The First Fruit of the Spirit (sermon 1782)

This week we finally crest the peak of our reading of Spurgeon's sermons, crossing the halfway line in our reading through the Passmore & Alabaster collection of his preaching. This address, on love as the first fruit of the Spirit, is a fitting marker for the occasion. The sermon bears many of Spurgeon's hallmarks: richly doctrinal and practical and experimental; full of a lively sense of the Holy Spirit; rising to a Christ-centred crescendo; pleading for the holiness of God's people and the salvation of the lost; a thorough sense of the text in its context; an inventive and engaging outline; a delight in the grace of our heavenly Father; a lively hope of heaven; a plain call to penetrating self-examination. In one sense there is nothing remarkable about the sermon. In another sense, the fact that this is a further sermon showing a consistent richness of substance and a sustained intensity of spirituality makes it notable not because it stands out but because it is more of the same, and it warms our hearts.