Series - Blind Eye

This post continues a lecture from C.H. Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students (read the series so far).

I should recommend the use of the same faculty, or want of faculty, with regard to finance in the matter of your own salary.

There are some occasions, especially in raising a new church, when you may have no deacon who is qualified to manage that department, and, therefore, you may feel called upon to undertake it yourselves. In such a case you are not to be censured, you ought even to be commended. Many a time also the work would come to an end altogether if the preacher did not act as his own deacon, and find supplies both temporal and spiritual by his own exertions. To these exceptional cases I have nothing to say but that I admire the struggling worker and deeply sympathize with him, for he is overweighted, and is apt to be a less successful soldier for his Lord because he is entangled with the affairs of this life.

This post begins a five-part series we first ran here in 2014. The series consists of one of C.H. Spurgeon’s lectures to his students. The idea came from a pastor friend contacted me with a link to the lecture and remarked that it was encouraging to know Spurgeon was dealing with all the same kinds of problems back then that pastors face regularly today. He suggested it would be good content for SharperIron, and I couldn’t agree more.

Depending on what collection you look at, this is Lecture 9 in Volume 3, or possibly Chapter 22, or even Lecture 22. (I believe I also saw it as Lecture 10 in one collection.) The text is available in multiple locations on the Web (such as cblibrary.net, monergism.com and reformationtheology.com), and is apparently in the public domain.

In the case of false reports against yourself, for the most part use the deaf ear.

Unfortunately liars are not yet extinct, and, like Richard Baxter and John Bunyan, you may be accused of crimes which your soul abhors. Be not staggered thereby, for this trial has befallen the very best of men, and even your Lord did not escape the envenomed tongue of falsehood. In almost all cases it is the wisest course to let such things die a natural death. A great lie, if unnoticed, is like a big fish out of water, it dashes and plunges and beats itself to death in a short time.

Read the series so far.

Need I say a word or two about the wisdom of never hearing what was not meant for you? The eaves-dropper is a mean person, very little if anything better than the common informer; and he who says he overheard may be considered to have heard over and above what he should have done. Jeremy Taylor wisely and justly observes,

Never listen at the door or window, for besides that it contains in it a danger and a snare, it is also invading my neighbor’s privacy, and a laying that open, which he therefore encloses that it might not be open.

It is a well worn proverb that listeners seldom hear any good of themselves. Listening is a sort of larceny, but the goods stolen are never a pleasure to the thief. Information obtained by clandestine means must, in all but extreme cases, be more injury than benefit to a cause. The magistrate may judge it expedient to obtain evidence by such means, but I cannot imagine a case in which a minister should do so. Ours is a mission of grace and peace; we are not prosecutors who search out condemnatory evidence, but friends whose love would cover a multitude of offenses. The peeping eyes of Canaan, the son of Ham, shall never be in our employ; we prefer the pious delicacy of Shem and Japhet, who went backward and covered the shame which the child of evil had published with glee.

This post continues a lecture from C.H. Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students (read the series so far).

Avoid with your whole soul that spirit of suspicion which sours some men’s lives, and

to all things from which you might harshly draw an unkind inference turn a blind eye and a deaf ear.

Suspicion makes a man a torment to himself and a spy towards others. Once begin to suspect, and causes for distrust will multiply around you, and your very suspiciousness will create the major part of them. Many a friend has been transformed into an enemy by being suspected. Do not, therefore, look about you with the eyes of mistrust, nor listen as an eaves-dropper with the quick ear of fear. To go about the congregation ferreting out disaffection, like a gamekeeper after rabbits, is a mean employment, and is generally rewarded most sorrowfully.