The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

in the faith, and then he sent them two and two into every village, as Jesus did. They went into the marketplace, and they gathered the people around; they opened the book and read a chapter, and then they left them a manuscript of it which for months and years afterwards the people would assemble to read, and would remember the gospellers that had come to tell them the gospel of Christ. These men went from marketplace to marketplace, from town to town, and from village to village, and though their names are unknown to fame, they were the real reformers. You may talk of Cranmer, and Latimer, and Ridley; they did much, but the real reformers of the English nation were people whose names have perished from the annals of time, but are written in the records of eternity. God has blessed the poor man in preaching the truth. Far be it from me to depreciate learning and wisdom. We would not have had the Bible translated without learning and the more learning a man can have, if he is a sanctified man, the better; he has so many more talents to lay out in his Master’s service, but it is not absolutely necessary for preaching of the Word. Rough, untamed, untaught energy, has done much in the church. A Boanerges has stood up in a village; he could not put three words together in grammatical English; but where the drowsy parson had for many a year lulled all his people into an unhallowed rest, this man sprung up, like the herdsman Amos, and brought about a great awakening. He began to preach in some cottage; people thronged around him, then a house was built, and his name is handed down to us as the Rev. So-and-So, but then he was known as Tom the ploughman, or John the tinker. God has made use of men whose origin was the most obscure, who seemed to have little, except the gifts of nature, which could be made use of in God’s service; and we hold that this is no disgrace, but on the contrary an honour that poor men are taking to preaching the gospel.

      13. I have to ask you this morning to help some poor men in preaching the gospel. We are constantly receiving letters from our poor brethren, and it is very seldom that we say “No,” to their appeals for assistance, but we must do so, unless our friends, more especially those who love the gospel, really will do something towards the maintenance of God’s faithful servants. I have, during the past year, preached many times for ministers on this basis, that they could not live unless some preached a sermon and made a collection for them. In some places the population was so small that they could not maintain their minister, and in others it was a new movement, and therefore they were unable to support him. Some of you subscribe to the Church Pastoral Aid Society. That is a very excellent society, but I never could see any good in it. There are many poor clergy in the Church of England who need assistance bad enough; but if you want to know the right way of keeping poor curates, I will tell you. Split a bishop up into fifty, and that will do it. If that could be done at once and speedily, there would be no need of Pastoral Aid Societies. You will say, perhaps, “Let such a thing be done in our denomination.” I answer that we have no bishops with whom such a thing could be done. I believe there is not to be found one minister in the whole Baptist denomination whose salary has ever exceeded £600, and there are only three, I believe, who receive as much as that, of which I am not one, and these three men are in such a position that their demands are great, and they have not one penny too much, while the great mass of our denomination receive £20, £30, £40, £50, £60, and so on, but below £100. The sum collected today will be given to those whose incomes are below £80, and whose needs are great.

      14. And now, beloved, I have opened my mouth for the dumb, and pleaded the cause of the poor, let me end by entreating the poor of the flock to consider the poor man’s Christ; let me urge them to give him their thoughts, and may the Lord enable them to yield him their hearts. “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved but he who does not believe shall be damned.”

      15. May God bless the high and low, the rich and poor; yes, all of you, for his name’s sake.

      {a} Thermopylae: Place where several hundred Spartans held off the entire Persian army of a million or more in 480 BC.

      Why Are Men Saved?

      No. 115-3:65. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, February 1, 1857, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

       Nevertheless he saved them for his name’s sake. {Psalms 106:8}

      1. In looking upon the works of God in creation, there are two questions which at once occur to the thoughtful mind, and which must be answered before we can procure a clue to the philosophy and science of creation itself. The first one is the question of authorship: who made all these things? And the next question is that of design: For what purpose were all these things created? The first question, “Who made all these things?” is one which is easily answered by a man who has an honest conscience and a sane mind; for when he lifts his eyes up above to read the stars, he will see those stars spell out in golden letters this word — God; and when he looks below upon the waves, if his ears are honestly opened, he will hear each wave proclaiming, God. If he looks to the summits of the mountains, they will not speak, but with a dignified answer of silence they seem to say,

      “The hand that made us is Divine.”

      If we listen to the rippling of the brook at the mountain side, to the tumbling of the avalanche, to the lowing of the cattle, to the singing of the birds, to every voice and sound of nature, we shall hear this answer to the question, “God is our maker; he has made us, and not we ourselves.”

      2. The next question, as to design — Why were these things made? — is not so easy to answer, apart from Scripture; but when we look at Scripture we discover this fact — that as the answer to the first question is God, so the answer to the second question is the same. Why were these things made? The answer is, for God’s glory, for his honour, and for his pleasure. No other answer can be consistent with reason.

      Whatever other replies men may propound,

      No other can be really sound.

      If they will for one moment consider that there was a time when God had no creatures — when he dwelt alone, the mighty maker of ages, glorious in an uncreated solitude, divine in his eternal loneliness — “I am and there is no one beside me” — can anyone answer this question — Why did God make creatures to exist? — in any other way than by answering it thus: “He made them for his own pleasure and for his own glory.” You may say he made them for his creatures; but we answer, there were then no creatures to make them for. We admit that the answer may be a sound one now. God makes the harvest for his creatures; he hangs the sun in the firmament to bless his creatures with light and sunshine; he bids the moon walk in her course by night, to cheer the darkness of his creatures upon earth. But the first answer, going back to the origin of all things, can only be this: “For his pleasure they are and were erected.” “He made all things for himself and by himself”:

      3. Now, this which holds good in the works of creation, holds equally good in the works of salvation. Lift up your eyes on high; higher than those stars which glimmer on the floor of heaven; look up, where spirits in white clearer than light, shine like stars in their magnificence; look there, where the redeemed with their choral symphonies “circle the throne of God rejoicing,” and ask this question “Who saved those glorified beings, and for what purpose where they saved?” We tell you that the same answer must be given as we have previously given to the former question — “He saved them — he saved them for his name’s sake.” The text is an answer to the two great questions concerning salvation: who saved men and why are they saved? “He saved them for his name’s sake.”

      4. I shall endeavour to look into this subject this morning. May God make it profitable to each of us, and may we be found among the number who shall be saved “for his name’s sake.” Treating the text verbally — and that is the way most will understand — here are four things. First, a glorious Saviour — “He saved them”; secondly, a favoured people — “he saved them”; thirdly a divine reason why he saved them — “for his name’s sake”; and fourthly an obstruction conquered, in the word “nevertheless,” implying that there was some difficulty that was removed. “Nevertheless he saved them for his name’s sake.” A Saviour; the saved;