Preachers, Speculative – Charles Spurgeon

MANY preachers—and I speak it with sorrow—have built a tower of theological speculations, upon which they sit like Nero, fiddling the tune of their own philosophy while the world is burning in sin and misery; they are playing with the toys of speculation while men’s souls are being lost. Much of human wisdom is a mere coverlet for the absence of vital godliness. I went into railway carriages of the first class in Italy which were lined with very pretty crochet-work, and I thought the voyagers highly honored, since no doubt some delicate fingers had sumptuously furnished the cars for them. The crochet-work was simply put on to cover the grease and dirt of the cloth. A great deal that is now preached of very pretty sentimentalism and religiousness is a mere crochet-work covering for detestable heresies long since disproved, which dared not appear again without a disguise for their hideousness. With words of human wisdom and speculations of their own invention men disguise falsehood and deceive many. Be it ours to give to the people what God gives to us. Be you each of you as Micaiah, who declared: “As the Lord lives, whatever the Lord says unto me that will I speak.