"Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:"

Luke 2 verse 29.

Having found a single, leather bound volume of Spurgeon's sermons, in my library, I decided to try reading one onto an audio file, as I thought it might be a blessing to me, and to others. The first sermon that I read was "Daniel facing the lions' den", and this was rapidly downloaded by several hundred persons. I, myself, thought it was rather good and decided to do another, which was also, based solely on the download numbers, well recieved.

If people want to hear these sermons, and are, effectively, voting with their online feet, it seemed reasonable to put several more up. Each one was a blessing to read. It seemed as though I could have just read them to myself, by why not share them with others also? I had that feeling that each one that I read was better than the last. They are full of sound doctrine and passionate appeal. I was very happy that they were being shared with others.

My approach was to pray that God would enable me to preach them just as Spurgeon did. Now of course no-one living remembers how Spurgeon preached. Years ago a fellow Christian medical student confessed that he had told his Sunday school class that, because they could not tape Spurgeon's preaching, they had to photocopy his messages for distribution. But then he also told the same class that the Israelites had cycled round the walls of Jericho 7 times on the last day, blowing trumpets, before the walls fell down. He must have been in love with a girl or something. If you are reading this Billy, I'd love hear from you!

At any rate, in the absence of tapes, no-one knows what Spurgeon sounded like. All the same I realised that I cannot preach like Spurgeon, and the reality that I was reading and not preaching, lead me to pray that God would quicken me to read these messages as Spurgeon would have read them. Who can tell?

Nunc Dimittis (Now you may depart) affected me exceedingly. There was a point where Spurgeon was preaching on love, about half way through, and I felt I had never come across such preaching before. The power and truth of what he was saying got a deep grip on me, and I felt as though I could hardly continue reading in the presence of such magnificent heavenly doctrine.

I commmend it to you.