Sinners, Folly of – Charles Spurgeon

I KNOW a man at the present moment, a man I said, but alas! poor wretched mortal, he looks hardly like a man. I saw him in rags, shivering in the drenching rain but yesterday. He came of reputable parents; I knew his relatives well. He had some four hundred pounds or more left him a few years ago. As soon as ever he could get hold of it he came to London, and in about a month he spent it all, in a hideous whirlwind of evil. He went back a beggar and in rags, full of horrible sickness, loathsome, and an outcast. Since that time he has been so often aided by his friends that they have entirely given him up, and now this poor wretch, with scarce enough rags to hide his nakedness, has no eye left to pity him, and no hand to help him. He has been helped again and again, and again; but to help him appears to be useless, for at the very first opportunity he returns to his old sins. The workhouse, the hospital, the grave are his portion, for he seems unable to rise to the dignity of labor, and no one will harbor him. I could fairly cry at the sight of him, but what can be done for him, if he will destroy himself by his sins? If you say to him, “Why do your friends not notice you?” he will tell you, “They cannot notice me.” He has brought his mother to the grave; he has wearied out everybody who has pitied him, for his life has been so thoroughly bad that it excites no pity, but disgusts his own relatives. For the love of the Lord Jesus I will try this unhappy man again, and intend tomorrow to see him washed, and clothed, and fed, and put in a way of livelihood, but I have very slender hope of being of any lasting service to him, for he has been tried so often. Yet I never saw a wretch in such misery. He is emaciated, ragged, and has known hunger, and cold, and nakedness month after month, and unless he mends his ways this will be his lot until he dies. We have more than enough of such cases who cross our path, but this one outdoes all. Now I know that some of these forlorn persons sometimes steal into the Tabernacle, and if such be here, let me ask you, what is to be done with you? You put even the best and most tender of persons out of patience with you. Trouble has no power to break you, and kindness no influence to melt you. Oh, while there is a remedy, may God apply it to you poor guilty souls! There are some who have felt these goadings to the most fearful extent, until they have lost all, and yet they cling to their sins. I would to God that saints would cling to Christ half as earnestly as sinners cling to the devil. If we were as willing to suffer for God as some are to suffer for their lusts, what perseverance and zeal would be seen on all sides!