Spurgeon opens by affirming that praising God is not optional but a genuine duty for every Christian, then turns his attention to the problem of "little faith" — describing the many Christians, like Bunyan's characters Ready-to-halt and Mr. Fearing, who are genuinely saved but live in constant doubt, worry, and spiritual timidity, never enjoying the security that is already theirs. He walks through the real disadvantages of weak faith: it steals joy, makes a person feel unsafe even when they are perfectly safe, leaves them vulnerable to temptation, and turns every day into an experience of gloom rather than gladness. He then offers several practical remedies for growing stronger faith — meditating deeply on God's promises, recording and remembering answered prayers, spending time with mature believers, dying to self-reliance, embracing trials rather than avoiding them, putting faith to work in service, and above all maintaining close communion with Christ — promising that diligent cultivation of these habits can lead a believer all the way to a settled, unshakable confidence in God's love.

Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on July 18, 1858.

Spurgeon begins by establishing what he considers a foundational truth: whatever Jesus Christ intended to accomplish by his death absolutely will be accomplished, because an all-powerful God cannot fail in his purposes — which leads him to reject the idea of a general atonement where Christ died for everyone but secured salvation for no one. He then turns to the heart of his text, arguing that Christ came specifically "to seek and to save that which was lost" — meaning those who have completely run out of self-trust, self-effort, and self-hope, comparing them to shipwrecked sailors who have finally laid down their oars and accepted that they cannot save themselves. Spurgeon closes with the deeply encouraging point that Christ does not wait for lost sinners to find him, but actively seeks them out in every corner of their wandering — in pride, despair, sin, and self-righteousness — and when he finds them empty of all self-reliance, he saves them completely and forever.

Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on July 11, 1858.

Spurgeon opens by arguing that earth and heaven are far more connected than most people realize — through God the Father's constant attention, through Jesus Christ who shares in his people's sufferings, through departed saints who watch over us, and through angels who actively minister to believers — making heaven not a distant, unreachable place but more like a ship sailing right alongside our own. He then focuses on the specific claim of his text: that angels genuinely rejoice every time a single sinner repents, and he argues this is completely reasonable because angels understand both the horrors of hell that the repentant sinner has escaped and the magnitude of the heaven they have gained, and because angels know that a truly repentant sinner is permanently saved. He closes by calling the church to match the angels' joy — pointing out that believers often grumble more than they celebrate — and urging his congregation to feel the same delight over each conversion, whether of a stranger or a beloved family member, that the whole host of heaven feels every time one lost soul comes home.

A sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on July 4, 1858.

Using Paul's dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus as his text, Spurgeon addresses those who mock, ridicule, or obstruct believers in their faith, pointing out that Christ takes every injury done to his followers as a personal offense against himself — just as he said to Saul, "Why do you persecute me?" rather than "Why do you persecute my followers?" He then works through the futility of opposing Christ, arguing that persecutors accomplish nothing: they cannot stop the advance of the church, they gain nothing and harm themselves in the process, and if God has determined to save them, no amount of resistance will ultimately succeed. Spurgeon closes with both a warning and an invitation — warning that those who continue to reject Christ are only heaping injury on themselves — but holding out the remarkable hope that even the worst persecutors, like Paul and John Bunyan, have been transformed into the greatest servants of God, and urging any whose hearts are already stirring to come to Christ without delay.

A sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on June 27, 1858.

Inspired by reports of a massive revival sweeping America where a quarter million people had professed faith in just a few months, Spurgeon preaches on the absolute necessity of the Holy Spirit, explaining that the Spirit works in two ways: first by reordering and restoring the broken powers of the human mind, and second by implanting an entirely new spiritual capacity that no person is born with. He argues forcefully that neither physical force nor persuasive preaching can convert a single soul, since conversion is like a resurrection from the dead — something only God can accomplish — and that the real agent of every genuine conversion is the Holy Spirit, not any minister or method. Spurgeon closes with a passionate call to prayer, urging his congregation to honor the Holy Spirit above all human instruments and to gather daily for earnest corporate prayer, promising that if they seek God in this way, revival in England is just as certain as God's faithfulness to his own promises.

Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on June 20, 1858.

Spurgeon takes as his subject the person who regularly attends church, sits in judgment of others, or even stands in the pulpit — yet has no genuine faith — walking his listeners through the life, funeral, and epitaph of this "wicked man" to expose how hollow and ultimately tragic such a life turns out to be. He observes that repeated exposure to the gospel without a changed heart only hardens a person further, and that when such a person dies, all the pomp of their funeral is a dark joke — their hopes, pretensions, and reputation are buried with them, and they are quickly forgotten even by those who knew them. Spurgeon closes with a pointed challenge: if you are going to attend church without truly belonging to God, you are living in the most pitiful kind of hypocrisy, earning more scorn than open sinners, and the only fitting epitaph for such a life is "vanity" — urging every listener to stop pretending and instead turn to Jesus Christ in genuine faith.

Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on June 13, 1858.

Using the image of a merchant selling wine and milk, Spurgeon declares that the gospel offers a full, free, present, and permanent pardon for sin through Jesus Christ — available to absolutely anyone, regardless of their background, wealth, education, or the severity of their sins. He then humorously turns the sales metaphor around, explaining that his challenge is not to raise the price but to bring people down to it, since the gospel costs nothing — and he works through a parade of would-be buyers who keep arriving with things to offer: religious rituals, good works, money, feelings, experience — all of which must be left behind, because God's salvation is received with empty hands or not at all. Spurgeon closes with an urgent appeal to both the careless (who avoid thinking about eternity) and the troubled (who already feel their need), pleading with both to simply look to the crucified Christ and trust him now, since he turns away no one who comes with nothing but their need.

Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on June 11, 1858.

Using the image of a footrace, Spurgeon argues that while salvation is entirely a gift of God's grace, every genuine believer must still run with full effort toward the prize of eternal life — and he warns that many people who appear to be "running" are actually chasing the wrong things, like respectability, church status, financial gain, or a quieted conscience, none of which will matter at the end. He then walks through the common reasons people fail to win the race: never truly starting, starting without genuine repentance, carrying the heavy weight of worldly worries, wasting energy criticizing others, losing momentum over time, or eventually leaving the course altogether. Spurgeon closes with three urgent motivations to keep pressing forward — the watching eyes of angels, saints, and the world; the eternal stakes of heaven or hell; and the image of Jesus himself standing at the finish line, holding out a crown and calling every believer onward.

Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on June 11, 1858.

Using the story of the twelve spies sent into Canaan as his framework, Spurgeon argues that every Christian is like a spy reporting back to the watching world about whether religion is truly good — and that the daily conduct of believers either draws people toward God or pushes them further away, far more powerfully than any sermon ever could. He identifies three kinds of "bad spies": the chronically gloomy Christian who makes religion look miserable, the hypocrite whose private behavior contradicts their public piety, and the ordinary believer who occasionally stumbles, and warns that the world will always magnify Christians' failures while ignoring their virtues. Spurgeon then calls every believer — whether a merchant, a suffering invalid, an elderly saint, a wife, or a servant — to live with such consistent joy, honesty, and gentleness that their very life becomes a persuasive testimony that the Christian life is genuinely good, while also reminding the unconverted that blaming Christians for their own unbelief will be no excuse on Judgment Day.

Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on June 6, 1858.

Spurgeon challenges the common human tendency to treat religion as something to deal with later in life, arguing that this is simply a trick people play on themselves to avoid something they find inconvenient — just as people minimize the horror of war or death by imagining it as distant. He presents several strong reasons why salvation must be a present experience: this life is the seed time for eternity, faith and hope can only be exercised now, the duties of Christianity can only be practiced in this world, and the blessings of God — forgiveness, adoption, peace — are all described in Scripture in the present tense. He closes by directly challenging the idea that religion makes people miserable, insisting that no genuine Christian has ever reached their deathbed wishing they had given less of their life to Christ, and urging every listener to stop delaying and trust Jesus today.

Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on May 30, 1858.