COMPASSION FOR SOULS – Charles Spurgeon
Compassion for Souls
Introduction
“Then she went and sat down across from him at a distance of about a bowshot; for she had said to herself, ‘Let me not see the death of the boy.’ So she sat opposite him, and lifted up her voice and wept.” Genesis 21:16.
The Story of Hagar and Ishmael
Briefly let us rehearse the circumstances. The child Isaac was, according to God’s Word, to be the heir of Abraham. Ishmael, the elder son of Abraham, by the bondwoman Hagar, resided at home with his father until he was about 18 years of age. However, when he began to mock and scoff at the younger child, whom God had ordained to be the heir, it became necessary that he and his mother should be sent away from Abraham’s encampment. It might have seemed unkind and heartless to have sent them forth, but God, having arranged to provide for them, sent a Divine Command which made their expulsion necessary and assured its success.
We may rest assured that whatever God commands, He will be quite certain to justify. He knew it would be no cruelty to Hagar or Ishmael to be driven into independence, and He gave a Promise which secured them everything they desired. Also of the son of the bondwoman wIll I make a great nation,” and again, “I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation.
Had they both been able to go forth from Abraham’s tent in faith, they might have trod the desert with joyous footsteps, fully assured that He who bade them go, and He who promised that He would bless them, would provide all things necessary for them. Early in the morning, they were sent forth on their journey with as much provision as they could carry, and probably, they intended to make their way to Egypt, from which Hagar had come. They may have lost their way; at any rate, they are spoken of as wandering. Their store of food became exhausted, the water in the skin bottle was all spent, and both of them felt the fatigue of the wilderness and the heat of the pitiless sand. They were both faint and weary, and the younger one utterly failed.
As long as the mother could sustain the tottering, fainting footsteps of her boy, she did so. But when she could do so no longer, he swooned with weakness, and she laid him down beneath the slight shade of a desert tamarisk to shield him from the excessive heat of the sun. Looking into his face and seeing the pallor of coming death, knowing her inability to do anything to revive him or even preserve his life, she could not bear to sit and gaze upon his face. So, she withdrew just far enough to still be able to watch with all a mother’s care.
She sat down in the brokenness of her spirit, her tears gushing forth in torrents, and heart-rending cries of agony startled the rocks around. It was necessary that the high spirit of the mother and her son should be broken down before they received prosperity. The mother had been graciously humbled by a similar situation before but had probably relapsed into a haughty spirit. She had encouraged her boy in his insolence toward Sarah’s son, and therefore, she must be chastened again.
The Compassion of a Mother for Her Son
As the child fainted and the mother wept, it is likely that while she was overwhelmed with grief, the boy, though lost to all around, was still conscious enough of his helpless condition and sufficiently mindful of his father’s God to cry out in his soul for help. The Lord heard not so much the mother’s weeping (for the feebleness of her faith, which should have been stronger in light of a former deliverance, hindered her prayer), but the silent, unuttered prayers of the fainting lad went up into the ears of Elohim, and the angel of Elohim appeared and pointed to the well. The child received the needed draught of water, was soon restored, and in him and his posterity, the Promise of God received, and continues to receive, large fulfillment.
Compassion for Souls: A Lesson for Us
I am not about to speak on that narrative except as it serves me with an illustration for the subject which I would now press upon you. Behold the compassion of a mother for her child, expiring with thirst, and remember that such compassion ought all Christians to feel toward souls that are perishing for lack of Christ—perishing eternally, perishing without hope of salvation. If the mother lifted up her voice and wept, so should we. If the contemplation of her dying child was all too painful for her, so may the contemplation of the wrath to come, which is to pass upon every soul that dies impenitent, become too painful for us; but it should also stimulate us to earnest prayer and ardent effort for the salvation of our fellow men!
I. Compassion for Souls—The Reasons Which Justify It, No, Compel It!
It scarcely needs that I do more than rehearse in bare outline the reasons why we should have tender compassion for the perishing sons of men. For first, observe the dreadful nature of the calamity which will overwhelm them. Calamities occurring to our fellow men naturally awaken in us a feeling of commiseration. But what calamity under Heaven can be equal to the ruin of a soul? What misery can be equal to that of a man cast away from God and subject to His wrath world without end?
Today your hearts are moved as you hear the harrowing details of war; they have been dreadful indeed—houses burned, happy families driven as vagabonds upon the face of the earth, domestic circles and quiet households broken up, men wounded, mangled, massacred by thousands, and starved. I was about to say, by millions, but the miseries of war, if they were confined to this world alone, are nothing compared with the enormous catastrophe of tens of thousands of spirits accursed by sin, driven by justice into the place where their worm dies not, and their fire is not quenched!
The edge of the sword grows blunt at last; the flame of war dies out for want of fuel. But, lo, I see before me a sword which is never quiet, a fire unquenchable! Alas, that the souls of men should fall beneath the Infinite Fire of God’s Justice! All your hearts have been moved of late with the thought of famine in a great city; the dogs of war, and this, the fiercest mastiff of them all, have laid hold upon the fair throat of the beautiful city which thought to sit as a lady forever and see no sorrow! You are hastening with your gifts, if possible, to remove her urgent need, and to avert her starvation. But what is a famine of bread compared with that famine of the soul which our Lord describes when He represents it as pleading in vain for a drop of water to cool its tongue, tormented in the flame?
To be without bread for the body is terrible, but to be without the bread of Eternal Life—none of us can tell the weight of horror which lies there!
The Dreadful Calamity of a Lost Soul
When Robert Hall, in one of the grand flights of his eloquence, pictured the funeral of a lost soul, he made the sun veil its light, and the moon its brightness; he covered the ocean with mourning, and the heavens with sackcloth, declaring that if the whole fabric of Nature could become animated and vocal, it would not be possible for her to utter a groan too deep or a cry too piercing to express the magnitude and extent of the catastrophe!
Time is not long enough for the sore lamentation which would attend the funeral of a lost soul. Eternity must be charged with that boundless woe, and must utter it in weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth! Not the tongues of prophets, nor of seraphs could set forth all the sorrow of what it is to be condemned from the mouth of mercy, damned by the Savior who died to save, pronounced accursed by rejected love. The evil is so immense that imagination finds no place, and understanding utterly fails. Brothers and sisters, if our hearts do not yearn for men who are daily hastening towards destruction, are we men at all?
II. The Sight Which True Compassion Dreads
Like Hagar, the compassionate spirit says, “Let me not see the death of the child,” or as some have read it, “How can I see the death of the child?” To contemplate a soul passing away without hope is too terrible a task! I do not wonder that ingenious persons have invented theories which aim at mitigating the terrors of the world to come to the impenitent; it is natural they should do so, for the facts are so alarming as they are truthfully given us in God’s Word, that if we desire to preach comfortable (false) doctrine and such as will quiet the consciences of idle professors, we must dilute the awful truth of God!
The revelation of God concerning the doom of the wicked is so overwhelming as to make it penal, no, I was about to say damnable, to be indifferent and careless in the work of evangelizing the world. I do not wonder that this error in doctrine springs up just now when abounding callousness of heart needs an excuse for itself; what better pillow for idle heads than the false doctrine that the finally impenitent become extinct?
The logical reasoning of the sinner is, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” And the professing Christian is not slow to feel an ease of heart from pressing responsibilities when he accepts so consolatory an opinion! Get rid of this sleeping draught, I pray you, for in very deed the sharp stimulant of the truth itself is abundantly necessary!
The Consequence of the Loss of a Soul
For a moment, I beseech you, contemplate that which causes horror to every tender heart. Behold, I pray you, a lost soul; lost beyond all hope of restitution. Heaven’s gates have shut upon the sanctified, and the myriads of the redeemed are there, but that soul is not among them. It passed out of this world without having washed its robes in Jesus‘ blood, and therefore, there are no harps of gold, no thrones of glory, no exultation with Christ. For that soul, all the bliss of Heaven is forever excluded!
The old divines used to speak much of the poena damni, or the punishment of loss. There were enough in that phase of the future to make us mourn bitterly, as David did for Absalom: My child shut out of Heaven! My husband absent from the seats of the blessed! My sister, my brother not in Glory!
When the Lord counts up His chosen, my dear companions outside the gates of pearl, outside the jeweled battlements of the New Jerusalem! O God, it is a heartbreaking sorrow to think of this! But then the punishment is added to the loss. What says the Savior? “Where their worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched.” “These shall go away into everlasting punishment.” And yet again, “And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites.” And yet again, “Into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
III. The Guilt of Neglecting the Lost
It makes a terrible addition to the sight of a soul being lost if we have to feel we were under responsibility concerning it and have been in any measure unfaithful. I cannot bear the idea of any of my congregation perishing, for in addition to the compassion I hope I feel, I am influenced by a further consideration, for I am set as a watchman to your souls. When any die, I ask myself, “Was I faithful? Did I speak all the truth? And did I speak it from my very soul every time I preached?”
Conclusion
John Walsh, the famous Scotch preacher, was often out of bed in the coldest night, by the hours together, in prayer, and when someone wondered why he spent so many hours upon his knees, he said, “Ah, man, I have three thousand souls to give account of in the Day of Judgment, and I do not know but what it is going very ill with some of them.”
Alas, I Have More Than That to Give Account Of
Alas, I have more than that to give account of, and well may I cry to God that I may not see you perish! O may it never be that you shall go from these pews to the lowest Hell! You, too, my fellow Christians, have your own responsibilities, each one in your measure—your children, your school classes, your servants, yes, and your neighbors. For if you are not doing any good and do not assume any responsibility towards the regions in which you dwell, that responsibility rests upon you none the less! You cannot live in a district without being responsible to God for doing something towards the bettering of the people among whom you reside! Can you endure it, then, that your neighbors should sink into Hell? Do not your hearts long for their Salvation? Is it not an awful thing that a soul should perish with the Gospel so near?
The Perils of Neglecting the Gospel
If Ishmael had died, and the water had been within bow shot, and yet unseen until too late, it would have been a dreadful reflection for the mother. Would she not have torn her hair with double sorrow? And yet many of you are being lost with the Gospel ringing in your ears! You are perishing while Christ is lifted up before you! You are dying in the camp through the serpent’s bite, though the bronze serpent is yonder before your eyes! And with many tears, we cry to you, “Look unto Jesus Christ and live!” Ah, woe is me! Woe is me if you perish when Salvation is brought so close home to you!
The Urgency of Salvation
Some of you are very near the Kingdom of God; you are very anxious, very concerned, but you have not believed in Jesus. You have much that is good, but one thing you lack; will you perish for lack of only one thing? A thousand pities will it be if you make shipwreck in the harbor’s mouth and go to Hell from the gates of Heaven!
We must add to all this the remembrance that it is not one soul which is lost, but tens of thousands are going down to the pit of Hell. Mr. Beecher said in one of his sermons, “If there were a great bell hung high in Heaven which the angels swung every time a soul was lost, how constantly would its solemn toll be heard!” A soul lost! The thunder would not suffice to make a knell for a lost spirit; each time the clock ticks, a soul departs out of this world, perhaps more often than that, and out of those who make the last journey, how few mount to the skies? What multitudes descend to endless woe! O Christians, pull up the sluices of your souls, and let your hearts pour out themselves in rivers of compassion!
The Temptation Compassion Must Resist
In the third place, I said I would speak upon compassion for the souls of men—the temptation it must resist. We must not fall into the temptation to imitate the example of Hagar too closely. She put the child under the shrubs and turned her gaze away from the all-too-mournful spectacle. She could not endure to look, but she sat where she could watch in despair. There is a temptation with each one of us to try to forget that souls are being lost. I can go home to my house along respectable streets and naturally choose that way, for then I need not see the poverty of the lowest quarters of the city; but am I right if I try to forget that there are Bethnal Greens, and Kent Streets, and such like abodes of poverty? The close courts, the cellars, the crowded attics, the lodging houses—am I to forget that these exist?
Surely the only way for a charitable mind to sleep comfortably in London is to forget how one half of the population lives! But is it our objective to live comfortably? Are we such brute beasts that comfort is all we care for, like swine in their sty? No, brothers and sisters, let us recall to our memories the sins of our great city, its sorrows and griefs, and let us remember also the sins and sorrows of the wide, wide world; and the tens of thousands of our race who are passing constantly into Eternity. No, look at them! Do not close those eyes! Does the horror of the vision make your eyeballs ache? Then look until your heart aches too, and your spirit breaks forth in vehement agony before the Lord! Look down into Hell a moment! Open the door wide; listen, and listen yet again! You say you cannot—it sickens your soul; let it be sickened; and in its swooning, let it fall back into the arms of Christ the Savior, and breathe out a cry that He would hasten to save men from the wrath to come!
Facing the Reality of Hell
Do not ignore, I pray you, what exists! It is a matter of fact that in this congregation many are going down to Hell; that in this city, there are multitudes who are hastening as certainly to Hell as time is hastening to Eternity; it is no dream, no fiction of a fevered brain that there is a Hell; if you think so, then why dare you call yourselves Christians? Renounce your Bible; renounce your Baptism; renounce your profession if one spark of honesty remains in you! Call not yourselves Christians when you deny the teaching of your Master! Since assuredly there is a dreadful Hell, shut not your eyes to it! Put not the souls of your fellows away among the shrubs, and sit not down in inactivity; come and look, come and look, I say, till your hearts break at the sight! Hear the cries of dying men whose consciences are awakened too late; hear the groans of spirits who are feeling the sure consequences of sin, where sin’s cure will never avail them.
Let this stir you, my brothers and sisters, to action; to action immediate and intense! You tell me I preach dreadful things. Yes, and they are needed, they are needed. Was there ever such a happy age as this? Were there ever such sleepy persons as we are? Take heed lest you take sad precedence of all others in the accusations of conscience, because, knowing the Gospel, and enjoying it, you nevertheless use so little exertion in spreading it abroad among the human race! Let us shun the temptation which Hagar’s example might suggest.
The Path True Compassion Should Follow
I will now speak upon the path which true compassion will be sure to follow. And what is that? First of all, true pity does all it can. Before Hagar sat down and wept, she had done her utmost for her boy. She had given him the last drop from the water bottle; she had supported his tottering footsteps; she had sought out the place under the shrubs where he might be a little sheltered; she had laid him down gently with soothing words. And then, but not until then, she sat herself down.
Have we done all that it is possible for us to do for the unconverted around us? There are preventable causes of men’s ruin; some causes you and I cannot touch, but there are some we ought at once to remove. For instance, it is certain that many perish through ignorance; it ought never to be that a soul should perish of ignorance within a mile of where a Christian lives! I would even allot a wider area in regions where the people dwell not so thickly. It should at least be the resolve of each Christian, “Within this district where I live, as far as my ability goes, everybody shall know the Gospel by some means or other; if I cannot speak to each one, I will send something for him to read. It shall not be said that a man lost his way forever because he had no Bible; the Holy Spirit alone can lead men into the truth, but it is my part to put the letter of the Word before all men’s eyes.”
Removing Prejudices and Working for Souls
Prejudice is another preventable cause of unbelief. Some will not hear the Gospel, or listen to it, because of their notions of its sternness, or of the moroseness of its professors; such a prejudice may effectually close their hearts. Be it yours to remove it! Be kind to the ungodly; be loving, be tender, be affable, be generous to them, so that you may remove all unnecessary enmity to the Gospel of Jesus. Do them all the good you can for their bodies, that they may be the more likely to believe in your love towards their souls. Let it be said by each one here, “If a soul perishes, I, at least, will have done all in my power to reclaim it.”
Prayer and Readiness to Act
But what does compassion do next? Having done all it can, it sits down and weeps over its own feebleness! I have not the words to describe to you the mother sitting there, pouring out her tears, and lifting up her plaintive voice over her child. The voice of a broken heart cannot be described, it must be heard! But, ah, there is wonderful power with God in the strong crying and tears of His people! If you know how to weep before the Lord, He will yield to tears what He will not yield to anything besides.
O you saints; compassionate sinners—sigh and cry for them! Be able to say, as Whitefield could to his congregation, “Sirs, if you are lost, it is not for lack of my weeping for you, for I pour out my soul day and night in petitions unto God that you may live.”
Instant Action in Helping Souls
When Hagar’s compassion had wailed itself out, she looked unto God, and God heard her; take care that your prayers are abundant and continuous for those who are dying without hope! And then what else does Hagar teach us? She stood there ready to do anything that was necessary after the Lord had interposed; the angel opened her eyes; until then she was powerless, sitting and weeping, and praying. But when he pointed to the well, did she linger for a minute? Was she unprepared with the bottle to draw water? Did she delay to put it to her child’s lips? Was she slack in the blessed task? Oh, no! With what eagerness did she spring to the well; with what speed did she fill the bottle; with what motherly joy did she hasten to her child, and give him the saving draught!
And so, I want every member here to stand ready to mark the faintest indication of Grace in any soul; watch always for the beginning of their conversion; be ready with the bottle of promise to carry a little comfort to their parched lips. Watch with a mother’s earnestness; watch for the opportunity of doing good to souls; yearn over them, so that when God shall work, you shall work with Him instantly, and Jesus shall not be hindered because of your carelessness and lack of Faith.
The Power of Compassionate Action
This is the path which the true Christian should pursue; he is earnest for souls, and therefore he lays himself out for them. If we did really know what souls are, and what it is for them to be cast away, those of us who have done very little or nothing would begin to work for Christ directly! It is said in an old classic story that a certain king of Lydia had a son who had been dumb from his birth. But when Lydia was captured, a soldier was about to kill the king when the young man suddenly found a tongue and cried out, “Soldier, would you kill the king?” He had never spoken a word before, but his astonishment and fear gave him speech.
Encouragement for Compassionate Souls
I think if you had been dumb to that moment; if you saw your own children and neighbors going down into the pit of Hell, you would cry out, “Though I never spoke before, I will speak now! Poor souls, believe in Christ, and you shall be saved.” You do not know how such an utterance as that, however simple, might be blessed. A very little child once found herself in company with an old man of eighty—a fine old man who loved little children, and who took the child upon his knee to talk to it. The little one turning round to him said, “Sir, I have a grandpa just like you, and my grandpa loves Jesus Christ, do you?” He said, “I was 84 years of age, and had lived always among Christian people, but nobody ever thought it worth his while to say as much as that to me.”
That little child was the instrument of the old man’s conversion! So have I heard the story—he knew he had not loved the Savior, and he began to seek Him; and in his old age, he found salvation. If as much as that is possible to a child, it is possible to you! O dear brothers and sisters, if you love Jesus, burst the bonds of timidity, or they may become lethargic—snap all fetters! And from this day on, feel that you cannot bear to think of the ruin of any soul, and must seek its salvation if there is in earth or Heaven ways and means by which you can bring a blessing to it.
The Encouragement Compassion Will Receive
But I must close, and the last point shall be the encouragement which true compassion for souls will always receive. First, take the case in hand. The mother had compassion; God had compassion, too. You pity, God pities. The motions of God’s Spirit in the souls of His people are the footfalls of God’s eternal purposes about to be fulfilled! It is always a hopeful sign for a man that another man prays for him; there is a difficulty in getting a man to Hell whom a child of God is drawing towards Heaven by his intercessions. Satan is often defeated in his temptations by the intercession of the saints.
Hope for the Salvation of Souls
Have hope, then, that your personal sense of compassion for souls is an indication that such souls God will bless. Ishmael, whom Hagar pitied, was a lad about whom promises had been made large and broad; he could not die; Hagar had forgotten that, but God had not! No thirst could possibly destroy him, for God had said he would make of him a great nation! Let us hope that those for whom you and I are praying and laboring are in God’s eternal purpose secured from Hell because the blood of Christ has bought them, and they must be the Lord’s. Our prayers are ensigns of the Will of God; the Holy Spirit leads us to pray for those whom He intends effectually to call.
Moreover, those we pray for—we may not know it, but there may be in their souls at this time a stirring of divine life. Hagar did not know that her son was praying, but God did; the lad did not speak, but God heard his heart cry. Children are often very reluctant to speak to their parents; often have I talked with young lads about their souls, who have told me that they could not talk to their fathers upon such matters. I know it was so with me; when I was under concern of soul, the last persons I would have chosen to speak to upon religion would have been my parents—not out of lack of love to them, nor absence of love on their part, but so it was; a strange feeling of shyness pervades a seeking soul, and drives it from its friends.
A Final Word of Encouragement
Those whom you are praying for may be praying, too, and you do not know it; but the time of love will come when their secret yearnings will be revealed to your earnest endeavors. The lad was preserved, after all; the well of waters was revealed, and the bottle put to his lips. It will be a great comfort to you to believe that God will hear importunate prayers. Your child will be saved! Your husband will be brought in yet, good woman—only pray on! Your neighbor shall be brought to hear the Truth, and be converted; only be earnest about it.
I do not know how to preach this morning. My tongue cannot readily speak when my heart feels too much; I pray that we may have a great revival of religion in our midst as a Church; my spirit longs and pants for it; I see a great engine of enormous strength, and a well-fashioned machine; the machine cannot work by itself—it has no power in it; but if I could get the belt to unite the machine with the engine, what might be done!? Behold, I see the omnipotence of God, and the organization of this Church; O that I could get the belt to bind the two together! The belt is living faith. Do you possess it? Beloved brothers and sisters, help me to pass it round the flywheel, and oh, how God will work, and we will work through His power; and what glorious things shall be done for Christ! We must receive power from on High, and faith is the belt that shall convey that power to us! The divine strength shall be manifest through our weakness. Cease not to pray! More than you ever have done, intercede for a blessing, and the Lord will bless us—He will bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him! Amen.
Portions of Scripture Read Before Sermon: Romans 10; Genesis 21:1-21