“Smooth Stones to Slay Goliath!”
These are just some of the many gospel centered quotations from Miles’ book,
Smooth Stones to Slay Goliath.
“To begin with, the circumstances of my birth are all wrong. I was born in the first man, Adam, and I was dead in sin. Doing right could not make me better and doing wrong could not make me worse. I was dead in sin. Some of us are in a worse state of decay than others, but dead is dead.”
Keith Lamb
“At the Passover it was the blood applied which saved. If they had tied a wee lamb to the door they all would have died. The blood had to be shed and applied.”
Gordon Magee
“Man has always treated sin as a misfortune, not a crime; as disease, not guilt; as a case for the physician, not for the judge. Herein lies the essential faultiness of all mere human religions or theologies.”

Horatius Bonar
“This is very humbling doctrine to the pride of man, that Christ is to be everything and man to be nothing, yea, worse than nothing, for he will never do anything but sin. Whether we be converted or not, our flesh will never do anything good. "In my flesh dwells no good thing" (Rom. vii. 18).”
William Tiptaft
“What think ye of Christ is the question
To settle your state and your scheme
You cannot be right in the rest
If you do not think rightly of Him”
“Keeping the law does not save us. It’s the One who kept it for us who saves us.”
Gordon Magee
When God Justifies the fallen sinner for the sake of Christ alone, He does so by ascribing to the believer all that Christ did in His Holy obedience on our behalf.
Present Truth
“Grace alone means to be accepted in spite of being unacceptable. Christ alone means that we have absolutely no righteousness before God but Jesus Christ. Faith alone means that we confess that the only thing about us which is good is that God has pronounced us good out of sheer mercy and for the sake of Jesus Christ.”
Present Truth
“As long as a man believes that he can do anything of himself to prepare his heart to receive grace or merit salvation, I cannot give him any present scriptural hope of being saved.”
William Tiptaft
Whilst man thinks any good dwells in his human nature, no good ever will dwell in it; for till a man is taught of God to see himself a lost and undone sinner, his body will never be the temple of the Spirit of Christ; and if he have not Christ's Spirit, he is none of his.”
William Tiptaft
Conviction of sin is just the sinner seeing himself as he is, and as God has seen him all along.
Horatius Bonar
“The Highest stooped to become the lowest, and the Greatest took his place amongst the least. Strange, and needing all our faith to grasp it, yet it is true that he who sat on the well of Sychar and said “give me to drink” was none other than He who dug the channels of the Ocean and poured into them the floods.”

Charles H. Spurgeon
“It is not merely of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, but all is mercy, from first to last, -- mercy that met us by the way, -- mercy that looked upon us in our misery, -- mercy that washed us from our sins in his own blood, -- mercy that covered our nakedness and clad us in his own robe of righteousness, -- mercy that led and guided us by the way, -- and mercy that will never leave nor forsake us till mercy has wrought its perfect work in the eternal salvation of our souls through Jesus Christ.”
Barton Bouchier.
“The Gospel is the report of a peace purchased by the BLOOD OF CHRIST for poor sinners, and offered to them. The Gospel brings a sound of liberty to captives, of pardon to condemned criminals, of peace to rebels, a sound of life to the dead, and of salvation to them that lie on the borders of hell and condemnation.”
William Reid
“It is my belief, and Scripture warrants me in saying so, that no man will ever go to heaven who is not taught of God to rest so entirely on Christ for salvation as to say: "By the grace of God, I am what I am." This is humbling to the pride of man, but salvation is of grace, and grace alone.”
William Tiptaft
Amazing grace! 'tis heav'n below
To feel the blood applied,
And Jesus, only Jesus know,
My Jesus crucified.
The cleansing stream I see, I see!
I plunge, and oh, it cleanseth me!
Oh! praise the Lord, it cleanseth me,
It cleanseth me, yes, cleanseth me!
("The Cleansing Wave" by Phoebe Palmer, 1807-1874).

“We are asked to give God nothing for salvation. He is the great Giver. Our proper position is to stand before Him as beggars in the attitude of receiving. "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" (Rom. 8:32).
William Reid
“Cast your troubles where you have cast your sins; you have cast your sins into the depths of the sea, there cast your troubles also. Never keep a trouble half an hour on your own mind before you tell it to God. As soon as the trouble comes, quick, the first thing, tell it to your Father in heaven. Remember, that the longer you take telling your trouble to God, the more your peace will be impaired. The longer the frost lasts, the more likely the ponds will be frozen.”
Charles H. Spurgeon
“If we look at something in the pitch blackness of the dark, we cannot see it; but we have done what we were told. So, if a sinner only looks to Jesus, He will save him, for Jesus in the dark is as good as Jesus in the light; and Jesus, when you cannot see him, in as good as Jesus when you can.”
Charles H. Spurgeon
“Christ is the chariot in which souls are drawn to heaven. The people of the Lord are on their way to heaven, they are carried in everlasting arms; and those arms are the arms of Christ. Christ is carrying them up to His own house, to His own throne; in time His prayer-"Father, I want those you have given Me to be with Me where I am" shall be completely fulfilled. And it is being fulfilled now, for He is like a strong charger drawing His children in the chariot of the covenant of grace unto Himself.”
Charles H. Spurgeon
“Oh! blessed be God, the cross is the plank on which we sail to heaven; the cross is the great covenant transport which will weather out the storms, and reach its desired heaven.”
Charles H. Spurgeon
"Give your heart to Christ," is law not Gospel. It is most proper that it should be done, for God himself demands it; but merely urging the doing of it is far short of the Gospel The true Gospel is, Accept the free gift of salvation from wrath and sin by receiving Jesus himself, and all the benefits He purchased with "HIS OWN BLOOD" (Acts 20:28), and your heart will be His in a moment, being given to Him, not as a matter of law, but of love; for, if you have the love of His heart poured into yours by His blessed Spirit, you will feel yourself under the constraining influence of a spontaneous spiritual impulse to give Him in return your heart, and all that you possess. It is right to give Him your heart, but unless you first receive His, you will never give Him yours.
William Reid
If it would take me seven years to describe the way of salvation, I am sure you would all long to hear it. If only one learned doctor could tell the way to heaven, how would he be sought after! And if it were in hard words, with a few scraps of Latin and Greek, it would be all the better. But it is a simple gospel that we have to preach. It is only "Look!" "Ah!" you say, "is that the gospel? I shall not pay any attention to that." But why has God ordered you to do such a simple thing? Just to take down your pride, and to show you that he is God, and that beside him there is none else. Oh, mark how simple the way of salvation is. It is, "Look! Look! Look! Four letters, and two of them alike! "Look unto me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth."
Charles H. Spurgeon
“We are taught, as nothing else can teach us, what man's heart is toward God. Nothing has ever displayed this as the cross has. If we want a perfect standard by which to measure the human heart, to measure sin, we must look at the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot stop short of the cross, and we cannot go beyond it, if we want to know what man is really like then all we have to do is listen to man crying out, "Crucify Him! crucify Him!" That’s the voice of the human heart, revealing, as nothing else could reveal, its true condition in the sight of God. When man nailed the Son of God to the cross, he reached the full height of his guilt, and the depth of moral depravity. When man preferred a robber and murderer to Christ, he proved that he would rather have robbery and murder than light and love. The cross demonstrates this tremendous fact; and the demonstration is so clear as to leave not the shadow of a question.”
C. H. Mackintosh
The cross is the only perfect measure of man, of the world, of sin. If we really want to know what the world is, we must remember that it preferred a robber to Christ, and crucified between two thieves the only perfect man that ever lived.

C. H. Mackintosh
We behold, at the cross, the marvellous meeting of hatred and love - sin and grace. Man displayed at Calvary, the very height of his hatred against God. God, in mercy and grace, displayed the height of His love for man. Hatred and love met; but love proved victorious. God and sin met; God triumphed, sin was put away, and now, at the resurrection side of the cross, the Holy Spirit announces the good news, that grace reigns through righteousness, unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. At the cross, the battle was fought and the victory won; and now the liberal hand of sovereign grace is scattering far and wide the spoils of victory.
C. H. Mackintosh
Look to Christ; do not fear. There is no stumbling when a man walks with his eyes looking up to Jesus. He who looked at the stars fell into the ditch; but he who looks at Christ walks safely.
Charles H. Spurgeon
“From the cross of Calvary, where the bleeding hands of Jesus drop mercy; from the garden of Gethsemane, where the bleeding pores of the Savior sweat pardons, the cry comes, ‘Look to me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth." From Calvary’s summit, where Jesus cries, "It is finished," I hear a shout, "Look, and be saved." But there comes a vile cry from our soul, "No, look to yourself! Look to yourself!" Ah, look to yourself, and you will be damned. That certainly will come of it. As long as you look to yourself there is no hope for you.”
Spurgeon