Richard Cecil (1748 – 1810)
Leading Evangelical Anglican clergyman of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Christian will sometimes be brought to walk in a solitary path. God seems to cut away his props, that He may reduce him to Himself. His religion is to be felt as a personal, particular, appropriate possession. He is to feel, that, as there is but one Jehovah to bless, so there seems to him as though there were but one penitent in the universe to be blessed by Him.
If there is any person to whom you feel a dislike, that is the person of whom you ought never to speak.
The spirit and tone of your home will have great influence on your children. If it is what it ought to be, it will fasten conviction on their minds, however wicked they may become.
The history of all the great characters of the Bible is summed up in this one sentence: — they acquainted themselves with God, and acquiesced in His will in all things.
To know Jesus Christ for ourselves is to make Him a consolation, delight, strength, righteousness, companion, and end.
A friend called on me when I was ill, to settle some business. My head was too much confused by my indisposition to understand fully what he said, but I had such unlimited confidence in him, that I did whatever he bid me, in the fullest assurance that it was right. How simply I can trust in man, and how little in God! How unreasonable is a pure act of faith in one like ourselves, if we cannot repose the same faith in God.
Never was there a man of deep piety, who has not been brought into extremities — who has not been put into fire — who has been taught to say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."
The man who labors to please his neighbor for his good to edification has the mind that was in Christ. It is a sinner trying to help a sinner. Even a feeble, but kind and tender man, will effect more than a genius, who is rough and artificial.