The essential simple nature of the Christian faith as summed up by the apostle Paul, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved’ (Acts 16 :31) was a subject dear to the heart of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

It was a great concern to him that so often this glorious simplicity was unintentionally clouded in some way or another. Faith — what it is and what it leads to gathers together Spurgeon’s thinking on the matter and presents clearly and succinctly the exact nature of Christian faith and its consequences.

Not that Spurgeon made any boast that only he was able to get the message across, rather, as ever, he approaches his task with due humility and the prayer that his efforts would be blessed by the God who alone could ‘grant the increase’. In his introduction he writes — ‘So that I think I may say that, while faith is the simplest thing in all the world, yet it is one of the most difficult upon which to write; because from its very importance, our soul begins to tremble while speaking of it, and then we are not able to describe it so clearly as we would.’