Mercy, Sparing—Gratitude for – Charles Spurgeon

HAVE you seen those foul dungeons of Venice, which are below the water-mark of the canal, where, after winding through narrow, dark, stifling passages, you may creep into little cells in which a man can scarcely stand upright, where no ray of sunlight has ever entered since the foundations of the palace were laid—cold, foul, and black with damp and mildew, the fit nursery of fever, and abode of death? And yet those places it were luxury to inhabit compared with the everlasting burnings of Hell. It were an excess of luxury to lost spirits if they could lie there with moss growing on their eyelids, in lonely misery, if they might but escape for a little season from a guilty conscience and the wrath of God. Friend, you are neither in those dungeons nor yet in Hell; therefore pluck up courage, and say, “It is of the Lord’s mercy we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.