Delicate dilettantes disgusted

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 The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, volume 14, sermon number 831, "The altar."  

"The sin of this age is idolatry. The whole tendency of this generation  is towards the setting up of other than spiritual altars."

I must not forget, in speaking of the form of the altar, also that as the observer passed round it, he would be constantly struck with its bespattered appearance. Entertain not the notion the tabernacle and the temple must have been very pleasant places—we can scarcely imagine anything that must have been more awe inspiring, and even revolting to the mind of the observer, than the court of priests, when sacrificing was being carried on. 

It must on great occasions have resembled a butcher’s shambles, with the addition of smoke and fire. And this brazen altar was so frequently besmeared with blood, and so constantly were bowl-fulls of warm gore thrown at its base, that it must have presented a very ghastly appearance. 

This was all to teach the observer what a dreadful thing sin is, and how it can only be put away through suffering and death. The Lord did not study attractive aesthetics, he did not prepare a tabernacle that should delight men’s tastes; it was rich indeed, but so blood-stained as to be by no means beautiful. 

No staining of glass to charm the eye, but instead thereof the inwards of slaughtered bullocks. Such sights would disgust the delicate tastes of the fops of this present age. Blood, blood on every side; death, fire, smoke and ashes, varied with the bellowing of dying beasts, and the active exertions of men whose white garments were all crimson with the blood of victims. 

How clearly did the worshipers see the sternness and severity of the justice of God against human sin, and the intensity of the agony of the great Son of God who was in the fullness of time by his own

death to put away all the sins and transgressions of his people! 

By faith come ye, my brethren, and walk round that blood-stained altar, and as you mark its four-square form and its horns of strength, and see the sacrifices smoking thereon acceptable to God, look down and mark the blood with which its foundations are so completely saturated, and understand how all salvation and all acceptance rests on the atonement of the dying Son of God.

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