Giving the keepers their due

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

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 Speeches at Home and Abroad, page 97, Pilgrim Publications.

My vineyard, which is mine, is before me: thou, O Solomon, must have a thousand, and those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred. Song of Solomon 8:12 

I sat on Monday last by the bedside of one of my old members. I went to comfort her, for I heard she was ill; but, instead of comforting her, she set about comforting me, so that I went away rejoicing.

She began in this way, “My dear pastor, I shall never be able to tell to any soul what I owe to you, both personally and relatively.” I said, “Now, do not talk about that.”

She replied, “I will, for my former pastor, Joseph Irons, once preached a sermon upon the words, ‘King Solomon shall have a thousand, but they that keep the vineyard shall have two hundred,’ and that dear man of God said, ‘Give God the glory, give Solomon his thousand, but let his ministers who are keepers of the vineyard have their two hundred. Give them all the encouragement you can.’

Now (said she), that sermon did me good. I used to be afraid to cheer ministers and tell them what God had done by them, for fear that they should be proud; but from that sermon I learned that it was God’s business to keep them humble, and my business to encourage them.”

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