Arduino w/ Ethernet & Sparkfun LED matrix?

NewSoftSerial does not know anything about the chip select pin. It assumes that the TX and RX pins it talks to are always connected to the device it is talking to.

You attach the CS pin of the LED matrix to an otherwise unused pin, set the pin HIGH to talk to the device, and LOW to talk to some other SPI device.

You need to declare the CS pin in your sketch, AND set it.