Where persons love little, do little, and give little, we may shrewdly suspect that they have never had much affliction of heart for their sins and that they think they owe but very little to divine grace.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that those who do not love or give much may lack a deep sense of remorse for their sins and may undervalue divine grace.
Charles Spurgeon's quote reflects on the connection between an individual's ability to love and their sense of gratitude towards divine grace. It implies that those who exhibit little love, action, or generosity may not have experienced significant struggle or guilt in their lives, leading them to believe they owe little to a higher power. This highlights the relationship between personal suffering, moral reflection, and the capacity for compassion towards others.
In practice
This quote could be used in a sermon to emphasize the importance of love and humility in one’s relationship with God.
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.
They learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works—although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself. What they didn’t see was that it is beautiful, and that some of the greatest beauties are the briefest.
And in England there has always been something deeply pro-Arab, of course, not among all Englishmen, and anti-Israeli, in the establishment. They abstained in the 1947 UN partition resolution... They maintained an arms embargo against us in the 1950s... They always worked against us. They think the Arabs are the underdogs.
The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.
After all, you put a lot into creating a universe and everything that goes with it, and it seems a shame to use it only once.
If I hear about a tsunami that hit Asia, hundreds of people have lost their lives, and you see it and you hear about it, but you still brush your teeth, still have to go on with your day. But let you get information about one person who you're close to or you're intimate with, it has an almost paralyzing effect.
Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?
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