The King’s Highway Opened and Cleaned

Using the image of Israel's cities of refuge — where magistrates annually cleared the roads of every obstacle so that the fleeing manslayer could arrive safely — Spurgeon surveys the road of faith and systematically removes six common stumbling blocks that prevent anxious sinners from trusting Christ: the enormity of past sin (answered by the boundless sufficiency of Christ's blood, which abounds where sin abounds), the hardness and lack of feeling in the heart (answered by the fact that the command to believe requires no preparation, and that a sight of Christ will melt what terrors cannot), the weakness of one's faith (answered by the truth that it is the object of faith, not its strength, that saves — the fringe of the garment is enough), the presence of doubts and fears mixed with faith (answered by Christ's own word to "little faith" and the testimony of the greatest saints who lived with doubt), the fear of death (answered by the principle that dying grace is given for dying moments, not before), and the consciousness of ongoing sin and failure to be holy (answered by the reminder that perfection is not the condition of salvation, and that the very grief over sin is evidence of new life). He closes by pressing the one great barrier that underlies all others — human pride that finds the simplicity of "trust Christ" too humbling — and urges every hearer to cast themselves wholly on Christ with nothing to commend them but the divine command itself, staking his own soul on the certainty that no soul that has ever genuinely trusted the blood of Christ has ever been cast away.Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on January 8th, 1860.