Evening and Morning
By Charles Haddon Spurgeon
July 11
Morning
"After that ye have suffered awhile, make you
perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle
you."—1 Peter 5:10.
You have seen the arch of
heaven as it spans the plain: glorious are its colours,
and rare its hues. It is beautiful, but, alas, it passes away, and lo, it is
not. The fair colours give way to the fleecy clouds,
and the sky is no longer brilliant with the tints of heaven. It is not established.
How can it be? A glorious show made up of transitory sun-beams
and passing rain-drops, how can it abide? The graces of the Christian character
must not resemble the rainbow in its transitory beauty, but, on the contrary,
must be stablished, settled, abiding. Seek, O
believer, that every good thing you have may be an abiding thing. May your
character not be a writing upon the sand, but an
inscription upon the rock! May your faith be no "baseless fabric of a
vision," but may it be builded of material able
to endure that awful fire which shall consume the wood, hay, and stubble of the
hypocrite. May you be rooted and grounded in love. May your convictions be
deep, your love real, your desires earnest. May your
whole life be so settled and established, that all the blasts of hell, and all
the storms of earth shall never be able to remove you. But notice how this
blessing of being "stablished in the faith"
is gained. The apostle's words point us to suffering as the means
employed—"After that ye have suffered awhile." It is of
no use to hope that we shall be well rooted if no rough winds pass over us.
Those old gnarlings on the root of the oak tree, and
those strange twistings of the branches, all tell of
the many storms that have swept over it, and they are also indicators of the
depth into which the roots have forced their way. So the Christian is made
strong, and firmly rooted by all the trials and storms of life. Shrink not then
from the tempestuous winds of trial, but take comfort, believing that by their
rough discipline God is fulfilling this benediction to you.
"Tell ye your children of it, and let your children
tell their children, and their children another generation."—Joel 1:3.
In this simple way, by
God's grace, a living testimony for truth is always to be kept alive in the
land—the beloved of the Lord are to hand down their witness for the
gospel, and the covenant to their heirs, and these again to their next
descendants. This is our first duty, we are to begin at the family
hearth: he is a bad preacher who does not commence his ministry at home. The
heathen are to be sought by all means, and the highways and hedges are to be
searched, but home has a prior claim, and woe unto those who reverse the order
of the Lord's arrangements. To teach our children is a personal duty; we
cannot delegate it to Sunday School Teachers, or other friendly aids, these can
assist us, but cannot deliver us from the sacred obligation; proxies and
sponsors are wicked devices in this case: mothers and fathers must, like
Abraham, command their households in the fear of God, and talk with their
offspring concerning the wondrous works of the Most High. Parental teaching is
a natural duty—who so fit to look to the child's well-being as those who are the authors of his actual being?
To neglect the instruction of our offspring is worse than brutish. Family
religion is necessary for the nation, for the family itself, and for the
church of God. By a thousand plots Popery is covertly advancing in our land,
and one of the most effectual means for resisting its inroads is left almost
neglected, namely, the instruction of children in the faith. Would that parents
would awaken to a sense of the importance of this matter. It is a pleasant duty
to talk of Jesus to our sons and daughters, and the more so because it has
often proved to be an accepted work, for God has saved the children
through the parents' prayers and admonitions. May every house into which this
volume shall come honour the Lord and receive His
smile.