THE

Clue of the maze

by

C. H. Spurgeon

THIRD EDITION

london:

Passmore & Alabaster

Paternoster Buildings, E.C.

1892

all rights reserved

Preface

Doubt dims and chills the day. A fog is over all things, and men move about like Egypt’s ancients when they felt the darkness. Oh that this mist would lift! The best we can hope is that the present gloom may pass away right speedily, and that the cloud may leave a dew behind, to nourish a more intelligent and unquestioning faith.

In this clammy scepticism no race but the puniest can be nurtured. Men who are greatly good are hill-born, and love the fresh air of the mountains of truth.

The paragraphs of this little book are not supposed to be an argument. It was not my aim to convince an opponent, but to assist a friend. How I have personally threaded the labyrinth of life thus far, may be of helpful interest to some other soul which just now is in a maze. I hope that by these pages some true heart may be assisted to “fight his doubts and gather strength.” Let no man’s heart fail him, for the prevalent scepticisms are but “spectres of the mind.” Face them, and they fly.

A great poet let fall the expression, “honest doubt.” How greedily it was clutched at! Modern unbelief is so short of the quality that it seized the label, and, in season and out of season, it has advertised itself as HONEST doubt. It was in dire need of a character.

Feeble as our voice may be, we lift it on behalf of

Honest Faith.

The Clue of the Maze

Let us live

The most important part of human life is not its end, but its beginning. Our death-day is the child of the past; but our opening years are the sires of the future. At the last hour men summon to their bedside a solemnity of thought which arrives too late for any practical result. The hush, and awe, and far-away look, so frequent in departing moments, should have come much sooner. Commend us to the example of the Hebrew King, who fasted, and wore sackcloth, while the child was yet alive. Wisely did he foresee the uselessness of lamenting when the scene should close. “Can I bring him back again?” was one of the most sensible of questions.

It may be a serious business to take the cold iron from the anvil; it seems to us far sadder to be standing still, and seeing the hot bar grow chill. Brother, at my side, whoever you may be, let us strike!

How shall we live?

With what hammer shall we strike? Ay, there’s the rub. Not that it is any question to me personally; but desiring to be a true brother to you, my reader, I put it so; and for your sake, and in fellowship with you, I look around the work-shop. Here are hammers, light, bright, many! See the trade-mark,—Warranted brand-new. The old smith over yonder says he knows nothing of them. They were left here by a new firm, who are always inventing fine things. “Leastwise,” says he, “they call themselves a new firm, but I believe they might better be called ‘the long firm’: they trade under new names, but they are old rogues.” The smith swings ...