If I were a Roman Catholic, I should turn a heretic, in sheer desperation, because I would rather go to heaven than go to purgatory.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a strong preference for a direct relationship with divinity over enduring a state of uncertainty or suffering.
Charles Spurgeon highlights the struggle of belief when faced with the complexities of religious dogma. He suggests that the idea of purgatory, which represents a state of waiting or punishment, is so unattractive that one might choose to reject the beliefs associated with it in favor of a clearer, more hopeful destination like heaven. This speaks to the human desire for certainty and ultimate salvation over ambiguous spiritual consequences.
In practice
Use the quote during a discussion on the complexities of faith and spirituality.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.
Zombies are a great rhetorical prop to talk about people and paranoia, and they are a good vehicle for my misanthropy.
A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.
Send me out into another life lord because this one is growing faint I do not think it goes all the way
I was early taught by sorrow to shed tears, and now when sudden joy lights up, or any unexpected sorrow strikes my heart, I find it difficult to repress the full and swelling tide of feeling.
The water hollows out the stone, not by force but drop by drop.
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