"We admire a man who was firm in the faith, say four hundred years ago...but such a man today is a nuisance, and must be put down. Call him a narrow minded bigot or give him a worse name, if you can think of one.
"Yet imagine that in those ages past Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and their
compeers had said, 'The world is out of order, but if we try to get it
right we shall only make a great row, and get ourselves into disgrace.
Let us go to our chambers, put on our night caps, and sleep over the bad
times, and perhaps when we wake up things will have grown better.'
"Such conduct on their part would have entailed upon us a heritage of error. Age after age would have
gone down into the infernal deeps, and the pestiferous bogs of error
would have swallowed all. These men loved the faith and the love of
Jesus too well to see them trampled on.
"It is today as it was in the Reformer's days. Decision is needed. Here
is the day for the man, where is the man for the day? We who have had
the gospel passed to us by martyr hands dare not trifle with it, nor sit
by and hear it denied by traitors, who pretend to love it but inwardly
abhor every line of it...look you, sirs, there are ages yet to come.
"If the Lord does not speedily appear, there will come another
generation, and another, and all those generations will be tainted and
injured if we are not faithful to God and to his truth today. We have
come to a turning point in the road. If we turn to the right, mayhap our
children and our children's children will go that way. But if we turn
to the left, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been
unfaithful to God and to his Word."
Further recommended reading & listening:
The Best of The Daily Spurgeon
The Forgotten Spurgeon, by Iain Murray
A Defense of Calvinism - by Charles Spurgeon