When this passing world is done,

When has sunk yon glaring sun,

When we stand with Christ in glory,

Looking o’er life’s finished story;

Then, Lord, shall I fully know—

Not till then—how much I owe.

When I stand before the throne,

Dressed in beauty not my own;

When I see Thee as Thou art,

Love Thee with unsinning heart;

Then, Lord, shall I fully know—

Not till then—how much I owe.

Even on earth, as through a glass,

Darkly, let Thy glory pass;

Make forgiveness feel so sweet,

Make Thy Spirit’s help so meet;

Even on earth, Lord, make me know

Something of how much I owe.

Chosen not for good in me,

Wakened up from wrath to flee;

Hidden in the Saviour’s side,

By the Spirit sanctified;

Teach me, Lord, on earth to show,

By my love, how much I owe.

– Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 1837

Charles Dickens utilized his pen to influence his readers’ opinions. In a Christmas Carol, he strikes out against the ill-treatment of the poor through stinginess. He prescribed for Scrooge’s spirit to be replaced with the love for the common man. In another work, Little Dorrit, Dickens turned threatening eyes upon a practice that stifles man’s freedom to live and enjoy life. What has enchained man to a life of bondage? The answer is the Victorian Sabbath.

The narrator in his story described “a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close, and stale.… Melancholy streets in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look at them out of windows, in dire despondency.”[1] Dickens considered the Victorian Sabbath to be punishment for the laborer who toiled the previous six days. “Nothing for the spent toiler to do,” lamented the narrator, “but to compare the monotony of the seventh day with the monotony of his six days.”[2]

To replace the Victorian Sabbath, Dickens advocated for Sunday societies along with other intellectuals in Britian.[3] These groups began meeting in the 1860s and replaced the traditional Christian sermon with a lecture on science or another subject. Thus, the common man, on his only day off a week, would have another option of inquiry than attending a depressing church service. For Dickens, the Victorian Sabbath produced misery and not joy.

Charles Spurgeon, however, came to the opposite conclusion. God gave humanity the Christian Sabbath as a day of joy. “Time is the ring,” he preached, “and these Sabbaths are the diamonds set in it.… The Sabbaths are the beds full of rich choice flowers.”[4] Elsewhere, he called the Sabbath “the pearl of the week”[5] and “a day to feast yourselves in God.”[6] Moreover, “they are full of brightness, and joy, and delight.”[7]

Spurgeon also compared the gift of the Sabbath to the gift of marriage. He argued, “It is a blessing for which good men dwelling with affectionate wives praise God every day they live. Marriage and the Sabbath are the two choice boons of primeval love that have come down to us from Paradise, the one to bless our outer and the other our inner life.”[8] Certainly, this statement exalted the Sabbath day, considering Spurgeon’s blessed union with his wife.

Reflecting upon his letters to her, Susannah wrote, “To the end of his beautiful life it was the same, his letters were always those of a devoted lover, as well as of a tender husband.”[9] After thirty-six years of marriage, she saw herself as the “loving wife of the best man on God’s earth.”[10] From the couple’s letters and secondary historical accounts, it is natural to conclude that Charles and Susannah had an ideal marriage.[11] Given this fact, Spurgeon’s assertion that the Sabbath is one of God’s two greatest gifts discloses the happiness and gratitude with which he approached the day.

For a person to love the Sabbath, he must love the Lord of the Sabbath.

Spurgeon, therefore, saw the Sabbath commandment as a life-giving gift and not as a soul draining obligation. Why? God calls all people to rest from their normal labors to labor joyfully for Him. He invites us into His presence to hear the preaching of the Word, to sing hymns, to pray before His throne of grace, to give financial gifts, and to commune at the Lord’s Table. Furthermore, we can serve others in conversation, in evangelism, in visiting the shut-ins, in teaching our children, and in hospitality.  

What caused Dickens and Spurgeon to have opposite attitudes on the Sabbath? Spurgeon believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and Dickens did not. For a person to love the Sabbath, he must love the Lord of the Sabbath. If God sets aside every Sunday for worship, a believer is “glad when the Sabbath arrives,” because he “look[s] forward to it with delight.”[12] When the services end, the believer would “wish that Sabbaths were never over” and would “look forward to the next occasion when we should meet the saints of God.”[13]

For a believer in Christ, the joy of the Sabbath anticipates the joy of heaven. We skip one Sabbath day after another across the river of life until we arrive at the eternal Sabbath. George Herbert, a 17th century Anglican poet whom Spurgeon admired summarizes this Christian experience. In his poem “Sunday,” he wrote,

Thou art a day of mirth:

And where the week-days trail on ground,

Thy flight is higher, as thy birth.

O let me take thee at the bound,

Leaping with thee from sev’n to sev’n,

Till that we both, being tossed from earth,

Fly hand in hand to heav’n! [14]

[1] Charles Dickens, The Works of Charles Dickens: Little Dorrit, Part 1,29. Spurgeon’s library in Kansas City contains a volume of this work: Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit (London: Chapman and Hall, 1865).

[2] Dickens, Little Dorrit, 30.

[3] John Wigley, The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Sunday, 126, 190.

[4] Spurgeon, MTP, 7:584.

[5] Spurgeon, MTP, 33:104.

[6] Spurgeon, MTP, 8:527.

[7] Spurgeon, MTP, 38:140.

[8] Spurgeon, MTP, 20:42.

[9] Spurgeon, Autobiography, 2:24.

[10] Ibid., 28.

[11] See Rhodes, Susie: The Life and Legacy of Susannah Spurgeon, 75–86. Rhodes titled the chapter that chronicles the Spurgeon’s courtship “A Marriage Made for Heaven” (italics in original).

[12] Spurgeon, MTP, 47:76.

[13] Spurgeon, MTP, 14:413.

[14] Herbert, The Complete English Poems, 69.

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has a new scandal to add to its tragically growing list. Let’s call this one “bindergate,” because a black notebook binder with a red and white identification page is at the center of it. The following information is printed on that page:
2021 Resolutions Committee
James Merritt
June 2021
That binder evidently contains private emails that I exchanged with James Merritt (who chaired the Resolutions Committee that recommended resolutions to the 2021 SBC annual meeting that met in Nashville, June 15-16). I wrote those emails in response to Dr. Merritt reaching out to me with specific questions before the 2021 annual meeting. In an April 20 email he asked me two questions:
1) What are your specific concerns concerning Critical Race Theory and how the Southern Baptist Convention has handled this issue? 2) What specific things would you want our committee to hear from you?
I answered him as directly and helpfully as I could the very next day. We exchanged a couple of more brief emails before the annual meeting.
I had not given much thought to those email exchanges until a reporter for the Tennessean newspaper notified me a few weeks ago that he had obtained copies of them and intended to use them in a story he was writing on the SBC. Liam Adams asked to speak with me several times for the story. For a variety of reasons I never responded to his request (I was beyond cell service part of the time; I don’t trust mainstream media; and I find it somewhat distasteful that a reporter would make private emails public without at least asking permission to do so).
Let me quickly note that I am not concerned that Adams quoted my private correspondence. I long ago decided that I would operate as if every word I say in any context is being recorded and that anything I write anywhere will be made public. After all, a day is coming when I will give an account for all my words to a much higher court than that of mere human opinion. My Lord said, “On the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak” (Matthew 12:36).
So, I am not worried about my private words being made public in this way. I just think it is a slimy thing to do. Evidently it fits within the journalistic standards of the Tennessean, but I would like to think that Christians would have higher standards of ethics than that. Of course, while I might like to, I know better than to actually think that when it comes to certain SBC elitists. After all, this ain’t my first rodeo.
After Adams informed me in his third email to me (on November 18) that he intended to quote from my private emails to James Merritt, I contacted Dr. Merritt and asked him if he knew he had given my emails to Adams or if he knew how Adams had obtained them. Dr. Merritt called me the next day, while I was in Tennessee (which, as former ERLC ethicist, Philip Bethancourt reminded Southern Baptists is a “one-party consent” state when it comes to capturing audio secretly). He assured me that he had not given those emails to the reporter and that he had “no idea” how Adams obtained them. That conversation was the first time that I heard the word “binder” in connection with all of these shenanigans. Dr. Merritt said that Adams kept bringing up “some kind of binder” during an interview that he gave to Adams. Dr. Merritt assured me that he didn’t know what Adams’ meant by that.
In the story that Adams wrote for the Tennessean (which can be accessed here without a paywall) he states, “The documents, included in a binder that once belonged to James Merritt, the chair of the 2021 resolutions committee, include resolutions submitted on the subject of race and emails between top Southern Baptist leaders, including Greear.” I have since learned that a staff member from the ERLC is usually assigned to help the Resolutions Committee and that Executive Committee staff members would have access to their work room. Perhaps one of them could provide more information about this fiasco. I have also learned that it is not uncommon for each member of the SBC Resolutions Committee to have a binder with information related to their work at the annual meeting. That is understandable. What I do not yet understand is why the binder with James Merritt’s name on it and my private emails in it was given to the press.
In recent days we have heard a great deal about the need for transparency in the SBC. Calls for such have come from various sectors of the convention, including from the current SBC President. I generally agree with such calls. There was a time when Southern Baptist leaders tried to live by the old adage, “trust the Lord and tell the people.” Today that principle has morphed into “forget the Lord, just trust us, people.” But no association of churches can survive where the leaders call for trust from but eschew genuine accountability to the people they are supposed to lead. Much less can it survive when there is little or no fear of God demonstrated by leadership.
So, in the interest of transparency, and with full confidence in the power of the gospel to forgive any sin that may be involved and to strengthen any forgiveness that may need to be granted, I am asking for those who know how this binder made its way into the hands of the press to step forward and tell the truth. Southern Baptists have a right to know how something like this could happen. I have been informed that there are some whose salaries are paid by Southern Baptist churches who are in positions to know or at least to find out.
Perhaps the Lord would bless such a simple step of honesty and integrity to begin a deeply needed work of renewal among the people known as Southern Baptists.

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