Helps – Charles Spurgeon

ON the summit of some of the Swiss passes, the canton, for the preservation and accommodation of travelers, maintains a small body of men, sometimes only two or three, who live in a little house at the top, and whose business it is to help travelers on their way. It was very pleasant when we were going through a pass in the mountains of Northern Italy, to see, some three or four miles from the top, a man coming down who saluted us as though he had known us for years. He carried a spade in his hand, and though we did not know what was coming, yet he evidently understood better than we did what was going to occur. By-and-by we came to deep snow, and the man went to work with his spade to clear a foot-way, and when he came to a very ugly piece of road, some of the party were carried along on the man’s back. It was the man’s business to care for the travelers, and before long there came one of his companions with wine and refreshments, which were generously offered to the weary ones. These men were “helps,” who spent their lives on that part of the road where it was known their services would be requisite; and when travelers reach the spot, these men are ready to give their assistance at the very nick of time. They would have been worth nothing at all down in the plains; they would have been only an incumbrance if they had met us in any other place, but they were exceedingly valuable, because they were just where they were required, and came exactly at the moment when they were wanted.

Now, my friends, “helps” are of no use to a man when he can help himself. When he has no difficulties, an offer of assistance is an intrusion. There is just one point, such a juncture as the passing of the summit of the mountain, where help will be exceedingly precious to him. And it seems to me, that the period of a man’s experience which Bunyan describes by the Slough of Despond, is just that season when you, my dear brethren and sisters in Christ, may render invaluable aid to the Christian minister by coming to the rescue of those who seem as though they would be swallowed up.