Mr. Evil-Questioning Tried and Executed

Spurgeon takes Naaman's question about the rivers of Damascus as the emblem of what he calls "Evil-Questioning" — the habit of raising intellectual objections to the gospel not from honest intellectual difficulty but as a convenient cover for continuing in sin — and he tracks this enemy through his disguises (calling himself "Honest Enquiry"), his speeches (turning Calvinist doctrine into an excuse for passivity, Arminian mercy into a license for delay, the imperfection of Christians into a reason to reject Christianity), and his distinguishing marks (applying to spiritual matters a logic he would never use in business, measuring the Infinite God by finite standards, drawing arguments from exceptions, and always reaching conclusions that happen to conveniently favor the sinner's continued rebellion). He then arraigns Evil-Questioning as a traitor to the King, a liar whose conclusions the questioner knows to be false, a murderer of souls, and an enemy who deserves immediate execution — and describes his large family of equally dangerous children that John Bunyan named: Doubt, Unbelief, Wrong Thoughts of Christ, Clip Promise, Legal Life, Live by Feeling, Carnal Sense, and Self Love, with brief counsel on how to deal with each. He closes with a dual application: to believers, urging them to refuse every suggestion that clips the promise, judges by feeling, or measures God by circumstances; and to the unconverted, urging them to stop their endless questioning, bring all their questions to the cross, look to Christ in simple trust, and discover that he will receive even the blackest sinner who dares to throw himself upon him.Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on February 5th, 1860.