The Pure Church

It is related that a man once came to Charles H. Spurgeon and asked that great preacher if his church was a pure church. He said he was looking for a pure church that he might belong to it. Mr.

Spurgeon said that he did not know about his own church; but he did know that there were many good people in it— saintly people and truly Christian people. But there might possibly be a Judas among them, as there was in the company of Jesus’ first apostles.

And there might be some deceivers and idolators and those who walk unruly, as there seemed to have been in the churches of Rome and Corinth and Galatia and Ephesus and Colossae and Philippi and Thessalonica and alli the others to which the New Testament epistles were written. On the whole, he thought that his church was not the one his brother was looking for. Instead, he did not know that there had been such a church in all history. “But,” said Mr.

Spurgeon, “if you should happen te find such a church, I beg of you not to join it, for you would spoil the whole thing.”—Bernard Bain, in the Christian Observer.