Summer and Winter of the Church – Charles Spurgeon

ALL through the summer months, bright for the world, it is usually dark for the church. In the country towns the multitude engaged in agricultural occupations cannot be expected to come out to week-night services; and prayer-meetings, Bible-classes, and the like generally flag, while the long days demand longer labor. I do not say it is right that these meetings should flag so much as they do, but the fact remains that during the summer season there generally is a flagging of religious interest in the villages and towns; and even among ourselves it is to some extent the same. During the long days, the man who has to earn his bread with the sweat of his brow, must work, and it is only when the evenings begin to draw in, and the winter months come, that the happier seasons in the church arrive, and the winter becomes our summer, as the summer had been our winter. Right on from this period of the year the church should shake herself and say, “Now our harvest time comes; now is the period for kings to go forth to battle. God has given us the opportunity now, and we must avail ourselves of it, lest before another harvest time is past, and another spiritual summer time is ended, many may be where they can never be saved.”