Charles Spurgeon
"The path of righteousness has often conducted men to the rack, to the prison, to the gibbet, to the stake; while the road of sin has often led a man to empire, to dominion, and to high esteem among his fellows. It is not true that in this world God does punish men for sin, and reward them for their good deeds. For, did not David say, "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree?" and did not this perplex the Psalmist for a little season, until he went into the sanctuary of God, and then he understood their end? Although your faith assures you that the ultimate result of providence will work out only good to the people of God, yet your life, though it be but a brief part of the Divine drama of history, must have taught you that providence does not outwardly discriminate between the righteous and the wicked that the righteous perish suddenly as well as the wicked that the plague knows no difference between the sinner and the saint and that the sword of war is alike pitiless to the sons of God and the sons of Belial. When God sendeth forth the scourge, it slayeth suddenly the innocent as well as the perverse and froward."
"Death, irresistible conqueror of men, there is none that can stand against thee, thy word is law, thy will is destiny!"
"I say again, that any advancement of the gospel which is owing to the superstition of men is a false advance, and it will by-and-bye recoil upon the people who use such an unhallowed weapon."
"Brethren, we assert daily, with Scripture for our warrant, that God is just, and inasmuch as he is just, he must punish sin, and reward the righteous. Manifestly he does not do it in this world."
"Make this world the reaping place, and you have taken the sting out of sin. "Oh," says the sinner, "if the sorrows men endure here be all the punishment they will have, we will sin greedily." Say to them, "No; this is not the world of punishment, but the world of probation; it is not the court of justice, but the land of mercy; it is not the prison of terror, but the house of long-suffering;""
"It is awful work when through disobedience to the command of the gospel it becomes a savor of death unto death instead of life unto life, and instead of a corner-stone it becomes a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. Remember, upon whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder. Christ himself has said it, and so it must be. Stay lo of his infinite mercy give us the willing and the obedient mind that we may not pervert the gospel to our own destruction."
"if you could not die a martyr's death for Christ, your love to him is not worth much, and the Abraham spirit is not in you. May God enable us to take our places in the battle in the front of the foe, where the fight is most furious."
"Promptness is one of the brightest excellencies in faith's actings. Delay spoils all."
"Whenever you feel a prompting to do a good thing do not ask anybody whether you should do it or not; no one ever repents of doing good."
"When Napoleon was attacking the Egyptians he had powerful artillery, but he could not reach the enemy, for they were ensconced in a mud fort, and it made Napoleon very angry, because, if they had been behind granite walls, he could hate battered them down, but their earthworks could not be blown to pieces, every ball stuck in the mud, and made the wall stronger. Your hopes and delays are just such a mud wall."
"You must not expect that you will wear silver slippers and walk on green rolled turf all the way to heaven: the road was rough which your Lord traversed, and if you walk with him yours will be rough too. Can ye bear for Jesus' sake all earthly loss? Can ye bear the scoff, the cold shoulder, the cutting jest, the innuendo, the sarcasm, the sneer?"
"It is the church that is unmerciful sometimes, but not the Master: he is ever willing to receive us when we come to him"
"Or else your troubles take another shape, and you feel that you are called to some eminently arduous service for your Lord, and your strength is utterly insignificant compared with the labor before you. If you had great faith it would be as much as you could do to accomplish it; but with your poor little faith you are completely beaten. You cannot see how you can accomplish the matter at all. Now, what is all this but simply looking at second causes? You are looking at your trouble, not at the God who sent your trouble; you are looking at yourselves, not at the God who dwells within you, and who has promised to sustain you. O soul! it were enough to make the mightiest heart doubt, if it should look only at things that are seen."
"It seems as if doubt were doomed to be the perpetual companion of faith. As dust attends the chariot-wheels so do doubts naturally becloud faith. Some men of little faith are perpetually enshrouded with fears; their faith seems only strong enough to enable them to doubt. If they had no faith at all, then they would not doubt, but having that little, and but so little, they are perpetually involved in distressing surmises, suspicions, and fears. Others, who have attained to great strength and stability of faith, are nevertheless, at times, subjects of doubt. He who has a colossal faith will sometimes find that the clouds of fear float over the brow of his confidence. It is not possible, I suppose, so long as man is in this world, that he should be perfect in anything; and surely it seems to be quite impossible that he should be perfect in faith. Sometimes, indeed, the Lord purposely leaves his children, withdraws the divine inflowings of his grace, and permits them to begin to sink, in order that they may understand that faith is not their own work, but is at first the gift of God, and must always be maintained and kept alive in the heart by the fresh influence of the Holy Spirit."
"If we can with all boldness and distinctness declare the inward work which the Holy Ghost accomplishes in the soul by working in us to will and to do of God's good pleasure, and at the same time can tell the sinner most plainly that the object of his faith is not the work within, but the work which Jesus Christ accomplished upon the cross for him, we shall have dealt faithfully with divine truth, and wisely with our hearer's soul. The faith which brings salvation, looks away from everything that is inward to that which was accomplished and completed by our once slain but now ascended Lord; and yet no man has this faith except as it is wrought in him by the quickening Spirit."
"No soul asks for pardon or obtains it till he has felt that sin is an evil for which pardon is necessary; that is to say, repentance always comes with faith. There must be a loathing of sin and a dread of its consequences, or there is no faith. Now, as repentance is an evident sign of life, faith in Jesus must involve spiritual life. What if I say that repentance is like the cry of the new-born babe, which indicates that the child is alive?"
"Joy in God is too wonderful a work of God for mere professors to forge a passable counterfeit of it. Artificial flowers may be very like the real beauties of the garden, but they lack the joyous perfume and honeyed stores of life, and the bees soon find out the difference: the honey juice and the delicate aroma are not to be matched. The like might be said of all the results of faith, which are far too numerous for me to speak of them in detail this morning, such as purging the conscience from dead works, enlightenment by the Spirit, godly fear, the spirit of adoption, brotherly love, separation from the world, the consecration of life, holy gratitude which mounts like flame to heaven, and sacred affection which ascends like altar-smoke none of these can be found in the charnel-house of fallen humanity; they can only be discovered in the house of life, where God worketh according to his good pleasure."
"Many aged persons have either forgotten their birthdays, or have lost the register, and cannot tell exactly how old they are; but that does not at all prove that they are not alive; so your not knowing precisely when you were converted, is no evidence that you are not saved. No doubt, it is very comfortable to be able to refer to a distinct date and place when the great change took place, but in many instances, there could be no such reference made, because the change was extremely gradual."
"So, again, it may be that you have never passed through any special horrors and alarms. When some pilgrims come to the wicket gate, the Slough of Despond pours forth its filth, and the black dog howls at them as they knock at mercy's door, but many others are brought to Jesus gently, being carried like lambs in his bosom. Many of Christ's flowers bloom in sheltered spots, and feel not the frosts of sharp temptation. Jesus has bands of love to draw with, as well as a scourge of small cords to draw with. Many gentle spirits are led to find their all in the Christ of God, and yet they know very little of the depths of their inward depravity, and less still of the evil suggestions of Satan. My dear friends, do not let this distress you, I was about to say, even be thankful for it. Have you looked to Jesus Christ have you depended alone in him? That is, for the present, sufficient evidence without anything else. "He that hath the Son of God hath life.""