The Prince of Preachers Charles Haddon
Spurgeon has been called England's greatest contribution to
the spread of the Gospel in the 19th
century.
One of his contemporaries said that the chief
secret of Spurgeon's attractiveness was the fact that
in every sermon, no matter what the text
or the occasion, he explained the way of
salvation in simple terms.
Spurgeon's messages remain one of the great treasure
houses of Christian literature, still bringing the light
of the Gospel and the comfort of the
Scriptures to hungry souls long after the preacher
has passed into glory.
This is Charles Kelsch inviting you to listen
to a message from the Prince of Preachers.
C.
H.
Spurgeon preached this message on July 24th, 1859,
at the Music Hall of the Royal Surrey
Gardens.
It is entitled, How Saints May Help the
Devil.
The text is found in Ezekiel chapter 16
and verse 54.
That thou mayest bear thine own shame, and
mayest be confounded in all that thou hast
done, in that thou art a comfort unto
them.
It is not a comfortable state to be
at enmity with God, and the sinner knows
this.
Although he perseveres in his rebellion against the
Most High, and turns not to the rebuke
of the Almighty, but still goeth on in
his iniquity, desperately seeking his own destruction, yet
is he aware in his own conscience that
he is not in a secure position.
Hence it is that all wicked men are
constantly on the lookout for excuses.
They find these either in pretended resolutions to
reform at some future period, or else in
the declaration that reformation is out of their
power, and that acting according to their own
nature, they must continue to go on in
their iniquities.
When a man is willing to find an
excuse for being God's enemy, he need never
be at a loss.
He who hath to find a fact may
find some difficulty, but he who would forge
a lie may sit at his own fireside
and do it.
Now the excuses of sinners are all of
them false.
They are refuges of lies, and therefore we
need not wonder that they are exceedingly numerous
and very easy to come at.
One way in which sinners frequently excuse themselves
is by endeavoring to get some apology for
their own iniquities from the inconsistencies of God's
people.
This is the reason why there is much
slander in the world.
A true Christian is a rebuke to the
sinner.
Wherever he goes, he is a living protest
against the evil of sin.
Hence it is that the worldling makes a
dead set upon a pious man.
His language in his heart is, He accuses
me to my face.
I cannot bear the sight of his holy
character.
It makes the blackness of my own life
appear the more terrible when I see the
whiteness of his innocence contrasting with it.
And then the worldling opens all his eyes
and labors to find a fault with the
virtuous.
If, however, he fails to do so, he
will next try to invent a fault.
He will slander the man.
And even of there he fails, and the
man is like Job, perfect and upright, and
one that fears God and eschewed evil.
Then the sinner will, like the devil of
old, begin to impute some wrong motive to
the Christian's innocency.
Doth Job serve God for naught, said the
devil?
He could find no fault with Job whatever.
His character was untainted and unblemished.
But, says he, he keeps to his religion
for what he gets by it.
I reckon it to be a glorious accusation
when we are falsely charged with being religious
for the sake of gain.
It shows that our enemies have no other
charge that they can bring against us.
They have ransacked all the files of their
calumny, and they can find nothing tangible.
And this is the last that they can
bring, an imputation upon the motive of the
man, who has no other motive in all
the world than to glorify his God and
win sinners from destruction.
In this, then, let us glory.
If sinners slander us, it is because we
make them uneasy.
They see that our lives are a protest
against them.
And what can they do?
They must somehow or other answer the bill
which we have filed against them in heaven's
chancery.
And they do it by issuing a rejoinder
against us, and bringing us in as defendants
in a case.
We glory in this, that we are defendants
who can prove our innocence.
And we are not ashamed to stand before
the bar of God to have our motives
tried.
There is much, I say, to cheer us
in the fact of such a libel.
We know the work is done.
We are sure our shots have told on
their armor when they are driven to return
on us their calumnies and the venom of
their wrath.
Now we know that they feel the might
of our arm.
Now we know that we are not like
them mere drivelings and dwarfs.
They have felt our might, and against it
they kick, they foam, they vomit forth their
wrath.
In this, I say, we glory.
We have smitten them hard, or else they
would not rise against us in this fashion.
Alas, alas, however, sinners have not always to
use calumny and lies.
It is too true that the church has
given a real bona fide cause to the
wicked for excusing themselves in their sin.
The inconsistencies of professors, the want of heart
and piety, the absence of devout earnestness, have
given sad grounds to the ungodly to justify
themselves in their sin.
It is upon this melancholy subject that I
am about to enter this morning.
And may God grant unto all His people
who shall feel convicted in their consciences the
spirit of mourning and contrition, that they may
vex themselves before God and confess this great
iniquity that they have done, namely, that they
have comforted sinners in their sin by their
own inconsistency and have justified the wicked in
their rebellion by their own rebellings and revoltings.
This morning I shall thus deal with the
subject.
First, I shall point out the fact, the
different acts of Christians which have helped to
comfort sinners in their sin.
Then, secondly, I shall observe the consequences of
this evil, how much the world at large
has been injured by the deeds of professed
followers of Christ.
Then I shall come with a solemn warning,
bringing out the great battering ram to dash
against these refuges of lies.
Moreover, crying with a loud voice to those
who are the faithful servants of Christ to
withdraw their hands and no longer to assist
in keeping up the Jericho in which the
wicked have entrenched themselves.
First, then, it shall be my sad and
melancholy business this morning to show certain facts
which it were dishonest to deny, namely, that
the acts of many of Christ's followers have
been the cause of justifying and comforting sinners
in their evil ways.
And first, I would observe that the daily
inconsistencies of the people of God have much
to do in this matter.
By inconsistencies, I do not exactly mean those
grosser crimes into which at sad and mournful
periods many professors fall.
But I mean those frequent inconsistencies which become
so common indeed that they are scarcely condemned
by society.
The covetousness of too many Christians has had
this effect.
Look, says the worldling, this man professes that
his inheritance is above and that his affection
is not set on things on earth, but
on the things of heaven.
But look at him.
He is just as earnest as I am
about the things of the world.
He can drive the screw home as tightly
with his debtor as I can.
He can scrape and cut with those that
deal with him quite as keenly as ever
I have done.
Nay, beloved, this is not a mere tale.
Alas, I have seen persons held up to
commendation as successful merchants whose lives will not
bear the test of Scripture, whose business transactions
were as hard, as gripping, as grasping, as
the transactions of the most worldly.
How often has it happened that some of
you have bent your knee in the sanctuary
and have said, Forgive us our debts as
we forgive our debtors.
And one hour afterwards your finger has been
almost meeting your thumb through the jugular vein
of some debtor whom you had seized by
the throat.
The church of Christ appears to be as
worldly as the world itself, and professors of
religion have become as sharp in trade and
as ungenerous in their dealing as those that
have never been baptized into the Lord Jesus
and have never professed to serve Him.
And now what does the world say?
It throws this in our teeth.
If it be accused of loving the things
of time and sense, it answers, And so
do you.
If we tell the world that it has
set its hopes upon a shadow, it replies,
But we have set our hope upon the
selfsame thing in which you are trusting.
You are as worldly, as grasping, as covetous
as we are.
Your protest has lost its force.
You are no longer witnesses against us.
We are accusers of you.
Another point in which the sinner often excuses
himself is the manifest worldliness of many Christians.
You will see Christian men and women as
fond of dress and as pleased with the
frivolities of the age as any other persons
possibly could be, just as anxious to adorn
their outward persons so as to be seen
of men, just as ambitious to win the
praise which fools accord to fine dressing as
the most silly fop or the most gaudy
among worldly women.
What saith the world when we turn round
to it and accuse it of being a
mere butterfly and finding all its pleasures in
gaudy toys?
Oh yes, it says, we know you can't.
But it is just the same with you.
Do you not stand up and sing, Jewels
to me are gaudy toys, and gold but
sordid dust?
And yet you are just as fond of
glittering as we are.
Your doctors of divinity pride themselves just as
much in their D.D. as any of
us in other titles.
You are just as punctilious about terms of
honor as any of us can be.
You talk about carrying the cross, but we
do not see it anywhere except it be
a golden cross sometimes hanging on your bosom.
You say you are crucified to the world
and the world to you.
It is a very merry sort of crucifixion.
You say that you mortify your members and
deny yourselves.
Your mortification must be suffered in secret, for
it is but very little that we can
see of it.
Thus the worldling casts back to us our
challenge, declaring that we are not sincere.
And thus he comforts himself in his sin
and justifies himself in his iniquity.
Look, too, at the manifest pride of many
professors of religion.
You see members of Christian churches as proud
as they possibly can be.
Their backs are as stiff as if an
iron rod were in the center.
They come up to the house of God,
and it is a Christian doctrine that God
has made of one flesh all nations that
dwell upon the face of the earth.
But the Christian is as aristocratic as anybody
else, just as proud and just as stiff.
Is the Christian clothed in broadcloth?
How often does he feel it a condescension
to own a smock frock?
And how often do you see a sister
in Christ in satin, who thinks it something
wonderful if she owns a fellow member in
an unwashable print?
It is of no use denying it.
I do not think that the evil is
so common amongst us as it is in
some churches.
But this I know, that there are respectable
churches and chapels in which a poor man
scarcely dares to show his face.
The pride of the church surely has become
almost as great as the pride of Sodom
of old.
Her fullness of bread and her stiffness of
neck have brought her to exalt herself.
And whereas it is the real glory of
the church that the poor have the gospel
preached unto them and that the poor have
received the word with gladness, it becomes now
the honor of the church to talk of
her respectability, of the dignity and station of
her members, and of the greatness of her
wealth.
What then do worldlings say?
You accuse us of pride.
You are as proud as we are.
You, the humble followers of Jesus, who washed
his saints' feet?
Not you.
No, you would have no objection.
We doubt not to be washed by others.
But we do not think it likely that
you would ever wash ours.
You, the disciples of the fishermen of Galilee?
Not you.
You are too fine and great for that.
Accuse us not of pride.
Why, you are as stiff-necked a generation
as we ourselves are.
Now, these are only mentioned amongst us as
inconsistencies, not as sins.
Sins they verily are, and they are such
sins that they restrain the Spirit of God
from blessing the church.
Sins, too, they are that render the wicked
callous in their sins, blunt the edge of
our rebukes, and prevents the word of God
from working in the hearts of men.
I might mention another sad fact with regard
to the church, which often stings us sorely.
The various enmities and stripes and divisions that
arise.
You tell the worldly man that Christians love
each other.
Ah, says he, you should go over to
Ebenezer or to Rehoboth and see how they
love each other.
Don't talk of leading a cat-and-dog
life.
Look at many of your churches.
See how the minister is treated, and how
the deacons are in arms, and how the
members hate one another.
They can scarcely hold a church meeting without
abusing each other.
How often is this proved to be true
in many churches?
And then the worldling says, you tell us
that we bite and devour each other, and
that our wars and fighting come from our
lusts.
Where do your wars and fighting come from?
You tell us that our anger and wrath
are the effect of sin that dwelleth in
us.
What causes your divisions and your stripes?
In this way, you see, the testimony of
the children of God is rendered invalid, and
we help to comfort sinners in their sins.
Now it is my mournful duty to go
a step further.
It is not merely these inconsistencies, but the
glaring crimes of some professed disciples that have
greatly assisted sinners in sheltering themselves from the
attacks of the word of God.
Every now and then the cedar falls in
the midst of the forest.
Someone who had stood prominent in the church
of God as a professed follower of Jesus
turns aside.
They go out from us because they were
not of us.
For if they had been of us, doubtless
they would have continued with us.
But they went out from us, that it
might be manifest that they were not of
us.
We have wept over high professors becoming drunkards.
We have seen mighty men at religious public
meetings becoming scoundrel bankrupts.
We have had it dashed in our faces
dozens of times that religion has often become
a cloak for fraud, that when the world
has trusted a religious man with its wealth,
that religious man has carried it off with
him and has not been found at the
proper time.
Oh, this is the great curse of the
church.
I was thinking only yesterday, with much sorrow
in my heart of the present age, and
I could not but come to the conclusion
that all the burnings of pagan tyrants, that
all the tortures of popish executioners, that all
the bloody deaths to which God's people were
ever put in any one age of the
world have never done so much hurt to
the cause of Christ as the inconsistencies of
professors of the present time.
It was about three years ago, I think,
that failures among religious men seemed to be
the order of the day, and our papers
literally teemed with accusations against the church of
God.
Oh, my brethren, let us not talk of
these things except with mourning and tears.
Wrap thyself in sackcloth, O church of God,
put away thy laughter, and cast ashes on
thine head, for the crown of thy glory
is departed, thy garments are stained, and the
filthiness of thy skirts witnesses against thee.
O church of Christ, thy Nazarites were purer
than snow, they were whiter than milk, but
now their visage is blacker than a coal,
and their hands are defiled with iniquity.
Remember thou the time of thy purity, when
thy priests were glorious, and thy sons and
daughters were clothed in royal apparel.
How art thou fallen!
How art thou cast down from thy high
mountains!
Thy princes are clothed in rags, the veils
are plucked from the face of thy daughters,
and thou thyself art become disconsolate, and a
widow by reason of the iniquity of thy
sons and thy daughters.
Woe unto us, for thy glory is departed,
thy sun is covered with thick darkness, and
thy stars withhold their light.
The crown is fallen from our head, woe
unto us that we have sinned.
My hearers, my soul has carried me away.
Breathless and panting I return to my humbler,
but not less earnest style.
Remember how vast your powers were mischief.
Your ministers may preach as long as they
will, but you undo their preaching if you
are unholy.
If you are inconsistent in your lives, Paul,
Apollos and Cephas might preach with power, but
they have not half the power to build
up that you have to pull down.
You are the mightiest workmen, ye professors of
religion.
You can undo infinitely more than we can
accomplish.
Now I pause and relieve the shadow of
this subject with something which I fear is
in the sight of God equally vile.
How often do the people of God comfort
sinners in their sins by their murmurings and
their complaints.
O beloved, we are too much in the
habit of covering our faces with sadness on
account of our temporal trials.
And too little in the habit of weeping
on account of the failings of the church
of God.
How frequently do you meet with a true
Christian full of unbelieving cares.
Ah, he says, all these things are against
me.
He has food and raiment, but he is
not content with it.
He has more than that, but his store
is a little diminished and he is very
cast down and he has no faith and
cannot trust the Lord.
Oh, says the worldling, see these Christians.
They talk about faith, but their faith is
not half so much service to them as
my desperation is to me.
That hardens my heart and makes me stand
up against affliction a great deal better than
their faith in God's providence can do.
Why, just look at these saints.
A dribbling set of crying creatures.
They never either have peace or joy.
They are everlastingly pulling long faces and talking
through their noses about their sad trials and
troubles.
They never have an hour of happiness.
Who would be a Christian?
I don't want to be converted, says the
worldling.
Why should I pluck the sunbeam out from
my eye and take the smile from my
brow?
Why should I profess to follow a God
whose servants only worship Him by weeping and
never offer any sacrifice but that of groans
and sighs and murmurs?
Might not a wicked man come in often
when Christians are grumbling together about the badness
of the times, about the high price of
commodities and the low rate of wages and
so forth?
And might he not say, Yes, I can
see your God treats you very badly.
If I were you, I'd strike and have
nothing to do with Him.
And he would go away laughing and saying,
Ah, Baal treats me better.
I get more pleasure in this world than
these Christian people do.
Let them have their brave heaven to themselves
if they like.
I'm not going sniveling through this world with
them.
Let me have joy and rejoicing while I
may.
Don't you think that in this way you
and I have done a world of damage
to the cause of Christ and may have
helped to comfort sinners in their iniquities?
One other point, and I will have done
with this.
Perhaps the greatest evil has been done by
the cold-heartedness and indifference of religious professors.
I charge thee not, O church of God,
with inconsistency.
I lay no crime at thy door now.
It is with another fault I charge thee,
one as grievous as these.
I pray thee, plead guilty to it, for
thou wilt but speak the truth.
Then I pray God that this thy guilt
may be cleansed and that thou mayest offend
him no longer with this thine evil.
The church of God at the present age
is cold and lukewarm and lifeless compared with
what it used to be.
When I was preaching in Wales this week,
I could not but observe the power which
attended the ministry when there was a living
congregation and an earnest company gathered together to
hear the word of God.
We have become accustomed to sit in a
kind of solemn silence to hear the gospel.
O, not so in Wales!
There is to be heard the voice of
acclamation.
Every person express the feelings of his soul
in audible prayers and cries to God.
And at last, when the Spirit has descended,
you hear the loud cries of gogonjant!
Glory to God!
As each precious sentence drops from the lips
of the preacher, it seems to be taken
up and fed upon by the people while
they shout aloud for joy.
I believe it is a great improvement on
our English congregations, and some of our English
preachers could not go on in their dull
style if sometimes the people had a chance
of either hissing them or cheering them on.
That, however, is but an index of the
cold state of the churches.
We are a phlegmatic cold nation.
Even Scotch divines are more alive than we
are.
They speak the word of God with more
earnestness than many of our ministers do in
England.
Cold as we think the north is, yet
hath even it become warmer than we are.
And now, what says the world to all
our coldness?
Why, it says, Ah, this is the kind
of religion we like, says the worldling.
We don't like those raving Methodists.
We can't stand them.
We don't like those earnest, indefatigable Christians of
the days of Whitefield.
Oh, no!
They were a raving set of folks.
We don't like them.
But we like these quiet folks.
Yes, says the worldling, I think it is
quite right that every man should go to
his church and his chapel on a Sunday,
but I never could go and hear such
raving as Mr. So-and-so gives.
Of course you could not.
You are an enemy to God, and that
is why you like a Laodicean church.
That very church which the world likes best
is sure to be that which God abhors.
The world says we like everything to go
on smoothly.
We like a man to go to his
own parish church and hear a good, solid,
substantial sermon read.
We like to go up to the meeting
house and hear a sober, eloquent divine.
We don't like any of this furious preaching,
any of these earnest exhortations, no.
Of course you like that of which God
has said, Thou art neither cold nor hot.
God hates such, and that is why sinners
love it.
But what effect does all this have upon
the worldling?
Why just this?
He says, I like you, because you don't
rebuke me.
I like that kind of religion, because it
is no accusation against me.
When I see a Christian hot and in
earnest about being saved, he says, It rebukes
my own indifference.
But when I see a professed Christian just
as indifferent about the salvation of men as
I am, why then I say it's all
a farce, nonsense.
They don't mean it.
The minister does not care a bit about
whether souls are saved or not.
And as for the church, they make a
great deal of noise every now and then
at Exeter Hall about saving some poor blacks
far away.
But they don't care about saving us.
And so a worldling wraps himself up and
goes on his way in his sin and
his iniquity and perseveres even to the last,
declaring all the while that religion is but
a sham because he sees us careless in
solemn matters and cold concerning everlasting realities.
Thus I have mournfully in my own soul
set forth the plan whereby Satan comforts sinners
in their sins even by means of those
who ought most sternly to rebuke them.
And now for the second point, the consequences
of this evil.
And here I wish to speak very pointedly
and personally to all of you who are
professors of religion.
And I do hope that you will take
every point to yourself in which you must
feel that you have been and are guilty.
Friends, how often have you and I in
the first place helped to keep sinners easy
in their sin by our inconsistency.
Had we been true Christians, the wicked man
would often have been pricked to the heart
and his conscience would have convicted him.
But having been unfaithful and true, he has
been able to sleep on quietly without any
disturbance from us.
Do you not think, my dear brothers and
sisters, that you have each been guilty here,
that you have often helped to pacify the
wicked in their rebellion against God?
I must confess myself that I am guilty.
I have labored to escape from the sin,
but I am not clean delivered from it.
I pray each one of you, make a
full confession before God if by your silence
when sin has been committed before your eyes
or by a smile when a lascivious joke
has been told in your hearing or if
by a constant indifference to the cause of
Christ, you have led sinners to sleep more
securely in the bed of their iniquities.
But to go further still, do you not
think that very often when a sinner's conscience
has been roused, you and I have helped
to give it a soporific draft by our
coldness of heart?
Hush, Master Conscience, says the sinner, that he
will not be still, but cries aloud, repent,
repent, and then you, a professing Christian, pass
by and you administer the laudatum draft of
your indifference, and the sinner's conscience falls back
again into its slumber, and the reproof that
might have been useful is entirely lost upon
him.
I am sure that this is one of
the great crying sins of the church that
we are not now the witnesses of God
as we should be, but often quiet the
witness of conscience in the souls of men.
Look now to your lives.
I am speaking personally to each one.
Look at yesterday and the days that went
before, and I ask you, and I solemnly
charge you to answer that question, have you
not often assisted in the first place to
keep men's consciences quiet, and afterwards to send
them to sleep when they have been aroused?
Further, is it not possible that often sinners
have been strengthened in their sin by you?
They were but beginning in iniquity, and had
you rebuked with honesty and sincerity by your
own holy life, they might have been led
to see their folly, and might have ceased
from sin.
But you have strengthened their hands.
They have gone forward confidently because they have
said, See, a church member leads the way.
So-and-so is not more scrupulous than
I, says such-and-one.
I may do what he does.
And so you have helped to strengthen sinners
in their sins.
Nay, is it not possible that some of
you Christians have helped to confirm men in
their sins and destroy their souls?
It is a masterpiece of the devil when
he can use Christ's own soldiers against Christ.
But this he has often done.
I have known many a case.
Let me tell a story of a minister,
one which I believe to be true, and
which convicts myself.
Therefore I tell it with the hope that
it may also awaken your consciences and convict
you too.
There was a young minister once preaching very
earnestly in a certain chapel, and he had
to walk some four or five miles to
his home along a country road after the
service.
A young man who had been deeply impressed
under the sermon requested the privilege of walking
with the minister, with an earnest hope that
he might get an opportunity of telling out
his feelings to him and obtaining some word
of guidance or comfort.
Instead of that, the young minister all the
way along told the most singular tales to
those who were with him, causing loud roars
of laughter and even relating tales which bordered
upon the indecorous.
He stopped at a certain house, and this
young man with him, and the whole evening
was spent in frivolity and foolish talking.
Some years after, when the minister had grown
old, he was sent forward to the bedside
of a dying man.
He hastened thither with a heart desirous to
do good.
He was requested to sit down at the
bedside.
The dying man, looking at him and regarding
him most closely, said to him, Do you
remember preaching in such and such a village
on such an occasion?
I do, said the minister.
I was one of your hearers, said the
man, and I was deeply impressed by the
sermon.
Thank God for that, said the minister.
Stop, said the man.
Don't thank God till you have heard the
whole story.
You will have reason to alter your tone
before I have done.
The minister changed countenance, but he little guessed
what would be the full extent of that
man's testimony.
Said he, Sir, do you remember after you
had finished that earnest sermon, I with some
others walked home with you?
I was sincerely desirous of being led in
the right path that night.
But I heard you speak in such a
strain of levity and with so much coarseness,
too, that I went outside the house while
you were sitting down to your evening meal.
I stamped my foot upon the ground.
I said that you were a liar, that
Christianity was a falsehood, that if you could
pretend to be so in earnest about it
in the pulpit and then come down and
talk like that, the whole thing must be
a sham.
And I have been an infidel, said he,
a confirmed infidel from that day to this.
But I am not an infidel at this
moment.
I know better.
I am dying, and I am about to
be damned.
And at the bar of God I will
lay my damnation to your charge.
My blood is on your head.
And with a dreadful shriek and one demoniacal
glance at the trembling minister, he shut his
eyes and died.
Is it not possible that we may have
been guilty thus?
The bare idea would make the flesh creep
on our bones.
And yet I think there are few among
us who must not say, That has been
my fault after all.
But are there not enough traps into which
to catch the souls without your being made
Satan's fowlers to do mischief?
Hath not Satan legions enough of devils to
murder men without employing you?
Are there no hands that may be red
with the blood of souls besides yours?
O followers of Christ!
O believers in Jesus!
Will ye serve under the black prince?
Will ye fight against your master?
Will ye drag sinners down to hell?
Shall we, I take myself in here more
truly than any of you, shall we who
profess to preach the gospel by our conversation
injure and destroy men's souls?
Thus I think I have expounded the solemn
consequences of this fearful evil.
Now I come in conclusion, and I pray
God to help me while I deal earnestly
and solemnly with you and bring out the
great battering ram to bear against this vain
excuse of the wicked.
Among this great congregation I have doubtless a
very large number of persons who are not
converted to God and who have continually made
this their excuse.
I see so much of the inconsistencies of
professors that I do not intend to think
about religion myself.
My hearer, I conjure thee by the living
God.
Give me thine ear a moment while I
pull this vain excuse of thine to pieces.
What hast thou to do with the inconsistencies
of another?
To his own master he shall stand or
fall?
What will it better thee if one half
of all the professors of religion be sent
to hell?
What comfort will that be to thee when
thou shalt come there thyself?
Man, will God require the sins of other
people at thine hands?
Where is it said that God will punish
thee for what another does?
Or dost thou imagine that God will reward
thee because another is guilty?
Thou art surely not foolish enough for that.
I ask thee, what canst thou have to
do with another's servant?
That man is a servant of God, or
at least professes to be.
If he be not so, what business can
it possibly be of thine?
If thou shouldst see twenty men drinking poison,
would that be a reason why thou shouldst
drink it?
If, passing over London Bridge, thou shouldst see
a dozen miserable creatures leaping off the parapet,
there would be a good argument why thou
thyself shouldst seek to stop them, but no
argument why thou shouldst leap to.
What if there be hundreds of suicides?
Will that excuse thee if thou shalt shed
thine own blood?
Do men plead thus in courts of law?
Does a man say, O judge, excuse me
for having been a thief.
There are so many hundreds of men that
profess to be honest that are as big
as thieves as I.
Thou wilt be punished for thine own offenses,
remember, not for the offenses of another.
Man, I conjure thee, look this in the
face.
How can this help to assuage thy misery?
How can this help to make thee happier
in hell, because thou sayest there are so
many hypocrites in this world?
Besides, thou knowest well enough that the church
is not so bad as thou sayest it
is.
Thou seest some that are inconsistent, but are
there not many that are holy?
Dost thou dare to say there are none?
I tell thee, man, thou art a fool.
There are many bad coins in the world,
many counterfeits.
Do you therefore say there are no good
ones?
If you say so, you are mad, for
the very fact that there are counterfeits is
a proof that there must be realities.
Would any man think it worth his while
to make bad sovereigns if there were no
good ones?
It is just the quantity of good ones
that passes off the few false coins.
And so no man would pretend to be
a Christian unless there were some good Christians.
There would be no hypocrites if there were
not some true men.
It is the quantity of true men that
helps to pass off the hypocrite in the
crowd.
And then again I say, when thou comest
before the bar of God, dost thou think
that this will serve thee as an excuse
to begin to find fault with God's own
children?
Suppose you were brought before a king, an
absolute monarch, and you should begin to say
by way of appeal, O king, I have
been guilty, it is true, but your own
sons and daughters I do not like.
There are a great many faults in the
princes of the blood.
Would he not say, Wretch, thou art adding
insult to wickedness, thou art guilty thyself, and
now thou dost malign mine own children, the
princes of the blood?
The Lord will not have thee say that
at last.
He has pardoned His children.
He is ready to pardon thee.
He sends mercy to thee this day.
But if thou reject it, imagine not that
thou shalt escape by recounting the sins of
the pardoned ones, that rather this shall be
an addition to thy sin, and thou shalt
perish the more fearfully.
But come, man, once again, I would entreat
of thee with all my might.
What, canst thou be so foolish as to
imagine that because another man is destroying his
own soul by hypocrisy, that this is a
reason why thou shouldst destroy thine by indifference?
If there be thousands of untrue Christians, so
much the more reason why I should be
a true one.
If there are hundreds of hypocrites, this should
make me more earnest to search myself, and
should not make me indifferent about the matter.
O sinner, thou wilt soon be on thy
dying bed.
And will it comfort thee there to think,
I have rejected Christ, I have despised salvation,
I am perishing in my sins?
And to add, but there are many Christians
who are hypocrites.
No, death will tear away that excuse.
That will not serve you.
And when the heavens are in a blaze,
when the pillars of the earth shall reel,
when God shall come on flying clouds to
judge the children of men, when the eternal
eyes are fixed upon you, and like burning
lamps are enlightening the secret parts of your
belly, will you then be able to make
this an excuse?
Good God, it is true I have damned
myself.
It is true I have willfully transgressed.
But there are many hypocrites.
Then shall the judge say, What hast thou
to do with that?
Thou hast not to interfere with my kingdom
and with my judgeship.
For thine own offenses thou art lost.
For thine own rejection of Christ, thou shalt
perish everlastingly.
And now I conclude by addressing the people
of God with equal solemnity and earnestness.
My dear hearers, if I could weep tears
of blood this morning, I could not show
too much emotion concerning this solemn point.
I do not know that this text ever
struck me before yesterday, but I no sooner
noticed it than it came home to me
as an accusation.
I plead guilty to it, and I pray
for forgiveness.
I only wish that a like power may
attend it to you, that you may feel
that you have been guilty too.
O friends, can you bear the thought that
you may have helped to drag others down
to hell?
Christ has loved you and pardoned your sins,
and will you push others downward?
And yet, if you are inconsistent, and especially
if you are cold and lukewarm in your
religion, you are doing it.
Well, says one, I don't do much good,
but I do no hurt.
That is an impossibility.
You must be either doing good or evil.
There is no borderland between truth and sin.
A man must be either on land or
in the water, and you are either serving
God or serving Satan.
Each day you are increasing your master's kingdom
or else diminishing it.
I cannot bear the thought that any of
you should be employed in Satan's camp.
Suppose there ever should be an invasion of
this country by France.
The toxin rings from every church steeple, the
drum is sounding at every street, and men
are gathering at every market cross.
Peaceful men spring up to soldiers in an
instant, and multitudes are marching away to the
coast.
When we come near it, we behold a
troop of soldiers who have climbed our white
cliffs, and with bayonets fixed they are marching
against us.
We, with a tremendous cheer, rush on against
them to drive them back into the sea
which girds our beloved country.
Suddenly, as we rush forward, we detect scores
of Englishmen marching in the same ranks with
our foes and seeking to ravage their own
country.
What should we say?
Seize those traitors!
Let not one of them escape!
Put them all to death!
Can Englishmen take the side of England's enemies?
Can they march against our hearths and homes,
betray their fatherland, and take the side of
the tyrant emperor?
Can this be?
Then let them die the death!"
And yet, this day, I behold a more
mournful spectacle yet.
There is King Jesus marching at the head
of His troops.
And can it be that some of you
who profess to be His followers are on
the other side?
That, professing to be Christ's, you are fighting
in the ranks of the enemy, carrying the
baggage of Satan, and wearing the uniform of
hell, when you profess to be soldiers of
Christ?
I know there are such here.
God forgive them!
God spare them!
And may the deserters yet come back, even
though they come back in the chains of
conviction.
May they come back and be saved!
O brethren and sisters, there are enough to
destroy souls without us, enough to extend the
kingdom of Satan without our helping Him.
Come out from among them.
Touch not the unclean thing.
Be ye separate.
Church of God, awake!
Awake!
Awake to the salvation of men!
Sleep no longer.
Begin to pray, to wrestle, to travail in
birth.
Be more holy, more consistent, more strict, more
solemn in thy deportment.
Begin, O soldiers of Christ, to be more
true to your colors.
And as surely as the time shall come
when the church shall thus be reformed and
revived, so surely shall the King come into
our midst, and we shall march on to
certain victory, trampling down our enemies, and getting
to our King many crowns through many victories
achieved.
This message, How Saints May Help the Devil,
was preached by Charles Haddon Spurgeon on July
24th, 1859.
This is Charles Kelsch inviting you to join
me again for another message from the Prince
of Preachers.