Remembering The Choice Mercies of Yesterday
Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful.
The Lord preserves the simple; when I was brought low, he saved me.
Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.
–Psalm 116:5-7
C.H. Spurgeon writes,
You can’t do this? Are there mercies which you haven’t experienced? Even though you are gloomy now, how can you forget that blessed hour when Jesus met you, and said, ‘Come to me’? Can’t you remember that rapturous moment when He snapped your fetters, dashed your chains to the earth and said, ‘I came to break your bonds and set you free?’ Or if you’ve forgotten the love you felt at your wedding, surely there must be some precious milestone along the road of life not quite grown over with moss on which you can read a happy memorial of His mercy toward you? Don’t forget what your God has done for you; turn over the pages of your mind, and remember the days gone by. Go back, then, a little way to the choice mercies of yesterday, and though all may be dark now, light up the lamps of the past, they shall glitter through the darkness, and you shall trust the Lord until the day breaks and the shadows flee away.
The Spotless Purity of Truth
The Church of Christ is continually presented under the figure of an army; yet its Captain is the Prince of Peace; its object is the establishment of peace, and its soldiers are men of a peaceful disposition. The spirit of war is at the extremely opposite point to the spirit of the gospel.
Yet nevertheless, the church on earth has, and until the second advent must be, the church militant, the church armed, the church warring, the church conquering. And how is this?
It is in the very order of things that so it must be. Truth could not be truth in this world if it were not a warring thing, and we should at once suspect that it were not true if error were friends with it. The spotless purity of truth must always be at war with the blackness of heresy and lies.
–C. H. Spurgeon
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol.5 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1879), 41.
