Have you no wish for others to be saved? Then you're not saved yourself, be sure of that!
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of compassion for others in one's own spiritual well-being.
Charles Spurgeon's quote articulates a profound philosophical view on salvation and empathy. It suggests that true personal salvation is intertwined with the desire for the well-being and salvation of others. If an individual does not care for the fate of others, it implies a lack of genuine connection to their own spiritual state, as a self-centered approach undermines the core principles of love and community that often accompany true salvation.
In practice
In a sermon about community service, one might use this quote to inspire action and compassion.
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.
Civil war.... What did the words mean? Was there any such thing as "foreign war"? Was not all warfare between men warfare between brothers?
Disgust with injustice may sharpen the desire for justice. Readers who don’t see this connection merely wish to be entertained, and I have neither skill nor desire to turn the agony of a people into entertainment.
The internal dialogue is what grounds people in the daily world. The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such and so and so. The passageway into the world of shamans opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off his internal dialogue
It's totally irrational, patently insane to condemn an entire race - to despise an entire nation - to vilify an entire religion.
There aren't that many monsters. It's very hard to create a new monster.
That day, I really believed that I had grasped something and that henceforth my life would be changed. But insights cannot be held for ever. Like water, the world ripples across you and for a while you take on its colours. Then it recedes, and leaves you face to face with the void you carry inside yourself, confronting that central inadequacy of soul which you must learn to rub shoulders with and to combat, and which, paradoxically, may be our surest impetus.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.