New Year’s Message from Mr. Spurgeon
BELOVED FRIENDS,
The season
invites to renewal of spiritual life. It suggests freshness and
awakening. As there was of old a time when kings went forth to battle,
so are there periods when to gird up our loins anew is the order of the
day. The furnishing of the armor, and the sharpening of the sword, are
the duties now incumbent. Let the year of grace, 1870, be to us all a
year of greater consecration, and more incessantly indefatigable effort
for the great cause and kingdom of the Lord Jesus. To achieve this it
will be most helpful to begin the year well, and to do this there must
he holy resolve, and a settling of the whole soul to the work.
Being
debarred from serving the Lord by my own public ministry, it has been
laid upon my heart to endeavor to stir up my brother ministers to use
increased diligence while they are permitted the great pleasure and
privilege of preaching the word. It is a hard trial to be laid aside,
and harder still if the heart he pierced with regrets for opportunities
unimproved when health was in possession. That you may never know such
poignant sorrows is my earnest wish, and to help in that end I ask leave
to address a few words to you. I pray that every syllable I write may
be approved of God, and may be by the Holy Ghost rendered serviceable to
you.
It has struck me painfully, that for some
little time a somewhat listless spirit has fallen upon many of the
churches, and perhaps upon the ministers. A short time ago we heard more
of special services, revival meetings, and aggressive efforts upon the
world than we do at present; perhaps these may still be in full and
vigorous operation among your people, but in many places it is not so;
the pace of holy work has slackened, and the church is falling back into
that dreary routine which is easily reached and is so hard to escape.
Nothing is more dreadful than stagnation, even heresy is not more deadly
in its consequences. Sleep at the hour of battle would prove as
disastrous to an army as the most deadly artillery. The spiritual
morphia with which some churches appear to be drugged and drenched is
for all practical purposes as injurious as the poison of infidelity. A
church whose religion is mechanical and whose zeal is non-existent may
soon become a nuisance but is never a blessing. Continue Reading >>>
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