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Miscellaneous Articles and Sermons"Everywhere there is a cry for the gospel, for men who will preach it in the love of it, for ministers who will live it, and inoculate others with its life: the church is growing sick of essayists, and asks for men of God. She is weary of word-spinners, and pretenders to deep thought, and she cries for men full of the Holy Spirit, who are lovers of the word and not speakers only." "Our object was not to moot points of difference, but to stimulate brethren to strive for those precious things wherein we agree."
"Would the outer array of Popish worship strike the candid observer as being in accordance with the spirit of the New Testament?" "Sundry divines in our age have become weary of the old-fashioned well of which our fathers drank, and would fain have us go to their Abana and Pharpar, but we are still firm in the belief that the water from the rock has no rival, and we shall not, we hope, forsake it for any other." "This is most illiberal talk in the judgment of our liberal friends, and they will rail at it in their usual liberal manner." Spurgeon answers some questions from correspondents. More questions from correspondents.
"In a few years you will be one of that vast assembly, and have to answer for every deed and word of your life. Think of it long; picture it vividly; let it work upon your mind. Though at the first it fill you with fear and trembling, it may conduct you to the Savior's feet."
"When the eye is clear and the soul can evidently perceive this oneness between the soul and Christ, the pulse may be felt as beating for both, and the one blood may be known as flowing through the veins of each." "The yelping of a dog pitted against the artillery of heaven!" "Whoever may advocate dreary dullness, I cannot and dare not do other than impeach it as an enemy of true religion." "The town swarms with bishops as Egypt once swarmed with frogs." "If boys read The Sword and the Trowel it cannot be said to shoot over people's heads, nor can it be said to be very dull and dreary." "At last, faith threw a bridge over the road by teaching men that where two truths are both revealed by inspiration they are equally to be believed."
"May Christianity rule and Churchianity be cast to the moles and to the bats." "Let churches do less in criticizing their minister, and do more in praying for him; let them expect less from him and more from God; let them, as a whole, arise and put on strength; let them have no strife but which shall best serve the brotherhood to edification, and they will yet see the windows of heaven opened and a blessing poured out upon them unspeakably beyond their largest hopes."
"Anything new, however true, was stigmatized as heresy in those Inquisition times, and Columbus might well fear the consequences of indulging any thought that savoured of heresy. Priestcraft, that great curse of mankind, was sure to oppose a new theory which overturned the testimony and traditions of the Church."
"It is our duty to seek after the dispirited and cast-down ones, and comfort them. That is our errand in this short discourse. We hear the Master's words, "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people," and we will endeavor to obey them by his Spirit's help." "The peace of families can never be maintained while the confessional exists, the word home may as well be left out from the Englishman's vocabulary when the women of the household have other confidants for their most secret thoughts besides their natural guardians."
"If we had hitherto believed in the infallibility of the Pope of Rome, the fact here recorded would have delivered us from the delusion, and we trust the making of it known may have a like effect upon those who are now the victims of that fiction." "Were these brethren to allow the same liberty to others that they claim for themselves, we should not complain, but this they refuse—'They are the people,' every other Christian is wrong; no matter how earnestly a man is working, or how many souls are added to the Lord by his ministry, if he cannot utter the Shibboleth of Darbyism, he is counted the veriest heretic."
"Amid all the mischief which Pusey has done, it is well to note and acknowledge whatever service he may in this case render to truth"
"Young man, young woman, 'I have a message from God unto thee!'" "We observe an advertisement of Ear-muffs, which are recommended to all who would not have their ears frostbitten. What sort of things these must be we have tried to imagine, but have so badly succeeded that we half hope some generous Canadian reader will make us a present of a pair, that we may no longer puzzle our brains about them." "Besides improving the social condition of the poor, [Savonarola] endeavoured to reform the church. He never spared the priests—they were 'the devil's midwives.' Referring to the primitive church, he once said, 'In those days they had a golden priest and wooden vessels, but now we have golden vessels and a wooden priest.'" "Alas, that men should think to perform the most important business of all at a time when all their powers and faculties are failing!"
"We should be very sorry to see every fool set up for a preacher; perhaps the market in that direction may be regarded as sufficiently stocked; but if there be men of rough natural ability who are muzzled by our present craving for superior elocution, we would say, 'In the name of God, loose them and let them go.'"
"We are willing to reverence the aged pastor, and we did not hesitate to give that title to our beloved friend George Rogers, just in the same way as we use the term 'the venerable Bede,' or 'the judicious Hooker,' but we are not prepared to reverence every stripling who ascends the pulpit; and, moreover, if we thought it due to others to call them reverend, we should still want some reason for their calling themselves so." "It is the mark of a feeble mind to despise the wonders of nature because we prize the treasures of salvation." "All the world is nothing but a hog that is not worth the shearing."
A sermon. This is surely the best and funniest of Mr. Spurgeon's travelogues. "If you perish from want of shelter it will not be because there was no room for you in Christ."
"Abhor the practice of some men, who will not bring out the letter 'r,' such a habit is 'vewy wuinous and wediculous, vewy wetched and wepwehensible.'" "Holy water, indeed! a vile mixture, neither fit for man nor beast." "We have dead children before us, and our souls yearn to bring them to life. We confess that all quickening must be wrought by the Lord alone, and our humble petition is that, if the Lord will use us in connection with his miracles of grace, he would now show us what he would have us to do." "What is life? 'Tis but a vapor; and that vapor is often a thick, light-obstructing mist!"
"This fiftieth year of mine has not been without its peculiar heart-searchings." A few words spoken by Mr. Spurgeon at a prayer-meeting, when a friend had been carried out in a fit.
"Poor pieces of common clay are all these men by nature; their luster and excellence are entirely due to their common Lord, who counts them all his own blood-bought jewels. We delight in them as his workmanship, and feel it to be right to admire his grace in them." "All churches, when they lose the spirit of Christ, are very prone to persecute; but a horrible pre-eminence must be awarded to the scarlet harlot of the seven hills, for no church on earth except that of Rome has had a separate institution for hunting out and destroying heretics." "The practical lesson to us all is to be thankful for our senses, educate them to perfection, learn all we can by means of them, and use them for the glory of God." "No Tabernacle enterprise has ever yet been in debt. No building raised under our immediate auspices has ever been opened without being paid for. Is this to be an exception to an admirable rule? Shall we tarnish our laurels?" "We cut out from an American paper the other day a short article. . ." "We prize the reservoir, not for its masonry but for its contents; and so we value Calvinism; not so much for its massive logic, its stupendous grandeur, its sublime conceptions, and its vast compass, as for the gospel of our salvation which from its depth it has poured forth for the supply of human needs. Let its professors see to it that it becomes to them no dry doctrine, empty and void and waste."
It must not be supposed that in consequence of the respectable appearance which Catholicism is now necessitated to put on that the nature of Popery is changed. It is, and from its organization must continue to be, ambitious of supremacy.
"Of the work in London, we can only say that various opinions are held, but no one can doubt that the two beloved workers did their utmost to bring down a blessing, and that in a measure the blessing did come."
"Is not this the fashion after which the Gospel was originally designed to spread, and in which it can best be extended in any country and in any age?"
"There is no necessary connection between the two facts of growth in tolerance and decline in sincerity, but we are suspicious that they have occurred and are occurring at the same moment."
"Satan knows full well the power of the ministry, and therefore he labours abundantly to pervert the minds of the Lord's servants, and also to raise up false teachers who may do his evil cause great service. It is clear, therefore, that if it be at all in our power to bless the church of our own day with sounder doctrine and more vital godliness, our first efforts, whatever they may be, should strike at once at the root of the matter, and begin with the ministry."
"There is nothing which they have so much to dread as being thoroughly unearthed and exposed; for their grosser errors are not generally made known to their dupes until they are fairly in their meshes." "You have mentioned his name in your remarks in such a way as may lead to the impression that he is a leader of one party of the "Brethren." The fact is, that on almost every important point, he is altogether opposed to their views and practices."
"It is believed that several were convinced of sin during the services, and certainly Mr. Spurgeon's appeals will never be forgotten by many who had been unaccustomed to sympathetic, earnest entreaty."
"May the Lord whom we serve convince all true believers connected with the State Church of their inconsistency in remaining in it."—Spurgeon defends himself by quoting from an article he had written four years previously.
"There were between eleven and twelve thousand persons present—a number far greater than has ever listened to a Christian minister under one roof [for a regular Sunday worship service]." "Inquire whether you are of the mulish breed."
"Don't go about the world with your fist doubled up for fighting, carrying a theological revolver in the leg of your trousers. There is no sense in being a sort of doctrinal game-cock, to be carried about to show your spirit, or a terrier of orthodoxy, ready to tackle heterodox rats by the score. Practice the suaviter in modo, as well as the fortiter in re. Be prepared to fight, and always have your sword buckled on your thigh, but wear a scabbard; there can be no sense in waving your weapon about before everybody's eyes to provoke conflict, after the manner of our beloved friends of the Emerald Isle, who are said to take their coats off at Donnybrook Fair, and drag them along the ground, crying out, while they flourish their shillelahs, "Will any gentleman be so good as to tread on the tail of my coat?" There are theologians of such warm, generous blood, that they are never at peace till they are fully engaged in war." "The Word of God is very plain as to the duty of rebuking sin, although, from the neglect into which the work has fallen, one might have imagined that it was left optional, or allowed, rather than commanded." "To suppose that theology can be new is to imagine that the Lord himself is of yesterday." "The more often we cry for help the better."
"It is a long and weary journey from Calais to Paris, just a dreary drag over a huge flat; monotonous as the clergyman's tones at Droneton-in-the-Marsh, and two-thirds as dull as his oft-repeated sermons." "Many of the reformers were evidently as disgusted with the ceremonials tolerated in the Anglican church as ever we can be. Royal rather than spiritual authority, was the reason for sparing those Popish mummeries which have survived the reformers' pruning knife." A short list of paradoxes. "The first tabernacle . . . with all its furniture, was erected from the produce of a bazaar."—by G. Rogers.
"Do we not all need in our own souls, every now and then, just what this building required, namely, restoration and renovation?" "'How old are you?' was the leading question. 'I am under sixty,' was the reply. 'Yes, and under sixteen,' was the old lady's rejoinder. 'Never mind my age, think of the Lord Jesus and his preciousness,' was all that I could say." "In a very short time the congregation so multiplied as to make the chapel in the evening, when the gas was burning, like the black-hole of Calcutta."—an account of Spurgeon's early ministry.
"There is no bigotry in the world equal to the bigotry of modern liberalism. Sectarianism may be bitter, but latitudinarianism is wormwood and gall." "This incident gives us the true history of backsliding, and of restoration from it." "Do not many of the wealthy and of those who are thriving in business need to blush when they see themselves giving towards their pastor's maintenance no more than is given by domestic servants and day laborers?" "We have so little faith in the spirit which inspires the Brethren, that we endure their thunderbolts as calmly as we would those of the other infallible gentleman who occupies the Vatican." "They call us "a Political Dissenter," and seem as if they had delivered themselves of a terrible epithet, whose very sound would annihilate us."
"Earnest men can always learn from one another."
"Ministers of the gospel, let Christ be your subject, and let Christ be your model: find in him not only the truth you utter, but the way and life of your utterance."
"What can be their motive for conducting their flocks to such waste places?"
"Those who labour to smother 'Calvinism' will find that it dies hard. . . . Its funeral oration has been pronounced many times before now, but the performance has been premature." "On looking back through thirty years of church life we are compelled to come to the conclusion that the most unsatisfactory members we have ever had have been those who were most satisfied with themselves." "In proportion as the preaching becomes political, and the pastor sinks the spiritual in the temporal, strength is lost and not gained." "Pulpits have much to answer for in having made men awkward." "The superstition of Rome is the worst of all the evils which have befallen our race; may the Lord arise, and sweep it down to the hell from whence it arose."
"The Romish Church avails herself of the national cry, and claims liberty in France, although if dominant she would not give liberty to France. She employs the watchword of the opposite camp to obtain the key of the position she assails. Liberty! cries she. But the French are awaking to the conviction that they must not give up common-sense under the magic spell of three syllables. If they would defend the fortress of freedom they must not put the key into the hands of the foe." "Peter would be filled with wrath at the idolatry which defiles St. Peter's, and Paul would wonder how Pio Nono could dare to claim apostolical succession, when his palaces, and his teachings, and his pretensions are things unknown in the word of God." "To stand there and see those detestable priests looking on with an ill-concealed contempt for the crawling crowd of deluded men and women, looking, as Luther would say, 'as if the poor laity stank in their sacred noses,' made our blood boil, and gave our language a flavor akin to David's fiercer psalms." "Unto you therefore which believe He is precious."—1 Peter 2. 7. "The candle among illustrations is one of the most shining, and beams of truth dart from it on every side."
"Those who have set up the gaming tables of Monte Carlo have no conscience." "All compliance with that which we know to be erroneous and unscriptural is a form of bowing the knee to Antichrist, and should be loathed by every follower of the Lord Jesus. Union with unsound churches, and compliance with unscriptural ceremonies stain the integrity of many." "The plea was novel, irresistible." "The poor may hear an honest word from his neighbor, but etiquette forbids that the rich man should enjoy the like privilege. . . . What man can help slipping when everybody is intent upon greasing his ways?" "Pity indeed is it that the bulk of hearers are hearers only, and are no more likely to go to heaven than the seats they sit on in the assembly of the saints." "The Lord does not cause the new creature to come forth in one set form and fashion. The Holy Ghost is called by David 'thy free Spirits' and so he is; working after his own sweet will, and not according to some invariable standard." "Truth turned into a pillow for an idle head is a good thing turned to most evil use." "What man would wish to have his designs and aims exposed to every onlooker? But why this aversion to being known and read of all men? The Christian's motives and springs of action should be so honest and pure that he might safely defy inspection. He who has nothing to be ashamed of has nothing to conceal." "It is well, if we can, to do good in all ways."
"It has given us much pleasure to assist our brethren Messrs. Moody and Sankey at Camberwell Hall, and we would have done far more, only our own enterprises demand our constant attention: our heart is very warm towards them for their work's sake." "There is no word in the world so hateful to our heart as that word Spurgeonism, and no thought further from our soul than that of forming a new sect. . . . We preach no new gospel, we desire no new objects, and follow them in no novel spirit." "We accept the hint . . . and shall feel less than ever inclined to be silent, while on all hands the vaunted Liberalism is so clamorous." "Modern ritualists breathe the same spirit as their Jewish predecessors; but . . ." "Just now I observe that nothing can be done without a very large Bagster's Bible with a limp cover. There seems to be some special charm about the large size, though it almost needs a little perambulator in which to push it about."
"All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me; and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out."—John 6:37. "We have gathered several facts which may not unfitly be woven into parables, and made to illustrate truth."
"When we can do nothing Jesus can do all things; let us enlist his powerful aid upon our side, and all will be well." "These be thy gods, O Egypt! Thou shalt have enough of them! Pharaoh himself shall pay a new reverence to these reptiles. As the true God is everywhere present; around us, in our bed-chambers and in our streets, so shall Pharaoh find every place filled with what he chooses to call divine." "It was hard to avoid a sickening feeling in the midst of this mass of decay, but in our case this was overcome by wonder at the want of human tenderness in the religion which allows such needless and heartless exposure of the sacred relics of mortality."
Mr. Spurgeon's response to some early dispensationalist errors. ". . . only Bat's-eyes is not now her name, for she is married into a rich family of great title and repute. Her first husband was so weak in the eyes as not to be able to see anything in the sunlight, and once upon a time, walking abroad at noon with the blind priest of his own parish, that is to say the parish of St. Elymas the Great, they both fell into a ditch, and the poor man perished in the mire."
"By a slender apparatus I mean that they have few books, and little or no means wherewith to purchase more. This is a state of things which ought not to exist in any case; the churches ought to take care that it should be rendered impossible. Up to the highest measure of their ability they should furnish their minister, not only with the food which is needful to sustain the life of his body, but with mental nutriment, so that his soul may not be starved."
"The reflections which rushed upon our mind we have committed to paper, and here they are." "At sight of Park Street Chapel we felt for a moment amazed at our own temerity, for it seemed to our eyes to be a large, ornate, and imposing structure, suggesting an audience wealthy and critical, and far removed from the humble folk to whom our ministry had been sweetness and light."
"Those who grudgingly yield scanty attention to our sacred message must not complain if in return we give scanty attention to their desire for short sermons." "Yea, it shall be at an instant suddenly."—Isaiah 29:5. "Even now, while the ink is flowing from our pen, the Lord may be on his way, and may suddenly appear. In Pompeii's last tremendous hour the bread was in the oven, but the baker never saw it taken from it; the meat was seething in the pot never to be eaten; the slave was at the mill, the prisoner in the dungeon, the traveler at the inn, the money dealer in his treasury, but none of these saw aught of their labors, their pains, their pleasures, or their profits again. The burning dust fell over all, the poisonous vapours sought out every crevice, and the ocean of mud buried inhabitant and habitation, worshipper and temple, worker and all that he had wrought! Should a sudden overthrow come upon us also, are we ready?" "A prudent man, with the fear of God before his eyes, is almost a prophet." "Many blessings may come to the unconverted in consequence of a revival among Christians, but the revival itself has to do only with those who already possess spiritual life." "The field of work is boundless; there is no need to pause for spheres of labor. But a voice says, 'Begin at home.'" "We will use this striking narrative as an illustration—what if we make it into an allegory?"
"You string together your long lines of nonsense, with such an absence of all thought, that you are altogether unbearable."
"Man is often a mere yahoo, a two-legged brute, and this yahoo proves himself to be the worst possible master to the other animals; he is a viler tyrant than the wolf or the hyæna would have been: unhappy are the creatures to be ruled by such a lord!"
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Churchianity versus Christianity
