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.
Oh, breathe not his name! let it sleep in the shade, Where cold and unhonour'd his relics are laid
Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn't accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else's insistence or someone else's whim or convenience.
My being Muslim is only one part of my identity. But particularly in India and the world over, a concerted effort is being made to diminish all other aspects of identity and only take your religious identity as who you are.
If God is treated as God during suffering, then suffering can reveal and present him in all his greatness.
The sight of snow made her think how beautiful and short life is and how, in spite of all their enmities, people have so very much in common; measured against eternity and the greatness of creation, the world in which they lived was narrow. That's why snow drew people together. It was as if snow cast a veil over hatreds, greed, and wrath and made everyone feel close to one another. -- Snow pg 119
One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
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