hear much of a decent pride, a becoming pride, a noble pride, a laudable pride. Can that be decent, of which we ought to be ashamed? Can that be becoming, of which God has set forth the deformity? Can that be noble which God resists and is determined to abase? Can that be laudable, which God calls abominable?
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Pride
It requires as much reflection and wisdom to know what is not to be put into a sermon, as what is.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Preaching
The nurse of infidelity is sensuality.
—Richard Cecil
Method is the very hinge of business; and there is no method without punctuality.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Business, Punctuality
I extend the circle of religion very widely.—Many men fear and love God, and have a sincere desire to serve him, whose views of religious truth are very imperfect, and in some points utterly false.—But may not many such persons have a state of heart acceptable before God?
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Religion
Never was there a man of deep piety, who has not been brought into extremities—who has not been put into fire—who has not been taught to say, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.”
—Richard Cecil
The world looks at preachers out of church to know what they mean in it.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Evangelism, Preaching
When a founder has cast a bell he does not presently fix it in the steeple, but tries it with his hammer, and beats it on every side to see if there be any flaw in it. So Christ doth not, presently after he has converted a man, convey him to heaven; but suffers him first to be beaten upon by many temptations, and then exalts him to his crown.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Trials
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
All extremes are error. The reverse of error is not truth but error still. Truth lies between these extremes.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Balance, Truth
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 very heart and root of sin is an independent spirit.—We erect the idol self, and not only wish others to worship, but worship it ourselves.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Selfishness
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: Concentration, Beauty, Focus
God denies a Christian nothing but with a design to give him something better.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Prayer
There are soft moments even to desperadoes. God does not, all at once, abandon even them.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Thought
Tenderness of conscience is always to be distinguished from scrupulousness. The conscience cannot be kept too sensitive and tender; but scrupulousness arises from bodily or mental infirmity, and discovers itself in a multitude of ridiculous, superstitious, and painful feelings.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Conscience
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
The union of Christians to Christ, their common head, and by means of the influence they derive from him, one to another, may be illustrated by the loadstone. It not only attracts the particles of iron to itself by the magnetic virtue, but by this virtue it unites them one to another.
—Richard Cecil
Self-will is so ardent and active, that it will break a world to pieces, to make a stool to sit on.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Will Power, Willpower, Will
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
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
If a man has a quarrelsome temper, let him alone. The world will soon find him employment. He will soon meet with some one stronger than himself, who will repay him better than you can. A man may fight duels all his life, if he is disposed to quarrel.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Temper
If there is any person whom you dislike, that is the one of whom you should never speak.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Hatred
The world looks at ministers out of the pulpit to know what they mean when in it.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Preaching
Supreme and abiding self-love is a very dwarfish affection, but a giant evil.
—Richard Cecil
Topics: Selfishness