Emotions, Natural—Not Saving – Charles Spurgeon

WE have heard of many expedients for softening hard hearts, but none of them are of any avail. I know preachers who delight in talking of a mother’s tears, and a father’s grey hairs, of dying children and consumptive sisters, and I believe these are all legitimate topics; but no hearts are ever turned from stone to flesh merely by natural emotion. You may make a man weep over his dead child, or his dead wife, until his eyes are red, but his heart will be black for all that. Men’s hearts are changed by quite another agency than oratorical or rhetorical appeals to the natural affections. I readily admit that such appeals have their own sphere, but for the renewing of the heart something much more effectual is wanted than natural emotion. It is written, “I will take away the heart of stone out of your flesh,” and there is the secret of the matter.