Spurgeon was a master illustrator. You can use this illustration in your own preaching to describe bearing fruit.
I have generally found that a man is not much better than he looks. If a man’s outward life is not right, I will not feel bound to believe that his inward life is acceptable to God. One person said in Rowland Hill’s time, “He is not exactly what I should like, but he has a good heart at the bottom.” The shrewd old preacher replied, “When you go to market and buy fruit, and there are none but rotten apples on the top of the basket, you say to the market woman, ‘These are a very bad lot.’ Now, if the woman replied, ‘Yes, they are rather gone at the top, but they are better as you go down,’ you would not be so silly as to believe her, but would say, ‘No, no, the lower we go, the worse they will be, for the best are always put on the top.’ ”
And so it is with men’s characters. If they cannot be decent, sober, and truthful in their daily life, their inner parts are more abominable still. The deeper you pry into their secrets the worse will be the report.
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