"Ask not . . . "

Do You Suppose JFK's Speech-Writer Ever Read C. H. Spurgeon?

Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Volume 51, Year 1905, pages 246, 247:

I once heard a minister speak very grumblingly of the Baptist denomination. He said, “I do not know what the denomination ever did for me.”

I could not help thinking to myself, “Well now, that is a question which has never occurred to me and probably never will. The question that has occurred to me is, What can I do for the denomination?’”

And I think that is the kind of question which every Christian minister ought to ask, not only concerning the denomination, but concerning Christians in general. We ought not to ask, “What can these people do for me?” No, put the shoe on the other foot and say, “What can I do for these people?”

If you want to love a man, you must not get him to do you a kindness, but you must do a kindness to him and then you will love him. You cannot do good to another person without finding growing up in your heart some degree of interest in the person to whom you have done that good. It is possible that a child may forget its mother, forget that it drew its life, its nourishment and all the comforts of its infancy from its mother, but the mother does not forget that she reared it in its weakness and brought it up to strength.

If you want to love a person, do some loving thing for that person and love will spring up in your soul to that person. Our Lord Jesus Christ loved His disciples unselfishly—let us do the same.

Entire sermon is at http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols49-51/chs2936.pdf