What Have We to Do with Consequences?

Spurgeon, preaching toward the end of his ministry, in the 1880s--

If a deed done for Christ should bring you into disesteem, and threaten to deprive you of usefulness, do it nonetheless. I count my own character, popularity, and usefulness to be as the small dust of the balance compared with fidelity to the Lord Jesus. It is the devil's logic which says, "You see I cannot come out and avow the truth because I have a sphere of usefulness which I hold by temporizing with what I fear may be false."

O Sirs, what have we to do with consequences? Let the heavens fall, but let the good man be obedient to his Master, and loyal to his truth.

O man of God, be just and fear not! The consequences are with God, and not with thee. If thou hast done a good work unto Christ, though it should seem to thy poor bleared eyes as if great evil has come of it, yet hast thou done it, Christ has accepted it, and He will note it down, and in thy conscience He will smile thee His approval.

--quoted in Iain Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon (Banner of Truth, 1966), 205-6