A few words, spoken by Mr. Spurgeon at a Prayer Meeting, when a friend had been carried out due to a medical emergency. This is taken from The Sword and Trowel magazine published in August, 1878. The original article was titled: An Interruption Improved. It has been updated for today’s reader and the Scriptures quoted are in the English Standard Version.
Beloved friends, do not allow your souls to be upset. When we are occupied in prayer or in any other form of worship, interruptions may occur, especially in large groups like this. We cannot expect everything else to be put on hold because we are praying. Do not allow your minds to be easily distracted, or you will often have your devotion destroyed. Instead, let us learn a lesson from this painful incident. I seem to hear a voice in that pitiful cry of our friend. It is calling on me to have pity on the many whose existence is a long life of suffering. Let that mournful sound of suffering awaken sympathy for thousands, both in hospitals and at home, who are tormented with pain. We are in good health and sitting in the happy company of our fellow Christians. We should be grateful that we have not been struck down and need to be carried out while surrounded by anxious friends. Sympathy and Gratitude are two wonderful emotions. If both of these are awakened by this interruption, we will have gained more from it than we can possibly have lost.
Sympathy, or feeling sorrow for someone, often comes when we see or hear them in pain. Our tendency to sympathize is good. The person who is suffering deserves at least that much from us and it is very helpful to the compassionate heart that feels it. Those who continually enjoy good health and keep their distance from the poor and the sick, are likely to injure themselves by becoming hardened and unfeeling toward others. It is a sad thing when a blind man, who has to read braille by feeling the raised type with his fingertips, when his fingertips become hardened and numb and he can no longer read the thoughts of others. It is far worse when the soul loses its sensibility. You can no longer read the book of human nature; you remain untaught in the sacred literature of the heart. You have heard of “the Iron Duke of Wellington”1 who placed iron shutters over the windows of his London home to keep angry crowds from breaking them, but an iron Christian would be a very terrible person. A broken heart is a gift of God’s grace. It shows pity and tenderness for the suffering and less fortunate, and is full of compassion. You would feel even more sympathy for some afflicted ones if you knew how good they are and how patiently they endure their sufferings.
I am delighted with the dedicated way that some of our suffering sisters-in-Christ come out to religious services. When many in good health use the most silly excuses for staying away from the services, there are certain dear sick ones who are never absent. There is one among us who has many seizures in a week, but how she loves to be here! I ask her to sit near the door, because her attacks may come on her at any moment, but she is a example to all of us by the faithfulness of her attendance. Have sympathy with all the sick, but especially with those who might be spoken about in the words applied to Lazarus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”2
I also mentioned Gratitude. I hope none of you will forget to be thankful. Let the cry of pain remind us that we owe our Lord a song of thanksgiving for shielding us from the greater misfortunes of life. There are those who suffer from the ever weakening disease of tuberculosis, the misery of trying to breathe because of asthma, being torn to pieces by epileptic seizures, or the paralysis and involuntary shaking of cerebral palsy. Blessed be God for healthy limbs and senses that allow us to enjoy life. We can never become too grateful. Let us never run low of thanksgiving.
This interruption speaks to us with a still deeper and more serious tone. Our friend did not die, but he might easily have passed away this evening. That cry says to me, ”Prepare to meet your God.”3 We may die at any moment! We should always be ready for death. We should always be ready because we are washed in the blood of the Lamb, but we should also be ready to depart this life by having our affairs in order. I feel it is the right thing to do, when I lay my head upon my pillow to ask myself, “If I never wake on earth, is it well with my soul?” and then to reply,
“Sprinkled afresh with pardoning blood,
I lay me down to rest,
As in the embraces of my God,
Or on my Savior’s breast.”
Dear friends, could all of us at this moment stop breathing, and without any further preparation, enter eternity? Could our last breathe be used to say, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!”4? Could we rise from the earth right now and know we are ready for what awaits us above? We should be ready. Everything about us should be ready to the point that if our Lord should come while we are away from home we would not wish to go into the house, but could leave at once. I agree with the great scholar Bengel5 that death should not become a spiritual parade, but should be regarded as the natural close of our ordinary life; the final note of the song of which each day has been a stanza. We should live in such a way that to die would be no more remarkable than for a busy man to hear a knock at his door and quietly step away from what he is doing to answer it. There should be no calling a clergyman to administer sacraments, or asking a lawyer to write a hurried will, or needing to make peace with a relative we have not spoken to in years. Everything should be done as decently and in order as if the tax man was about to examine our returns and we were truly prepared for him.
This is the way we should live. Doing so will bring more glory to God than the most impressive death scene. A friend once told George Whitefield6 that, if he outlived him, he hoped he could be at his side when he died and hear his wonderful testimony for Christ. The good man replied, “I do not think it at all likely that I shall bear any remarkable witness in death, for I have borne so many testimonies to my Lord and Master during my life.” This is far better than hoping to give testimony for Christ when you are on your deathbed. Let us begin that holy work immediately and avoid the possibility that a quick death might arrest us on the spot and seal our lips in silence. Being faithful every day is the best way to guarantee that you will be faithful to the end.
Do not allow your life to be like a tangled mass of yarn that is good for nothing. Keep it in good order so that wherever the fatal knife of death cuts the thread of life, it will leave no difficult issues or regrets. Practice the excellent habit of Mr. Whitefield who we have already mentioned. He could not stand to go to bed and leave even a pair of gloves out of place. He felt that his Master might come at any moment and he wished to be ready even to the smallest details.
That disturbing incident is now over. Let us settle down again, all the more ready to unite in prayer and praise.
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1 Arthur Wellesley (1769 - 1852)
2 John 11:3
3 Amos 4:12
4 Luke 23:46
5 Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687 - 1752)
6 George Whitefield (1714 - 1770) Famous English evangelist who helped spread the Great Awakening in England and the American colonies.
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