A church is a soul-saving company or it is nothing.
Interpretation
A church should primarily focus on its spiritual mission to save souls; otherwise, it serves no purpose.
In this quote, Charles Spurgeon emphasizes that the core mission of a church is to provide a space for spiritual growth and salvation. If a church fails to fulfill this fundamental role, it becomes irrelevant, highlighting the importance of purpose and service in religious institutions.
In practice
During a sermon, a pastor might refer to this quote to remind the congregation about their spiritual mission.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
How often it consoles me to think of barbarism once more flooding the world, and real feelings and passions, however rudimentary, taking the place of our wretched hypocrisies.
The most important thing to me is, how, in the process of learning how to use my body, can I come to understand myself ?
Whoever is going to listen to the philosophers needs a considerable practice in listening.
God is not a static thing...but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.
In the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than glorification of the splendid system that makes them so.
It is my belief, that we should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in that part of humanity that is most remote from our own.
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