If you meet with a system of theology which magnifies man, flee from it as far as you can.
Interpretation
Beware of ideologies that elevate human beings above their rightful place.
This quote by Charles Spurgeon warns against theological systems that inflate human importance, implying that such beliefs can lead individuals away from a true understanding of their relationship with the divine. It suggests that elevating man above God distorts spiritual truths and can ultimately be detrimental to one's faith and understanding of purpose.
In practice
During a sermon on the importance of divine humility, you might quote this to emphasize reliance on God.
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.
People couldn't become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.
The world we know at present is in no fit state to take over the dreariest little meteor ... If we have the courage and patience, the energy and skill, to take us voyaging to other planets, then let us use some of these to tidy up and civilize this earth. One world at a time, please.
I was raised to believe that other people's suffering was my responsibility.
But he could not taste, he could not feel. In the teashop among the tables and the chattering waiters the appalling fear came over him- he could not feel. He could reason; he could read, Dante for example, quite easily…he could add up his bill; his brain was perfect; it must be the fault of the world then- that he could not feel.
In its revolt against congestion and sordor, a space-hungry generation has, I fear, developed eyes that are bigger than its stomach.
If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
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