Quote from "The Soul Winner"

I have been reading The Soul Winner by C.H. Spurgeon, a book which emphasizes how the primary goal and focus of all believers is the salvation of sinners.  All the ministries of the church, all effort for the glory of God in the lives of a Christian, is that through our testimony people would come to salvation found only in Jesus Christ.  Having been a Sunday School teacher for many years, I found the following quote enlightening and invigorating.  As teachers of adults or children, we are not to be content with the mere transfer of information, but the transformation of a life committed to Christ.  Spurgeon describes how Elisha raised the dead son of the Shunammite in 2 Kings 4:29-37, and compares it to our work in saving souls.  The quote can be found on pages152-153:

The position of Elisha in this case is exactly your position, brethren, in relation to your work for Christ.  Elisha had to deal with a dead child.  It is true that, in his instance, it was natural death; but the death with which you have to come in contact is not the less real death because it is spiritual.  The boys and girls in your classes are, as surely as grown-up people, "dead in trespasses and sins."  May none of you fail fully to realise the state in which all human beings are naturally found!  Unless you have a very clear sense of the utter ruin and spiritual death of your children, you will be incapable of being made a blessing to them.  Go to them, I pray you, not as to sleepers whom you can by your own power awaken from their slumber, but as to spiritual corpses who can only be quickened by a power divine.  Elisha's great object was not to cleanse the dead body, or embalm it with spices, or wrap it in fine linen, or place it in an appropriate posture, and then leave it still a corpse:  he aimed at nothing less than the restoration of the child to life.  Beloved teachers, may you never be content with aiming at secondary benefits, or even with realising them; may you strive for the grandest of all ends, the salvation of immortal souls!  your business is not merely to teach the children in your classes to read the Bible, not barely to inculcate the duties of morality, nor even to instruct them in the mere letter of the gospel, but your high calling is to be the means, in the hands of God, of bringing life from heaven to dead souls.  Your teaching on the Lord's-day will have been a failure if your children remain dead in sin.  In the case of the secular teacher, the child's fair proficiency in knowledge will prove that the instructor has not lost his pains; but in your case, even thought your youthful charge should grow up to be respectable members of society, thought they should become regular attendants upon the means of grace, you will not feel that your petitions to heaven have been answered, nor your desires granted to you, nor your highest ends attained, unless something more is done,-unless, in fact it can be said of your children, "The Lord hath quickened them together with Christ."