The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from the lifetime of works from the Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The following excerpt is from The Gospel of the Kingdom, pages 256-57, Pilgrim Publications."For money Christ was betrayed, and for money the truth about his resurrection was kept back as far as it could be: They gave large money unto the soldiers."
contact with it.
The lie put into the soldiers’ mouths was so palpable that no one ought to have been deceived by it: “Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept.” A Roman soldier would have committed suicide sooner than confess that he had slept at his post of duty. If they were asleep, how did they know what happened?
The chief priests and elders were not afraid of Pilate hearing of their lie; or if he did, they knew that golden arguments would be as convincing with him as with the common soldiers: “If this come to the governor’s ears, we will persuade him, and secure you.”
The soldiers acted just as many men have continued to do from their day to ours: They took the money, and did as they were taught.
“What makes a doctrine straight and clear?
About five hundred pounds a year,”
is an “old saw” that can be “reset” to-day. How much even of religious teaching can be accounted for by the fact that “they took the money”! There are many who make high professions of godliness, who would soon give them up if they did not pay.
May none of us ever be affected by considerations of profit and loss in matters of doctrine, matters of duty, and matters of right and wrong!
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