Samuel Rutherford Quotes

Prayer is essentially the practice of the presence of God, and that is the road to Heaven. There is no alternative. God is the only game in town. All other roads are dead ends. Since we must give our all to the one true God, we must not give any part to idols, to the many false gods that now bite away at our lives.

A loving God who has no wrath is no God. He is an idol of our own making as much as if we carved Him out of stone.

Never think that you need to protect God. Because anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol.

The confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust be right, then is your god also true; and, on the other hand, if your trust be false and wrong, then you have not the true God; for these two belong together faith and God. That now, I say, upon which you set your heart and put your trust is properly your god.

Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves.

When you worship an idol, you're substituting a thing for the ultimate.

Whatever you love more than God is your idol.

It's easy to get attached to idols, good things inappropriately adored. But when you have Jesus in the centre of a room, everything else only junks up the decor.

If you want to follow Jesus because He'll fix your marriage, if you want to follow Jesus because He'll give you a better life, that's idolatry. Follow Christ for the sake of Christ; He is worthy!

The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree. Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.

There is no greater threat to our devotion to Christ than our service for Christ.

Idolatry, then, is always polytheism, an aimless passing from one lord to another. Idolatry does not offer a journey but rather a plethora of paths leading nowhere and forming a vast labyrinth.

Indeed the Idols I have loved so long, have done my credit in this World much wrong; have drowned my Glory in a shallow Cup, and sold my Reputation for a Song.

Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.

As a general rule, fans and idols should always be kept at arm's length, the length of the arm to be proportionate to the degree of sheer idolatry involved. Don't take a Beatle to lunch. Don't wait up to see if the Easter Bunny is real. Just enjoy the egg hunt.

We may worship a picture as God, but not God as the picture. God in the picture is right, but the picture as God is wrong. God in the image is perfectly right. There is no danger there. This is the real worship of God. But the image-God is a mere Pratika.

In scripture we are told of some trusting in God and others trusting in idols, and that God is our refuge, our strength, our defense. In this sense God is the rock of his people, and false Gods are called the rock of those that trust in them. In the same sense the Gods of the King who shall do according to his will are called Mahuzzims, munitions, fortresses, protectors, guardians, or defenders.

We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands.

Whatever thing a man sets his heart on...is his god; and if his god doesn't also happen to be the true and living God of Israel that man is laboring in idolatry.

Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones.

It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol.

No graven images may be Worshipped, except the currency.

Yet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs, fears and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them.

There is no idol more debasing than the worship of money.

Had we been as free from all sins as we were from gluttony and drunkenness we might have been canonized for saints.