Anti-Alter Call

"Let God send the fire of His Spirit here, and the minister will be more and more lost in his Master. You will come to think less of the speaker and more of the truth spoken....

Suppose the fire should come here, and the Master be seen more than the minister, what then? Why, this church will become two, three and four thousand strong.... We shall have the lecture hall beneath this platform crowded at each prayer meeting, and we shall see in this place young men devoting themselves to God; we shall find ministers raised up, and trained, and sent forth to carry the sacred fire to other parts of the globe.... If God shall bless us, He will make us a blessing to multitudes of others.

Let God but send down the fire, and the biggest sinners in the neigbbourbood will be converted; those who live in dens of infamy will be changed; the drunkard will forsake his cups, the swearer will repent of his blasphemy, the debauched will leave their lusts...dry bones be raised, and clothed afresh. And hearts of stone be turned to flesh.

"I do not come to this pulpit hoping that perhaps somebody will of his own free will return to Christ. My hope lies in another quarter, I hope that my Master will lay hold of some of them and say, ‘you are mine, and you shall be mine, I claim you for myself.’ My hope arises from the freeness of grace, and not from the freedom of the will."

-- Charles Spurgeon, his first sermon in the Metropolitan Tabernacle, March 31, 1861