Around the Wicket Gate;
or, a Friendly Talk with Seekers concerning Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
C.H. Spurgeon [1889]
Quotes from the Passmore & Alabaster edition, London (1889)
Via The Sword & the Trowel:
It came into the author’s heart to write a shilling book to help souls over the threshold, that they might really enter by the gate at the head of the way. To win eyes that look for pictures, a number of woodcuts have been interwoven with the simple, homely, earnest talk. In this way, the author, while away from his pulpit, hopes to keep on preaching. He begs his friends to scatter this little book in all directions.
Awakening
p9 — Great numbers of persons have no concern about eternal things. They care more about their cats and dogs than about their souls.
p10 — Better far that our tenderness of conscience should cause us long years of anguish, than that we should lose it, and perish in the hardness of our hearts.
p11 — Remember, awakening is not salvation. A man may know that he is lost, and yet he may never be saved. He may be made thoughtful, and yet he may die in his sins.
p13 — It is not what you feel that will save you, but what Jesus felt. Even if there were some healing value in feelings, they would have to be good ones; and the feeling which makes us doubt the power of Christ to save, and prevents our finding salvation in him, is by no means a good one, but a cruel wrong to the love of Jesus.
p14 — Even so, to believe that you have sinned, and that your soul is forfeited to the justice of God, is a very proper thing; but it will not save. Salvation is not by knowing our own ruin, but by fully grasping the deliverance provided in Jesus Christ.
2. Jesus Only
p16 — It pleased God from of old to devise a method of salvation which should be all contained in his only-begotten Son. The Lord Jesus, for the working out of this salvation, became man, and being found in fashion as a man, became obedient to death, even the death of the cross. If another way of deliverance had been possible, the cup of bitterness would have passed from him. It stands to reason that the darling of heaven would not have died to save us if we could have been rescued at less expense. Infinite grace provided the great sacrifice; infinite love submitted to death for our sakes. How can we dream that there can be another way than the way which God has provided at such a cost, and set forth in Holy Scripture so simply and so pressingly? Surely it is true that “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”
p20 — The nature of the Lord Jesus should inspire us with the fullest confidence. As he is God, he is almighty to save; as he is man, he is filled with all fulness to bless; as he is God and man in one Majestic Person, he meets man in his creatureship and God in his holiness."