Charles Spurgeon’s Letters-Letter 218

GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE

To [Mrs. Bartlett’s Class].

MENTONE, Saturday evening. [Undated.]

BELOVED FRIENDS, —

I write to salute you all, and especially your beloved mother in the gospel, my dear friend, Mrs. Bartlett. I hope you are enjoying times of power such as have been so usual with the class. The Lord’s own daughters among you— each one a princess, not in her own right, but by marriage to King Jesus,— are, I trust, living in the enjoyment of their high privileges.

“Why should the children of a King

Go mourning all their days?”

Yours it is to wear a girdle of joy; “For the joy of the Lord is your strength.” See to it that your lives are consistent with your high callings, for it ill becomes the daughters of Zion to demean themselves like the children of earth. “Let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ.” Be watchful for the souls of others, and support by your prayers the earnest efforts of your beloved leader, Mrs. Bartlett.

For those of you who are unsaved, I have this word, — “How long halt ye between two opinions?” Years roll on; and each one spent in alienation from God swells your dreadful account. Have you not sinned enough? Have you not run risks enough, that you must still imperil your souls? An hour even of the toothache is too much; but what is that compared with the disease of sin and the anger of God? Yet these you bear as if they were mere trifles. Will the time of decision never come? Or will you linger till you perish in your sin? “Remember Lot’s wife.” She is a monument of salt; take a little of that salt, and season your thoughts with it. Your graves are yawning for you, hell also enlargeth itself. Flee from the wrath to come; start up, like those who have been asleep upon the brink of death; and “strive to enter in at the strait gate.”

Yours lovingly, for Christ’s sake,

C. H. SPURGEON.