My Year With Spurgeon: Week 51

I believe that many of us, whilst we have sought to learn by books, have neglected those great volumes which God has given us; we have neglected to study this great book, the Bible! moreover, perhaps, we have not been careful enough students of the great volume of nature, and we have forgotten that other great book, the human heart. ~ Charles Spurgeon, What Are The Clouds?

I like to read the book of my fellow creatures; nothing delights me so much as when I see a multitude of them gathered together, or when I have the opportunity of having their hearts poured into mine, and mine into theirs. He will not be a wise man who does not study the human heart, and does not seek to know something of his fellows and of himself. But if there be one book I love to read above all others, next to the book of God, it is the volume of nature. I care not what letters they are that I read, whether they be the golden spellings of the name of God up yonder in the stars, or whether I read, in rougher lines, his name printed on the rolling floods, or see it hieroglyphed in the huge mountain, the dashing cataract, or the waving forest. Wherever I look abroad in nature I love to discern my Father’s name spelled out in living characters. ~ Charles Spurgeon, What Are The Clouds?

Look at God, and at whatever he has deigned to do, and you will always see him to have been a hidden God. He has concealed himself, and all his ways have been veiled in the strictest mystery. Consider his works of salvation. How did he hide himself when he determined to save mankind? He did not manifestly reveal himself to our forefathers. He gave them simply one dim lamp of prophecy which shone in words like these “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head;” and for four thousand years God concealed his Son in mystery, and no one understood what the Son of God was to be. The smoking incense beclouded their eyes, and while it showed something of Jesus, it did hide far more. The burning victim sent its smoke up towards the sky, and it was only through the dim mists of the sacrifice that the pious Jew could see the Saviour. Angels themselves, we are told, desired to look into the mysteries of redemption, yet though they stood with their eyes intently fixed upon it, until the hour when redemption developed itself on Cavalry, not a single angel could understand it. The profoundest sage might have sought to find out how God could be just and yet the justifier of the ungodly; but he would have failed in his investigations. The most intensely pious man might meditate, with the help of that portion of God’s Spirit which was then given to the prophets, on this mighty subject, and he could not have discovered what the mystery of godliness was—“God manifest in the flesh.” ~ Charles Spurgeon, What Are The Clouds?

Ah! it does not matter how heavy troubles are if you can cast them on the Lord. The heavier they are so much the better, for the more you have got rid of, and the more there is laid upon the Rock. Never be afraid of troubles. However heavy they are, God’s eternal shoulders can bear them. He, whose omnipotence is testified by revolving planets, and systems of enormous worlds, can well sustain you. ~ Charles Spurgeon, What Are The Clouds?

I do not know whether Christendom was ever worse off than it is now. At any rate, I pray God it never may be... Wherever I have gone through England, I have been always grieved to see how the glory of Zion is under a cloud; how the precious saints of Zion, comparable to fine gold have become like earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter. It is not for me to set myself up as universal censor of the church, but I must be honest and say, that spiritual life, and fire, and zeal, and piety, seemed to be absent in ten thousand instances. We have abundance of agencies, we have good mechanism but the church, now-a-days is very much like a large steam engine, without any fire, without any hot water in the boiler, without any steam. There is everything but steam, everything but life... But, I am afraid of this deadness, this sloth, this indifference, that has come over our churches. The church wants shaking, like the man on the mountain-top does when the cold benumbs him into a deadly slumber. The churches are gone to sleep for want of zeal, for want of fire. Even those who hold sound doctrine are beginning to slumber. Oh may God stir the church up! One great black cloud, only broken here and there by a few rays of sunlight, seems to be hanging over the entire of this our happy island. But, beloved, there is comfort, “for the clouds are the dust of his feet.” He can scatter them in a moment. He can raise up his chosen servants, who have only to put their mouth to the trumpet, and one blast shall awaken the sleeping sentinels, and startle the sleeping camp. God has only to send out again some evangelist, some flying angel, and the churches shall start up once more, and she who has been clothed in sackcloth, shall doff her garments of mourning and put on a garment of praise, instead of the spirit of heaviness. ~ Charles Spurgeon [writing in 1855], What Are The Clouds?

Fall down before his feet and worship him, for he hath loved thee by his grace. You know there are many fearful events which may befall us; but we are never afraid of them, if we are saints, because they are the dust of his feet. ~ Charles Spurgeon, What Are The Clouds?

© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible