Phil D.
ὁ βαπτιστὴς
"Sin will make thee leave off praying, or else praying will make thee leave off sinning.” Oh! thou canst never be strong in sin and strong in prayer. As long as thou indulgest in lust, or sin, or wantonness of any kind, thy power in prayer is taken away, and thy lips are shut when thou attemptest to approach thy God.
Or if thou willest, try another exercise: after committing a sin, go into the world and seek to do good. Why, man, thou canst not do it; thou hast lost the power to cleanse others when thou art impure thyself. What! can I with filthy fingers wash the face of others? Shall I essay to plough another man’s field while my own is lying fallow, and the tall, rank thistle and weed are overspreading it? I am powerless to do good until I have first cleansed my own vessel and made that pure.
An unholy minister must be an unsuccessful one, and an unholy Christian must be an unfruitful one. Unless thou desirest to have thy sinews loosed, to have the marrow of thy bones scorched from thee, unless thou willest that the sap of thy being should be dried up, I beseech thee, hate sin, for sin can debilitate and weaken thee so much that thou shalt drag along a miserable existence, the very skeleton of a soul instead of flourishing in the ways of thy God. “Ye that love the Lord, hate evil.”
(Charles Spurgeon, The New Park Street Pulpit, Vol. IV, 1858, pp. 786, 787)
