Running Well - » Killing Old Rhodes:
D.R. offers the remarkable story of SIX YEAR OLD C.H. Spurgeon rebuking a sinning church member! Read the whole thing at his blog, but I have included the results of "the kill" here.
"“I’m very sorry indeed, my dear pastor, to have caused you such grief and trouble. It was very wrong, I know, for I always tried you and wouldn’t have done it if I’d only thought. I was a-sitting in the public just having my pipe and mug of beer, when that child comes in–to think an old man like me should be took to task and reproved by a bit of a child like that! Well, he points at me with his finger just so and says, ‘What doest thou here, Elijah! sitting with the ungodly, and you a member of a church, and breaking your pastor’s heart. I’m ashamed of you! I wouldn’t break my pastor’s heart, I am sure.’ And then he walks away. Well, I did feel angry, but I knew it was all true and I was guilty; so I put down my pipe and did not touch my beer, and hurried away to a lonely spot and cast myself down before the Lord, confessing my sin and begging for forgiveness. And I do know and believe that the Lord in mercy pardoned me, and now I’ve come to ask you to forgive me; and I’ll never grieve you any more, my dear pastor.”"
Of course, Spurgeon grew up and having given up his childish ways, became a cigar smoker and beer drinker, so I suppose the sin of the gentleman was sitting in the ale house, or allowing the time spent there to detract from time better spent elsewhere? Or maybe young Spurgeon just got it wrong, as did his grandfather?
ReplyDeleteIt couldn't have been the beer and the pipe.
Say it isn't so!!
Canadian beer?
ReplyDelete