Sunday Spurgeon

Were you ever in a new trouble, one which was so strange that you felt that a similar trial had never happened to you, and, moreover you dreamt that such a temptation had never assailed anybody else? I should not wonder if that was the thought of your troubled heart.

And did you ever walk out upon that lonely desert island upon which you were wrecked, and say, "I am alone, — alone, — ALONE, — nobody was ever here before me"? AND DID YOU SUDDENLY PULL UP SHORT AS YOU NOTICED, IN THE SAND, THE FOOTPRINTS OF A MAN? I remember right well passing through that experience; and when I looked, lo! it was not merely the footprints of a man that I saw, but I thought I knew whose feet had left those imprints; they were the marks of One who had been crucified, for there was the print of the nails. So I thought to myself, "If he has been here, it is a desert island no longer. As his blessed feet once trod this wilderness-way, it blossoms now like the rose, and it becomes to my troubled spirit as a very garden of the Lord."

Read here about the possibility that Spurgeon
inspired the poem "Footprints in The Sand."