A Present Religion

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.