posted by Phil Johnson
The PyroManiacs devote space at the beginning of each week to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive.
This excerpt is from sermon 185, "The Great Revival," preached March 28th, 1858, at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens:We want every now and then a reformation. One reformation will never serve the church; she needs continually to be wound up, and set a-going afresh; for her works run down, and she does not act as she used to do.
The bold, bald doctrines that Luther brought out began to be a little modified, until layer after layer was deposited upon them, and at last the old rocky truth was covered up, and there grew upon the superficial subsoil an abundance of green and flowery errors, that looked fair and beautiful, but were in no way whatever related to the truth, except as they were the products of its decay.
Then there came bold men who brought the truth out again, and said, "Clear away this rubbish; let the blast light upon these deceitful beauties; we want them not; bring out the old truth once more!" And it came out. But the tendency of the church perpetually is, to be covering up its own naked simplicity, forgetting that the truth is never so beautiful as when it stands in its own unadorned, God-given glory.
And now, at this time, we want to have the old truths restored to their places. The subtleties and the refinements of the preacher must be laid aside. We must give up the grand distinctions of the school-men, and all the lettered technicalities of men who have studied theology as a system, but have not felt the power of it in their hearts; and when the good old truth is once more preached by men whose lips are touched as with a live coal from off the altar, this shall be the instrument, in the hand of the Spirit, for bringing about a great and thorough revival of religion in the land.
7 comments:
Exhilarating! Makes me yearn to stand firm in the truth.
"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, ... full of grace and truth."
a little more spurgeon for you ...
"We believe that the Baptists are the original Christians. We did not commence our existence at the reformation, we were reformers before Luther and Calvin were born; we never came from the Church of Rome, for we were never in it, but we have an unbroken line up to the apostles themselves. We have always existed from the days of Christ, and our principles, sometimes veiled and forgotten, like a river which may travel under ground for a little season, have always had honest and holy adherents. Persecuted alike by Romanists and Protestants of almost every sect, yet there has never existed a Government holding Baptist principles which persecuted others; nor, I believe, any body of Baptists ever held it to be right to put the consciences of others under the control of man..."
Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1861). Volume 7, Page 225
Who can say it better than Spurgeon?
Great stuff,
Doug
Great stuff Phil. Keep it coming. It's always amazing how well Spurgeon fights off all of today's goofy trends, even though he's a hundred plus years dead.
Phil,
Funny...
Can't imagine a less likely locale for revival to begin than this memorial to a DEAD guy!
Let Spurgeon be dead and conjure some living Christianity for your own time instead of living off of his dead words...
This is self-evident...
I suppose you would give the same advice to the author of Hebrews when he wrote chapter eleven Brad?
Not that I compare Spurgeons sermons to Scripture except that time and again we are shown through it the value of learning from men that God used.
Spurgeon is alive, as are all who are in Christ and to disparage the works that God gave him, or any other saint to do for the edification of the body is hardly an example of how "Living Christianity".
Hey brad meyer, I have a word of knowledge for you:
Hebrews 13:7 (KJV)
Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.
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