Charles Spurgeon was one of,
- if not the greatest preacher of the past 200 years. To say that he was prolific is a staggering understatement. He preached approximately 3600 sermons, wrote dozens of books, oversaw ministries to the poor and orphans, raised up new pastors, and countless other endeavors.
- In light of this, Spurgeon said some of the most profound, glorious things about God, the gospel, prayer, and numerous other subjects. He’s one of my favorite writers/preachers because of the poetic, picturesque, to-the-point way he speaks about so many subjects.
- So with that in mind, I put together a huge list of 104 absolutely fantastic Charles Spurgeon quotes. I’ve organized them by subject and you can click any of the links below to hop to that section.
- Charles Spurgeon Quotes About The Gospel
- Quotes About The Bible
- Spurgeon Quotes About The Church
- Quotes About Preaching
- Spurgeon About Contentment
- The New Covenant
- Quotes About Depression
- Election
- Quotes About Faith
- Spurgeon Quotes About Feelings
- Quotes About Suffering
- Charles Spurgeon Quotes About Legalism
- Heaven
- Quotes About Holiness
- Spurgeon Quotes About Prayer
- Quotes About Praise
- Spurgeon Quotes About The Gospel
- 1. …the best “apology” for the gospel is to let the gospel out. Never mind defending Deuteronomy or the whole of the Pentateuch. Preach Jesus Christ and him crucified. The Lion of the tribe of Judah will soon drive away all his adversaries.
- 2. The heart of Christ became like a reservoir in the midst of the mountains. All the tributary streams of iniquity, and every drop of the sins of his people, ran down and gathered into one vast lake, deep as hell and shoreless as eternity. All these met, as it were, in Christ’s heart, and he endured them all.
- 3. Atonement is the brain and spinal cord of Christianity. Take away the cleansing blood, and what is left to the guilty?
- 4. I believe that if I should preach to you the atonement of our Lord Jesus, and nothing else, twice every Sabbath day, my ministry would not be unprofitable.
- 5. If our Lord’s bearing our sin for us is not the gospel, I have no gospel to preach. Brethren, I have befooled you these thirty-five years if this is not the gospel. I am a lost man, if this is not the gospel, for I have no hope beneath the canopy of heaven, neither in time nor in eternity, save only in this belief—that Jesus Christ, in my place, bore both my punishment and sin.
- 6. The chief aim of the enemy’s assaults is to get rid of Christ, to get rid of the atonement, to get rid of his suffering in the place of men.
- 7. There may be some sins of which a man cannot speak, but there is no sin which the blood of Christ cannot wash away.
- 8. There are some preachers who cannot or do not preach about the blood of Jesus Christ, and I have one thing to say to you concerning them: Never go to hear them! Never listen to them!
- 9. Calvary preaching, Calvary theology, Calvary books, Calvary sermons! These are the things we want. And in proportion as we have Calvary exalted and Christ magnified, the gospel is preached.
- 10. No scene in sacred history ever gladdens the soul like the scene on Calvary.
- 11. I wish that our ministry—that mine especially—might be tied and tethered to the cross. I would have no other subject to set before you but Jesus only.
- 12. Christ’s five wounds kill my suspicions and fears. A crucified Savior is the life of faith and the death of unbelief. Can you view the flowing of the Savior’s precious blood upon the tree of doom and not trust him?
- 13. Nothing puts life into men like a dying Savior.
- 14. I believe that as often as I transgress, God is more ready to forgive me than I am ready to offend.
- Spurgeon Quotes About The Bible
- 15. The words of Scripture thrill my soul as nothing else ever can. They bear me aloft or dash me down. They tear me in pieces or build me up. The words of God have more power over me than ever David’s fingers had over his harp strings. Is it not so with you?
- 16. If you wish to know God, you must know his Word. If you wish to perceive his power, you must see how he works by his Word. If you wish to know his purpose before it comes to pass, you can only discover it by his Word.
- 17. I would rather speak five words out of this book than 50,000 words of the philosophers. If we want revivals, we must revive our reverence for the Word of God. If we want conversions, we must put more of God’s Word into our sermons.
- 18. …you take a divine promise, spoken thousands of years ago, and lo, it is fulfilled to you! It becomes as true to you as if God had spoken it for the first time this very day, and you were the person to whom it was addressed
- 19. If your creed and Scripture do not agree, cut your creed to pieces, but make it agree with this book. If there be anything in the church to which you belong which is contrary to the inspired Word, leave that church.
- 20. I view the difficulties of Holy Scripture as so many prayer stools upon which I kneel and worship the glorious Lord. What we cannot comprehend by our understandings we apprehend by our affections.
- 21. Bible study is the metal that makes a Christian. This is the strong meat on which holy men are nourished.
- 22. Oh, to be bathed in a text of Scripture, and to let it be sucked up into your very soul, till it saturates your heart!
- 23. If my sermons kept people from reading the Bible for themselves, I would like to see the whole stock in a blaze and burned to ashes.
- Spurgeon Quotes About Church
- 24. If I had never joined a church till I had found one that was perfect, I should never have joined one at all. And the moment I did join it, if I had found one, I should have spoiled it, for it would not have been a perfect church after I had become a member of it. Still, imperfect as it is, it is the dearest place on earth to us.
- 25. If Christ cannot take care of his church without you, you cannot do it. Be still, and know that he is God.
- 26. I know there are some who say, “Well, I have given myself to the Lord, but I do not intend to give myself to any church. Now, why not? “Because I can be a Christian without it.” Are you quite clear about that? You can be as good a Christian by disobedience to your Lord’s commands as by being obedient?
- 27. A church that does not exist to reclaim heathenism, to fight evil, to destroy error, to put down falsehood, a church that does not exist to take the side of the poor, to denounce injustice and to hold up righteousness, is a church that has no right to be.
- Charles Spurgeon On Preaching
- 28. The man who cannot weep cannot preach. At least, if he never feels tears within, even if they do not show themselves without, he can scarcely be the man to handle such themes as those which God has committed to his people’s charge.
- 29. I think the preacher should feel a burning desire for his hearers’ conversion, and even an intense anguish of heart for the immediate salvation of those to whom he speaks.
- 30. Love your fellowmen, and cry about them if you cannot bring them to Christ. If you cannot save them, you can weep over them. If you cannot give them a drop of cold water in hell, you can give them your heart’s tears while they are still in this body
- 31. Let this be to you the mark of true gospel preaching—where Christ is everything, and the creature is nothing; where it is salvation all of grace, through the work of the Holy Spirit applying to the soul the precious blood of Jesus.
- 32. Whitefield and Wesley might preach the gospel better than I do, but they could not preach a better gospel.
- Charles Spurgeon On Contentment
- 33. No man ever need fear offering a reward of a thousand pounds to a contented man, for if anyone came to claim the reward, he would prove his discontent.
- 34. I have heard of some good old woman in a cottage, who had nothing but a piece of bread and a little water. Lifting up her hands, she said as a blessing, “What! All this, and Christ too?”
- 35. You say, “If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.” You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.
- 36. A man’s contentment is in his mind, not in the extent of his possessions. Alexander the Great, with all the world at his feet, cries for another world to conquer.
- Charles Spurgeon On The New Covenant
- 37. The Lord has now arranged a new covenant of a different character. It is made with Christ Jesus, the second Adam, and with all whom he represents. It is on this wise: “You, Jesus, shall keep the law, and you shall also suffer a penalty for all the breaches of my law by all who are in you. If you do this, all those who are in you shall live eternally.”
- 38. What a Magna Carta is this! The old covenant says, “Keep the law and live.” The new covenant is, “You shall live, and I will lead you to keep my law, for I will write it on your heart.”
- 39. The man who can fully understand the word covenant is a theologian. That is the key of all theology—the covenant of works by which we fell, and the covenant of grace by which we stand, Christ fulfilling the covenant for us as our surety and representative, fulfilling it by the shedding of his blood, so leaving for us a covenant wholly fulfilled on our side, which is Christ’s side, and only to be fulfilled now by God.
- Charles Spurgeon Quotes About Depression
- 40. I, of all men, am perhaps the subject of the deepest depression at times.
- 41. I am the subject of depression so fearful that I hope none of you ever get to such extremes of wretchedness as I go to. But I always get back again by this—I know that I trust Christ. I have no reliance but in him, and if he falls, I shall fall with him. But if he does not, I shall not.
- 42. I often feel very grateful to God that I have undergone fearful depression. I know the borders of despair and the horrible brink of that gulf of darkness into which my feet have almost gone. But hundreds of times I have been able to give a helpful grip to brethren and sisters who have come into that same condition, which grip I could never have given if I had not known their deep despondency.
- 43. Trusting in Jesus Christ my Savior, there is still a blessed quietness in the deep caverns of my soul, though upon the surface, a rough tempest may be raging, and there may be little apparent calm.
- Charles Spurgeon Quotes On Election
- 44. If left to ourselves, the road to hell would be as naturally our choice as for a piece of inanimate matter to roll downwards, instead of assisting itself upwards.
- 45. If God requires of the sinner, dead in sin, that he should take the first step, then he requires just that which renders salvation as impossible under the gospel as it was under the law, since man is as unable to believe as he is to obey.
- 46. Who is to have authority in the matter of gracious adoption? The children of wrath? Surely not; and yet all men are such! No, it stands to reason, to common sense, that none but the parent can have the discretion to adopt.
- 47. It always seems inexplicable to me that those who claim free will so very boldly for man should not also allow some free will to God. Why should not Jesus Christ have the right to choose his own bride?
- 48. I can never cease to wonder that God has elected me.
- 49. From the Word of God I gather that damnation is all of man, from top to bottom, and salvation is all of grace, from first to last. He that perishes chooses to perish; but he that is saved is saved because God has chosen to save him.
- 50. Whatever may be said about the doctrine of election, it is written in the Word of God as with an iron pen, and there is no getting rid of it.
- 51. How is it that some of us are converted, while our companions in sin are left to persevere in their godless career? Was there anything good in us that moved the heart of God to save us? God forbid that we should indulge the blasphemous thought!
- Charles Spurgeon Quotes On Faith
- 52. The pith, the essence of faith, lies in this—a casting oneself on the promise.
- 53. Remember, he that believes shall be saved, be his sins ever so many.
- 54. There is no sin that shall damn the man who believes, and nothing can save the man who will not believe.
- 55. You believe in God for your soul. Believe in him about your property. Believe in God about your sick wife or your dying child. Believe in God about your losses and bad debts and declining business.
- 56. Faith of itself could not contribute a penny to salvation, but it is the purse which holds a precious Christ within itself. It holds all the treasures of divine love.
- 57. Get to Christ somehow, anyhow, for if you get to him you shall live. It is not the greatness nor the perfection of your faith, it is his greatness and his perfection which is to be depended on.
- 58. Faith is the surest of all sin-killers.
- 59. I would recommend you either believe God up to the hilt, or else not to believe at all. Believe this book of God, every letter of it, or else reject it.
- 60. If all my senses were to contradict God, I would deny every one of them and sooner believe myself to be out of my right mind than believe that God could lie.
- 61. There is no saint here who can out-believe God. God never out-promised himself yet.
- Charles Spurgeon Quotes On Feelings
- 62. Faith is a greater and grander thing than all experience; less fickle, more stable. It is the root of grace, and feelings are but the flowers, the germs, the buds.
- 63. You will not be saved by feeling that Christ died for you, but by his dying for you.
- 64. There is nothing so deluding as feelings. Christians cannot live by feelings. Let me further tell you that these feelings are the work of Satan, for they are not right feelings. What right have you to set up your feelings against the word of Christ?
- 65. You cannot sin so much as God can forgive. If it comes to a pitched battle between sin and grace, you shall not be so bad as God shall be good.
- Charles Spurgeon Quotes On Suffering
- 66. Our joy is like the wave as it dashes on the shore—it throws us on the earth. But our sorrows are like that receding wave which sucks us back again into the great depth of godhead. We would have been stranded and left high and dry on the shore if it had not been for that receding wave, that ebbing of our prosperity, which carried us back to our Father and our God again.
- 67. Our sorrows are all, like ourselves, mortal…They come, but blessed be God, they also go. We suffer today, but we shall rejoice tomorrow.
- 68. Men will never become great in theology until they become great in suffering.
- 69. There is no learning sympathy except by suffering. It cannot be studied from a book, it must be written on the heart.
- 70. Our infirmities become the black velvet on which the diamond of God’s love glitters all the more brightly.
- Charles Spurgeon Quotes On Legalism
- 71. The poor sinner trying to be saved by law is like a blind horse going round and round a mill, and never getting a step further, but only being whipped continually. The faster he goes, the more work he does, the more he is tired.
- 72. Many preachers have had to confess the uselessness of mere moral preaching. There is no instance, I believe, on record, where the mere preaching of the law made a man love God, or where the heart ever was, or ever could be, renewed by inculcating good works.
- 73. So honesty, sobriety, and such things may be very good among men. But all these things put together, without faith, do not please God. Virtues without faith are whitewashed sins.
- 74. I was like a man in a bog. The more he struggles, the more he sinks. Or like a prisoner upon the treadmill, who rises no higher, but only wearies himself by his climbing. No good can result from efforts made apart from faith in Jesus.
- 75. The attempt to perform good works apart from God is like the effort of a thief to set his stolen goods in order. His sole duty is to return them at once.
- 76. Perhaps your chosen hope is that you will be saved by doing your best. Alas, no man does his best! And the best acts of a rebel must be unacceptable to his king.
- 77. The cardinal error against which the gospel of Christ has to contend is the effect of the tendency of the human heart to rely on salvation by works.
- Charles Spurgeon Quotes On Heaven
- 78. I believe there will be more in heaven than in hell. If you ask me why I think so, I answer, because Christ in everything is to have the preeminence (Col. 1:18), and I cannot conceive how he could have the preeminence if there are to be more in the dominions of Satan than in paradise.
- 79. I bear my testimony that there is no joy to be found in all this world like that of sweet communion with Christ. I would barter all else there is of heaven for that. Indeed, that is heaven.
- 80. Oh, to think of heaven without Christ! It is the same thing as thinking of hell. Heaven without Christ! It is day without the sun, existing without life, feasting without food, seeing without light.
- 81. The true Christian life, when we live near to God, is the rough draft of the life of full communion above.
- 82. You remember the story of the three wonders in heaven. The first wonder was that we should see so many there we did not expect to see. The second was that we should miss so many we did expect to see there. But the third wonder would be the greatest wonder of all—to see ourselves there.
- 83. There is a crown there which nobody’s head but yours can ever wear. There is a seat in which none but yourself can sit. There is a harp that will be silent till your fingers strike its strings.
- 84. I suspect that every saved soul in heaven is a great wonder, and that heaven is a vast museum of wonders of grace and mercy, a palace of miracles, in which everything will surprise everyone who gets there.
- 85. I must frankly confess that of all my expectations of heaven, I will cheerfully renounce ten thousand things if I can but know that I shall have perfect holiness. If I may become like Jesus Christ—pure and perfect—I cannot understand how any other joy can be denied me. If we shall have that, surely we shall have everything.
- Charles Spurgeon Quotes On Holiness
- 86. There is nothing which my heart desires more than to see you, the members of this church, distinguished for holiness. It is the Christian’s crown and glory. An unholy church! It is of no use to the world and of no esteem among men.
- 87. In proportion as a church is holy, in that proportion will its testimony for Christ be powerful.
- 88. In holiness God is more clearly seen than in anything else, save in the person of Christ Jesus the Lord, of whose life such holiness is but a repetition.
- 89. I believe the holier a man becomes, the more he mourns over the unholiness which remains in him.
- 90. Holiness is better than morality. It goes beyond it. Holiness affects the heart. Holiness respects the motive. Holiness regards the whole nature of man.
- 91. There can be no such thing as perfect happiness till there is perfect holiness.
- 92. Unless our faith makes us pine after holiness, it is no better than the faith of devils, and perhaps it is not even so good as that.
- 93. To me the greatest privilege in all the world would be perfect holiness. If I had my choice of all the blessings I can conceive of, I would choose perfect conformity to the Lord Jesus, or, in one word, holiness.
- Charles Spurgeon Quotes On Prayer
- 94. If you could pray the best prayer in the world without the Holy Spirit, God would have nothing to do with it. But if your prayer be broken and lame and limping, if the Spirit made it, God will look upon it and say, as he did upon the works of creation, “It is very good.
- 95. If any of you should ask me for an epitome of the Christian religion, I should say it is in that one word—prayer.
- 96. All our perils are nothing, so long as we have prayer.
- 97. My own soul’s conviction is that prayer is the grandest power in the entire universe, that it has a more omnipotent force than electricity, attraction, gravitation, or any other of those other secret forces which men have called by name, but which they do not understand.
- 98. There is no secret of my heart which I would not pour into [the Lord’s] ear. There is no wish that might be deemed foolish or ambitious by others, which I would not communicate to him.
- 99. If there be anything I know, anything that I am quite assured of beyond all question, it is that praying breath is never spent in vain.
- 100. The more we pray, the more we shall want to pray. The more we pray, the more we can pray. The more we pray, the more we shall pray
- Charles Spurgeon Quotes On Praise
- 101. I feel like that good old saint, who said that if she got to heaven, Jesus Christ should never hear the last of it. Truly he never shall!
- 102. Praise is the rehearsal of our eternal song. By grace we learn to sing, and in glory we continue to sing.
- 103. It is well to praise the Lord for his mercy when you are in health, but make sure that you do it when you are sick, for then your praise is more likely to be genuine.
- 104. If I did not praise and bless Christ my Lord, I should deserve to have my tongue torn out by its roots from my mouth. If I did not bless and magnify his name, I should deserve that every stone I tread on in the streets should rise up to curse my ingratitude, for I am a drowned debtor to the mercy of God—over head and ears—to infinite love and boundless compassion I am a debtor.
