Secular vs. Sacred

Dear Brethren, it is to be feared that many of us are not separated enough from the world. God intends the difference to be very marked; he would have the line between the church and the world drawn very clearly. I could wish to obliterate for ever the unhappy and artificial distinction which is constantly made between sacred and secular, for a world of mischief has come out of it. The truth is that a real Christian may be known by this, that to him everything secular is sacred, and the commonest matters are holiness unto the Lord. I do not believe in the religion which only lifts its head above water on Sunday, and confines itself to praying and preaching and carrying hymn books about: we must have a religion which gives a true yard when it is measuring its calicoes, a religion which weighs a true pound when it is dealing out shop goods, a religion which scorns to puff and lie, and take advantage of a gullible public, a religion which is true, upright, chaste, kind, and unselfish.


Give me a man who would not lie if all the whole earth or heaven itself were to be won thereby. We need among professed Christians a high morality; nay, far more, we need unsullied holiness. O, Holy Spirit, work it in us all! As we have often said, holiness means wholeness of character in contradistinction to the cultivation of some few virtues and the neglect of others. Oh that we were like the Lord in this, that we loved only that which is right, and abhorred that which is evil; that we kept along the straight and narrow path, and could not be decoyed from it, fearing not the frown of man nor courting his smile, but resolved as God lives in us that we will live in our daily actions according to his will. This would make Christians to be indeed a separated people, and this is precisely what their God would have them to be.From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Solomon's Plea," delivered May 2, 1875. 

O, to Really Pray!

"Oh! to have heard Luther pray!

Luther, you know, when Melancthon was dying, went to his death-bed, and said, “Melancthon, you shall not die!”

“Oh,” said Melancthon, “I must die! It is a world of toil and trouble.”

“Melancthon,” said he, “I have need of thee, and God’s cause has need of thee, and as my name is Luther, thou shalt not die!”

The physician said he would.

Well, down went Luther on his knees, and began to tug at death. Old death struggled mightily for Melancthon, and he had got him well nigh on his shoulders.

“Drop him,” said Luther, “drop him, I want him.”

“Ho,” said death, “he is my prey, I will take him!”

“Down with him,” said Luther, “down with him, death, or I will wrestle with thee!”

And he seemed to take hold of the grim monster, and hurl him to the ground, and he came off victorious, like Orpheus with his wife, up from the very shades of death. He had delivered Melancthon from death by prayer!

“Oh,” say you, “that is an extraordinary case.” No, beloved, not one-half so extraordinary as you dream. I have men and women here who have done the same in other cases; that have asked a thing of God, and have had it; that have been to the throne, and showed a promise, and said they would not come away without its fulfillment, and have come back from God’s throne conquerors of the Almighty; for prayer moves the arm that moves the world."

As recounted by Charles Spurgeon

Can We Bear It?

Many would be saints if everybody would encourage them; but as soon as a hard word is spoken they are offended. They would go to heaven if they could travel there amidst the hosannas of he multitude, but when they hear the cry of “Crucify him, crucify him,” straightway they desert the man of Nazareth, for they have no intention to share his cross, or to be despised and rejected of men.

The true saints of God are prepared to endure scoffing, and jeering, and scorning; they accept this cross without murmuring, remembering him who endured such contradiction of sinners against himself. They know that their brethren who went before “resisted unto blood, striving against sin,” and as they have not yet come to that point, they count it foul scorn that they should be ashamed or confounded in minor trials, let their adversaries do what they may. Those who are to sing Christ’s praise in heaven must first have been willing to bear Christ’s shame below. Numbered with him in the humiliation must they be, or they cannot expect to be partakers with him in the glory. 

And now, dear brethren and sisters, how is it with us? Are we willing to be reproached for Christ’s glory? Can we bear the sarcasm of the wise? Can we bear the jest of the witty?

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "A Voice From Heaven."