Spurgeon: A Day of Division

                                                                                                                                                               Vol. VII, No. 10, December 1994

The following was delivered as a portion of a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon at the New park Street Baptist Church in Southwark, England, 14 September 1856. Spurgeon was then only 22 but was to become the pre-eminent inerrantist of his day, in England, America, and around the world. In April 1888 he was voted out of the British Baptist Union to the rejoicing of the liberal Baptist pastors of that day. But Spurgeon remained faithful to the absolute accuracy of God’s Word.

“We live in very singular times just now. The professing church has been flattering itself that, notwithstanding all our divisions with regard to doctrine. we were all right in the main. A false and spurious liberality has been growing up, which has covered us all, so that we have dreamed that all who bore the name of ministers were indeed God’s servants – that all who occupied pulpits, of whatever denomination they might be, were entitled to our respect, as being stewards of the mystery of Christ. But lately, the weeds upon the stagnant pool have been a little stirred, and we have been enabled to look down into the depths. This is a day of strife – a day of division – a time of war and fighting between professing Christians. God be thanked for it! Far better that it should be so than that the false calm should any longer exert its fatal spell over us. The day is come when we must know who are for the Lord and for His truth, and who are on the side of error. The time is now come when some men, once distinguished among us for the attractiveness of their preaching, must be ranked amongst those who are opponents of the truth. We did once imagine, in the blindness of our charity, that we all preached one gospel; but now the enmity of the carnal mind hath appeared. Carnal churches have chosen to themselves carnal teachers, who have begun to teach strange doctrines, which they mystify by their words, garnish with their eloquence, and try to support by specious logic, apart from simple Scripture.

"The time is coming when it shall be openly proved who is on the Lord’s side; at this very hour, separations are everywhere taking place. We weep for the cause – we do not weep for the effect. We weep that there should have been such heresies growing up in the midst of the church, but we do not weep when we see those heresies brought out to the day, and slaughtered, with what some think remorseless cruelty, but what we believe unflinching justice. We desire that God may spare to us the men who are still faithful, and who will never cease, at the risk of being called bigots, to drag out to the light those who lie against God’s gospel – to bring them publicly before the world as opponents of the faith which is in Christ Jesus, whereby we hope to be saved. May God give us courage to stand up for the right!”