"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." - Pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1934-1892)
