A Drama in Five Acts

Spurgeon frames the entire sermon as a visit to a five-act play — marriage and family life, weeping and trial, rejoicing and prosperity, buying and accumulating, and finally using the world's comforts in old age — watching alongside a worldling who insists at every scene that this is solid and real and enough for an immortal soul, while Spurgeon whispers at every act that time is short, the scene is already changing, and no one has ever yet been consoled on their deathbed by a curtain about to fall. He then invites the audience to watch the same five acts through Christian eyes, insisting that nothing in Paul's text forbids marriage, grief, joy, commerce, or comfort — but that the Christian receives all of them as temporary loans held with an open hand, finding his real treasure elsewhere, weeping without despair because the rainbow arches over every storm, rejoicing without idolatry because better springs than earth's seasons can dry up, trading without greed because his real riches are laid up beyond the sky. He closes with a graphic image of a man pinned beneath a ship by the rising tide — an hour to live with the cold water creeping in — as the picture of every unconverted soul who does not feel the danger, and calls every hearer to ask what is actually real and lasting in their life: only the soul, other men's souls, Christ's church, and the glory of Christ himself — and he urges both sinner and saint to stop playing in the streets while the real work goes undone and the tide keeps rising.A sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on November 23, 1862.