Sir, usually I do preach for souls, but my orphans cannot eat souls. And if they could, it would take four souls the size of yours to make a square meal for just one orphan!
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of practical help over abstract spirituality, especially in addressing urgent needs.
Charles Spurgeon's quote highlights the harsh reality faced by orphans who require tangible support, such as food, rather than spiritual guidance alone. It underscores the necessity of combining compassion with actionable aid, suggesting that while preaching is valuable, it cannot substitute for the physical needs of those suffering. The metaphor emphasizes the inadequacy of spiritual nourishment when basic survival is at stake.
In practice
In a charity event speech, one might use this quote to highlight the need for practical support for the underprivileged.
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 what idiots we have all been, this is just as it must be
You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.
True tolerance is not a total lack of judgment. It's knowing what should be tolerated, and refusing to tolerate that which shouldn't.
If in a discussion of many matters ... we are not able to give perfectly exact and self-consistent accounts, do not be surprised: rather we would be content if we provide accounts that are second to none in probability.
Every Socialist outbreak only blazes new paths for Capitalism.
I played the vina until my heart turned into the same instrument. Then I offered this instrument to the Divine Musician, the only muscian existing. Since then I have become His flute, and when He chooses He plays His music. The people give me credit for this music which, in reality, is not due to me, but to the Musician who plays his own instrument.
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