Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 642
Delivered on Sunday Morning, July 30, 1865, by C. H. Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
Proverbs 11:26.
IF I dared, I would always preach upon the comfortable promises and gracious doctrines of God’s Word. I find it most delightful and easy work to expatiate upon those themes of Revelation which abound in sweetness and are full of savor and preciousness to the child of God. I said, “If I dared,” and you will ask me why I dare not? The answer is because I have a solemn conviction on my mind that if I would be clear of the blood of all men I must strive to make my range of ministry as wide as the range of Revelation and I must not shun to declare the whole counsel of God. I feel bound to go not where my wishes would lead me, but where Holy Scripture has made a track for my feet.
There are certain texts in the Scriptures which are very seldom preached upon because it is thought that there is little Gospel in them and that the people, when they go home, will say to one another, “Well, I wasn’t fed this morning.” Those who aim at pleasing men may well be shy of such subjects. But I hold that since God, in His wisdom has placed these passages in the Bible, He intends His servants, the preachers of the Word, to expound them.
We are, it strikes me, not to preach from selections of Scripture only, but from the whole of the Sacred Volume, for “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness—that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” I freely confess that I do not know why I have selected this text this morning except that it haunted and hunted me until I could not forbear to preach upon it.
It seemed to force itself upon me and to bore its way into my soul like a rifle shot. I thought it over and over and could not make much of it until I yielded up myself to it, saying within myself, “If the Lord has anything to say to the people out of my mouth, here it is—let Him use it.” If there should be any persons among our country friends, or our corn-dealing townsmen who this morning feel at all touched by the text, I cannot help it. Here is my Master’s message to them and I can only deliver it with the best intentions, hoping that those to whom it comes home may be profited by it.
It will, however, soon be clear to you that the verse before us has, besides its first meaning, a weight of very important spiritual teaching in it to which we shall all do well to take heed. The text, as it stands, has to do, as you clearly see, with owners of corn and dealers in it.
In Solomon’s days there were very frequent famines. Communication between one nation and another was so extremely difficult that the transportation of wheat in any large quantities was not attempted. Therefore, if a failure in the crops occurred in one district, the scarcity in that neighborhood was not compensated by abundance in another and terrible famines prevailed. Certain persons in those days not only stored up all the corn which grew in their own fields, but purchased as much as they could of others, so as to raise the market above its natural level. This, under the circumstances, was a very high affront put upon God—for instead of bearing their part in His judgments, these men enriched themselves by the poverty of their starving neighbors.
There have been such people ever since Solomon’s day and although the present system of free trade has nearly put an end to that kind of thing, there are doubtless some who would again withhold their corn, even at famine prices, if they could rise the price still higher. How does Scripture deal with this peculiar form of greed in trade? I cannot but admire the wonderful reserve of Holy Scripture, for as Mr. Arnot well observes, “in this brief maxim no arbitrary rule is laid down to the possessor of corn that he must sell at a certain period and at a certain price—and yet the hungry are not left without a protecting law.
“The protection of the weak is entrusted not to small police regulations, but to great self-acting providential arrangements. The double fact is recorded in terms of peculiar distinctness that he who in times of scarcity keeps up his corn in order to enrich himself is loathed by the people, and he who sells it freely is loved. This is all. There is no further legislation on the subject.”
Our narrow wisdom might have wished for some definite law upon the subject—something like a sliding scale—but the great Ruler of Heaven and earth falls into no such error. Laws which interfere between buyer and seller, master and workman by any form of law, are blunders and nuisances. Parliaments and princes have hung on to the antiquated absurdity of regulating prices, but the Holy Spirit does nothing of the kind. All the attempts of men to control the price of bread and wheat is sheer folly, as the history of France may well prove. The market goes best when it is left alone and so, in our text, there is no law enacted and no penalty threatened except that which the nature of things makes inevitable.