Preface

149: Mark 5:7. — Resistance to Salvation

15 2. Mark 10:49, 50. — The Blind Beggar of Jericho

PREFACE This is the third portion of “My Sermon Notes,” and it consists of Notes of Sermons preached by me on Sabbath and Thursday evenings. I trust it will be helpful to men who are greatly occupied, and are therefore sorely pressed for subjects of discourse. One more selection of outlines—upon certain texts which range from Romans to Revelation—will complete the series. This last part I hope to prepare for publication before this year has quite run out. I might have taken longer time over the rest of the work; but as the sale of the former volumes indicates a want, I feel bound to supply it as speedily as I can. “The night comes, when no man can work.”

I hope and believe that these Notes will not be of much use to persons who fail to think for themselves. For such talkers I have no sort of compassion. My outlines are meant to be aids to preparation, and nothing more. The theory that they will induce men to be idle is not supported by facts. Concerning this, information of the most reliable kind is forthcoming. Those who have valued them, and turned them to account, have almost always used them in the manner which I proposed to them: they have cut them up into several sermons, of have taken the raw material and rearranged it after their own fashion, and so have made it as good as new. In several instances brethren who have been necessarily occupied in visitation and other pastoral work have found great assistance from these summaries, and have been able on the Lord’s-day to give their people a fair measure of spiritual food, by working out at full length the thoughts suggested. Knowing what it is to be hardly pressed myself, and remembering my great gratitude when a friend has suggested a theme and a line of thought, I am now happy in rendering to others a service which I have so often needed myself.

Mr. PAGE, of Chelsea, has again helped me in the somewhat difficult task of appending illustrations to the outlines. We have brought forth “things new and old.” In this age of Cyclopedias it is hard to find anything which has not been used in some form or other; but yet I hope that, to a fair extent, there is real freshness about these selections. At any rate, most of the quotations and anecdotes are new to me. The very oldest will be novel in some places, and to some hearers.

In all these outlines evangelical truth is set forth as clearly as I am able to do it. This will injure my work in the estimation of those whose admiration I do not covet; but this will cause me no alarm, for the weight of their censure is not great. My conviction is, that the lovers of the Old Gospel are far more numerous than the cold other-gospellers suspect, and that the orthodox are increasing every day. The mania of “advanced thought” has nearly had its day, and a sorry day it has proved to many. The will-o’-the-wisp has flitted on and on towards the pestilent swamps of Socinianism. At one time the pretended goddess was resplendent in fine apparel, but the foolish creature has danced itself threadbare: its tattered garments of pretentious knowledge no longer conceal its deformity.

Better days are coming for the lovers of the eternal verities. For a season we seemed to be surrounded by a torrent of unbelief; but the waters are assuaging, and the mountains of truth lift their peaks above the flood. Whatever the times may be, there shall be no doubt as to where the writer of these outlines took up his standing in the hour of controversy. I know nothing but the doctrines of grace, the teaching of the cross, the gospel of salvation; and I write only that these things may be the more widely published. If those who believe these truths will honor me by using my Notes, I shall rejoice, and shall trust that the blessing of God will go with their discourses. It is no small pleasure to be helping brethren in the faith to sow beside all waters the living seed of the Word of God.

While all around us workers are being taken to their reward, it becomes us to be doubly diligent in our Lord’s service. Let us all use such ability as we have. One can preach sermons without aid from books; another can fill up a frame-work, though he cannot construct one for himself; a third can only read a discourse: let no man so envy his fellow’s gift as to neglect his own; but let each one do what he can, and look up for a blessing.

To God I commend these baskets of fragments which remained after the multitudes were fed: the Master’s example has encouraged me to “take up” what else had been forgotten.

Charles SpurgeonWestwood October, 1886