p. 181 | Not a Doubt of It by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 19, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 12.

Not a Doubt of It.

By Charles Haddon Spurgeon

PROFESSIONAL preaching, ex-officio creed-repeating, is the devil's most effectual method of propagating falsehood and, defeating truth. Full assurance of the certainty of what we preach in the name of the most high God is absolutely necessary to making full proof of our ministry; in fact, it is questionable whether it is ministry for God at all if it is not the ministry of faith. If whatsoever is not of faith is sin, and men are forbidden to do that about which they have any scruple, much more in sacred things must a preaching that is not of faith be sin; and how can sin promote the righteousness of God? If Jesus the Son of God be not really and truly God to any man, if that man should dare assert the doctrine of the Redeemer's deity, he will but do the truth dishonor. We may not forbid his preaching, but if the Master were here he would as surely silence him as he did the devils when they loudly attested that he was the Son of God. If the Bible be not believed to be a supernatural book, infallibly teaching the things which make for our eternal salvation, he who, with deliberate falsehood of unbelief, yet uses it as his text book, and refers to it as his authority, is a trifler with truth and a mocker of sacred things. If a man believes that there is no such thing as regeneration, or that men do not need it, his attempt to preach concerning the new birth will only scatter among the multitudes doubts as to its reality. Whatever is held forth in the palsied hand of unbelief is itself made to quiver. Skepticism is a smoking lamp, which, while it gives no light, loads the atmosphere with a thick darkness, if not with a stench. If we are ever to see men brought down under the power of the law to a condition of true repentance, if we are ever to see them converted by the Holy Ghost through the gospel of Christ Jesus, if we are ever to see the converted ones sanctified and marching forth to the Master's battles as an army with banners, we must preach the truth boldly, as we ought to preach it, and we must say of every jot and tittle of it, "Not a doubt of it! Not a doubt of it!"—Spurgeon.