Obstinacy – Charles Spurgeon

THERE’S a queer chap in our village who keeps a bulldog, and he tells me that when the creature once gives a bite at anything he never lets go again, and if you want to get it out of his mouth you must cut his head off; that’s the sort of man that has fretted me many a time, and almost made me mad. You might sooner argue a pitchfork into a threshing machine, or persuade a brickbat to turn into marble, than get the fellow to hear common sense. Scrubbing blackamoors white, and getting spots out of leopards, is nothing at all compared with trying to lead a downright obstinate man. Right or wrong, you might as easily make a hill walk to London, as turn him when his mind is made up. When a man is right, this sticking to his text is a grand thing; our minister says, “it is the stuff that martyrs are made of,” but when an ignorant, wrongheaded fellow gets this hard grit into him, he makes martyrs of those who have to put up with him.