Oh, How Men Have Fallen

Today, I was taken slightly back as I read through Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s sermon, ‘A Carnal Mind Enmity Against God,’ in preparation for an audio presentation (which you can hear in the Modern Whitfield Audio Series). How did he see the human race after the fall of man? Comparing man’s fall to the great cities of Carthage and Jerusalem, Spurgeon said, (my interpretation in paratheses.)

“So, ought we mourn for ourselves and for our race when we behold the ruins of that goodly structure (speaking of the two great cities) which God had piled (cities destroyed, left in heaps)… (now directed to and of men) … that creature… matchless in symmetry… second only to angelic intellect… that mighty being – man! when we behold how he is “fallen, fallen, fallen, from his high estate,” and lies in a mass of destruction.”

I wondered what Spurgeon saw that inspired him to write what he did in describing the human race in its fallen condition. Was London in such a state of physical destruction? No. He referred to Carthage and Jerusalem as analogous of the fallen, spiritual, soul state of our race. Truly, in a spiritual sense – created in the image of God – we are utterly and completely undone… oh, have we have fallen! From Eden to Sodom… from glory to ghetto… from gold to dross… wheat to tare… Perhaps those comparisons make a little more sense… they did for me.