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 Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, volume 54, sermon number 3,093, "The Church of God and the Truth of God.""Remember how your fathers, in times gone by, defended God’s truth, and blush, ye cowards, who are afraid to maintain it!"
The doctrines which we preach to you are doctrines that have been baptized in blood,—swords have been drawn to slay the confessors of them; and there is not a truth which has not been sealed by them at the stake, or the block, or far away on the lofty mountains, where they have been slain by the hundreds.
It is but a little duty we have to discharge compared with theirs. They were called to maintain the truth when they had to die for it; you only have to maintain the truth when taunt and jeer, ignominious names and contemptuous epithets are all you have to endure for it. What! Do you expect easy lives? While some have sailed through seas of blood and have fought to win the prize, are you wearied with a slight skirmish on dry land?
What would you do if God should suffer persecuting days to overtake you? O craven spirits, ye would flee away, and disown your profession! Be ye the pillar and ground of the truth. Let the blood of martyrs, let the voices of confessors speak to you. Remember how they held fast the truth, how they preserved it and handed it down to us from generation to generation; and by their noble example, I beseech you, be steadfast and faithful, tread valiantly and firmly in their steps, acquit yourselves like men,—like men of God, I implore you!
Shall we not have some champions, in these times, who will deal sternly with heresies for the love of the truth,—men who will stand like rocks in the centre of the sea, so that, when all others shake, they stand invulnerable and invincible?
Thou who art tossed about by every wind of doctrine, farewell; I own thee not till God shall give you grace to stand firm for his truth and not to be ashamed of him nor of his words in this evil generation.
1 comment:
Nobody takes the truth of our Lord, and keeps it in its fullness, and yet knows just how to add a good adverb here and adjective there so it is not made shallow, but we are able to grasp its depth.
He truly was the "prince of preachers."
I read this one the other evening (my wife and I read his morning & evening together and then pray):
"You cannot be accepted without Christ; but, when you have received his merit, you cannot be unaccepted. Notwithstanding all your doubts, and fears, and sins, Jehovah's gracious eye never looks upon you in anger; though he sees sin in you, in yourself, yet when he looks at you through Christ, he sees no sin. You are always accepted in Christ, are always blessed and dear to the Father's heart. Therefore lift up a song, . . . "
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