The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

reprobate of men, in the opinion of anyone who knows how to judge. Not worse in his open character, but worse really, because he is not honest enough to go through with that he professes. Tom Loker, in “Uncle Tom,” was pretty near the mark when he shut the mouth of Haley, the slave holder, who professed religion, with the following common sense remark: — “I can stand most any talk of yours, but your pious talk — that kills me right up. After all, what’s the odds between me and you? Tain’t that you care one bit more, or have a bit more feelin’ — its clean, sheer, dog meanness, wanting to cheat the devil and save your own skin; do not I see through it? And your getting religious, as you call it, after all, is a deal too mean for me, run up a bill with the devil all your life, and then sneak out when pay time comes.” And how many do the same every day in London, in England; everywhere else! They try to serve both masters; but it cannot be; the two things cannot be reconciled; God and Mammon, Christ and Belial, these never can meet; there never can be an agreement between them, they never can be brought into unity, and why should you seek to do it? “Two opinions,” said the prophet. He would not allow any of his hearers to profess to worship both. “No,” he said, “these are two opinions, and you are hesitating between the two.”

      5. II. In the second place, the prophet calls these waivers to an account for the amount of time which they had consumed in making their choice. Some of them might have replied, “We have not yet had an opportunity of judging between God and Baal, we have not yet had time enough to make up our minds”; but the prophet puts away that objection, and he says, “How long do you hesitate between two opinions? How long? For three and a half years not a drop of rain has fallen at the command of Jehovah; is not that proof enough? You have been all this time, three and a half years, expecting, until I should come, Jehovah’s servant, and give you rain; and yet, though you yourselves are starving, your cattle dead, your fields parched, and your meadows covered with dust, like the very deserts, yet all this time of judgment, and trial, and affliction, has not been enough for you to make up your minds. How long, then,” he said, “do you hesitate between two opinions?”

      I do not speak, this morning, to the thoroughly worldly; with them I have now nothing to do; another time I may address them. But I am now speaking to you who are seeking to serve God and to serve Satan; you, who are trying to be Christian worldlings, trying to be members of that extraordinary corporation, called the “religious world,” which is a thing that never had an existence except in title. You are endeavouring, if you can, to make up your mind which it shall be; you know you cannot serve both, and you are coming now to the period when you are saying, “Which shall it be? Shall I go thoroughly into sin, and revel in the pleasures of the earth, or become a servant of God?” Now, I say to you this morning, as the prophet did, “How long do you hesitate?” Some of you have been hesitating until your hair has grown grey; the sixtieth year of some of you is drawing near. Is not sixty years long enough to make your choice? “How long do you hesitate?” Perhaps one of you may have tottered into this place, leaning on his staff, and you have been undecided up until now. Your eightieth year has come; you have been a religious character outwardly, but a worldling truly; you are still up to this date hesitating, saying, “I do not know on which side to be.” How long, sirs, in the name of reason, in the name of mortality, in the name of death, in the name of eternity, “How long do you hesitate between two opinions?” You middle aged men, you said when you were youths, “When we are out of our apprenticeship we will become religious; let us sow our wild oats in our youth, and let us then begin to be diligent servants of the Lord.” Lo! you have come to middle age, and are waiting until that quiet villa shall be built, and you shall retire from business, and then you think you will serve God. Sirs, you said the same when you came of age, and when your business began to increase. I therefore solemnly demand of you, “How long do you hesitate between two opinions?” How much time do you want? Oh! young man, you said in your early childhood, when a mother’s prayer followed you, “I will seek God when I come to manhood”; and you have passed that day; you are a man, and more than that and yet you are still hesitating. “How long hesitate you between two opinions?” How many of you have been church goers and chapel goers for years! You have been impressed, too, many a time; but you have wiped the tears from your eyes, and have said, “I will seek God and turn to him with full purpose of heart”; and you are now just where you were. How many more sermons do you want? How many more Sundays must roll away wasted? How many warnings, how many sicknesses, how many tollings of the bell to warn you that you must die? How many graves must be dug for your family before you will be impressed? How many plagues and pestilences must ravage this city before you will turn to God in truth? “How long do you hesitate between two opinions?” Would to God that you could answer this question, and not allow the sands of life to drop, drop, drop from the glass, saying, “When the next goes I will repent,” and yet that next one finds you impenitent. You say, “When the glass is just so low, I will turn to God.” No, sir, no; it will not do for you to talk so; for you may find your glass empty before you thought it had begun to run low, and you may find yourself in eternity when you only thought about repenting and turning to God. How long, you grey heads, how long, you men of ripe years, how long, you youths and maidens, how long will you be in this undecided, unhappy state? “How long do you hesitate between two opinions?”

      6. Thus we have brought you so far. We have noted that there are two opinions, and we have asked the question, how much time do you need to decide. One would think the question would require very little time, if time were all was to it, if the will would not be biased to evil and contrary to good, it would require no more time than the decision of a man who has to choose a gallows or life, wealth or poverty; and if we were wise, it would take no time at all; if we understood the things of God, we would not hesitate, but say at once, “Now and for ever God is my God.”

      7. III. But the prophet charges these people with the absurdity of their position. Some of them said, “What! prophet, may we not continue to hesitate between two opinions? We are not desperately irreligious, so we are better than the profane; certainly we are not thoroughly pious; but, at any rate, a little piety is better than none, and the mere profession of it keeps us decent, let us try both!” “Now,” says the prophet, “how long do you hesitate?” or, if you like to read it so, “how long do you limp between two opinions?” (how long do you wriggle between two opinions? would be a good word if I might use it.) He represents them as like a man whose legs are entirely out of joint; he first goes on one side, and then on the other, and cannot go far either way. I could not describe it without putting myself into a most ludicrous posture, “How long do you limp between two opinions?” The prophet laughs at them, as it were. And is it not true, that a man who is neither one thing or another is in a most absurd position? Let him go among the worldlings; they laugh behind his back, and say, “That is one of the Exeter Hall saints,” or “That is one of the elect.” Let him go among the Christian people, those who are saints, and they say, “However a man can be so inconsistent, however he can come in our midst one day, and the next be found in such-and-such society, we cannot tell.” I think even the devil himself must laugh at such a man in scorn. “There,” he says, “I am everything that is bad; I do sometimes pretend to be an angel of light, and put on that garb; but you do really excel me in every respect, for I do it to get something by it, but you do not get anything by it. You do not have the pleasures of this world, and you do not have the pleasures of religion either; you have the fears of religion without its hopes; you are afraid to do wrong and yet you have no hope of heaven; you have the duties of religion without the joys; you have to do just as religious people do, and yet there is no heart in the matter; you have to sit down, and see the table all spread before you, and then you have no power to eat a single morsel of the precious dainties of the gospel.” It is just the same with the world; you dare not go into this or that mischief that brings joy to the wicked man’s heart; you think of what society would say. We do not know what to make of you. I might describe you, if I might speak as the Americans do, but I will not. You are half one thing and half the other. You come into the society of the saints, and try to talk as they talk; but you are like a man who has been taught French in some day school in England; he makes a queer sort of Frenchified English, and Anglicised French, and every one laughs at him. The English laugh at him for trying