Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? So say the Latins. Shepherds may keep the sheep; but who shall pastorize the shepherds? A question of the weightiest import, both for the flocks and the pastors … Of vital importance is this enquiry religiously. What is to become of any body of Christians whose ministers are not loyal to their Lord and to his gospel? When a church has over it a man of whom it can be justly said that he shows no sign of ever having been converted, what spirituality can be expected to survive? When another preacher has one creed for the pulpit, and another for the private fraternal meeting, how can truth and honesty flourish in the community? When a third changes with the moon, and is not quite sure of anything, how can his hearers be established in the faith? We are not imagining cases; there are too many who answer the description. Evil in the pulpit is poison in the fountain. In this case we find death in the great pot out of which all the guests are to be fed.

But who shall keep the keepers? There is the great difficulty. This is a task beyond the power of the church and its most valiant champions. We might do well to watch the schools of the prophets, that more of deep devotion and fervent piety should be nurtured there. We might do no more than our duty if we were more jealously watchful over every election of ministers in which we take part, so that none were ordained but those sound in the faith, and filled with the Spirit. Even for these things, who is sufficient? But if these were done to perfection, the plague might still break out among the teachers: their heads might be dazed with error, or their hearts grow chill with worldliness. We are thrown back upon him that keepeth Israel. It is well that it should be so. That which develops dependence upon God works for good.

All plans, however wise in themselves, and however effective they would be if we had to deal with honesty and truth, are baffled by the moral obliquity which is part of the evil. The men are not to be bound by creeds: they confess that such things are useless to them. Their moral sense is deadened by the error they have imbibed. They have become shepherds that they might poison the flock, and keepers of the vineyard that they might spoil the vines: if this was not their first motive, their course of action distinctly suggests it. There is no reaching them: they are bewitched and benumbed. Neither from within nor from without are healthy influences likely to operate upon them; we must carry the case to the great head of the church, and leave it in his hands. When he ascended on high he received gifts for men; and these gifts were men of differing offices, for the perfecting of his people. We have need that he should anew send us such men. Maybe we have forgotten to look to the ascended Lord. Maybe we have been gazing about us to find the men without looking first to Him from whom they must come. Our Lord can speedily raise us up a new race of apostolic preachers from amid our youth, or he can convert those who are now the devourers of the churches. In the Reformation, many of the ablest leaders were called from among the priests and the monks; and today the Lord may breathe the life of faith into those who lie buried in sceptical philosophies. With him all things are possible. When we are at the end of our power and knowledge, we are on the confines of his omnipotence and omniscience. Let us bow our heads as we pass the frontier, and leave behind our own barren impotence to rejoice in his fruitful strength. Our confidence in the church of God lies not in her natural power, but in the fact that ‘God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved.’

Those who lament the declension of many among the present professed ministry should cry day and night unto the Lord to bless his people with pastors after his own heart. Let them also see to it that they walk wisely towards those they have. It behoves established believers to bear their testimony faithfully, but kindly, to young divines who are beginning to step aside; for it may be that a gentle word may save them. In grosser cases, firmness may be needful as to the matter of quitting an unfaithful, Christless ministry; or as to the removal of the false teacher.

In the happy instances in which the gospel is held and fully preached, the faithful should encourage, sustain, and help with all their hearts. Those who are faithful to the truth of God, should find us faithful to them. God will have his gifts valued, and his servants well treated. He has among his chosen ministers those who feel tears of gratitude welling up in their eyes when they think of the kindness of their churches; but there are other worthy men who are buffeted and battered, left without a decent maintenance, and never appreciated as they ought to be. For these the Lord himself will plead with his people, if there be not speedy improvement. Let not true shepherds be forgotten by the flocks to which they minister, nor by any of the faithful, lest their Master should be provoked to recall the gift which is not valued. Now, if never before, our eyes should be upon all the faithful of the land, to hold up their hands. No one must hold himself aloof lest that bitter curse should fall upon him which was of old pronounced on Meroz and the inhabitants thereof, because they came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty.

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Featured image (visible when this post is shared on social media): detail from Arthur James Stark, 1831–1902, A Shepherd with Flock Beneath a Large Tree, undated, Yale Centre for British Art (Public Domain).

The post Spurgeon: ‘Who Shall Keep the Keepers?’ appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

He was a wise man who said, ‘The roundest peg seldom fits into the roundest hole without some paring.’ There is no position in life which, at the first, has not something irksome and trying about it. Newcomers cannot expect to feel at home at once. We remember our first wretched night at a school where we afterwards became supremely happy. Well do we recollect the misery of the first few months of a calling which we afterwards valued and enjoyed. Our mind was sorely depressed on first coming into that sphere in London, which has since been the delight of our life. Let no man, therefore, when he at first commences work in any place, feel at all discouraged by the uneasiness which may come over him. It is natural that he should feel strange in a new position. The burden is not yet adapted to the shoulder, and the shoulder is not yet hardened to the load. While feeling the irksomeness of a fresh position, do not be so foolish as to throw it up. Wait a little while, and time will work wonders. You will yet take pleasure in the very things which are now the source of discomfort. The very worst thing will be to hasten away and make a change, for the change will only bring trial in a fresh form, and you will endure afresh the evils which you have already almost mastered. The time which you have already spent at your new place will be lost, and the same weary first steps will have to be taken upon another ladder. Besides, you may readily leap out of the frying pan into the fire. Change has charms to some men, but among its roses they find abundant thorns.

Has the minister just entered upon a fresh sphere, and does he miss the affectionate warmth of his old acquaintances? Does he find his new people strange and singular? Do they appear cold and distant? Let him persevere, and all this will wear off, and he will come to love the very people to whom he now feels an aversion, and find his best helpers among those who now seem to be utterly indifferent to him. The call of Providence has brought him where he is, and he must not venture to leave because of inconveniences: often it will be his wisdom to regard these as a part of the tokens that he is in the right way, for the appointed path is seldom easy to the feet.

Has our young friend commenced teaching a class in the Sunday-school, and does she find it far less pleasant work than she imagined? Are the children wild and careless and inattentive, and does her own power of teaching appear to be smaller than she hoped? Let her give double application to her holy toil, and she will come to love it. Should she leave it, she may incur the blame of those who put their hands to the plough and look back. The ice has been already broken; the edge has been taken off from the difficulty; let her persevere, and all will be well.

There is no position in this world without its disadvantages. We may be perpetually on the move to our continual disquiet, and each move may bring us under the same, or even greater, disadvantages. We remember a Scotch story of an unlucky family who attributed all their misfortunes to their house being haunted by mischievous spirits, known to our northern countrymen as ‘brownies.’ These superstitious individuals became at length desperate; nothing prospered in house or field, they would therefore pack up all and begone from a spot so mysteriously infested. All the household goods were loaded up, and the husband and the ‘gude wife’ and the bairns were all flitting, when one of them cried out, ‘Brownie is in the churn. Brownie is flitting, too.’ Just so, the matters which hinder a man’s success are generally in himself, and will move with him; and wherein it is not so, he may yet be sure that if by change of place he avoids one set of brownies, he will find another awaiting him. There is bran in all meal, and there are dregs in all wine. All roads must at times be rough, and all seas must be tossed with tempest. To fly from trouble will need long wings, and to escape discomfort will require more than a magician’s skill.

It is wiser to ‘bear the ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of.’ It is probable that our present condition is the best possible for us; no other form of trial would be preferable. What right have we to suspect the wisdom and the goodness of God in placing us where we are? It will be far more prudent to mistrust our own judgment when it leads us to murmuring and discontent. Occasionally, it may be prudent to remove, or to change one’s form of Christian service; but this must be done thoughtfully, prayerfully, and with a supreme regard to the glory of God, rather than out of respect to our own feelings. A tree that is often transplanted will make but little growth, and bear but slender fruit. A man who is ‘everything by turns, and nothing long,’ will be a sort of ‘Jack of all trades, and master of none.’ An increase of spiritual strength by greater communion with God, and a more resolute determination to glorify him in every possible way, will usually conquer difficulties and win success. An extremely hard substance in the world may be cut by something harder: even the adamant can be forced to yield. Double force will make that easy, which now seems impossible. Do not, therefore, change the work, but change yourself. Attempt no other alteration till a distinct improvement in your own self has resolutely been carried out.

We speak thus because we believe that many are discouraged at the outset of a career which, if they could see its end, would fill them with thankfulness; and Satan raises these discouragements to tempt them to leave a position in which they may damage his kingdom and glorify Christ. Courage, dear friend, you have a great Helper; look to the strong for strength. Say with Nehemiah, ‘Should such a man as I flee?’ Who are you that everything should be made smooth for your feet? Are you such a little babe in grace that only the slightest tasks should be allotted to you? Be a man, and play the man. Resolve that even at this present, and where you now are, you will set up the standard, and hold the fort. Many are the instances in which men have commenced their life-work under every possible disadvantage, and for months, and even years, they have seemed to make no headway whatsoever, and yet they have ultimately triumphed, and have come to bless the providence which called them into a place so well adapted for their gifts. It would have been their worst calamity if, under a fit of despondency, they had changed their station or relinquished their vocation. The church would have been the poorer, the world would have been the darker, and themselves the feebler, if they had shifted at the first even to the most promising spheres which tempted them. That rock on which they stood, and mourned the hardness of the soil, was more full of the elements of fruitfulness than the softer soil at a little distance, which invited them to leave. Tarrying where they were, exercising indomitable perseverance, they have softened the granite, cultured it into fertility, and reaped a golden harvest. He is the greatest man who achieves success where stronger men might have failed. If we desire to glorify God, we must not select the comfortable positions and the hopeful fields; it is best to make no selection, but to yield our own will to the will of God altogether. The hole is round enough, it will be difficult to make it any rounder; the proper plan is to round ourselves. If we will but adapt ourselves to our position, the position will adapt itself to us.

It may be that these lines will furnish counsel to a brother whose choice now lies between being a rolling stone and a pillar in the house of our God. To turn tail under present pressure may be the beginning of a cowardly career, neither honourable to God nor to man: to stand fast at this distressing juncture may be the commencement of an established position of supreme usefulness and honour.

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‘During the past week the church of God, and the world at large, have sustained a very serious loss. In the taking home to himself by our gracious Lord of the Earl of Shaftesbury, we have, in my judgment, lost the best man of the age. I do not know whom I should place second, but I certainly should put him first — far beyond all other servants of God within my knowledge — for usefulness and influence. He was a man most true in his personal piety, as I know from having enjoyed his private friendship; a man most firm in his faith in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; a man intensely active in the cause of God and truth. Take him whichever way you please, he was admirable: he was faithful to God in all his house, fulfilling both the first and second commands of the law in fervent love to God, and hearty love to man. He occupied his high position with singleness of purpose and immovable steadfastness: where shall we find his equal?

If it is not possible that he was absolutely perfect, it is equally impossible for me to mention a single fault, for I saw none. He exhibited scriptural perfection, inasmuch as he was sincere, true, and consecrated. Those things which have been regarded as faults by the loose thinkers of this age are prime virtues in my esteem. They called him narrow; and in this they bear unconscious testimony to his loyalty to truth. I rejoiced greatly in his integrity, his fearlessness, his adherence to principle, in a day when revelation is questioned, the gospel explained away, and human thought set up as the idol of the hour. He felt that there was a vital and eternal difference between truth and error; consequently, he did not act or talk as if there was much to be said on either side, and, therefore, no one could be quite sure. We shall not know for many a year how much we miss in missing him; how great an anchor he was to this drifting generation, and how great a stimulus he was to every movement for the benefit of the poor.

Both man and beast may unite in mourning him; he was the friend of every living thing. He lived for the oppressed; he lived for London; he lived for the nation; he lived still more for God. He has finished his course; and though we do not lay him to sleep in the grave with the sorrow of those that have no hope, yet we cannot but mourn that a great man and a prince has fallen this day in Israel. Surely, the righteous are taken away from the evil to come, and we are left to struggle on under increasing difficulties.’

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“Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.’ — Luke 20:37, 38.

During the past week the church of God, and the world at large, have sustained a very serious loss. In the taking home to himself by our gracious Lord of the Earl of Shaftesbury, we have, in my judgment, lost the best man of the age. I do not know whom I should place second, but I certainly should put him first — far beyond all other servants of God within my knowledge — for usefulness and influence. He was a man most true in his personal piety, as I know from having enjoyed his private friendship; a man most firm in his faith in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; a man intensely active in the cause of God and truth. Take him whichever way you please, he was admirable: he was faithful to God in all his house, fulfilling both the first and second commands of the law in fervent love to God, and hearty love to man. He occupied his high position with singleness of purpose and immovable steadfastness: where shall we find his equal? If it is not possible that he was absolutely perfect, it is equally impossible for me to mention a single fault, for I saw none. He exhibited scriptural perfection, inasmuch as he was sincere, true, and consecrated. Those things which have been regarded as faults by the loose thinkers of this age are prime virtues in my esteem. They called him narrow; and in this they bear unconscious testimony to his loyalty to truth. I rejoiced greatly in his integrity, his fearlessness, his adherence to principle, in a day when revelation is questioned, the gospel explained away, and human thought set up as the idol of the hour. He felt that there was a vital and eternal difference between truth and error; consequently, he did not act or talk as if there was much to be said on either side, and, therefore, no one could be quite sure. We shall not know for many a year how much we miss in missing him; how great an anchor he was to this drifting generation, and how great a stimulus he was to every movement for the benefit of the poor. Both man and beast may unite in mourning him; he was the friend of every living thing. He lived for the oppressed; he lived for London; he lived for the nation; he lived still more for God. He has finished his course; and though we do not lay him to sleep in the grave with the sorrow of those that have no hope, yet we cannot but mourn that a great man and a prince has fallen this day in Israel. Surely, the righteous are taken away from the evil to come, and we are left to struggle on under increasing difficulties.

It must always be so. The godly must die, even as others. Though our life be perfectly consecrated, yet it cannot for ever be continued in this world. It is appointed unto men once to die, and that appointment stands. We expect the present rule to last till he shall come who shall destroy the last enemy. We are not troubled with Sadducean doubts; to us, seeing that Christ rose from the dead, it is a matter of certainty that all his followers must rise also; and seeing that Jesus ever lived, it is equally a matter of certainty to us that all the saints are still living, for he hath said, ‘Because I live, ye shall live also.’ Yet, if no infidelity is permitted to creep into our brain and disturb our belief, it may penetrate into our heart, and cause us great sadness. We who believe in Jesus should rise into an atmosphere more clear and warm than that of the sepulchre; for the Lord Jesus hath ‘abolished death, and brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel.’ We are not now sitting in the shadow of death, for eternal light has sprung up. Children of God, it is in the highest degree proper that you should think of things as your Father thinks of them; and he saith that ‘all live unto God.’ Let us correct our phraseology by that of Scripture, and speak of departed saints as inspiration speaks of them. Then shall we come back to the simple child’s talk which Wordsworth so sweetly turned into rhyme — ‘Master, we are seven’¹; and in our family we shall number brothers, and sisters, and friends, whose bodies lie in the churchyard and shall speak of those who have crossed the border, and passed within the veil, as still our own. Like Jesus, we shall say, ‘Our friend Lazarus sleepeth.’ Like Paul, we shall speak of them as absent from the body but present with the Lord and regard them as part and parcel of the one family in heaven and earth.

Our text was fashioned in a place which has the air of death, burial, and resurrection about it. The voice came to Moses in the desert. This was a strange place for Moses: the living, active, well-instructed mind of Moses, mighty in all the wisdom of Egypt, and full of noble thoughts concerning the living God, was buried in a desert. It is singular to see the foremost mind of the age in the remotest part of the desert, hidden away among sheep. He who was a born king is here feeding a flock. It is death to Moses. Rest assured that Moses cannot be kept in this living tomb; he must rise to life and leadership. While there is a God and a providence Moses cannot continue in obscurity. There are certainties wrapped up in him which cannot fail. A man need not be a prophet to stand at Horeb and prognosticate that Moses will emerge from the desert, and shake Egypt by his resurrection.

While Moses is in the desert he is thinking about another case of death, burial, and resurrection, namely, Israel in Egypt. The people of God, the favoured nation of Jehovah, with whom he had entered into covenant, saying, ‘I will be their God, and they shall be my people’ — these were in Egypt, ground down by relentless oppression, begrimed with brick-earth, and black and blue with the blows of task-masters. It has come to this, that they are compelled to cast their male children into the river, and so to be the destroyers of their own race. The children of Israel have become a herd of slaves; yet they are God’s elect people, God’s favoured family. It does not require a prophet to declare that this death in Egypt cannot last; the elect nation must live, and rise and go forth free to serve the Lord. No, Israel; thou shalt never perish! The voice must yet be heard: ‘Thus saith the Lord, Let my people go, that they may serve me.’

And so, while Moses in the desert is thinking of Israel in Egypt, he sees a bush, and that bush is all ablaze. An ordinary bush upon the heath needs only to be touched with a match: in one moment there is a puff of flame, and then all is over; nothing is left but a trace of ashes. Yet here was an extraordinary thing — a bush that continued to burn, and was not consumed. Here was life in the midst of death, continuance in the midst of destruction. This was an emblem of God abiding with a people, and yet suffering them to live; or of the fires of affliction being rendered harmless to the children of God. He who then spoke to Moses was the God of life, the God who could sustain in the midst of destruction, the God who could preserve even a bush from being devoured by the intense fury of flame. Said I not truly that the surroundings of Moses and the bush all favour a display of life in death, and resurrection out of death.

Now we come to the central matter. Out of the midst of the bush there came a voice, a mysterious and divine voice, which said, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ From this voice our divine Lord teaches us to gather this fact: that God’s people live when they appear to have been long dead — for he who cannot be the God of the dead, or non-existent, still avows himself to be the God of the long-buried patriarchs. Our Lord proved from that utterance at the bush the continued life of the Lord’s chosen, and also their resurrection: how did he do this?

1. We will not go straight to the answer, but we will beat about the bush a little, that the reasoning may the more gently enter our minds. I would say, first, that in these words we have A GLORIOUS RELATIONSHIP DECLARED. Moses calleth the Lord ‘The God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’

The glorious Lord did at the bush as good as say, ‘These three men have chosen me to be their God,’ so they had; through the grace of God they had deliberately chosen to part with their natural kindred in the country of the Chaldees, and to journey to a land of which they knew nothing except that God had promised that they should afterwards receive it for an inheritance. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were three very different characters; yet this was common to the three — that they believed God, and took him to be their God alone. They nestled in the bosom of Jehovah while the rest of the world went after their idols. In all their troubles they flew to Jehovah; for the supply of all their needs they resorted alone to him. They were men who had through divine grace deliberately attached themselves unto Jehovah the Most High throughout the whole of their lives. It is a sublime sight to see a man trust in God as Abraham did, and obey the Lord fully as he did in the matter of Isaac, when he accounted God to be able to raise him up even from the dead. Surely there must be everlasting life in a being who could thus confide in Jehovah. I call you to admire the fact that God called the patriarchs into the noble position of following the Lord fully, of fixed and settled choice. Being men of like passions with ourselves, they nevertheless cast in their lot with the Lord, and for his sake preferred the life of strangers and pilgrims on the earth to the comforts of settled residence in Ur of the Chaldees, and to the sinful pleasures of Canaan. We also take this God to be our God, even the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. There is a nobility about the choosers of the true God which will surely secure them from annihilation.

Next, these three men had learned to commune with God. How wondrously had Abraham spoken with God! Full many a spot was consecrated as ‘the place where he stood before the Lord.’ Isaac also walked in the fields at eventide; and, doubtless, there entered into secret fellowship with God. The Lord also appeared unto him at night, and led him to build an altar and call upon the name of Jehovah. The good old man even in his blindness found solace in communion with the Lord God Almighty. Jacob also was favoured with heavenly visitations. We can never forget that mystic dream at Bethel, nor the wrestling at Jabbok, nor the many times when he turned to the God of his father Abraham, and his father Isaac, and God spake with him as a man speaketh with his friend. It is a wonderful thing that the Lord should thus commune with men. He does not thus show himself to the beasts which perish; he does not thus reveal himself to the lifeless stones of the field. Those are strangely honoured beings with whom God enters into close communion as he did with these three men. I argue from it that these beings cannot dissolve into a handful of dust and then cease to be. Can those eyes cease to be which have seen the Lord? Can these souls perish which have conversed with the Eternal? We think not so. But just now I ask you only to meditate upon the glories to which the patriarchs were lifted up, when they were permitted to be the friends of God.

What was still more notable, the Lord entered into covenant with them. He made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which he remembered, saying, ‘Surely, blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thee.’ You know how the Lord swore to give unto the seed of Abraham a goodly heritage, a land that flowed with milk and honey. Now, it is a wonderful thing that God should enter into compact with man. Doth he make an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure, with mere insects of an hour? Especially, would he give his Son Jesus to die to seal the everlasting covenant by his heart’s blood with mere shadows who are but for a little time and then cease to be? I am sure it is not so. If God makes men capable of entering into everlasting covenant with himself, there lies within that fact the clear suggestion that he imparts to them an existence which is not for today and tomorrow, but for eternity. Still, I wish you mainly to regard the glory into which manhood is lifted up when God enters into gracious covenant with it.

Moreover, to go further, these men were not only in covenant with God, but they had lived in accordance with that covenant. I do not mean that they had lived perfectly in accord with it, but that the main strain of their lives was in conformity with their covenant relationship to God. For the sake of that covenant Abraham quitted Ur of the Chaldees, and dwelt no longer in the land of Haran, but became a sojourner with God in the land of Canaan. For the sake of this he sent away his firstborn after the flesh, seeing it was said, ‘In Isaac shall thy seed be called.’ ‘By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.’ These faithful men had respect to the recompense of the reward, and, therefore, they were not mindful of the country from whence they came out, neither sought opportunity to return. Jacob, the most faulty of the three, greatly as he erred in his conduct to his brother Esau, was evidently actuated by an intense faith in the covenant birthright, so that he ventured all things to obtain it. In his old age and death he was anxious not to be confounded with the Egyptians, or separated from the chosen household, and, therefore, he said unto Joseph, ‘But I will lie with my fathers, and thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their burying-place.’ This he made Joseph swear; for he must make sure of it. He was aiming at the promise, despite the errors that he committed in so doing. Now, doth God enter into covenant with men and help men to live in accordance with that covenant, and after all shall they miss the blessing? Shall it end in nothing? Hiding beneath the shadow of God’s wing, shall they, after all, perish? It cannot be: they must live to whom God is God.

For this was the covenant, that they should have God to be their God, and that they should be God’s people. O brothers, I do not know how to speak on such a blessing as this, though I live in the daily enjoyment of it. This God is our God. All that the Lord is, and all that he can do, he hath given over to us, to be used on our behalf: the fullness of his grace and truth, the infinity of his love, the omnipotence of his power, the infallibility of his wisdom — all, all shall be used on our behalf. The Lord has given himself over to his people to be their inheritance; and on the other hand, we, poor weak feeble creatures as we are, are taken to be the peculiar treasure of the living God. ‘They shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels.’ ‘The Lord’s portion is his people: Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.’ We are God’s heritage, we are God’s jewels, we are God’s children, we are dear to him as the apple of his eye. We are to him as the signet upon his hand and the crown upon his head. He cannot have chosen for his portion a mass of corruption, or a handful of brown dust; yet that is what the body comes to in death. He cannot have chosen for his heritage that which will melt back into mother earth, and be no more found; this cannot be. The covenant hath within it the sure guarantee of eternal life. Oh what an honour it is that God should even say to you and to me — ‘I will be your God, and you shall be my people. Beyond the angels, beyond heaven, beyond all my other creatures, I reserve you unto myself. I have loved you with an everlasting love. I will rest in my love to you. I will rejoice over you with singing.’ In this the Lord has highly exalted his covenanted ones, and raised them to great nearness to himself, and thus to glory and honour. What hath God wrought! What is man that God is thus mindful of him, or the son of man that he thus visits him! Angels are nowhere as compared with men, yea, cherubim with all their burning bliss and consecrated ardour cannot match with men who are in covenant with God. Blessed above all other beings are those who have Jehovah to be their God, and who are themselves the Lord’s choice, and care, and delight. Each one of these points, if well thought out, will go to strengthen our belief that the saints must live, must live for ever, and are at this moment living unto God.

1. We now come to that matter more distinctly under our second head: here is ETERNAL LIFE IMPLIED; for ‘God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.’

It is implied first in the very fact of the covenant of grace. As I have asked before — Doth the eternal God covenant with creatures that shall live only to threescore years and ten, and then shall go out like a candle-snuff? How can he be a God to them? I understand how he can be a helper and a friend to men of brief existence, but I see not how he can be a God. Must they not partake in his eternity if it be truly said, ‘I will be your God’? How can the Lord be an eternal blessing to an ending being? He has power, and he will give me strength sufficient; he hath wisdom, and he will give me as much of his wisdom as I am capable of receiving; must he not also cause me to partake of his immortality? How is he a God to me if he suffers me to be blotted out of existence? When David said in dying, ‘Yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant,’ his comfort lay in his belief that he should live in the everlasting age to enjoy the fruit of that covenant. How could there be an everlasting covenant with a creature who would cease to exist?

But next, this covenant was made up of promises of a very peculiar order; for in very deed the covenant that God made with Abraham was not altogether, or even mainly, concerning things temporal. It was not the land of Canaan alone of which the Lord spake to Abraham, but the patriarchs declared plainly that they desired ‘a better country, that is, an heavenly’ (Heb. 11:16). Even when they were in Canaan they were still looking for a country; and the city promised to them was not Jerusalem; for, according to Paul in the eleventh of the Hebrews, they still were looking for ‘a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.’ They did not find in their earthly lives the complete fulfilment of the covenant; for they received not the promises, but saw them afar off, and were persuaded of them. The temporal blessings which God gave to them were not their expected portion; but they took hold upon invisible realities, and lived in expectation of them. They were evidently actuated by faith in something spiritual, something everlasting; and they believed that the covenant which God had made with them concerned such things. I have not the time to go into this subject; you get it more fully explained to you in the Epistle to the Hebrews; but so it was, that the covenant blessings were of an order and a class that could not be compassed within the space of this present mortal life: the outlook of covenant promises was towards the boundless sea of eternity. Now, if the Lord made with them a covenant concerning eternal blessings, these saints must live to enjoy those blessings. God did not promise endless blessings to the creatures of a day.

More especially, beloved, it is to be remembered that for the sake of these eternal things the patriarchs had given up transient enjoyments. Abraham might have been a quiet prince in his own country, living in comfort; but for the sake of the spiritual blessing he left Chaldea, and came to wander in the pastures of Canaan, in the midst of enemies, and to dwell in tents in the midst of discomforts. Isaac and Jacob were ‘heirs with him also of the same promises’; but they entered not into the pursuits of the people; they dwelt alone, and were not numbered among the nations. Like Moses himself, to whom God spake, they ‘counted the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.’ They quitted kith and kin, and all the advantages of settled civilized life, to be rangers of the desert, exiles from their fatherland. They were the very types and models of those who have no abiding city here; therefore, for certain, though they died in hope, not having received the promise, we cannot believe that God deceived them. Their God was no mocker of them, and therefore they must live after death. They had lived in this poor life for something not seen as yet; and if there be no such thing, and no future life, they had been duped and cozened into a mistaken self-denial. If there be no life to come, the best philosophy is that which saith, ‘Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.’ Since these men put this life in pawn for the next, they were sadly mistaken if there be no such life. Do you not see the force of our Saviour’s reasoning? — God, who has led his people to abandon the present for the future, must justify their choice.

Besides, the Lord had staked his honour and his repute upon these men’s lives. ‘Do you want to know,’ saith he, ‘who I am? I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. If you want to know how I deal with my servants, go and look at the lives of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob.’ My brethren, as far as the earthly lives of the patriarchs can be written in human records, they are certainly full of God’s lovingkindness; but still there is nothing so remarkably joyous and majestic about them from a natural point of view as to make the Lord’s dealings with them appear to be specially wonderful. Others who feared not God have been as rich, and powerful, and honourable as they. Especially is the life of Jacob ploughed and cross-ploughed with affliction and trial. He spake the truth when he summed up his life in the words, ‘Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been.’ Does the Lord intend us to judge of his goodness to his servants from the written life of Jacob? or from the career of any one of his servants? The judgement must include the ages of an endless blessedness. This life is but the brief preface to the volume of our history. It is but the rough border, the selvage of the rich cloth of our being. These rippling streams of life come not to an end, but flow into the endless, shoreless ocean of bliss. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have long been enjoying felicity, and shall enjoy it throughout eternity. God is not ashamed to be called their God if you judge of the whole of their being; he would not have spoken thus if the visible were all, and there were no future to counterbalance the tribulations of this mortal life. God is not the God of the shortlived, who are so speedily dead; but he is the living God of an immortal race, whose present is but a dark passage into a bright future which can never end.

Yet further, to bring out the meaning here, God cannot be the God of the non-existent. The supposition is too absurd. Our Saviour does not argue about it, but he says so most peremptorily! God is not the God of the dead — that cannot be! If Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob are reduced to a handful of ashes, God cannot be at this moment their God. We cannot take a dead object to be our God, neither can Jehovah be a God to lifeless clay. God is not the God of putrefaction and annihilation. God is not the God of that which has ceased to be. We have but to put the idea into words to make it dissolve before the glance of reason. A living God is the God of living men; and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still alive. This even goes far to show that the bodies of these saints shall yet live. God reckons his covenanted ones to be alive. He saith, ‘The dead are raised.’ He reckons them to be raised; and as he reckons nothing falsely, it is said by way of anticipation. ‘Thy dead men shall live.’ Inasmuch as a portion of these chosen ones is still in the earth, God, who reckons things that are not as though they were, looks upon their bodies as possessing life, because they are to possess life so soon. God is not only the God of Abraham’s soul, but of Abraham as a whole, his body, soul, and spirit. God is the God of Abraham’s body; we are sure of that, because the covenant seal was set upon the flesh of Abraham. Where the doubt might be, there is the confirming seal, namely, in his mortal body. There was no seal set upon his soul, for the soul had life, and could not see death; but it was set upon his body, which would die, to make sure that even it would live. At this day we have baptism and the holy supper to be seals as to the body. I have sometimes thought to myself that it were better if there were no water baptism, seeing it has become the nest of so much superstition; and the Lord’s Supper, with all its blessed uses, has been so abused that one is apt to think that without outward ordinances there might be more spiritual religion; but the Lord intends that the materialism of man, and of creation, shall be uplifted; and that the body shall be raised incorruptible, and therefore has he given seals which touch the outward and material. The water wherein the body is washed, and the bread and wine whereby the body is nourished, are tokens that there cometh to us, not only spiritual and invisible blessings, but even such as shall redeem and purify our mortal body. The grave cannot hold any portion of the covenanted ones: eternal life is the portion of the whole man. God is the God of our entire manhood, spirit, soul, and body; and all live unto him in their entirety. The whole of the covenant shall be fulfilled to the whole of those with whom that covenant was made.

This is good reasoning to those who have gone beyond mere reason, and have ascended into the realm of faith. May the Holy Spirit grant unto us to be among them!

III. Thirdly, and very briefly, beloved friends: my text not only declares glorious relationship, and implies eternal life, but it also unveils somewhat scantily, but still sufficiently, what the glorious life must be. Look then and see the GLORIOUS LIFE UNVEILED.

It is clear that they live personally. It is not said, ‘I am the God of the whole body of the saints in one mass.’ But ‘I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.’ God will make his people to live individually. My mother, my father, my child, each will personally exist. God is the God of saints, as living distinct lives: Abraham is Abraham, Isaac is Isaac, Jacob is Jacob. The three patriarchs were not all melted into one common Abraham, nor Isaac into one imaginary Isaac; neither was any one so altered as to cease to be himself. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are all literally living as actual men, and the same men as they used to be. Jacob is Jacob, and not an echo of Abraham; Isaac is Isaac, and not a rehearsal of Jacob. All the saints are existent in their personality, identity, distinction, and idiosyncrasy.

What is more, the patriarchs are mentioned by their names; and so it is clear they are known: they are not three anonymous bodies, but Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Many enquire, ‘Shall we know our friends in heaven?’ Why should we not? The saints in heaven are never spoken of in Scripture as moving about anonymously; but their names are spoken of as written in the book of life. Why is this? The apostles knew Moses and Elias on the Mount, though they had never seen them before. I cannot forget old John Ryland’s answer to his wife: ‘John,’ she said, ‘will you know me in heaven?’ ‘Betty,’ he replied, ‘I have known you well here, and I shall not be a bigger fool in heaven than I am now; therefore I shall certainly know you there.’ That seems to be clear enough. We read in the New Testament, ‘They shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven’; not sit down with three unknown individuals in iron masks, or three impersonalities who make a part of the great pan, nor three spirits who are as exactly alike as pins made in a factory; but Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That is clear enough in the text.

That glorious life, while it is a personal and a known life, is also free from all sorrow, and misery, and earthly grossness. They are neither married nor given in marriage, neither shall they die any more; but they are as the angels of God. It is a life of perfect blessedness, a life of hallowed worship, a life of undivided glory. Oh, that we were in it! Oh that we may soon reach it! Let us think of the many who are enjoying it now, and of those who have attained to it during the last few days. I am sure they are at home in every golden street, and fully engaged in the adoration and worship of their Lord. Those saints who have been in glory now these thousands of years cannot be more blest than the latest arrivals. Within a very short space you and I shall be among the shining ones. Some of us may spend our next Sabbath with the angels. Let us rejoice and be glad at the bare thought of it. Some of us are not doomed to live here through another winter: we shall pass beyond these autumn fogs into the golden light of the eternal summer before another Christmas day has come. Oh the joy which ought to thrill through our souls at the thought of such amazing bliss!

And now, taking the whole subject together, I want to say a few familiar things about the influence which all this ought to have upon us.

Concerning those that have gone before us, we gather from this whole text that they are not lost. We know where they are. Neither have they lost anything, for they are what they were, and more. Abraham has about him still everything that is Abrahamic; he is Abraham still. And Isaac has everything about him that properly belongs to Isaac; and Jacob has all about him that makes him God’s Israel. These good men have lost nothing that really appertained to their individuality, nothing that made them precious in the sight of the Lord. They have gained infinitely; they have developed gloriously. They are Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob now at their best; or rather they are waiting till the trumpet of the resurrection shall sound, when their bodies also shall be united to their spirits, and then Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob will be completely Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, world without end. We are by no means deprived of our dear ones by their death: they are; they are themselves; and they are ours still. As Abraham is not lost to Isaac, nor to Jacob, nor to God, nor to himself; so are our beloved ones by no means lost to us. Do not let us think of them then as if they were lost. I know your sorrows make an excursion to the grave, to look there for the deceased ones. You want to lift that coffin lid, and to unwrap the shroud. Oh, do not so, do not so! He is not here; the real man has gone. He may be dead to you for a while, but he lives unto God. Yes, the dead one liveth, he liveth unto God. Do but anticipate the passage of that little time, which is almost gone while I am speaking of it, and then your Saviour’s angels shall sound their golden trumpets, and at the welcome noise the grave shall open its portals, and resign its captives. ‘Thy brother shall rise again.’ Wherefore, comfort one another with these words. Shaftesbury is as much Shaftesbury as ever, and even more so. We have parted with the earl, but the saint liveth: he has gone past yonder veil into the next room, and there he is before the Lord of Hosts. He has gone out of this dim, dusky, cloudy chamber into the bright, pearly light that streameth from the throne of God and of the Lamb. We have nothing to sorrow about in reference to what he is or where he is. So, too, your valued parents, and beloved children, and choice friends — they are yours still. Herein is great cause for thankfulness. Put aside your sackcloth, and wear the garments of hope; lay down the sackbut, and take up the trumpet. Draw not the beloved bodies to the cemetery with dreary pomp, and with black horses; but cover the coffin with sweet flowers, and drape the horses with emblems of hope. It is the better birthday of the saint, yea, his truer wedding-day. Is it sad to have done with sadness? Is it sorrowful to part with sorrow? Nay rather, when joy beginneth to our friends, where glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s land, we may in sympathy sing, as it were, a new song, and tune our harps to the melodies of the glorified.

I want you also to recollect that the departed have not become members of another race; they have not been transferred into another family; they are still men, still women, still of our kindred dear; their names are in the same family register on earth, and in heaven. Oh, no, no! do not dream that they are separated, and exiled; they have gone to the home country: we are the exiles; they it is who are at home. We are en route for the fatherland; they are not so far from us as we think. Sin worked to divide them from us, and us from them while we were here together; but since sin is now taken away from them, one dividing element is gone. When it is also removed from us, we shall be nearer to each other than we could have been while we were both sinful. Do not let us think of them as sundered far, for we are one in Christ.

And they are not gone over to the other side in the battle. Oh, do not speak of them as dead and lying on the battlefield: they live, they live in sympathy with our divine conflict. They have marched through the enemy’s country; they have fought their fight, and taken possession of their inheritance. They are still on our side, though we miss them from the daily service. When you number up the hosts of God, you must not forget the godlike bands that have fought the good fight, and kept the faith, and finished their course. They are in the armies of the Lord, though not at this moment resisting unto blood. The hundred and forty-four thousand sealed unto the Lord include in their ranks all who are with God, whether here or in heaven.

“One family we dwell in him,

    One church, above, beneath,

Though now divided by the stream,

    The narrow stream of death.”

Our sacramental host marches onward to the New Jerusalem. Certain of the legionaries have forded the dividing flood. I see them ascending the other side! The hither bank of the river is white with their rising companies. Lo! I hear the splash of the ranks before us as they steadily pass down into the chill stream; in deep silence we see them solemnly wading through the billows. The host is ever marching on, marching on. The much dreaded stream lies a little before us: it is but a silver streak. We are to the margin come. We shudder not at the prospect. We follow the blessed footsteps of our Lord and his redeemed. We are all one army still: we are not losing our men; they are simply ascending from the long campaign to take their endless rewards at the Lord’s right hand.

What then? Why, then, we will take up their work. If they have gone into the upper chamber to rest, we will make up their lack of service in this lower room. The work they did was so human that we will not allow a stitch to drop, but take it up where they left it, and persevere in earnest. They are in glory, but they were not glorified when they were here. The work they did was done by men of such infirmities as ours; so let us not fear to go on where they left off, and perpetuate the work which they rejoiced in. There lies the plough in the furrow, and the oxen are standing still, for Shamgar, the champion, is gone. Will no one lay hold of the plough handles? Will nobody urge the oxen with the goad? Young men, are you idling? Here is work for you. Are you hiding yourselves: Come forward, I pray you in the name of the great Husbandman, and let the fields be tilled, and sown with the good seed. Who will fill the gap made by death? Who will be baptized for the dead? Who will bear the banner now that a standard-bearer has fallen? I hope some consecrated voice will answer, ‘Here am I; send me.’

For, last of all, brethren, we may expect the same succours as they received who have gone before. Jehovah saith that he is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; but he also saith, ‘I am the God of your father.’ The father of Moses had the Lord to be his God. That God is the God of my father, blessed be his name. As I took the old man by his hand yesterday, at the age of seventy-six, I could not but rejoice in all the faithfulness of the Lord to him and to his house. He was the God of my father’s father also; I cannot forget how the venerable man laid his hands upon his grandchild, and blessed him; and the blessing is with him still. Yes, and he is the God of my children, and he shall be the God of my children’s children; for he keepeth covenant to thousands of them that love him. Wherefore take courage, men and brethren! This God is your God. He is a God to you, and you are a people to him. Act as his true servants. Live as those that are elect. If you are his choice, be choice characters. The chosen should be the best, should they not? The elect should be especially distinguished above all others by their conversation and their fervent zeal for him that chose them. As you shall rise from among the dead, because the Lord Jesus hath redeemed you from among men, so stand up from among the dead and corrupt mass of this world, and be alive unto God, through Jesus Christ your Lord. What manner of people ought ye to be who serve the living God? Since the living God hath manifested himself so wonderfully to you, ought you not to live unto him to the utmost? God bless you for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

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Mr Spurgeon is a Calvinist, which few of the dissenting ministers in London now are. He preaches salvation, not of man’s free will, but of the Lord’s good will, which few in London, it is to be feared, now do.
John Anderson of Helensburgh
The Early Years, p. 339.

I do not hesitate to say, that next to the doctrine of the crucifixion and the resurrection of our blessed Lord – no doctrine had such prominence in the early Christian Church as the doctrine of the election of grace.
C.H.S., Sermons, 6, 302.

The doctrine of grace has been put by in the lumber chamber. It is acknowledged to be true, for it is confessed in most creeds; it is in the Church of England articles, it is in the confessions of all sorts of Protestant Christians, except those who are avowedly Arminian, but how little is it ever preached! It is put among the relics of the past. It is considered to be a respectable sort of retired officer, who is not expected to see any more active service.
C.H.S., Sermons, 12, 429.

In the previous chapter we sought to recover the image of Spurgeon as he was in the days of his New Park Street ministry. The picture which emerged was not that of a jovial pulpit phenomenon upon whom men lavished their praise but rather of a youth whose arrival amidst the soothing and sleepy religious life of London was about as unwelcome as the Russian cannons which were then thundering in the far-off Crimea. The facts come as somewhat of a jolt to us, for we have more or less become accustomed to look upon Spurgeon as a benign grandfather of modern evangelicalism. When the revival of 1855 and onwards shook Southwark out of its spiritual slumber, the name of the pastor of New Park Street was a symbol of reproach, and blows were rained on him from every direction; the name has since been turned into a symbol of evangelical respectability and we tend to comfort ourselves amidst the prevailing defection from evangelical principles with the thought that the religious world has still some remembrance of a man holding our position whose influence not so many years ago encircled the globe. Yet when we recall the real character of his ministry our comfort may evaporate, for we are faced with the question, not how much we admire Spurgeon, but what would a man like this think of the church today?

We have already spoken of the general characteristics of his early life and they need to be borne in mind as we turn to more detailed aspects of the doctrine he preached. It would be an injustice to the man in any way to separate the truth which he held from the spirit in which he lived. His doctrinal convictions were not formulated in the cool detachment of intellectual study. Rather they were burned into him by the Holy Spirit, irradiated by his love for his Redeemer, and kept fresh in his ministry by communion with God. Spurgeon had little sympathy for men who held an orthodox system which was devoid of the living unction of the Spirit.

One of the first attacks which was made on Spurgeon’s ministry after his settlement in London came from a section of the Baptist community which could at that time be described as ‘Hyper-Calvinist’. The label is not one that Spurgeon liked to use, for he regarded the introduction of the great Reformer’s name as a misnomer: ‘Calvinists, such men may call themselves, but, unlike the Reformer, whose name they adopt, they bring a system of divinity to the Bible to interpret it, instead of making every system, be its merits what they may, yield, and give place to the pure and unadulterated Word of God.’ In the January 1855 issue of The Earthen Vessel, an anonymous writer of this school cast doubt on Spurgeon’s whole position and call to the ministry. Spurgeon’s untraditional phraseology, the crowds which followed him, his general invitations and exhortations to all hearers to repent and believe the gospel, and the ‘broadness’ of his theology were all grounds for suspicion. He was neither narrow enough nor discriminating enough for his critic, who complained: ‘Spurgeon preaches all doctrine and no doctrine; all experience, and therefore no experience.’

For a reason which will later be apparent, the youthful preacher was not concerned to meet this attack; nevertheless he did sometimes pause in the course of a sermon to deal with  the views of the Hyper-Calvinists. Sometimes his reflections are semi-humorous, as the following:

Is there not many a good ‘Hyper’ brother, who has a full knowledge of the doctrines of grace; but when he is reading the Bible, one day, he finds a text that looks rather wide and general, and he says, ‘This cannot mean what it says; I must trim it down and make it fit into Dr Gill’s commentary’?

More often he deals much more sharply with the principles which lead to this kind of practice, for Hyper-Calvinism not only causes personal lopsidedness, but what is more serious, it prevents a full preaching of the gospel.¹

I do not believe [he declares in the course of a sermon on the Good Samaritan] in the way in which some people pretend to preach the gospel. They have no gospel for sinners as sinners, but only for those who  are above the dead level of sinnership, and are technically styled sensible sinners.

We must break the quotation for a moment to clarify his terminology: Hyper-Calvinism in its attempt to square all gospel truth with God’s purpose to save the elect, denies there is a universal command to repent and believe, and asserts that we have only warrant to invite to Christ those who are conscious of a sense of sin and need. In other words, it is those who have been spiritually quickened to seek a Saviour and not those who are in the death of unbelief and indifference, to whom the exhortations of the gospel must be addressed.

In this way a scheme was devised for restricting the gospel to those who, there is reason to suppose, are elect. Spurgeon continues:

Like the priest in this parable, they see the poor sinner, and they say ‘He is not conscious of his need, we cannot invite him to Christ’; ‘He is dead,’ they say, ‘it is of no use preaching to dead souls’; so they pass by on the other side, keeping close to the elect and quickened, but having nothing whatever to say to the dead, lest they should make out Christ to be too gracious, and his mercy to be too free . . . I have known ministers say, ‘Well, you know, we ought to describe the sinner’s state, and warn him, but we must not invite him to Christ.’ Yes, gentlemen, you must pass by on the other side, after having looked at him, for on your own confession you have no good news for the poor wretch. I bless my Lord and Master he has given me a gospel which I can take to dead sinners, a gospel which is available for the vilest of the vile.²

Spurgeon was urgent upon this issue because he saw that if the sinner’s warrant for receiving the gospel lies in any internal qualifications or feelings, then the unconverted, as such, have no immediate duty to believe on Christ, and they may conclude that because they do not feel any penitence or need, the command to believe on the Son of God is not addressed to them. On the other hand, if the warrant rests not in anything in the sinner but solely in the command and invitations of God, then we have a message for every creature under heaven. Spurgeon did not believe that the fact of election should be concealed from the unconverted, but he held that Hyper-Calvinism, by directing men’s attention away from the centrality of personal faith in Christ, had distorted³ the New Testament emphasis and bolstered up complacency in unbelievers. It had alleged that because faith is wrought in man by the power of the Spirit of God, then we cannot command men to believe, but in so doing it by-passed the stark fact that unbelief is always presented to us in Scripture as sin for which we are responsible: ‘If you had not fallen you would come to Christ the moment he was preached to you; but you do not because of your sinfulness.’ Man’s failure to comply with the gospel, instead of being excusable, is the highest expression of his depravity.

It should be clear from this that Hyper-Calvinism is more than a mere theoretical deviation from the gospel, and Spurgeon spoke strongly because he knew by experience that it reduces churches to inactivity or even complete paralysis. ‘I have met with some brethren who have tried to read the Bible the wrong way upwards. They have said, “God has a purpose which is certain to be fulfilled, therefore we will not budge an inch. All power is in the hands of Christ, therefore we will sit still;” but that is not Christ’s way of reading the passage. It is, “All power is given unto me, therefore go ye, and do something.”’⁴ ‘The lazy-bones of our orthodox churches cry, “God will do His own work”; and then they look out the softest pillow they can find, and put it under their heads, and say, “The eternal purposes will be carried out: God will be glorified.” That is all very fine talk, but it can be used with the most mischievous design. You can make opium out of it, which will lull you into a deep and dreadful slumber, and prevent your being of any kind of use at all.’⁵

At no point was Hyper-Calvinism more seriously at fault, in Spurgeon’s eyes, than in its failure to be characterized by zeal for militant and world-wide evangelism. While he knew that not a few Christians of this persuasion were better than their creed, he saw clearly that both the theological and historical evidence indicated that the influence of this teaching never promoted earnest missionary work. If the gospel is only for sensible sinners, how then can the church act under the compulsion of her commission to ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature’? If the warrant to believe only belongs to the penitent, then it does not belong to all men everywhere, for the multitudes of the earth are not in that condition:

I would like to carry one of those who only preach to sensible sinners, and set him down in the capital of the kingdom of Dahomey. There are no sensible sinners there! Look at them, with their mouths stained with human blood, with their bodies smeared all over with the gore of their immolated victims – how will the preacher find any qualification there? I know not what he could say, but I know what my message would be. My word would run thus – ‘Men and brethren, God, who made the heavens and the earth, hath sent His Son Jesus Christ into the world to suffer for our sins, and whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.⁶

‘The day was,’ he says in another sermon, ‘when the very idea of sending the gospel to the heathen was regarded by our orthodox brethren as a piece of Don Quixotism, not to be attempted, and even now, if you say, “All the world for Jesus,” they open their eyes and say, “Ah, we are afraid you are tainted with universal redemption, or are going off to the Arminian camp.” God grant these dear brethren new hearts and right spirits; at present their hearts are too small to bring Him much glory. May they get larger hearts, hearts something like their Lord’s, and may they have grace given them to estimate the precious blood at a higher rate, for our Lord did not die to buy a few hundred of souls, or to redeem to Himself a handful of people; He shed His blood for a number which no man can number, and His elect shall excel in multitude the sands which belt the sea.’⁷

The above quotations are vitally important for a variety of reasons, Firstly, they indicate that there is a real difference between Biblical Calvinism and Hyper-Calvinism. The latter term is sometimes used as though it were simply a stronger formulation of Scriptural doctrines – something beyond a ‘moderate’ position – but this is an incorrect usage, for the system deviates seriously from Scripture and falls short of Scripture. Another wrong usage of the term, which is even more common, is for the label ‘hyper-’ or ‘ultra-’ Calvinist to be attached to those who are in fact opposed to Hyper-Calvinism. Being ignorant of the distinct theological differences which separate Hyper-Calvinism from the faith of the Reformers and Puritans, and being unaware of its different historical origins, some critics use the phrase as though it were the most suitable to describe anyone who is earnest in opposing the tenets of Arminianism. But while this may be a convenient way to brand ‘extremists’, it reveals the spiritual muddle of those who thus use it. Spurgeon, however, had frequently to put up with this treatment and it is not unknown today.

If the reader turns to the twentieth-century biographies of Spurgeon he will have no difficulty in finding references to the preacher’s opposition to the ‘hyper’ school. J. C. Carlile, for example, says, ‘Naturally Mr Spurgeon’s theology often brought him into controversy,’ and he immediately proceeds to mention the controversy we have sketched above. We are left with the impression that Spurgeon was just like we are – opposed to extremes, and we are confirmed in this feeling when we are told by W. Y. Fullerton that ‘he broke away from the sterner school’.⁸ Of course we are given a vague statement of Spurgeon’s Calvinism, but Carlile adds that ‘the stern truths of the Calvinist faith were held practically by all Protestants’.⁹ So with such assurances we are unsuspectingly allowed to suppose that the doctrinal content of Spurgeon’s preaching caused no great uproar in the religious world of his day. This is all thoroughly misleading. The twentieth-century biographers have in fact entirely passed over the greatest controversy of his early ministry; there is not even a whisper of the word which echoes through the six volumes of the New Park Street sermons; it cannot be found in the indexes to these biographies. Why should modern evangelicals be so much concerned to make the word ‘Arminianism’ vanish away?¹⁰

Whatever the purpose, this method of dealing with Spurgeon has quite effectively created an impression of the man which has wide currency today; yet we believe this impression of the nature of Spurgeon’s ‘evangelicalism’ is one which a study of his autobiography and a study of his unabridged sermons thoroughly demolishes. When a small selection of his sermons, entitled Revival Year Sermons, was published in 1959 to commemorate the revival of a century earlier, some British reviewers could not refrain from expressing their feeling that the sermons were ‘hand-picked’ in an attempt to put over a party position which was not really Spurgeonic at all, and when the same sermons were translated into Spanish by a minister of that country, Spanish Baptists questioned the veracity of the translation! We may smile at the story of the Victorian schoolboy who thought that Spurgeon was the Prime Minister of England but it seems there are similar wild ideas about what kind of man he really was, current at the present time.

In expanding these statements it is first necessary to show that the prevalent doctrinal outlook in the 1850s was not Calvinistic, as Carlile affirms, but rather Arminian, and it was chiefly because Spurgeon stood against this that his arrival in London was looked upon with such disfavour by the religious world. Spurgeon’s exchanges with Hyper-Calvinism were only skirmishes compared to the battle which he had to fight on quite a different and much wider front; he judged that Hyper-Calvinism was held only by a group, with comparatively small and scattered influence, within the Baptist denomination, whereas he regarded Arminianism as an error which was influential throughout Nonconformity, as well as within the Church of England. He consequently devoted more time and energy to the exposing of the latter, and the correctness of his assessment of the position is borne out by the strength of the opposition he soon encountered.

The few religious periodicals which favoured Hyper-Calvinism could never have caused the storm which raged round Spurgeon’s ministry in its early years. The newspapers generally, religious and secular, were indeed so far from Hyper-Calvinism that they were not even aware that Spurgeon was opposed by Hyper-Calvinists!

There is no shortage of literary evidence indicating that Spurgeon’s doctrinal position was his chief offence in the eyes of his contemporaries. For example, Silas Henn introduced his book Spurgeon’s Calvinism Examined and Refuted, published in 1858, with these words:

By many, the Calvinistic controversy has been considered as long since settled, and comparatively few in these times, amid such enlightened views of Christianity, dare to proclaim, openly and without disguise, the peculiar tenets of John Calvin. Even in many professedly Calvinistic pulpits, the doctrines are greatly modified, and genuine Calvinism is kept back. But there are some who hold it forth in all its length and breadth, and among these, the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, the notorious preacher at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens, is the most prominent.

The same criticism is commonly to be found in many of the newspapers of that period. The Bucks Chronicle accused Spurgeon of making Hyper-Calvinism essential for entrance to heaven; The Freeman deplored that he denounced Arminians ‘in almost every sermon’; The Christian News likewise decried his ‘doctrines of the most rampant exclusiveness’ and his opposition to Arminianism; and The Saturday Review was pained, as we have noted earlier, at the profanity of his preaching ‘Particular Redemption in saloons reeking with the perfume of tobacco’. Perhaps The Patriot, a Nonconformist journal, best summarized in the following broadside why they were all so much offended at the young preacher:

All, in turn, come under the lash of the precocious tyro. He alone is a consistent Calvinist; all besides are either rank Arminians, licentious Antinomians, or unfaithful professors of the doctrines of grace. College training does but wean young men’s sympathies from the people; and ‘really ploughmen would make a great deal better preachers’. The doctrine of election is, ‘in our age, scorned and hated’. ‘The time-serving religion of the present day’ is ‘only exhibited in evangelical drawing rooms’. ‘How many pious preachers are there on the Sabbath-day who are very impious preachers during the rest of the week!’ He ‘never hears’ his brother ministers ‘assert the positive satisfaction and substitution of our Lord Jesus Christ’. These fishers of men ‘have been spending all their life fishing with most elegant silk lines and gold and silver hooks, but the fish will not bite for all that; whereas we of the rougher sort’, adds the self-complacent censor, ‘have put the hook into the jaws of hundreds’. Still ‘rougher’, if possible, is Mr Spurgeon’s treatment of theologians not of his own especial school. ‘Arminian perversions’, in particular, are to ‘sink back to their birthplace in the pit’. Their notion of the possibility of a final fall from grace is ‘the wickedest falsehood on earth’.¹¹

These quotations are coloured by the annoyance of the writers but they are all unanimous in two charges: namely that Spurgeon’s doctrine was not that which was characteristic of contemporary Protestantism and secondly that he openly and repeatedly opposed Arminianism. Instead of clearing himself from the guilt of these charges Spurgeon readily accepted them.¹² ‘We need not be ashamed of our pedigree,’ he says, ‘although Calvinists are now considered to be heterodox.’ His estimate of the religious situation was that the church was being tempted ‘with Arminianism by the wholesale’¹³ and that her primary need was not simply more evangelism nor even more holiness (in the first place) but a return to the full truth of the doctrines of grace – which, for convenience, he was prepared to name as Calvinism. It is clear that Spurgeon did not view himself simply as an evangelist but also as a reformer whose duty it was ‘to give more prominence in the religious world to those old doctrines of the gospel’¹⁴ . . . ‘The old truth that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, that Paul preached, is the truth that I must preach today, or else be false to my conscience and my God. I cannot shape the truth; I know of no such thing as paring off the rough edges  of a doctrine. John Knox’s gospel is my gospel. That which thundered through Scotland must thunder through England again.’¹⁵ These words take us back to the heart of his New Park Street ministry; there is a reforming zeal and prophetic fire about the man which, while it awakened some, aroused others to wrath and hostility. Spurgeon spoke as a man convinced that he knew the reason for the church’s ineffectiveness, and though he might have to say it alone, he would not be silent:

There has sprung up in the Church of Christ an idea that there are many things taught in the Bible which are not essential; that we may alter them just a little to suit our convenience: that provided we are right in the fundamentals, the other things are of no concern . . . But this know, that the slightest violation of the divine law will bring judgments upon the Church, and has brought judgments, and is even at this day withholding God’s hand from blessing us . . . The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible is the religion of Christ’s Church. And until we come back to that the Church will have to suffer . . .

Ah, how many have there been who have said, ‘The old puritanic principles are too rough for these times; we’ll alter them, we’ll tone them down a little.’ What are you at, Sir? Who art thou that darest to touch a single letter of God’s Book which God has hedged about with thunder, in that tremendous sentence, wherein He has written, ‘Whosoever shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book; and whosoever shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city.’ It becomes an awful thing when we come to think about it, for men not to form a right and proper judgment about God’s Word; for man to leave a single point in it uncanvassed, a single mandate unstudied, lest we shall lead others astray, while we ourselves are acting in disobedience to God . . .

Our victories of the Church have not been like the victories of the olden times. Why is this? My theory to account for it is this. In the first place, the absence of the Holy Spirit in a great measure from us. But if you come to the root of it to know the reason, my fuller other answer is this: the Church has forsaken her original purity, and therefore, she has lost her power. If once we had done with everything erroneous, if by the unanimous will of the entire body of Christ, every evil ceremony, every ceremony not ordained of Scripture were lopped off and done with; if every doctrine were rejected which is not sustained by Holy Writ; if the Church were pure and clean, her path would be onward, triumphant, victorious . . .

This may seem to you to be of little consequence, but it really is a matter of life and death. I would plead with every Christian – think it over, my dear brother. When some of us preach Calvinism, and some Arminianism, we cannot both be right; it is of no use trying to think we can be – ‘Yes’, and ‘no’, cannot both be true . . . Truth does not vacillate like the pendulum which shakes backwards and forwards. It is not like the comet, which is here, there, and everywhere. One must be right; the other wrong.¹⁶

This reforming element in Spurgeon’s early ministry can only be rightly interpreted if we understand his convictions on the theological drift of his age. He believed that God had called him to stand for a reviving of the old Calvinistic evangelicalism once predominant in England and it was because this conviction was so intertwined with the course of his ministry during his first years in London that he has a chapter in his autobiography, at this point, entitled A Defence of Calvinism.¹⁷ An interesting letter of Spurgeon’s which has only recently come to light bears out the same point. The letter is to Charles Spiller, a Baptist minister in Chipping Campden, and while Spurgeon mentions the attack he has suffered from the Hyper-Calvinistic quarter in The Earthen Vessel, it is plain that his main attention is turned in quite a different direction. He rejoices that, through the platform of Exeter Hall, God has given him an opportunity to disturb the general religious malaise which he believed to be connected with an absence of the old orthodoxy.

75 Dover-road,
Boro.
13th February, 1855.

My Dear Brother,

Amid the labour of an enormous correspondence I yet find a moment to acknowledge your note. I bless God that I have sounded an alarm in Zion for I find the sound has gone forth. You may conceive my position, a young man under 21 preaching on that occasion to all the ministers ofLondon (nearly), but I thank God I never yet feared man and although last Sabbath more than 4,000 were assembled in Exeter Hall, though every inch was occupied and they clinging to pillars and everywhere, yet I feel unawed by it, for the God within makes even the Babe mighty. My position, as Pastor of one of the most influential churches, enables me to make myself heard and my daily labour is to revive the old doctrines of Gill, Owen, Calvin, Augustine and Christ. My sermons are printed weekly, I enclose one – the sale is great – and you can procure them at your bookseller by order. They are also printed in the Penny Pulpits.

If you have ever seen The Earthen Vessel you will see how I have been attacked, and set down as a deceiver – the consequence has been that more interest was excited, all the Earthen Vessels were sold –- hundreds of rejoinders were sent to the Editor – while I have quietly looked on, and rejoiced that all things work together for good. I think you will be amused if you read that magazine for December, January and February. I am not very easily put down, I go right on and care for no man on God’s earth. You may well pray that I may be kept near to God, for with knocks up, and kicks down – if I did not lean on His arm I were of all men most miserable. It is no easy matter to be belaboured, both by high and low, and stand still firm. I bless God my church increases at a hopeful rate, 20 to hear tonight before the church, and more to come. All honour to God – for His name I can bear reproach – but the truth I must proclaim. Your note is like a flower in winter – it has the bloom of the summer on it, oh, to have Christ in the Heart, the Holy Ghost in the soul and glory in prospect – for this we might well barter worlds, and for this let us strive not only in words in the pulpit but in verity and truth in our closets alone with our Father.

I am,
Yours fraternally,
C. H. Spurgeon.¹⁸

That it was his emphasis on reviving the old doctrine which aroused intense opposition to his ministry, Spurgeon had not the slightest doubt: ‘We are cried down as hypers; we are reckoned the scum of creation; scarcely a minister looks on us or speaks favourably of us, because we hold strong views upon the divine sovereignty of God, and his divine electings and special love towards his own people.’¹⁹ Preaching to his own congregation in 1860 he said:

There has been no single church of God existing in England for these fifty years which has had to pass through more trial than we have done . . . scarce a day rolls over my head in which the most villainous abuse, the most fearful slander is not uttered against me both privately and by the public press; every engine is employed to put down God’s minister – every lie that man can invent is hurled at me . . . They have not checked our usefulness as a church; they have not thinned our congregations; that which was to be but a spasm – an enthusiasm which it was hoped would only last an hour – God has daily increased; not because of me, but because of that gospel which I preach; not because there was anything in me, but because I came out as the exponent of plain, straight-forward, honest Calvinism, and because I seek to speak the Word simply.²⁰

Spurgeon was not surprised at the enmity that was manifested towards his proclamation of the doctrines of grace: ‘Brethren, in all our hearts there is this natural enmity to God and to the sovereignty of His grace.’²¹ ‘I have known men bite their lip and grind their teeth in rage when I have been preaching the sovereignty of God . . . The doctrinaires of today will allow a God, but he must not be a King: that is to say, they choose a god who is no god, and rather the servant than the ruler of men.’²²

The fact that conversion and salvation are of God, is an humbling truth. It is because of its humbling character that men do not like it. To be told that God must save me if I am saved, and that I am in his hand, as clay is in the hands of the potter, ‘I do not like it’, saith one. Well, I thought you would not; whoever dreamed you would?²³

On the other hand Spurgeon regarded Arminianism as popular because it served to approximate the gospel more to the thinking of the natural man; it brought the doctrine of the Scripture nearer to the mind of the world. The common view of Christianity was accepted by men simply because it was not the teaching of Christ: ‘Had the religion of Christ taught us that man was a noble being, only a little fallen – had the religion of Christ taught that Christ had taken away by His blood, sin from every man, and that every man by his own free-will, without divine grace, might be saved – it were indeed a most acceptable religion to the mass of men.’²⁴ The sting in Spurgeon’s comment was occasioned by the fact that this was precisely what a superficial Protestantism was preaching as the Christian Faith! So in attacking the worldly notions of Christianity which were current, Spurgeon could not help also undermining what so many within the church were actually preaching. No wonder there was a great uproar! But Spurgeon did not flinch, for he believed the old truths were powerful enough to turn his age upside down.

Featured Image:

Jacques-Laurent Agasse, 1767–1849, Swiss, active in Britain (from 1800), Old Smithfield Market, 1824, Oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B2001.2.252. Public Domain.

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