Flowers from a Puritan's Garden, Annotated and Illustrated.

by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The largest generosity must refuse some requests when it is a higher kindness to withhold than to bestow.

The limit which is set to prayer—namely, that if we ask anything in accordance with God’s will he heareth us, is just such a limit as love on God’s part must fix, and as prudence on our part must approve. Would we have the Lord act according to our ignorance or according to his own wisdom? Assuredly no Christian in his senses would propose such an arrangement.

Our feelings are poor judges of facts.

Hence the impossibility of producing love while we are under a legal spirit; it will not come to order; it will only rise to the bidding of its like. Love alone begets love. Purchase price for it there is none; the bribe would be scorned.

Love is not the result of effort on our part.

How idle is it, then, to hope to chide ourselves into loving God! The price of love is love; the origin of it is not found in law or in a sense of duty, but in love, or a return of gratitude. When the sun of eternal love melts the glaciers of the soul, then the rivers of affection flow; but if the rocks of ice could all be broken to shivers with hammers, not a drop of affection would stream forth. Only a sense of divine love will ever create love to God in the heart.

the more we grow the more we regard the spiritual part of the word, and such Scriptures and truths as are of practical use and personal concern.

“Hard speeches have an evil influence in controversy, and do exasperate rather than convince.

Certainly, as we grow in grace, we shall more carefully distinguish between holy ardor which is kindled by the Spirit, and carnal heat, which is the wild-fire of un-renewed nature.

Free grace is a harbor into which few ships ever run except through stress of weather.

He who is discovered by his real excellence, and not by his egotistical advertisement of his own perfections, is a man worth knowing:

Never may it be any concern of mine to be observed of men, and yet let me so live that I need not fear to be read and known of all.

The cant of the present-day cries, “Charity, charity.” The truest charity is to grow indignant with things which ruin souls.

The failures of ministers are often traceable to the sinful state of their hearers —what is a man to do who labors to kindle a fire with stones?

If we could be satisfied with less, we should be less dissatisfied.

It is a great pity when men try to live above their means, for it often ends in their hardly having the means to live at all.

Contentment is the crown jewel of a happy life.

O Lord, grant me grace to live above this world; and wherein I must live upon it, and think about it, help me to have few desires and no cares. Tune my nature so that without fail my life may make music to thy praise.

“O ye ministers of the word, consider well that you are the first sheets from the King’s press; others are printed after your copy. If the first sheet be well set, a thousand more are stamped with ease. See, then that the power of religion prevails over your own hearts, lest you not only lose your own souls, but cause the ruin of others.”

If the town-clock be wrong half the watches in the place will be out of time.

A man may have so much of this world that he misses the next.

Of course, you will avoid a wolf, for his howl is your warning; but be doubly careful to keep clear of the false shepherd, and, to make quite sure of your man, count him to be false who is not evidently true.

Learned men are to be respected when they express opinions upon subjects which they understand; but when they are known to be without grace and spiritual light their opinions upon divine truth are not to be regarded.

Societies which were doing great service have even been broken up by the crazy whimsies of good brethren, who made much ado about nothing, and did great harm in trying to do a little good.

never ought we to endanger a really good thing for the sake of making it a little better.

Holy meditation can scarcely be overdone; in this age we fear it never is.

Communion with Jesus is not only sweet in itself, but it has a preserving power by bearing us aloft, above gun-shot of the enemy. Thoughts of heaven prevent discontent with our present lot, delight in God drives away love to the world, and joy in our Lord Jesus expels pride and carnal pleasure: thus, we escape from many evils by rising above them.

Our trials come in due season, and go at the appointed moment. Our fretfulness will neither hasten nor delay the purpose of our God.

Have faith in Christ and you are ready for anything, thankful for everything, afraid of nothing.

God, who knows best how to ripen both grain and men, ordereth all things according to the counsel of his will, and it is our wisdom to believe in the infallible prudence which arranges all the details of a believing life.

If we know little of the prophecies, we can show our expectancy by keeping the precepts.

To push a crucible among the glowing coals and snatch it forth again would answer no purpose in refining: the metal must tarry in the furnace till the fire has done its work.

God had one Son without sin, but never a son who did not pray.

Occupation is the remedy for many an internal sorrow.

Secret religion is the very soul of godliness. “What we are alone, that alone we are.

It would be a sad degeneration if faith became nothing better than a conclusion drawn from preponderating probabilities: we must hope against hope, and believe in the truth of the promise against all likelihood of its performance, or we know nothing of the crown and glory of faith.

The soul’s grasp of Jesus saves even when it does not comfort.

How often have I seen this: A soul tempted by the pleasures of sin one day, and driven to despair by remorse for it the next!

Satan first acts as deceiver and then as accuser. While men can be made to suck down sin, he will make it sweet in their mouths; but when the poison is down, he makes it bitter in their bowels. At the first he tells them that there is no punishment, and by and by that there is no mercy.

It is with the transgressor as with the falling stone, the further he falls the faster he falls.

Pining for things denied them, they undervalue favors bestowed upon them.

They climb the wall, and spurn the ladder by which they climbed; they drink, and then defile the spring; they rise upward to the sky, and then, like clouds, obscure the heavens.

The world is no fool; it would not be so fierce against us if it did not see something about us contrary to itself; its enmity therefore is part evidence that we are the children of God.

We need as much to look to Christ for faith as by faith.

If the heart would, but the hand dares not, the person will be judged by what he desires rather than by his actions.

It is not the loftiness of our place, but the worthy occupying of it, which will bring acceptance to our work before the Lord.

This, then, is the purpose of affliction: first, to test me, that I may see how far my supposed graces are real and vital.

Secondly, trials relieve me, for it is a hurtful thing to the tree and to its living fruit to be cumbered with rottenness, in which may breed noxious worms, which when they multiply may come to be devourers of the tree’s life. We are enriched when we lose fictitious virtues.

In the end such a result of affliction also beautifies me as for as rotten apples disfigure the tree, so would the mere pretence of virtue mar my character in the sight of God and good men.

It is always better to be openly without an attainment than to bear the form of it without in reality possessing it.