It is a very solemn delusion when ministers think they are prospering, and yet do not hear of conversions.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of genuine spiritual growth over superficial success.
Charles Spurgeon highlights a critical perspective on ministry and spiritual leadership, suggesting that true progress is measured not by outward appearances or worldly achievements, but by the real transformations in people's lives. It serves as a caution against complacency and the false sense of success that can arise when the fruits of one’s labor—namely, conversions or real changes in faith—are absent.
In practice
This quote can be used in a sermon to remind ministers of the importance of focusing on true spiritual outcomes.
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.
Gullibility and credulity are considered undesireable qualities in every department of human life - except religion ... Why are we praised by godly men for surrendering our 'godly gift' of reason when we cross their mental thresholds?
The human heart has a tiresome tendency to label as fate only what crushes it. But happiness likewise, in its way, is without reason, since it is inevitable.
As we discern a fine line between crank and genius, so also (and unfortunately) we must acknowledge an equally graded trajectory from crank to demagogue. When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.
Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.
Even such isTime, which takes in trust Our youth, our joys, and all we have, And pays us but with age and dust, Who in the dark and silent grave When we have wandered all our ways Shuts up the story of our days, And from which earth, and grave, and dust The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.
An earthly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, some serfs, some rulers, some subjects.
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