Puritanism Commended – Charles Spurgeon

ALTHOUGH the world may openly denounce the rigid Puritan, it secretly admires him. When the big heart of the world speaks out, it has respect to the man that is sternly honest, and will not yield his principles, no, not to a hair’s breadth. In such an age as this, when there is so little principle, when principle is cast to the winds, and a general latitudinarianism, both of thought and of practice, seems to rule the day, it is still the fact that a man who is decided, and speaks his mind, commands the reverence of mankind. Depend upon it, woman, your husband and your children will respect you none the more because you say, “I will give up some of my Christian privileges,” or “I will go sometimes with you into that which is sinful.” You cannot help them out of the mire if you go and plunge into the mud yourself. You cannot help to make them clean if you go and blacken your own hands. How can you wash their faces then? You, young man in the shop—you, young woman in the workroom—if you keep yourselves to yourselves in Christ’s name, chaste and pure for Jesus, not laughing at that which so often wins a laugh, but which is doubtful; not mixing up with a pleasure that is suspicious, but feeling, on the other hand, that to you a doubtful thing is a sinful thing, and that only that which is of faith and of truth is good to you—if you will so keep yourselves, your company in the midst of others shall be as though an angel shook his wings, and they will say to one another, “Do not do that just now, for so-and-so is there.” They will fear you, in a certain sense; they will admire you, and who can tell but they at last may come to imitate you.