Obstacles to Soul-Winning
Charles Spurgeon · The Soul-Winner; or, How to Lead Sinners to the Saviour
OBSTACLES TO SOUL-WINNING
I have spoken to you, brethren, at different times,
about soul-winning — that most royal employment.
May you all become, in this sense, mighty hunters be-
fore the Lord, and bring many sinners to the Saviour!
I want, at this time, to say a few words upon —
THE OBSTACLES THAT LIE IN OUR PATH AS WE
SEEK TO WIN SOULS FOR CHRIST.
They are very many, and I cannot attempt to make
a complete catalogue of them; but the first, and one
of the most difficult is, doubtless, the i7idifference and
lethargy of sitiners. All men are not alike indifferent;
in fact, there are some persons who seem to have a
sort of religious instinct, which influences them for
good, long before they have any real love to spiritual
things. But there are districts, especially rural dis-
tricts, where indifference prevails; and the same state
of things exists in various parts of London. It is not
infidelity ; the people do not care enough about religion
even to oppose it. They are not concerned as to what
you preach, or where you preach, for they have no
interest whatever in the matter. They have no thought
of God; they care nothing about Him, or His service,
they only use His name in profanity. I have often
noticed that any place where there is little business
doing is bad for religious effort. Among the negroes
of Jamaica, whenever they had not much work, there
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was little prosperity in the churches. I could indicate
districts, not far from here, where business is slack;
and there you w-ill find that there is very little good
being done. All along the valley of the Thames, there
are places wdiere a man might preach his heart out,
and kill himself; but there is little or nothing of good
being accomplished in those regions, just as there is
no active business life there.
Now, whenever you meet with indif¥erence, as you
may do, my dear brother, in the place wdiere you go
to preach, — indifiference affecting your own people,
and even your own deacons seeming to be tinged
with it, — what are you to do? Well, your only hope
of overcoming it is, to be doubly in earnest yourself.
Keep your own zeal all alive, let it be even vehement,
burning, blazing, all-consuming. Stir the people up
somehow; and if all your earnestness seems to be in
vain, still blaze and burn; and if that has no effect
upon your hearers, go elsewhere as the Lord may
direct you. This indifference or lethargy, that pos-
sesses the minds of some men, is very likely to have
an evil influence upon our preaching; but we must
strive and struggle against it, and try to wake both
ourselves and our hearers up. I would far rather
have a man an earnest, intense opposer of the gospel
than have him careless and indifferent. You cannot
do much with a man if he will not speak about reli-
gion, or will not come to hear what you have to say
concerning the things of God. You might as well have
him a downright infidel, like a very leviathan covered
with scales of blasphemy, as to have him a mere earth-
worm wriggling away out of reach.
Another very great obstacle to soul-winning is U7i-
belief. You know that it is written of the Lord Jesus
when in ''His own country" that "He did not many
OBSTACLES TO SOUL-WINNING. 109
mighty works there because of their iinbehef." This
evil exists in all nnregenerate hearts, but in some men
it takes a very pronounced form. They do think about
religion, but they do not believe in the truth of God
which we preach to them. Their opinion is to them
more weighty, more worthy of belief, than God's
inspired declarations; they will not accept anything
that is revealed in the Scriptures. These people are
very hard to influence; but I would warn you not to
fight them with their own w^eapons. I do not believe
that infidels ever are won by argument; or, if so, it
very seldom happens. The argument that convinces
men of the reality of religion, is that which they gather
from the holiness and earnestness of those who profess
to be Christ's followers. As a rule, they barricade
their minds against the assaults of reason; and if we
give our pulpits over to arguing with them, we shall
often be doing more harm than good. In all probabil-
ity, only a very small portion of our audience will
understand what w^e are talking about; and while we
are trying to do them good, most likely we shall be
teaching infidelity to others who do not know any-
thing about such things, and the first knowledge they
ever have of certain heresies will have come to them
from our lips. Possibly our refutation of the error
may not have been perfect, and many a young mind
may have been tinctured with unbelief through listen-
ing to our attempted exposure of it. I believe that
you will rout unbelief by your faith rather than by your
reason; by your belief, and your acting up to your
conviction of the truth, you will do more good than
by any argument, however strong it may be. There
is a friend who sits to hear me generally every Sab-
bath. ''What do you think?" he said to me, one day,
"you are my only link with better things; but you
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are an awful man in my estimation, for you have not
the sHghtest sympathy with me." I repHed, "No, I
have not; or, rather, I have not the least sympathy
with your unbelief." 'That makes me cling to you,
for I fear that I shall always remain as I am; but
when I see your calm faith, and perceive how God
blesses you in exercising it, and know what you accom-
plish through the power of that faith, I say to myself,
'Jack, you are a fool.' " I said to him, "You are quite
right in that verdict, and the sooner you come to my
way of thinking, the better, for nobody can be a big-
ger fool than the man who does not believe in God."
One of these days I expect to see him converted ; there
is a continual battle between us, but I never answer
one of his arguments. I said to him once, "If you
believe that I am a liar, you are free to think so if you
like; but I testify what I do know, and state what I
have seen, and tasted, and handled, and felt, and you
ought to believe my testimony, for I have no possible
object to serve in deceiving you." That man would
have beaten me long ago if I had fired at him with the
paper pellets of reason. So, I advise you to fight
unbelief wath belief, falsehood with the truth, and never
to cut and pare down the gospel to try to make it fit
in with the follies and fancies of men.
A third obstacle in the way of winning souls is that
fatal delay which men so often make. I do not know
whether this evil is not on the whole more widespread
and mischievous than the indiiTerence and lethargy and
unbelief of which I have spoken. Many a man says
to us what Felix said to Paul, "Go thy way for this
time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for
thee." Such an individual gets into the border country,
he seems to be within a few steps of Emmanuel's land,
and yet he parries our home-thrusts, and puts us of¥
OBSTACLES TO SOUL-WINNING. Ill
by saying, '*Yes, I will think the matter over, it shall
not be long before I decide." There is nothing like
pressing men for a speedy decision, and getting them to
settle at once this all-important question. Never mind
if they do find fault with your teaching; it is always
right to preach what God says, and His word is, "Be-
hold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the
day of salvation."
This leads me to mention another obstacle to soul-
winning, which is the same thing in another form,
viz., carnal security. Many men fancy that they are
quite safe; they have not really tested the foundation
on which they are building, to see that it is sound and
firm, but they suppose that all is w^ell. If they are
not good Christians, they can at least say that they
are rather better than some who are Christians, or who
call themselves by that name; and if there is anything
lacking in them, they can at any time put on the finish-
ing touch, and make themselves fit for God's presence.
Thus they have no fear; or, if they do fear at all, they
do not live in constant dread of that eternal destruc-
tion from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory
of His power, which will certainly be their portion
unless they repent, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Against these people we ought to thunder day and
night. Let us plainly proclaim to them that the unbe-
lieving sinner is ''condemned already," and that he is
certain to perish everlastingly if he does not trust in
Christ. We ought so to preach as to make every sinner
tremble in his seat; and if he will not come to the
Saviour, he ought at least to have a hard time of it
while he stops away from Him. I am afraid that we
sometimes preach smooth things, too soothing and
agreeable, and that we do not set before men their real
danger as we should. If we shun in this respect to
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declare all the counsel of God, part at least of the
responsibility of their ruin will lie at our door.
Another obstacle to soul-winning is despair. The
pendulum swings first one way and then the other;
and the man who yesterday had no fear, to-day has
no hope. There are thousands who have heard the
gospel, and yet live in a kind of despair of its power
being ever exerted upon them. Perhaps they have
been brought up among people who taught them that
the work of salvation was something of God altogether
apart from the sinner; and so they say that, if they
are to be saved, they will be saved. You know that
this teaching contains a great truth, and yet, if it is
left by itself, without qualification, it is a horrible false-
hood. It is fatalism, not predestination, that makes
men talk as if there is nothing whatever for them to
do, or that there is nothing that they can do. There
is no likelihood of anyone being saved while he gives
you this as his only hope, *Tf salvation is for me, it
will come to me in due time." You may meet with
people who talk thus; and when you have said all you
can, they will remain as if they were cased in steel,
with no sense of responsibility, because there is no
hope awakened in their spirit. Oh, if they would but
hope that they might receive mercy by asking for it,
and so be led to cast their guilty souls on Christ, what
a blessing it would be! Let us preach full and free
salvation to all who trust in Jesus, so that we may, if
possible, reach these people. If the carnally secure
should be tempted to presume, some who are quietly
despairing may pluck up heart, and hope, and may
venture to come to Christ.
No doubt a great obstacle to soul-winning is the love
of sin. *'Sin lieth at the door." There are many men
who never get saved because of some secret lust; it
OBSTACLES TO SOUL-WINNING. 11:;
may be that they arc Hving- in fornication. I remem-
ber well the case of a man, of whom I thought that
he would certainly come to Christ. He was fully aware
of the power of the j^ospel, and seemed to be impressed
under the preaching of the Word; but I found out
that he had become entangled with a woman who was
not his wife, and that he was still living in sin while
])rofessing to be seeking the Saviour. When I heard
that, I could easily understand how it was that he could
not obtain peace; wdiatever tenderness of heart he may
have felt, there was this woman always holding him
in the bondage of sin.
There are some men who are guilty of dishonest
transactions in business; you will not see them saved
all the while they continue to act so. If they will not
give up that trickery, they cannot be saved. There
are others who are drinking to excess. People who
drink, you know, are often very easily affected under
our preaching; they have a watery eye, their drinking
has made them soft-headed, and there is a maudlin kind
of sensitiveness in them; but as long as a man clings
to "the cup of devils" he will not be likely to come to
Christ. With others it is some secret sin, or some
hidden lust that is the great difficulty. One says
that he cannot help flying into a passion, another de-
clares that he cannot give up getting drunk, while
another laments that he cannot find peace, whereas
the root of the mischief is that there is a harlot who
stands in his way. In all these cases, we have only
to keep on preaching the truth, and God will help us
to aim the arrow at the joint in the sinner's harness.
Another obstacle is put in our way by vicji's self-
righteousness. They have not committed any of these
sins I have mentioned, they have kept all the com-
man.dments from their youth up; what lack they yet?
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There is no room for Christ in a full heart; and when
a man is clothed from head to foot with his own right-
eousness, he has no need of the righteousness of Christ ;
at least, he is not conscious of his need, and if the
gospel does not convince him of it, Moses must come
with the law, and show him what his true state is.
That is the real difficulty in many, many cases; the
man does not come to Christ because he is not con-
scious that he is lost, he does not ask to be lifted up
because he does not know that he is a fallen creature,
he does not feel that he has any need of divine mercy
or forgiveness, and therefore he does not seek it.
Once more, there are some with whom all we say
has no effect because of their titter ttwrldliness. This
worldliness takes two shapes; in the poor, it is the
result of grinding poverty. When a man has scarcely
enough bread to eat, and hardly knows how to get
clothes to put on, when at home he hears the cries of
his little children, and looks into the face of his over-
worked wife, we must preach very wonderfully if we
are to secure his attention, and make him think about
the world to come. "What shall we eat? what shall we
drink? and wherewithal shall we be clothed?" are ques-
tions that press very heavily upon the poor. To a
hungry man, Christ is ver\^ lovely when He has a loaf
of bread in His hand. Our Lord so appeared whefi
He was breaking the bread and fish for the multitude,
for even He did not disdain to feed the hungry; ami
when we can relieve the wants of the destitute, we
may be doing a necessary thing to them, and placing
them where they may be capable of listening with profit
to the gospel of Christ. The other kind of worldliness
comes of having too much of this world, or at least
of making too much of this world. The gentleman
must be fashionable, his daughters must be dressed in
OBSTACLES TO SOUL- WINNING. 115
the best sy\e, his sons must learn to dance, and so on.
This sort of worldHncss has been the great curse of
our Nonconformist churches.
Then there is another kind of man who is from
morning" to night grinding away at the shop; his one
business seems to be to put up the shutters, and take
them down again; he will rise early, and sit up late,
and eat the bread of carefulness, so as to make money.
What can we do for these covetous persons? How
can we ever hope to touch the hearts of these men
whose one aim is to be rich, the people who scrape
up the halfpennies and farthings? Economy is good,
but there is an economy that becomes parsimony, and
that parsimony becomes the habit of these miserly folk.
Some will even go to chapel because it is the proper
and respectable tiling, and they hope to gain custom-
ers by going. Jndas remained unconverted even in
the company of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we have
some people still among us in whose ears the thirty
pieces of silver chink so loudly that the soiind of the
gospel cannot be heard by them.
I may mention one more obstacle to soul-winning,
that is, the obstacle there is with some men througii
f/ieir liabits, and resorts, and company. How can we
expect a working-man to go home, and sit all the
evening in the one room that he has to live in, and
sleep in? Perhaps there are two or three children cry-
ing, and linen drying, and all sorts of things to pro-
duce discomfort. The man comes in, and his wife is
scolding, his children are crying, and the linen is dry-
ing; what would you do if you were in his place?
Suppose you were not Christian men, would you not
go somewhere or other? You cannot walk the streets,
and you know that there is a cosy room at the public-
house, with its flashing gaslight, or there is the gin-
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palace at the corner, where everything is bright and
cheerful, and where there are plenty of jolly compan-
ions. Well, now, you cannot hope to be the means of
saving men while they go to such places, and while
they meet with the company that is found there. All
the good that they receive from the hymns they
heard on the Sabbath is driven away as they listen to the
comic songs in the drink-shop, and all remembrance
of the services of the sanctuary is obliterated by the
very questionable tales that are told in the bar-parlour.
Hence the great mercy of having a place where work-
ing-men can come and sit in safety, or of having a
Blue Ribbon meeting, a gathering wdiere it may not
be all singing, nor all preaching, nor all praying, but
where there is something of all these things. Here
the man is enabled to get out of the former habits
which seemed to hold him fast, and by-and-by he does
not go to the public-house at all, but he has two rooms,
or perhaps a little cottage, so that his wife can dry
the linen in the backyard, and now he finds that the
baby does not cry so much as he used to do, probably
because his mother has more to give him; and every-
thing gets better and brighter now that the man has
forsaken his former resorts. I think a Christian min-
ister is quite justified in using all right and lawful means
to wean the people from their evil associations, and
it may be well sometimes to do that which seems to
be extraordinary if thereby we can by any means win
men to the Lord Jesus Christ. That must be our one
aim in all that we do; and whatever obstacles may be
in our pathway, we must seek the aid of the Holy
Spirit that they may be removed, and that thus souls
may be saved, and God may be glorified.