I. Do not disbelieve the gospel because it surprises you.
1. Nothing stands in the way of real knowledge so much as prejudice.
2. Many things which we know to be true would not have been believed by our fathers if they had been revealed to them.
3. There are many things which are undoubted facts which certain classes of men find it hard to believe.
4. The fact that a gospel statement seems new and astonishing ought not to create unbelief in the mind.
II. There are very singular and surprising things in the gospel.
1. That the gospel should come to people whom it regards as incapable.
2. That the gospel calls upon men to do what they cannot do.
3. That whilst the gospel bids men do what they cannot of themselves do, they actually do it.
4. This paralyzed man was healed-
(a) at once,
(b) without any ceremony,
(c) perfectly,
(d) evidently.
So is it when the gospel saves the soul.
III. If it be so with you, then go and glorify god. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Prejudice a stumbling block
Theories are the nuisances of science: the rubbish that must be swept away that the precious facts may be made bare. If you go to the study of a subject, saying to yourself, “This is how the matter must shape itself,” having beforehand made up your mind what the facts ought to be, you will have put in your own way a difficulty more severe than the subject itself could place there. Prejudice is the stumbling block of advance. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
New things may be true things
When an observer first discovered that there were spots on the sun he reported it, but he was called before his father confessor and upbraided for having reported anything of the kind. The Jesuit father said that he had read Aristotle through several times and he had found no mention in Aristotle of any spots in the sun, and therefore there could be no such things. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The inconceivable may be true
If our forefathers could have been informed that men would travel at forty or fifty miles an hour, drawn by a steam engine, they would have shaken their heads and laughed the prediction to scorn. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Sense not to limit faith
Some time ago a missionary had told his black congregation that in the winter time the water in England became so hard that a man could walk upon it. Now they believed a good deal that he told them, but they did not believe that. One of them was brought over to England. The frost came at length, and the missionary took his black friend down to it; and although he stood upon the ice himself he could not persuade the Negro to venture. “No,” he said, “but I never saw it so. I have lived fifty years in my own country, and I never saw a man walk on a river before.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)
God’s power not to be limited by human calculation
If you are longing for a great salvation you must not sit down and calculate the Godhead by inches, and measure out the merit of Christ by ells, and calculate whether He can do this or do that. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The most senseless limit of evidence is the limit of the senses
But there is a great proneness to fix just such limits as these. Said a shrewd pastor in Massachusetts, when a new method of church work was proposed to him by a visiting brother, “No, no, that wouldn’t go down with my people; it’s too novel. There are two objections which my people raise against any fresh thing which I propose to them; one is, We never tried that thing here: the other is, We tried that here once, and it didn’t go. Either of these objections is fatal.” Such people as that don’t all live in Massachusetts, nor in Palestine. (H. C. Trumbull.)
