Theodore L. Cuyler Books: A Guide to All 16 and Where to Start
Christian LifeSermonsDevotional
Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) pastored the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn for thirty years and wrote thousands of short articles for the religious papers. His books grew out of that work. They're short, plain and pastoral, and they fall into a few groups: books of comfort, a handbook for new converts, collections of short papers on the Christian life, sermons, books for ministers, and his memoirs. TheWay Library has sixteen of them, all free to read. For his life story, see who was Theodore L. Cuyler.
Where to start
If you're grieving, start with God's Light on Dark Clouds. It's the best of Cuyler in one small book. If you want help with everyday Christian living, start with Pointed Papers for the Christian Life, which you can read one short chapter at a time.
After that, choose by what you need:
- After the death of a child: The Empty Crib.
- For the later years of life: Beulah Land, then Help and Good Cheer.
- For a new Christian: Newly Enlisted.
- More short papers for every day: Heart-Life, Thought-Hives, Wayside Springs and The Cedar Christian.
- Sermons to read straight through: Stirring the Eagle's Nest or A Model Christian.
- If you're a pastor or training to be one: The Young Preacher, then How to Be a Pastor.
- To know the man and his times: Recollections of a Long Life.
Every quotation below is checked against the book it comes from. For many more, see our collection of Theodore L. Cuyler quotes.
Books of comfort
God's Light on Dark Clouds (1882)
Cuyler wrote this after his daughter Louise died at twenty-two. It opens in his "lonely room" with Job's words about the bright light in the clouds, and in twenty-two short chapters he shares the comforts that came to him: God's law of compensations, taking short views instead of worrying about tomorrow, God's school of affliction, the everlasting arms, and hope at the grave of those asleep in Jesus. It closes with an autumn hour in Greenwood cemetery.
The cloud is not so dense but love-rays shine through.
God's Light on Dark Clouds, God's Light on Dark Clouds
It's an ideal book to give someone who is mourning, or to read one chapter a night. Read God's Light on Dark Clouds.
The Empty Crib: A Memorial of Little Georgie (1868)
Cuyler's twin son Georgie died of scarlet fever at four and a half. So many kind letters reached the family that this little book became their answer. It tells the story of the boy, his illness and funeral, then adds short meditations on children, on God's bitter cups that heal sick souls, on quietness before God, on the conversion of children and on children in heaven, with poems of comfort.
God never mingles a cup of trial for one of his children without a merciful purpose.
The Empty Crib, God's Bitter Cups for Sick Souls
Read The Empty Crib. For other books on loss, see the best Christian books on death and grief.
Beulah Land (1896)
Twenty-four short papers for Christians in the later stretch of life. The title comes from The Pilgrim's Progress, where Beulah is the restful country in sight of the Celestial City. Cuyler writes on fruitful old age, light at evening time, living by the day, the Lord's "shut-ins," mothers in Israel, assurance, and dying without fear.
There are 365 days in every year, but really there is only one working day, and that is to-day.
Beulah Land, chapter V, Living by the Day
Help and Good Cheer (1902)
Twenty-five chapters of encouragement from his last years, written for the sorrowing, the discouraged and the aging. He writes on the hidden supply of grace behind a strong life, a merry heart, contentment, God's guidance, giving, and growing old while staying young, and he names the Bible texts that carried him.
Christian contentment is the cheerful acquiescence of the soul to the will of God in all conditions and under all weathers.
Help and Good Cheer, chapter XIX, How to Be Contented
For new Christians
Newly Enlisted: Talks with Young Converts (1888)
Cuyler met converts for more than forty years, and this is what he told them. He pictures conversion as enlisting in Christ's army, then gives twenty-four short talks on joining the church, showing your colors, feeding on Scripture, conscience, learning to say no, guarding the mind, consecration, prayer, patience and winning others. It's an easy book to hand a new believer.
My dear friends, you must bear in mind that conversion is simply an enlisting in the army of Jesus.
Newly Enlisted, Newly Enlisted
Short papers on the Christian life
Most of Cuyler's books gather the short articles he wrote each week for the religious papers. Any chapter can be read in five minutes.
Pointed Papers for the Christian Life (1879)
Nearly fifty short papers arranged to follow the soul from its first steps toward Christ to its home-coming in heaven. The early papers speak to inquirers: those not far from the kingdom, one honest hour with Jesus, Matthew's conversion at the toll-booth. Then come papers for new converts ("After Conversion: What Next?"), on being wholly for Christ and on the Christian as the only Bible many people read. Later ones take up the ups and downs of experience, rest for the restless, nearness to God, and knowing our friends in heaven.
Christ must be to you a pattern, and he must be to you a power.
Pointed Papers for the Christian Life, So Did Not I
This copy was restored from a scan, so you'll find some misread words, mostly at the start of chapters. Read Pointed Papers for the Christian Life.
Heart-Life (1872)
Twenty-eight papers on the inner life: keeping the heart, staying spiritually alive after conversion, building on Christ the Rock, prayer that is never lost, and assurance. Three papers tell the stories of favorite hymns of the cross, of heaven and of the heart.
There is a great difference between being "made alive" and keeping alive afterwards.
Heart-Life, Am I Alive?
Thought-Hives (1872)
Forty-four papers, opening with the picture of every mind as a hive that God sees into as if through glass. Cuyler goes on to choosing Christ, the deceitfulness of sin, self-denial, the tongue, a father's influence, cheerful Christians, small things, a pastor's life in Brooklyn and the stories behind favorite hymns.
The Almighty never "despises the day of small things," or else he would not put his mighty oaks into acorns, or his golden grain-crops into little seed-bags.
Thought-Hives, The Day of Small Things
The Cedar Christian, and Other Practical Papers (1864)
Thirty papers, led by a call for believers who grow, root deep and stay green like the cedars of Lebanon. Others treat morning devotion, prayer, the Holy Spirit, confessing Christ and being useful, mixed with travel sketches and portraits of preachers he admired.
He is never to ask God to give what he is not trying his utmost to obtain; he is never to ask God to make him what he is not faithfully trying to become.
The Cedar Christian, Answering Our Own Prayers
Wayside Springs from the Fountain of Life (1883)
Twenty-five devotional papers, each drawing a lesson from one Bible scene or saying: Christ as the fountain for the thirsty, a thorough repentance, giving Christ the best, right and wrong praying, a life that preaches all week, winning souls one at a time, assurance and heaven.
The Son of God felt (what we ministers too often forget on stormy Sundays) that a single immortal soul is a great audience.
Wayside Springs, The Song at the Well
Stray Arrows (1851)
His first book, written as a young pastor: thirty short pieces, like arrows shot "at a venture," on revival, prayer, the prayer meeting as a church's thermometer, earnest preaching, faith and works, and giving up all for Christ. There are sketches of Samuel Rutherford and Robert Murray M'Cheyne, of Bunyan's characters, and of a visit to Wordsworth.
The true thermometer of a church, to indicate its spiritual temperature, is the weekly gathering around the mercy-seat.
Stray Arrows, The Church Thermometer
Sermons
Stirring the Eagle's Nest, and Other Practical Discourses (1892)
Eighteen short sermons, warm and full of illustration. The title sermon, on Deuteronomy 32:11, shows God breaking up His people's comfortable nests in love, so they learn to use their wings. Others treat the new birth, bearing burdens, Hannah's little coat for Samuel, the danger of small sins, Peter as the re-converted Christian, believers as "sermons in shoes," the grace of silence before God, and the joys of the ministry.
God will not release us from duty; but he will sustain us in the doing it.
Stirring the Eagle's Nest, Burden-Bearing
Read Stirring the Eagle's Nest.
A Model Christian (1903)
Eight sermons, named for the first, a portrait of Barnabas as "a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith." The others treat bearing burdens, the decisive battles of a life, Hannah's little coat for Samuel, Eliezer's prayer at the well, "Jesus only" at the Transfiguration, seeing things rightly, and Noah's dove. A few overlap with Stirring the Eagle's Nest.
Life is largely made up of small things, and the small things are often very great in their influence upon character and destiny.
A Model Christian, chapter IV, The Little Coat
Books for pastors
The Young Preacher (1893)
Nine short chapters of advice to young ministers from a man with forty-six years in the work. Cuyler asks why anyone should be a minister, then covers pastoral visiting, how sermons "grow" from Bible texts planted by the Spirit, delivery, health and habits, winning souls one by one, building a working church, and the holiness of the man behind the message.
The men who draw from God's inexhaustible reservoir of truth are commonly the men who hold out; for human brains often run dry, but the Bible never does.
The Young Preacher, Growing Sermons
It's short enough to read in an evening. Read The Young Preacher.
How to Be a Pastor (1890)
Published as he left Brooklyn, this handbook covers the pastor's work outside the pulpit: visiting every family, the sick and funerals, the troubled and doubting, putting a church to work, training converts, prayer meetings (with a model meeting described in detail) and revivals. It ends with his farewell sermon to his congregation on the joys of the Christian ministry.
On the other hand, a well attended, well conducted prayer-meeting is both a joy to the pastor, and a well-spring of blessings to the people.
How to Be a Pastor, Prayer-Meetings
His life
Recollections of a Long Life (1902)
Cuyler's autobiography, written at eighty. He tells of his godly mother, his boyhood on Cayuga Lake, Princeton, and a visit to Britain as a young man when he met Wordsworth, Dickens and Carlyle. Chapters follow on hymn-writers he knew, the temperance cause, his preaching, revivals, his writing, the Civil War and Lincoln, pastoral work, famous preachers in Britain and America, home life, and the joys of the ministry. It's full of stories, and it's the best way to know the man.
Our lives turn on small pivots, and if we let God lead us, the path will open before our footsteps.
Recollections of a Long Life, My Work in the Pulpit
Read Recollections of a Long Life.
Why read Cuyler today
Cuyler writes like a pastor sitting across from you. He's brief, he's kind, and he doesn't let you off easy. His books of comfort have helped grieving and aging Christians for well over a century, and his counsel to pastors is still sound. Begin with God's Light on Dark Clouds or Pointed Papers. All sixteen books are on the Theodore L. Cuyler author page.