"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." - Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)
