that want the gospel most. If you saw a physician’s door surrounded by a number of ladies of the sentimental school, who are sick about three times a week, and never were ill at all — if it were said he cured them, you would say, “No great wonder too, for there never was anything the matter with them.” But if you heard of another man, that people with the worst diseases have come to him, and that God has made use of him, and his medicine has been the means of healing their diseases, you would then say, “There is something in it, for the people that need it most have received it.” If, then, it is true that the poor will come to hear the gospel more than others, it is no disgrace to the gospel, it is an honour to it, that those who most need it do freely receive it.
12. III. And now I must close up by briefly dwelling on the last point. It was the third translation, WYCLIFFE’S TRANSLATION. To give it you in old English — “Poor men are taking to the preaching of the gospel.” “Ah!” say some, “they had better remain at home, minding their ploughs or their blacksmith’s hammer; they had better have kept on with their tinkering and tailoring, and not have turned to preachers.” But it is one of the honours of the gospel that poor men have taken to the preaching of it. There was a tinker once, and let the worldly wise blush when they hear of it — there was a tinker once, a tinker of whom a great divine said he would give all his learning if he could preach like him. There was a tinker once, who never so much as brushed his back against the walls of a college, who wrote a Pilgrim’s Progress. Did ever a doctor in divinity write such a book. There was a pot-boy once — a boy who carried on his back the pewter pots for his mother, who kept the Old Bell. That man drove men mad, as the world had it, but led them to Christ, as we have it, all his life long, until, loaded with honours, he sank into his grave, with the good will of a multitude around him, with an imperishable name written in the world’s records, as well as in the records of the church. Did you ever hear of any mighty man, whose name stood in more esteem among God’s people than the name of George Whitfield? And yet these were poor men, who, as Wycliffe said, were taking to the preaching of the gospel. If you will read the life of Wycliffe you will find him saying there, that he believed that the Reformation in England was more promoted by the labours of the poor men whom he sent out from Lutterworth than by his own. He gathered around him a number of the poor people whom he instructed 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.
