Charles Spurgeon - Prince of Preachers

What condescension is this, that the infinite Lord assumes towards his people the office and character of a Shepherd! It should be the subject of grateful admiration that the great God allows himself to be compared to anything which will set forth his great love and care for his own people. David had himself been a keeper of sheep, and understood both the needs of the sheep and the many cares of a shepherd. He compares himself to a creature weak, defenceless, and
foolish, and he takes God to be his Provider, Preserver, Director, and, indeed, his everything. No man has a right to consider himself the Lord's sheep unless his nature has been renewed for the scriptural description of unconverted men does not picture them as sheep, but as wolves or goats. A sheep is an object of property, not a wild animal; its owner sets great store by it, and frequently it is bought with a great price.

It is well to know,as certainly David did, that we belong to the Lord. There is a noble tone of confidence about this sentence. There is no "if" nor "but", nor even "I hope so"; but he says, "The Lord is my shepherd." We must cultivate the spirit of assured dependence upon our heavenly Father. The sweetest word of the whole is that monosyllable, "My." He does not say, "The Lord is the shepherd of the world at large, and leadeth forth the multitude as his flock", but "The Lord is my shepherd; "if he be a Shepherd to no one else, he is a Shepherd to me; he cares for me, watches over me, and preserves me. The words are in the present tense. Whatever be the believer's position, he is even now under the pastoral care of Jehovah.

From "The Treasury Of David," Notes on Psalm 23:1

The one Church of God, of what is it composed then? Is it composed of the Church of England, the Congregational Union, the Wesleyan Conference, and the Baptist body? No, it is not. Is not then the Church of England a part of the Church of Christ, and the Baptist denomination a part? No; I deny that these bodies, as such, unrefined and in the gross, are a part of the great unity for which Jesus prayed; but there are believers united with the Church of England who are a part of the body of Christ and there are believers in all denominations of Christians, ay! and many in no visible Church at all, who are in Christ Jesus, and consequently in the great unity. The Church of England is not a part of Christ's true body, nor any other denomination as such; the spiritual unity is made up of spiritual men, separated, picked out, cleared away from all the mass with which they happen to be united. I have spoken very boldly perhaps, and may be misunderstood; but this I mean, that you cannot take out any visible Church, however pure, and say that as it stands it belongs to the spiritual unity for which Jesus prayed. There are in the visible Churches a certain number of God's elect ones, and these are of the body of Jesus Christ; but their fellow professors, if unconverted, are not in the mystical unity. Christ's body is not made up of denominations, nor of presbyteries,nor of Christian societies; it is made up of saints chosen of God from before the foundation of the world, redeemed by blood, called by his Spirit, and made one with Jesus.

No one knows who is listening, say nothing you would not wish put in the newspapers.

By perseverance the snail reached the ark.

Must is a hard nut to crack, but it has a sweet kernel.

We are all at times unconscious prophets.

Sincerity makes the very least person to be of more value than the most talented hypocrite.

The goose that lays the golden eggs likes to lay where there are eggs already.

No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.

The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.

Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of.

You must be in fashion is the utterance of weak headed mortals.

It is said that if Noah's ark had to be built by a company; they would not have laid the keel yet; and it may be so. What is many men's business is nobody's business. The greatest things are accomplished by individual men.

Friendship is one of the sweetest joys of life. Many might have failed beneath the bitterness of their trial had they not found a friend.

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.

When you see a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend on it, that he keeps a very small stock of it within.

There is no fatigue so wearisome as that which comes from lack of work.

It is a great pity when the one who should be the head figure is a mere figure head.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is the knowledge of our own ignorance.

Luck generally comes to those who look for it, and my notion is that it taps, once in a lifetime, at everybody's door, but if industry does not open it luck goes away.

Economy is half the battle of life. It is not so hard to earn money as to spend it well.

Trust in the person's promise, who dares to refuse what they fear they cannot perform.

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

The wishing gate opens into nothing.