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        Title: Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 15: 1869
   Creator(s): Spurgeon, Charles Haddon (1834-1892)
CCEL Subjects: All; Sermons;
   LC Call no: BV42
  LC Subjects:

               Practical theology

               Worship (Public and Private) Including the church year, Christian
               symbols, liturgy, prayer, hymnology

               Times and Seasons. The church year
     __________________________________________________________________

Jesus Christ Immutable

   A sermon

   (No. 848)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, JANUARY 3, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever."- Hebrews 13:8.

   FOR a very considerable number of years an esteemed and venerable vicar
   of a Surrey parish has sent me at the New Year a generous testimony of
   his love and an acknowledgment of the pleasure which he derives from
   the weekly reading of my sermons. Enclosed in the parcel which his
   kindness awards to me is a text from which he hopes that I may preach
   on the first Sunday morning of the New Year. This year he sends me this
   golden line, "Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever."

   I have preached from it before--you will find a sermon from this text
   in print. But we need not be at all afraid of preaching from the same
   text twice. The Word is inexhaustible--it may be trod in the winepress
   many times and yet run with generous wine. We ought not to hesitate to
   preach a second time from a passage any more than anyone going to the
   village well would be ashamed to put down the same bucket twice, or
   feel at all aggrieved at sailing twice down the same river! There is
   always a freshness about Gospel Truth, and though the matter may be the
   same, there are ways of putting it in fresh light so as to bring new
   joy to those who meditate upon it.

   Moreover, what if we should repeat our teachings concerning Christ?
   What if we should hear over and over again the same things "touching
   the King"? We can afford to hear them! Repetitions concerning Jesus are
   better than varieties upon any other subject. As a French monarch
   declared that he would sooner hear the repetitions of Bourdaloue than
   the novelties of another, so we may declare concerning our Lord Jesus,
   we would sooner hear again and again the precious truths which glorify
   Him than listen to the most eloquent orations upon any other theme in
   all the world!

   There are a few works of art and wonders of creation which you might
   gaze upon every day in your life and yet not weary of them. A great
   architect tells us there are but few buildings of this kind, but he
   instances Westminster Abbey as one--and everyone knows, who has ever
   looked upon the sea, or upon the Falls of Niagara--that look as often
   as you may, though you see precisely the same object, yet there are new
   tints, new motions of the waves and new flashes of the light which
   forbid the least approach of monotony and give to the assembling of the
   waters an ever-enduring charm.

   Even thus is it with that sea of all delights which is found in the
   dear Lover of our souls. We come, then, to the old subject of this old
   text and may the blessed Spirit give us new unction while we meditate
   upon it. Note, first, our Lord's personal name, Jesus Christ. Notice,
   secondly, His memorable attribute--"He is the same yesterday and today
   and forever.''" And then let us have a few words about His evident
   claims derived from the possession of such a Character.

   I. First, then, the personal names of our Lord here mentioned--"JESUS
   CHRIST." "JESUS" stands first. That is our Lord's Hebrew name, "Jesus,"
   or, "Joshua." The word signifies, a Savior, "for He shall save His
   people from their sins." It was given to Him in His cradle--

   "Cold on His cradle the dewdrops are shining, Low lies His head with
   the beasts of the stall. Angels adore Him, in slumber reclining, Maker
   and Monarch and Savior of all." While He was yet an Infant hanging on
   His mother's breast, He was recognized as Savior, for the fact of God's
   becoming Incarnate was the sure pledge, guarantee and commencement of
   human salvation. At the very thought of His birth the virgin sang, "My
   spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior." There is hope that man shall be
   lifted up to God, when God condescends to come down to man! Jesus in
   the manger deserves to be called the Savior, for when it can be said
   that, "the tabernacle of God is with men and He does dwell among them,"
   there is hope that all good things will be given to the fallen race.

   He was called Jesus, in His childhood--"The Holy Child Jesus." It was
   as Jesus that He went up with His parents to the Temple and sat down
   with the doctors, hearing them and asking them questions. Yes, and
   Jesus as a Teacher in the very first principles of His doctrine is a
   Savior--emancipating the minds of men from superstition, setting them
   loose from the traditions of the fathers--scattering, even, with His
   Infant hand the seeds of Truth, the elements of a glorious liberty
   which shall emancipate the human mind from the iron bondage of false
   philosophy and priestcraft.

   He was Jesus, too, and is commonly called so both by His foes and by
   His friends in His active life. It is as Jesus the Savior that He heals
   the sick, that He raises the dead, that He delivers Peter from sinking,
   that He rescues from shipwreck the ship tossed upon the Galilean lake.
   In all the teachings of His middle life, in those laborious three years
   of diligent service, both in His public ministry and in His private
   prayer, He is still Jesus the Savior. By His active, as well as by His
   passive obedience, we are saved.

   All through His earthly sojourn He made it clear that the Son of Man
   had come to seek and to save that which was lost. If His blood redeems
   us from the guilt of sin, His life shows us how to overcome its power.
   If by His death upon the tree He crushes Satan for us, by His life of
   holiness He teaches us how to break the dragon's head within us. He is
   the Savior as a Babe, the Savior as a Child, the Savior as the toiling,
   laboring, tempted Man.

   But He comes out most clearly as Jesus when dying on the Cross--named
   so in a writing of which the author said, "What I have written, I have
   written," for over the head of the dying Savior you read, "Jesus of
   Nazareth, the King of the Jews." There pre-eminently was He the Savior,
   being made a curse for us that we might be made the righteousness of
   God in Him. After beholding the dying agonies of his Master, the
   beloved Apostle said, "We have seen and do testify that the Father sent
   the Son to be the Savior of the world."

   On Calvary was it seen that the Son of Man saved others, though,
   through blessed incapacity of love, "Himself He could not save." When
   He was made to feel the wrath of God on account of sin, and pangs
   unknown were suffered by Him as our Substitute--when He was made to
   pass through the thick darkness and burning heat of Divine wrath--then
   was He, according to Scripture, "the Savior of all men, specially of
   those that believe." Yes, it is on the tree that Christ is peculiarly a
   Savior. If He were nothing better than our Exemplar, alas for us! We
   might be grateful for the example if we could imitate it, but without
   the pardon which spares us and the Divine Grace which gives us power
   for holiness, the brightest example were a tantalizing of our grief!

   To be shown what we ought to be, without having any method set before
   us by which we could attain to it were to mock our misery! But Jesus
   first draws us up out of the horrible pit into which we were fallen,
   takes us out of the miry clay by the efficacy of His atoning Sacrifice
   and then, having set our feet upon a rock by virtue of His merits, He
   Himself leads the way onward to perfection! And so is He Savior both in
   life and in death--

   "That JESUS saves from sin and Hell, Is truth Divinely sure. And on
   this Rock our faith may rest Immovably secure.'

   Still bearing the name of Jesus, our Lord rose from the dead. The
   Evangelists delight in calling Him Jesus--in His appearance to
   Magdalene in the garden--in His manifestation of Himself to the
   disciples when they were together, the doors being shut. He is always
   Jesus with them as the risen One. Beloved, since we are justified by
   His Resurrection, we may well regard Him as Savior under that aspect.
   Salvation is still more linked with a risen Christ, because we see Him,
   by His Resurrection, destroying death, breaking down the prison of the
   sepulcher, bearing away like another Samson the gates of the grave. He
   is a Savior for us since He has vanquished the last enemy that shall be
   destroyed, that we, having been saved from sin by His death should be
   saved from death through His Resurrection.

   Jesus is the title under which He is called in Glory, for, "Him has God
   exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, for to give
   repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins." He is today, "the Savior
   of the body." We adore Him as the only-wise God and our Savior. "He is
   able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him,
   seeing He ever lives to make intercession for them." As Jesus He shall
   shortly come and we are, "Looking for that blessed hope and the
   glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ." Our
   daily cry is, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus." Yes and this is the name,
   the name, "Jesus," by which He is known in Heaven at this hour.

   Thus the angel spoke of Him before He was conceived by the virgin! Thus
   the angels serve Him and do His bidding, for He said to John in Patmos,
   "I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify these things." The angels
   prophesied His coming

   under that sacred name. They came to those who stood looking up into
   Heaven and they said, "You men of Galilee, why stand you gazing up into
   Heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into Heaven, shall
   so come in like manner as you have seen Him go into Heaven."

   Under this name the devils fear Him, for didn't they say, "Jesus we
   know and Paul we know, but who are you?" This is the spell that binds
   the hearts of cherubim in chains of love and this is the Word that
   makes the hosts of Hell to tremble and to shrink back in fear! This
   name is the joy of the Church on earth! It is the joy of the Church
   above! It is a common Word, a household name for our dear Redeemer
   among the family of God below! And up there they still sing it--

   "Jesus, the Lord, their harps employ-- 'Jesus, my Love,' they sing!
   Jesus, the life of both our joys, Sounds sweet from every string."

   That man of God, Mr. Henry Craik, of Bristol, who, much to our regret,
   was lately called away to his rest, tells us in his little work upon
   the study of the Hebrew tongue, as an instance of how much may be
   gathered from a single Hebrew word, that the name Jesus is particularly
   rich and suggestive to the mind of the Hebrew scholar. It comes from a
   root signifying amplitude, spaciousness. And then it comes to mean
   setting at large, setting free, delivering--and so comes to its common
   use among us, namely, that of Savior.

   But there are two words in the name Jesus. The one is a contraction of
   the word "Jehovah," the other is the word which I have just now
   explained to you as ultimately coming to mean "salvation." Taken apart,
   the word Jesus means JEHOVAH-SALVATION. You have the glorious Essence
   and Nature of Christ revealed to you as Jehovah, "I Am that I Am." And
   then you have in the second part of His name His great work for you in
   setting you at large and delivering you from all distress.

   Think, beloved fellow Christian, of the amplitude, the spaciousness,
   the breadth, the abundance, the boundless all-sufficiency laid up in
   the Person of the Lord Jesus! "It pleased the Father that in Him should
   all fullness dwell." You have no contracted Christ, you have no narrow
   Savior! Oh, the infinity of His love, the abundance of His Grace, the
   exceedingly greatness of the riches of His love towards us! There are
   no words in any language that can bring out, sufficiently, the
   unlimited, the infinite extent of the riches of the glory of Christ
   Jesus our Lord! The word which lies at the root of this name "Jesus,"
   or, "Joshua," has sometimes the meaning of riches--and who can tell
   what a wealth of Divine Grace and glory are laid up in our Immanuel?

   Mr. Craik tells us that another form of the same word signifies "a
   cry." "Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King and my God." Thus
   salvation, riches and a cry are all derived from the same root and all
   find their answer in our Joshua or Christ. When His people cry out of
   their prisons, then He comes and sets them free--He comes with all the
   amplitude and wealth of His eternal Grace--all the plenitude of His
   overflowing power! And delivering them from every form of bondage, He
   gives them to enjoy the riches of the Glory treasured up in Himself! If
   this interpretation should make the name of Jesus one particle more
   dear to you, I am sure I shall be exceedingly rejoiced.

   What do you think--if there is so much stored up in the one single
   name, what must be laid up in Himself! And if we can honestly say that
   it would be difficult to give the full bearing of this one Hebrew name
   which belongs to Christ, how much more difficult will it be to give the
   full bearing of all His Character? If His bare name is such a mine of
   excellence, what must His Person be? If this, which is but a part of
   His garment, does so smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia, O what must
   His blessed Person be but a bundle of myrrh which shall lie forever
   between our breasts, to be the perfume of our life and the delight of
   our soul?--

   "Precious is the name of Jesus,

   Who can half its worth unfold? Far beyond angelic praises, Sweetly sung
   to harps of gold. Precious when to Calvary groaning, He sustained the
   cursed tree. Precious when His death atoning, Made an end of sin for
   me. Precious when the bloody scourges

   Caused the sacred drops to roll. Precious when of wrath the surges
   Overwhelmed His holy Soul. Precious in His death victorious, He, the
   host of Hell overthrows. In His Resurrection glorious, Victor cro wned
   o 'er all His foes. Precious, Lord! Beyond expressing, Are Your
   beauties all Divine! Glory, honor, power and blessing, Be henceforth
   forever Yours!

   Thus much have we spoken upon the Hebrew name. Now reverently consider
   the second title--Christ. That is a Greek name, a Gentile
   name--Anointed. So that you see you have the Hebrew Joshua, Jesus, then
   the Greek Christos, Christ. And so that we may see that no longer is
   there either Jew or Gentile, but all are one in Jesus Christ. The word
   Christ, as you all know, signifies anointed and as such our Lord is
   sometimes called, "the Christ," "the very Christ." At other times, "the
   Lord's Christ," and sometimes, "the Christ of God." He is the Lord's
   Anointed, our King and our

   Shield.

   This word, "Christ," teaches us three great Truths of God. First, it
   indicates His offices. He exercises offices in which anointing is
   necessary and these are three--the office of the King, of the Priest
   and of the Prophet. He is King in Zion, anointed with the oil of
   gladness above His fellows, even as it was said of old, "I have found
   David My servant; with My holy oil have I anointed him: with whom My
   hand shall be established: My arm also shall strengthen him. I will set
   his hand also in the sea and his right hand in the rivers. Also I will
   make him My firstborn, higher than the kings of the

   earth."

   Saul, the first king of Israel, was anointed with but a vial of
   oil--David, with a horn of oil--as if to signify the greater plenitude
   of his power and excellence of his kingdom. But as for our Lord Jesus
   Christ, He has received the Spirit of anointing without any measure--He
   is the Lord's Anointed, for whom an unquenchable lamp is ordained.
   "There will I make the horn of David to bud: I have ordained a lamp for
   My Anointed." Beloved, as we think of that name, Christ, let us
   reverently yield our souls up to Him whom God has anointed to be King.
   Let us stand up for His rights over His Church, for He is King of Zion
   and none have a right to rule there but under and in subjection to the
   great Head over all, who in all things shall have the pre-eminence! Let
   us stand up for His rights within our own hearts, seeking to thrust out
   all rival objects, desirous to keep our souls chaste for Christ and to
   make every member of our body, though it may have surrendered itself
   before unto sin, to become subservient to the anointed King who has a
   right to rule over it.

   Next, the Lord Christ is Priest. Priests were anointed. They were not
   to undertake this office of themselves nor without passing through the
   ceremony which set them apart. Jesus Christ our Lord has Divine Grace
   given to Him that no priest ever had. Their outward anointing was but
   symbolic--His was the true and the real! He has received that which
   their oil did but set forth in type and shadow. He has the real
   anointing from the Most High. Beloved, let us always look at Christ as
   the anointed Priest. My Soul, you can never come to God except through
   the only ever-living and truly anointed High Priest of our profession!
   O never for a moment seek to come without Him, nor through any
   pretender who may call himself a priest!

   High Priest of the house of God, we see You thus ordained and we give
   our cause into Your hands. Offer our sacrifices for us! Present our
   prayers! Take our praises and put them into the golden censer and offer
   them before Your Father's Throne. Rejoice, my Brethren, every time you
   hear the name Christ, that He who wears it is anointed to be Priest! So
   with regard to the prophetic office. We find Elisha anointed to
   prophesy and so is Jesus Christ the Prophet anointed among His people.
   Peter spoke to Cornelius of, "how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with
   the Holy Spirit and with power: who went about doing good and healing
   all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him."

   He was anointed to preach the glad tidings and to sit as Master in
   Israel. We hold no man's teaching to be authoritative among us but the
   testimony of the Christ. The teaching of the Lord's Christ is our creed
   and nothing else. I thank God that in this Church we have not to divide
   our allegiance between some venerable set of articles and the teaching
   of our Lord. One is our Master! We declare no right of any man to bind
   another's conscience, even though they

   are great in piety and deep in learning! Augustine and Calvin, whose
   names we honor--for God honored them-- they still have no dominance
   over private judgment in regard to the people of God. Jesus Christ is
   the Prophet of Christendom! His Words must always be the first and the
   last appeal!

   This, then, is the meaning of the word "Christos." He is anointed as
   King, Priest and Prophet. But it means more than that. The name Christ
   declares His right to those offices. He is not King because He sets
   Himself up as such. God has set Him as King upon His holy hill of Zion
   and anointed Him to rule. He is also Priest, but He has not taken the
   priesthood upon Himself, for He is the Propitiation whom God has set
   forth for human sin. He is the Mediator whom the Lord God has appointed
   and set to be the only Mediator between God and man. And as for His
   prophesying He speaks not of Himself--those things which He has learnt
   of the Father, He has revealed unto us. He comes not as a Prophet who
   assumes office, but God has anointed Him to preach glad tidings to the
   poor and to come among His people with the welcome news of eternal
   love.

   Moreover, this anointing signifies a third thing, that as He has the
   office, and as it is His by right, so He has the qualifications for the
   work. He is anointed to be King. God has given Him royal power and
   wisdom and government. He has made Him fit to rule in the Church and to
   reign over the world. No better king than Christ! None so majestic as
   He who wore the crown of thorns, but who shall put upon His head the
   crown of universal monarchy! He has the qualifications for a priest,
   too, such qualifications as even Melchisedec had not--such as cannot be
   found in all the house of Aaron--in all its length of pedigree. Blessed
   Son of God, perfect in Yourself, and needing not a sacrifice for Your
   own sake, You have presented unto God an offering which has perfected
   forever those whom You have set apart. And now, needing not to make a
   further offering, You have forever put away sin!

   And so is it with our Lord's prophesying--He has the power to teach.
   "Grace is poured into Your lips: therefore God has blessed You
   forever." All the words of Christ are Wisdom and Truth. The substance
   of true philosophy and certain knowledge are to be found in Him who is
   the wisdom and the power of God. Oh, that word, "Christ!" It seems to
   grow upon us as we think it over--it shows us the offices of
   Christ--His right to those offices and His qualifications for them--

   "Christ, to You our spirits bow! Prophet, Priest and King are You!

   Christ, anointed of the Lord, Evermore be You adored.'

   Now, put the two titles together and ring out the harmony of the two
   melodious notes--Jesus Christ, Savior-Anointed. Oh, how blessed! Can
   you see that our Beloved is a Savior duly appointed, a Savior
   abundantly qualified? My Soul, if God appoints Christ a Savior of
   sinners, why do you raise a question? God set Him forth as a sinner's
   Savior. Come, then, you sinners, take Him, accept Him and rest in Him!
   Oh, how foolish we are when we begin raising questions, quibbles and
   difficulties! God declares that Christ is a Savior to all who trust in
   Him! My poor heart trusts Him--she has peace! But why do some of you
   imagine that He cannot save you? Why do you ask, "How can it be that
   this Man shall save me?" God has appointed Him! Take Him! Rest in Him!

   Moreover, God has qualified Him, given Him the anointing of a Savior.
   What? Do you think God has not girded Him with power enough, or
   furnished Him with enough of merit with which to save such as you are?
   Will you limit what God has done? Will you think that His anointing is
   imperfect and cannot qualify Jesus to meet your case? O do not so
   slander the Grace of Heaven! Do not do such despite to the Wisdom of
   the Lord! Honor the Savior of God's anointing by coming now, just as
   you are, and put your trust in Him!

   II. We shall now examine the second point, HIS MEMORABLE ATTRIBUTES. He
   is said to be the same. Now,

   Jesus Christ has not been the same in condition at all times, for He
   was once adored of angels but afterwards spit upon by men! He exchanged
   the supernal splendors of His Father's court for the poverty of the
   earth, the degradation of death and the humiliation of the grave.

   Jesus Christ is not and will not be always the same as to occupation.
   Once He came to seek and to save that which was lost, but we very truly
   sing, "The Lord shall come, but not the same as once in lowliness He
   came." He shall come with a very different objective--He shall come to
   scatter His enemies and break them as with a rod of iron! We are not to
   take the expression then, "the same," in the most unlimited sense
   conceivable. Looking at the Greek, one notices that it might be read
   thus, "Jesus Christ Himself yesterday and today and forever."

   The anointed Savior is always Himself. He is always Jesus Christ--and
   the word, "same," seems to me to bear the most intimate relation to the
   two titles of the text. It does as good as say that Jesus Christ is
   always Jesus Christ, yesterday, and today and forever. Jesus Christ is
   always Himself. At any rate, if that is not the correct translation, it
   is a very correct and blessed sentence! It is sweetly true that Jesus
   Christ is always Himself. Immutability is ascribed to Christ and we
   remark that He was evermore to His people what He now is, for He was
   the same yesterday.

   Distinctions have been drawn by certain exceedingly wise men (measured
   by their own estimate of themselves), between the people of God who
   lived before the coming of Christ and those who lived afterwards. We
   have even heard it asserted that those who lived before the coming of
   Christ do not belong to the Church of God! We never know what we shall
   hear next, and perhaps it is a mercy that these absurdities are
   revealed one at a time in order that we may be able to endure their
   stupidity without dying of amazement!

   Why, every child of God in every place stands on the same footing! The
   Lord has not some children best beloved, some second-rate offspring and
   others whom He hardly cares about. These who saw Christ's day before it
   came had a great difference as to what they knew and, perhaps, in the
   same measure a difference as to what they enjoyed while on earth in
   meditating upon Christ. But they were all washed in the same blood, all
   redeemed with the same ransom price and made members of the same body!

   Israel in the Covenant of Grace is not natural Israel, but all
   Believers in all ages. Before the first Advent, all the types and
   shadows all pointed one way--they pointed to Christ--and to Him all the
   saints looked with hope. Those who lived before Christ were not saved
   with a different salvation to that which shall come to us! They
   exercised faith as we must. That faith struggled as ours struggles and
   that faith obtained its reward as ours shall. As like as a man's face
   to that which he sees in a glass is the spiritual life of David to the
   spiritual life of the Believer now. Take the book of Psalms in your
   hand and forgetting, for an instant, that you have the representation
   of the life of one of the olden time, you might suppose that David
   wrote but yesterday.

   Even in what he writes of Christ, he seems as though he lived after
   Christ instead of before and both in what he sees of himself and in
   what he sees of his Savior, he appears to be rather a Christian writer
   than a Jew. I mean that living before Christ he has the same hopes and
   the same fears, the same joys and the same sorrows--there is the same
   estimate of his blessed Redeemer which you and I have in these times.
   Jesus was the same yesterday as an anointed Savior to His people as He
   is today and they under Him received like precious gifts.

   If the goodly fellowship of the Prophets could be here today, they
   would all testify to you that He was the same in every office in their
   times as He is in these, our days. Jesus Christ is the same now as He
   was in times gone by, for the text says, "The same yesterday and
   today." He is the same today as He was from old eternity. Before all
   worlds He planned our salvation. He entered into Covenant with His
   Father to undertake it. His delights were with the sons of men in
   prospect and now, today, He is as steadfast to that Covenant as ever.
   He will not lose those who were then given to Him, nor will He fail nor
   be discouraged till every stipulation of that Covenant shall be
   fulfilled.

   Whatever was in the heart of Christ before the stars began to shine,
   that same infinite love is there today! Jesus is the same today as He
   was when He was here on earth. There is much comfort in this thought.
   When He tabernacled among men, He was most willing to save. "Come unto
   Me, all you that labor and are heavy-laden," was the burden of His cry.
   He is still calling to the weary and the heavy-laden to come to Him. In
   the days of His flesh He would not curse the woman taken in adultery,
   neither would He reject the publicans and sinners who gathered to hear
   Him. He is merciful to sinners, still, and says to them yet, "Neither
   do I condemn you: go and sin no more."

   That delightful sentence which so graciously came from His lips, "Your
   sins, which are many, are forgiven you," is still His favorite
   utterance in human hearts. O think not that Christ in Heaven has become
   distant and reserved so that you may not approach Him! Such as He was
   here--a Lamb gentle and meek, a Man to whom men drew near without a
   moment's hesitation--such is He now! Come boldly to Him, you lowest and
   guiltiest ones! Come near to Him with broken hearts and weeping eyes!
   Though He is King and Priest, surrounded with unknown splendor, yet He
   still retains the same loving heart and the same generous sympathies
   towards the sons of men! He is still the same in His ability as well as
   in His willingness to save. He is still Jesus Christ the anointed
   Savior!

   In His earthly days He touched the leper and said, "I will. Be you
   clean." He called Lazarus from the tomb and Lazarus came. Sinner, Jesus
   is still as able to heal or quicken you now, as then! "He is able also
   to save them to the

   uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever lives to make
   intercession for them." Now that the blood is spilt, indeed, and the
   sacrifice is fully offered, there is no limit to the ability of Christ
   to save! O come and rely upon Him and find salvation in Him now!
   Believer, it will cheer you, also, to remember that when our Lord was
   here upon earth He showed great perseverance in His art of saving. He
   could say," Of them which You gave Me I have lost none." Rejoice that
   He is the same today--He will not cast one of you away, nor suffer His
   little ones to perish! He brought all safe in the days of His flesh. He
   takes care to keep all safely in these, the days of His Glory. He is
   the same today, then, as He was on earth.

   Blessed be His name, Jesus Christ is the same today as in apostolic
   days. Then He gave the fullness of the Spirit. Then, when He ascended
   up on high, He gave gifts to men--Apostles, preachers, teachers of the
   Word. Do not let us think we shall not see as good as days now as they
   saw at Pentecost! He is the same Christ! He could as readily convert
   3,000 under one sermon today as in Peter's time! His Holy Spirit is not
   exhausted, for God gives it not by measure unto Him! We ought to pray
   that He would raise up among us eminent men to proclaim the Gospel. We
   do not pray enough for the ministry.

   The Gospel ministry is peculiarly the gift of the Ascension. When He
   ascended on high He received gifts for men and He gave--what? Why, men,
   Apostles, teachers, preachers. If we ask for salvation, we plead the
   blood--why do we not ask for ministers and plead the Ascension? If we
   would do this more, we should see raised up among us more Whitefields
   and Wesleys! More Luthers and Calvins, more men of the apostolic stock
   and the Church would be revived. Jesus is the same to enrich His people
   with all spiritual gifts in this year, 1869, as in the year when He
   ascended to His Throne. "He is the same yesterday and today."

   He is the same, today, as He was to our fathers. These have gone to
   their rest, but they told us before they went what Christ was to
   them--how He succored them in their time of peril--how He delivered
   them in their hour of sorrow. He will do for us just what He did for
   them. Some who lived before us went to Heaven in a chariot of fire, but
   Christ was very precious to them at the stake. We have our
   martyrologies which we read with wonder. How sustaining the company of
   Christ was to those that lay in prison! To those that were cast to the
   lions! To those that wandered about in sheep skins and goat skins!
   England, Scotland--all the countries where Christ was preached--have
   been dyed with blood and ennobled with the testimonies of the faithful!
   Whatever Jesus was to these departed worthies, He is to His people
   still. We have only to ask of God and we shall receive the same
   benefit.

   "Jesus Christ the same today," says the text. Then He is the same today
   as He has been to us in the past. We have had great enjoyments of God's
   Presence. We remember the love of our espousals and if we have not the
   same joys today it is no fault of His. There is still the same water in
   the well and if we have not drawn it, it is our own fault. We have come
   away from the fire and therefore we are cold. We have walked contrary
   to Him and therefore He walks contrary to us. Let us return to Him and
   He will be as glad to receive us now as in our first moment of
   repentance. Let us return to Him! His heart is as full of love and as
   ready to weep upon our neck as when we first came and sought pardon
   from His hands. There is much sweetness in the text, but I cannot
   linger longer upon that part of the subject. It is enough for us to
   remember that Jesus Christ is the same today as He always was.

   Now, further, Christ shall be tomorrow what He has been yesterday and
   is today. Our Lord Jesus Christ will be changed in no respect
   throughout the whole of our life. It may be long before we shall
   descend to our graves, but let these hairs all be gray and these limbs
   begin to totter and these eyes grow dim--Jesus Christ shall have the
   dew of His youth upon Him and the fullness of His love shall still flow
   to us. And after death, or if we die not, at the coming of Christ and
   in His glorious reign, Jesus will be the same to His people, then, as
   now.

   There seems to be a notion abroad among some that after His coming
   Christ will deal differently with His people than now. I have been
   informed by a modern school of inventors (and, as I tell you, we live
   to learn) that some of us will be shut out from the kingdom when Christ
   comes! Saved by His precious blood and brought near and adopted into
   the family--and our names written upon the breastplate of Christ--and
   yet some of us will be shut out from the kingdom! Nonsense! I see
   nothing in the Word of God--though there may be a great deal in the
   fancies of men--to support these novelties.

   The people of God, equally bought with blood, and equally dear to
   Jesus' heart, shall be treated on the same scale and footing. They will
   never be put under the Law. They will never come to Christ and find Him
   rule them as a legal Judge and beat them with many stripes in a future
   state, or shut them out of His estate of millennial Majesty. He will
   give to none, as a mere matter of reward, such rule and government so
   as to exclude others of His redeemed family! They shall find Him always
   treating them all as unchanging love and immutable Grace shall dictate.
   The rewards of the millennial state shall be always

   those of Divine Grace--they shall be such as not to exclude the very
   least of all the family--all shall have tokens of reward from the dear
   Savior's hand.

   I know He will not love me today and give me a glimpses of His
   face--give me to delight in His name--and yet after all, when He comes,
   tell me I must stand out in the cold and not enter into His kingdom! I
   have not a shade of faith in the purgatory of banishment which certain
   despisers of the ministry have chosen to set up! I marvel that in a
   Protestant sect there should rise up a dogma as villainous as the dogma
   of "purgatory" and that, too, from those who say they are no
   sectarians! We all are wrong but these Brethren! These are deeply
   taught and can discover what the ablest Divines have never seen!

   That Jesus will love His people in time to come as strongly as He does
   now seems to be a doctrine which, if destroyed or denied, would cast
   sorrow into the whole family of God! Throughout eternity, in Heaven,
   there shall still be the same Jesus Christ with the same love to His
   people and they shall have the same familiar communion with Him, no,
   shall see Him face to face and rejoice forever in Him as their
   unchangeably, anointed Savior!

   III. Our time has failed us and therefore just two or three words upon
   our Lord's EVIDENT CLAIMS. If our Lord is "the same yesterday and today
   and forever," then, according to the connection of our text, He is to
   be followed to the end. Observe the seventh verse, "Remember them which
   have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the Word of God; whose
   faith follow considering the end of their conversation." The meaning
   being--these holy men ended their lives with Christ. Their exit was to
   go to Jesus and to reign with Him.

   Beloved, if the Lord is still the same, follow Him till you reach Him!
   Your exit out of this life shall bring you where He is and you will
   find Him, then, what He always was. You shall see Him as He is. If He
   were a will-o'- the-wisp, forever changing, it were dangerous to follow
   Him. But since He is ever and equally worthy of your admiration and
   example, follow Him evermore. That was an eloquent speech of Henry the
   Sixth, of France, when on the eve of battle, he said to his soldiers,
   "Gentlemen, you are Frenchmen. I am your King. There is the enemy!"
   Jesus Christ says, "You are My people. I am your Leader. There is the
   foe!"

   How shall we dare to do anything unworthy of such a Lord as He is, or
   of such a citizenship as that which He has bestowed upon us? If we are,
   indeed, His and He is, indeed, Immutable, let us by His Holy Spirit's
   power persevere to the end that we may obtain the crown! The next
   evident claim of Christ upon us is that we should be steadfast in the
   faith. Notice the ninth verse: "Jesus Christ the same yesterday and
   today, and forever. Be not carried about with various and strange
   doctrines."

   There is nothing new in theology but that which is false. All that is
   true is old, though I say not that all that is old is true. Some speak
   of developments as though we had not the whole Christian religion
   discovered yet--but the religion of Paul is the religion of every man
   who is taught by the Holy Spirit. We ought not, therefore, to indulge
   for a moment the idea that something has been discovered which may
   correct the teaching of Christ! We must not even think that some new
   philosophy or discovery of science has risen up to correct the declared
   Testimony of our Redeemer! Let us hold fast that which we have received
   and never depart from "the Truth once delivered unto the saints" by
   Christ Himself.

   If Jesus Christ is Immutable, He has an evident claim to our most
   solemn worship. Immutability can be the attribute of none but God.
   Whoever is "the same yesterday and today and forever," must be Divine.
   Then, Believer, bring your adoration to Jesus! At the feet of Him that
   was crucified, cast down your crown! Give royal and Divine honors unto
   Him who stooped to the ignominy of crucifixion! Let no one stop you of
   glorying in your boast that the Son of God was made Man for you!
   Worship Him as God over all, blessed forever!

   He also claims of us, next, that we should trust Him. If He is always
   the same, here is a rock that cannot be moved! Build on it! Here is an
   anchor! Cast your anchor of hope into it and hold fast in time of
   storm. If Christ were variable, He were not worthy of your confidence.
   Since He is evermore unchanged, rest on Him without fear. And, lastly,
   if He is always the same, rejoice in Him and rejoice always! If you
   ever had cause to rejoice in Christ, you always have cause, for He
   never alters!

   If yesterday you could sing of Him, today you may sing of Him. If He
   changed, your joy might change. But, if the stream of your gladness
   springs solely and only out of this great deep of the Immutability of
   Jesus, then it need never stay its flow. Beloved, let us, "rejoice in
   the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice." And, until the day breaks
   and the shadows flee away, till the blest hour arrive when we shall see
   Him face to face and be made like He is, be this our joy, that, "He is
   the same yesterday, and today and forever." Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Hebrews 13.
     __________________________________________________________________

Unsound Spiritual Trading

   (No. 849)

   Delivered on Lord's-Day, January 10th, 1869, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the [1]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth
   the spirits."— Proverbs 16:2.

   DURING THE last two years some of the most notable commercial
   reputations have been hopelessly destroyed. Men in the great world of
   trade who were trusted for hundreds of thousands of pounds, around
   whose characters there hovered no cloud of suspicion nor even the shade
   of doubt, have proved themselves reckless of honesty and devoid of
   principle. The fiery trial has been too much for the wood, hay, and
   stubble of many a gigantic firm. Houses of business which seemed to be
   founded upon a rock, and to stand as fast as the commonwealth of
   England itself, have been shaken to their foundations and have caved in
   with a tremendous crash: on all sides we see the wrecks of great
   reputations and colossal fortunes. There is wailing in the palaces of
   sham, and desolation in the halls of pretense. Bubbles are bursting,
   windbags are collapsing, paint is cracking, gilt is peeling off.
   Probably we have more of this to come, more revelations still to be
   made of apparent wealth which covered insolvency, as a rich paper may
   cover a mud wall; crafty schemes which duped the public with profits
   never made, and tempted them to advance to deeper speculations, even as
   the mirage of the desert mocks the traveler. We have seen in the public
   prints month after month, fresh discoveries of the modes of financing
   adopted by the villainy of this present age, to accomplish robbery
   respectably, and achieve felony with credit. We have been astonished
   and amazed at the vile tricks and shameless devices to which men of
   eminence have condescended. And yet we have been compelled to hear
   justifications of gigantic frauds, and have even been compelled to
   believe that the perpetrators of them did not consider themselves to be
   acting disreputably, their own previous successes, and the low state of
   morality, together having lulled them into a state in which conscience,
   if not dead, was thoroughly asleep. I say, we may probably have yet
   more to see of this school of dishonesty; but it is a pity that we
   should—and altogether needless—for the whole trade of financing is now
   to be examined by the diligent student, with models and living
   examples, more than enough to illustrate every single portion of the
   art. Some ages may have been great in science, others in art, and
   others in war, but our era overtops every other in the proficiency of
   its rascals; this is the classic period of chicanery, the golden age of
   fraud. Let a man have a base heart, and a seared conscience, and a
   plausible mode of address, and let him resolve upon deluding the public
   out of millions, he need not travel to learn the readiest method, he
   can find examples near at home amongst high professors and the great
   ones of the earth. My brethren, these noises of falling towers on the
   right, these sounds of crumbling battlements on the left, these cries
   of the shipwrecked everywhere along the coasts of trade, have not only
   awakened within me many thoughts relative to themselves and the
   rottenness of modern society, but they have made me muse upon similar
   catastrophes evermore occurring in the spiritual world. Unrecorded in
   the journals, and unmourned by unregenerate men, there are failures and
   frauds and bankruptcies of soul most horrible to think upon. There is a
   spiritual trading just as pretentious and apparently just as successful
   as your vaunted limited liability juggle, but really just as rotten and
   as sure to end in hopeless overthrow. Speculation is a spiritual vice
   as well as a commercial one—trading without capital is common in the
   religious world, and puffery and deception are every-day practices. The
   outer world is always the representative of the inner; the life which
   clusters round the Exchange illustrates that which gathers within the
   church; and if our eyes were opened and our ears were able to hear, the
   sights and the sounds of the spirit world would far more interest us
   and sadden us than the doings which begin in the directors' board-room
   and end we know not where. We should see at this moment colossal
   religious fortunes melting into abject spiritual poverty. We should see
   high professors, much reverenced and held in esteem, brought into shame
   and everlasting contempt. We should see the wealthy in divine matters,
   whom men have unwisely trusted as their guides and counsellors as to
   their souls' best interests, unmasked and proved to be deceitful
   through and through. I seem at this moment to be peering into the world
   of spiritual things, and I see many a Babel tower tottering and ready
   to fall; many a fair tree decaying at the heart; many a blooming cheek
   undermined by disease. Yes, a sound comes to my ear of men in the
   church, apparently rich and increased in goods, who are naked, and
   poor, and miserable, and great men whose towering glories are but a
   fading flower. There ever have been such, there are many now, and there
   will be to the end.

   The supply of deceivers is sure to be maintained since the text tells
   us that all the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; there is a
   propensity in human nature which leads men, even when they are most
   wrong, to judge themselves most right. The text at the same time
   suggests the terrible conclusion to which all self-deception will
   certainly come, for the judgment of man concerning himself is not
   final, and there comes a day when the Lord who weigheth the spirits
   will reverse the verdict of a perjured conscience, and make the man to
   stand no longer in the false light which his conceit has thrown around
   him, but in the true light, in which all his fancied glory shall vanish
   as a dream.

   Travelling some time ago in an iron steamboat to the Continent, the
   captain told me that the compass was far from trustworthy where so much
   iron was on every side, and that sometimes, when so far as he knew he
   had steered correctly, he had found himself very considerably out of
   his course. Though the compass was fixed aloft so as to be as much as
   possible out of the region of the metallic attraction, yet the
   deflection and aberrations in the case of his own compass had been
   occasionally most remarkable. In like manner our conscience originally
   as it came from God was no doubt an exceedingly correct standard of
   right and wrong, and if we had sailed by it we must have reached the
   haven safely enough; but conscience is now placed in connection with a
   depraved nature which forbids its accurate working. Now, if the laws of
   nature would vary to make up for its defects when the compass erred,
   the aberrations would not matter; but if the man is misled by the
   perverted needle he may unexpectedly be upon a rock, and will be as
   surely wrecked as if the helmsman had neglected the compass altogether.
   So, if God's law could be shaped to suit the errors of our judgment it
   might not matter; but the laws of God stand sternly and inflexibly the
   same, and if we deviate from the right way through this false judgment
   of ours we shall be none the less guilty, and we shall find our fate to
   be none the less terrible. Hence I do approach this matter with a
   greater vehemence and earnestness this morning, on your account, and
   with more brokenness and humility of spirit on my own, desiring to
   speak with divers classes among you, urging you not to be so flattered
   by your own conceptions of your position as to get out of the course in
   which you ought to steer; beseeching you to remember that however well
   you may cajole yourselves with the idea that your way is right and
   clear, yet the inevitable judgment-day will come to end all delusions,
   however pleasant. Spiritual traders, I speak to you this day, reminding
   you of the great audit which hastens on, and warning you lest you make
   a fair show for awhile, and then in the end come down with a crash. I
   am sure there is much rotten spiritual trading abroad, and to save you
   from it I pray the Holy Ghost to help me speak plainly and searchingly
   this morning.

   I intend, as God shall help me, to address the text to different
   characters. We will endeavor to be practical throughout the sermon, and
   to push home vital truth with great earnestness upon each one.

   I. THE WAYS OF THE OPENLY WICKED are clean in their own eyes, but the
   Lord will weigh their spirits.

   At first sight this statement seems to be rash. The drunkard, the
   blasphemer, the Sabbath-breaker, can it be that these people are right
   in their own eyes? Solomon was a profound student of human nature, and
   when he penned this sentence you may rest assured he knew what he
   wrote. They who are best acquainted with mankind will tell you that
   self-righteousness is not the peculiar sin of the virtuous, but that
   most remarkably it flourishes best where there appears to be the least
   soil for it. Those men who in the judgment of their fellows distinctly
   and plainly have no righteousness in which they can glory, are the very
   persons who, when you come to search into the depth of their nature,
   are relying upon a fancied goodness which they dream about and rest
   upon. Take the outwardly immoral for a moment and begin to talk with
   them about their sins, and you will find that they are accustomed to
   speak of their faults under very different names from those which
   Scripture and right reason would use. They do not call drunkenness
   "drunkenness," for instance, but it is "taking a glass." They would not
   for a moment advocate downright blasphemy, but it is "strong language
   which a fellow must use if he's to get on," or "letting slip an ugly
   word or so, because you were plagued so." They disguise vice to
   themselves as pleasure; they label their uncleanness as gaiety, their
   filthiness as lightheartedness. They speak of their sins as though they
   had no enormity about them, but were trifles light as air—if wrong at
   all, themes rather for the feather lash of ridicule than for the
   scourge of reproof. Moreover, the most of them will claim that they are
   not so bad as others. There is some one point in their character in
   which they do not go so far as some of their fellows, and this is a
   grand point and a vast comfort to them. They will confess that they are
   sinners, not meaning it for a moment; and if you come to particulars
   and details, if they are in an honest frame of mind they will recede
   step by step, admitting fault after fault, till they come to a
   particular point, and there they take their footing with virtuous
   indignation. "Here I am right beyond all rebuke, and even deserving of
   praise. So far my sin has come, but how thoroughly sound at heart must
   I be that I have never permitted it to advance further!" This boasted
   line is frequently so singular and mysterious in its direction, that no
   one but the man himself can see any reason or consistency in it; and
   the satirist who shoots at folly as it flies, finds abundant objects
   for his arrows. Yet to that man himself, his pausing there is the
   saving clause of his life; he looks to that as the sheet anchor of his
   character. The woman whose character long since has gone, will yet
   boast some limit to her licentiousness which is merit in her
   esteem—merit sufficient to make all her ways clean in her own eyes.

   Moreover, the worst of men conceive that they have some excellences and
   virtues, which, if they do not quite atone for their faults, yet at any
   rate greatly diminish the measure of blame which should be awarded
   them. The man is a spendthrift, "But sir, he was always freehearted,
   and nobody's enemy but his own." The man, it is true, would curse God,
   but then, well, it was a mere habit, he always was a dashing blade, but
   he meant no harm; and besides he never was such a liar as So-and-So;
   and indeed, he scorned to tell a lie upon any business subject. Another
   has cheated his creditors, but he was such a nice man; and although,
   poor fellow, he never could keep accounts or manage money matters, yet
   he always had a good word for everybody. The immoral man, if he sits
   down to write his own character, and summons all the partiality he is
   capable of, will say "I am a sad dog in some respects, sowing a great
   many wild oats, but I have a fine character underlying it all which
   will no doubt come up some day, so that my end shall be bright and
   glorious notwithstanding all. That last point that I hinted at is very
   often the righteousness of men who have no other, namely, their
   intention one of these days much to amend and improve. To make up for
   present poverty of righteousness they draw a bill upon the future.
   Their promises and resolves are a sort of paper currency on which they
   imagine they can trade for eternity. "Is it not often done in
   business?" say they: "A man who has no present income may have a
   reversionary interest in an estate; he gets advances thereon—why should
   not we?" Thus the open sinner, easing his all too ready conscience with
   the imaginary picture of his future repentance and amendment, begins to
   feel himself already meritorious and bids defiance to all the
   threatenings of the word of God.

   I may be speaking to some to whom these remarks are very applicable,
   and if so I pray that they may lead to serious thought. My hearer, you
   must know, or at any rate a few sober moments of reflection would make
   you know, that there is no truth in the pleas, excuses, and promises
   with which you now quiet your conscience; your peace is founded on a
   lie, and is upheld by the father of lies. Whilst you are continuing
   recklessly to break the laws of God in your ordinary life and to take
   pleasure in sin, you most assuredly are under the anger of God and you
   are heaping up wrath against the day of wrath, and when the measure of
   your iniquity is full then shall you receive the terrible reward of
   transgression. The Judge of all the earth will not pay regard to the
   idle preterites which now stultify your conscience. He is not a man
   that he should be flattered as you flatter and deceive yourself. You
   would not have the impertinence to tell your excuses to him. Dare you
   kneel down now and speak to the great God in heaven and tell him all
   these fine things with which you are now smoothing your downward road?
   I hope you have not come to such a brazen pitch of impertinence as
   that, but if you have let me remind you of that second sentence of my
   text, "The Lord weigheth the spirits." A just and true balance will be
   used upon you ere long. When the Lord puts such as you are into the
   scale, there will be no need for delay; the sentence will go forth at
   once and from it there shall be no appeal: "Thou art weighed in the
   balances and found wanting." Ah then my hearer, when that conscience of
   yours wakes up, how it will torment you! It sleeps now, drugged by the
   opiates of your ignorance and perverseness; but it will start up soon
   like a giant refreshed with new wine, and then with strength and fury
   unthought of before it will pull down the temple of your peace about
   your ears, even as Samson smote the Philistines. An awakened conscience
   in another world is the worm that dieth not and the fire which never
   can be quenched. O sirs, it is a dreadful thing to be delivered up to
   one's own conscience when that conscience is enlisted on the side of
   right. Old tyrants had their terrible headsmen with grim masks across
   their brows who carried the bright and gleaming axe; the old
   inquisitors had their familiars arrayed in gowns of serge and cowls,
   from the loopholes of which their fierce eyes gleamed like wolves; but
   no tormentors, yea, no fiends of hell, can ever prove more terrible to
   a man than his conscience when its lash is corded with truth and
   weighted with honesty. Did you ever spell the burning letters of that
   word remorse? Within the bowels of that single word there lieth hell
   with all its torments. O sirs, if you be but a little aroused now by an
   earnest sermon or a sudden death, how wretched you feel and how
   desperately you plunge into fresh gaiety and wantonness to drown your
   thoughts; but what will you do with thoughts which no dissipation can
   drown, and remembrances which no mirth can banish? What will it be to
   be haunted by your sins for ever and for ever? What to have it made
   sure to you that from the guilt and punishment no way of escape can
   ever be discovered?

   O you who fondly dream that the broad road to destruction is the upward
   path to celestial bliss, I beseech you, learn wisdom and hearken to the
   voice of instruction; consider your ways and seek unto the precious
   blood which alone can blot our your sins.

   II. A second class I will now address. THE WAYS OF THE GODLESS MAN are
   clean in his own eyes, but the Lord weigheth the spirits.

   The godless man is often exceedingly upright and moral in his outward
   behavior to his fellow men. He has no religion, but he glories in a
   multitude of virtues of another kind. It is unhappily true that there
   are many who have much that is amiable about them who nevertheless are
   unamiable and unjust towards the one Being who ought to have the most
   of their love, and who should have been respected in their conduct
   first of all. How often have I met with the ungodly man who has said,
   "You talk to me about fearing God! I know him not, neither do I regard
   him, but I am much better than those who do." He will sometimes say,
   "Your religion I look upon as a mere farce: I regard Christians as
   being made up of two sorts, knaves and fools. They are either duped by
   others, or else for purposes of their own they are deceiving others.
   Their talk about God, sir, it is all cant; with some of them I grant
   you it is not quite that, but then they have too few brains to be able
   to discover that they are deceived. However, take the whole thing for
   all in all, it is all a piece of nonsense, and if people just behave as
   they ought towards their neighbors and do their duty in their station
   in life, that is enough." Yes, and there are in this city of London
   thousands, and hundreds of thousands, who think this to be good logic,
   and indeed who open their eyes with astonishment if for a single moment
   you are supposed to contradict their statement that such a style of
   life is the best and most commendable; and yet if they would but think,
   nothing can be more unsound than their life and its supposed
   excellence. Here is a man created by his God, and he is put down
   amongst his fellow creatures; surely the first duty that he owes is
   towards his Creator. His life depends entirely upon that Creator's
   will—it must be his first duty to have respect to him in whose hands
   his breath is; but this man not only refuses to be obedient to the law
   of his Creator and have regard to him in his daily actions, but turns
   round to his neighbours who are mere creatures like himself, and he
   says "I will have respect to you, but not to God. Any laws of the state
   which bind me in my relation to you I will obey; but any laws which
   describe my relation to God I will not consider except it be to
   ridicule and laugh at them. I will be obedient to any but to God; I
   will do the right thing to any but to the Most High. I have a sense of
   right and wrong but I will restrict its action to my fellow men, and
   that sense of right and wrong when it comes in relation to God I will
   utterly obliterate." Now if there were no God this man were wise
   enough, but as there is a God who created us, and who shall surely come
   in the clouds of heaven to call every one of us to account for the
   things which we have done in the body, what think you will be the
   judgment dealt out to this unfaithful servant? Will he dare to say unto
   his King, "I knew that thou wast my Maker and Lord, but I considered
   that if I served my fellow servants it would be enough. I knew what was
   right to them, but I disregarded the doing of anything that was right
   towards thee"? Shall not the answer be, "Thou wicked and faithless
   servant, thou knewest what was right and wrong, and yet towards me,
   having first claim upon thee, thou hast acted unjustly, and whilst thou
   wouldst bow thy neck to others thou wouldst not yield to me. Depart
   from me, I know thee not. Thou didst not know me, neither do I know
   thee. I weigh thee in the balances, and I find thee utterly reprobate.
   Thou art cast away for ever." O ungodly man, let this warning, if thou
   be here this morning, sound in thy heart as well as thy ears: no longer
   set thyself in defiance to thy Creator or live in negligence of him,
   but say, "I will arise and go unto my Father; I will confess that I
   have forgotten him and despised him, and I will seek peace through the
   blood of Jesus Christ."

   III. Further, I shall address myself to another class of persons. In
   all ages of the church, and especially at this time, there are numbers
   of persons who are OUTWARDLY RELIGIOUS, but whose religion ends there.

   Now it seems to some of us amazingly strange that a man should be
   acting viciously, should be living wickedly, and yet should think that
   his ways are clean because he takes a sacrament or attends a certain
   place of worship. I must confess to my mind this seems a very strange
   phenomenon, that there should exist men of intelligence in this world
   who know that their conduct is altogether blameworthy and yet feel
   perfectly at ease because a chosen ritual has been diligently observed;
   as if bowing and scraping, singing or groaning could be a substitute
   for holiness of heart. Look at the Pharisee and tell me if he be not a
   moral wonder! He devours widows' houses, he is ready to prey on
   everything that comes to hand; he is a detestable hypocrite, but the
   man is perfectly at ease because he has made broad the border of his
   garments, because he fasts twice in the week, and strains out gnats
   from the wine that he drinks; he is quite content with himself and all
   his ways seem right, so right, indeed, that other men who are better
   than he, he passes by with contempt, afraid lest they should come
   between the wind and his nobility. He thanks God that he is not as
   other men, when so far as you and I can judge he is ten thousand
   fathoms deeper down in dark damnation in his horribly hypocritical
   character. Yet brethren, some form or other of this is very common. All
   the ways of a man are clean unto him when he once imbibes the idea that
   ceremonial religion, or religious talk, or religious profession, can
   make up for moral sin. Ah brethren, this evil may even creep in among
   ourselves. Let us not be so swift in condemning the Pharisee when
   perhaps the same sin may pollute our own souls. I have known the man
   who was reckoned a sound Calvinist and believed in very high doctrine,
   live a very unhallowed life. He despised "Arminians," as he chose to
   call them, though some of these despised ones lived very near to God
   and walked in holiness and integrity. The Arminian, forsooth, godly man
   as he was, would be lost; but this self-righteous orthodox man who
   could at the same time drink and cheat thought that he should be saved
   because he had been able to see the truth of certain doctrines, which
   also the devil sees as well as he. I have known another who thought he
   had a deep and memorable experience who would talk by the yard of the
   depravity of his heart. Some people thinking that he ought to be able
   to talk about that very truly, for he proved it in his life; and yet
   because he could repeat cant phrases and had picked up certain rich
   expressions of experience from books, he verily thought within himself
   that he was not only as good as others but a very pattern for others to
   copy. Right and left such men as these will hurl curses and anathemas
   upon the best and most earnest of saints. They are the men—wisdom will
   die with them. Holiness being dead already with them, it is no wonder
   that wisdom should die too. Ah! take care lest you and I drink in the
   same spirit in another shape. Ah! preacher, thy preaching may be all
   well and good, it may be sound enough and right enough, and it may be
   even edifying to the people of God and arousing to the unconverted. But
   remember, God will not judge thee by thy sermons but by thy spirit, for
   he weigheth not thy words but thy motive, thy desire, thine object in
   preaching the gospel. Deacon of the church, you may have walked in all
   honor for many years and may be universally respected, and thine office
   may have been well maintained in all the outward duties of it, but if
   thy heart be not right, if some secret sin be indulged, if there be a
   canker upon thy profession which none know but thine own self, the Lord
   who weighs the spirit will make nothing of thy deaconship and thy
   carrying round the cups and bread at the communion, but thou shalt be
   found wanting and cast away. Thou too, brother elder, thy labors and
   thy prayers are nothing if the heart be evil. Thou mayst have visited
   others and instructed them and been a judge of their state; still, if
   thou hast not served God and his church out of a pure desire for his
   glory, thou too, put into the scales, shall be rejected with
   abhorrence. I often pray—I wish however I prayed it more—that none of
   us here may be preached into the idea that we are all right if we are
   all wrong. It is not your coming to the Tabernacle, it is not your
   joining the church, your being baptised, your attending
   prayer-meetings, or your doing anything that will be the slightest
   matter in this business—it is your giving up your hearts to God truly,
   and your living in conformity with your profession; and unless the
   grace of God be really given you, helping you to do this, your ways may
   be clean unto you because of your outward profession; but the Lord who
   weigheth the spirits will make short work of these bubbles, he will
   break this confectionery, smash to pieces these shams, and leave the
   man who ought to have a palace over his head throughout eternity to sit
   down and shiver amongst the ruins of his Babylon, and cry out and weep
   and wail amongst dragons and fiends.

   IV. But to pass on, there is another character that must be addressed.
   "All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes," so are THE WAYS OF
   THE COVETOUS PROFESSOR.

   It is marvellous to some of us that a man whose object in life is
   merely to get money and who withholds what he has from the cause of God
   should take up the profession of being a Christian man, because none of
   all the vices is more contrary to true religion than covetousness.
   Where will you find an instance of a single saint in Scripture that
   ever fell into covetousness? Into all other sins have they fallen, but
   into this one I do not remember that one child of God mentioned in
   Scripture ever descended. Grace may exist where there are many
   occasional sins, but never where there is abiding covetousness. Think
   of Paul's words: "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit
   the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither, fornicators, nor
   idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves
   with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers,
   nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." Luther used to
   say, "I have been tempted to all sins but covetousness." This he so
   detested that he distributed gifts made to him lest he should have his
   portion in this world. Adams, in his book on Peter, well remarks, "Noah
   was once drunk with wine but never with the world; Lot, twice
   incestuous, never covetous; Peter denied his Master thrice, but it was
   not the love but the fear of the world that brought him to it. Once
   David was overcome by the flesh, never by covetousness. Why did not
   these purge themselves from adultery, anger, and the like? Because into
   these sins the infirmities of a saint may fall, but if once into
   covetousness there is nothing of a saint left—not even the name.
   Covetousness hath the brand of God's hate full on its brow." "If any
   man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him;" and when a
   professor shows the love of the world in its grossest shape, when he
   gives way to being the slave of "Mammon, the least erect of all the
   fiends," he bears evidence to all who judge righteously according to
   Scripture that the love of God is not in him, and cannot be in him; the
   two things are inconsistent. Yet, strange to say we do know not a few
   whose way seems very clean to them. They screw here and there, now
   their servants, and now their customers: the widow and the fatherless
   would not be safe from them if they could pick their bones. What they
   scrape together is held with an iron grasp. Let souls be damned, they
   shall have no missionary sent to them by their money. Let this London
   fester with sin, let it be covered with the ulcers of the most fearful
   depravity, they are never stirred to give any assistance towards the
   healing of the city's wounds. And yet while their damnation awaits them
   certainly, and their condemnation stares them in the face as plainly as
   the sun in the heavens, yet their ways seem clean unto them. Strange it
   should be so, but the Lord weigheth the spirits, and what a weighing
   that shall be when men who escape church censure because theirs was a
   sin of which the church could not deal with, shall be found guilty of
   it, and God shall cast them away! Vain will be their pretensions that
   they ate and they drank in God's house, for the answer shall come, "I
   was an hungered and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me no
   drink; naked, and ye clothed me not. I was sick and in prison, and ye
   did not minister unto me. Verily I say unto you, I know ye not!" O let
   this truth, for truth it is, pierce like a two-edged sword right
   through the hearts of any of you who are beginning to yield to this
   damning vice. Cry unto God that as he gives you substance you may use
   it for his glory. Ask him that you may never perish with a millstone
   about your neck; for even if that killing weight be made of gold it
   will be no better perishing for all that.

   V. Another character must have a word also: we will now note THE WAYS
   OF THE WORLDLY PROFESSOR.

   It is amazing how some people making a profession of religion, square
   it with their conscience that they live as they do live. You could not
   with a microscope detect any difference between them and common
   worldlings, and yet they think there is a vast difference, and they
   would be insulted if you did not allow it. Here they come up to the
   house of God to-day, but to what amusements have they been during the
   week? How are they dressed? How are their children educated? Is there
   any family prayer? Is there anything in the household that is
   Christian? Look at them in business. Do not they trade precisely like
   those who make no pretensions to religion? Ask their workpeople, just
   go yourselves and watch them—see if they cannot tell white lies as well
   as others, whether they are not for all the world as alike as two peas
   are to one another, like other unregenerate and unconverted people! and
   yet their ways seem very clean unto them, very clean indeed, and their
   conscience does not trouble them in any way whatever. I have but this
   word to say in all affection to such, earnestly desiring that they may
   be plucked out of this fire, "the Lord will weigh the spirits." The
   whole of our life is known to him. He will not judge us without book.
   When he comes to the account he will not be like a judge who has to
   learn the facts; he will come to the last assize, having seen with
   those eyes of fire the secret thoughts, the private feelings of our
   life. God be merciful to us sinners, we may all of us say; but God
   especially save us from being like the ungodly.

   VI. Yet another word, and this is addressed to all professors here more
   or less: it is a solemn word concerning THE WAYS OF SECURE BACKSLIDERS.

   Do you not know brethren and sisters, that very often our ways seem
   very clean to us when they are not. I have learned by experience most
   painful to my own soul, that I am not in the least qualified to judge
   of my own spiritual health: I have thought myself gradually advancing
   in the ways of God when I have been going back, and I have had the
   conceit crossing my mind that I had now overcome a certain besetting
   sin, when to my surprise I had found it return with greater force than
   before. Fellow professor, you may be at this moment walking as you
   think very rightly, and going off very well and comfortably, but let me
   ask you a few questions: are you not less in private prayer than you
   used to be? Do you not now hurry over it, do you not sometimes omit it
   altogether? Do you not frequently come from your closet without really
   having spoken to God, having merely gone through the form for the sake
   of quieting yourself? Your way may seem clean, but is it not foul when
   the mercy-seat becomes neglected? How about your Bible, is that read as
   it once was, and are the promises as sweet to you? Do they ever rise
   from the page and talk with you? Oh, but if your Bible be neglected my
   brother, you may be just as diligent in attending to the house of God
   as you used to be, but is not yours a sad state of decay? Let me come
   closer still. Is there the vitality about your profession that there
   used to be? There are some in this house this morning who if they could
   speak, would tell you that when to their great sorrow they fell into
   sin, it was because by little and little their piety began to lose its
   force and power of life. They have been restored, but their bones still
   ache where they were once broken, and I am sure they would say to their
   brethren "Take care of allowing a gracious spirit to evaporate, as it
   were, by slow degrees. Watch carefully over it, lest settling upon your
   lees and not being emptied from vessel to vessel you should by-and-by
   become carnally secure, and afterwards fall into actual sin. I ask some
   of my brethren here, and I ask the question because I have asked it of
   my own soul and answered it very tearfully, may not some of us be
   growing hardened in heart with regard to the salvation of our fellow
   creatures? Do we not love less now than we used to do, those who are
   crying to us, "Come over and help us"? Do we not think ourselves
   getting to be experienced saints? We are not the poor sinners we once
   used to be. We do not come broken-heartedly to the mercy-seat as we
   did. We begin to judge our fellow Christians and we think far less of
   them than we did years ago when we used almost to love the ground that
   the Lord's saints did tread upon, thinking ourselves to be less than
   nothing in their sight. Now if it were the case in others, that they
   were growing proud, or becoming cold, or waxing hard of heart, we
   should say of them, "they are in great danger," but what about
   ourselves if that be the case with us? For my own self, I dread lest I
   should come to this pulpit merely to preach to you because the time has
   come and I must get through an hour or an hour-and-a-half of worship. I
   dread getting to be a mere preaching machine without my heart and soul
   being exercised in this solemn duty; and I dread for you, my dear
   friends who hear me constantly, lest it should be a mere piece of
   clock-work that you should be in the seats at certain times in the
   week, and should sit there and patiently hear the din which my noise
   makes in your ears. We must have vital godliness, and the vitality of
   it must be maintained, and the force and energy of our religion must go
   on to increase day by day, or else though our ways may seem to be very
   clean the Lord will soon weigh our spirits to our eternal confusion. Do
   you know that to his people the divine weighing in fatherly
   chastisement is rough work, for he can put the soul into the scale to
   our own consciousness, and when we think that it weighs pounds he can
   reveal to us that it does not even reach to drachms! "There," saith he,
   "see what you are!" and he begins to strip off the veil of
   self-conceit, and we see the loathsomeness and falsehood of our nature,
   and we are utterly dismayed. Or perhaps the Lord does worse than that.
   He suffers a temptation to come when we do not expect it, and then the
   evil bolls up within us, and we who thought we were next door to the
   cherubs find ourselves near akin to the demons; wondering too that such
   a wild beast should have slumbered in the den of our hearts, whereas we
   ought to have known it was always there and to have walked humbly with
   God, and watched and guarded ourselves. Rest assured beloved, great
   falls and terrible mischief never come to a Christian man at once, they
   are a work of slow degrees; and be assured too that you may glide down
   the smooth waters of the river and never dream of the Niagara beyond,
   and yet you may be speeding towards it. An awful crash may yet come to
   the highest professor among us that shall make the world to ring with
   blasphemy against God, and the church to resound with bitter
   lamentations because the mighty have fallen. God will keep his own, but
   how if I should turn out not to be his own! He will keep the feet of
   his saints, but what if I leave off to watch and my feet should not be
   kept, and I should turn out to be no saint of his, but a mere intruder
   into his family, and a pretender to have what I never had! O God,
   through Christ Jesus deliver each of us from this.

   VII. Had time not failed me I meant to speak concerning the seventh and
   last character, namely, THE WAYS OF THE DECEIVED MAN.

   There are, no doubt, many in the world who will never find out that
   their ways which they thought to be so clean are all foul till they
   enter upon another world. There are some men who are Christians in all
   but this, that they have not true faith in Jesus. There are others who
   apparently are saved, but they have never been really born again. There
   are many who have everything but the one thing needful, and who think
   they have that, and persuade their fellows that they have that. How
   near a man may come to being a Christian and yet miss salvation it were
   difficult to tell; but certainly he may come so near that no man nor
   yet the angels of God shall be able to tell the difference between him
   and a saved soul, only God shall discern the difference when he comes
   to weigh the spirits.

   Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. It is this: let us come
   my brethren, all of us, to the place of confession of sin and
   acknowledge that we have broken God's law, and deserve his just
   displeasure. Let us go by the help of his Holy Spirit, who is the
   Spirit of supplication, and let us confess the depravity of our nature
   and the error of our hearts. Let us pray that instead of thinking our
   ways clean, we may know them to be foul, may mourn over them, and may
   learn to see them as God sees them, as crooked ways and wrong ways in
   themselves not to be boasted of, but to be remembered with shame and
   confusion of face. Blessed is he who is delivered from any rejoicing in
   himself. Happy is that man who can see no speck of soundness in his own
   flesh, but who feels that the leprosy of sin hath covered him without
   and within from head to foot. And brethren, if we come to such deep
   humiliation of spirit, the next word is this: let us go together to the
   great salvation which God has provided in the person of Christ Jesus.
   Come, linking hand in hand, saint and sinner, now all sinners
   consciously, let us stand and see where sin has pierced the body of the
   blessed Substitute with yonder bleeding wounds. Let us read the lines
   of grief written upon that blessed face; let us gaze into the depth of
   his soul filled with an ocean of anguish, lashed to a tempest of
   suffering; let us believe that he suffered in our stead and so roll our
   sin and our sinfulness on him. Jesus, accept a sinner, a poor sinner
   still; though these twenty years I have known thy name, yet still a
   sinner I come to thee, the chief of sinners! Ah, brethren and sisters,
   we are never safer I am sure, never healthier, never in a better frame
   than when we are right flat down on the ground before the cross. When
   you feel yourself to be utterly unworthy you have hit the truth. When
   you think you are doing something and are rich and flourishing, you are
   poor, and naked, and miserable; but when you are consciously weak and
   sinful, then you are rich. When you are weak you are strong; but O God,
   save us from letting our ways seem clean in our own sight, but may we
   weigh our spirits by the help of thy Spirit, and condemn ourselves that
   we may not be condemned of the Lord.

   The Lord bless you richly and freely for his name's sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON—Psalm 51.
     __________________________________________________________________

Soul-winning

   A sermon

   (No. 850)

   Delivered by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "He that wins souls is wise."- Proverbs 11:30.

   THE text does not say, "he that wins money is wise," though no doubt he
   thinks himself wise and perhaps, in a certain groveling sense in these
   days of competition, he might be so. But such wisdom is of the earth,
   and ends with the earth. There is another world where the currencies of
   Europe will not be accepted, nor their past possession be any sign of
   wealth or wisdom. Solomon, in the text before us, awards no crown for
   wisdom to crafty statesmen, or even to the ablest of rulers. He issues
   no diplomas to philosophers, poets, or men of wit. He crowns with
   laurels only those who win souls.

   He does not declare that he who preaches is necessarily wise--and alas,
   there are multitudes who preach and gain much applause and
   eminence--who win no souls and who shall find it go hard with them at
   the last, because in all probability they have run and the Master has
   never sent them. He does not say that he who talks about winning souls
   is wise, since to lay down rules for others is a very simple thing, but
   to carry them out is far more difficult. He who actually, really and
   truly turns men from the error of their ways to God, and so is made the
   means of saving them from going down to Hell is a wise man. And that is
   true of him whatever his style of soul-winning may be. He may be a
   Paul, deeply logical, profound in doctrine, able to command all candid
   judgments--and if he thus win souls he is wise.

   He may be an Apollos, grandly rhetorical, whose lofty genius soars into
   the very Heaven of eloquence--and if he wins souls in that way he is
   wise, but not otherwise. Or he may be a Cephas, rough and rugged, using
   uncouth metaphor and stern declamation. But if he win souls he is no
   less wise than his polished brother or his argumentative friend. The
   great wisdom of soul-winners, according to the text, is proven only by
   their actual success in really winning souls. To their own Master they
   are accountable for the ways in which they go to work, not to us.

   Do not let us be comparing and contrasting this minister and that. Who
   are you that judges another man's servants? Wisdom is justified in all
   her children. Only children wrangle about incidental methods--men look
   at sublime results. Do these workers of many sorts and various manners
   win souls? Then they are wise! And you who criticize them, being
   yourselves unfruitful, cannot be wise, even though you affect to be
   their judges! God proclaims soul-winners to be wise, dispute it who
   dare! This degree from the College of Heaven may surely stand them in
   good stead--let their fellow mortals say what they will of them. "He
   that wins souls is wise," and this can be seen very clearly.

   He must be a wise man in even ordinary respects who can, by Divine
   Grace, achieve so Divine a marvel. Great soul-winners have never been
   fools. A man whom God qualifies to win souls could probably do anything
   else which Providence might allot him. Take Martin Luther! Why, Sirs,
   the man was not only fit to work a Reformation, but he could have ruled
   a nation or have commanded an army! Think of Whitefield and remember
   that the thundering eloquence which stirred all England was not
   associated with a weak judgment, or an absence of brain power--the man
   was a master orator, and if he had addicted himself to commerce, would
   have taken a chief place among the merchants. Or had he been a
   politician, amid admiring senates he would have commanded the listening
   ear.

   He that wins souls is usually a man who could have done anything else
   if God had called him to it. I know the Lord uses what means He wills,
   but He always uses means suitable to the end. And if you tell me that
   David slew Goliath with a sling, I answer it was the best weapon in the
   world to reach so tall a giant and the very fittest weapon that David
   could have used, for he had been skilled in it from his youth up. There
   is always an adaptation in the instruments which God uses to produce
   the ordained result, and though the glory is not to them, nor the
   excellence in them--all is to be ascribed to God--yet is there a
   fitness and preparedness which God sees, even if we do not. It is
   assuredly true that soul-winners are by no means idiots or simpletons,
   but such as God makes wise for Himself, though vainglorious wiseacres
   may dub them fools.

   "He that wins souls is wise," because he has selected a wise object. I
   think it was Michelangelo who once carved certain magnificent statues
   in snow. They are gone. The material readily compacted by the frost as
   readily melted in the heat. Far wiser was he when he fashioned the
   enduring marble and produced works which will last all down the ages.
   But even marble itself is consumed and fretted by the tooth of time!
   And he is wise who selects for his raw material immortal souls, whose
   existence shall outlast the stars! If God shall bless us to the winning
   of souls, our work shall remain when the wood and hay and stubble of
   earth's art and science shall have gone to the dust from which they
   sprang.

   In Heaven itself, the soul-winner, blessed of God, shall have memorials
   of his work preserved forever in the galleries of the skies. He has
   selected a wise object, for what can be wiser than to glorify God and
   what, next to that, can be wiser than in the highest sense to bless our
   fellow men--to snatch a soul from the gulf that yawns, to lift it up to
   the Heaven that glorifies--to deliver an immortal from the thralldom of
   Satan and to bring him into the liberty of Christ? What more excellent
   than this? I say, that such an aim would commend itself to all right
   minds and that angels themselves may envy us poor sons of men that we
   are permitted to make this our life-work, to win souls for Jesus
   Christ!

   Wisdom herself assents to the excellence of the design. To accomplish
   such a work, a man must be wise, for to win a soul requires infinite
   wisdom. God Himself wins not souls without wisdom, for the eternal plan
   of salvation was dictated by an infallible judgment and in every line
   of it infinite skill is apparent. Christ, God's great Soul-Winner, is
   "the wisdom of God," as well as "the power of God." There is as much
   wisdom to be seen in the new creation as in the old. In a saved sinner
   there is as much of God to be beheld as in a universe rising out of
   nothing! And we, then, who are to be workers together with God,
   proceeding side by side with Him to the great work of soul-winning,
   must be wise, too.

   It is a work which filled a Savior's heart--a work which moved the
   Eternal mind before the earth was. It is no child's play, nor a thing
   to be achieved while we are half asleep, nor to be attempted without
   deep consideration, nor to be carried on without gracious help from the
   only-wise God, our Savior. The pursuit is wise. Mark you well, my
   Brethren, that he who is successful in soul-winning will prove to have
   been a wise man in the judgment of those who see the end as well as the
   beginning.

   Even if I were utterly selfish and had no care for anything but my own
   happiness, I would choose, if I might, under God, to be a soul-winner,
   for never did I know perfect, overflowing, unutterable happiness of the
   purest and most ennobling order till I first heard of one who had
   sought and found a Savior through my means. I recollect the thrill of
   joy which went through me! No young mother ever rejoiced so much over
   her first-born child--no warrior was so exultant over a hard-won
   victory. Oh, the joy of knowing that a sinner once at enmity has been
   reconciled to God, by the Holy Spirit, through the words spoken by our
   feeble lips!

   Since then, by Divine Grace given to me, the thought of which
   prostrates me in self-abasement, I have seen and heard of, not hundreds
   only, but even thousands of sinners turned from the error of their ways
   by the testimony of God in me. Let afflictions come! Let trials be
   multiplied as God wills, still this joy preponderates above all
   others--the joy that we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ in every
   place--and that as often as we preach the Word, hearts are unlocked,
   bosoms heave with a new life, eyes weep for sin and their tears are
   wiped away as they see the great Substitute for sin and live!

   Beyond all controversy, it is a joy worth worlds to win souls and,
   thank God, it is a joy that does not cease with this mortal life. It
   must be no small bliss to hear, as one wings his flight up to the
   Eternal Throne, the wings of others fluttering at one's side towards
   the same Glory and turning round and questioning them, to hear them
   say, "We are entering with you through the gates of pearl--you brought
   us to the Savior." To be welcomed to the skies by those who call us
   father, in God--father in better bonds than those of earth--father
   through Grace and sire for immortality--it will be bliss beyond
   compare, to meet in yon eternal seats with those begotten of us in
   Christ Jesus, for whom we travailed in birth, till Christ was formed in
   them the hope of Glory!

   This is to have many heavens--a Heaven in everyone won for Christ,
   according to the Master's promise, "they that turn many to
   righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever." I have said
   enough, Brethren, I trust, to make some of you desire to occupy the
   position of soul-winners. Now, before I further address myself to my
   text, I should like to remind you that the honor does not belong to
   ministers only. They may take their full share of it, but it belongs to
   every one of you who have devoted yourselves to Christ! Such honor have
   all the saints! Every man here, every woman here, every child here
   whose heart is right with God, may be a soul-winner!

   There is no man placed by God's Providence where he cannot do some
   good. There is not a glowworm under a hedge but gives a needed light.
   And there is not a laboring man, a suffering woman, a servant girl, a
   chimney sweeper, or a crossing sweeper, but what has opportunities for
   serving God. And what I have said of soul-winners belongs not to the
   learned doctor of divinity, or to the eloquent preacher, alone, but to
   you all who are in Christ Jesus! You can, each of you, if Divine Grace
   enables you. Therefore be wise and win the happiness of turning souls
   to Christ through the Holy Spirit.

   I am about to dwell upon my text in this way--"He that wins souls is
   wise." I shall, first, make that fact stand out a little clearer by
   explaining the metaphor used in the text--winning souls. And then,
   secondly, by giving you some lessons in the matter of soul-winning,
   through which, I trust, the conviction will be forced upon each
   believing mind that the work needs the highest wisdom.

   I. First, LET US CONSIDER THE METAPHOR USED IN THE TEXT--"He that wins
   souls is wise." We use the word, "win," in many ways. It is sometimes
   found in very bad company, in those games of chance, juggling tricks
   and sleight-of-hand, or thimble-rigging (to use a plain word), which
   cheaters are so fond of winning by. I am sorry to say that much of
   legerdemain and trickery are to be met with in the religious world.
   Why, there are those who pretend to save souls by curious tricks,
   intricate maneuvers and dexterous posture making. A basin of water,
   half-a-dozen drops, certain syllables--presto!--the infant is a child
   of Grace and becomes a member of Christ and an inheritor of the kingdom
   of Heaven!

   This aqueous regeneration surpasses my belief! It is a trick which I do
   not understand! The initiated, only, can perform this beautiful piece
   of magic which excels anything ever attempted by the Wizard of the
   North! There is a way, too, of winning souls by laying hands upon
   heads--only the elbows of aforesaid hands must be encased in flowing
   robes--and then the machinery acts and there is Grace conferred by
   blessed fingers! I must confess I do not understand the occult science,
   but at this I need not wonder, for the profession of saving souls by
   such juggling can only be carried out by certain favored persons who
   have received Apostolic succession direct from Judas Iscariot.

   This Episcopal confirmation, when men pretend that it confers Divine
   Grace, is an infamous piece of juggling. The whole thing is an
   abomination! Only to think that in this 19th century there should be
   men who preach up salvation by sacraments and salvation by themselves,
   indeed! Why, Sirs, it is surely too late in the day to come to us with
   this drivel! Priestcraft, let us hope, is a fossil and the sacramental
   theory out of date. These things might have done for those who could
   not read and for the days when books were scarce!

   But ever since the day when the glorious Luther was helped by God to
   proclaim with thunderclaps the emancipating Truth of God--"By Grace are
   you saved, through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of
   God"--there has been too much light for these Popish owls! Let them go
   back to their ivy-mantled towers and complain to the moon of those who
   spoiled of old their kingdom of darkness. Let shaven crowns go to
   Bedlam, and scarlet hats to the scarlet harlot-- but let not Englishmen
   yield them respect.

   Modern Tractarianism is a bastard Popery--too mean, too shifty, too
   double-dealing--to delude men of honest minds. If we win souls it shall
   be by other arts than Jesuits and idiots can teach us. Trust not in any
   man who pretends to priesthood. Priests are liars by trade and
   deceivers by profession. We cannot save souls in their theatrical way
   and do not want to do so, for we know that with such jugglery as that,
   Satan will hold the best hand and laugh at priests as he turns the
   cards against them at the last.

   How do we win souls, then? Why, the word, "win," has a far better
   meaning. It is used in warfare. Warriors win cities and provinces. Now,
   to win a soul is a much more difficult thing than to win a city!
   Observe the earnest soul-winner at his work. How cautiously he seeks
   his great Captain's directions to know when to hang out the white flag
   to invite the heart to surrender to the sweet love of a dying Savior.
   When, at the proper time, to hang out the black flag of threat, showing
   that if Divine Grace is not received, judgment will surely follow. And
   when to unfurl, with dread reluctance, the red flag of the terrors of
   God against stubborn, impenitent souls.

   The soul-winner has to sit down before a soul as a great captain before
   a walled town. He has to draw his lines of circumvallation, to cast up
   his entrenchments and fix his batteries. He must not advance too
   fast--he may overdo the fighting. He must not move too slowly, for he
   may seem not to be in earnest and may do mischief. Then he must know
   which gate to attack--how to plant his guns at Ear-Gate and how to
   discharge them. He has to know how, sometimes,

   to keep the batteries going, day and night, with red-hot shot. He has
   to know when and if, perhaps, he may make a breach in the walls.

   At other times he may have to lay by and cease. And then, on a moment's
   notice, to open all the batteries with terrific violence, if perhaps he
   may take the soul by surprise or cast in a Truth of God when it was not
   expected, to burst like a shell in the soul and do damage to the
   dominions of sin. The Christian soldier must know how to advance by
   little and little--to sap that prejudice, to undermine that old enmity,
   to blow into the air that lust--and at the last to storm the citadel.
   It is his to throw the scaling ladder up and to have his ears gladdened
   as he hears a clicking on the wall of the heart, telling that the
   scaling ladder has grasped and has gained a firm hold! And then, with
   his saber between his teeth, he climbs up and springs on the man! He
   slays his unbelief in the name of God and captures the city and runs up
   the blood-red flag of the Cross of Christ! Then he can say, "The heart
   is won, won for Christ at last!"

   This needs a warrior well trained--a master in his art. After many
   days' attack, many weeks of waiting, many an hour of storming by prayer
   and battering by entreaty to carry the Malakoff of depravity--this is
   the work--this the difficulty. It takes no fool to do this! God's Grace
   must make a man wise to capture Mansoul, to lead its captivity captive
   and open wide the heart's gates that the Prince Immanuel may come in.
   This is winning a soul!

   The word, "win," was commonly used among the ancients, to signify
   winning in the wrestling match. When the Greek sought to win the
   laurel, or the ivy crown, he was compelled a long time before to put
   himself through a course of training. And when he came forth at last,
   stripped for the encounter, he had no sooner exercised himself in the
   first few efforts than you saw how every muscle and every nerve had
   been developed in him. He had a stern opponent, and he knew it, and
   therefore left none of his energy unused.

   While the wrestling was going on you could see the man's eyes, how he
   watched every motion, every feint of his antagonist and how his hands,
   his feet and his whole body were thrown into the encounter. He feared
   to meet with a fall--he hoped to give one to his foe. Now, a true
   soul-winner has often to come to close quarters with the devil within
   men. He has to struggle with their prejudice, with their love of sin,
   with their unbelief, with their pride. And then again, all of a sudden,
   to grapple with their despair. At one moment he strives with their
   self-righteousness, at the next moment with their unbelief in God. Ten
   thousand arts are used to prevent the soul-winner from being conqueror
   in the encounter, but if God has sent him, he will never renounce his
   hold of the soul he seeks till he has given a throw to the power of sin
   and won another soul for Christ!

   Besides that, there is another meaning to the word, "win," upon which I
   cannot go into too much detail here. We use the word, you know, in a
   softer sense than these which have been mentioned, when we come to deal
   with hearts. There are secret and mysterious ways by which those who
   love win the object of their affection, which are wise in their fitness
   to the purpose. I cannot tell you how the lover wins his fond one, but
   experience has probably taught you. The weapon of this warfare is not
   always the same, yet where that victory is won the wisdom of the means
   becomes clear to every eye. The weapon of love is sometimes a look, or
   a soft word whispered and eagerly listened to. Sometimes it is a tear.
   But this I know, that we have, most of us in our turn, cast around
   another heart a chain which that other would not care to break and
   which has linked us together in a blessed captivity which has cheered
   our life.

   Yes, and that is very nearly the way in which we have to win souls.
   That illustration is nearer the mark than any of the others. Love is
   the true way of soul-winning, for when I spoke of storming the walls
   and when I spoke of wrestling, those were but metaphors, but this is
   near the fact. We win by love. We win hearts for Jesus by love, by
   sympathy with their sorrow, by anxiety lest they should perish, by
   pleading with God for them with all our hearts that they should not be
   left to die unsaved. We win hearts for Jesus by pleading with them for
   God that, for their own sake, they would seek mercy and find Divine
   Grace. Yes, Sirs, there is a spiritual wooing and winning of hearts for
   the Lord Jesus! And if you would learn the way, you must ask God to
   give you a tender heart and a sympathizing soul.

   I believe that much of the secret of soul-winning lies in having hearts
   of compassion, in having spirits that can be touched with the feeling
   of human infirmities. Carve a preacher out of granite and even if you
   give him an angel's tongue, he will convert nobody. Put him into the
   most fashionable pulpit. Make his elocution faultless and his matter
   profoundly orthodox, but so long as he bears within his bosom a hard
   heart he can never win a soul. Soul-winning requires a heart that beats
   hard against the ribs. It requires a soul full of the milk of human
   kindness. This is the sine qua non of success. This is the chief
   natural qualification for a soul-winner, which, under God and blessed
   of Him, will accomplish wonders.

   I have not looked at the Hebrew of the text, but I find--and you will
   find who have margins to your Bibles--that it is, "He that takes souls
   is wise," which word refers to fishing, or to bird catching. Every
   Sunday when I leave my house, I cannot help seeing as I come along, men
   with their little cages and their stuffed birds, trying all around the
   common and in the fields, to catch poor little warblers. They
   understand the method of alluring and entrapping their little victims.
   Soul-winners might learn much from them. We must have our lures for
   souls adapted to attract, to fascinate, to grasp. We must go forth with
   our birdlime, our decoys, our nets, our baits, so that we may but catch
   the souls of men.

   Their enemy is a fowler possessed of the basest and most astounding
   cunning. We must outwit him with the guile of honesty, the craft of
   Grace. But the art is to be learned only by Divine teaching and herein
   we must be wise and willing to learn. The man who takes fish must also
   have some art in him. Washington Irving, I think it is, tells us of
   some three gentlemen who had read in Izaak Walton all about the
   delights of fishing. So they entered upon the same amusement and
   accordingly they became disciples of the gentle art.

   They went into New York and bought the best rods and lines that could
   be purchased. They found out the exact fly for the particular day or
   month so that the fish might bite at once and, as it were, fly into the
   basket with cheerful accuracy! They fished and fished and fished the
   whole day but the basket was empty. They were getting disgusted with a
   sport that had no sport in it, when a ragged boy came down from the
   hills without shoes or stockings and humiliated them to the last
   degree. He had a bit of a bough pulled from off a tree and a piece of
   string and a bent pin. He put a worm on it, threw it in and out came a
   fish directly, as if it were a needle drawn to a magnet! In again went
   the line and out came another fish and so on, till his basket was quite
   full.

   They asked him how he did it. Ah, he said, he could not tell them that,
   but it was easy enough when you had the way of it. Much the same is it
   in fishing for men. Some preachers who have silk lines and fine rods,
   preach very eloquently and exceedingly gracefully, but they never win
   souls. I know not how it is, but another man comes with very simple
   language, but with a warm heart and, straightway, men are converted to
   God. Surely there must be a sympathy between the minister and the souls
   he would win! God gives to those whom He makes soul-winners a natural
   love to their work and a spiritual fitness for it. There is a sympathy
   between those who are to be blessed and those who are to be the means
   of blessing and very much by this sympathy, under God, souls are taken.
   But it is as clear as noonday--to be a fisher of men a man must be
   wise. "He that wins souls is wise."

   II. And now, Brothers and Sisters, you who are engaged in the Lord's
   work from week to week and who seek to win

   men's souls to Christ, I am, in the second place, to illustrate this BY
   TELLING YOU OF SOME OF THE WAYS BY

   WHICH SOULS ARE TO BE WON. The preacher himself wins souls, I believe,
   best, when he believes in the reality of his work--when he believes in
   instantaneous conversions! How can he expect God to do what he does not
   believe God will do? He succeeds best who expects conversion every time
   he preaches. According to his faith so shall it be done unto him.

   To be content without conversions is the surest way never to have them.
   To drive with a single aim entirely at the saving of souls is the sure
   method of usefulness. If we sigh and cry till men are saved, saved they
   will be! He will succeed best who keeps closest to soul-saving Truth.
   Now, all the Truth of God is not soul-saving, though all Truth may be
   edifying. He that keeps to the simple story of the Cross--tells men
   over and over again that whoever believes in Christ is not
   condemned--that to be saved nothing is needed but a simple trust in the
   crucified Redeemer. He whose ministry is much made up of the glorious
   story of the Cross, the sufferings of the dying Lamb, the mercy of God,
   the willingness of the great Father to receive returning prodigals.

   He who cries, in fact, from day to day, "Behold the Lamb of God, which
   takes away the sin of the world"--he is likely to be a
   soul-winner--especially if he adds to this much prayer for souls, much
   anxious desire that men may be brought to Jesus, and then, in his
   private life seeks as much as in his public ministry to be telling out
   to others of the love of the dear Savior of men.

   But I am not talking to ministers, but to you who sit in the pew, and
   therefore to you let me turn myself more directly. Brothers and
   Sisters, you have different gifts. I hope you use them all. Perhaps
   some of you, though members of the Church, think you have none. But
   every Believer has his gift and his portion of work. What can you do to
   win souls? Let me recommend to those who think they can do nothing, the
   bringing of others to hear the Word of God. That is a duty much
   neglected. I can hardly ask you to bring anybody here, because many of
   you attend other places which are not

   perhaps half-filled. Fill them! Do not grumble at the small
   congregation, but make it larger! Take somebody with you to the very
   next sermon and at once the congregation will be increased.

   Go up with the prayer that your minister's sermon may be blessed, and
   if you cannot preach yourselves, yet, by bringing others under the
   sound of the Word, you may be doing what is next best. This is a very
   commonplace and simple remark, but let me press it upon you, for it is
   of great practical value. Many Churches and Chapels which are almost
   empty, might soon have large audiences if those who profit by the Word
   would tell others about the profit they have received, and induce them
   to attend the same ministry. Especially in this London of ours, where
   so many will not go up to the House of God--persuade your neighbors to
   come forth to the place of worship. Look after them. Make them feel
   that it is a wrong thing to stay at home on Sunday from morning till
   night.

   I do not say upbraid them, that does little good. But I do say entice
   them, persuade them. Let them have your tickets for the Tabernacle, for
   instance, sometimes, or stand in the aisles, yourself, and let them
   have your seat. Get them under the Word and who knows what may be the
   result? Oh, what a blessing it would be to you if you heard that what
   you could not do, for you could scarcely speak for Christ, was done by
   your pastor, by the power of the Holy Spirit, through your inducing one
   to come within gunshot of the Gospel! Next to that, Soul-Winners, the
   preacher may have missed the mark--you need not miss it. Or the
   preacher may have struck the mark and you can help to make the
   impression deeper by a kind word.

   I recollect several persons joining this Church who traced their
   conversion to the ministry in the Surrey Music Hall, but who said it
   was not that, alone, but another agency cooperating with it. They were
   fresh from the country and some good man, I knew him well, I think he
   is in Heaven now, met two of them at the gate, spoke to them, said he
   hoped they had enjoyed what they had heard. He heard their answer,
   asked them if they were coming in the evening. He said he would be glad
   if they would drop into his house to tea. They did, and he had a word
   with them about the Master. The next Sunday it was the same and at
   last, those whom the sermons had not much impressed, were brought to
   hear with other ears, till by-and-by, through the good old man's
   persuasive words and the good Lord's gracious work, they were converted
   to God!

   There is a fine hunting ground here and, indeed, in every large
   congregation for you who really want to do good. How many come into
   this House every morning and evening with no thought about receiving
   Christ. Oh, if you would all help me, you who love the Master--if you
   would all help me by speaking to your neighbors who sit near you--how
   much might be accomplished! Never let anybody say, "I came to the
   Tabernacle three months and nobody spoke to me." But do, by a sweet
   familiarity, which ought always to be allowable in the House of God,
   seek with your whole heart to impress upon your friends the Truth of
   God which I can only put into the ear, but which God may help you to
   put into the heart!

   Further, let me commend to you, dear friends, the art of button-holing
   acquaintances and relatives. If you cannot preach to a 100, preach to
   one! Get a hold of the man, alone, and in love, quietly and
   prayerfully, talk to him. "One!" you say. Well, is not one enough? I
   know your ambition, young man--you want to preach here, to these
   thousands. Be content and begin with the ones. Your Master was not
   ashamed to sit on the well and preach to one! And when He had finished
   His sermon He had really done good to all the city of Samaria, for that
   one woman became a missionary to her friends. Timidity often prevents
   our being useful in this direction, but we must not give way to it. It
   must not be tolerated that Christ should be unknown through our silence
   and sinners unwarned through our negligence!

   We must school and train ourselves to deal personally with the
   unconverted. We must not excuse ourselves, but force ourselves to the
   irksome task till it becomes easy. This is one of the most honorable
   modes of soul-winning and if it requires more than ordinary zeal and
   courage, so much the more reason for our resolving to master it.
   Beloved, we must win souls! We cannot live and see men damned! We must
   have them brought to Jesus. Oh, then, be up and doing and let none
   around you die unwarned, unwept, uncured for! A tract is a useful
   thing, but a living word is better. Your eyes and face and voice will
   all help. Do not be so cowardly as to give a piece of paper where your
   own speech would be so much better. I charge you, attend to this, for
   Jesus' sake.

   Some of you could write letters for your Lord and Master. To far-off
   friends a few loving lines may be most influential for good. Be like
   the men of Issachar who handled the pen. Paper and ink are never better
   used than in soul-winning. Much has been done by this method. Could you
   not do it? Will you not try? Some of you, at any rate, if you could not

   speak or write much, could live much. That is a fine way of
   preaching--that of preaching with your feet--I mean preaching by your
   life and conduct and conversation! That loving wife who weeps in secret
   over an infidel husband, but is always so kind to him. That dear child
   whose heart is broken with a father's blasphemy, but is so much more
   obedient than he used to be before conversion! That servant whom the
   master swears at, but whom he could trust with his purse and the gold
   uncounted in it! That man in trade who is sneered at as a Presbyterian,
   but who, nevertheless, is straight as a line and would not be compelled
   to do a dirty action, no, not for all the mint!

   These are the men and women who preach the best sermons! These are your
   practical preachers! Give us your holy living and with your holy living
   as the leverage, we will move the world! Under God's blessing we will
   find tongues, if we can, but we need greatly the lives of our people to
   illustrate what our tongues have to say. The Gospel is something like
   an illustrated paper. The preacher's words are the print, but the
   pictures are the living men and women who form our Churches. And as
   when people take up such a newspaper, they very often do not read the
   print, but they always look at the pictures--so in a Church, outsiders
   may not come to hear the preacher--but they always consider, observe
   and criticize the lives of the members. If you would be soul-winners,
   then, dear Brothers and Sisters, see that you live the Gospel! I have
   no greater joy than this, that my children walk in the Truth of God.

   One thing more, the soul-winner must be a master of the art ofprayer.
   You cannot bring souls to God if you go not to God yourself. You must
   get your battle-ax and your weapons of war from the armory of sacred
   communion with Christ. If you are much alone with Jesus, you will catch
   His Spirit. You will be fired with the flame that burned in His breast
   and consumed His life. You will weep with the tears that fell upon
   Jerusalem when He saw it perishing. And if you cannot speak so
   eloquently as He did, yet shall there be in what you say somewhat of
   the same power which in Him thrilled the hearts and awoke the
   consciences of men.

   My dear Hearers, especially you members of this Church, I am always so
   anxious lest any of you should begin to lie upon your oars and take
   things easy in the matters of God's kingdom. There are some of you--I
   bless you and I bless God at the remembrance of you--who are in season
   and out of season, in earnest for winning souls and you are the truly
   wise. But I fear there are others whose hands are slack, who are
   satisfied to let me preach, but do not preach themselves. There are
   some who take these seats and occupy these pews and hope the cause goes
   well, but that is all they do. Oh, let me see you all in earnest!

   A great host of 4,000 members--for that is now as nearly as possible
   the accurate counting of our numbers--what could we not do if we were
   all alive and all in earnest? But such a host, without the spirit of
   enthusiasm, becomes a mere mob, an unwieldy mass out of which mischief
   grows and no good results arise. If you were all firebrands for Christ,
   you might set the nation on a blaze! If you were all wells of living
   water, how many thirsty souls might drink and be refreshed! One thing
   more you can do. If some of you feel you cannot do much personally, you
   can always help the College and there it is that we find tongues for
   the dumb. Our young men are called out by God to preach. We give them
   some little education and training and then away they go to Australia,
   to Canada, to the islands of the sea, to Scotland, to Wales and
   throughout England, preaching the Word!

   And it is often, it must be often, a consolation to some of you, to
   think that if you have not spoken with your own tongues as you could
   desire, you have at least spoken by the tongues of others, so that
   through you the Word of God has been sounded abroad throughout all this
   region. Beloved, there is one question I will ask and I have done and
   that is, Are your own souls won? You cannot win others if they are not.
   Are you yourselves saved? My Hearers, every one of you under that
   gallery, there. And you behind here, are you, yourselves, saved? What
   if this night you should have to answer that question to another and
   greater than I am? What if the bony finger of the last great orator
   should be uplifted instead of mine?

   What if his unconquerable eloquence should turn those bones to stone
   and glaze those eyes and make the blood chill in your veins? Could you
   hope, in your last extremity, that you were saved? If not saved, how
   will you ever be? When will you be saved if not now? Will any time be
   better than now? The way to be saved is simply to trust in what the Son
   of Man did when He became Man and suffered the punishment for all those
   who trust Him. For all His people, Christ was a Substitute. His people
   are those who trust Him. If you trust Him, He was punished for your
   sins! And you cannot be punished for them, for God cannot punish sin
   twice--first in Christ and then in you! If you trust Jesus, who now
   lives at the right hand of God, you are this moment pardoned and you
   shall forever be saved.

   that you would trust Him now! Perhaps it may be now or never with you.
   May it be now, even now! And then, trusting in Jesus, dear Friends, you
   will have no need to hesitate when the question is asked, "Are you
   saved?" for you can answer, "Yes, that I am, for it is written, 'He
   that believes in Him is not condemned.'" Trust Him, then! Trust Him now
   and then God help you to be a soul-winner and you shall be wise and God
   shall be glorified.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Psalm 51.
     __________________________________________________________________

Nearness To God

   A sermon

   (No. 851)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, JANUARY 17, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off are made near by the
   blood of Christ."- Ephesians 2:13.

   THE text is a gate of pearl leading up to the excellent Glory. Happy
   are the men to whom it is given to enter thereby. It turns upon hinges
   of diamond. Those two phrases, "in Christ Jesus," "by the blood of
   Christ"--these are the two pivots of the precious doctrine of the text.
   "Made near," this is our delightful privilege, but, "in Christ Jesus,"
   is one source of the blessing, "and by the blood of Christ" is the
   other. Before our rejoicing eyes rolls a sea of love, an ocean of
   boundless peace and bliss comparable to the sea of glass before the
   sapphire throne! In order to reach this great Pacific, you must sail
   through yon narrow strait which flows between the two headlands of
   union to Christ and cleansing by the atoning blood.

   I. We commence, therefore, this morning, by endeavoring to EXPLAIN THE
   MEANING OF THE TWO KEY WORDS--"In Christ Jesus," and "by the blood of
   Christ." "We who once were far off are made near." First, because we
   are in Christ Jesus. All the elect of God are in Christ Jesus by a
   federal union. He is their Head ordained of old to be so from before
   the foundation of the world. As Adam was the federal head of the race
   and as in him we fell, so Christ, the second Adam, stands as the Head
   of the chosen people and in Him they rise again and live.

   This federal union leads in due time, by the Grace of God, to a
   manifest and vital union--a union of life and for life--even unto
   eternal life, of which the visible bond is faith. The soul comes to
   Jesus and lays hold on Him by an act of faith because Jesus has already
   laid hold upon that soul by the power of His Spirit, claiming it to be
   His heritage, seeing He has bought it with His blood and His Father has
   given it to Him as the reward of the travail of His soul. All who are
   in Christ Jesus in the eternal Covenant of Grace, shall, in due time,
   be in Him by the living union of which we now speak--mystical and
   mysterious--but still most real, most true and most efficient.

   Now, Beloved, when a soul becomes really in Christ, as the branch is in
   the vine, and draws its nourishment from the stem, as the limb is in
   the body and derives all its vitality from the central heart--when a
   man thus becomes one with Christ, it is clear to the most common
   observer that he must be near to God--for Christ is ever near to God
   and those one with Him must be near, also. Jesus is Himself God--here
   is nearness outdone! As Man He is without spot or blemish and near to
   God in Character. As having finished the work which was given Him to
   do, He is near to God in acceptance. As having gone up to Heaven to
   take the promised crown, He is near to God in Person. And since we are
   one with Him, we must be from that very fact near to God, yes, as near
   to God as Christ Himself is!

   Understand that if anything is one with a man, actually one with that
   man, it stands in the same place as that man does. So if we are one
   with Christ by a real and actual union--where Christ is, we are!
   Christ's standing is our standing! And as Christ is near unto God, even
   so He has raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly
   places. We are--

   "So near, so very near to God, We cannot nearer be, For in the Person
   of His Son,

   We are as near as He."

   The other key word of the text is, "by the blood of Christ." If it is
   asked what power lies in the blood to bring near, it must be answered,
   first, that the blood is the symbol of the Covenant. Ever in Scripture
   when covenants are made, victims are offered and the victim becomes the
   place and ground of approach between the two covenanting parties. The
   blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is expressly called, "the blood of the
   Everlasting Covenant," for God comes in Covenant near to us by the
   blood of His only-begotten Son. Every man whose faith rests upon the
   blood of Jesus slain from before the

   foundations of the world is in Covenant with God and that Covenant
   becomes to him most sure and certain because it has been ratified by
   the blood of Jesus Christ and therefore can never be changed or
   disannulled.

   The blood brings us near in another sense because it is the taking away
   of the sin which separated us. When we read the word, "blood," as in
   the text, it means mortal suffering--we are made near by the griefs and
   agonies of the Redeemer. The shedding of blood indicates pain, loss of
   energy, health, comfort, happiness. But it goes further still--the
   term, "blood," signifies death. It is the death of Jesus in which we
   trust. We glory in His life. We triumph in His Resurrection. But the
   ground of our nearness to God lies in His death.

   The term, "blood," moreover, signifies not a mere expiring, but a
   painful and ignominious and penal death. A death not brought about by
   the decay of nature, or the arrows of disease, but caused by the sharp
   sword of Divine vengeance. The word, in fact, refers directly to the
   Crucifixion of our Lord. We are brought near to God especially and
   particularly by a crucified Savior pouring out His life's blood for us!
   Beloved, it is well to note this well-known doctrine, because there are
   some teachers--and I doubt not very excellent men, too--who seem not to
   be of Paul's mind when he said, "God forbid that I should glory, save
   in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ," and who resolved to know
   nothing among men save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

   These Brethren are incessantly preaching concerning Christ glorified, a
   valuable Truth of God, I allow, but not the way of a sinner's access to
   God. Christ's Second Coming was never intended to take the place of
   Christ's Crucifixion and yet there have been some, I fear, who, in
   their zeal for the very great and important Truth of the coming Glory,
   have suffered the blazing light of the Second Advent to obscure the
   milder radiance and the more healing beams of the First Advent, with
   its bloody sweat, its scourges, its crown of thorns and ransom price
   for lost sinners.

   Let it never be forgotten that while we bless Immanuel, God with us,
   for His Incarnation. And we joyfully perceive that even our Lord's
   birth in human flesh brought man near to God. While we thank and praise
   the Man of Sorrows for His Divine example and we see that this is a
   blessed help to us practically to advance towards our heavenly Father.
   While we praise and magnify the Lord Jesus for His Resurrection and His
   Ascension and discern in each glorious step fresh rungs of the ladder
   which leads from earth to Heaven. Yet still, for all that, we are not
   made near to God by the Incarnation! We are not in very deed made near
   to God by the Resurrection, nor by the Second Advent, but we are made
   near by the blood of Christ.

   The first, the grandest, the highest, the most essential Truth of God
   for us to lay hold of and to preach is the fact that Jesus Christ died
   for our sakes according to the Scriptures and that this is a faithful
   saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the
   world to save sinners and for sinners gave Himself up to die, the Just
   for the unjust, to bring us to God. God is glorified because Christ was
   punished for the sin of His people. Love has its full, but Law has its
   due. On the Cross we see sin fully punished and yet fully pardoned. We
   see Justice with her gleaming sword triumphant and Mercy with her
   silver scepter reigning in sublime splendor!

   Glory be to the wondrous wisdom which discovered the way of blending
   vengeance with love, making a tender heart to be the mirror of
   unflinching severity, causing the crystal vase of Jesus' loving Nature
   to be filled with the red wine of righteous wrath!--

   "O love of God, how strong and true!

   Eternal and yet ever new,

   Uncomprehended and unbought,

   Beyond all kno wledge and all thought.

   We read You best in Him who came

   To bear for us the Cross of shame--

   Sent by the Father from on high,

   Our life to live, our death to die." Beloved, you thus see that we are
   made near because the blood of Christ has sealed a Covenant between us
   and God and has forever taken away the sin which separated us from God.
   Experimentally, we are brought near by the application of the blood to
   our conscience. We see that sin is pardoned and bless the God who has
   saved us in so admirable a manner, and then we who hated Him, before,
   come to love Him.

   We who had no thought towards Him desire to be like He is. We are
   experimentally, and in our own souls, drawn and attracted to God by the
   blood of Jesus. The great attracting loadstone of the Gospel is the
   doctrine of the Cross. To

   preach the atoning sacrifice of Jesus is the shortest and surest way,
   under God's Holy Spirit, to draw those that are far off, mentally and
   spiritually, very near unto God! Thus have I dwelt upon those two key
   words upon which the text seems to me to hinge.

   II. Let us pass on to ILLUSTRATE THE NEARNESS into which God has been
   pleased to bring us in Christ Jesus by virtue of His blood. I shall
   take three illustrations from the Word of God. The first illustration
   is from our first parent, Adam. Adam dwelt in the Garden, abiding with
   God in devout communion. The Lord God walked in the Garden in the cool
   of the day with Adam. As a favored creature, the first man was
   permitted to know much of his Creator and to be near to Him.

   But, alas, Adam sinned and at once we see the first stage of our own
   distance from God as we perceive Adam in the Garden without his God. In
   the Garden, in the very midst of Paradise, flowers shedding their sweet
   perfume, fruits hanging ready to his hand on every side--and yet man is
   wretched, miserable and cowardly! He hides among the trees of the
   Garden until the Lord God calls to him, "Adam, where are you?" Here is
   the first stage of distance and it is sad and terrible. But, ah,
   Brethren, you and I were further off than that--much further off than
   that when love made us near!

   It would have been a great wonder of Divine Grace if, being in such a
   position, God had restored us again to His favor. If He had said to us
   after one transgression, "I have blotted out your sin like a cloud: I
   have passed by your offense, I restore you to happiness." But the Grace
   which God has shown to us is as much greater than this as the
   thorn-bearing soil is sterner than Eden's laughing flowers.

   Adam was brought before his God, arraigned, upbraided and condemned to
   be expelled from Paradise. Justice drove out the man. With fiery sword
   the cherubim keep watch at Eden's gate. Adam banished into the cold,
   sin-blighted world, to till the ground from where he was taken, with
   the promise ringing in his ear, "The Seed of the woman shall bruise the
   serpent's head," is the second stage of distance from God. Now, it
   would have been great Grace for God to take Adam from outside the
   Garden, to forgive him, to bring him within the happy gate and restore
   him to his former place--but the mercy worked in us is greater still!

   You and I were further gone than Adam outside of Eden, with a Gospel
   promise newly given him. We were not on the threshold of Paradise, but
   we were far off by wicked works. Our natural position as Gentile
   sinners was not with Adam outside the gate, but with the nations that
   knew not God! Our position was as when they had wandered farthest away
   from Paradise, had become most estranged from God and had set up many
   gods, and many lords, and had polluted and defiled themselves with all
   manner of uncleanness!

   See now the steps which God has taken with us Gentile dogs, as the Jews
   once called us! He has taken us, who were of old an idolatrous people,
   practicing bloody rites--a nation without knowledge of the Divine
   oracles and He has illuminated us with the Gospel of His Grace,
   bringing the kingdom of God very near unto us and ourselves very near
   to it. The Lord has been pleased to separate many of us to Himself and
   bring us into His visible Church so that we dwell within that "garden
   walled around, chosen and made peculiar ground." This is no small deed
   of love! Aliens are made fellow citizens with the saints and of the
   household of God!

   Yet, much more than this has been done for true Believers in the blood
   of Jesus. Not the name only, but the very essence and soul of true
   piety is ours, so that once again we walk with God! And in communion
   with the saints and with their Lord, we find a new garden of delight
   whose plants are an orchard of pomegranates with pleasant fruits,
   camphor with spikenard. "Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates,
   with pleasant fruits; camphor, with spikenard, spikenard and saffron;
   calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes,
   with all the chief spices: a fountain of gardens, a well of living
   waters and streams from Lebanon." We might date our letters from
   Elysium, for, "we that have believed do enter into rest." Yes, we are
   restored by Divine Grace to the King's garden! We have found Glory
   begun below--

   "Celestial fruits on earthly ground, From faith and hope do grow." Let
   me now give you a second illustration, which may place this wonder of
   love in a still clearer light. It shall be taken from the children of
   Israel traveling through the wilderness. If an angel had poised himself
   in mid air and watched awhile in the days of Moses, gazing down upon
   the people in the wilderness and all else that surrounded them, his
   eyes

   would have rested upon the central spot, the tabernacle, over which
   rested the pillar of cloud and fire by day and night, as the outward
   index of the Presence of God.

   Now, observe yonder select persons clad in fair white linen, who come
   near, very near, to that great center--they are priests--men who are
   engaged from day to day sacrificing bullocks and lambs and serving God.
   They are near to the Lord and engaged in most hallowed work, but they
   are not the nearest of all. One man, alone, comes nearest. He is the
   high priest, who, once every year, enters into that which is within the
   veil. Ah, what condescension is that which gives us the same access to
   God! The priests are servants of God and very near to Him, but not
   nearest. And it would be great Grace if God permitted the priests to
   enter into the Most Holy Place.

   But, Brothers and Sisters, we were not by nature comparable to the
   priests. We were not the Lord's servants. We were not devoted to His
   fear and the Grace that has brought us near through the precious blood
   was much greater than that which admits a priest within the veil. Every
   priest that went within the veil entered there by blood which he
   sprinkled on the Mercy Seat. If made near, even from the nearer stage,
   it must be by blood and in connection with the one only High Priest.

   If the angel continued his gaze he would next see lying all round the
   tabernacle the twelve tribes in their tents. These were a people near
   unto God--for what nation has God so near unto them? Deuteronomy 4:7.
   But they are nothing like so near as the priests. They did not abide in
   the holy court, nor were they always occupied in worship. Israel may
   fitly represent the outward Church, the members of which have not yet
   received all the spiritual blessing they might have, yet are they
   blessed and made near. If ever an Israelite advanced into the court of
   the priests, it was with blood. He came with sacrifice. There was no
   access without it. It was great favor which permitted the Israelite to
   come into the court of the priests and partake in Divine worship. But,
   Brethren, you and I were farther off than Israel and it needed more
   Grace, by far, to bring us near. By blood alone are we made near, and
   by blood displayed in all the glory of its power!

   Outside the camp of Israel altogether, you would have seen a company of
   miserable wretches who herded together as best they
   could--lepers--unclean, driven outside the camp. This is more like our
   position. If ever these lepers were brought near enough to come into
   communion with the camp of Israel, much more to come into communion
   with the priests, their access must be wholly and alone by blood. The
   turtle dove, or the young pigeon must be slain. The lamb must be
   killed, the scarlet wool and hyssop must be used. There was no purging
   of the leper to bring him into communion with the tribes of Israel
   except by blood.

   And oh, we--we in our filthiness so like the leper--we have to praise
   almighty Grace which looked upon us when our natural depravity stared
   us in the face--when it had become apparent by our continued
   disobedience to God! We have to praise the mercy which has brought us
   right away from the leper's place to as near to God as the accepted
   high priest before the veil! Beloved, had the angel still continued his
   gaze, he would have observed that even these lepers were far more
   favored than the other inhabitants of the world, for the whole world
   was lying in darkness, without God, without a revelation of His Glory.

   THIS is our position, this last one! We were the aliens, the strangers,
   the foreigners! A leper, though a leper, was still an Israelite, and if
   he could not go up into the sanctuary of the Lord, yet still there was
   the mark of the Covenant of his flesh and he was of the seed of Abraham
   and the wing of God in the cloudy pillar covered him! He ate the manna
   and drank of the rock. But as for the poor heathen--for them there was
   no appointed way of access--they were cast out and left to perish in
   their sins! The old Covenant did not, so far as its outward
   manifestation was concerned, have a word to say to US!

   Far off, then, with the Gentiles is your place and my place. We are by
   nature out of covenant and aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.
   There you are right away in the dark heathen world. And what did God's
   Grace do for you? Why, it brought you, first of all, into connection
   with God's people and under the sound of the Gospel's silver trumpet!
   You became like the poor leper, but still you were near to Israel,
   hearing the Gospel and learning the way of salvation. Thank God for
   bringing you so near as that, for there is no small privilege in
   hearing the Truth of God. But Divine Grace did not stop there. It
   purged and cleansed you, and you were admitted into fellowship with the
   Church.

   You became numbered with the seed of Israel! You pitched your tent near
   the tabernacle and partook of its abundant blessings! But Grace did not
   stop there. It made you, next, a priest unto God, a consecrated servant
   of the Lord of Hosts and you have been kept by Grace in the place of
   holy service! You are still the Lord's anointed priest and your
   sacrifices

   are well-pleasing in His sight. But here is the wonder of wonders--when
   the eternal love of God had brought you so near, so gloriously near, it
   did not stop there! It did not content itself with making you a priest,
   but it said you shall stand "in Christ Jesus!" And, Beloved, you know
   that this means that we are made as near Christ Himself, who, as the
   great High Priest, with blood in His hand, goes right into the veil,
   right up to the Mercy Seat and talks with God!

   A third illustration of our nearness to God will be found around the
   peaks of the mount of God, even Sinai, where the various degrees of
   access to God are set forth with singular beauty and preciseness of
   detail. The 19th chapter of the book of Exodus tells us that the Lord
   revealed Himself on the top of Sinai with flaming fire and the smoke
   thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace. Jehovah drew near unto His
   people Israel, coming down in the sight of all the people upon Mount
   Sinai, while the tribes stood at the foot of the mountain.

   Now remember that our natural position was much more remote than Israel
   at the foot of the mountain, for we were a Gentile nation to whom God
   did not appear in His Glory and with whom He spoke not as with Israel.
   We were living in darkness and in the valley of the shadow of
   death--and Israel was privileged to come very near as compared with us.
   Therefore the Apostle, in the chapter from which the text is taken,
   speaks of the circumcised as near. I take Israel to be to us this
   morning the type of those who live under Gospel privileges and are
   allowed to hear the joyful sound of salvation bought with blood.

   There stand the tribes at the foot of the mountain. They can hear the
   sound of the trumpet waxing exceedingly loud and long and a distinct
   voice proclaiming the Law of God--they hear it and it affects their
   hearts and prostrates them with awe. Boundaries were set round about
   the mountain and an ordinance was given that if so much as a beast
   touched the mountain, it should be stoned or thrust through with a
   dart. Their distance was thus far more apparent than their comparative
   nearness. Do you see them standing there--the whole vast host--hearing,
   hearing distinctly and trembling as they hear--at last trembling so
   much that they say to Moses, "Speak you with us and we will hear. But
   let not God speak with us lest we die"?

   Their fear made them remove further still--what they saw and heard of
   God begot in them no love--it did not draw them to Him, but the
   reverse! They promised fairly to Moses that they would keep all God's
   Laws, that they would serve him with all their hearts. But alas, their
   goodness soon vanished! They had been outwardly purified and made
   ready, sanctified, as Moses says, to behold the Glory of the Lord. But
   alas, after a few short days they deliberately fell into idolatry,
   worshipping a golden calf--forgetting the solemnities of the Law and
   indifferent to the will of God who had displayed Himself to them. Very
   near they were, and yet far enough off to perish--for their carcasses
   fell in the wilderness and with many of them He was not well-pleased.

   Ah, my dear Hearers, there is much Grace in the fact that you are
   brought near enough, all of you, to be able to hear the Gospel plainly
   and earnestly delivered. At the base of Mount Zion you have stood
   trembling while we have warned you of the judgment to come and told you
   of the indignation of God against sin. You have been like Israel, ready
   to sink into the earth with fear and you have promised, some of you
   very fairly, that before long you would repent and believe the Gospel.
   The Gospel command has come to your conscience with such power that you
   have been compelled to promise obedience to it! But alas, what has been
   the result of your fear and your vow? You have gone farther back from
   God and have plunged anew into the world's idolatry--and are today
   worshipping yourselves, your pleasures, your sins, or your
   righteousness!

   And when the Lord comes, the nearness of opportunity which you have
   enjoyed will prove to have been to you a most fearful responsibility
   and nothing more. You come to the mount of God and hear His voice, but
   like Israel you go your way to rebel yet more and more! Sometimes,
   under earnest sermons, or by solemn Providences, or by the suggestions
   of the Holy Spirit, you have been almost persuaded to be Christians!
   But yet you are, to this hour, without Christ and without hope! You
   came up to the turning point, but you stopped there. We all hoped well
   of you. We could almost have clapped our hands in the certainty of our
   hope that you would be saved and yet you remained like Israel-- only
   near in the point of outward privilege--but not brought near by the
   blood so as to be saved.

   Child of God, be thankful for that first stage of nearness this
   morning, for even this is given us by blood! If there had been no
   paschal lamb, Israel had never stood at Sinai. And if there had been no
   blood shedding you had never heard the Gospel. But bless the Lord that
   you have advanced far, far beyond this into a nearness infinitely
   preferable! Turning to

   the 24th chapter of Exodus, you will observe that the Lord said unto
   Moses, "Come up unto the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu and 70
   of the elders of Israel; and worship afar off."

   The next stage of nearness to God is pictured by the chosen men
   selected from the people who were to climb halfway up the hill, nearer
   to the thick canopy of darkness which veiled the Presence of God. But
   still they are said to have worshipped afar off. Now, note that these
   70 could not come nearer than the people except by blood--turn to the
   5th verse, "And Moses sent young men of the children of Israel, which
   offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the
   Lord. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins; and half
   of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the Book of the
   Covenant and read in the audience of the people and Moses took the
   blood and sprinkled it on the people and said, Behold the blood of the
   Covenant which the Lord has made with you concerning all these words."

   The select band of representative men could not come into a degree of
   superior nearness without blood. It was a great honor to be called out
   from among the people to enjoy a nearer audience with the Almighty
   Lord. Surely those men, with their souls hushed under a deep sense of
   awe would, nevertheless, rejoice and say, "What are we and what is our
   father's house, that we are called upon to climb so near to God?" Those
   70 may be used to represent the visible Church of Jesus Christ. Church
   members are all, in a certain sense, made nearer to God than the mere
   common hearers of the Word and their position is one of eminent honor
   and privilege.

   In the case of the 70, it is said, "they saw the God of Israel"--10th
   verse--that is to say, they had a remarkably vivid impression upon
   their minds of His august Presence--"and there was under His feet, as
   it were, a paved work of sapphire stone." That is, they were permitted
   to see the justice, the holiness, the purity of God typified by a
   pavement of clear crystal. As the text continues--"as it were the body
   of Heaven in His clearness." They were doubtless overwhelmed with a
   sense of the awful majesty, holiness and purity of God. But they were
   encouraged by Divine mercy to be of good cheer, so that they saw God,
   "and did eat and drink."

   They had manifest communion with the Most High and yet they did not die
   under the blaze of Glory. "Upon the nobles of the children of Israel He
   laid not His hand." See here a fair type of the Glory which God gives
   to His visible Church! We are selected and taken out from among men to
   be a people near unto Him. We are made, as Church members, to have a
   clearer view than others of the holiness and Glory of God. We are
   permitted to eat and drink in His Presence, to sit down at His table
   and yet to live. We are favored in the Church with many gracious
   displays of the Lord's love and Grace such as the world sees not.

   But I want you to notice a Truth of God which strikes me as so solemnly
   full of warning. Among those who thus were privileged to enter into
   this nearness, we have the names of Nadab and Abihu--and what became of
   them? They were destroyed before the Lord for offering strange fire
   upon the altar! So that it is clear that there is an official nearness
   of God which does not secure men from wrath. In the Christian Church,
   there may be, no, it seems as if there always must be some who shall,
   without doubt, perish--and the fire of God shall devour them. I wish
   that those who join the Church without due consideration would solemnly
   recollect that it is not necessary for them to thrust themselves into
   such an awful position unless they know that they are the people of
   God. It were a pity for them to increase their own condemnation by such
   a willful act of presumption.

   Note well that passage concerning the unfaithful servant who said in
   his heart, "My lord delays his coming," and began to beat the men
   servants and maidens, and to eat and drink and to be drunken. For it is
   written, "The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looks not
   for him and at an hour when he is not aware and will cut him in sunder
   and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers." The sacrifices
   of the Covenant were cut in sunder and so the Covenant was ratified.

   Now, the man who mocks the Covenant by intruding himself into the
   fellowship to which he belongs not shall receive upon himself the curse
   which for others our Great Sacrifice has borne. There will be singular
   judgments for ungodly Church members. It were good for such men that
   they had never been born! Judgment is to begin at the House of God.
   "His fan is in His hand." And what will He do with it? "He will
   thoroughly purge His floor." When He sits as a refiner, whom will He
   purify? Mark the words of Malachi--"He will purify the sons of Levi."
   His fire, where is it? It is in Zion and His furnace in Jerusalem.
   There shall be no such condemnation as that which shall be measured out
   to those who, in official standing, possess peculiar nearness to God
   and yet, like Nadab and Abihu, have not the true spirit, are unfaithful
   in service, look not to the Savior in truth and so are cast away after
   all!

   Most worthy of your notice is another fact connected with the 70 and
   that is when Moses went up into the higher Glory, he bade Aaron and the
   70 stay where they were, but they failed to do it. He said unto the
   elders (in the 14th verse), "Tarry you here for us, until we come again
   unto you: and, behold, Aaron and Hur are with you: if any man has any
   matters to do, let him come unto them." Moses was then gone from them
   for 46 or 47 days at the least and their duty was to have remained
   where he had appointed their place. If the people needed Aaron, they
   were to send up to him--he need not cease to direct and judge the
   people, but they were to come to him--he was not to go down to them.

   Now, what did Aaron do? Why, he went down to the camp and fell into the
   black sin of making a molten image! "And when the people saw that Moses
   delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves
   together unto Aaron and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go
   before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the
   land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him." Aaron would never
   have made that golden calf if he had stayed upon the mountain where he
   was told to remain.

   What does this say to us? Is not the lesson plain? The visible Church
   is too prone to come down to the world and even those who are God's
   servants, when they are lifted up into a state of nearness to God,
   seldom abide there. They conform to this evil world--they descend from
   their true eminence, they mix with the people--and they, who have seen
   God in His Glory like unto a sapphire stone, are found pandering to the
   corruption of the world! To what a state of degradation may any of us
   come unless the Lord shall hold us up! We may go up very far and may
   see God and then come down and become the instruments of the sins of
   others, as Aaron did.

   If you read on, in the 24 th chapter, you will observe that the Lord
   called to Moses again and he went up the hill attended by one single
   person. "And Moses rose up and his minister, Joshua: and Moses went up
   into the mount of God." So these two men go alone and Joshua comes to
   what I may call the fringe of the black cloud of darkness which hung
   over the central peak of Sinai. There he stopped and there by God's
   Grace he was able, patiently, to remain the first six days with Moses
   and those other 40 days, while Moses was on the top alone. Joshua, by
   God's Grace, was enabled to maintain the true, real, abiding, faithful
   communion with God!

   And he seems to me to represent those virgin souls among God's elect
   ones who follow the Lamb where ever He goes. Those men, greatly
   beloved, who are delivered by abundant Grace from much of the
   instability of the majority of professors, so that they walk in the
   light as He is in the light. They abide in their Lord and His Word
   abides in them. These come not down to the people as Aaron and the
   elders did, but their conversation is in Heaven and their walk is with
   God. Such men fall not into the people's sin, but tarry in solitary
   nonconformity to a degenerate Church. Even these do not realize the
   fullness of the nearness which belongs to them in the Mediator, but
   they come very, very near to God.

   Now what are such men sure to be? What was Joshua? He was a warrior and
   of martial spirit. When Moses came down from the mount with Joshua,
   Joshua said to him, "There is a sound of war in the camp." As a warrior
   he would naturally be apprehensive of a foe. Moses descended alone till
   he met his servant, Joshua, waiting in his place. The two went down
   till they came to the place where the 70 ought to be, but they were all
   gone--all gone! And at the foot of the mountain, where they might have
   expected to find Israel on their knees in prayer, they saw a ribald
   crew indulging in vile orgies before a golden calf! Joshua's example
   seems to say to us, that if we are to keep up our fellowship with
   Christ, we must fight for it! If we would be men of God, we must be
   warriors for the Truth of God! What a blessing if we can get to such a
   point as this!

   But there is something beyond it and I desire to bring you to it by
   bidding you observe that Moses is the type of the Mediator--he went
   right up to the greatest nearness of access and there he communed with
   God--he interceded with God and he received from God's hand the
   revelation of God's Law! Now hear and wonder, "We who sometimes were
   far off are made near by the blood of Christ," and brought to stand as
   near as Moses stood, for we are in Jesus as near to God as possible. It
   was something to come as near as Israel. It was more to advance as near
   as the elders. It was higher, still, to be called as near as Joshua.

   But to be brought as near as Moses, through the precious blood, so that
   we dwell in God, rejoice in Him, intercede with Him, have power with
   Him and receive from Him the revelation of His Truth by the energy of
   His Holy Spirit--this is the crown of all! O that we may go down with a
   Glory upon our faces like that upon the face of Moses, to show the sons
   of men that we have been with Jesus in the Holy Place and are filled
   with all the fullness of God!

   Looking at these stages of nearness, does it not seem a tremendous
   distance from our place in far-off Tarshish and the isles thereof,
   among the heathen, into the camp of Israel, up the sides of the
   mountain with the elders, higher still with Joshua and beyond Joshua
   into the secret place of the majesty of the Most High, where the
   Mediator of that Covenant stood alone and where our Mediator stands
   forever with all those who are in Him?!

   III. Let US NOTE SOME OF THE DISPLAYS OF THE REALIZATIONS OF THIS
   NEARNESS TO GOD as granted to us by blood through our union with
   Christ. We perceive and see manifestly our nearness to God in the very
   first hour of our conversion. The father fell upon the prodigal's neck
   and kissed him--no greater nearness than that! The prodigal becomes an
   accepted child--is and must be very near his father's heart.

   And we, who sometimes were far off, are as near to God as a child to
   his parents. We have a renewed sense of this nearness in times of
   restoration after backsliding, when, pleading the precious blood, we
   say, "Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be
   whiter than snow." We come to God and feel that He is near unto them
   that are of a broken heart. We come near to God in prayer. Our nearness
   to God is peculiarly evinced at the Mercy Seat. The very term we use
   for prayer is, "Let us draw near unto God." But, Brothers and Sisters,
   we never get to God in prayer unless it is through pleading the
   precious blood!

   We see our nearness to God in the act of praise. Oftentimes in praising
   Him, we have taken the wings of seraphs and passed up into the Glory
   and magnified the Lord, but it has always been through Him who by His
   precious blood makes our praises acceptable to the Most High. We who
   have believed come very near to God in the act of Baptism, for we are
   baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
   Spirit. Wicked and base is he who has dared to touch that ordinance,
   unless he sincerely desired fellowship in the Lord's death. The
   nearness we get to God in Baptism by faith depends upon whether or not
   we see the blood there and behold Jesus as buried for us.

   Then in the Lord's Supper--what nearness is there! But it, too, all
   lies in the blood. We get no nearness through the wine, no nearness
   through the bread--the elements are nothing of themselves--it is only
   when we get to feel that our Lord's flesh is meat, indeed, and His
   blood drink, indeed, that we draw near to Him. And, Beloved, when we
   have done with means of Grace, with communings here, and meditations
   and prayers and praises, we shall get nearer to our God up yonder--in
   the place where they see His face and bear His name upon their
   foreheads.

   But why shall we then draw near to Him? It is written, "They have
   washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb:
   therefore are they before the Throne of God and serve Him day and night
   in His Temple."

   IV. I have thus hinted at various times when this nearness to God
   develops itself and is most seen. Let us close with a BRIEF
   EXHORTATION. Let us live in the power of the nearness which union with
   Christ and the blood has given us. It is a well-known rule that our
   minds are sure to be occupied with those things which are most near to
   us. We may excuse ourselves for being so worldly because the things of
   this world are so near us--but we must never venture to repeat that
   excuse again-- since we now know that we are made near to God and
   heavenly things by the blood.

   Let your conversation be in Heaven: "Where your treasure is, there let
   your heart be." Beloved, if we are, indeed, so near to God through the
   blood and through union with Christ, let us enjoy those things which
   this nearness was intended to bring! Those who live under the equator
   never lack for light or heat. There vegetation is luxuriant and every
   form of life is well developed. They who dwell far away in the frigid
   zone, where the sun only casts his slanting rays, may well be meager
   and short of stature and feel the pinch of poverty.

   We who dwell under the equator of the Lord's love must bring forth much
   fruit! Let us rejoice with joy unspeakable! Let our souls be like those
   torrid zones where all the birds have plumage rich and rare, where
   brilliant flowers abound, where everything is fall of vigor! If we are
   so near to God, it follows as a very natural exhortation that we should
   exercise much faith in Him. If I am, indeed, brought so near to God,
   why should I be afraid that He will leave me in poverty? If I were a
   stranger and He knew me not, He might cast me away. But if I am near to
   Him, as near as Christ is, He cannot be unkind, thoughtless, or
   ungenerous to me. Near to Him! Why, my name is on the palms of Jesus'
   hands! I live in Jesus' heart! And I live, if I am in Christ, under the
   very eyes of God! He will keep me as He keeps the apple of His eye.

   One other word. Let us maintain a behavior suitable to the high
   position which Divine Grace has given us. If we are a people near to
   God, let us walk in all integrity, uprightness, chastity, honesty,
   soberness--in one word, in all holiness. "Be you perfect, even as your
   Father which is in Heaven is perfect." If you have looked upon the
   pavement of sapphire, you must have seen your own sinfulness in
   contrast with its azure brightness. Pray the Lord to give you of His
   Spirit, that you may become like He who is thus so pure and glorious in
   all things!

   Let not the sons of God demean themselves! Let not princes of the blood
   imperial be found among the common herd. As you are to be the compeers
   of angels, no, as you are higher far than they, and one with
   Christ--and as the precious blood has been your ransom price--walk as
   becomes saints! The Lord help you to do so, that His name may be
   glorified. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Constancy And Inconstancy--a Contrast

   A sermon

   (No. 852)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, JANUARY 24, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord: His going forth
   is prepared as the morning; and He shall come unto us as the rain, as
   the latter and former rain unto the earth. O Ephraim, what shall I do
   unto you? O Judah, what shall I do unto you? For your goodness is as a
   morning cloud and as the early dew it goes away."- Hosea 6:3,4.

   THESE two verses very fitly describe in very similar imagery the
   opposite characters of the true and persevering Believer and the
   fictitious and the transient professor. There are many things in this
   world which are very much alike and yet are totally dissimilar. The
   king who, after stern conflict and arduous struggles, has at last
   obtained the empire, shines not with greater pomp than yonder actor
   mimicking majesty upon the stage in borrowed robes and tinsel crown.
   How like each other that monarch and the player, and yet how wide the
   difference! The one rules with real power, the other with but fancied
   sway--the king has fought for many a day to earn the scepter--the other
   in a few minutes in the green room has attained his monarchy and, we
   may add, in a few minutes more he will lose it, too!

   As in a glass, see here the true Christian and the base pretender to
   that royal name. Take into your hand this paste gem so skillfully
   manufactured, how exceedingly like a diamond! Yet this was made in
   almost the twinkling of an eye, while yonder sparkling gem of real
   adamant has taken years, even, to cut its facets on the wheel. Yet when
   that paste gem with other unconsidered trifles shall be resolved into
   the vile dust from where it sprang, that sparkling jewel shall shine
   with as clear a radiance of morning light within it as flashes from it
   now! Such is the true heir of Heaven and the hypocrite when seen by the
   eye of wisdom.

   Look but a year or two ago at two houses of business, how like each
   other! How large their transactions, how respectable their names. Yet
   the one all hollow, its capital long spent, its reputation all a
   bubble. The other solid and substantial, with ample means and large
   connections--this last has outlived the storm of commercial
   panic--while its rival has long been stranded and left a total wreck.
   Even thus men trade with Heaven and such are the differing results.

   We will inspect those two fine vessels upon the stocks and unless well
   educated in the art of shipbuilding, who shall give a preference to the
   one or the other? But see them out at sea, let old Boreas blow, let the
   Atlantic rollers advance in their fury and you shall see how the flimsy
   ill-built ship opens at every timber, her bolts loosen, her entire hull
   is disjointed and shivered, she is blown down and sinks to her doom!
   But the other vessel, built of sterner stuff, well bolted, with
   seasoned timbers all fitted, staunch and sound, braves the fury of the
   tempest and reaches her desired haven.

   After this sort does the sea of life try the sons of men and discern
   between the precious and the vile. As in the outer world things may be
   very like and yet have no likeness, so in the spiritual world there are
   persons so like Christians that even a seraph's judgment could not
   detect the imposter. There are characters so like to that which the
   renewed nature exhibits, that even if you lived with the man, you
   scarcely could tell him to be a counterfeit! And yet after a little
   time and trial the falsehood oozes through and the man is found out.

   If some of the remarks of this morning should help us to test and try
   ourselves and so, incidentally, lead some into comfort and others into
   anxiety, I shall be very grateful and so will you who shall receive the
   blessing! The first verse seems to me to describe the constancy of God
   to those who are really His people, and the second, the inconstancy of
   men in their dealings with their God.

   I. Let us commence with the third verse of our text and accept it as a
   description of THE CONSTANCY OF GOD TOWARDS THOSE WHO ARE HIS PEOPLE.
   It is our solemn conviction that the gifts and calling of God are
   without repentance--that wherever the Lord bestows spiritual life and
   salvation He never recalls the gift--that it is not His wish

   to play fast and loose with the sons of men, to give today and retract
   tomorrow. We enjoy the doctrine of final perseverance and cannot think
   how anyone can doubt it. Without doubt or fear we sing--

   "Whom once He loves He ne ver leaves,

   But loves them to the end."

   We are persuaded of the immutable love of God towards His children. But
   mark the connection of the text leads us to observe the fact, the
   constancy of God to His people is not occasioned by their constancy to
   Him. For Ephraim and Judah, of whom this text was written, were the
   most fickle and inconstant of people. They were unstable as water
   towards their God. He brings accusations such as these against
   them--"Israel slides back as a backsliding heifer." "Ephraim is
   oppressed and broken in judgment, because he willingly walked after the
   commandment"--that is, the evil commandment of heathen kings.

   All through the book of Hosea there are exhortations to repentance and
   returning from backsliding. If, then, God remained faithful towards
   such a people, it was not because they remained faithful to Him! The
   fact is, that wherever there is in any Christian a holy patience and a
   diligent perseverance, this is the work of God in his soul, and is
   worked in him by the faithful Grace and abiding Presence of God. It is
   not our faithfulness which holds God to His promise, but it is God's
   faithfulness which holds us near to Him. Ah, Lord, if Your love should
   hang on our poor love which is as a rusted nail driven into rotten
   wood, our salvation would soon fail! But when we hang upon Your
   faithfulness in Christ Jesus, how safe we are!

   Ah, if one single stone of the entire fabric of our salvation had to be
   quarried out of our carnal nature, it could never be found, for our
   whole nature is as a miry place, a bog in which nothing stable can be
   discovered. Beloved, thought we believe not, God abides faithful!
   Though we twist and turn aside a thousand times, yet He brings His
   wandering servants back and restores them to His ways, out of the
   infinite love and compassion of His heart. I know some prostitute this
   doctrine into an excuse for sin. Oh, mean and sensual hearts! They are
   base-born pretenders to a Divine Grace they never knew! If they found
   not this excuse they would make another, for they are generations apt
   in lies and well skilled in perverting the Truth of God to their own
   purposes! They turn the Grace of God into licentiousness and their
   damnation is just!

   But no converted man ever found an apology for sin in the immutability
   of Divine affection. No, but this is the greatest condemnation of our
   sin--that we transgress against a God who still loves us! That we dare
   to play the traitor to Him who never, for a moment, was inconstant in
   His love to us! If a husband were unstable in his marriage love, there
   were some excuse for the unfaithful wife--but the firmness of our Great
   Husband's love to our souls makes it the blackest treason and the most
   accursed unchastity if our hearts turn aside from our Best Beloved to
   follow after idols! The fountain does not depend on the stream, or the
   sun upon its beams, or the soil upon the flowers--effects depend on
   causes--not causes on effects! And so the attending love of God does
   not depend upon the constancy of His people.

   Note next, that the faithfulness of God to His people does not always
   show itself in the most pleasing ways. The first verse tells us that
   God had torn and struck His people and the last verse of the former
   chapter represents the Lord as saying, "I will go and return to My
   place." A father's love does not always reveal itself in kisses and
   gifts of sweets. Love often has to force itself to blows and
   stripes--and those black love tokens which blossom upon the rod of
   chastisement are as true proofs of a father's kindness as the soft
   blandishment and sweet endearments which at other times he lavishly
   scatters. Our God does not indulge His people with constant prosperity,
   lest they drown in the river of worldliness. His beloved are often
   plunged in troubles--"Many are the afflictions of the righteous," and
   their troubles are not only outward--the iron enters into their soul,
   also.

   We who have believed have our deep-sea sorrows and our downcastings
   when every wave and billow goes over us. We smart under dreadful
   desertions. Some of us have had to cry with the Master on the Cross,
   "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" We know why He has forsaken
   us--it is because we have forsaken Him! And therefore He has hidden the
   light of His Countenance from us until we could scarcely believe
   ourselves to be His children at all. We have turned to prayer and found
   words and even desires fail us when on our knees. We have searched the
   Scriptures with no consolatory result--every text of Scripture has
   looked black upon us! Every promise blockaded its ports against us! We
   have tried to raise a single thought heavenward, but have been so
   distracted under a sense of the Lord's wrath which lay heavy upon

   us, that we could not even aspire for a moment! We could only say, "Why
   are you cast down, O my Soul? Why are you disquieted within me?"

   Such suffering of soul will often be to the erring Christian the very
   best thing that could befall him. He has walked contrary to his God and
   if his God did not walk contrary to him he would be at peace in his
   sin. Remember, no condition can be more dangerous, not to say damnable,
   than for a man who is no longer agreed with his God to believe that all
   is well and go on softly and delicately in the way which tends to
   destruction. Brothers and Sisters, I have to thank God and I think you
   may join with me, for many a sharp pang which has gone through the
   soul, for many a sharp cut which has come from a stinging text of
   Scripture when that Word of God has searched us through and through and
   like a strong corrosive, or sharp acid, has burnt its way into our
   inmost soul, destroying and maiming in us much that we looked upon as
   precious and admirable!

   The faithfulness of God does not always wear silken robes and is not
   always arrayed in scarlet and fine linen, but it puts on steel armor
   and comes out to us, sword in hand, cutting and wounding and making us
   bleed. It is very faithfulness which thus afflicts us! In love and
   tenderness God often seems to deal harshly with His children. He hurls
   them upon the ground and crushes them till they lie like a bleeding,
   helpless mass of wounds and faintness--ready to perish--and overwhelmed
   with anguish. "Their thoughts," as George Herbert says, "are all a case
   of knives," piercing their souls and not a ray of comfort, nor a word
   of promise succors them! It is clear, then, that God does not always
   show His immutable love to His people in the way which they might
   select. His wine is not sent to us always in golden flagons, nor His
   apples of love in baskets of gold. Good comes in a chariot of fire and
   mercy rides on the pale horse.

   But, for all that, God reveals Himself comfortably to His saints in
   proof of His faithfulness in a timely and sure manner. Turn to the
   second verse and learn that we may be as if dead for two days, but no
   child of God can be dead eternally. We may lie buried in the sepulcher
   of our despair for two days and nights--nights cold and days black--but
   "the third day He will raise us up." We cannot raise ourselves up, but
   He will raise us up! God, who raises the dead, is our Savior. Glory be
   to His name, we may be as dead and lifeless and as far removed from
   right desires as the carcasses that rot beneath the sod, but He will
   raise us up and, "we shall live in His sight"!

   What would we do when God leaves us to be cast down and to feel our
   spiritual death and emptiness, if it were not for such a promise as
   this which certifies the soul sepulchered in sorrow the Lord will raise
   up? If your heart is right towards God and you are, indeed, trusting in
   none but Christ, it is no more possible for you to die of despair than
   for Christ Himself to return to the tomb! He must rise when the third
   morning comes, and so must you. Death cannot hold the immortal Son when
   once the hour of Resurrection dawns--and despair and darkness cannot
   hold the Believer in Jesus one moment longer in bondage when the decree
   of deliverance goes forth. The promise will yet come forth to meet you
   with tabouret and harp!

   The Holy Spirit will yet shed abroad in your heart the love of God like
   the oil of joy! You shall be crowned with loving kindnesses as with
   sweet flowers, and with consolations as with wines on the lees shall
   you be refreshed. Not all the devils in Hell shall be able to stop you
   of your glorying, or imprison your quickened energy! You who are
   passing through the valley of the shadow of death may look for the sun
   rising! Angels' wings are bringing consolations for you! O Mourner,
   mourning dies at morning! Still cling to Jesus in your extremity and
   believe that He is able to save to the uttermost and you shall live to
   sing of judgment and of mercy in the great congregation of the
   faithful!

   "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." You shall
   pass through the gate of tears into the sea of pearls! You shall cross
   by the bridge of sighs to the palace of content! The bittern and the
   owl shall fly away and the lark and the nightingale shall sing of
   bliss! You may groan and sigh like a Jeremy, but you shall yet dance
   and feast like a David! The tents of Kedar shall no more enclose you,
   but you shall dwell between the curtains of Solomon! "All in good time
   when wisdom ordains the hour." Mordecai, who sat in sackcloth at the
   gate, shall ride in triumph from the palace. And Job, penniless upon
   his dunghill, shall have twice as much as before!

   This fact is, in the text, illustrated by two metaphors. It is said
   that the child of God who follows on in the path of faith, despite the
   wounding and the striking which he may suffer, shall without doubt know
   the faithfulness of God whose, "going forth is prepared as the
   morning." Observe this figure, for it is very comforting and
   instructive. Note the preparation spoken of. The morning comes not
   unlooked for, like one in haste, with hair disheveled and garments in
   disarray. In the gloomiest watch of the night preparations are being
   made for the dawning of the day. The sun's flaming

   chariot is hastening with glowing axles along the celestial road to
   reach again that eastern clime from which he comes to us sowing the
   earth with orient pearls.

   As soon as the earth, by its continued revolutions, has taken Great
   Britain away from the light of the sun, it begins at once to hasten its
   return. Every moment of the night this portion of our planet is moving
   on towards the light. The world is spinning round in the silent hours
   of night so as to bring our little island as speedily as possible once
   more under the morning rays. On the black wings of night the dawning is
   hastening. Even thus, at the worst period of our sorrows, there is a
   preparation being made for a turn of the tide! Our winter is making
   ready for our summer! You tell me you do not see how this can be so,
   but even you might see it if you would consider, and, if you cannot see
   it, at any rate I pray you believe it, for surely it is so.

   God you clearly see in Nature is bringing on the morning by allowing
   the passage of the night--and within your heart He is preparing you for
   joy, brightness and comfort by your present sorrows. Is He not teaching
   you to value His Presence by making you know how bitter it is to be
   without it? Is He not humbling you that it may be safe to exalt you?
   Emptying you that there may be more room for His fullness? Is He not
   now sharpening your spiritual desires and quickening your heavenly
   appetites to make the feast of His love the more welcome? Is He not now
   purging you, but not with silver--refining you in the furnace of
   affliction, that you may be made a vessel unto honor--fit for the
   Master's use? Oh, yes, the morning is prepared for you! Faith's eye can
   detect the first streaks of the light upon the horizon. Hope is already
   come to you like a John the Baptist, to foretell the coming of the
   Lord! Sing, for the day breaks and the shadows flee away.

   But the text not only speaks of preparation--the figure evidently sets
   forth certainty. The Lord's goings forth of mercy are as sure as the
   return of day. No power known to us can put off tomorrow morning by so
   much as an hour. It is ordained that the sun shall rise at such a time
   and rise it will. The publication of an Act of Parliament by which the
   night should be prolonged would be an act of insanity. The gathering
   together of all the armies of the nations to hold back the sun, even
   for a single second, from his predestinated time of rising would be a
   monstrous freak of madness! Surely the sun, all blithely rising from
   his rest, would look upon the nations of the earth assembled to stay
   his course and scatter his laughing beams among them--darting his rays
   from his quiver as the swift-winged arrows of contempt!

   Truly thus it is with the Presence of God in the regenerate soul.
   Saints have their times to mourn and mourn they must. But in their time
   of dancing they shall dance, let who will howl at their sacred mirth.
   If April has its showers, May shall have its flowers. When God
   appoints, none can alter it. The joy which is sown for the righteous
   shall grow into waving sheaves--and blight nor withering wind shall
   prevent the golden ears. When God's time comes to turn mourning into
   joy, none shall say no to Him! Neither shall cold death freeze the
   genial current of our soul, nor Hell obscure with rising smoke the
   landscape of our hope! Nor sin, with serpent's trail, defile our Eden's
   joys! Nor trouble, with its rough wind, sweep through the bowers of our
   bliss! The King shall walk with us in the quiet garden of meditation
   and our joy shall be full!

   Rejoice in this, Believer! Your hope does not lie in what is in you.
   Your darkness is very dark, but the sun is bright--exceedingly
   bright--and God, at His own time shall bid the light come streaming
   into your soul! The figure brings before us not only the idea of
   preparation and certainty, but that of naturalness. Art and science
   could not have done so well what Nature achieves with Divine
   simplicity. There is no light like that of the sun! God does gloriously
   what we could not do with all our toils. Brethren, I have tried,
   oftentimes, when I have lost the light of my Lord's Countenance, to set
   myself right by earnest efforts, but I have never succeeded. I have
   tried to make myself earnest, to make myself believing, to make myself
   spiritually-minded, but it is wretched work! It is an attempt to pump
   sweet water out of a sour soil!

   But let the Lord Himself appear--and He will appear when we give up all
   our own attempts and cast ourselves wholly upon Him--then what we could
   not do in that we were weak through the flesh--is all accomplished at
   once, to the glory of our God and to the sweet solace of our soul!
   Observe that this metaphor of the morning sets forth the glorious
   efficiency of the Grace of God. The morning never fails to light up the
   land on which it smiles. The illumination is never half done--the light
   is bright, clear, effectual--no darkness visible, or mingled gloom and
   gleam! The sun, itself, wears an excess of brightness upon which no eye
   of mortal man may steadfastly gaze. And from that central orb, over
   hill and valley, rolls a flood of glory unrivalled in its splendor.

   Thus let the Lord but once come into our poor dark souls, how bright
   they become! Let Him but visit us and the barren woman does keep house
   and becomes a joyous mother of children! We who were farthest off from
   God and thought ourselves to be withered branches and dead plants
   yielding not so much as a bud for the Master's Glory, even we begin to
   sprout and bring forth fruit! Yes, and fruit unto perfection, like
   Aaron's famous rod of old. We are made to wonder, as we see God's
   handiwork in such poor creatures as we are. Let no Christian despair!
   Let no child of God, in his long wintry nights, begin to mistrust his
   God! His coming forth is as the morning and it shall be such a coming!
   Oh, such a coming that your soul, now so empty, shall not merely be
   filled, but shall overflow! The Lord will not give a mere sip to you
   who are thirsty, but He has said it, "I will pour water upon him that
   is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground." All, and more than all
   your heart can desire, shall be furnished you at the coming of your
   Master!

   The second figure is equally beautiful, "He shall come unto us as the
   rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth." There were two
   great rains in Palestine. One rain fell at the time when the seed was
   cast into the ground. Almost as soon as the farmer who watched the
   seasons had turned over the soil and dropped in his golden grain, there
   fell heavy showers which lasted for some time. Usually rain did not
   fall again for months, but it returned again when the ear was well
   formed and needed filling up.

   The farmer was always thankful for the rain. It plumped out the seed
   and when the return of fair weather ripened it, the harvest was
   abundant. Now the Lord's Presence is to all His people as the two rains
   to the seed. What a shower of Grace He gives us when first the seed is
   sown in our hearts!--

   "What peaceful hours we then enjoyed, How sweet their memory still!"

   Well do we recollect the love of our espousals, the time of peace and
   of drawing near to God. Those first early years of our religion were
   very, very happy. We grew as the lily and we cast forth our roots like
   the cedars of Lebanon. All went well with us. But with many a Christian
   the lament is put up--

   "They have left an aching void,

   The world can never fill."

   Beloved, you should be looking out for the next rain. You have had one,
   you shall have another. God will give you a shower of blessings--it may
   be today. You are very barren. Well, it is to the barren and to the dry
   that God delights to give His mercy! If the Grace of God only came to
   those who deserved it, it would not be Grace at all! If it only visited
   those who could claim it, it would be a matter of debt and not a free
   gift! But since it is the wish of God to give His Grace to the most
   unworthy, why should He not give it to you and to me? Since He gives
   the riches of His love to those who need them most, then, my Heart, put
   up your claim, for none need it more than you do! If you can but look
   right out of yourself to your God and trust in Him, then be assured as
   the rain falls upon the thirsty pastures of the wilderness and fills
   the pools and makes the little hills rejoice on every side, so your God
   who visited you before will deal graciously with you again and turn
   your barrenness into verdure and all your drought into plenty! Lord,
   let it be so and we will bless Your name!

   This is what our heavenly Father aims at to get praise from the lips of
   His children. Let us offer prayer in our inmost heart, today, that our
   Lord Jesus, the Beloved of our souls, may come down like rain upon the
   mown grass and that the result in us may bring to God a revenue of
   Glory from refreshed hearts. Beloved, the drift of all this is just
   this--earnest Christians, in toiling towards Heaven, often grow faint
   and in year after year of the pursuit of righteousness, human nature
   becomes weary of the daily watching unto prayer. But the Lord is
   faithful and He will strengthen His saints for the pilgrimage, lest
   they faint or turn aside. The Lord will renew the strength of those who
   wait on Him, so that they shall hold on their way.

   Poor traveler to Mount Zion, the devil tells you that you will soon
   turn back unto perdition, but be of good courage, mighty is He that is
   in you! His Grace is sufficient for you! The Divine life within you
   will not stop its sacred impulse for the holy and the heavenly till it
   has brought you up from the wilderness and lodged you within the palace
   gate of Jehovah!

   II. Now, with too short a time to deal rightly with it, let us take the
   second text. The second text speaks of THE INCONSTANCY OF MEN TO GOD.
   Though there are many illustrations of this sad fact, I shall only take
   one, namely, that which unconverted people so constantly furnish us
   with. Not many days ago I thought I saw the Alps. I have stood on the
   platform at Berne and viewed with growing wonder that magnificent range
   of the snow-clad Alps. and the other

   day within a few miles of this spot, in our own county of Surrey, I saw
   upon the horizon clouds which were the very facsimile of Switzerland's
   glorious mountains!

   To me there seemed no perceptible difference--the snowy masses of cloud
   were the exact counterpart of the Alps. Had I just risen from my sleep
   and not known where I was, I should have said, "I am at Berne, looking
   at the mountains which I saw years ago." Yet before some five minutes
   had passed, the fair vision had melted away and there were no peaks of
   granite there, but mere aggregations of vapor. How often have I seen
   Christians, as I have thought--and as all others have thought--and I
   have rejoiced and blessed God over what seemed converted men and women!
   But before long we have had clear proof that we have been grossly
   deceived.

   There was goodness in them--the text calls it "goodness"--but it was
   only such nominal goodness as nature boasts of and it vanished "like
   the morning cloud." Observe the contrasting metaphor--God's love is the
   morning. Man's fair promise is but the morning cloud. A mist is often
   seen in Palestine early in the morning and the farmer hopes that the
   drought will come to an end. But it mocks his hopes and there is no
   rain--the cloud is exhaled in the sun and the earth is as parched as
   ever.

   Early dew is also mentioned as a very fleeting thing. A child of the
   night, it is gone when the sun looks upon it. So is it with the
   religion of hundreds of people of whom we, in charity, judge hopefully,
   but concerning whom we are deceived. Many hear a sermon and are
   impressed, but their impression is soon gone. They remind one of the
   famous preacher who, while earnestly exciting the people by a
   description of the next world and the terrors of it, when he saw them
   all bursting into tears and using their handkerchiefs freely, stopped
   and said, "Dry your eyes, for I have something much more terrible to
   tell you than anything I have as yet spoken. It is this--you will, all
   of you, forget the impressions that are made today and go your way to
   live as you have done before."

   This is the worst point of all, that after bearing a true report to our
   fellow men concerning most weighty matters, the messengers of the Truth
   of God are forced to cry, "Who has believed our report and to whom is
   the arm of the Lord revealed?" Our hearers appear to believe, but
   having eyes they see not, and having ears they hear not so as to
   understand. Some cases are particularly painful to remember because
   their impressions continue--so continue that they reform their manners.
   They begin to pray. Spiritual life apparently visits them. They take a
   great delight in holy company. They are much in reading the Word.

   And yet all is gone and the men become as before. We have seen so much
   about certain people that we thought admirable, that we were ready to
   think if they were not converted we were not! And yet they have gone
   back, and the House of God sees them no more--or if the House sees
   their bodily presence, yet their heart is not in the worship. I fear we
   get a sad number of this sort into Church membership. Young people,
   impressed early when they have not known temptation, because they have
   not gone out from their parents' homes, too often disappoint us in
   later life. The seed springs up, but under the hot sun of temptation it
   withers away.

   Ah, and this is sad. According to the text it is mournful to the heart
   of God Himself that there should be goodness enough to be comparable to
   a cloud and to dew, and yet, like both cloud and dew the goodness
   should utterly pass away. Brothers and Sisters, you see the case before
   us--you see how like the hopefulness of some is to the reality that is
   in others--how near akin the morning cloud is to the morning and how
   like that early dew is to the heavenly shower! What is the reason why
   so many thus deceive themselves and us? Is not it, in most cases, the
   lack of a deep perception of sin? Though I rejoice in sudden
   conversions, I entertain grave suspicions of those suddenly happy
   people who seem never to have sorrowed over their sin.

   I am afraid that those who come by their religion so very lightly often
   lose it quite as lightly. Saul of Tarsus was converted on a sudden, but
   no man ever went through a greater horror of darkness than he did
   before Ananias came to him with the words of comfort. I like deep
   plowing-- skimming topsoil is poor work! The tearing of the soil under
   surface is greatly needed. After all, the most lasting Christians
   appear to be those who have seen their inward disease to be very deeply
   seated and loathsome--and after awhile have been led to see the Glory
   of the healing hand of the Lord Jesus as He stretches it out in the
   Gospel. I am afraid that in much modern religion there is a lack of
   depth on all points--they neither deeply tremble nor greatly rejoice!
   They neither much despair nor much believe.

   Oh, beware of pious veneering! Beware of the religion which consists in
   putting on a thin slice of godliness over a mass of carnality! We must
   have thorough work within! The Grace which reaches the core and affects
   the innermost spirit

   is the only Grace worth having! To put all in one word, a lack of the
   Holy Spirit is the great cause of religious instability. Beware of
   mistaking excitement for the Holy Spirit--or your own resolutions for
   the deep workings of the Spirit of God in the soul! All that ever
   Nature paints God will burn off with hot irons. All that Nature ever
   spins God will unravel and cast away with the rags.

   You must be born from above! You must have a new Nature worked in you
   by the finger of God Himself! Of all His saints it is written, "You are
   His workmanship, created anew in Christ Jesus." Oh, but everywhere, I
   fear, there is a lack of the Holy Spirit! There is much getting up of a
   tawdry morality, barely skin deep, much crying, "Peace, peace," where
   there is no peace and very little deep heart-searching anxiety to be
   thoroughly purged from sin. Well-known and well-remembered Truths of
   God are believed without an accompanying impression of their weight!
   Hopes are flimsily formed and confidences ill-founded--and it is this
   which makes deceivers so plentiful, and fair shows after the flesh so
   common.

   According to the text--and I ask your solemn attention to this
   remark--such persons are the objects of Mercy's anxiety. Observe it--it
   looks as if Justice and Mercy held a dialogue. "O Ephraim, what shall I
   do unto you?" "Sweep him away," says Justice, "the man vows and
   promises, only to play the liar's part! He says he will repent, but
   turns again like a dog to his vomit! He declares he will be saved, but
   he goes back like a sow that is washed to her wallowing in the mire."
   "Spare him," says Mercy, "spare him, O God! You can yet give him a new
   heart instead of that fickle heart and a right spirit in lieu of that
   wayward spirit! He is a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke, but, Lord,
   You have broken others into Your service, break him in also!"

   So Justice urges one thing and Mercy pleads another and therefore the
   conflict, "O Ephraim, what shall I do unto you? O Judah, what shall I
   do unto you?" The Lord has two courses open to Him. The first is He can
   leave you altogether. The man has heard the Gospel. He has had it
   preached to him affectionately and he has felt its power in a measure.
   He shall never hear it again--and if he goes down to Hell, he cannot
   say he had not an opportunity. He will not be able, amidst the fires of
   the pit, to say, "I never heard the Gospel and I never was impressed
   with it." "Mercy," says Justice, "you have had your turn, the man has
   had enough of you and he is not bettered by you. Come, put up your
   silver scepter, Mercy, I have a more potent weapon. Let me try my
   sharp, two-edged sword. They who will not bend shall break and he who
   will not stoop shall be dashed to the ground as with a rod of iron."

   Our compassionate God has, however, another alternative and that is to
   try something more with you deceptive ones. I could wish that some of
   you unconverted people who have been hearing me a long while would not
   come to this Tabernacle again. I speak out of kindness. I wish, if God
   would be pleased to convert you by somebody else, that you might be led
   at once to attend that ministry which He will bless to your souls.
   Perhaps I am not adapted to your case. Perhaps the Lord will never make
   use of me as a net to take such a fish as you are. Well, try somebody
   else, but, oh, do not grow so used to my voice as to go to sleep under
   it and so sleep yourselves into Hell! May the Lord resolve, "I will
   send another preacher."

   If my Master takes me away to my grave and sends another who will be
   blessed to you, I am well content. Perhaps, however, the Lord will try
   what Providence can do with you. You have lost your wife, what if He
   takes away the child? Or, good mother, you have buried a dear child and
   your darling's going to Heaven has not tempted you to the skies. What
   if the Lord takes away your husband? If He loves you, He will not give
   you up nor spare your feelings, but will bring you to repentance by any
   means, however severe! If the Lord does not give you up and you do not
   soon repent, it will come to this--He will strip every earthly comfort
   away from you! He will hedge up your way with thorns and so will compel
   you to come to Himself!

   It may be that some of you will never be saved while you are well-to-do
   in this world. Well, then, the very mercy of God will make you poor
   and, perhaps, when your belly is hungry like the prodigal's, you will
   cry, "I will arise and go to my Father." This I am sure of--if the Lord
   takes the alternative of not giving you up, but of saving you--if He
   tries gentle means and they succeed not, He will turn to rougher
   methods. You shall be beaten with many stripes! The fire shall burn up
   your comforts. The moth and rust shall consume your treasures. The
   light of your eyes shall be taken from you at a stroke. Your children
   shall die before your eyes, or the partner of your bosom shall be laid
   in the grave--for by any means God will bring you in. He has determined
   to save you and He will do it, let it cost what it may!

   He spared not His own Son to save you and He will not spare yours. Nor
   will He spare your body. You shall be worn with disease and wasted with
   sickness. You shall have misery of soul and despair of heart--but He
   will save you if He so

   resolves upon it. And for this you shall one day bless His name and
   kiss the rod by which He chastened you to Himself! He seems to me to
   say this morning to those of you who are unsaved after many
   impressions, "What more can I do than I have done?" And the answer must
   be, "Lord, there is only one thing more. Send Your Divine Spirit this
   morning on dove-like wings and change my poor heart. Lord, You have
   tried the means, now come to me Yourself. O my God, I am undone, I am
   lost! I am hopeless! But there is one hope left! Your arm can save!
   Your eyes can pity and Your voice can comfort."

   O God, this morning, in Your plenteous mercy, deal graciously with such
   souls and let Your mercy be extolled in the very highest as You lift up
   the beggar from the dunghill to set him among princes! I feel the hope
   in my own soul that to some of the most despairing and sad the true
   light has already come and from now on they shall rejoice! God make it
   so, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

   PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Hosea 6 and Luke 8:4-13.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Sermon for the Most Miserable of Men

   A sermon

   (No. 853)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, JANUARY 31, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "My soul refused to be comforted."- Psalm 77:2.

   In this refusal to be comforted, David is not to be imitated. His
   experience in this instance is recorded rather as a warning than as an
   example. Here is no justification for those professors who, when they
   suffer bereavements or temporal losses, repine bitterly and reject
   every consoling thought. We have known persons who made mourning for
   departed ones the main business of life years after the beloved
   relative had entered into rest. Like the heathen, they worship the
   spirits of the dead. The sufferer has a right to mourn, a right which
   Jesus Christ has sealed, for, "Jesus wept," but that right is abused
   into a wrong when protracted sorrow poisons the springs of the heart
   and unfits the weeper for the duties of daily

   life.

   There is a "hitherto" beyond which the floods of grief may not lawfully
   advance. "What?" said the Quaker, to one who wore the weeds of mourning
   many years after the death of her child and declared that she had
   suffered a blow from which she should never rally--"What? Friend, have
   you not forgiven God yet?" Much of unholy rebellion against the Most
   High will be found as a sediment at the bottom of most tear bottles.
   Sullen repining and protracted lamentation indicate the existence of
   idolatry in the heart. Surely the beloved object must have been
   enshrined in that throne of the heart which is the Lord's alone, or
   else the taking away of the beloved object, though it caused poignant
   sorrow, would not have excited such an unsubmissive spirit!

   Should it not be the endeavor of God's children to avoid excessive and
   continued grief because it verges so closely upon the two deadly sins
   of rebellion and idolatry? Sorrow deserves sympathy, but when it
   springs from a lack of resignation, it merits censure! When Believers
   refuse to be comforted, they act as mere worldlings might do with some
   excuse, for when unbelievers lose earthly comforts they lose their all.
   But for the Christian to pine and sigh in inconsolable anguish over the
   loss of a creature good is to belie his profession and degrade his
   name. He believes of his trial that the Lord has done it--he calls God
   his Father--he knows that all things work together for good. He is
   persuaded that a far more exceedingly and eternal weight of Glory is
   being worked out for him. How, then, can he sit down in sullen silence
   and say, "I will not be comforted!"?

   Surely, then, the Truths of God which he professes to believe have
   never entered into his soul! He must be a mere speculative theorizer
   and not a sincere Believer! Beloved, shame on us, if with such a faith
   as ours we do not play the man! If the furnace is hot, let our faith be
   strong. If the burden is heavy, let our patience be enduring. Let us
   practically admit that He who lends has a right to reclaim His own--and
   as we blessed the giving, so let us bless the taking hand. At all times
   let us praise the Lord our God! Though He slay us, let us trust Him.
   Much more, let us bless Him when He only uses the rod.

   Our text, however, might very fittingly describe individuals who,
   although free from outward trial or bereavement, are subject to deep
   depression of spirits. There are times with the brightest-eyed
   Christians when they can hardly brush the tears away. Strong faith and
   joyous hope at times subside into a fearfulness which is scarcely able
   to keep the spark of hope and faith alive in the soul. Yes, I think the
   more rejoicing a man is at one time, the more sorrowful he will be at
   others. They who mount highest descend lowest. There are cold-blooded
   individuals who neither rejoice with joy unspeakable nor groan with
   anguish unutterable.

   But others of a more excitable temperament, capable of lofty delights,
   are also liable to horrible sinking of heart. Because they have gazed
   in ecstasy within the gates of pearl, they are too apt to make a
   descent to the land of death shade and to stand shivering on the brink
   of Hell. I know this, alas, too well. In the times of our gloom, when
   the soul is well

   near overwhelmed, it is our duty to grasp the promise and to rejoice in
   the Lord. But it is not easy to do. The duty is indisputable, but the
   fulfillment of it impossible.

   In vain is it for us, at such seasons the star of promise and the
   candle of experience--the darkness which may be felt seems to smother
   all cheering lights. Barnabas, the son of consolation, would be hard
   put to it to cheer the victims of depression when their fits are on
   them. The oil ofjoy is poured out in vain for those heads upon which
   the dust and ashes of melancholy are heaped up. Brothers and Sisters,
   at such times the unhappy should wisely consider whether their
   disturbed minds ought not to have rest from labor. In these days, when
   everybody travels by express and works like a steam-engine, the mental
   wear and tear are terrible and the advice of the Great Master to the
   disciples to go into the desert and rest awhile is full of wisdom and
   ought to have our earnest attention.

   Rest is the best, if not the only medicine for men occupied in mental
   pursuits and subject to frequent depression of spirit. Get away, you
   sons of sadness, from your ordinary avocations for a little season if
   you possibly can, and enjoy quiet and repose--above all, escape from
   your cares by casting them upon God. If you bear them yourself, they
   will distract you so that your soul will refuse to be comforted. But if
   you will leave them to God and endeavor to serve Him without
   distraction, you will overcome the drooping tendency of your spirits
   and you will yet compass the altar of God with songs of gladness.

   Let none of us give way to an irritable, complaining, mournful
   temperament. It is the giving way which is the master mischief, for it
   is only as we resist this devil that it will flee from us. Let not your
   heart be troubled. If the troubles outside the soul toss your vessel
   and drive her to and fro, yet, at least let us strain every nerve to
   keep the seas outside the boat lest she sink altogether. Cry with
   David, "Why are you cast down, O my Soul? And why are you disquieted
   within me?" Never mourn unreasonably. Question yourself about the
   causes of your tears. Reason about the matter till you come to the same
   conclusion as the Psalmist, "Hope in God: for I shall yet praise Him."

   Depend upon it, if you can believe in God, you have, even in your
   soul's midnight, 10 times more cause to rejoice than to sorrow. If you
   can humbly lie at Jesus' feet, there are more flowers than thorns ready
   to spring up in your pathway. Joys lie in ambush for you. You shall be
   compassed about with songs of deliverance. Therefore, companions in
   tribulation, give not way to hopeless sorrow! Write no bitter things
   against yourselves! Salute with thankfulness the angel of hope and say
   no more, "My soul refused to be comforted."

   My main bent, this morning, to which I have set my whole soul, is to
   deal with these mourners who are seeking Christ but up till now have
   sought Him in vain. Convicted of sin, awakened and alarmed--these
   unhappy ones tarry long outside the gate of Mercy, shivering in the
   cold, pining to enter into the banquet which invites them--but
   declining to pass through the gate which stands wide open for them.
   Sullenly--no, I will not use so harsh a word--tremblingly they refuse
   to enter within Mercy's open door, although infinite Love itself cries
   to them, "Come and welcome! Enter and be blessed."

   I. Concerning so deplorable a state of heart, alas, still so common, we
   will remark in the first place that IT IS VERY AMAZING. It is a most
   surprising thing that there should be in this world persons who have
   the richest consolation near to hand and persistently refuse to partake
   of it. It seems so unnatural that if we had not been convinced by
   abundant observation, we should deem it impossible that any miserable
   soul should refuse to be comforted. Does the ox refuse its fodder? Will
   the lion turn from his meat? Or the eagle loathe its nest?

   The refusal of consolation is the more singular because the most
   admirable comfort is within reach. Sin can be forgiven. Sin has been
   forgiven! Christ has made an atonement for it. God is graciously
   willing to accept any sinner that comes to Him confessing his
   transgressions and trusting in the blood of the Lord Jesus. God waits
   to be gracious! He is not hard nor harsh. He is full of mercy. He
   delights to pardon the penitent and is never more revealed in the Glory
   of His Godhead than when He is accepting the unworthy through the
   righteousness of Jesus Christ! There is so much comfort in the Word of
   God that it were as easy to measure the heavens above, or set the
   limits of space, as to measure the Divine Grace revealed in it.

   You may seek, if you will, to comprehend all the sweetness of Divine
   love, but you cannot, for it passes knowledge. Like the vast expanse of
   the ocean is the abounding goodness of God made manifest in Jesus
   Christ! Amazing is it, then, that men refuse to receive what is so
   lavishly provided! It is said that some years ago, a vessel sailing on
   the northern coast of the South American continent was observed to make
   signals of distress. When hailed by another vessel, they

   reported themselves as, "Dying for water!" "Dip it up then," was the
   response, "you are in the mouth of the Amazon river." There was fresh
   water all around them--they had nothing to do but to dip it up--and yet
   they were dying of thirst because they thought themselves to be
   surrounded by the salt sea!

   How often are men ignorant of their mercies! How sad that they should
   perish for lack of knowledge! But suppose after the sailors had
   received the joyful information, they had still refused to draw up the
   water which was in boundless plenty all around them? Would it not have
   been a marvel? Would you not at once conclude that madness had taken
   hold upon the captain and his crew? Yet, so great, dear Friends, is the
   madness of many who hear the Gospel and know that there is mercy
   provided for sinners, that unless the Holy Spirit interferes they will
   perish! Not through ignorance, but because, for some reason or other,
   like the Jews of old, they judge themselves, "unworthy of everlasting
   life," and exclude themselves from the Gospel, refusing to be
   comforted!

   This is the more remarkable because the comfort provided is so safe.
   Were there suspicions that the comforts of the Gospel would prove
   delusive--that they would only foster presumption and so destroy the
   soul--men would be wise to start back as from a cup of poison! But many
   have satisfied themselves at this life-giving stream! Not one has been
   injured, but all who have partaken have been eternally blessed. Why,
   then, does the thirsty soul hesitate, while the river, clear as
   crystal, flows at his feet?

   Moreover, the comfort of the Gospel is most suitable. It is fully
   adapted to the sinful, the weak and the broken-hearted. It is adapted
   to those who are crushed by their need of mercy and adapted equally as
   much to those who are the least sensible of their need of it. The
   Gospel bears a balm in its hand suited to the sinner in his worst
   estate--when he has no good thing about him and nothing within which
   can, by possibility, be a ground of hope. Does not the Gospel declare
   that Christ died for the ungodly? Is it not a faithful saying and
   worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to
   save sinners, of whom, said the Apostle, "I am chief"? Is not the
   Gospel intended even for those who are dead in

   sin?

   Don't we read such words as these, "God, who is rich in mercy, for His
   great love wherewith He loved us, even when we where dead in sins, has
   quickened us together in Christ (by grace are you saved)"? Are not the
   invitations of the Gospel, so far as we can judge, just the kindest,
   most tender and most attractive that could be penned and addressed at
   the worst emergency in which a sinner can be placed? "Ho, everyone that
   thirsts, come to the waters and he that has no money; come, buy and
   eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price."
   "Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts:
   and let him return unto the Lord and He will have mercy upon him; and
   to our God, for He will abundantly pardon."

   No qualifying adjectives are used to set forth a degree of goodness in
   the person invited--but the wicked are bid to come--and the unrighteous
   are commanded to turn to God! The invitation deals with base, naked,
   unimproved sinnership! Grace seeks for misery, unworthiness, guilt,
   helplessness and nothing else. Not because we are good, but because the
   Lord is gracious, we are bid to believe in the infinite mercy of God in
   Christ Jesus and so to receive comfort! Strange that where consolation
   is so plentiful--where comfort is so safe, where the heart-cheer is so
   suitable--souls should be found by the thousands who refuse to be
   comforted! This fact grows the more remarkable because these persons
   greatly need comfort and, from what they say, and I trust also from
   what they feel, you might infer that comfort was the very thing they
   would clutch at as a drowning man at a rope!

   Why, they scarcely sleep at night by reason of their fears. By day
   their faces betray the sorrow, which, like a tumultuous sea, rages
   within. They can scarcely speak a cheerful sentence. They make their
   household miserable. The infection of their sorrow is caught by others.
   You would think that the very moment the word, "hope," was whispered in
   their ears they would leap towards it at once! But it is not so. You
   may put the Gospel into what shape you please and yet these poor souls
   who need your pity, though, I fear, they must also have your blame,
   refuse to be comforted. Though the food is placed before them, their
   soul abhors all manner of meat and they draw near unto the gates of
   death. Yes, you may even put the heavenly cordial into their very
   mouths, but they will not receive the spiritual nutriment! They pine in
   hunger rather than partake in what Divine love provides.

   Need I enlarge on this strange infatuation? It is a monstrosity
   unparalleled in Nature! When the dove was weary, she remembered the ark
   and flew into Noah's hand at once. These are weary and they know the
   ark, but they will not fly to it. When an Israelite had slain,
   inadvertently, his fellow, he knew the City of Refuge. He feared the
   avenger of blood and

   he fled along the road to the place of safety. But these know the
   Refuge and every Sunday we set up the signposts along the road, but yet
   they come not to find salvation!

   The destitute waifs and strays of the streets of London find out where
   the night refuges are and ask for shelter! They cluster round our
   workhouse doors like sparrows under the eaves of a building on a rainy
   day! They piteously crave for lodging and a crust of bread! Yet crowds
   of poor benighted spirits, when the House of Mercy is lighted up and
   the invitation is plainly written in bold letters--"Whoever will, let
   him turn in here"--will not come! They prove the truth of Watts'
   verse--

   "Thousands make a wretched choice And rather starve than come." 'Tis
   strange, 'tis passing strange, 'tis amazing!!

   II. Secondly, this strange madness has a method in it and MAY BE
   VARIOUSLY ACCOUNTED FOR. In many, their refusal to be comforted arises
   from bodily and mental disease. It is in vain to ply with Scriptural
   arguments those who are in more urgent need of healing medicine, or
   generous diet, or a change of air. There is so close a connection
   between the sphere of the physician and the Divine, that they do well
   to hunt in couples when chasing the delusions of morbid humanity. And I
   am persuaded there are not a few cases in which the minister's presence
   is of small account until the physician shall, first of all, wisely
   have discharged his part.

   I shall not, this morning, therefore, further allude to characters out
   of my line of practice, but I shall speak of those whose refusal to
   accept comfort arises from moral rather than physical disease. In some
   the monstrous refusal is suggested by a proud dislike to the plan of
   salvation. They would be comforted, yes, that they would, but may they
   not do something to earn eternal life? May they not, at least,
   contribute a feeling or emotion? May they not prepare themselves for
   Christ? Must salvation be all gratis? Must they be received into the
   House of Mercy as paupers? Must they come with no other cry but, "God
   be merciful to me a sinner"?

   Must it come to this--to be stripped, to have every rag of one's own
   righteousness torn away--as well righteousness of feeling as
   righteousness of doing? Must the whole head be confessedly sick and the
   whole heart faint and the man lie before Jesus as utterly undone and
   ruined, to take everything from the hand of the crucified Savior? Ah,
   then, says flesh and blood, I will not have it! The crest is not easy
   to cleave in two--the banner of self is upheld by a giant
   standard-bearer--it floats on high long after the battle has been lost.
   But what folly! Indeed, for the sake of indulging a foolish dignity we
   will not be comforted!

   O Sir, down with you and your dignity! I beseech you, bow down now
   before the feet of Jesus and kiss the feet which were nailed for your
   sins. Roll yourself and your glory in the dust. What are you but an
   unclean thing? And what are your righteousnesses but filthy rags? O
   take Christ to be your All-in-All, and you shall have comfort this very
   morning! Let not pride prompt a fresh refusal, but be wise and submit
   to Sovereign Grace. In others it is not pride, but an unholy resolve to
   retain some favorite sin. In most cases, when the Christian minister
   tries to heal a wound that has long been bleeding, he probes and probes
   again with his lancet, wondering why the wound will not heal. It seems
   to him that all the circumstances point to a successful healing of the
   wound. He cannot imagine why it still continues to bleed, but at last
   he finds out the secret. "Ah, here I have it. Here is an extraneous
   substance which continually frets and aggravates the wound. It cannot
   heal while this grit of sin lies within it."

   In some cases we have found out that the sorrowing person indulged
   still in a secret vice, or kept the society of the ungodly, or was
   undutiful to parents, or unforgiving, or slothful, or practiced that
   hideous sin, secret drunkenness. In any such case, if the man resolves,
   "I will not give up this sin," do you wonder if he is not comforted?
   Would not it be an awful thing if he were? When a man carries a
   corroding substance within his soul, if his wound is filmed over, an
   internal disease will come of it and prove deadly. I pray God none of
   you may ever get comfort till you get rid of every known sin and are
   able to say--

   "The dearest idol I have known, Whatever that idol is, Help me to tear
   it from its throne, And worship only You."

   There must be a plucking out of the right eye and a cutting off of the
   right arm if we are to inherit eternal life! Foolish, indeed, is he,
   who, for the sake of some paltry sin--a sin which he himself despises,
   a sin which he would not

   dare to confess into the ears of another--continues to reject Christ.
   Might I take such a one by the hand and say, "My Brother, my Sister,
   give it up! Oh, for God's sake, hate the accursed thing and come now
   with me! Confess to Jesus, who will forgive all your foolishness and
   accept you this morning, so that no longer you shall refuse to be
   comforted."

   Some refuse to be comforted because of an obstinate determination only
   to be comforted in a way of their own selecting. They have read the
   life of a certain good man who was saved with a particular kind of
   experience. "Now," they say, "if I felt like that man, then I shall
   conclude I am saved." Many have hit upon the experience of Mr. Bunyan,
   in "Grace Abounding." They have said, "Now, I must be brought just as
   John Bunyan was, or else I will not believe." Another has said, "I must
   tread the path which John Newton trod--my feet must be placed in the
   very marks where his feet went down, or else I cannot believe in Jesus
   Christ."

   But, my dear Friend, what reason have you for expecting that God will
   yield to your self-will? And what justification have you for
   prescribing to the Great Physician the methods of His cure? Oh, if He
   will but bring me to Heaven, I will bless Him, though He conduct me by
   the gates of Hell! If I am but brought to see the King in His beauty,
   in the land which is very far off, it shall make no trouble to my heart
   by what method of experience He brings me there! Come, lay aside this
   foolish choosing of yours and say, "Lord, do but have mercy on me. Do
   but give me to trust Your dear Son and my whims and my fancies shall be
   given up."

   I fear, in a great many, there is another reason for this refusing to
   be comforted, namely, a dishonoring unbelief in the love and goodness
   and truthfulness of God. They do not believe God to be gracious! They
   think Him a tyrant, or if not quite that, yet one so stern that a
   sinner had need plead and beg full many a day before the stern heart of
   God will be touched. Oh, but you do not know my God! What is He? He is
   LOVE! I tell you He needs no persuading to have mercy any more than the
   sun needs to be persuaded to shine, or a fountain to pour out its
   streams! It is the Nature of God to be gracious! He is never so Godlike
   as when He is bestowing mercy.

   "Judgment is His strange work." It is His left-handed work. But mercy,
   the last manifested of His attributes, is His Benjamin, the child of
   His right hand. He delights to exercise it. Is it not so written, "He
   delights in mercy"? Alas, Alas, Alas, that God should be slandered by
   those to whom He speaks so lovingly! "As I live, says the Lord," here
   He takes an oath, and will you not believe Him? "As I live, says the
   Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the
   wicked should turn from his way and live." "Turn, turn! Why will you
   die, O house of Israel?"

   He even seems to turn beggar to His own creatures and to plead with
   them to come to Him. His heart yearns as He cries, "How shall I give
   you up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver you, Israel? How shall I make you
   as Admah? How shall I set you as Zeboim? My heart is turned within Me,
   My repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness
   of My anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God and not
   man." O do not, I pray you, be unbelieving any longer, but believe
   God's Word and Oath and accept the comfort which He freely offers to
   you this morning in the words of His Gospel!

   Some, however, have refused comfort so long that they have grown into
   the habit of despair. Ah, it is a dangerous habit and trembles on the
   brink of Hell! Every moment in which it is indulged a man grows
   accustomed to it. It is like the cold of the frigid zone which benumbs
   the traveler, after awhile, till he feels nothing and drops into
   slumber and from that into death. Some have despaired and despaired
   until they had reason for despair and until despair brought them into
   Hell. Despair has hardened some men's hearts till they have been ready
   to commit sins which hope would have rendered impossible to them.
   Beware of nursing despondency!

   Does it creep upon you today through unbelief? O shake it off if
   possible! Cry to the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to loose you from this
   snare of the fowler! For, depend upon it, doubting God is a net of
   Satan and blessed is he who escapes its toils. Believing in God
   strengthens the soul and brings us both holiness and happiness--but
   distrusting and suspecting and surmising and fearing hardens the
   heart--and renders us less likely ever to come to God! Beware of
   despair! And may you, if you have fallen into this evil habit, be
   snatched from it as the brand from the burning and delivered by the
   Lord, who looses His prisoner.

   III. Thirdly, this remarkable piece of folly ASSUMES VARIOUS FORMS. If
   I were to give a catalog of the symptoms of this disease which I have
   met with and have jotted down in my memory, I should need not an hour,
   but a month. For as each man has something peculiar to himself, so each
   form of this melancholy bears about it a measure of distinctness. I can
   scarcely put them under various heads and species--they are too many
   and too mixed. I think they say

   a sheep has so many diseases that you cannot count them. And I am sure
   men have a great many more mental maladies than can be counted, too.

   You might as well count the sands on the seashore as enumerate the
   soul's diseases. But certain forms are very common. For instance, one
   is a persistent misrepresentation of the Gospel, as though it claimed
   some hard thing of us. Persons have been sitting in these seats, now,
   for years, who have heard us say and who know the truth of it, from
   God's Word, that all that is asked of the sinner is that he should
   trust in the work which Jesus Christ has worked out--should trust
   Christ, in fact. We have in all manner of ways, as numerous and varied
   as our ingenuity could suggest, sought to show that there is nothing
   for the sinner to do! That he is to be nothing, but just get out of the
   way and let Christ and the Grace of God be everything!

   We have tried to show that to trust in Christ, which is the great
   saving act, is looking to Him, Resting on Him. Depending on Him. We
   have multiplied figures and metaphors to make this plain. And yet, as
   soon as ever we begin to talk to some of these who refuse to be
   comforted, they say, "But I am afraid, Sir, that I have never been
   sufficiently made to feel the evil of sin." Now, did we ever say that
   feeling of sin was the great saving Grace? Does not the Word of God put
   it over and over again that believing saves the soul, not feeling? Yet
   these people virtually deny the Gospel and set up another Gospel--a
   Gospel offeeling in the place of a Gospel of trusting!

   "Oh, but," they will then say, "I have had these desires so many times
   before and they have all gone and I cannot expect that I should be
   accepted now." This is another denial of the Gospel! They make it out
   that God will only accept those who have experienced good desires but
   never repressed them. They reduce the Gospel into this kind of thing--
   "You who never have repressed good desires, you may come." But the
   Gospel says, "Whoever will, let him take the water of life freely." I
   could not give you all the shapes and ways in which they will evade and
   mystify the Gospel, but assuredly they use as much ingenuity to make
   themselves unhappy, as the most ardent spirit that ever lived ever used
   to discover a country or to win a crown!

   Another shape of this malady is this--many continually and persistently
   underestimate the power of the precious blood of Jesus. Not, if you
   brought them to look, that they would dare affirm that Jesus could not
   save, or that His blood could not pardon sin, but, virtually, it comes
   to that. "Oh, I am such a sinner!" And what if you are? Did not Christ
   come to save sinners, even the very chief? What has the greatness of
   your sinnership to do with it? Is not Christ a greater Savior than you
   are a sinner? Towering high, the mountain of His mercy is far above the
   hills of your guiltiness! Yes, but you do not think so. Yes and herein
   you limit the efficacy of an Infinite Atonement and so dishonor the
   blood of Jesus Christ!

   There are some who will then say, "But I have sinned such-and-such a
   sin." What? And cannot the blood of Jesus wash that away? "All manner
   of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men." There is no sin which
   you can by any possibility have committed, which Jesus cannot pardon if
   you will come to Him and trust Him, for, "the blood of Jesus Christ,
   God's dear Son, cleanses us from all sin." Why, believe me, Sinner,
   though your sin is such that, of itself, it will damn you to all
   eternity, beyond all hope--though it is such, that could your tears
   forever flow, not a particle of it could ever be washed out--yet in a
   moment it shall vanish if you do but now trust in that bleeding Savior.

   There is nothing in your sin that can now obstruct the power of the
   bleeding Savior. God will at once forgive you. But I know that you will
   still slander my Lord Jesus and refuse His comfort. I pray Him,
   therefore to forgive you this wrong and bring you, by His Holy Spirit,
   into a saner mind, to believe that He is able and willing and to doubt
   no more. Many cast their doubts into the shape offoolish inferences
   drawn from the doctrine of predestination. I do not find that the
   doctrine of predestination impresses people in the way of sadness in
   any way except that of religion!

   Everybody believes that there is a predestination about the casting of
   lots, and yet the spirit of gambling is rife everywhere and men in
   crowds subscribe to the public lotteries, which to our shame, are still
   tolerated. They know that only two or three can win a large prize, yet
   away goes the money and nobody stands at the office door and says, "I
   shall not invest my money because if I am to get a prize I shall get a
   prize and if I am not to win a prize I shall not do so." Men are not
   such fools when they come to things of common life as they are when
   they deal with religion! This predestination sticks in the way of many
   as a huge stumbling block when they come to the things of God.

   The fact is, there is nothing in predestination to stumble a man. The
   evil lies in what he chooses to make of it. When a man wants to beat a
   dog, they say he can always find a stick to do it with. And when a man
   wants to find excuses for not believing in Christ, he can always
   discover one, somewhere or other. For this cause so many run to this
   predestination

   doctrine, because it happens to be a handy place of resort. Now God has
   a people whom He will save, a chosen and special people, redeemed by
   the blood of Christ. But there is no more in that doctrine to deny the
   other grand Truth that whoever believes in Jesus Christ is not
   condemned, than there is in the fact that Abyssinia is in Africa, to
   contradict the doctrine that, Hindustan is in Asia!

   They are two Truths of God which stand together and though it may not
   always be easy for us to reconcile them, it would be more difficult to
   make them disagree. There never seems to me to be any need to reconcile
   the two Truths, nor, indeed, any practical difficulty in the matter.
   The difficulty is metaphysical and what have lost sinners to do with
   metaphysics? Fixed is everything, from the motion of a grain of dust in
   the summer's wind to the revolution of a planet in its orbit--and yet
   man is as free as if there were no God--as independent an actor as if
   everything were left to chance! I see indelible marks both of
   predestination and free agency everywhere in God's universe! Then why
   do you ask questions about your election when God says, "whoever will"?
   It is foolish to stand and ask whether you are ordained to come when
   the invitation bids you come! Come, and you are ordained to come! Stay
   away, and you deserve to perish!

   Yonder is the gate of the hospital for sick souls and over it is
   written, "Whoever will, let him come," and you stand outside that house
   of mercy and say, "I do not know whether I am ordained to enter." There
   is the invitation, man! Why are you so mad? Would you talk like that at
   Guy's or at Bartholomew's Hospital? Would you say to the kind persons
   who picked you up in the street and carried you to the hospital, "Oh,
   for goodness sake, do not take me in, I do not know whether I am
   ordained to go in or not"? You know the hospital was built for such as
   are sick and wounded and when you are taken in you perceive that it was
   built for you. I do not know how you are to find whether you were
   ordained to enter the hospital or not, except by going in, and I do not
   know how you are to find out your election to salvation, except by
   trusting Jesus Christ, who bids you trust, and promises that if you do
   so you shall be saved!

   You may smile, but these things which to some of us are like spiders'
   nets through which we break, are like nets of iron to those desponding
   ones whose soul refuses to be comforted. I have known others and here I
   shall close this list, who have tried to find a hole in which to hide
   their eyes from the comforting light in the thought of the unpardonable
   sin. The greatest divines who have written on this subject have never
   been able to prove anything about it except that all the other divines
   are wrong! I have never yet read a book upon the subject which did not,
   one-half of it, consist in proving that all who had written before knew
   nothing at all on the subject. And I have come to the conclusion, when
   I have finished each treatise, that the writer was about as right as
   his predecessors and no more.

   Whatever the unpardonable sin may be, and perhaps it is different in
   every person--perhaps it is a point of sin in each one, a filling up of
   his measure beyond which there is no more hope of mercy--whatever it
   is, there is one thing that is sure, that no man who feels his need of
   Christ and sincerely desires to be saved can have committed that sin at
   all. If you had committed that sin, it would be to you death. "There is
   a sin which is unto death." Now, death puts an end to feeling. You
   would be given up to hardness and to incorrigible impenitence. The
   reason why you could not be saved would be because your will would
   become fast set against all good and you never would will to be saved.

   There is no difficulty in salvation when the will is made right--and if
   you have a will and God has made you willing to come to Christ and to
   be saved, you have no more committed the unpardonable sin than has the
   angel Gabriel who stands at God's right hand! If your heart palpitates
   still with fear. If your soul still trembles before the Law of God and
   dreads His wrath, then still are you within the bounds of mercy! And
   the silver trumpet sounds this morning sweet and shrill, "Whoever will,
   let him take of the water of life freely." "Believe in the Lord Jesus
   Christ and you shall be saved."

   IV. We will not continue that dreary catalog, but turn to a fourth
   consideration, namely, that this refusal to be comforted INVOLVES MUCH
   OF WRONG. Much of it we can readily forgive, still we must mention it.
   When you hear the Gospel and refuse to be comforted by it, there is a
   wrong done to the minister of God. He sympathizes with you. He desires
   to comfort you and it troubles him when he puts before you the cup of
   salvation and you refuse to take it.

   Now, I do not say that we, in our private persons, claim any great
   respect from you. But I do say that to reject God's ambassador may not
   be a light sin. And to cause the man whom God sends to speak words of
   mercy to you to go, with a heavy heart, again and again to his knees,
   may be such a sin as will rankle in your soul in years to come if it is
   not repented of. But worse than that, you wrong God's Gospel. Every
   time you refuse to be comforted, you do as good as say, "The Gospel is
   of no use to me. I do not esteem it. I will not have it." You put it
   away as though it were a thing of nothing.

   You wrong this precious Bible. It is full of consoling promises and you
   read it and you seem to say, "It is all chaff." You act as if you had
   winnowed it and found no food in it. It is a barren wilderness to you.
   Oh, but the Bible does not deserve to have such a slur cast upon it!
   You do wrong to the dear friends who try to comfort you. Why should
   they so often bring you with loving hands the Words of comfort and you
   put them away? Above all, you do wrong to your God, to Jesus and to His
   Holy Spirit. The Crucifixion of Christ is repeated by your rejection of
   Christ. That unkind, ungenerous thought that He is unwilling to
   forgive, crucifies Him afresh. Grieve not the Holy Spirit--

   "He's waited long, is waiting still-- You use no other friend so ill."

   He is the Spirit of consolation and when you refuse the consolation,
   you virtually reject Him--reject Him to your shame! Think, dear
   Friends, wherever you may be this morning--your refusing to be
   comforted is very wrong because it is depriving the Church of what you
   might do for it. Oh, if you became a cheerful Christian, what another
   in Israel you might be! I think I hear you sing as the virgin did of
   old, "He has remembered the low estate of His handmaiden." How would
   you rejoice with Hannah that, "He raises up the poor out of the dust
   and lifts the needy out of the dunghill, that He may set him with
   princes." How would your exultant Psalm go up to Heaven, "He has filled
   the hungry with good things and the rich He has sent away empty."

   The world--what a wrong you are doing to it! Why, that part of the
   world which comes under your influence is led to say, "Religion makes
   that woman miserable. It is religion which makes that man so sad." You
   know it is not so! But they put it down to it--they say, "Religion
   drives people mad." I would sooner lose this right hand and this right
   eye, too, than have such a thing said of my religion! I cannot bear,
   when I do anything wrong that men should say, "That's your
   Christianity." If they lay the blame on me, who so well deserved it,
   then let me bear it! But to lay it on the Cross of Christ--oh, this
   makes a man shudder!

   V. I will close with this remark--that SUCH A REFUSAL SHOULD NOT BE
   PERSISTED IN. It is unreasonable to be sad when you might rejoice. It
   is unreasonable to be wretched when Mercy provides every cause for
   making you happy. Why are you sad and why is your countenance fallen?
   If there were no Savior, no Holy Spirit, no Father willing to forgive,
   you might go your way and put an end to your existence in despair. But
   while all this Divine Grace is ready for you, why not take it?

   One would think you were like Tantalus, placed up to his neck in water,
   which, when he tried to drink, receded from his lips--but you are in no
   such condition. Instead of the water flowing away from you, it is
   rippling up to your lips! It is inviting you but to open your mouth and
   receive it! While it is unreasonable to continue such a persistence, it
   is also most weakening to you. Every hour that you continue sad you
   spoil the possibilities of your getting out of that sadness. You are
   dissolving the strength even of your bodily frame. And, as for your
   soul, the pillars are being shaken. And, mark you, it is most
   dangerous, too, for maybe--oh, I pray God it may not be!--it may be
   that God, who gives you light when He sees you shut your eyes again,
   will say, "Let his sun be darkened and his moon be turned into blood.
   The creature which I made for light rejects it and no light shall ever
   come to it, even forever."

   The king who kills the fatlings and makes ready the feast and brings
   you to the table, if He sees you still refuse to partake, may swear in
   His wrath that you shall not eat of His supper. I have known parents,
   when their children cried for nothing, take care to give them something
   to cry for. And, maybe, if you are miserable when there is no cause for
   it, you may have cause for it--cause that will never end. Oh, by the
   blood and wounds of Jesus! By the overflowing heart of God! By the
   eternal promises of Divine Grace! By the Covenant which God has made
   with sinners in the Person of His Son! By the Holy Spirit, the
   Comforter, put not from you the consolation which God provides! Say no
   longer, "My soul refuses to be comforted," but cast yourself at Jesus'
   feet and trust in Him, and you are saved!

   God bless you and grant this prayer for Jesus' sake. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

Fire--the Need of the Times

   A sermon

   (No. 854)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, FEBRUARY 7, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already
   kindled!"- Luke 12:49.

   OUR Lord was here certainly alluding to the opposition and persecution
   which the Gospel would excite. This is clear from the context, in which
   He declares that He is not come to send peace on the earth but a sword,
   and from the parallel passages in the other Gospels, where our Lord is
   forewarning His disciples that they must look for persecution. Albeit,
   that this was the first direction of the Savior's thought, He here
   delivers Himself of a Truth of God of a far wider application and
   reveals a great peculiarity of the Gospel which causes men to oppose
   it. He bears witness that the Gospel is an ardent, fervent, flaming
   thing--a subject for enthusiasm, a theme for intense devotion, a matter
   which excites men's souls and stirs them to the lowest depths--and for
   this reason, mainly, it arouses hostility.

   If the Gospel were a mere propriety of ceremonies, a truth which would
   slumber in the creed or lie entombed in the brain. If it were not a
   spiritual principle which lays hold upon the innermost nature, rules
   the emotions and fires the affections--if it were not all this it would
   remain unopposed. But because it is so living and forcible a principle,
   the powers of evil are in arms to stop its course. The subject then, of
   this morning's meditation will be the fiery nature of the religion of
   Jesus Christ! And to bring this clearly before you we shall first and
   foremost CONSIDER THE HISTORY OF THE GOSPEL.

   Practically, so far as the most of us are concerned, it begins with a
   revelation contained in this Book--we come to the Bible, therefore, to
   find out what the Gospel is. Bending over the pages we are struck with
   the extraordinary doctrines revealed. We find them far from being
   matters for the curious and the philosophical, but practical truths,
   touching upon everyday life and bearing upon common human nature.
   Truths, indeed, so powerful over humanity that they seem to wear the
   key of man's heart hanging at their belt. We find in this Book the
   master Truth of the love of God plainly and repeatedly stated.

   Right golden are these words, "God so loved the world, that He gave His
   only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but
   have everlasting life." We see revealed to us a love of God so vast as
   to be incomprehensible! So generous as to be a theme for adoring wonder
   throughout eternity, since the Father gives up His equal Son that He
   may bleed and die that we, who are rebellious and undeserving, may live
   through Him! As we believe the doctrine of Divine love, we feel it to
   be a Truth which sets the soul on fire with joy, gratitude and love. As
   we peruse the Gospel, we perceive that Divine love has been manifested
   in connection with a most astonishing display of justice and severity
   towards sin.

   We see God willing to forgive, but not willing to allow His Law to be
   dishonored, and therefore giving up His only-begotten Son to die a
   death of pain and ignominy, in order that the penalty of a broken Law
   might be rendered to justice and yet mercy displayed to rebels! We
   behold the Savior bleeding on the tree as much to manifest the justice
   as the love of God. And now, as we behold our Lord's passion, thoughts
   that burn full into our bosom--holy detestation of sin lifts the torch
   of heart-searching and the flame of true love burns up our lusts. He
   dies, the Friend of Sinners dies! Murdered by human sin! Who will not,
   therefore, loathe the murderous thing? It is impossible to read aright
   in the illuminated volume of the Cross, printed in crimson characters,
   without feeling our hearts burn within us with an ardor unquenchable.

   As we study more fully the Gospel of our Lord Jesus, we perceive that
   in consequence of the death of the Crucified and by reason of the love
   of God, eternal salvation by Divine Grace is freely proclaimed to
   everyone that believes in Christ! This creates, at first, a fire of
   opposition to the doctrine of Free Grace, given not for works of
   righteousness which we have done, but according to the decree of
   God--for naturally we choose to be saved by our own goodness and

   we prefer, like Luther on Pilate's staircase, to please ourselves with
   acts of humiliating penance rather than submit to that voice which
   says, "By the works of the Law there shall no flesh living be
   justified." Before long, through God's Spirit, another fire burns in
   our soul of intense gratitude that God should condescend to make a
   covenant with man and ordain faith in Jesus as the great way of
   obtaining reconciliation!

   Brothers and Sisters, these three Truths--the love of God, the atoning
   death of Christ and of justification by faith--are doctrines which
   cannot sleep! They must be active! Like the sword of God, they cannot
   be quiet. They are a seed which must grow, a leaven which must spread,
   a fire which must burn on forever! Take any other Truth of the Gospel
   and you will find it to be of the same energetic character--as, for
   instance, that of the universal priesthood of all Believers.
   Priestcraft, throughout all its domains, is stirred to bitterest hate
   by this Truth of God. How cardinals and bishops gnash their teeth! How
   priests and friars revile this teaching, "You are a royal priesthood"!

   This does away with the pride of a clerical caste--the commerce in
   pardons and confessions. Every man who believes in Jesus Christ is at
   once a priest and as much a priest as any other of the saints, so that
   no man has any right to arrogate unto himself in particular the title
   of priest, or to suppose or imagine that there is any sacerdotal rank
   in the Church but such as is common to all Believers in Christ Jesus!
   This Truth of God coming into a man's soul makes him blaze and burn
   with zeal! Am I consecrated to God, ordained to stand as a priest
   between the living and the dead and to offer acceptable sacrifice
   through Jesus Christ? Then I will purge myself from uncleanness and
   diligently serve my God!

   "Am I and all my Brethren priests?" asks the Believer. "Then down with
   priestcraft! We will be no longer duped by pretenders who claim to be
   channels of Divine Grace and anointed dispensers of the Divine favor."
   If the Gospel of Jesus Christ had been a mystic philosophy which only a
   few could comprehend, it would not have been a matter of fire! If it
   had been a mere pompous bunch of ceremonies which the people could only
   look upon and admire, it would have had no ardent influence! If it had
   been a mere orthodoxy, to be learnt by heart and every jot and tittle
   to be accepted without consideration, or if it had been a mere law of
   civilities and legalities, a mere ordinance of propriety and rule and
   regulation, it would never have been what Christ says it is! But,
   inasmuch as it is a principle which affects the heart, which takes
   possession of our entire manhood, changes, renews, uplifts and inspires
   us, making us akin with God and filling us with the Divine fullness, it
   becomes in this world a thing of flame and fire, burning its way to
   victory! "I came to send fire on the earth."

   I have commenced the history of the Gospel with the Bible, but
   remember, the Gospel does not long remain a mere writing--it is no
   sooner thoroughly read and grasped than the reader becomes, according
   to his ability, a preacher. We will suppose when a preacher whom God
   has truly called to the work, proclaims this Gospel, you will see for a
   second time that it is a thing of fire. Observe the man! If God has
   sent him, he is little regardful of the graces of oratory. He counts it
   sheer folly that the servants of God should be the mimics of
   Demosthenes and Cicero. He learns in another school how to deliver his
   Master's message. He comes forward in all sincerity, not in the wisdom
   of words, but with great plainness of speech and tells to the sons of
   men the great message from the skies!

   The one thing of all others he abhors is to deliver that message with
   bated breath, with measured cadence and sentences that chill and freeze
   as they fall from ice-bound lips. He speaks as one who knows that God
   has sent him--like a man who believes what he says, and moreover, feels
   that his message is a burden on his own soul--a burden which he must be
   delivered from--a fire within his bones which rages till he gives it
   vent, for woe is unto him if he preach not the Gospel! I would not
   utter too sweeping a sentence, but I will venture to say that no man
   who preaches the Gospel without zeal is sent of God to preach at all.

   When I turn to sermons such as Blair's, so faultless and yet so
   lifeless, I wonder whether by any possibility a soul could have been
   converted under them! The absence of enthusiasm in a sermon is fatal!
   It is the lack of its essential element, the one thing necessary to
   raise the discourse above the level of a mere essay. In Whitefield's
   sermons, of which we have but the rough notes, one perceives coals of
   juniper and hot thunderbolts which mark him out to be a true Boanerges.
   Mark, my Brethren, that the fire in the preacher sent of God is not
   that of mere excitement, nor that alone of an intelligent judgment
   acting upon the passions. No, but there is also a mysterious influence
   resting on God's servants which is irresistible.

   The Holy Spirit sent down from Heaven anoints all true evangelists and
   is the true power and fire. The more we believe in the Presence and
   power of the Holy Spirit, the more likely shall we be to see the Gospel
   triumphant in our

   ministry. Brethren, there is nothing in the Gospel, apart from the
   Spirit of God, which can win upon man, for man hates the Gospel with
   all his heart. Though the reasonableness of the Gospel of Jesus ought
   to make the belief of it universal, yet its plain dealing with human
   sin excites deadly antagonism, and, therefore, the Gospel itself would
   make no progress were it not for the Divine power. There is an
   invisible arm which pushes forward the conquests of the Truth of God!
   There is a fire unfed of human fuel which burns a way for the Truth of
   Jesus Christ into the hearts of men!

   In tracing this history of the Gospel, I would have you observe the
   effect of the preaching of such a one as I have described. While he is
   delivering the Truth of God of a crucified Savior and bidding men
   repent of sin and believe in Christ. While he is pleading and exhorting
   with the Holy Spirit sent down from Heaven, do you see the fire flakes
   descend in showers from on high? One of them has dropped just yonder
   and fallen into a heart that had been cold and hard before--observe how
   it melts all that was hard and iron-like--and tears begin to flow from
   channels long dried up! Can you hear the sobbing of that anxious one as
   she confesses her sins and asks for mercy? Do you notice the inward
   anguish of yonder youth who is convicted of sin, of righteousness and
   of judgment to come and who is ready to cry out, "What must I do to be
   saved?"

   Do you notice the opposite effect in another quarter? Yonder sinner has
   heard of Jesus and now believes in Him. Mark well the joy he feels! He
   is not like a man who has learned fresh mathematical truths of a cold,
   unemotional nature, but he is ready to clap his hands! He has as much
   as he can do to restrain himself, he feels so overjoyed! Do you observe
   that man who has now heard that Gospel for some few months? Do you
   notice that the fire still continues to burn within him? He gives to
   the cause of God what seems to others to be a lavish waste. He does for
   Christ what some would think to be a work of fanaticism. He is bold, he
   is in earnest, he is mighty in prayer--he is, in fact, consecrated,
   given up, devoted--the zeal of God's House has eaten him up as it did
   the Psalmist, so that his meat and his drink is to do the will of Him
   that sent him. Herein you see the true character of the Gospel! Like
   fire it thaws the iceberg heart, it makes the iron flow forth to be
   molded into a Divine shape. It sets the sacrifice on a blaze and man's
   whole nature goes up in sacred smoke of gratitude and praise to the
   Most High!

   And now, as surely as God glorifies His Truth and gives seals to the
   Christian ministry, opposition is aroused. If the preacher is supposed
   to live in the middle ages, his history will be told in a few words. He
   preaches at first to a crowd. Converts are made. The priests hear of
   it. He is abhorred and marked for extermination. He resorts to lone
   places among the hills. He preaches in cottages and private
   assemblies--converts are still brought in. The hunt grows hotter! The
   Hell hounds are out, eager for blood. The man is secreted. He takes his
   pen to write if he cannot use his tongue to speak. At last he is
   seized. He is dragged before the tribunals. He burns and blazes with
   sacred eloquence before his judges, but he is condemned to die.

   And now he stands upon a fiery pulpit, the firewood blazing all around
   him! And, if he utters not a single word, yet his death is eloquent.
   The fire of his earnestness is met by the fire of their malice--we know
   which of the two fires will win the day! In these times we are screened
   by a gracious Providence from the Satanic cruelty of persecution.
   Nowadays it takes another shape--the preacher is no sooner successful
   than it is reported that he is actuated either by covetous or ambitious
   designs. It is also currently reported that he said this or that
   ridiculous or blasphemous thing. There are some who heard him say what
   he never dreamed of and others stand prepared to be godfathers to the
   lie and add another of their own invention. And so the slander flies
   abroad and opposition finds barbed shafts to fling at the too valiant
   champion.

   Parties are made and sides taken for and against--and thus, again, is
   fulfilled the Master's saying--"I came not to send peace, but a sword.
   For I am come to set a man at variance against his father and the
   daughter against her mother and the daughter-in-law against her
   mother-in-law." You may depend upon it, there is no good doing if Satan
   does not howl! When there is no opposition from the infernal powers, it
   is because there is nothing to oppose. "Let them be," says Satan, "let
   them be! A comfortable congregation, a sober minister--all asleep--let
   them be! Drive on!" he says to his charioteer, "I need not alight here.
   Another small congregation--more pews than people--sleepy nothings!
   Drive on!" he says, "no trouble here for my empire. Drive on to yonder
   Meeting House where there is an earnest preacher and a people much
   given to prayer. Stop," he says, "I must use my best endeavors to stop
   this invasion of my kingdom."

   Straightway Satan comes to do his best or his worst to hinder the
   kingdom of Christ. In Hell's opposition we discern a sign of
   hopefulness, for where that fire of malice burns against the Gospel
   there God's fire of Divine Grace is burning,

   also! When the fire of conversion has kindled the fire of persecution,
   it proves its own infinite energy by subjecting even persecution to
   itself. That famous master in Israel and servant of God, Farel, the
   Swiss Divine, was converted to God by the sight of a martyr burnt in
   one of the streets of Paris. The wonderful demeanor of the saint as he
   stood in the midst of the fire to die, made an impression on his
   youthful spirit which was never afterwards shaken off.

   It has often been through opposition that the Church has made her
   greatest advances. Hence partly the reason for our Lord's saying, "How
   I wish it were already kindled!" as if our Lord had meant, "What does
   My kingdom care if opposition comes?" Let it come! It is so fruitful a
   thing to the Church of God, that the sooner it shall come the better!
   We might almost say, today, if there could be a return to the
   persecutions of the past, if it were not for the sin which would be
   caused, "How I wish it were already kindled!"

   The Christian man who is slandered and opposed can afford to smile with
   a sacred contempt at all that can be done against the Gospel of Christ.
   It was during the persecution which raged against the saints at
   Jerusalem that the Church obtained one of the greatest pillars that
   have ever strengthened and adorned her fabric--I mean the Apostle Paul.
   Breathing out threats against the people of God, he is on the road to
   Damascus, but the blaze of heavenly fire blinds him, strikes him to the
   ground and afterwards he becomes a chosen vessel to carry, like an
   uplifted cresset, that very fire throughout the nations of the earth!

   I look, Brothers and Sisters, for recruits to the Truth of God from the
   ranks of our enemies. Never despair, the brightest preacher of Christ
   may yet be fashioned out of the wretched raw material of Roman Catholic
   and Anglican priests! In politics, one of the leaders of reform has
   come to us from the hostile party--and we may expect in religious
   matters to see the same, or even more wonderful enlightenments! A monk
   reformed Germany! A parish priest was the morning star of England's day
   of light! The Lord can send out His warrant to arrest a ringleader in
   the army of Satan and to say to him, "You shall be no more against Me.
   You are Mine. Enlist beneath My banner and from this day be a champion
   for the Truth which you have despised."

   Never let us fear! The fire of God which Christ has cast among us shall
   go on to burn, let man do what he will to quench it! Thus I have given
   you a very brief abstract of the history of the Gospel from the Bible
   and the man, to the convert and the persecution, until opposition,
   valiantly met, yields up its spoils.

   II. Secondly, LET US STUDY MORE CAREFULLY THE QUALITIES OF THE GOSPEL
   AS FIRE. First, fire and the Gospel are notable for spiritual purity.
   The most refined form of idolatry that has ever existed has been the
   Parsee worship of fire. There is a kind of sentiment connected with the
   sun, the great parent of light and fire, which casts a halo around the
   error which it cannot excuse. Behold the enlightening flame, so
   immaterial, so spiritual, so akin to spirit-- behold it and see to what
   the Gospel may be compared!

   God Himself, though He has no earthly likeness, has been pleased to say
   of Himself, that He is "a consuming fire," fire being as instructive a
   symbol of God as earth can afford. The Gospel is like fire because it
   is so pure a thing--there is no admixture of error or unholiness in it.
   Fire has little of earth. It has no dross. It is a simple element, I
   was about to say, but what it is no man knows. We scarcely can put it
   among the component parts of this material earth, it is so pure. Even
   so, the Gospel is very pure, like silver purified seven times, free
   from every earthly alloy. Moreover, it is exceedingly spiritual, so
   spiritual that few understand it. Yes, none but those to whom it is
   given of the Father. It is but the spiritual man, enlightened of the
   Spirit of God, who receives of the things which are of God.

   It is so different from the trash of Rome! It talks not of the material
   flesh of Christ as if it could literally dwell in bread and wine! It
   talks not of aqueous regeneration worked by drops of water! It never
   consecrates holy places, or imputes holiness to material substances. It
   declares that God is a Spirit and that they who worship Him must
   worship Him in spirit and in truth. The Altar of Christianity is the
   Person of an unseen Savior. The offering of Christianity is prayer and
   praise. The worship of Christianity is the uprising of the heart--it is
   not at all a matter for the eyes and hands and nostrils--but altogether
   spiritual, sublime, elevated, pure, God-like.

   Happy are they who have accepted a spiritual and perfect Gospel! The
   Gospel is like fire, again, because of its cheering and comforting
   influence. He that has received it finds that the cold of this world no
   longer pinches him. He may be poor, but the Gospel's fire takes away
   the chilliness of poverty. He may be sick, but the Gospel gives his
   soul to rejoice even in the body's decay. He may be slandered and
   neglected, but the Gospel honors him in the sight of God. The Gospel,
   where it is fully received into the heart, becomes a Divine source of
   matchless consolation. Fire, in addition to its

   warmth, gives light. The flaming beacon guides the mariner or warns him
   of the rocks. The Gospel becomes to us our guide through all the
   darkness of this mortal life. And if we cannot look into the future,
   nor know what shall happen to us tomorrow, yet by the light of the
   Gospel we can see our way in the present path of duty, yes, and see our
   end in future immortality and blessedness! Life and immortality are
   brought to light by the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

   Brothers and Sisters, I need not enlarge here, because your lives are a
   daily homily upon this subject. You bear about with you this heavenly
   flame. It is this which cheers and guides you. You have, day by day,
   found that godliness with contentment is great gain. You have learned
   to rejoice in the Lord always and to be happy in the favor of the Most
   High, in the salvation of Jesus and in the consolation of the blessed
   Comforter. Thus do you show to others that Christ has sent fire upon
   the earth.

   A third likeness between the Gospel and fire is its testing qualities.
   No test like fire. That piece ofjewelry may seem to be gold. The color
   is an exact imitation. You could scarcely tell but what it was the
   genuine metal. Yes, but the melting pot will prove all--put it into the
   crucible and you will soon see. Thus in this world there are a thousand
   things that glitter, things which draw admirers that are advocated in
   the name of philanthropy and philosophy and I know not what beside. But
   it is amazing how different the schemes of politicians and the devices
   of wise men appear when they are once put into the refining pot of the
   Gospel of Jesus Christ! Despotic rulers and kings are very wise to try
   and keep the Gospel out of their dominions, for if they have anything
   crooked in the statute book, the Gospel is sure to show it! If there is
   anything rotten in the foundations of the government, there is nothing
   like a preached Gospel to discover and unveil it!

   What is the reason, today, that we enjoy such precious liberties in
   this realm? Liberties which I venture to say are not excelled by those
   possessed by any people under Heaven--what has been the groundwork of
   our freedom, but this--that the Gospel preached among us, evermore like
   a fire, is testing and trying everything in our institutions and that
   which is not right is sure in the end to give way! Much which now
   stands, but is not according to the Master's will, is marked to be
   consumed--and thank God it is so--for we shall be all the better for
   the overthrow of moss-grown injustice and wrong. The Gospel proves all
   things and is the great ultimate test as to right and wrong.

   Ah, how the fire of the Gospel will test a man's heart. Many a man
   thinks he carries something good within him and he wraps himself up in
   the robes of his own righteousness until the Gospel comes--and then he
   finds that he is naked and poor and miserable! Many a professor
   imagines that he is serving God and doing well--until, in the Gospel
   fire, his wood, hay and stubble vanish in smoke! All through this world
   of ours, the Gospel will burn up with unquenchable fire everything that
   is evil, and leave nothing but that which is just and true. Of all
   things under Heaven, the most intolerant is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
   "What," you ask, "intolerant?" Yes, I say, intolerant! The Gospel
   enables us to proclaim liberty of conscience to all men! The Gospel
   wields no temporal sword. It asks for no cannon balls to open the gates
   of a nation for its ministry. The true Gospel prepares no dungeon and
   no rack. It asks not Peter's sword to cut off Malchus' ear--but while
   it gives freedom from all bondage, it demands obedience to itself!

   Within its own realm its power is absolute! Its arguments cut and kill
   error! Its teachings lay low every proud hope and expose every false
   way! The Gospel is merciful to the sinner, but merciless to sin! It
   will not endure evil, but wars against it to overturn it and to set up
   a throne for Him whose right it is to reign. The Gospel of Jesus Christ
   will never join hands with infidelity or Popery! It will never enter
   into league with idolatry! It cannot be at peace with error! False
   religions can lie down, side by side with one another, for they are
   equally a lie and there is a brotherhood between them--but the true
   religion will never rest until all superstitions are utterly
   exterminated and until the banner of the King eternal, immortal,
   invisible, shall wave over every mosque and minaret, temple and shrine!
   Fire cannot be made tolerant of that which can be consumed--it will
   burn the stubble until the last particle is gone and the Truth of God
   is of the same kind.

   A further parallel between the Gospel and fire lies in their essential
   aggressiveness. Take a few live coals, put them down in a wheat stack
   or corn rick and tell the fire, "I have given you a bundle of straw to
   burn. Now burn--burn away to your heart's content, for that straw is
   yours. But you must go no further--burn with propriety and within
   bounds. Do not begin making sparks and flames, for we will have none of
   your fierce attacks." While you are thus talking in this senseless way,
   the fire has blazed up vehemently, burning the materials surrounding it
   and if you do not take to your heels you will probably be consumed
   yourself!

   Fire is not to be talked to in that way. It knows nothing about
   moderation and keeping to itself. Have I not often heard this kind of
   theory laid down: "You religionists have your own liberty. Keep
   yourselves respectable and quiet and enjoy yourselves, but leave other
   people alone. You have no business to be propagandists, compassing sea
   and land to make proselytes. Why fall into fanaticism? Sit still, now.
   You have cushioned seats--be comfortable upon them. The minister has
   his stipend and his pulpit--let him mind his own congregation--it will
   be as much as he can do if he pleases his own disciples. Why must a man
   become a firebrand, bigotedly intruding his peculiar views where they
   are not

   wanted?"

   Yes, that is just what the world desired in Christ's day, no doubt.
   Idolaters would have been satisfied if Christianity had kept itself to
   the handful of disciples which Christ had gathered. Christians might
   have been ridiculed at first, but by degrees they would have cooled
   down into a respectable sect like the Pharisees and Sadducees,
   especially after those uneducated fishermen had died out and some
   respectable tradesmen in Jerusalem and, perhaps, a squire or two from
   beyond Jordan had joined the community.

   But Christianity did not happen to be a thing that would so soon be
   frozen. The Gospel of Jesus was a thing of fire! Jerusalem, alone,
   would not serve its purpose. All Judea and Galilee could not escape
   from it--

   "More and more the kingdom grows, Ever mighty to prevail."

   Asia Minor is set upon a blaze by that fanatical firebrand, Saul of
   Tarsus, and even that is not enough! The fire burns so fiercely in Asia
   that the sparks fly across the Bosphorus! Paul is working in Macedonia.
   He is heard of in Athens, he is talked about in Corinth--and even that
   is not enough--that restless soul must cross the sea and is found in
   Rome thundering at the gates of Caesar's palace! Right away in Spain
   the new religion is gaining ground. Proconsuls, what are you doing? The
   gods of Rome defied in far-off Spain?

   No, the emissaries have crossed beyond Gaul into the savage land of
   Britain! They have dared to stand in Albion and proclaim the name of
   Him that was crucified! Will they never rest? Let us torture them! Rack
   them! Shut them up in prison! But look!--they come to the tribunals
   eagerly, and confess themselves Christians with enthusiasm! Pliny
   writes home to know what is to be done with these people who seem so
   anxious to die! Well, bring them into the amphitheatre! Fling them to
   the wild beasts! Let the bears and lions see what they can do with
   them! Make them die a gladiator's death amidst the shouts of Rome's
   matrons and senators!

   It does not stop them, Sir. They have entered the senate! They have
   disciples among the patricians! The name of Christ was spoken the other
   day right in the midst of the senate to the Emperor's own face! Yes!
   They even say that there are some high in rank and of imperial blood
   who worship the Crucified! Yes, and as years roll on, you priests of
   Jupiter and Saturn, listen to the tale and be astonished--your gods are
   rolled away from their pedestals! You who are called Pontiff and
   Pontifex Maximus--all you are sent away--your temples are turned into
   churches and your places where idolatry reigned supreme become the
   assembling houses of the saints of the living God!

   Will this Gospel of Christ ever stop? Will it not pause today? No,
   Sirs, it never will, nor can! The true religion of Jesus Christ is
   essentially warlike. As the heathens spoke of Minerva leaping armed
   from the head of Jove, so did the religion of Christ spring armed from
   the very heart of Jesus Christ and it stands in the midst of the world
   an enemy of all unrighteousness! It is the foe of all oppression, the
   friend of the poor and needy and the enemy of everything that is at
   enmity to God! You are no Christian if such is not your Christianity,
   for Jesus Christ brought not a slumbering faith, but fire onto the
   earth!

   Our religion is like fire, again, because of its tremendous energy and
   its rapid advance. Who shall be able to estimate the force of fire? Our
   forefathers standing on this side the river, as they gazed many years
   ago upon the old city of London wrapped in flame, must have wondered
   with great astonishment as they saw cottage and palace, church and
   hall, monument and cathedral all succumbing to the tongues of flame. It
   must be an amazing sight, if one could safely see it, to behold a
   prairie rolling along in great sheets of flame, or to gaze upon
   Vesuvius when it is spouting away at its utmost force. When you deal
   with fire you cannot calculate--you are among the imponderables and the
   immeasurable. I wish we thought of that when we are speaking of
   religion. You cannot calculate concerning its spread.

   "How many years would it take to convert the world?" asks somebody.
   Sir, it need not take 10 minutes, if God so willed it--because as fire,
   beyond all reckoning, will sometimes, when circumstances are congenial,
   suddenly break out and spread--so will the Truth of God. Truth is not a
   mechanism--and does not depend upon engineering. A thought in one mind,
   why not the same thought in fifty? That thought in 50 minds, why not in
   fifty thousand? The Truth of God which affects a village and stirs it
   from end to end--why not a town, a city--why not a nation? Why not all
   nations? God may, when

   He wills it, bring all human minds into such a condition that one
   single text such as this, "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all
   acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,"
   may set all hearts on a blaze!

   Vainly do we reckon the missionary costs so much, and only so many can,
   therefore, be sent! Yes, but God works most by weakest means full often
   and sometimes achieves by His poorest saints works which He will not
   perform by those who have every visible appliance. Perhaps no men have
   ever been more useful than the Moravians, yet what poor men the
   Moravians have always been! How inadequate their means, yet they make
   it their lives' duty to propagate the Truth of God as it is in Jesus in
   every land and God is with them! The Lord has but to stir up the Church
   in England to a proper sense of her duty and endow her with confidence
   in Christ and a conviction that God is about to bless her, and you and
   I, before these hairs shall be gray, may see such sights as we would
   not have believed though a man should tell it unto us!

   I can believe anything about fire. Let a man tell me that in a house
   just now a bundle of rags have begun to burn. Let him tell me in five
   minutes that the shop is on fire. Let him tell me in five minutes more
   that it is blazing through the shutters, or that the next story is
   burning, or that the roof is coming in, I could believe it all! Fire
   can do anything! And so with the Gospel of Jesus--given but an earnest
   preacher, given but the Truth of God fully declared! Given an earnest
   people determined to propagate the Gospel and I can understand a nation
   converted to God, yes, and all the nations of the earth suddenly shaken
   with the majesty of the Truth of God!

   Once more, the Gospel resembles fire in this, that it will ultimately
   prevail. It is clearly revealed in Scripture that as the world was once
   destroyed by water, it will a second time be destroyed by fire. Perhaps
   they are correct who tell us that the center of the earth is all a
   molten mass and we dwell but upon the cool crust of it. Perhaps it may
   be so, that these great volcanoes are the ventilators of subterranean
   fires. But surely is it predestined that earth and all the works that
   are in it shall be burnt up, and the elements shall melt with fervent
   heat. Fire will win the day! Old ocean, you may roll on in your pride
   and laugh at fire, but fire will lick you up with its tongues of flame!
   Men, you may erect your machinery with which to protect your cities,
   but there shall not be a wreck of all your cities left!

   Like old Babel's tower, of which only a heap of dust and ruins remains,
   your pompous cities shall utterly vanish away! So with the Gospel. The
   seas of iniquity may slow, for awhile, the fire of the Gospel from
   spreading, but that sea shall be utterly removed by the energy of
   Divine Truth. The day shall come when the fire of the Gospel shall make
   the whole world to be a burnt-offering unto the Lord Most High! Let us
   have courage! Let us look forward to the flight of time and expect the
   advent of our Master--for the day shall come when He shall reign from
   the river even to the ends of the earth! And from sea and land, from
   mountain and valley there shall come up the universal song,
   "Hallelujah, hallelujah, the Lord God Omnipotent reigns."

   III. Lastly, if the Gospel is thus like fire, LET US CATCH THE FLAME!
   If this fire shall really burn within us, we shall become from this
   very moment fearless of all opposition. That retired friend will lose
   the strings which bind his tongue--he will feel that he must speak as
   God shall bid him. Or if he cannot speak, he will act with all his
   might in some other way to spread abroad the savor of Immanuel's name!
   That coward who hid his head and would not own his profession, when the
   fire burns, will feel that he had rather court opposition than avoid
   it. There may be some young man here who is about to take up his
   cross--it has come to this--he must decide which it shall be. Let him
   do so without fear, for the Master whom he serves will bear him through
   all opposition!

   The fondest relationship which can be lost by our decision for Christ
   shall be more than made up for us by the union which it cements with
   Jesus Himself. Better that we lost every friend and all our kinsfolk
   and had the bad word of all the neighborhood, than that we lost the
   love of God which passes knowledge. Cast in your lot, dear Friends,
   with Christ, and fling down the gauntlet to the world! Let them say
   their worst. Let them howl, let them bark, yes, let them bite--little
   shall it matter to the man to whom persecution has become an occasion
   for rejoicing--because now is he made like unto the Prophets which were
   before him!

   If we catch this flame, we shall, after having defied all opposition,
   tire utterly of the mere proprieties of religion which at this present
   time crush down like a nightmare the mass of the religious world. Do
   you believe that if Jesus Christ came into this world He would call
   nine-tenths of our modern religion the Christianity which He preached?
   Is it the least bit like His own zeal? Many think that all the faith
   Christianity requires is to put on your best things on Sunday and go to
   your place of worship with your Bible or hymn-book, or prayer-book.
   Then you sit there decorously and look at other people's bonnets and
   dresses. And then you come home again!

   Others think it is sufficient to listen to the sermon discreetly,
   perhaps making a few observations upon the discourse, perhaps making
   none because there is not enough in the sermon to be a peg to hang a
   remark upon! The religion of many professors is nothing more than
   that--if it is hardly that. Do you not know of people who believe the
   articles and do not

   doubt them because they never think of them? They have packed them away
   in the iron safe, with their title deeds which they feel so sure about
   that they do not care to read them. They are orthodox, but they feel no
   power in their own souls produced by these Truths of God! They feel no
   depression because the Truth of God convicts them of sin. There is no
   exhilaration because the Truth shows them their safety in Christ.

   Many, if they get to a supposed saving faith, get no farther. They are
   saved themselves and that seems to be all they care about. Their
   neighbors in the next pew may be damned, but what do they care? All
   down the street in which they live there may be scarcely a person
   attending a place of worship, but what business is that of theirs? They
   belong to the denomination of Cain--they say, "Am I my brother's
   keeper?" Such men have denied the faith! The selfishness which reigns
   supreme in them is as antichristian as even covetousness, or adultery,
   or murder could be! The spirit of Christianity is unselfishness and
   love to others, care of other's souls, a devotedness to the increase of
   the Master's kingdom.

   O Brothers and Sisters, it is sickening work to think of your cushioned
   seats, your chants, your anthems, your choirs, your organs, your gowns
   and your bands, and I know not what besides, all made to be instruments
   of religious luxury, if not of pious amusement, while you need far more
   to be stirred up and incited to holy ardor for the propagation of the
   Truth of God as it is in Jesus! One would think Christ came into the
   world to administer an opiate to the sons of men, or prepare down for
   all sleepers! But instead of it He came to send fire on the earth--and
   where His true Gospel is, it is a fire that will not rest and be quiet
   amidst mere proprieties and rounds of performances.

   If we catch this fire, we shall not only become dissatisfied with mere
   proprieties, but we shall, all of us, become instant in prayer. Day and
   night our soul will go up with cries and moans to God, "O God, how
   long, how long, how long? Will You not avenge Your own elect? Will not
   Your Gospel prevail? Why are Your chariots so long in coming? Why does
   not Christ reign? Why is not the Truth triumphant? Why do You suffer
   idolatry to rule and priestcraft to reign? Make haste, O God, grasp
   Your two-edged sword and strike and let error die and let Truth win the
   victory!" It is thus we shall be always pleading if this fire burns in
   our spirits.

   This will lead us to eager service. Having this fire in us, we shall be
   trying to do all we can for Christ. We shall never think we have done
   enough! We shall be uneasy if for a moment we rest! We shall seek, if
   possible, to snatch souls from the burning--to preach Christ where He
   is not known and to bring Him fresh jewels for His crown. Brethren,
   this is a large Church, numbering now nearly 4,000 souls and if you
   grow cold and lose your earnestness, I would sooner have 40 warmhearted
   men and women than the whole multitude of you if you are chilled! For
   what are you who are cold and indifferent but a clog upon the chariot?
   What are you but like the mixed multitude that came out of Egypt? Sin
   begins among you, but no strength do you minister to the Lord's host.

   The warm-hearted, earnest, thorough Christian is the life of the
   Church! And if we cannot all be as we would, may the fiery spirits
   among us never be retarded by those who are more lethargic. May they
   live above the influences that would drag them down! May we never be
   content to do as much as others, to pray as much as others, to give as
   much as others--but may it be our resolve that we will outstrip
   all--not out of any emulation, but out of a love to Him who has done so
   much, forgiven so much, secured so much, promised so much to us who are
   His people!

   O lovers of Christ, come and bow at His feet and ask Him to let His
   love supply you with fire this morning! Come to the Pierced One! Gaze
   upon the crown of thorns! Look into the hole which the soldier's spear
   has made! Gaze into the nail prints and say unto your soul--

   'Now, for the love I bear His name, What was my gain I count my loss.
   My former pride I call my shame And nail my glory to His Cross. Yes,
   and I must and will esteem All things but loss for Jesus' sake. O may
   my soul be found in Him, And of His righteousness partake." God bless
   you for Christ Jesus' sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Luke 12:13-53.
     __________________________________________________________________

Everyday Usefulness

   A sermon

   (No. 855)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, FEBRUARY 14, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "And he brought him to Jesus."- John 1:42.

   WE have a most intense desire for the revival of religion in our own
   midst and throughout all the Churches of our Lord Jesus. We see that
   error is making great advances and we would gladly lift up a banner for
   the cause of the Truth of God. We pity the mighty populations among
   whom we dwell for they are still godless and Christless and the things
   of their peace are hidden from their eyes. Therefore we would gladly
   behold the Lord performing miracles of Divine Grace. Our hope is that
   the set time to favor Zion is come and we intend to be importunate in
   prayer that God will reveal His arm and do great things in these latter
   days.

   Our eager desire, of which our special services will be the expression,
   is a right one. Challenge it who will, it is ours to cultivate and
   prove by our zeal for God that the desire is not insincere or
   superficial. But, my Brothers and Sisters, it is very possible that in
   addition to cultivating a vehement desire for the revival of religion,
   we may have been daydreaming and forecasting in our minds a conception
   of the form which the Divine visitation shall take. Remembering what we
   have heard of former times of refreshing, you expect a repetition of
   the same outward signs and look for the Lord to work as He did with
   Livingstone at the Kirk of Shotts, or with Jonathan Edwards in New
   England, or Whitefield in our own land.

   Perhaps you have planned in your mind that God will raise up an
   extraordinary preacher whose ministry will attract the multitude, and
   while he is preaching, God the Holy Spirit will attend the Word so that
   hundreds will be converted under every sermon and other evangelists
   will be raised up of a like spirit and from end to end this island
   shall hear the Truth and feel its power. Now it may be that God will so
   visit us. It may be that such signs and wonders as have frequently
   attended revivals may be again witnessed--the Lord may rend the heavens
   and come out and make the mountains to fall down at His feet!

   But it is just possible that He may select quite another method. His
   Holy Spirit may reveal Himself like a mighty river swollen with floods
   and sweeping all before its majestic current. But if He so wills, He
   may rather unveil His power as the gentle dew which, without
   observation, refreshes all the earth! It may happen unto us as unto
   Elijah when the fire and the wind passed before him, but the Lord was
   not in either of those mighty agencies--He preferred to commune with
   His servant in a still, small voice. Perhaps that still, small voice is
   to be language of Divine Grace in this congregation. It will be
   useless, then, for us to be mapping out the way of the eternal God! It
   will be idle for us to be rejecting all the good which He may be
   pleased to give us because it does not happen to come in the shape
   which we have settled in our own minds to be the proper one.

   Idle, did I say? Such prejudice would be wicked to the extreme! It has
   very frequently happened that while men have been sketching out
   imaginary designs they have missed actual opportunities! They would not
   build because they could not erect a palace--they therefore shiver in
   the winter's cold. They would not be clothed in homespun, for they
   looked for scarlet and fine linen--and before long they were not
   content to do a little and therefore did nothing! I want, therefore, to
   say, this morning, to every Believer here, it is vain for us to be
   praying for an extensive revival of religion and comforting each other
   in the hope of it, if, meanwhile, we allow our zeal to effervesce and
   sparkle--and then to be dissipated.

   Our proper plan is, with the highest expectations and with the greatest
   longings, to imitate the woman of whom it is written, "She has done
   what she could," by laboring diligently in such holy works as may be
   within our reach, according to Solomon's precept, "Whatever your hands
   find to do, do it with all your might." While Believers are zealously
   doing what God enables them to do, they are in the high road to
   abundant success. But if they stand all the day idle, grasping

   after wonders, their spiritual need shall come upon them as an armed
   man. I have selected the text before us in order that I may speak upon
   matters which are practical and efforts within the reach of all. We
   shall not speak of the universal triumph of the Gospel, but of its
   victory in single hearts. Nor shall we deal with the efforts of an
   entire Church, but with the pious fervor of individual disciples.

   If the Christian Church were in a proper and healthy state, the members
   would be studious of the Word of God and would themselves have so much
   of the Spirit of Christ that the only thing they would need in the
   great assemblies, over and above worship, would be a short encouraging
   and animating word of direction addressed to them, as to well-drilled
   and enthusiastic soldiers who need but the word of command and the deed
   of valor is straightway performed. So would I speak and so would I have
   you hear at this hour.

   Coming then, to the subject. Andrew was converted by Christ to become
   His disciple. Immediately he sets to work to recruit the little army by
   discipling others. He finds his brother, Peter, and he brings him to
   Jesus.

   I. First, I shall call your attention, this morning, to THE MISSIONARY
   DISCIPLE. Andrew is the picture of what all disciples of Christ should
   be! To begin, then. This first successful Christian missionary was
   himself a sincere follower of Jesus. Is it necessary to make that
   observation? No, rather, will it ever be needless while so many make a
   profession of a faith which they do not possess? While so many will
   wantonly thrust themselves into the offices of Christ's Church, having
   no concern for the Glory of His kingdom and no part or lot in it, it
   will always be necessary to repeat that warning, "Unto the wicked, God
   says, What have you to do to declare My statutes?"

   Men who have never seen the beauties of Emmanuel are not fit persons to
   describe them to others. An experimental acquaintance with vital
   godliness is the first necessity for a useful worker for Jesus. That
   preacher is accursed who knows not Christ for himself! God may, in
   infinite sovereignty, make him the means of blessing to others, but
   every moment that he tarries in the pulpit he is an impostor! Every
   time he preaches he is a mocker of God and woe unto him when his Master
   calls him to his dread account! You unconverted young people who enter
   upon the work of Sunday school instruction and so undertake to teach
   others what you do not know yourselves, place yourselves in a position
   of unusual solemnity and of extraordinary peril! I say, "of
   extraordinary peril," because you do, by the fact of being a teacher,
   profess to know and will be judged by your profession--and, I fear,
   condemned out of your own mouths!

   You know only the theory of religion and of what use is that while you
   are strangers to its power? How can you lead others along a way which
   you yourself refuse to tread? Besides, I have noticed that persons who
   become active in Church work before they have first believed in Christ
   are very apt to remain without faith, resting content with the general
   repute which they have gained. O dear Friends, beware of this! In this
   day hypocrisy is so common and self-deceit is so easy that I would not
   have you place yourselves where those vices become almost inevitable.
   If a man voluntarily puts himself where it is taken for granted that he
   is godly, his next step will be to mimic godliness and by-and-by he
   will flatter himself into the belief that he really possesses that
   which he so successfully imitates.

   Beware, dear Hearers, of a religion which is not true--it is worse than
   none! Beware of a form of godliness which is not supported by the
   fervor of your heart and soul. This age of shams presents but few
   instances to self-examination, therefore am I the more earnest that
   every one of us, before he shall seek to bring others to Christ, should
   deliberately ask himself, "Am I a follower of Christ myself? Am I
   washed in His blood? Am I renewed by His Spirit?" If not, my first
   business is not in the pulpit, but on my knees in prayer! My first
   occupation should not be in the Sunday school class, but in my closet,
   confessing my sin and seeking pardon through the atoning Sacrifice!

   Andrew was earnest for the souls of others, though he was but a young
   convert. So far as I can gather, he appears to have beheld Jesus as the
   Lamb of God one day and to have sought after his brother, Peter, the
   next. Far be it from us to forbid you who but yesterday found joy and
   peace, to exert your new-born zeal and youthful ardor! No, my Brothers
   and Sisters, delay not, but make haste to spread abroad the Good News
   which is now so fresh and so full of joy to you! It is right that the
   advanced and the experienced should be left to deal with the captious
   and the skeptical, but you, even you, young as you are, may find some
   with whom you can cope--some brother like Simon Peter, some sister dear
   to you who will listen to your unvarnished tale and believe in your
   simple testimony. Though you are but young in Divine Grace and but
   little instructed, begin the work of soul-winning, and--

   "Tell to sinners round What a dear Savior you have found!"

   If the religion of Jesus Christ consisted in abstruse doctrines, hard
   to be understood. If the saving Truths of Christianity were
   metaphysical points, difficult to handle--then a matured judgment would
   be needed in every worker for God and it would be prudent to say to the
   young convert, "Hold back till you are instructed." But, since that
   which saves souls is as simple as A, B, C. Since it is nothing but
   this, "He that believes and is baptized, shall be saved," he that
   trusts the merits of Christ shall be saved! You who have trusted Him
   know that He saved you and you know that He will save others! And I
   charge you before God, tell it, tell it right and left, but especially
   tell it to your own kinsfolk and acquaintances that they, also, may
   find eternal life!

   Andrew was a disciple, a new disciple and I may add, a commonplace
   disciple, a man of average capacity. He was not at all the brilliant
   character that Simon Peter, his brother, turned out to be. Throughout
   the life of Jesus Christ Andrew's name occurs, but no notable incident
   is connected with it. Though in later life he, no doubt, became a most
   useful Apostle, and according to tradition, sealed his life's ministry
   by death upon a cross, yet at the first Andrew was, as to talent, an
   ordinary Believer--one of that common standard and nothing remarkable.
   Yet Andrew became a useful minister and thus it is clear that servants
   of Jesus Christ are not to excuse themselves from endeavoring to extend
   the boundaries of His kingdom by saying, "I have no remarkable talent,
   or singular ability."

   I very much disagree with those who decry ministers of slender gifts,
   sneering at them, as though they ought not to occupy the pulpit at all.
   Are we, after all, Brethren, as servants of God, to be measured by mere
   oratorical ability? Is this after the fashion of Paul, when he
   renounced the wisdom of words lest the faith of the disciples should
   stand in the wisdom of man and not in the power of God? If you could
   blot out from the Christian Church all the minor stars and leave
   nothing but those of the first magnitude, the darkness of this poor
   world would be increased sevenfold! How often the eminent preachers,
   which are the Church's delight, are brought into the Church by those of
   less degree, even as Simon Peter was converted by Andrew!

   Who shall tell what might have become of Simon Peter if it had not been
   for Andrew? Who shall say that the Church would ever have possessed a
   Peter if she had closed the mouth of Andrew? And who shall put their
   finger upon the brother or sister of inferior talent and say, "These
   must hold their peace"? No, Brother, if you have but one talent, the
   more zealously use it! God will require it of you--let not your
   Brethren hold you back from putting it out to interest. If you are but
   as a glowworm's, lamp, hide not your light, for there is an eye
   predestinated to see by your light, a heart ordained to find comfort by
   your faint gleam. Shine, and may the Lord accept you!

   I am saying all this in this way that I may come to the conclusion that
   every single professor of the faith of Christ is bound to do something
   for the extension of the Redeemer's kingdom. I would that all the
   members of this Church, whatever their talents were, would be like
   Andrew in promptness. He is no sooner a convert than he is a
   missionary! He is no sooner taught than he begins to teach! I would
   have them like Andrew, persevering, as well as prompt. He first finds
   Peter--that is his first success--but how many afterwards he found, who
   shall tell? Throughout a long life of usefulness it is probable that
   Andrew brought many stray sheep to the Redeemer's fold, yet certainly
   that first one would be among the dearest to his heart.

   "He first finds Peter"--he was the spiritual father of many sons, but
   he rejoiced most that he was the father of his own brother Peter--his
   brother in the flesh, but his son in Christ Jesus! Could it be possible
   for me to come to every one of you personally and grasp you by the
   hand, I would with most affectionate earnestness--yes, even with
   tears--pray that you, by Him to whom you owe your souls, would awake
   and render personal service to the Lover of your souls! Make no excuse,
   for no excuse can be valid from those who are bought with so great a
   price! Your business, you will tell me, requires so much of your
   thoughts--I know it does--then use your business in such a way as to
   serve God in it.

   Still there must be some scraps of time which you could devote to holy
   service. There must be some opportunities for directly aiming at
   conversions. I charge you to avail yourselves of such occasions lest
   they be laid to your door. To some of you the excuse of "business"
   would not apply, for you have seasons of leisure. Oh, I beseech you,
   let not that leisure be driveled away in frivolities, in mere talk, in
   sleep and self-indulgence! Let not time slip away in vain persuasions
   that you can do nothing, but now, like Andrew, hasten at once to serve
   Jesus! If you can reach but one individual, let him not remain
   unsought. Time is hastening and men are perishing! The world is growing
   old in sin! Superstition and idolatry root themselves into the very
   soil of human nature!

   When, when will the Church become intent upon putting down her Master's
   foes? Possessing such little strength, we cannot afford to waste a jot
   of it. With such awful demands upon us we cannot afford to trifle. O
   that I had the power to stir the heart and soul of all my fellow
   Christians by a description of this huge city wallowing in iniquity--by
   a picture of the graveyards and cemeteries fattening on innumerable
   corpses--by a portrayal of that lake of fire to which multitudes yearly
   descend! Surely sin, the grave, and Hell are themes which might create
   a tingling even in the dull cold ear of Death! O that I could set
   before you the Redeemer upon the Cross dying to ransom souls! O that I
   could depict the Heaven which sinners lose and their remorse when they
   shall find themselves excluded!

   I wish I could even set before you in vivid light the cases of your own
   sons and daughters, the spiritual condition of your own brothers and
   sisters without Christ and therefore without hope! Unrenewed and
   therefore "heirs of wrath even as others"! Then might I expect to move
   each Believer here to an immediate effort to pluck men as brands from
   the burning.

   II. Having described the missionary disciple, we shall now speak
   briefly in the second place upon a GREAT OBJECT. The great object of
   Andrew seems to have been to bring Peter to Jesus. This, too, should be
   the aim of every renewed heart--to bring our friends to Jesus--not to
   convert them to a party. There are certain unbrotherly sectarians,
   called "Brethren," who compass sea and trod land to make proselytes
   from other Christian Churches. These are not merchants seeking goodly
   pearls in a legitimate fashion, but pirates who live by plunder. They
   must not excite our wrath so much as our pity, though it is difficult
   not to mingle with it something of disgust.

   While this world remains as wicked as it is, we need not be spending
   our strength as Christian denominations in attacking one another--it
   will be better for us to go and fight with the Canaanites than with
   rival tribes which should be one united Israel! I should reckon it to
   be a burning disgrace if it could be said, "The large Church under that
   man's pastoral care is composed of members whom he has stolen away from
   other Christian Churches." No, but I value beyond all price the
   godless, the careless who are brought out from the world into communion
   with Christ! These are true prizes--not stealthily removed from
   friendly shores--but captured at the edge of the sword from an enemy's
   dominions!

   We welcome Brethren from other Churches if, in the Providence of God
   they are drifted to our shores, but we would never hang out the
   wrecker's beacon to dash other Churches in pieces in order to enrich
   ourselves with the wreck! Far rather would we be looking after
   perishing souls than cajoling unstable ones from their present place of
   worship. To recruit one regiment from another is no real strengthening
   of the army--to bring in fresh men should be the aim of all.
   Furthermore, the object of the soul-winner is not to bring men to a
   merely outward religiousness. Little will you have done for a man if
   you merely make the Sabbath-breaker into a Sabbath-keeper and leave him
   a self-righteous Pharisee. Little will you have done for him if you
   persuade him, having been prayerless, to be a mere user of a form of
   prayer, his heart not being in it.

   You do but change the form of sin in which the man lives--you prevent
   him being drowned in the salt water, but you throw him into the fresh.
   You take one poison from him, but you expose him to another. The fact
   is, if you would do real service to Christ, your prayer and your zeal
   must follow the person who has become the object of your attention till
   you bring him absolutely to close with Divine Grace and lay hold on
   Jesus Christ and accept eternal life as it is found in the atoning
   Sacrifice! Anything short of this may have its usefulness for this
   world, but must be useless for the world to come. To bring men to
   Jesus--O, be this your aim and desire!--not to bring them to Baptism,
   nor to the Meeting House, nor to adopt our form of worship, but to
   bring them to His dear feet who alone can say, "Go in peace. Your sins
   which are many are all forgiven you."

   Brothers and Sisters, as we believe Jesus to be the very center of the
   Christian religion, he who gets not to Christ gets not to true
   godliness at all. Some are quite satisfied if they get to the priest
   and obtain his absolution. They are fine if they get the "sacraments"
   and eat bread in the church--if they get to prayers and pass through a
   religious routine--but we know that all this is less than nothing and
   vanity unless the heart draws near to Jesus. Unless the soul accepts
   Jesus as God's appointed Sin-Offering and rests alone in Him, it walks
   in a vain show and disquiets itself in vain. Come then, Brethren, nerve
   yourselves to this point, that from this day forth let your one
   ambition be in dealing with your fellow men, to bring them to Jesus
   Christ Himself! Be it determined in your spirit that you will never
   cease to labor for them till you have reason to believe that they are
   trusting in Jesus, loving Jesus, serving Jesus and united to Jesus in
   the hope that they shall be conformed to the image of Jesus and dwell
   with Him, world without end.

   But some will say, "We can very clearly understand how Andrew brought
   Peter to the Lord, because Jesus was here among men and they could walk
   together till they found Him." Yes, but Jesus is not dead and it is a
   mistake to suppose that He is not readily to be reached. Prayer is a
   messenger that can find Jesus at any hour. Jesus is gone up on high as
   to His body, but His spiritual Presence remains with us. And the Holy
   Spirit, as the Head of this dispensation, is always near at hand to
   every Believer. Intercede, then, for your friends! Plead with Christ on
   their account! Mention their names in your constant prayers! Set apart
   special times in which you plead with God for them. Let your dear
   sister's case ring in the ears of the Mediator. Let your dear child's
   name be repeated again and again in your intercessions.

   As Abraham pleaded for Ishmael, so let your cry come up for those who
   are round about you, that the Lord would be pleased to visit them in
   His mercy. Intercession is a true bringing of souls to Christ and this
   means will prevail when you are shut out from employing any other. If
   your dear ones are in Australia, in some settler's hut where even a
   letter cannot reach them, prayer can find them out! No ocean can be too
   wide for prayer to span, no distance too great for prayer to travel.
   Far off as they are, you can take them up in the arms of believing
   prayer and bear them to Jesus and say, "Master, have mercy upon them."
   Here is a valuable weapon for those who cannot preach or teach--they
   can wield the sword of all-prayer. When hearts are too hard for sermons
   and good advice is rejected, it still remains to love to be allowed to
   plead with God for its wayward one. Tears and weeping are prevalent at
   the Mercy Seat and if we prevail there, the Lord will be sure to
   manifest His prevailing Grace in obdurate spirits.

   To bring men to Jesus you can adopt the next means, with most of them,
   namely, that of instructing them, or putting them in the way of being
   informed concerning the Gospel. It is a very wonderful thing that
   while, to us, the light of the Gospel is so abundant, it should be so
   very partially distributed in this country. When I have expounded my
   own hope in Christ to two or three in a railway carriage, I have found
   myself telling my listeners perfect novelties! I have seen the look of
   astonishment upon the face of many an intelligent Englishman when I
   have explained the doctrine of the substitutionary Sacrifice of Christ.
   I have even met with persons who have attended their parish Church from
   their youth up who were totally ignorant of the simple truth of
   justification by faith!

   Yes, and I have known some who have been to dissenting places of
   worship who do not seem to have laid hold of the fundamental Truth of
   God that no man is saved by his own doings, but that salvation is
   procured by faith in the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. This
   nation is steeped up to the throat in self-righteous doctrine, and the
   Protestantism of Martin Luther is very generally unknown. The Truth is
   held by as many as God's Grace has called, but the great outlying world
   still talk of doing your best and then hoping in God's mercy--of legal
   self-confidence, and I know not what beside--while the master doctrine
   that he who believes in Jesus is saved by Jesus' finished work, is
   sneered at as enthusiasm, or attacked as leading to licentiousness.

   Proclaim it, then! Proclaim it on all sides! Take care that none under
   your influence shall be left in ignorance of it! I can bear personal
   witness that the statement of the Gospel has often proved, in God's
   hand, enough to lead a soul into immediate peace. Not many months ago I
   met with a lady holding sentiments of almost undiluted popery and in
   conversing with her I was delighted to see how interesting and
   attractive a thing the Gospel was to her. She complained that she
   enjoyed no peace of mind as the result of her religion and never seemed
   to have done enough. She had a high idea of priestly absolution, but it
   had evidently been quite unable to yield repose to her spirit. Death
   was feared. God was terrible--even Christ an object of awe rather than
   love.

   When I told her that whoever believes on Jesus is perfectly forgiven
   and that I knew I was forgiven--that I was as sure of it as of my own
   existence--that I feared neither to live nor to die, for it would be
   the same to me, because God had given me eternal life in His Son--I saw
   that a new set of thoughts were astonishing her mind! She said, "If I
   could believe that, I should be the happiest person in the world." I
   did not deny the inference, but claimed to have proved its truth and I
   have reason to believe that the little simple talk we had has not been
   forgotten. You cannot tell how many may be in bondage for lack of the
   simplest possible instruction upon the plainest Truths of the Gospel of
   Jesus Christ!

   Many, too, may be brought to Christ through your example. Believe me,
   there is no preaching in this world like the preaching of a holy life!
   It shames me, sometimes, and weakens me in my testimony for my Master,
   when I stand here and recollect that some professors of religion are a
   disgrace not only to their religion, but even to common morality. It
   makes me feel as though I must speak with bated breath and trembling
   knees when I remember the damnable hypocrisy of those

   who thrust themselves into the Church of God and by their abominable
   sins bring disgrace upon the cause of God and eternal destruction upon
   themselves!

   In proportion as a Church is holy, in that proportion will its
   testimony for Christ be powerful. Oh, were the saints immaculate, our
   testimony would be like fire among the stubble! Like the flaming
   firebrand in the midst of the sheaves of corn! Were the saints of God
   less like the world, more disinterested, more prayerful, more godlike,
   the tramp of the armies of Zion would shake the nations and the day of
   the victory of Christ would surely dawn! Freely might the Church barter
   her most golden-mouthed preacher if she received in exchange men of
   Apostolic life! I would be content that the pulpit should be empty if
   all the members of the Church would preach Jesus by their patience in
   suffering, by their endurance in temptation, by exhibiting in the
   household those Graces which adorn the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

   Oh, so live, I pray you, in God's fear and by the Spirit's power, that
   they who see you may ask, "From where has this man this holiness?" and
   may follow you till they are led by you to Jesus Christ to learn the
   secret by which men live unto God! You can bring men to Jesus by your
   example, then. And once again, let me say, before I close this point,
   our object should be to bring men to Jesus--having tried intercession
   and instruction and example--by occasionally, as time and opportunity
   may serve us, giving a word of importunate entreaty. Half-a-dozen words
   from a tender mother to a boy who is just leaving home for an
   apprenticeship, may drop like gentle dew from Heaven upon you. A few
   sentences from a kind and prudent father given to the daughter, still
   unconverted, as she enters upon her married life, and to her husband,
   kindly and affectionately put, may make that household forever a house
   for God.

   A kind word dropped by a brother to a sister. A little letter written
   from a sister to her brother, though it should be only a line or two,
   may be God's arrow of Divine Grace. I have known even such little
   things as a tear or an anxious glance work wonders. You perhaps may
   have heard the story of Mr. Whitefield, who made it his wish wherever
   he stayed to talk to the members of the household about their
   souls--with each one personally. But stopping at a certain house of a
   Colonel, who was all that could be wished except a Christian, he was so
   pleased with the hospitality he received and so charmed with the
   general character of the good Colonel and his wife and daughters, that
   he did not like to speak to them about a decision as he would have done
   if they had been less amiable characters.

   He had stopped with them for a week and during the last night, the
   Spirit of God visited him so that he could not sleep. "These people,"
   he said, "have been very kind to me and I have not been faithful to
   them. I must do it before I go. I must tell them that whatever good
   thing they have, if they do not believe in Jesus they are lost." He
   arose and prayed. After praying he still felt contention in his spirit.
   His old nature said, "I cannot do it," but the Holy Spirit seemed to
   say, "Leave them not without warning." At last he thought of a device
   and prayed God to accept it. He wrote upon a diamond-shaped pane of
   glass in the window with his ring these words:--"One thing you lack."

   He could not bring himself to speak to them, but went his way with many
   a prayer for their conversion. He had no sooner gone than the good
   woman of the house, who was a great admirer of his, said, "I will go up
   to his room--I want to look at the very place where the man of God has
   been." She went up and noticed on the window pane those words, "One
   thing you lack." It struck her with conviction in a moment. "Ah," she
   said, "I thought he did not care much about us, for I knew he always
   pleaded with those with whom he stopped and when I found that he did
   not do so with us, I thought we had vexed him, but I see how it was--he
   was too tender in mind to speak to us."

   She called her daughters up. "Look there, girls," she said, "see what
   Mr. Whitefield has written on the window, 'One thing you lack.' Call up
   your father." And the father came up and read that, too, "One thing you
   lack," and around the bed where the man of God had slept they all knelt
   down and sought that God would give them the one thing they lacked. And
   before they left that chamber they had found that one thing and the
   whole household rejoiced in Jesus! It is not long ago that I met with a
   friend, one of whose Church members preserves that very pane of glass
   in her family as an heirloom.

   Now, if you cannot admonish and warn in one way, do it in another! But
   take care to clear your soul of the blood of your relatives and
   friends, so that it may never crimson your garments and accuse you
   before God's bar. So live and so speak and teach, by some means or
   other, that you shall have been faithful to God and faithful to the
   souls of men.

   III. I must now take you to a third point. We have had the missionary
   disciple and his great object. We have now, thirdly, HIS WISE METHODS.
   I have touched upon this subject already, but I could not help it.
   Andrew, being zealous, was wise. Earnestness often gives prudence and
   puts a man in the possession of tact, if not of talent. Andrew used
   what

   ability he had. If he had been as some young men are of my
   acquaintance, he would have said, "I would like to serve God. How I
   would like to preach! And I would require a large congregation."

   Well, there is a pulpit on every street in London--there is a most wide
   and effectual door for preaching in this great city of ours beneath
   God's blue sky. But this young zealot would rather prefer an easier
   berth than the open air, and, because he is not invited to the largest
   pulpits, does nothing. How much better it would be if, like Andrew, he
   began to use the ability he had among those who are accessible to him,
   and from there stepped to something else and from that to something
   else, advancing year by year!

   Sirs, if Andrew had not been the means of converting his brother, the
   probabilities are that he never would have been an Apostle. Christ had
   some reason in the choice of His Apostles to their office and perhaps
   the ground of His choice of Andrew as an Apostle was this--"He is an
   earnest man, he brought me Simon Peter. He is always speaking privately
   to individuals. I will make an Apostle of him." Now, you young men, if
   you become diligent in tract distribution, diligent in the Sunday
   school, you are likely men to be made into ministers. But if you stop
   and do nothing until you can do everything, you will remain useless--an
   impediment to the Church instead of being a help to her!

   Dear Sisters in Jesus Christ, you must, none of you, dream that you are
   in a position in which you can do nothing at all. That is such a
   mistake in Providence as God cannot commit. You must have some talent
   entrusted to you and something given you to do which no one else can
   do. Out of this whole structure of the human body, every little muscle,
   every single cell has its own secretion and its own work. And though
   some physicians have said this and that organ might be spared, I
   believe that there is not a single thread in the whole embroidery of
   human nature that could well be spared-- the whole of the fabric is
   required.

   So in the mystical body, the Church, the least member is necessary. The
   most uncomely member of the Christian Church is necessary for its
   growth. Find out, then, what your sphere is and occupy it! Ask God to
   tell you what is your niche and stand in it, occupying the place till
   Jesus Christ shall come and give you your reward! Use what ability you
   have and use it at once! Andrew proved his wisdom in that he set great
   store by a single soul. He bent all his efforts at first upon one man.
   Afterwards, Andrew, through the Holy Spirit, was made useful to scores,
   but he began with one. What a task for the mathematician, to value one
   soul! One soul sets all Heaven's bells ringing by its repentance. One
   sinner that repents makes angels rejoice! What if you spend a whole
   life pleading and laboring for the conversion of that one child? If you
   win that pearl it shall pay you your life's worth. Be not, therefore,
   dull and discouraged because your class declines in numbers, or because
   the mass of those with whom you labor reject your testimony.

   If a man could earn but one in a day he might be satisfied. "One what?"
   asks one. I meant not one penny, but 1,000 pounds. "Ah," you say, "that
   would be an immense reward." So if you earn but one soul you must
   reckon what that one is--it is one for numeration, but for value it
   exceeds all that earth could show. What would it profit a man if he
   gained the whole world and lost his soul? And what loss would it be to
   you, dear Brother, if you did lose all the world and gained your soul
   and God made you useful in the gaining of the souls of others? Be
   content and labor in your sphere, even if it is small, and you will be
   wise.

   You may imitate Andrew in not going far afield to do good. Many
   Christians do all the good they can five miles off from their own
   house, when the time they take to go there and back might be well spent
   in the vineyard at home. I do not think it would be a wise regulation
   of the parochial authorities if they required the inhabitants of St.
   Mary, Newington, to remove the snow from the pavement of St. Pancras
   and the inhabitants of St. Pancras to keep the pavement of St. Mary,
   Newington, clean. It is best and most convenient that each householder
   should sweep before his own door--and so it is our duty, as Believers,
   to do all the good we can in the place where God has been pleased to
   locate us and especially in our own households.

   If every man has a claim upon me, much more my own offspring. If every
   woman has some demand upon me as to her soul, so far as my ability
   goes, much more such as are of my own flesh and blood. Piety must begin
   at home as well as charity. Conversion should begin with those who are
   nearest to us in ties of relationship. Brothers and Sisters, during
   this month I stir you up--not to be attempting missionary labors for
   India, not to be casting eyes of pity across to Africa, not to be
   occupied so much with tears for popish and heathen lands--as for your
   own children, your own flesh and blood, your own neighbors, your own
   acquaintances. Lift up your cry to Heaven for them and then afterwards
   you shall preach among the nations!

   Andrew goes to Cappadocia in his later life, but he begins with his
   brother. And you shall labor where you please in years to come, but
   first of all your own household! First of all those who are under your
   own shadow must receive your guardian care. Be wise in this thing. Use
   the ability you have and use it among those who are near at hand.
   Perhaps somebody will be saying, "How did Andrew persuade Simon Peter
   to come to Christ"? Two or three minutes may be spent in answering that
   enquiry. He did so, first, by narrating his own personal experience. He
   said, "We have found the Messiah."

   What you have experienced of Christ tell to others. He did so next by
   intelligently explaining to him what it was he had found. He did not
   say he had found someone who had impressed him, but he knew not who He
   was. He told him he had found Messiah, that is, Christ. Be clear in
   your knowledge of the Gospel and your experience of it and then tell
   the Good News to those whose soul you seek. Andrew had power over Peter
   because of his own decided conviction. He did not say, "I hope I have
   found Christ," but, "I have found Him." He was sure of that! Get full
   assurance of your own salvation. There is no weapon like it. He that
   speaks doubtingly of what he would convince another, asks that other to
   doubt his testimony. Be positive in your experience and your assurance,
   for this will help you.

   Andrew had power over Peter because he put the good news before him in
   an earnest fashion. He did not say to him, as though it were a
   commonplace fact, "The Messiah has come," but no, he communicated it to
   him as the most weighty of all messages with becoming tones and
   gestures, I doubt not, "We have found the Messiah, which is called
   Christ!"

   Now then, Brothers and Sisters, to your own kinsfolk tell your belief,
   your enjoyments, and your assurance! Tell all judiciously, with
   assurance of the truth of it, and who can tell whether God may not
   bless your work?

   IV. My time is past. I meant to have spoken of THE SWEET REWARD Andrew
   had. His reward being that he won a soul--won his brother's soul--won
   such a treasure! He won no other than that Simon who at the first cast
   of the Gospel net, when Christ had made him a soul-fisherman, caught
   3,000 souls at a single haul! Peter, a very prince in the Christian
   Church! One of the mightiest of the servants of the Lord, in all his
   later usefulness, would be a comfort to Andrew. I should not wonder but
   what Andrew would say in days of doubt and fear, "Blessed be God that
   He has made Peter so useful! Blessed be God that ever I spoke to Peter!
   What I cannot do, Peter will help to do. And while I sit down in my
   helplessness, I can feel thankful that my dear brother, Peter, is
   honored in bringing souls to Christ."

   In this house today there may sit an unconverted Whitefield! In your
   class this afternoon there may be an unsaved John Wesley, a Calvin, and
   a Luther--mute and inglorious--yet who is to be called, by God's Grace,
   through you. Your fingers may yet wake to ecstasy the living heart that
   up till now has not been tuned to the praise of Christ! You may kindle
   the fire which shall light up a sacred sacrifice of a consecrated life
   to Christ! Only be up and doing for the Lord Jesus! Be importunate and
   prayerful! Be zealous and self-sacrificing. Unite with us, during this
   month, in your daily prayers!

   Constantly, while in business, let your hearts go up for the blessing,
   and I make no doubt of it, that, when we have proved our God by prayer,
   He will pour us down such a blessing that we shall not have room to
   receive it! The Lord make it so, for His name's sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--John 1:19-51.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Importunate Widow

   A sermon

   (No. 856)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, FEBRUARY 21, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "And He spoke a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to
   pray and not to faint, saying, There was in a city a judge which feared
   not God, neither regarded man: and there was a widow in that city; and
   she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of my adversary. And he would not
   for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not
   God, nor regard man; yet because this widow troubles me, I will avenge
   her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And the Lord said, Hear
   what the unjust judge says. And shall not God avenge His own elect,
   which cry day and night unto Him, though He bear long with them? I tell
   you that He will avenge them speedily."- Luke 18:1-8.

   REMEMBER that our Lord did not only inculcate prayer with great
   earnestness, but He was Himself a brilliant example of it. It always
   gives force to a teacher's words when his hearers know that he carries
   out his own instructions. Jesus was a mighty Prophet both in deed and
   in word, and we read of Him, "Jesus began both to do and to teach." In
   the exercise of prayer, "cold mountains and the midnight air" witnessed
   that He was as great a Doer as a Teacher. When He exhorted His
   disciples to continue in prayer and to "pray without ceasing," He only
   bade them follow in His steps. If any one of all the members of the
   mystical body might have been supposed to need no prayer, it would
   certainly have been our Covenant Head, but if our Head abounded in
   supplication, much more ought we, the inferior members!

   He was never defiled with the sins which have debased and weakened us
   spiritually. He had no inbred lusts to struggle with. But if the
   perfectly pure drew near so often unto God, how much more incessant in
   supplication ought we to be! So mighty, so great and yet so prayerful!
   O you weak ones of the flock, how forcibly does the lesson come home to
   you! Imagine, therefore, the discourse of this morning is not preached
   to you by me, but comes fresh from the lips of One who was the great
   master of secret prayer, the highest paragon and pattern of private
   supplication--and let every word have the force about it as coming from
   such a One.

   We turn at once to our text and in it we shall notice, first, the end
   and design of the parable. Secondly, we shall have some words to say
   upon the two actors in it, whose characters are intentionally so
   described as to give force to the reasoning. And then, thirdly, we
   shall dwell upon the power which in the parable is represented as
   triumphant.

   I. First, then, consider our LORD'S DESIGN IN THIS PARABLE--"Men ought
   always to pray and not to faint." But can men pray always? There was a
   sect in the earlier days of Christianity who were foolish enough to
   read the passage literally and to attempt praying without ceasing by
   continual repetition of prayers. They, of course, separated themselves
   from all worldly concerns--and in order to fulfill one duty of life
   neglected every other! Such madmen might well expect to reap the due
   reward of their follies.

   Happily there is no need in this age for us to duplicate such an error!
   There is far more necessity to cry out against those who, under the
   pretense of praying always, have no settled time for prayer at all and
   so run to the opposite extreme. Our Lord meant, by saying men ought
   always to pray, that they ought to be always in the spirit of
   prayer--always ready to pray. Like the old knights, always in
   warfare--not always on their steeds dashing forward with their lances
   in position to unhorse an adversary--but always wearing their weapons
   where they could readily reach them and always ready to encounter
   wounds or death for the sake of the cause which they championed. Those
   grim warriors often slept in their armor. So even when we sleep, we are
   still to be in the spirit of prayer, so that if perhaps we wake in the
   night we may still be with God.

   Our soul, having received the Divine influence which makes it seek its
   heavenly center, should be evermore naturally rising towards God
   Himself. Our heart is to be like those beacons and watchtowers which
   were prepared along the coast of England when the invasion of the
   Armada was hourly expected, not always blazing, but with the wood
   always dry and

   the match always there--the whole pile being ready to blaze up at the
   appointed moment. Our souls should be in such a condition that
   ejaculatory prayer should be very frequent with us. No need to pause in
   business and leave the counter and fall down upon our knees--the spirit
   should send up its silent, short, swift petitions to the Throne of
   Grace.

   When Nehemiah would ask a favor of the king, you will remember that he
   found an opportunity to do so through the king's asking him, "Why are
   you sad?" But before he gave him an answer he says, "I prayed unto the
   King of Heaven." Instinctively perceiving the occasion, he did not leap
   forward to embrace it, but he halted just a moment to ask that he might
   be enabled to embrace it wisely and fulfill his great design in it. So
   you and I should often feel, "I cannot do this till I have asked a
   blessing on it." However impulsively I may spring forward to gain an
   advantage, yet my spirit, under the influence of Divine Grace, should
   hesitate until it has said, "If Your Spirit goes not with me, carry me
   not up."

   A Christian should carry the weapon of all-prayer like a drawn sword in
   his hand. We should never sheathe our supplications. Never may our
   hearts be like an unloaded gun, with everything to be done to it before
   it can thunder on the foe! But it should be like a primed cannon,
   loaded and ready, only requiring the fire that it may be discharged.
   The soul should be not always in the exercise of prayer, but always in
   the energy of prayer. Not always actually praying, but always
   intentionally praying. Further, when our Lord says men ought always to
   pray, He may also have meant that the whole life of the Christian
   should be a life of devotion to God--

   "Prayer and praise, with sins forgiven, Bring down to earth the bliss
   of Heaven." To praise God for mercies received both with our voices and
   with our actions, and then to pray to God for the mercies that we need,
   devoutly acknowledging that they come from Him--these two exercises in
   one form or other should make up the sum total of human life.

   Our life psalm should be composed of alternating verses of praying and
   of praising until we get into the next world, where the prayer may
   cease and praise may swallow up the whole of our immortality. "But,"
   says one, "we have our daily business to attend to." I know you have,
   but there is a way of making business a part of praise and prayer. You
   say, "Give us this day our daily bread," and that is a prayer as you
   utter it. You go off to your work and as you toil, if you do so in a
   devout spirit, you are actively praying the same prayer by your lawful
   labor. You praise God for the mercies received in your morning hymn.
   And when you go into the duties of life and there exhibit those Graces
   which reflect honor upon God's name, you are continuing your praises in
   the best manner.

   Remember that with Christians to labor is to pray, and that there is
   much truth in the verse of Coleridge--

   "He prays best who loves best."

   To desire my fellow creatures' good and to seek after it. To desire
   God's Glory and so to live as to promote it is the truest of devotion.
   The devotion of the cloisters is by no means equal to that of the man
   who is engaged in the battle of life. The devotion of the nunnery and
   the monastery is at best the heroism of a soldier who shuns the
   battle--but the devotion of the man in business life who turns all to
   the Glory of God, is the courage of one who seeks the thickest of the
   fray and there bears aloft the grand old standard of Jehovah-Nissi! You
   need not be afraid that there is anything in any lawful calling that
   need make you desist from vital prayer!

   But, oh, if your calling is such that you cannot pray in it--you had
   better leave it! If it is a sinful calling, an unholy calling, of
   course, you cannot present that to God! But any of the ordinary
   avocations of life are such that if you cannot sanctify them, it is a
   lack of sanctity in yourself and the fault lies with you. Men ought
   always to pray. It means that when they are using the lap stone, or the
   chisel. When the hands are on the plow handles, or on the spade. When
   they are measuring out the goods. When they are dealing in
   stocks--whatever they are doing--they are to turn all these things into
   a part of the sacred pursuit of God's Glory. Their common garments are
   to be vestments. Their meals are to be sacraments. Their ordinary
   actions are to be sacrifices and they themselves a royal priesthood, a
   peculiar people zealous for good works.

   A third meaning which I think our Lord intended to convey to us was
   this--men ought always to pray--that is, they should persevere in
   prayer. This is probably His first meaning. When we ask God for a mercy
   once, we are not to consider that now we are not further to trouble Him
   with it, but we are to come to Him again and again. If we have asked of
   Him seven times, we ought to continue until 70 times seven. In temporal
   mercies there may be a limit and the Holy Spirit may bid us ask no
   more. Then must we say, "the Lord's will be done." If it is anything
   for our own personal

   advantage, we must let the Spirit of submission rule us, so that after
   having sought the Lord thrice, we shall be content with the promise,
   "My Grace is sufficient for you," and no longer ask that the thorn in
   the flesh should be removed.

   But in spiritual mercies and especially in the united prayers of a
   Church, there is no taking a no for an answer! Here, if we would
   prevail, we must persist! We must continue incessantly and constantly
   and know no pause to our prayer till we win the mercy to the fullest
   possible extent. "Men ought always to pray." Week by week, month by
   month, year by year--the conversion of that dear child is to be the
   father's main plea. The bringing in of that unconverted husband is to
   lie upon the wife's heart night and day till she gets it! She is not to
   take even 10 or 20 years of unsuccessful prayer as a reason why she
   should cease--she is to set God no times nor seasons--but so long as
   there is life in her and life in the dear object of her solicitude, she
   is to continue, still, to plead with the mighty God of Jacob.

   The pastor is not to seek a blessing on his people occasionally and
   then in receiving a measure of it to desist from further
   intercession--he is to continue vehemently without pause, without
   restraining his energies--to cry aloud and spare not till the windows
   of Heaven are opened and a blessing is given too large for him to
   house! But, Brethren, how many times we ask of God and have not because
   we do not wait long enough at the door? We knock a time or two at the
   gate of Mercy and as no friendly messenger opens the door, we go our
   ways. Too many prayers are like boys' runaway knocks--given and then
   the giver is away before the door can be opened. O for Divine Grace to
   stand foot to foot with the Angel of God--and never, never, never relax
   our hold--feeling that the cause we plead is one in which we must be
   successful, for souls depend on it, the Glory of God is connected with
   it, the state of our fellow men is in jeopardy!

   If we have given up in prayer our own lives and the lives of those
   dearest to us, yet the souls of men we cannot give up! We must urge and
   plead again and again until we obtain the answer--

   "The humble suppliant cannot fail

   To have his needs supplied, Since He for sinners intercedes Who once
   for sinners died."

   I cannot leave this part of the subject without observing that our Lord
   would have us learn that men should be more frequent in prayer. Not
   only should they always have the spirit of prayer and make their whole
   lives a prayer and persevere in any one object which is dear to their
   souls, but there should be a greater frequency of prayer among all the
   saints. I gather that from the parable, "lest by her continual coming
   she weary me."

   Prayerfulness will scarcely be kept up long unless you set apart times
   and seasons for prayer. There are no times laid down in Scripture
   except by the example of holy men, for the Lord trusts much to the love
   of His people and to the spontaneous motions of the inner life. He does
   not say, "Pray at seven o'clock in the morning every day," or "pray at
   night at eight, or nine, or 10, or eleven." He says, "Pray without
   ceasing." Yet every Christian will find it exceedingly useful to have
   his regular times for retirement, and I doubt whether any eminent piety
   can be maintained without these seasons being very carefully and
   scrupulously observed.

   We read in the old traditions of James the Apostle, that he prayed so
   much that his knees grew hard through his long kneeling. And it is
   recorded by Fox, that Latimer, during the time of his imprisonment, was
   so much upon his knees that frequently the poor old man could not rise
   to his meals and had to be lifted up by his servants. When he could no
   longer preach and was confined within stone walls, his prayers went up
   to Heaven for his country, and we in these times are receiving the
   blessing! Daniel prayed with his windows open daily and at regular
   intervals. "Seven times a day," says one, "will I praise You." David
   declared that at, "evening and morning, and at noon," would he wait
   upon God. O that our intervals of prayer were not so distant, one from
   the other! Pray that God will grant us Grace that on the pilgrimage of
   life the wells at which we drink are more frequent!

   Our Lord means, to sum up the whole, that Believers should exercise a
   universality of supplication--we ought to pray at all times. There are
   no canonical hours in the Christian's day or week. We should pray from
   cockcrowing to midnight, at such times as the Spirit moves us. We
   should pray in all circumstances--in our poverty and in our wealth, in
   our health and in our sickness, in the bright days of festival and in
   the dark nights of lamentation. We should pray at the birth and pray at
   the funeral. We should pray when our soul is glad within us by reason
   of abundant mercy and we should pray when our soul draws near unto the
   gates of death by reason of heaviness. We should pray in all
   transactions, whether secular or religious. Prayer should sanctify
   everything.

   The Word of God and prayer should come in over and above the common
   things of daily life. Pray over a bargain. Pray over going into the
   shop and coming out again. Remember in the days of Joshua how the
   Gibeonites deceived Israel because Israel enquired not of the Lord. Be
   you not deceived by a specious temptation, as you may well be if you do
   not daily come to the Lord and say, "Guide me! Make straight a plain
   path for my feet and lead me in the way everlasting." You shall never
   err by praying too much! You shall never make a mistake by asking God's
   guidance too often! But you shall find this to be the gracious
   illumination of your eyes, if in the turning of the road where two
   paths meet which seem to be equally right, you shall stay a moment and
   cry unto God, "Guide me, O great Jehovah." "Men ought always to pray."
   I have enlarged upon it from this pulpit--go and expound it in your
   daily lives.

   II. In enforcing this precept, our Lord gives us a parable in which
   there are TWO ACTORS, the characteristics of the two actors being such
   as to add strength to His precept. In the first verse of the parable
   there is a judge. Now, here is the great advantage to us in prayer.
   Brethren, if this poor woman prevailed with a judge whose office is
   stern, unbending, untender, how much more ought you and I to be instant
   in prayer and hopeful of success when we have to supplicate a Father!

   Far other is a father than a judge. The judge must necessarily be
   impartial, stern--but the father is necessarily partial to his child,
   compassionate and tender to his own offspring. Does she prevail over a
   judge, and shall not we prevail with our Father who is in Heaven? And
   does she continue in her desperate need to weary him until she wins
   what she desires-- and shall not we continue in the agony of our
   desires until we get from our heavenly Father whatever His Word has
   promised? In addition to being a judge, he was devoid of all good
   character. In both branches he failed. He "feared not God." Conscience
   was seared in him--he had no thoughts of the great Judgment Seat before
   which judges must appear.

   Though possibly he had taken an oath before God to judge impartially,
   yet he forgot his oath and trod justice under his feet. "Neither did he
   regard man." The approbation of his fellow creatures, which is very
   often a power, even with naturally bad men either to restrain them from
   overt evil, or else to constrain them to righteousness--this principle
   had no effect upon him. Now, if the widow prevailed over such a wretch
   as this! If the iron of her importunity broke the iron and steel of
   this man's stubbornness, how much more may we expect to be successful
   with Him who is righteous and just and good--the Friend of the needy,
   the Father of the fatherless, and the Avenger of all such as are
   oppressed?!

   O let the Character of God, as it rises before you in all its majesty
   of truthfulness and faithfulness, blended with loving kindness and
   tenderness and mercy, excite in you an indefatigable ardor of
   supplication, making you resolve with this poor woman that you will
   never cease to supplicate until you win your case! The judge was a man
   so unutterably bad that he even confessed his badness to himself, with
   great contentment, too. Without the slightest tinge of remorse, he said
   within himself, "Though I fear not God, neither regard man." There are
   few sinners who will go to this length. They may neither fear God nor
   regard men, yet still they will indulge in their minds some semblance
   of that which is virtuous and cheat themselves into the belief that, at
   least, they are not worse than others.

   But with this man there was no self-deception. He was as cool about
   this avowal as the Pharisee was concerning the opposite, "God, I thank
   You that I am not as other men are." To what a brazen impertinence must
   this man have come! To what an extent must he have hardened his mind,
   that knowing himself to be such, he yet climbed the judgment seat and
   sat there to judge his fellow men! Yet the woman prevailed with this
   monster in human form who had come to take pleasure in his own
   wickedness and gloated in the badness of his own heart! Over this man
   importunity prevailed--how much more over Him who spared not His own
   Son, but freely delivered Him up for us all? How much more over Him
   whose name is Love, whose Nature is everything that is attractive and
   encouraging to such as seek His face? As we look at him, the more evil
   this judge appears, and he could scarcely have been painted in blacker
   colors, the more does the voice of the Savior seem to say to us, "Men
   ought always to pray and not to faint."

   Note with regard to the character of this judge that he was one who
   consciously cared for nothing but his own ease. When at last he
   consented to do justice, the only motive which moved him was, "lest by
   her continual coming she weary me. "She stun me," might be the Greek
   word--a kind of slang, I suppose, of that period, meaning lest "she
   batter me," "she bruise me," and as some translate it, "blacken my face
   with her incessant constant battering." That was the kind of language
   he used--a short quick sentence of indignation at being bothered, as we
   should say, by such a case as this! The only thing that moved him was a
   desire to be at ease and to take things comfortably.

   O Brothers and Sisters, if she could prevail over such a one, how much
   more shall we speed with God whose delight it is to take care of His
   children? Who loves them even as the apple of His eye! This judge was
   practically unkind and cruel to her, yet the widow continued. For
   awhile he would not listen to her--though her household, her life, her
   children's comfort--were all hanging upon his will. He left her by a
   passive injustice to suffer. But our God has been practically kind and
   gracious to us--up to this moment He has heard us and granted our
   requests. Set this against the character of the judge, and surely every
   loving heart that knows the power of prayer will be moved to incessant
   importunity!

   We must, however, pass on, now, to notice the other actor in the
   scene--the widow, and here everything tells again the same way--to
   induce the Church of God to be importunate. She was apparently a
   perfect stranger to the judge. She appeared before him as an individual
   in whom he took no interest. He had possibly never seen her before. Who
   she was and what she wanted was no concern to him. But when the Church
   appears before God she comes as Christ's own bride. She appears before
   the Father as one whom He has loved with an everlasting love. And shall
   He not avenge His own elect, His own chosen, His own people? Shall not
   their prayers prevail with Him, when a stranger's importunity won a
   suit of an unwilling judge?

   The widow appeared at the judgment seat without a friend. According to
   the parable, she had no advocate, no powerful pleader to stand up in
   the court and say, "I am the patron of this humble woman." If she
   prevailed, she must prevail by her own ardor and her own intensity of
   purpose. But when you and I come before our Father, we come not alone,
   for--

   "He is at the Father's side, The Man of love, the Crucified."

   We have a Friend who ever lives to make intercession for us! O
   Christian, urge your suit with holy boldness! Press your case, for the
   blood of Jesus speaks with a voice that must be heard! Be not,
   therefore, faint in your spirit, but continue instant in your
   supplication. This poor woman came without a promise to encourage her,
   no, with the reverse--with much to discourage! But when you and I come
   before God, we are commanded to pray by God Himself, and we are
   promised that if we ask it shall be given us, if we seek we shall find!

   Does she win without the sacred weapon of the promise and shall not we
   win who can set the battering rams of God's own Word against the gates
   of Heaven--a battering ram that shall make every timber in those gates
   quiver? O Brethren, we must not pause nor cease a moment while we have
   God's promise to back our plea! The widow, in addition to having no
   promise whatever, was even without the right of constant access. She
   had, I suppose, a right to clamor to be heard at ordinary times when
   judgment was administered, but what right had she to dog the judge's
   footsteps--to waylay him in the streets, to hammer at his private
   door--to be heard calling at nightfall, so that he, sleeping at the top
   of his house, was awakened by her cries?

   She had no permission so to importune, but we may come to God at all
   times and all seasons! We may cry day and night unto Him, for He has
   bid us pray without ceasing! What? Without a permit is this woman so
   incessant? And with the sacred permissions which God has given us and
   the encouragement of abounding loving kindness, shall we cease to
   plead? She, poor soul, every time she prayed, provoked the judge! Lines
   of anger were on his face. I doubt not he foamed at the mouth to think
   he should be wearied by a person so insignificant! But with Jesus,
   every time we plead we please Him rather than provoke Him! The prayers
   of the saints are the music of God's ears--

   "To Him there's music in a groan, And beauty in a tear."

   We, speaking after the manner of men, bring a gratification to God when
   we intercede with Him. He is vexed with us if we restrain our
   supplications. He is pleased with us when we draw near constantly. Oh,
   then, as you see the smile upon the Father's face, children of His
   love, I beseech you faint not, but continue, still, without ceasing to
   entreat the blessing!

   Once more, this woman had a suit in which the judge could not be
   himself personally interested. But ours is a case in which the God we
   plead with is more interested than we are! For when a Church asks for
   the conversion of souls, she may justly say, "Arise, O God, plead Your
   own cause." It is for the honor of Christ that souls should be
   converted! It brings Glory to the mercy and power of God when great
   sinners are turned from the error of their ways! Consequently we are
   pleading for the Judge with the Judge--for God we are pleading with
   God! Our prayer is virtually for Christ as through Christ, that His
   kingdom may come and His will may be done.

   I must not forget to mention that in this woman's case she was only
   one. She prevailed though she was only one! And shall not God avenge
   His own elect, who are not one, but tens of thousands? If there is a
   promise that if two or three are agreed it shall be done, how much more
   if in any Church hundreds meet together with unanimous souls anxiously
   desiring that God would fulfill His promise? These pleas cast chains
   around the Throne of God! How they, as it were, hem in Omnipotence! How
   they constrain the Almighty to arise out of His place and come in
   answer to His people, and do the great deed which shall bless His
   Church and glorify Himself!

   You see, then, whether we consider the judge, or consider the widow,
   each character has points about it which tend to make us see our duty
   and our privilege to pray without ceasing.

   III. The third and last point--THE POWER WHICH, ACCORDING TO THIS
   PARABLE, TRIUMPHED. This power was not the woman's eloquence, "I pray
   you avenge me of my adversary." These words are very few. They have the
   merit of being very expressive, but he that would study oratory will
   not gather many lessons from them. "I pray you avenge me of my
   adversary."

   Just eight words. You observe there is no plea, there is nothing about
   her widowhood, nothing urged about her children, nothing said about the
   wickedness of her adversary, nothing concerning the judgment of God
   upon unjust judges, nor about the wrath of God upon unjust men who
   devour widows' houses--nothing of the kind. "I pray you avenge me of my
   adversary." Her success, therefore, did not depend upon her power in
   rhetoric, and we learn from this that the prevalence of a soul or of a
   Church with God does not rest upon the elocution of its words, or upon
   the eloquence of its language!

   The prayer which mounts to Heaven may have but very few of the tail
   feathers of adornment about it, but it must have the strong wing
   feathers of intense desire! It must not be as the peacock, gorgeous for
   beauty, but it must be as the eagle, for soaring aloft, if it would
   ascend up to the seventh heavens. As a rule, when you pray in public,
   the shorter the better. Words are cumbersome to prayer. It often
   happens that an abundance of words reveals a scarcity of desires.
   Verbiage is generally nothing better in prayer than a miserable fig
   leaf with which to cover the nakedness of an unawakened soul.

   Another thing is quite certain, namely, that the woman did not prevail
   through the merits of her case. It may have been a very good
   case--there is nothing said about that. I do not doubt the rightness of
   it, but still, the judge did not know nor care whether it was right or
   wrong. All he cared about was that this woman troubled him. He does not
   say, "She has a good case and I ought to listen to it." No, he was too
   bad a man to be moved by such a motive--but, "she worries me"--that is
   all. "I will attend to it." So in our suit--in the suit of a sinner
   with God, it is not the merit of his case that can ever prevail with
   God. You have no merit! If you are to win, Another's merit must stand
   instead of yours and on your part it must not be merit but misery. It
   must not be your righteousness but your importunity that is to prevail
   with

   God!

   How this ought to encourage those of you who are laboring under a sense
   of unworthiness! However unworthy you may be, continue in prayer. Black
   may be the hand, but if it can but lift the knocker, the gate will
   open! Yes, though you have a palsy in that hand. Though, in addition to
   that palsy, you are leprous and the white leprosy is on your forehead,
   yet if you can but tremblingly lift up that knocker and let it fall by
   its own weight upon that sacred promise, you shall surely get an
   audience with the King of kings! It is NOT eloquence! It is NOT merit
   that wins with God--it is nothing

   but IMPORUNITY!

   Note with regard to this woman, that the judge said first she troubled
   him. Next he said, she came continually and then he added his fear,
   "lest she weary me." I think the case was somewhat after this fashion.
   The judge was sitting one morning on his bench and many were the
   persons coming before him asking for justice--which he was dealing out
   with the impartiality of a villain--giving always his best word to him
   who brought the heaviest bribes. When presently a poor woman uttered
   her complaint. She had tried to be heard several times, but her voice
   had been drowned by others. But this time it was more shrill and sharp
   and she caught the judge's eye. "My lord, avenge me of my adversary!"

   He no sooner sees from her poverty-stricken dress that there are no
   bribes to be had, than he replies, "Hold your tongue! I have other
   business to attend to." He goes on with another suit in which the fees
   were more attractive. Still he hears the cry again, "My lord, I am a
   widow, avenge me of my adversary." Vexed with the renewed disturbance,
   he bade the usher put her out because she interrupted the silence of
   the court and stopped the public business. "Take care she does

   not get in again tomorrow," he says, "she is a troublesome woman." Long
   before the morrow had come, he found out the truth of his opinion.

   She waited till he left the court, dogged his footsteps and followed
   him through the streets, until he was glad to get through his door, and
   bade the servants fasten it lest that noisy widow should come in, for
   she had constantly assailed him with the cry, "Avenge me of my
   adversary." He is now safely within doors and bids the servants bring
   in his meal. They are pouring water on his hands and feet. His Lordship
   is about to enjoy his repast, when a heavy knock is heard at the door,
   followed by a clamor, pushing and a scuffle. "What is it?" he asks. "It
   is a woman outside, a widow woman, who wants your Lordship to see
   justice done her." "Tell her I cannot attend to her, she must be gone."

   He seeks his rest at nightfall on the housetop, when he hears a heavy
   knock at the door and a voice comes up from the street beneath his
   residence, "My lord, avenge me of my adversary." The next morning his
   court is open, and, though she is forbidden to enter, like a dog that
   will enter somehow, she finds her way in and she interrupts the court
   continually with her plea, "My lord, avenge me of my adversary." Ask
   her why she is thus importunate and she will tell you her husband is
   dead and he left a little plot of land--it was all they had and a cruel
   neighbor who looked with greedy eyes upon that little plot, has taken
   it as Ahab took Naboth's vineyard. And now she is without any meal or
   any oil for the little ones and they are crying for food.

   Oh, if their father had been alive, how he would have guarded their
   interests but she has no helper and the case is a glaring one. And what
   is a judge for if he is not to protect the injured? She has no other
   chance, for the creditor is about to take away her children to sell
   them into bondage. She cannot bear that. "No," she says, "I have but
   one chance. It is that this man should speak up for me and do me
   justice. And I have made up my mind he shall never rest till he does
   so. I am resolved that if I perish, the last words on my lips shall be,
   'Avenge me of my adversary.'" So the court is continually interrupted.
   Again the judge shouts, "Put her out! Put her out! I cannot conduct the
   business at all with this crazy woman here continually dinning in my
   ears a shriek of, 'Avenge me of my adversary.'" And it is no sooner
   said than done.

   But she lays hold of the pillars of the court so as not to be dragged
   out and when at last they get her in the street, she does but wait her
   chance to enter again. She pursues the judge along the highways. She
   never lets him have a minute's peace. "Well," says the judge, "I am
   worried out of my very life. I care not for the widow, nor her
   property, nor her children. Let them starve, what are they to me? But I
   cannot stand this, it will weary me beyond measure. I will see to it."
   It is done and she goes her way. Nothing but her importunity prevailed.

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, you have many other weapons to use with God
   in prayer, but our Savior bids you not neglect this master,
   all-conquering, instrument of importunity! God will be more easily
   moved than this unjust judge if only you are as importunate as this
   widow was. If you are sure it is a right thing for which you are
   asking, plead now! Plead at noon! Plead at night! Plead on--with cries
   and tears spread out your case! Put your arguments in order! Back up
   your pleas with reasons! Urge the precious blood of Jesus! Set the
   wounds of Christ before the Father's eyes! Bring out the atoning
   sacrifice--point to Calvary--enlist the crowned Prince, the Priest who
   stands at the right hand of God! And resolve in your very soul that if
   Zion does not flourish, if souls are not saved, if your family is not
   blessed, if your own zeal is not revived, you will die with the plea
   upon your lips and with the importunate wish upon your spirits!

   Let me tell you that if any of you should die with your prayers
   unanswered, you need not conclude that God has disappointed you. With
   one story I will finish. I have heard that a certain godly father had
   the unhappiness to be the parent of some five or six most graceless
   sons. All of them, as they grew up, imbibed infidel sentiments and led
   an evil life. The father, who had been constantly praying for them and
   was a pattern of every virtue, hoped at least that in his death he
   might be able to say a word that should move their hearts. He gathered
   them to his bedside, but his unhappiness in dying was extreme, for he
   had lost the light of God's Countenance and was beset with doubts and
   fears. And the last black thought that haunted him was, "Instead of my
   death being a testimony for God, which will win my dear sons, what if I
   die in such darkness and gloom that I shall confirm them in their
   infidelity and lead them to think that there is nothing in Christianity
   after all?"

   The effect was the reverse. The sons came round the grave at the
   funeral and when they returned to the house, the eldest son thus
   addressed his brothers--"My brothers, throughout his lifetime our
   father often spoke to us about religion and we have always despised it.
   But what a sermon his deathbed has been to us! For if he, who served
   God so well

   and lived so near to God found it so hard a thing to die, what kind of
   death may we expect ours to be who have lived without God and without
   hope?" The same feeling possessed them all, and thus the father's death
   had strangely answered the prayers of his life through the Grace of
   God.

   You cannot tell but what, when you are in Glory, you should look down
   from the windows of Heaven and receive a double Heaven in beholding
   your dear sons and daughters converted by the words you left behind. I
   do not say this to make you cease pleading for their immediate
   conversion, but to encourage you. Never give up prayer, never be
   tempted to cease from it. So long as there is breath in your body and
   breath in their bodies, continue to pray, for I tell you that He will
   avenge you speedily though He bear long with you. God bless these words
   for Jesus' sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Luke 18:1-30.
     __________________________________________________________________

Timely Reflections

   A sermon

   (No. 857)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Evening, DECEMBER 27, 1868, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed."- Romans 13:11.

   BUT what "salvation" is this? The question is important because we very
   commonly speak of "salvation" as that state of Divine Grace into which
   everyone that believes in Jesus is introduced when he passes from death
   unto life, being delivered from the power of darkness and translated
   into the kingdom of God's dear Son. This sweet assurance we celebrate
   in our hymns of praise--

   "The moment a sinner believes And trusts in His crucified God, His
   pardon at once he receives, Redemption in full through His blood."

   Salvation, so far as the forgiveness of sin, the imputation of
   righteousness, and the eternal safety of the soul are concerned, is
   given to us the moment that we are brought to trust in Jesus. But the
   term, "salvation," here and in some other parts of Scripture signifies
   that complete deliverance from sin, that glorious perfection which will
   not be attained by us until the day of the appearing of our Lord and
   Savior Jesus Christ.

   Salvation here signifies entire deliverance from indwelling sin,
   perfect sanctification, and, as I take it, includes the resurrection of
   the body and the glorification of body and soul with Christ Jesus in
   the world to come. Salvation here means what many think it always
   implies, namely, eternal Glory. At this hour our perfect salvation is
   nearer than when we believed. Observe the date from which the Apostle
   begins to reckon. He does not say our salvation is nearer than when we
   were christened--that is a ceremony of which the Apostle never
   dreamed--a tradition and invention of men which had never crossed his
   mind!

   He does not say your salvation is nearer than when you were
   confirmed--that also was a thing quite unknown to him. He does not
   reckon even from our Baptism, as if he were to say, now is your
   salvation nearer than when you put on Christ openly in Baptism. But he
   strikes at the vital point--he specifies the true indication of
   spiritual life, namely, "believe." What could ever come of all that is
   before believing?. It is all death! It is not worth reckoning! No
   matter how studied the ceremony or how garnished with profession, up to
   the moment a man believes he has no spiritual life--he comes not into
   the happiness of the living--neither has the Apostle anything to say to
   him except that he is dead in trespasses and sins!

   The moment of faith is the moment from which he dates his spiritual
   career. It is when we look to Jesus hanging upon the Cross, our
   Substitute, that life comes to us. As we look we live! We look and are
   forgiven! We look and are saved-- and from that time forward with our
   faces Zionward we start upon the celestial pilgrimage towards that
   glorious City whose Builder and Maker is God. Thus it was, then, that
   the Apostle measured from one fixed point to another fixed point. If
   you have two shifting points you cannot say that now you are nearer
   this or that. If the time of our believing was not a fixed and definite
   moment, but a thing which may be put here or there, we could not reckon
   from that. And if the time of our emancipation from this body and our
   complete salvation were unsettled, precarious--a point that moves, a
   sort of planetary star--we could not say we are getting any nearer to
   it.

   But the Apostle takes a fixed point. There is a man saved. He has
   believed in Christ. That day he believed in Christ, yes, that very
   minute, he may not know which minute, but God knows, that very
   second--at that tick of the clock in which he trusted in Christ he
   became a new man--old things were passed away and all things became
   new. Therefore that is a fixed and definite point in that man's history
   from which to date. And there is another point, settled by God in the

   Divine decree, never to be removed, neither to be ante-dated nor
   post-dated--a moment when those that believe shall be with Christ where
   He is and shall be like He and shall behold His Glory forever!

   Now, between these two points you and I, if we have believed, are
   sailing! And this evening at the close of the year it seemed meet for
   me to haul up the log and just to note where we are on the sea that
   rolls between these two blessed points and to congratulate my fellow
   Believers that now--tonight--we are nearer the eternal port by the
   space of many years than when we first slipped our cable, hauled up the
   anchor and began to sail towards the haven of everlasting rest. "Now is
   our salvation nearer than when we believed."

   I have been told--I have not been on the voyage--but I have been told
   that in going to Australia it has frequently been the custom to toast
   "Friends behind," till they get half-way. And then it changes to,
   "Friends ahead." "Here's to the helm, friends behind," and then near to
   the port, "Friends ahead." Well, I am going to say something tonight
   about things behind, and then we shall congratulate you as we talk of
   things ahead. "Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed."

   I. THE THINGS THAT ARE BEHIND. I want you to look back a little, all of
   you who have started from the point of believing. Recollect--and it
   will do you good to recollect it--when you did believe. Oh, that
   blessed day! Of all the days we have ever seen, that was, in some
   respects, the brightest of all! Not to be compared with the day of our
   natural birth, for that was a day of our first weeping. But in the day
   of our new birth, we wept tears of sacred joy! We were thrust from
   death into life, from condemnation to acceptance, from everlasting
   peril into eternal safety--

   "Happy day, happy day! When Jesus washed my sins away!"

   That was the day, we may say, when we left the first shore--and you all
   know those who are going round the world to dwell on the other side,
   always look back with great satisfaction at the day when they left.
   When the vessel was first tugged out of dock and safely towed down to
   the Nore and began to try the deep sea wave, what congratulations there
   were of friends--and many tears, no doubt, and waving of handkerchiefs
   and hurrahing, as the vessel left the port. Well, now, in our case we
   remember how our friends and kinsfolk in Christ rejoiced over us--how
   glad they were to hear us tell the tale of saving Grace! They prized us
   as a new-born child is prized in the household. No, not only friends
   below, but the angels looking down from Heaven rejoiced over us as
   repenting sinners! And surely, if it were worth their while to rejoice
   when we believed, we need not blush to go back to that period.

   It is not very long with some of you--well, be grateful. It is a long
   time with some of you. Some of us can, no doubt, count 20 years since
   we first knew the Lord! Happy years they have been, too! And happy was
   that day when we became first enlisted in His service--when we first
   left the shores of earth to try and find the new country, the better
   land. Yes, "when we believed." We will dwell upon that time and let our
   souls ring the sweet silver bells of gratitude as we bless the Lord
   that we were not left to perish in our natural unbelief, but that we
   have believed in Christ Jesus.

   Since then--now turn to your logs--since then we have had a good number
   of storms. I remember that first storm we had in that Bay of
   Biscay--for there is generally such a bay as that soon after the
   mariner gets off from shore. What a tempest it was. We had not long
   rejoiced before all our rejoicing was gone. We had not long found
   Christ before we thought that Satan himself had found us! We fancied it
   was all a delusion. We were ready to give up our confidence! We had
   thought at first that the moment we believed there would be an end of
   conflicts, but we discovered that it was then the conflict began! And
   perhaps one of the severest storms our vessel has ever had was just at
   the first.

   You remember it. And we have had many since then, when the waves of
   unbelief have made us stand and tremble. You have seen one washed
   overboard that you thought very dear. You have yourselves suffered loss
   and endured great peril. You were glad to get some of your treasures.
   "But there," you said, "let the ingots go." Now the ship rights! Happy
   were you if you might, by losing earthly substances and carnal joys,
   find peace and safety in Christ. You remember, too, when you had to
   sail very slowly in the thick fog and keep the whistle always sounding,
   and the look-out you had to keep at the bows for fear you should run
   into something and come to mischief.

   And you remember when you had almost gone too far and you just caught
   sight of the red lights, for if you had but gone a little further your
   soul would have been wrecked, cast away forever. But Mercy interposed
   at the precise moment, when there was time yet to tack about and save
   the vessel and rescued us in the hour of temptation, saved us as by
   fire. Well, now, why do I call these things to your remembrance, but to
   make you bless the name of your God? You have been

   nearly shipwrecked, but you are not wrecked. The storm has been very
   furious, but above all the billows Jehovah's power has kept and
   preserved you! Your feet had almost gone. Your steps had well near
   slipped, but the Divine power interposed in everlasting Grace and to
   this day--a wonder unto many, but especially a wonder to yourself--you
   are still on the road towards the Celestial City and you are nearer to
   it than when you first believed.

   But I would not have your recollection of what is behind be altogether
   saddened. Remember, Beloved, you have had a great deal of fair weather,
   too, since you left the port of believing. Oh, there have been happy
   days with us! Blessed days, as the days of Heaven upon earth! We have
   sailed along with a favoring breeze. All has been happy within our
   spirits, and peace, like a river, has abounded in our souls. Let us
   praise the name of God for this! Life is not the dreary thing that some
   men say it is. It has its sorrows, for what rose has not its thorns?
   Thistles spring up in it, but after all, who would not expect the
   thistles to grow here and there in the midst of a harvest field? But we
   bear our testimony that we have not had such a bad time of it after
   all--

   "The men of Grace have found Glory begun below, Celestial fruit on
   earthly ground, From faith and hope may grow."

   So that behind us, since the hour we first believed, there are the
   storms from which we have escaped, but there are also the mercies, the
   loving kindnesses which we dare not and will not forget. Behind us,
   too, dear Brethren--and this will be a mingled thought--behind us, how
   many opportunities of service have we left? When we sailed ourselves,
   there were with us many other little ships and some of these--ah, some
   of these, have been cast away and shipwrecked before our eyes! In that
   night of storm, when we ourselves were hard beset, a companion vessel
   that bade fair to make as good a voyage as our own, went to pieces and
   was never heard of again. A great professor foundered--his hypocrisy
   was discovered and his profession ruined forever.

   Another, who seemed to be as ardent for the cause of Christ as we,
   passed away, stranded on simple pleasures, broken to pieces on the
   rocks of worldliness and lost--and we preserved! Blessed be God, we are
   preserved! But we have had many opportunities of seeking out the
   distressed, of bringing some of the shipwrecked ones to safety. Did we
   always do it? Well, I hope there are many of you who, during past
   years, have been the means of bringing some to Christ. I know many of
   you have, but I fear some of you have not. Just before this sermon
   commenced I saw one who wished to make a profession of her faith in
   Christ and she traced her conversion, she said, to the prayers of one
   of our members. I dare say you would know him if I were to mention his
   name--a humble brother--and I was so thankful to think that God should
   bless his prayer in the family to the conversion of one who had
   listened to him. May all of us be looking out for others and
   endeavoring to bring them to Christ.

   But what a sad thing it is if we have to recollect that in our sailing
   we have rescued none from the storm. If we are compelled to say, "I saw
   the signals go up. I know they were firing minute-guns of distress, but
   I passed them by, I never sent aid there--and whether they were saved
   or lost I do not know. I had enough to do to look to myself. I never
   looked to them." During this year hundreds have gone to their graves.
   Some of your own children, perhaps, or neighbors. Are you clear of
   their blood? Are you clear of their blood? It would be an awful piece
   of brutality if a boat full of poor shipwrecked mariners, far out at
   sea, saw a vessel in the offing and yet that vessel would not turn
   aside to help them.

   And that is exactly the conduct of many professors of Christ. They see
   others perishing, but they will not tell them the way of salvation.
   They neither pray for them, nor labor for them--but they let them go
   down to Hell unwept, unpitied and uncared for. Where are your hearts of
   compassion, Professors, that you have done this? Perhaps you have done
   it. If so, do not merely regret, but earnestly amend. We ought to
   recollect, again, that since we left the fixed point of believing and
   began to voyage onward towards the point of Glory, we have had many
   opportunities of serving the Lord Jesus and, I may ask, have we always
   availed ourselves of them?

   I wish we had sung as many hymns for Christ as He deserved. O that I
   could have put upon His head the crown which He deserves to have of His
   poor servant whom He has delivered out of bondage and made to rejoice
   in liberty! O that I had always spoken up for His name! That I had
   poured a broadside into His enemies whenever I had an opportunity! We
   can sometimes sing--

   "Is there a lamb among the flock,

   I would disdain to feed?

   Is there a foe before whose face,

   I fear Your cause to plead?"

   And though we sing it and mean it, yet I fear many of the lambs are not
   fed, and before many a foe we do not plead the cause of Christ. Golden
   opportunities of bringing glory to Christ are suffered to go by.

   Alas for this! If we could weep in Heaven we might weep the loss of
   such opportunities! But instead of weeping, let us earnestly pray that
   for the future we may serve the Master with heart and soul and
   strength, so long as we have any being.

   II. Thus much about things behind. And now, very briefly, indeed,
   ANTICIPATION OF THOSE WHO ARE AHEAD, AND OF THE THINGS THAT ARE AHEAD.
   Keeping our lookout, expecting to see other storms and soon to reach a
   fairer clime, what is there which we are expecting? I cannot fail to
   expect more storms between this and the fair haven. There shall be more
   blustering winds and tossing billows. It is not over yet. It was not
   all smooth behind--it cannot be all smooth ahead.

   But there is this to be said--though there may be many more storms,
   they must be fewer in number than they were. There cannot be as many,
   for so many have already gone! As we are nearer Home, so the trials are
   fewer that we have to bear. You are getting through them, Christian.
   Every one, as you pass it, leaves one the less. Be comforted, then, be
   comforted! And how few storms must remain for some of you? "I am on the
   better side of seventy," said one. "Why," said another, "I thought you
   were seventy-seven." "So I am," said he, "and that is the right side of
   70--it is the nearest side

   Home."

   Can you not trust God for the next half-dozen years? You will not have
   more than that, perhaps. You cannot expect to have twenty. He has
   helped you for 70--will He not help you for another ten? Will He change
   at the last? Has he up to now taught you to trust in His name and
   brought you so far to put you to shame? Has He finished the house all
   but the last course of bricks and will He not complete it in due
   course? Surely He will! Be of good courage! There are few storms, after
   all, that are ahead, to those that have passed through many already.
   The further we are on the road, the less there is of it to bear.
   Beloved, there will be fairer winds yet, thank God. We cannot suspect
   it will be all storms. But it would be folly to suppose there would be
   none! It would be greater folly, still, to suppose it would be all
   boisterous weather.

   Before we reach the heavenly plains, or walk the golden streets, there
   is a land called Beulah, which John Bunyan pictures in his "Pilgrim's
   Progress," and surely it is no realm of fancy. In old age God's people
   are often brought into a peaceable frame of mind where their
   confidences are always bright, their enjoyment of Christ always
   great--where they have not those molestations which afflicted them when
   they were young--they have come to perfect peace and rest. We can
   expect this and we will steer on towards it! There are calm days ahead!

   Christ will be with us. Our communion with Him shall be sweet. Do you
   know, I look forward in days to come to the oft-recurring refreshment
   of our Sabbaths. If we are to be spared, there will always be these
   oases in the desert. Though we have, some of us, our hardest day's work
   and often wish we could sit in a pew and hear somebody else, yet there
   is no day like the Sabbath, after all. Oh, what a blessed help it is to
   Heaven! If we had not those windows, the earth would be a blank,
   indeed. But with these sacred windows, that which would otherwise be a
   hard black wall, shutting out all light, becomes a very palace and we
   look through these windows up to the better palace, where the eternal
   Sabbath shall be our portion! Well, there are these Sabbaths ahead!
   There is the outpouring of the Spirit! There are Covenant blessings to
   be participated in and there is the safety which Providential Grace can
   bring, all lying ahead of us. Let us, then, be comforted and pass on.

   And there will be more opportunities ahead. Now, you young people,
   especially, should be looking out. I spoke of occasions of serving God
   which we had wasted. Do not let us waste any more, but gird up the
   loins of our lives. Let this be our prayer, that we may snatch every
   opportunity by the wing--take time by the forelock--and, in the service
   of God, contend with might and main for the Truths of God. The wheels
   of eternity are sounding behind us--life must be short. To those to
   whom it is longest it is but brief. Work on, worker! You have scarcely
   time to finish your day's work! Waste not a second! Throw not away
   these priceless hours. Speed! Speed! Speed! As with sevenfold wing it
   glides forward--swifter than the thunderbolt. Oh, pause not! Trifle
   not!

   O Christian, if you would take your crowns up to your Lord and great
   sheaves from the harvest, "work while it is called today, for the night
   comes in which no man can work." "It is high time," says our Apostle,
   "to awake out of sleep." Would that you would consider it! Be not as
   those who open their eyes in the morning only to close them again, like
   the sluggard with the reflection, "I need not bestir myselfjust yet."
   But start, Man, from your slumbers as one who

   feels that he has slept too long and must now briskly cast off dull
   sloth, bestirring himself with eager haste to do his appointed task--to
   redeem the time, to reclaim the golden hours! For, consider this, your
   calling is of God and the King's business requires haste.

   But looking still further ahead, let us tonight, when we remember we
   are nearer our salvation than when we believed, begin to think of what
   that salvation will be. How near it may be to some of us it were not
   possible for us to tell. But 24 hours may take some of us there--yes,
   less time than that! What is the distance between earth and Heaven? It
   only takes a second of time--

   "One gentle sigh, the fetter breaks. We scarcely can say, 'They're
   gone!' Before the willing spirit takes Her mansion near the Throne."

   Now, what shall we see when we get there? Well, first we shall see
   Jesus. And the sight of Him, oh, say no more--think of it! The vision
   of the Man of Sorrows! Our Beloved, who gave Himself for us--once to
   see Him, once to fall at His feet and speechless there to lie--bursting
   with gratitude, which even there shall be inexpressible! Oh, what a
   Heaven to be with

   Him!

   Then, next to Jesus, we shall be with all the bright spirits that have
   gone before us. Those that go to Australia begin forgetting father and
   mother that they left behind, because they are thinking of the brother
   and sister that went before. They will be at the landing place to meet
   them. Some of you have dear children that went Home in infancy. Some of
   you have a dear wife or a husband and they have been looking for you. I
   do not doubt they will know you. It will be one of the joys of Heaven
   to reunite these broken ties. I do not think Rowland Hill was at all
   foolish when he rode over from Cambridge, a distance of 13 miles, to
   see an old woman who was upon her dying bed. He said, "You are older
   than I am, but I am getting older and, even now, I sometimes think they
   have forgotten me. But in the meantime, as you are going first, take my
   love to the four great Johns--John who leaned on Jesus' bosom and John
   Bunyan and John Calvin and John Knox. Take my love to them and tell
   them poor old Rowly will be coming by-and-by."

   I cannot doubt but that the message was delivered. I think there is
   such a connection between earth and Heaven that we shall see those who
   have gone before. How comfortable it must be to some aged ones when
   they think that though they are taken from that part of the family
   which remains on earth, they have a larger family circle probably in
   Heaven than here! It was so with a poor old man who accosted me the
   other day in a country lane and asked me for something. As I gave to
   him, I said, "How is it you are so poor?" "Ah," he said, "everybody is
   dead that ever cared for me." "But," I said, "surely there is somebody
   left?" "No, Sir," he said, "there is nobody. I buried my poor old wife
   last year. We had two or three children and they all died. My brother
   had five or six and they died years ago. The people that were young in
   my time, they are all gone. I do not know anybody now, nobody cares for
   me."

   So, too, wrote one, who, if I am not mistaken, had been a votary of
   fashion in her gay circles--

   "The friends of youth, manhood and age, At length are all laid in the
   ground. An unit I stand on life's stage, With nothing but vanity round.
   I wander bewildered and lost, Without impulse or interest view. And all
   hope of my heart is at most To soon bid the desert adieu. But this
   derelict state of man's lot That fate to the aged ordains, Bids the
   heart turn the thoughts where it ought, Nor seek worldly cure for its
   pains. Thus I turn from the past and the lost, Close the view my life's
   picture supplies And while penitent tears pay the cost, Blot the
   follies of mirth from my eyes."

   Well, but what a comfort to such a one if he could but feel that though
   there is nobody here, yet there are plenty there among those that are
   gone before to greet and love him!

   So, let us salute those that are ahead. We cannot yet see the bright
   light at the harbor's mouth, but we know we are on the right tack and
   that God's Eternal Spirit is driving us on towards the harbor. O let us
   still think of them and sing as Wesley did--

   "Even now by faith we join our hands With those that went before And
   greet the blood-besprinkled bands On the eternal shore."

   I shall not delay you, however, with these anticipations. There are
   some mournful reflections with which I will close.

   The Lord Jesus, whose eyes of fire can read all hearts, knows this
   night that there are some of you who are not nearer your salvation than
   when you believed, because, first, you never did believe. And,
   secondly, that which you are nearer to is not salvation. Alas, Alas,
   alas, is it true that you have not believed? What does that mean? It
   means, with some of you that you have violated conscience. From your
   youth up you knew the beauties of godliness and the brightness of a
   holy life, but you have chosen evil in defiance of the inward monitor.
   You have elected to be an enemy of God! You have not believed and so
   have been a traitor to your own conscience.

   And you have done it in the face of a hundred warnings--hundreds, did I
   say? No, hundreds of thousands of invitations! Are there not some of
   you who seem resolved to go to Hell over a mother's tears and prayers?
   You are pressing forward in the wrong way in defiance of the
   admonitions of a father who is now in Heaven. A godly education trained
   you for the sky but your own choice has doomed you to another fate.
   Alas, there are many in this congregation who have done violence to the
   Holy Spirit! There are many who have been accused, convicted, startled,
   made to pray-- and yet tears have been brushed away--they have plunged
   into gaiety! They have returned to thoughtlessness! And so the hour of
   Divine Grace and the opportunity of mercy, they have flung to the
   winds.

   If I knew the private history of a good many who have seats in this
   tabernacle, it would be a dreadful story of striving against every good
   principle, not for their own good, but for their own evil! You have
   fought not with devils, but with angels! You have fought with angels
   that you might be permitted to damn your own souls! You have contended
   with eternal mercy and not for the crown of your victory, but that you
   might ruin yourselves forever! If men were half as earnest to be saved
   as many seem to be to be lost, it were a blessed change. But, oh, the
   struggles of conscience, the murdering of godly thoughts, the putting
   of the bowstring about the neck of solemn conviction which has been
   committed by some who are here!

   You have not believed--not believed! And here it is, the last Sunday
   night of 1868! Though three, four, five, six, or 10 years ago you were
   promising to mend and look hopeful, here you are just the same, with
   this label to be put upon you--not believed, confirmed unbelievers,
   enemies to God. Well now, there comes this horrible thought across my
   mind and I wish I did not feel compelled to utter it, but I must. Then,
   since you are not believing, your eternal destruction is nearer than
   ever it was. It must be so! Look at the vessel. The bows were in that
   direction. She is sailing that way. Cannot you see the trail she has
   left in the ocean? Do you not see everything indicates she is fast set
   towards that dreadful rock that shall grind her to pieces?

   It is not merely that, the helm seems thus turned, but there is a
   current underneath the vessel which seems to be bearing it along
   swiftly. Apparently, the life of some of you is towards evil and
   towards Hell. Your whole tenor of life seems to bear you that way. Your
   inclinations, your companions, your very business seem to have acted
   like a gulf stream to bear you on towards ruin! Besides that, the wind
   is blowing that way--that wind that blew you into the theater last
   night, that blows you into carnal company, into the house of vice, that
   is drawing you fast, I say, into fierce temptations, while you grow
   more and more reckless of the consequences.

   What with the helm set and perpetually nailed fast so that it should
   not be moved, a current under the vessel and the wind filling her
   sails--great God, how is she speeding on towards her eternal fate! But,
   worst of all, there is the engine within throbbing, palpitating,
   helping the ship towards her ruin. Every thought, every desire you
   have, seems to be leading you away from Christ and onward towards
   mischief. See, there are others that have gone down during the past
   year! Others have been wrecked--wrecked on those rocks to which you are
   determinedly steering your soul. The wind is getting up, the tempest is
   howling fiercer than ever! With some of you, the sins you did not dare
   to do once have become

   common and the things that made you shudder and your blood run cold,
   and you said, "Is your servant a dog that he should do this thing?" you
   now do them!

   But the wind is still getting up, howling and blowing strong upon you
   and driving you onward in that evil course which must end in your
   eternal destruction. The wind is getting up! If you look ahead you see
   the iron-bound coast before you. Iron-bound, I say, not a harbor or a
   creek--nothing to run to--not a crack or a crevice up which a man might
   climb! And you have no lifeboat along that coast to rescue you and no
   boats in your vessel that would prove seaworthy when the vessel
   strikes. O that God might preserve you from ever striking upon the
   rocks of destruction! Some of you are steering ahead fast for them.
   Hard aport! Turn the vessel round, for there is yet a chance! Stop her!

   Now she is right in the wind's teeth. Good mariner, hold fast to the
   helm and if you can, try to escape. It is too late for some of you! It
   is too late for all of you! Into those rocks you must drive and perish
   unless there shall come the ever-blessed Steersman of the Galilean Lake
   walking across the sea with pierced hands and feet and bid the winds to
   hush and turn right round and bid you believe in Him and then bid you
   steer to the port of Glory, where all shall be rest and peace! God
   grant that such mercy may come to you! Pray for it! Ask for it! Trust
   Jesus and you shall have it and to Him shall be the praise, world
   without end. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Psalm 49.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Fullness of Jesus the Treasury of Saints

   A sermon

   (No. 858)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Evening, FEBRUARY 28, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Of His fullness have we all received and Grace for Grace."- John 1:16.

   THESE are not words spoken by John the Baptist, as a cursory reader
   might imagine, but they were written by John the Evangelist. The verse
   preceding is a paragraph cast into the midst of the Gospel, causing a
   temporary break. Omitting that verse, we read as follows: "The Word was
   made flesh and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as
   of the only-begotten of the Father), full of Grace and truth; and of
   His fullness have we all received and Grace for Grace."

   In its more limited meaning, as it stands in its connection, the text
   appears to teach that while Jesus Christ dwelt on earth there was a
   Divine Glory about His Person and Character which His Apostles and
   disciples clearly beheld, perceiving in Him and in His teaching a
   fullness of Divine Grace and the Truth of God. And further, that this
   Grace and Truth were Divinely contagions, so that the disciples
   participated in it and men took knowledge of them that they had been
   with Jesus and learned of Him--this being especially true of the
   Apostles who drank most fully into the life and power of Jesus and
   continued to reveal to the world, after their Master was taken up--the
   Grace and Truth of the Gospel committed to them.

   But this passage is not to be restricted to so limited a sense--it is
   of far wider range and of much greater depth. We understand it of our
   Lord Jesus in the whole of His Character and work. Looking beyond His
   earthly life we see Him in His Crucifixion, His Resurrection, His
   Ascension, His sitting at the right hand of God and His Second Advent.
   And beholding Him as the all-sufficient Savior, we this day behold His
   Glory, the Glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father, full of Grace
   and Truth! And we, that is, the whole range of the saints in all ages
   past and in all periods to come--we receive out of this fullness
   superabundant Grace!

   I. In discussing this text I shall first remind you of the ONE GLORIOUS
   PERSON concerning whom this verse is written. There are other persons
   in the verse, but they are comparatively insignificant. "We all" are
   mentioned as the receivers--we occupy the most humble place. The one
   throne of the text, (and a glorious high throne it is), is reserved for
   Him who is intended in the pronoun, "His." "Of His fullness have we all
   received." We know that this is no other than that august Person whom
   John calls, "The Word," or the speech of God, so called because God in
   Nature has revealed Himself, as it were, inarticulately and
   indistinctly--but in His Son He has revealed Himself as a man declares
   his inmost thoughts--by distinct and intelligible speech.

   Jesus is to the Father what speech is to us. He is the unfolding of the
   Father's thoughts, the revelation of the Father's heart. He that has
   seen Christ has seen the Father. "Would you have me see you?" said
   Socrates, "then speak," for speech reveals the man. Would you see God?
   Listen to Christ, for He is God's Word, revealing the heart of Deity.
   Lest, however, we should imagine Jesus to be a mere utterance, a mere
   word spoken and forgotten, our Apostle is peculiarly careful that we
   should know that Jesus is a real and true Person, and therefore tells
   us that the Divine Word, out of whose fullness we have received, is
   most assuredly God!

   No language can be more distinct. He ascribes to Him the eternity which
   belongs to God--"In the beginning was the Word." He clearly claims
   Divinity for Him--"The Word was God." He ascribes to Him the acts of
   God--"Without Him was not anything made that was made." He ascribes to
   Him self-existence which is the essential characteristic of God--"In
   Him was life." He claims for Him a Nature peculiar to God--"God is
   light and in Him is no darkness at all." And the Word is "the true
   light, which lights every man that comes into the world." No writer
   could be more explicit in his utterances, and beyond all question he
   sets forth the proper Deity of that Blessed One of whom we all must
   receive if we would obtain eternal salvation.

   Yet John does not fail to set forth that our Lord was also Man. He
   says, "the Word was made flesh"--not merely assumed manhood, but was
   made. And made not merely Man as to His nobler part, His Soul, but Man
   as to His flesh, His lower element. Our Lord was not a phantom, but One
   who, as John declares in his Epistle, was touched and handled. "The
   Word dwelt among us." He tabernacled with the sons of men--a
   carpenter's shed His lowly refuge and the caves and mountains of the
   earth His midnight resort in His later life. He dwelt among sinners and
   sufferers, among mourners and mortals, Himself completing His
   citizenship among us by becoming obedient to death, even the death of
   the Cross.

   See, then, my beloved Brothers and Sisters, where God has treasured up
   the fullness of His Grace! It is in a Person so august that Heaven and
   earth tremble at the majesty of His Presence and yet in a Person so
   humble that He is not ashamed to call us, "Brethren." The Apostle, lest
   we should by any means put a second person in comparison with the one
   and only Christ, throughout this chapter continually enters caveats and
   disclaimers against all others. He bars the angels and shuts out
   cherubim and seraphim by saying, "Without Him was not anything made
   that was made"! At the creation of the world no ministering spirit may
   intrude a finger. Angels may sing over what Jesus creates, but as the
   Builder of all things He stands alone.

   Further on the Apostle guards the steps of the Throne against John and
   virtually against all the other witnesses of the Messiah, albeit among
   those that are born of women there was not a greater than John the
   Baptist, yet, "he was not that Light." The stars must hide their heads
   when the sun shines--John must decrease and Christ must increase. No,
   there was One whom all the Jews reverenced and whose name is coupled
   with that of the Lamb in the triumphant song of Heaven! They sang the
   song of Moses, the servant of God and of the Lamb. But even he is
   excluded from the glory of this text, "For the Law was given by Moses,
   but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ." Moses must sit down at the
   foot of the Throne with the tablets of stone in his hands, but Jesus
   sits on the Throne and stretches out the silver scepter to His people.

   Lest there should remain a supposition that another person yet
   unmentioned should usurp a place, the Apostle adds, "No man at any time
   has seen the Father." The best and holiest have all, alike, been unable
   to look into that excellent Glory! But the Word has not only seen the
   Father, but has declared Him unto us! The text is as Tabor to us and
   while in its consideration, at the first we see Moses and Elijah and
   all the saints with the Lord Jesus, receiving of His fullness, yet all
   these vanish from our minds and our spirit sees "no man, but Jesus
   only." Gazing into this text, one feels as John did when the gates of
   Heaven were opened to him and he looked within them and he declared, "I
   looked and lo, a Lamb stood on the Mount Zion."

   He saw other things afterwards, but the first thing that caught his eye
   and filled his mind was the Lamb in the midst of the Throne! Brothers,
   it becomes us as ministers to be constantly making much of Christ, to
   make Him, indeed, the first, the last and the midst of all our
   discourses! And it becomes all Believers, whenever they deal with
   matters of salvation, to set Jesus on high and to crown Him with many
   crowns. Give Him the best of your thoughts and works and affections,
   for He it is who fills all things and to whom all things should pay
   homage.

   II. Secondly, there are TWO PRECIOUS DOCTRINES in the text. The first
   doctrine teaches us that in this glorious Person of Jesus all fullness
   is treasured up, and the second--without which the first might yield us
   little comfort--that all this treasure of Divine Grace is received by
   His saints, so that all His saints receive all they have that is
   gracious and truthful from Him.

   1. First consider this master Truth of God, that all Divine Grace is
   treasured up in Christ Jesus. "His fullness," says the text. Ah, what a
   word, "His fullness!" If I had no other text given me to preach from
   until all preaching should be ended, this might suffice. His fullness!
   O Brothers and Sisters, here is a fullness which cannot be measured for
   length, or breadth, or depth--for He is filled with all the fullness of
   God! "In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." The
   fullness of which the text speaks particularly is His double fullness
   of Grace and Truth. There is in Jesus Christ a fullness of essential
   Grace for it is His Nature to overflow with free mercy to the miserable
   sons of men.

   It was a fullness of Grace in Him that made Him enter into the Eternal
   Covenant and undertake suretyship engagements for us. It was a fullness
   of love and Grace which sustained Him in the discharge of His
   liabilities as our Great Substitute and the fullness of Grace it is
   which constrains Him, still, to persevere in His work, saying, "For
   Zion's sake I will not rest, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not hold
   My peace." In Christ there is a fullness of Grace to impart to us and
   to that the text refers a fullness ofpardoning Grace, so that no sin
   can ever exceed His power to forgive!

   It refers a fullness of justifying Grace, so that He justifies the
   ungodly. A fullness of converting Grace, so that He calls to Him whom
   He pleases. A fullness of quickening Grace, for "He quickens whom He
   wills." Here is a fullness ofpurifying Grace, for His blood cleanses us
   from all sin and a further fullness of comforting Grace, of sustaining
   Grace, of satisfying Grace, of restoring Grace--Jesus has a fullness in
   whatever office you regard Him--and with whatever needs. He is never
   limited in any gift or Grace, but always full thereof. This fullness,
   time would fail us to rehearse! Drink of it! Plunge into it, and you
   shall know far more than I can, by any possibility, tell.

   This, however, I may say--the fullness which dwells in Christ is, from
   the text, clearly proved to be an abiding fullness, for, mark, "We
   all," says he, "have received of it." And yet he calls it a "fullness,"
   still. It was a fullness before a single sinner came to it to receive
   pardon--before a solitary saint had learned to drink of that river the
   streams of which make glad the Church! And now, after thousands and
   even myriads of blood-redeemed saints have drank of this life-giving
   stream, it is just as overflowing as ever!

   We are accustomed to say that if a child takes a cupful from the sea it
   is just as full as before, but that is not literally true--there must
   be just so much the less of water in the ocean. But it is literally
   true of Christ, that when we have not only taken out cups full--for our
   needs are too great to be satisfied with such small quantities--when we
   have taken out oceans full of Divine Grace--and we need as much as that
   to carry us to Heaven--there is actually as much left! Although we each
   have drawn upon the treasury of His love to an extent so boundless that
   we cannot understand it, yet there is as much mercy and Divine Grace
   left in Christ as there was before. And it is a "fullness," still,
   after all the saints have received of it.

   Brethren, there is a fullness of Truth in our Lord as well as Grace,
   that is to say, everything which Christ says is not only true, but
   emphatically true. And not only true in one sense, but true in multiple
   senses--true to the letter and to the jots and to the tittles--true
   today and true tomorrow and true forever! True to one saint and true to
   every saint! True at one season and true in all seasons! There is a
   blessed emphasis of Divine reality in Christ Jesus. Every word He
   speaks is as the decree of God. Every doctrine that He promulgates is
   clear as the Great White Throne. In Him there is no admixture of error.
   "Never man spoke like this Man," because His teaching is unalloyed
   gold. All doctrine which He reveals is as pure and celestial as the dew
   from Heaven.

   Brethren, there is an abiding fullness of truth in Christ! After you
   have heard it for 50 years, you see more of its fullness than you did
   at first. Other truths weary the ear. I will defy any man to hold
   together a large congregation, year after year, with any other subject
   but Christ Jesus! He might do it for a time. He might charm the ear
   with the discoveries of science, or with the beauties of poetry. And
   his oratory might be of so high an order that he might attract the
   multitudes who have itching ears, but they would, in time, turn away
   and say, "This is no longer to be endured. We know it all."

   All music becomes wearisome but that of Heaven! But oh, if the minstrel
   does but strike this celestial harp, though he keeps his fingers always
   among its golden strings and is but poor and unskilled upon an
   instrument so Divine, yet the melody of Jesus' name and the sweet
   harmony of all His acts and attributes will hold His listeners by the
   ears and thrill their hearts as nothing beside can do! The theme of
   Jesus' love is inexhaustible! Though preachers may have dwelt upon it
   century after century, a freshness and fullness still remain.

   2. The second doctrine is that all the saints have received all of
   Grace out of the fullness of Christ. It is not one saint who has
   derived Grace from the Redeemer, but all. "Of His fullness have we all
   received." And they have not merely derived a part of the blessings of
   Grace from Jesus, but all that they ever had they received from Him. It
   would be a wonderful vision if we could now behold passing before us
   the long procession of the chosen, the great and the small-- the goodly
   fellowship of Apostles, the noble army of martyrs--the once weeping but
   now rejoicing band of penitents. There they go! I think I see them all
   in their white robes, bearing their palms of victory.

   But you shall not, if you stop the procession at any point, be able to
   discover one who will claim to have obtained Grace from another source
   than Christ. Nor shall one of them say, "I owed the first Grace I
   gained to Christ, but I gained other Grace elsewhere." No, the
   unanimous testimony is, "of His fullness have we all received." My
   inner eye beholds the throng as the procession pauses before the Throne
   of God. Oh, can you see how every man prostrates himself before the
   Throne of the Lamb and altogether they cry, "Of His fullness have we
   all received"?

   Whoever we may be. However well we may have served our Master. Whatever
   honor we have gained--though our Lord has helped us to finish our
   course and to win the prize--yet it is ALL of him--"Non nobis Domine!"
   Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Your name be all the praise! What a
   precious Truth of God, then, we have before us, that all the saints in
   all ages have been just what you and I must be tonight if we would be
   saved--receivers! They did not, any one of them bring anything to
   Christ, but received from Him.

   If they, at this moment, cast their crowns at His feet, their crowns
   were first given to them by Him! Their robes are wedding garments of
   His providing. The whole course of saintship is receptive. None of the
   saints talk of what they gave. None of them speak of what came of
   themselves, but they all bear testimony without a solitary exception
   that they were all receivers from Jesus' fullness! Oh, but this casts
   mire into the face of human self-sufficiency! What? Not one saint who
   had a little of his own? Not one of all the favored throng who could
   furnish himself? No, not one! Did none of them look to the works of the
   Law? No, they all went to Jesus and His Grace and none to Moses and the
   Law.

   Did none of them trust in priests of earthly anointing? Did none of
   them bow down before holy fathers and saintly confessors to obtain
   absolution? There is not a word said about such foolishness! Nor even a
   syllable concerning appeals to saints--but all the saved ones received
   direct, "from His fullness," who fills all in all. I must not leave
   this second doctrine, however, without noting that these receptive
   saints received very abundantly. They drew from an abundance, even a
   fullness--and they also drew largely, as indicated by the words, "and
   Grace for Grace," which words are only difficult to understand by
   reason of the extent of meaning hidden in them--for they might be
   translated a dozen ways with equal accuracy.

   Do they not mean this?--Just as Samson slew so many Philistines that he
   cried out, "Heaps upon heaps," so our Lord has given to His people
   Divine Grace at such a rate that they have Grace upon Grace for
   abundance? They have received from Him such a plenty, such a plenitude
   of Divine Grace and the Truth of God that as the ancients fabled Mount
   Pelion to be piled upon Ossa by the giants to make a staircase to the
   skies, so our great Savior has piled mountains of Grace upon mountains
   of Grace--that on these, as on a stupendous ladder--His elect might
   climb to the Throne of God! Not one step to Heaven is other than of
   Divine Grace--and all comes out of His fullness.

   III. We advance to the third point and mark THREE EXPERIENCES indicated
   by the text. And first, Beloved in the Lord, if you and I would receive
   of the fullness of Christ, it is imperatively necessary that we should
   have an experience of our own emptiness. All saints receive of Christ,
   but no vessel can receive beyond the measure of its emptiness. The more
   full it is, so much the less is its capacity for reception. And the
   more empty it is, so much the greater the space which can be filled.
   This is a hard lesson for human nature, for we firmly believe in
   ourselves.

   You say, "I am rich and increased in goods, and have need of nothing."
   We learn this with our mother tongue and we repeat it so often that we
   believe it! And like the Pharisee, we make it our daily boast, "God, I
   thank You that I am not as other men are." The Pharisee would see no
   chaff in his wheat, whereas Divine Grace makes us to be like the
   publican who could see no wheat in his chaff and would only say, "God
   be merciful to me a sinner." It is hard going down the ladder of
   self-knowledge. We give up with great reluctance our flattering
   opinions of ourselves. We are hard to empty of the notion of our own
   inherent merit--and if the Lord spills that upon the ground--we then
   hold to the idea of our own inherent strength!

   What if we have no merit, yet at least we will have some, by-and-by,
   and we spin out our poor resolves as freely as a spider spins her web
   and the fabric is as frail. And if our notion of power is taken from
   us, we then betake ourselves to our self-justification by endeavoring
   to persuade ourselves that we are not responsible! Or, wrapping
   ourselves in despair, we declare that we cannot help ourselves and
   wickedly cast our ruin upon destiny. Man is hard to be dragged away
   from the rock of self-justification. Like Theseus in the old mythology,
   he is glued so fast to the great stone of self-conceit which lies hard
   by the gates of Hell, that a stronger than Hercules is needed to tear
   him from it! And even such a deliverer must rend him from it, leaving
   his skin behind.

   When the Lord comes and makes the sinner stand before His bar and
   plead, "Lord, I am guilty," the man is made ready to receive of
   Christ's merits because he is emptied of his own. Hear him again:
   "Lord, I would gladly repent and believe, but oh, for this I have no
   strength! Be You my Helper." The man's own power is gone and with it
   his hardness of heart. He confessed that he has willfully and wickedly
   sinned, and now the Lord pours out His Grace and mercy. Our

   Lord withholds from those who are full--but He is always ready to give
   to those who are empty! Never does He keep back anything from those who
   are consciously in need. Never does He give anything to those who say
   they need nothing.

   There must be in each of us, then, an emptiness of self if we are to
   enjoy the fullness of Christ. But he who knows the emptiness of self is
   not, therefore, saved. The man who knows he has the fever is not cured
   by that knowledge. The man who knows he is condemned to die is not, for
   that reason, pardoned. It is a dreadful thing to stop short with a mere
   sense of sin--we must go on to the second experience--a personal
   reception of Christ Jesus. Here I shall put the question to each of my
   hearers, especially to professors of religion--Have you received out of
   Christ's fullness? I am not asking you whether you are Church members.
   We sorrowfully know that it is one thing to be that, and quite another
   thing to receive Christ.

   I do not ask you whether you received the ordinance of the Lord's
   Supper. Alas, to receive bread and wine is a very different thing from
   feeding upon the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ! The one is a carnal
   act which Judas might perform, who had a devil, but the other is a
   spiritual act, possible only for spiritual men. "Oh," says one, "do not
   put high standards before us." No, I am not. I am putting the lowest
   standard that can prove a soul to be saved--have you received Christ? I
   want to call your attention to the marvelous simplicity of this one act
   by which salvation comes to all the saints. It is receiving. Now,
   receiving is a very easy thing. There are 50 things which you and I
   cannot do, but, my dear Friend, you could undoubtedly receive a penny,
   could you not?

   There is not a man, nor woman, nor child here, so imperfect in power as
   to be unable to receive. Everybody seems capable of receiving any
   amount. Mark, then, in salvation you do nothing but merely receive.
   There is a hand, a beggar's hand and if it is needed to write a fair
   letter, it cannot do that, but be assured it can receive! Try it, and
   the beggar will soon let you know. Look at that hand again. Do you see
   that it has the palsy? It quivers and shakes! Ah, but it can receive,
   for all that! Many a palsied hand has received a jewel. But do you not
   see that in addition to being filthy and palsied, it has a foul
   disease? The leprosy lies within and is not to be washed out by any
   mode of purification known to us, and yet it can receive!

   The saints all came to be saints and remained saints through doing
   exactly what that poor dirty, leprous, quivering hand can do. All their
   Divine Grace came by receiving! So, dear Hearer, I am not setting up a
   high test, though I am assuredly setting up a very safe and necessary
   one. Have you received out of the fullness of Christ? Did you come all
   empty-handed and take Jesus Christ to be your All? I know what you did
   at first. You were for accumulating the shining heaps of your own
   merits and esteeming them as if they were so much gold--but you found
   out that your labor profited not, so at last you came empty-handed and
   said, "My precious Savior, do but give me Yourself and I will have done
   with merit. I renounce all merit and all doing and working and I take
   You to be everything to me."

   Then, Friend, you are saved if that is true, for the acceptance of
   Christ is the mark of the saint. I said there were three
   experiences--the first was emptiness. The second is receiving. And the
   third is that blessed experience, the discovery that all we receive
   comes to us by Divine Grace. Look at the last words, "And Grace for
   Grace," which words may be read, "And Grace because of Grace," that is
   to say, the only reason why we get Grace is because of Grace! Grace is
   the cause of itself. It is a self-creating thing. God will have mercy
   on whom He will have mercy. He is gracious because He is gracious and
   He gives Divine Grace to men NOT because they deserve it, or ask for
   it--but because He is gracious and chooses to bless them. I trust,
   beloved Brethren, you all have experienced this. If you know your own
   emptiness and Christ's fullness, I am sure you know, in a measure, the
   doctrine of Divine Grace and I hope you will go on to know it more and
   more. May you also get Grace to have more Grace--Grace to qualify you
   for a higher degree of Grace!

   Now, you do not get some Grace from God's Grace and then the rest from
   your own efforts, but every step you have to go from the gate of the
   City of Destruction up to the pearl gates of the New Jerusalem, is all
   Grace. The road to Glory is paved with stones of Grace. The chariot in
   which we ride to Heaven is all of Grace. The strength that draws it and
   the axle that bears it up is all of Grace and Grace alone. In the whole
   Covenant of Grace, from the first letter of the charter down to its
   last word, there is nothing at all of merit or man's goodness, but it
   is Grace, Grace, Grace. As Grace laid the foundation, so Grace brings
   out every stone and as we sing--

   "It lays in Heaven the topmost stone, And well deserves the praise."

   I cannot make out where some of the Lord's children get their creed
   when they preach up the dignity and free will of man. There are good
   people but who seem to me to use part of the speech of Ashdod and only
   part of the speech of Jerusalem. To my mind, free will seems such an
   incongruity when tacked on to Divine Grace and makes a man's ministry
   like Nebuchadnezzar's image, with its head of gold and its feet of
   clay--the two things do not consort. O for a Gospel that is all of one
   piece--that reveals the sinner as saved by Grace from first to
   last--that God may have all the praise!

   IV. As briefly as possible we shall speak of FOUR DUTIES.

   1. First, if we have received from Christ all we have, then let us
   praise Him. If we live on His fullness, let us magnify and bless His
   name. Gratitude is a natural virtue and it ought always to be in us a
   spiritual Grace. O let our tongues talk well of Him to whom we owe
   everything! There was a poor man who was a pauper, but a kind friend
   had taken care of him and the old man was never better pleased than
   when he could ramble out his thanks to passing strangers. "That's a
   dear man who lives up at the white house, there, Sir.

   "Do you see these clothes? He has given me all. I have not a rag on me
   but what is of his finding and I have a nice little cottage down there
   and, you know, he gave it to me--told me I might live there rent free!
   He lets me walk through his grounds and tells me I am welcome to all I
   can desire." It was the old man's joy to expatiate upon the
   extraordinary goodness of his benefactor. I wish we all imitated him.
   Do you see anything that is happy and peaceful in me? It all came from
   Jesus. I am a poor worm with nothing at all in myself that I could
   boast of, but if there is anything at all that could commend the
   Gospel, I received it all from my dear Lord and Master who has done
   more for me than tongue can tell!

   Brethren, speak more of Him and sing more His praise! If you have the
   gift of song, never prostitute it (as I think it must be) to light,
   giddy, loose verses. Keep your sweetest notes for Him. Music, reserve
   your charms for him. If the things of this world might claim a note or
   two, yet, oh, let Him have the loudest of your harmony. You daughters
   of Israel, go forth to meet your David--for if any of this world has
   helped you--if Saul has slain his thousands--this David has slain His
   ten thousands! The mightiest of your foes He has overthrown. One of the
   best ways of praising Jesus is by trusting Him more. Faith is often
   compact praise. A trustful heart has in it the quintessence of music.
   Jesus loves to be trusted--it is a true, if indirect, form of
   gratitude, when we repose confidence because of mercies received.

   Once more, if you wish to praise the Prince of Peace, as I trust you
   do, go and beg harder of Him. Go to Him this very night and say--

   "The best return for one like me, So wretched and so poor, Is from Your
   gifts to draw a plea, And ask You still for more."

   You cannot do your Lord a better turn nor make His heart more glad by
   way of praising Him, than by opening your mouth wider than ever tonight
   that you may receive more out of His fullness than you have ever had
   since you have known Him!

   2. The second duty is this--if up till now we have received out of
   Christ's fullness, then let us repair to Him again. As you have
   received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. I find it my best and
   safest way and I recommend it to you all, to live daily on Christ, as I
   did when first I trusted in Him. If I have ever known Him at all. If He
   has ever been revealed to me and in me. If He has ever answered my
   prayers. If He has ever blessed me to your souls and made me the
   spiritual parent of any that are in the skies, I do know that I had it
   all from Him, for I never had a grain of anything good of my own--all
   my Grace has been the free grant of His sovereign will!

   But Satan says, "Ah, but you never knew Jesus!" Well, if I never did, I
   know what to do now. I will go to Jesus at once. If I never did go to
   Him before, I will hasten to Him now. Now, when I go to Jesus Christ in
   that way, not as a saint but as a sinner--not as a preacher but as a
   poor, miserable offender--I find my comfort returns to me. I would like
   to be as a babe, always hanging on the breast of Jesus' love. I would
   like to be the fruit which remains on the bough and so grows ripe and
   sweet. I would like to be always locked up in Christ's pantry and never
   live on what I had before fed on, but feeding evermore! To this duty I
   invite you tonight. If you have received--come and receive again--you
   have not received the whole of Christ's fullness yet!

   But all that is in Christ is meant to be received. Jesus Christ is like
   the sun--He is a storehouse of light, but the light is there to be shed
   abroad. He is like the clouds--a storehouse of waters, but all that is
   in Him is to descend in showers upon thirsty souls. There is nothing in
   Christ but what was meant to be distributed! He is like Joseph's
   granaries in

   Egypt, full of corn for hungry men. Do you read of mercy in
   Christ?--say, "That mercy was meant for a needy sinner. Even I will
   have it." Little children, when they come to the table, seem to know by
   instinct that everything there is meant to be eaten, so they cry, "Give
   me this. Give me that."

   Now, in this be children. If you see anything in Christ, however rich
   and rare, however precious and choice, say, "Lord, give me that and
   give me that," for it is all meant to be given away--it is all provided
   on purpose to meet the needs of the Lord's people. So we leave that
   duty, but I trust not till we have attended to it.

   3. The third duty is, if you have been receiving of Christ, try to
   obtain more, for the text says, "Grace for Grace"-- that is, Grace upon
   Grace--Grace to fit you for higher Grace. If you are no richer than the
   old Believers under the Law and you have found only Jewish Grace, come
   and ask for clearer views. If you have Grace as a babe, ask Grace to be
   a young man. And if you have grown to be a young man, ask Grace to be a
   father. Aspire to the highest point of Christian perfection! In other
   matters we are very covetous, but in the things of God, what an
   accursed contentment we soon fall into!

   I use the word advisedly, for it is accursed, since it brings the curse
   of barrenness upon us. I loathe to hear a Believer say, "Well, if I am
   but just saved, that is enough for me. If I may but just get in behind
   the door in Heaven, I shall be content." So you will, my dear Brother,
   but you ought not to talk that way! Your business is to show forth as
   much of Christ to His Glory as you possibly can. What? Are you so
   selfish that if you can creep into Heaven that will content you? I
   would Like to carry my Master a whole casket of jewels in my bosom! I
   would gladly say to Him, "Here am I and the children whom You have
   given me." I would desire to die with the sweet satisfaction, "I have
   finished my course, I have kept the faith, therefore there is laid up
   for me a crown of life that fades not away."

   Wrestle for more Grace! If you are up to your ankles, wade into this
   river of gracious fullness up to your knees. If you are up to your
   knees, be thankful, but do not be content. I ask you to advance till
   you are up to your loins and be not fully satisfied even then. Forget
   the things that are behind, be not satisfied till you find a river to
   swim in! Strike out till you feel you are utterly out of your depth and
   then dive into it and strike out! Glory in Christ to think that it
   pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell and be glad
   that you have learned to comprehend with all saints what are the
   heights and depths and to know the love of Christ which passes
   knowledge.

   4. The last duty and the last word. If you have received of Christ,
   encourage others to receive of Him. Indeed, you need not go far for the
   encouragement, for you may first of all look at home. If Jesus Christ
   received you, whom will He not receive? If my Master's heart opened
   wide its doors to let me in, I know He has received one of the blackest
   that ever was accepted. And I feel confident in recommending you, poor,
   needy, troubled, conscience-stricken Sinner, to come to Jesus by simple
   trust tonight! I am sure if He had meant to reject you, He would not
   have accepted me. If you want to encourage souls to come to Christ,
   what a wonderful text this is: "Of His fullness have we all received."

   I must bring that little dream of mine up to your mind's eye again.
   There are all the saints--millions of them--and they tell you, all of
   them, that they were all receivers. Now, suppose you were a beggar. You
   know what beggars do. If they go to a door and get anything, they make
   a little mark--you and I do not understand it, but it means, "Good
   house to knock at." And the next beggar who comes sees that token and
   he knocks boldly. If they get nothing, of course, they make some scurvy
   remark or another, after their own fashion, which the next beggar
   understands.

   Now, I have already made that mark on Christ's door and I have told you
   of it! It is a good house to knock at, for I have tried it. But
   suppose, being a beggar, you were to meet some 50 or 60 tramps, all
   coming down the street and they were to say to you, "Are you in the
   same trade as we are?" "Yes, I am a beggar." "Well," they say, "there's
   a good house down there, we have all of us been to it and they have
   given us all something." "What? Given something to all of you?" "Yes,
   to every one of us." "What? To that man yonder? Why, he looks good for
   nothing!" "Ah, well, they gave him something." "What? To the whole of
   you?" "Yes." "Then I shall be as quick as I can to knock and get the
   next turn."

   Why, of course, everybody would feel that that is the shop to beg at
   where nobody has been rejected. Now, since the world began there never
   has been a sinner who sincerely asked for mercy through faith in the
   precious blood of Jesus who has been rejected! Since Adam was cast out
   of the Garden, there has never been a sinner, whoever he might have
   been, that has cast himself by simple trust upon the blood and
   righteousness of Jesus Christ, whom God has cast out! Well, but if they
   all received and all received, "of His fullness," why not you?

   One thing more--it may be that you will still say, "Perhaps the Lord
   will change His mode of dealing and reject me!" Oh, but let me tell
   you, He has pledged Himself that He will not, for, in addition to all
   those who have received at His hands, there is a promise given, "Him
   that comes unto Me, I will in no wise cast out." He cannot cast you
   away, for He has said He will not and that word, "no wise," is like the
   flaming cherub's sword, which turns every way, not to keep you out of
   the garden of life, but to keep out all your doubts and fears.

   Observe, "I will in no wise cast out." Then, if any man says, "But I am
   too old," that cannot be the reason for your rejection, for Christ has
   said, "Him that comes, I will in no wise cast out." "Oh, but I have
   sinned beyond all reason. I have gone to an excess of riot. Sir, I'm a
   damnable sinner. No one can say too bad of me." I do not care what you
   are! He cannot cast you out, for He has said, "in no wise," that is, on
   no account, on no consideration, under no circumstances! If you come to
   Christ, Heaven and earth may pass away and yon blue sky may be folded
   up and put away as a worn-out mantle, and the stars shall fall like
   withered leaves in autumn, and the sun be turned into darkness and the
   moon into blood--but NEVER shall a praying, trusting sinner be cast
   away from the Presence of God!

   O come, then, you most guilty, you most empty, you most worthless! Come
   and welcome! Hark! The silver trumpet sounds tonight, "Come and
   welcome! Come and welcome! Come and welcome!" Come to the dear wounds
   of Jesus and be hidden there! Come to the fountain filled with blood
   and be cleansed there! Come to the heart of Christ in Heaven by
   trusting Him and be saved both now and forever!

   May God bless you and everyone in this great house tonight! May He
   bless every one of you young women up there and of you men down there
   and you strangers thronging the aisles! May every one of us have to
   say, "Of His fullness have we all received and Grace for Grace." The
   Lord bless you. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--John 1:1-18
     __________________________________________________________________

The Old Way of the Wicked

   A sermon

   (No. 859)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, MARCH 7, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Have you marked the old way which wicked men have trod? Which were cut
   down out of time, whose foundation was swept away with a flood: Which
   said unto God, Depart from us: and what can the Almighty do for them?"-
   Job 22:15-17.

   "HAVE you marked the old way?" Antiquity is no guarantee for truth. It
   was the old way, but it was the wrong way. If our religion is to be
   settled by antiquity, we shall presently pass back to the worst form of
   idolatry, for we would have to become Druids. It is not always that
   "the old is better." Sometimes, by reason of the depravity of human
   nature, the old is the more corrupt. The oldest of all would be the
   best, but how shall we come at it? Adam was once perfection-- but how
   shall we regain that state? Old, exceedingly old, is the path of sin
   and the path of error, for as old as the Father of Lies is sin.

   Antiquity is, moreover, no excuse for sin. It may be that men have long
   transgressed, but use in rebellion will not mitigate the treason before
   the eternal Throne. If you know better, it will not stand you in any
   place that God winked at the ignorance of others in former ages. If you
   have had more light than they, you shall have severer judgment than
   they--therefore plead not the antiquity of any evil custom as an excuse
   for sin. It was an old way, but they who ran in it perished in it just
   as surely as if it had been a new way of sinning entirely of their own
   invention. Antiquity will be no consolation to those who perish by
   following evil precedents. It will serve no purpose to lost souls that
   they sinned as thousands sinned before them! And if they shall meet
   long generations of their ancestors lost in the same overthrow, they
   shall by no means be comforted by such grim companionship.

   Therefore, it becomes all of us to examine whether those religious
   dogmas which we have accepted on account of their apparent
   venerableness of age and universality of custom are, indeed, the Truth
   of God. We are not among those who believe that the traditions of the
   fathers are the ultimate tests of the Truth of God. We have heard the
   voice which says, "To the Law and to the Testimony. If they speak not
   according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them." We
   would not affect novelty for its own sake--that were folly--neither
   will we adore and venerate antiquity for its own sake, for that would
   lead us into idolatry and superstition.

   Is the thing right? Then follow it, though you have discovered it but
   yesterday. Is it wrong? Then, though the road were trod by sinners of
   the first ages, yet do not pursue it unless you desire to meet with the
   same end as they. Search and look to your creeds, your worships and
   your customs, for this world has long enough been deluded by hoary
   superstitions. Search, my Hearer, search and look right carefully
   within your heart, for you may be deceived and it were a pity if it
   should be so with you while there are such opportunities given you to
   discover and rectify your mistakes. We shall now, this morning, in the
   words of the text, mark the old way of wicked men, observe it carefully
   and consider it well. There shall be three points this morning, the
   way, the end, the warning.

   I. The first shall be THE WAY--"the old way which wicked men have
   trod." First, what it was. There is no doubt that Eliphaz is here
   alluding to those who sinned before the Flood. He is looking to what
   were ancient days to him. Living as he did, in what is olden time to
   us, his days of yore were the days beyond the Flood and the old way he
   speaks of is the way and course of sinners before the world was
   destroyed by water.

   Now this way, in the first place, was a way of rebellion against God.
   Adam, our first parent, knew God's will--that will ought not to have
   been irksome to him. The command was a very easy one. The denial of the
   one tree to him should have been no great loss. He ought to have been
   well content when all the rest of the garden was his own leasehold, to
   have that one tree belong to the Great Freeholder of all--but he set
   his will in direct antagonism to the will of the Most High.

   The sin itself looked small. The act of plucking the forbidden fruit
   appeared to be trivial, but within the loins of it lurked a dark
   hostility to the mind of God which led to open breach of the Lord's
   command.

   That is the way in every transgressor's case, for every sinner is a
   rebel against God. Though the man, at the time when he commits the sin,
   may claim that he was not thinking of God, yet the fact of his acting
   without regard to Him whom he ought always reverently to consider was,
   in itself, a sin. Sin is a defiance of Divine authority, it throws down
   the gauntlet and challenges the rights of the King of kings. Are there
   any here, this morning, who are pursuing that old way which wicked men
   have trod? Do not many of you neglect, as a rule, the consideration of
   what is God's mind? Do you not act as unrestrainedly as if there were
   no God at all? Do you not constantly follow after that which the Lord
   abhors?

   I fear many of you are traversing the way of rebellion and are daily
   provoking the Great Judge. I pray you beware, for this is the old way
   which wicked men have trod and you may be sure that as God met with
   them, and their rebellion soon ended in terrible destruction, so will
   He also meet with you, for God's ways are equal and He deals out
   justice to sinners, now, as He did then.

   In the next place, the old way was a way of selfishness. Why did Eve
   take of that fruit? It was because she believed that the taking of it
   would delight her appetite and would also make her wise. It was to gain
   something for self that evil was done. And her children also have
   participated in the same feeling. It was this that made Nimrod the
   mighty tyrant of the world. It was this which led the sons of God
   before the Flood to look upon the daughters of men, for they were fair,
   because they sought their own pleasure and not the service of God. Self
   reigned! The men cast themselves down before their own natural
   propensities, indulged their wantonness and had no delight in God. This
   is the old way which wicked men have trod and I fear it is a well-trod
   path today.

   How do the mass of mankind cry? "Show us any good! Show us something
   that shall give us pleasure, amusement, sport--we care little what it
   is! Let it be decent and respectable, if so it may be, but by any means
   let us disport ourselves and find pleasure, or get gain, or heap to
   ourselves honor!" Man seeks himself, still, and this is the root of
   man's sin. He cannot believe that if he would find himself he must not
   seek himself. He cannot believe the Savior's testimony that he that
   would save his life must be content to lose it--that in looking after
   God and denying self we follow the highest and surest road to promote
   our own happiness.

   No, the sinner resolves to serve self, first, and then, perhaps, he
   will condescend, even, to follow God Himself out of self-love and be
   religious and devout and worship God after his fashion in order to save
   himself, still seeking self even at the foot of the Throne of God!
   Well, dear Friend, if you, this morning, have not been taught that you
   must live unto God and not to self. If you are still following out your
   own ends and aims, and if the main object of your life is to acquire
   wealth or to get position, or to live in comfort, or to indulge your
   passions--then depend upon it, you are treading in the old way which
   wicked men have trod--and as it has always ended in disappointment, so
   will it with you! The apple stolen out of God's garden has turned to
   ashes in the hand! The Abimelech of self has become a tyrant! Fire has
   come forth from the bramble which men have made a king and their cedars
   have been burned! Be wise, I pray you, and forsake the road which leads
   to misery!

   The old way, in the third place, was a way of pride. Our mother, Eve,
   rebelled against God because she thought she knew better than God did.
   She would be as a God--that was her ambition and the same thought had
   entered into her husband's mind. He was not content to be what his
   Maker would have him. He would, if he could, leap into the very Throne
   of Deity and put upon his own head the diadem of universal dominion! An
   ambitious pride led them both astray and this, I fear, is the road in
   which many are constantly treading. Content to be as nothing before
   God, no, they will not--they boast that they are something and they
   lift up their heads and claim dignity and ask for respect.

   Lie at the feet of Jesus Christ and receive salvation as a gift of
   mercy, pure mercy? No, that they will not--they talk of merits,
   prayers, tears! They will, if they can, find something of their own in
   which to trust. They wrap their miserable rags about them and claim
   that they are well-dressed, and being fascinated by self-deceit, they
   imagine that they are rich and increased in goods when they are naked
   and poor and miserable!

   This old way which wicked men have trod is still frequented by the mass
   of those who hear the Gospel, but who reject it, to their own
   confusion. O you who are pilgrims in it, remember Pharaoh and how the
   Lord crushed the pride of that haughty monarch! Remember He has always
   cut down the lofty trees and leveled towering hills, and it is His
   sworn

   purpose to stain the pride of all glory and to bring into contempt all
   the excellency of earth. Tarry awhile, O pilgrim of pride, and humble
   yourself in dust and ashes that you may be exalted by the hand of God!

   Hoping that each one before me is undergoing the process of
   self-examination, I would further remark that the old way which wicked
   men have trod is a way of self-righteousness. Cain, especially, trod
   that road. He was not an outwardly irreligious man, but quite the
   reverse. Inasmuch as a sacrifice must be brought, he will bring an
   offering on his own account. If Abel kneels by the altar, Cain will
   kneel by the altar, also. It was respectable and reputable in that age
   to pay deference to the unseen God--Cain therefore does the same. But
   mark where the flaw was in his religion!

   Abel brought a bloody sacrifice, a lamb, indicating his faith in the
   great atoning sacrifice which was to be offered in the end of the world
   in the Person of the Lamb of God, Christ Jesus. But Cain presented an
   unbloody offering of the fruits of the earth, the products of his own
   toil. And he thought himself as good as Abel, perhaps better. When the
   Lord did not accept his service, the envious heart of the
   self-righteous man boiled over with indignation and he became a
   persecutor, yes, a murderer. None are so bitter as the self-righteous.
   None so cruelly persecute the righteous as those who think themselves
   righteous and are not.

   It was because Saul of Tarsus boasted in a fancied righteousness of his
   own that he breathed out threats against those who found their
   righteousness alone in Christ. The old way of self-righteousness, then,
   was trod by the feet of the first murderer and it is trod still by tens
   of thousands of men. Ah, your Church attendance and your Chapel
   attendance, your receiving of the sacrament, your Baptism, your
   confirmation, your ceremonies of all sorts and kinds, your gifts to the
   poor, your contributions to charities, your amiable speeches and your
   repetitions of your liturgies, or of your extemporaneous
   prayers--these, all put together, are rested on as the rock of your
   salvation!

   Beware, I entreat you, for this is the old way of the Pharisee when he
   thanked God that he was not as other men! It is the old way of
   universal human nature which evermore goes about to establish its own
   righteousness and will not submit itself to the righteousness of
   Christ! As surely as the Pharisees were condemned as a generation of
   vipers and could not escape the damnation of Hell, so surely every one
   of us, if we set up our righteousness in the place of Christ's
   righteousness, will meet with condemnation and will be overthrown by
   God's sudden wrath! Mark that old way and I beseech you, Brothers and
   Sisters, flee from it! By God's Grace, flee from it now!

   The old way which wicked men have trod was, in the next place, a way of
   unbelief. Noah was sent to tell those ancient sinners that the world
   would be destroyed by a flood. They thought him an old dotard and
   mocked him to scorn. For 120 years that "preacher of righteousness"
   continually lifted up his warning voice. He threatened that the world
   would certainly be deluged and the ungodly sons of men would surely be
   swept away. He pointed to the ark of safety which he was building in
   testimony against them and besought them to humble themselves and break
   off their sins by righteousness--but they would not believe the
   Prophet, preacher of righteousness though he was--they turned his most
   earnest words into jests and his tender invitations were made the
   subject of their scorn.

   This was the old way and the old way has not lost its pilgrims. In
   different forms and different ways, the atheism of the human heart
   still continues to discover itself, yes, and discover itself in
   Christian congregations. You that are unconverted surely do not believe
   that you will be condemned by the righteous justice of God, or you
   would not be so much at ease. If you solemnly believed in the justice
   of God, you would not dare to bring it down upon your heads! If you
   really and in very truth believed in the great assize and in the Judge
   of all, you would not spend your lives in violation of the Law and in
   bringing upon yourself the penalty!

   Oh, if you believed that there is a Hell for such as die out of Christ,
   you would be afraid to remain out of Christ another day! You would seek
   your chambers, fall upon your knees and cry to God in mercy that He
   would now accept you and let you now be reconciled to Him through His
   blood. Alas, you hear of God's anger and you profess to believe in it,
   but you act like infidels and as you act, so you are! This old way of
   disbelief has always ended in confusion, for the Flood did come and
   their disbelief could not arrest its rising. The angry waters burst out
   from their lairs like beasts of prey, hungry for human life and the
   rebellious race was utterly destroyed! Even thus most surely shall the
   vengeance of God overtake us, whether we believe it or not, unless we
   fly to Christ, the Ark, and are housed in Him from the coming tempest.

   I will not detain you much longer over this very terrible story, but
   the old way which wicked men have trod is a way of worldliness and
   carelessness and procrastination. What did those men do before the
   Flood? They married and were

   given in marriage till the Flood came and swept them all away. If any
   of them believed in Noah, they, at any rate said, "We will wait a
   little longer, there will be time for us to escape from the threatened
   flood when the first appearance of the descending rains and the
   upheaving fountains shall be visible to us." The whole world seems to
   have been making festival on that black day that closed the years of
   mercy. Never did the joy-bells ring more sweetly. Never was the
   marriage dance more merry. Never did eyes of love speak to loved eyes
   more than when the first booming of the terrible battle were heard afar
   off and Jehovah came forth to vengeance, dressed like a man of war,
   resolved to ease Him of His adversaries!

   Are there not some of you treading in this old way of worldliness, dear
   Hearers, this very morning? Perhaps you are professors of religion and
   yet treading in this way. I mentioned the sons of God just now who are
   said by Moses to have looked upon the daughters of men and formed
   alliances with them. Perhaps you may be contemplating the same act and
   when the flood comes your profession will be no refuge to you, but you
   shall be swept away with the rest. Alas, this is the world's great
   catechism, "What shall we eat and what shall we drink and with what
   shall we be clothed?" And this is the world's trinity in unity, "The
   lust of the eye and the lust of the flesh and the pride of life." And
   this is the course of this world--ever does it seek after its own gain
   and its own pleasure, saying to more solemn and serious things--"When I
   have a more convenient season I will send for you."

   Though the King of Heaven has spread a banquet, yet men make light of
   it! Though He has killed His oxen and His fatlings, they go their way,
   every man, to his farm and to his merchandise and so will they do
   till--

   "God's right arm is bared for war, And thunder clothes His cloudy car."
   Where shall the ungodly fly in that tremendous day? They have chosen
   this old way and have walked in it, but how will they escape Him when
   His flood shall sweep them away? Eliphaz says, "Have you marked the
   way?" I want you to stop a little while and look at that road, again,
   and mark it anew. The first thing I observe, as I look at it, is that
   it is a very broad way. Our Savior's words are most true, "Wide is the
   gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction and many there are
   which go in there."

   The road of sin is so wide that it has room for rebels, for selfish
   sinners, for proud sinners, for professors of religion, for infidels,
   for the worldly and for the hypocrite. Those who tread the narrow way
   must all go in at one gate. They must all partake of one washing in the
   Savior's blood. They must all be renewed by one Holy Spirit. They must
   walk in one command. But as for the ungodly, they may follow--

   "Each a different way Though all the downward road." The road is so
   wide that there may be many independent tracks in it and the drunkard
   may find his way along it without ever ruffling the complacency of the
   hypocrite. The mere moralist may pick a clean path all the way, while
   the immoral wretch may wade up to his knees in mire throughout the
   whole road.

   Behold how sinners disagree and yet agree! How the Sadducee and the
   Pharisee are opposed to each other in most respects and yet agree in
   this--that they are opposed to God! It is a broad road. Observe that it
   is a very popular road. The way downward to destruction is a very
   fashionable one and it always will be. To follow God and to be right
   has always been a thing espoused by the minority. Holy Richard Baxter
   says that, when a child, he marveled that if he ever met with a man who
   was much more holy than other men--spoke more of Christ, was more
   prayerful, was more scrupulous in business--he was always the man of
   whom the neighbors spoke worst! And he wondered more, as he read
   history, that the children of God always were the nicknamed ones, the
   persecuted ones, the despised ones--until he began to understand that
   text of Scripture, "I will put enmity between you and the woman,
   between your seed and her

   Seed."

   It must be so! The people of God must expect to go against the stream,
   as the living fish always do. They must stem the torrent of custom and
   of fashion. But if you want to follow the old way which wicked men have
   trod, you will find plenty of companions and everyone will give you
   good cheer. It is a very easy way, too. You need not trouble yourself
   about finding the entrance into it, you can find it in the dark! And
   the path is so exceedingly smooth that you need not exert yourself much
   to make great progress in it.

   If you desire to go to Heaven and you ask me what is to be done, why, I
   am earnest to inform you rightly. But if you ask me what you are to do
   to be damned, well, nothing at all, it is only a little matter of
   neglect. "How shall we escape,"

   says the Apostle, "if we neglect so great a salvation?" Leave your boat
   alone, slip the oars, just sit still and fold your arms and she will
   descend to the rapids swiftly enough. The way to total destruction is
   most easy! But ah, if you would escape, Divine Grace must make you work
   out your own salvation! You must trust in Jesus and by His Grace tug at
   the oars like a man, for if the righteous scarcely are saved, where
   shall the ungodly and the wicked appear?

   This old way, if you look at it, is the way in which all men naturally
   run. I called it a popular road and a crowded road, but, indeed, it is
   the road of universal human nature! Only put a child on his feet and
   leave him alone, and his first footsteps are towards this broad way. He
   will need no teaching. You shall have no difficulties in training him.
   He will find out the evil path and he will run in it. Yes, and will
   delight in it--and unless the Grace of God shall turn him, he will
   continue in it even when he leans upon his staff. And when his hair
   grows gray he will still persevere in the old way which wicked men have
   trod.

   For all that, it is a most unsatisfactory road. Dangerous, I should
   think, it must clearly be seen to be, even by those who think the least
   of it. Since you set out on it, my Brother, how many have perished from
   the way? Look back, I pray you, upon your companions--where are they
   now? They have gone to the place appointed for all living, one by one,
   and I will ask you, now, what testimony have they left behind as to the
   way? When I speak of the pathway to the skies, I can recount a thousand
   testimonies of dying Christians who have all spoken well of the ways of
   God. Their unanimous testimony, borne, mark you, in the light of
   another world where hypocrisy will be impossible--the unanimous
   testimony has been, that her, "ways are ways of pleasantness and all
   her paths are peace."

   But who ever heard of the testimony of an ungodly man, when dying, to
   the sweetness of sin and to the excellence of unholiness? Why, I think
   I might stake the whole matter upon the testimony of such a one as
   Byron, a man of gigantic genius, having an experience of the widest
   kind, who had drunk of the bowl of pleasure and of fame to its very
   dregs. His testimony put into other words is precisely that of
   Solomon--"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." He became an unhappy man,
   wearied of life and died disgusted with all that he had seen. Better
   far for him had he lived the most obscure Believer in Christ, who,
   dying, could have exclaimed, "I have finished my course, I have kept
   the faith, therefore there is laid up for me a crown of life that fades
   not away." Let the testimonies, then, of those who have trod this road
   and found it out to be so poor a one, convince you that it is dangerous
   for you to tread it, for all along the route you meet with nothing but
   disappointments. If you wish to spend your money for that which is
   bread and your labor for that which truly profits, you will leave this
   tempting but deceptive pathway and fly to another road in which you
   shall have present comfort and everlasting felicity.

   One thing more I want you to notice before I take you away from this
   old way which wicked men have trod, and it is this, that across it here
   and there Divine mercy has set bars. Along the road of sin men dash
   with increasing rapidity every year. It is marvelous the rate at which
   wickedness will travel when it has once overcomes all the drags and
   brakes of common sense and of respect to one's fellows. The course of
   sin is downhill and the rate of sinning is every day accelerated.
   Across the first part of the ungodly man's course, God has been pleased
   to place many chains and bars and barricades--and one of those, though
   it may be but a frail one--is to you, dear Hearer, the subject of this
   morning.

   You were led here that I might say to you as solemnly as I can, if you
   are selfish, if you are proud, if you are self-righteous, if you are
   indulging the lusts of your flesh, you are on the old way which wicked
   men have trod and, for your own sake, stop! The Angel of Mercy stands
   before you, now, and bids you tarry. Why will you die? Why will you
   choose a path that even now gives you no rest? Why select a way which
   hereafter shall fill you with eternal misery? O tarry awhile and ask
   yourself whether it is well to fling away your everlasting hope and
   ruin yourself for present willfulness! O pause awhile!

   That dead child at home lies in your pathway like the dead Amasa, who,
   as he lay decaying in his blood, made an army pause. That sickness of
   yours from which you have just recovered. That loss of property which
   has made you so sorrowful. That dire affliction which you see in a
   beloved wife--all these are bars and chains--will you leap over
   them--will you go steeple-chase to Hell? Oh, sorry exertion for so
   miserable an end! No, but let Mercy arrest you. God's hand is put upon
   the bridle now--He reins up your horse. He thrusts back the steed upon
   its haunches--will you heed your Maker? Will you let your conscience
   listen to His voice? Stay on the plains of mercy! If you break through
   this warning, you may have another and another, but the further the
   road is traveled the fewer the barricades and the impediments
   become--till the last part of that tremendous road which leads down to
   death is all smooth as glass and a

   soul may take a dreadful slide--as down the steep sides of an Alpine
   mountain and so glide into Hell without the soul being disturbed.

   The Lord may give you up and then, like the train of which we read the
   other day in the newspapers, when the engine had become overpowered by
   the weight and the brakes were of no further use, the whole will run
   down the tremendous decline to destruction. God permits the last end of
   many men to be just such an awful descent. Oh, for God's sake, put the
   breaks on this morning! For Christ's sake, I pray you, seek to arrest
   the growing force of your lusts--its growing tendency towards evil--and
   may His Spirit make use of the words which the text has suggested to
   us, to come to a dead halt, and to be saved by faith in Jesus!

   II. We come now to say a little concerning THE END--"Which were cut
   down out of time, whose foundation was swept away with a flood." The
   end of these ancient travelers was that the Flood came and swept them
   all away. It is a parallel case to the end of all ungodly men. I do not
   intend, however, to detain you long upon the horrible subject, but only
   to utter these few words. The end of these travelers was not according
   to their unbelief, but according to the despised Truth of God. They
   would not believe Noah, but the Flood came. You may reject the
   testimony of God's Bible. You may despise the daily warnings of God's
   ministers, but the result will be as we have said.

   God is bound to make true His threats as well as His promises. His
   people bear witness that He has never lied to them in a single gracious
   Word and you may be sure He will never lie to you if you persevere in
   your sin--every single threatening Word will be fulfilled. He is very
   loath to punish, but He will do it. He will unsheathe His heavenly
   sword, and He will strike and none shall stand against the stroke. God
   did not fail at the end of the 120 years to visit the guilty world, and
   He will not fail, when your iniquities are full, to visit you. If your
   ears refuse the language of His Grace, as surely as there is a God in
   Heaven, you shall be made to feel the power of His vengeance.

   Those who will not be covered by the wings of Mercy, as a hen covers
   her chicks, shall see Justice darting upon them as with the wings of an
   eagle. Power reigned in the world's creation--Providence reigns in the
   world's preservation. Mercy reigned in its redemption, but Justice will
   reign in its condemnation. Remember this, then, unbelief will not,
   laugh as it may, remove one jot of the penalty! The Flood, like the
   destroying fire which will come upon ungodly men, was total in its
   destructiveness. It did not sweep away some of them, but all, and the
   punishments of God will not be to a few rebels, but to all. It will
   find out the rich in their palaces, as well as the poor in their
   hovels. The sword of Vengeance will not be bribed, neither will it be
   made quiet by prayers and entreaties--when it is once drawn out of the
   scabbard of Mercy--it shall find out the sinner, even though he seeks
   sanctuary in the Church of God and lays hold on the horns of the altar
   of profession.

   He that is not washed in Jesus' blood and covered with His
   righteousness, shall find the overthrow of God to make no exceptions.
   It will be an overthrow of the most awful kind. What a sight the angels
   must have seen as they saw the miserable men and women of that old
   world fleeing to the hills and to the mountains and to the tops of the
   craggy rocks to escape, if possible, the ever-advancing Flood! I shall
   not try to make your ears listen to their cries and their imprecations.
   Oh, will it ever be your fate, thus hopelessly, to fear the floodgates
   of Divine Vengeance drawn up and the wrath of God, like flaming fire,
   let loose upon you and your fellow sinners?

   Moreover, it was a final overthrow. None out of the ark outlived the
   Flood. They perished, every one of them. So shall it be when the wrath
   of God comes--it shall be eternal destruction from the Glory of the
   Lord and from the presence of His power. There is no hope for those
   with whom God deals in justice--no expectation--no, not a ray of
   expectancy can ever reach the gloomy chambers of their despair. Their
   death-knell is tolled. Their prison is fastened forever. God has turned
   the key in the lock and hurled that key into the abyss where even He
   will never find it to unlock and to unloose. The fetters of the damned
   are everlasting! The fires that burn about them never can be quenched
   and their worm shall never die!

   O that men would take heed of this and not wantonly incur that
   tremendous wrath of which the Scripture, if it speaks but sparingly,
   yet speaks most solemnly! I am not of those who delight to dwell upon
   this subject. I have accused myself, sometimes, that I have so seldom
   spoken of the terrors of the Law, that I have not entered into details
   with regard to the wrath to come and the judgments that await the
   wicked. O let me urge you not to tempt the mercy of God, nor provoke
   His wrath lest you should know in your own experience with a bitter and
   fearful knowledge far more than I

   either care to say to you this morning, or could say if I cared!
   Consider the old way which wicked men have trod and how they were swept
   away with the devouring Flood.

   The text gives us two pictures and these two may suffice to bring out
   the meaning of Eliphaz. First, he says, they were "cut down out of
   time." The representation here is that of a tree with abundant foliage
   and wide-spreading boughs, to which the woodsman comes. He feels his
   axe--it is sharp and ready--and he gives blow after blow till the tree
   begins to shake and quiver. And at last, leaning to the side to which
   it must fall, with a tremendous crash it falls headlong on the turf.
   Such is the sinner in his prosperity, spreading himself like a green
   bay tree--birds of song are among his branches and his fruit is fair to
   look upon. But the axe of Death is near and where the tree falls there
   it must forever lie. Fixed is its everlasting state. The crash which we
   hear in this world as the sinner dies does but foretell to us his
   perpetual doom.

   The other picture of the text is that of a building which is utterly
   swept away. Here I would have you notice that Eliphaz does not say that
   the Flood came and swept away the building of the wicked, but swept
   away their very foundations! If in the next world the sinner only lost
   his wealth or his health, or his outward comforts of this life, it
   would be subject for serious reflection. But when it comes to
   this--that he loses his soul, his very self. When not the comfort of
   life, but life itself is lost--not the comforts of the mind, but the
   mind itself--oh, then it becomes a thing to consider with all one's
   reason and with something more of the enlightenment which God's Spirit
   can add to our reason!

   O that we would but be wise and think of this! May God grant that we
   may not run the risks of having the foundation of our hope, our
   comfort, our very joy torn up by an overwhelming torrent and swept
   away, every stone of it, while we poor fools who built on sand shall
   wring our hands with anguish to think that we would not take the
   warning and build on the Rock while we might have done so!

   III. And now our last word is THE WARNING of the text. And its warning
   seems to me to be summed up in the enquiry of everyone of us, "Am I, or
   am I not, treading in that broad way?" I would not like a hearer to go
   out of this place, this morning, without my having accosted him
   personally, as best I may while standing here and put to him the
   question, Are you treading in the old way which wicked men have trod?

   "Ah," says one, "I do not know." Do you want to know? I will help you
   to answer it. Are you traveling in the narrow way in which Believers in
   Christ are walking? "I cannot say that," you say. Well, then, I can
   tell you without hesitation that you are treading in the broad way, for
   there are but two ways--the one the way of mercy that leads upward to
   the chambers of peace--and the other the way of sin that leads down to
   the gates of Hell. Be not deceived, there are no neutrals here!
   Christ's word is, "He that is not with Me, is against Me. And he that
   gathers not with Me, scatters abroad."

   Do you say, "I take no part in this quarrel. I am not for God and I am
   not against Him"? No, then, out of your own mouth are you condemned! If
   you are not for God, who made you, then you have thrown off your
   allegiance and denied the rights of God to possess the creature which
   He Himself has formed! You are in the wide and broad way. The Lord help
   you! But if you cannot answer the question, I will help you in another
   way. Friend, did you ever experience a great change? Are you a new man?
   If not, you are in the old way, for the way of nature for every one of
   us is the old way and none ever runs in the way of righteousness but
   such as are renewed by the interposition of the Holy Spirit.

   "You must be born again." "Except a man be born again from above, he
   cannot see the kingdom of God." "That which is born of the flesh is
   flesh. And that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Do I hear one
   say, "Then I trust I am changed. I trust I have come into the narrow
   way"? Brother, bless God for it this morning! Hang your head in shame
   to think you have been in the broad road, but bless the Grace which has
   taken you from it! And be sure to prove your gratitude by trying to
   rescue others! This very day, as much as lies in you, tell the Gospel
   of your salvation, that it may be the Gospel of their salvation, too.
   Have you bread to eat while others starve? Eat not your morsel alone.
   Have you light while others are in the dark? Lend them your candle--you
   shall see all the better for the loan. God help you, dear Brothers and
   Sisters, to prove by your life to others that you love God because you
   love your brother also.

   As for you who confessedly are in the old way, would you turn, would
   you leave it? Then the turning point is at yonder Cross where Jesus
   hangs a bleeding Sacrifice for the sons of men. Stop there, stay there!
   Look up and count the purple drops which flow from His dear hands and
   feet and side! And if the Holy Spirit shall help you to say, "Jesus,
   accept me, wash me from my sin and take me to be Your servant and lead
   me in a right way, even the way everlasting,"

   then it is done and this very day you may go your way rejoicing! The
   turning point is not a thing of months, weeks, and years, but rather of
   seconds when the Grace of God comes to work with man!

   My prayer is that some who came in here today the slaves of Satan, may
   go out the Lord's free men and that pilgrims in the way to ruin may
   become travelers on the road to Heaven and to God be the glory! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--2 Peter 3.
     __________________________________________________________________

Mourning at the Sight of the Crucified

   A sermon

   (No. 860)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, MARCH 14, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "And all the people that came together to that sight, beholding the
   things which were done, smote their breasts and returned."- Luke 23:48.

   MANY in that crowd came together to behold the crucifixion of Jesus, in
   a condition of the most furious malice. They had hounded the Savior as
   dogs pursue a stag and at last, all mad with rage, they hemmed Him in
   for death. Others, willing enough to spend an idle hour and to gaze
   upon a sensational spectacle, swelled the mob until a vast assembly
   congregated around the little hill upon which the three crosses were
   raised. There unanimously, whether of malice or of wantonness, they all
   joined in mockery of the Victim who hung upon the center Cross. Some
   thrust out their tongue. Some wagged their heads. Others scoffed and
   jeered--some taunted Him in words and others in signs--but all alike
   exulted over the defenseless man who was given as a prey to their
   teeth.

   Earth never beheld a scene in which so much unrestrained derision and
   expressive contempt were poured upon one man so unanimously and for so
   long a time. It must have been hideous to the last degree to have seen
   so many grinning faces and mocking eyes and to have heard so many cruel
   words and scornful shouts. The spectacle was too detestable to be long
   endured of Heaven. Suddenly the sun, shocked at the scene, veiled his
   face and for three long hours the ribald crew sat shivering in midday
   midnight.

   Meanwhile the earth trembled beneath their feet. The rocks were split
   and the temple, in superstitious defense of whose perpetuity they had
   committed the murder of the Just, had its holy veil torn as though by
   strong invisible hands. The news of this and the feeling of horror
   produced by the darkness and the earth tremor caused a revulsion of
   feelings. There were no more gibes and jests. No more thrusting out of
   tongues and cruel mockeries--they went their way solitary and alone to
   their homes, or in little silent groups, while each man after the
   manner of Orientals when struck with sudden urge, smote upon his
   breast.

   Far different was the procession to the gates of Jerusalem from that
   march of madness which had come out. Observe the power which God has
   over human minds! See how He can tame the wildest and make the most
   malicious and proud to cower down at His feet when He does but manifest
   Himself in the wonders of Nature! How much more cowed and terrified
   will they be when He makes bare His arm and comes forth in the
   judgments of His wrath to deal with them according to their deeds! This
   sudden and memorable change in so vast a multitude is the apt
   representative of two other remarkable mental changes. How like it is
   to the gracious transformation which a sight of the Cross has often
   worked most blessedly in the hearts of men!

   Many have come under the sound of the Gospel resolved to scoff, but
   they have returned to pray. The most idle and even the basest motives
   have brought men under the preaching, but when Jesus has been lifted
   up, they have been savingly drawn to Him and as a consequence have
   struck upon their breasts in repentance and gone their way to serve the
   Savior whom they once blasphemed. Oh, the power, the melting,
   conquering, transforming power of that dear Cross of Christ! My
   Brethren, we have but to abide by the preaching of it. We have but
   constantly to tell abroad the matchless story and we may expect to see
   the most remarkable spiritual results!

   We need despair of no man now that Jesus has died for sinners. With
   such a hammer as the doctrine of the Cross, the most flinty heart will
   be broken! And with such a fire as the sweet love of Christ, the most
   mighty iceberg will be melted! We need never despair for the heathenish
   or superstitious races of men. If we can but find occasion to bring the
   doctrine of Christ Crucified into contact with their natures, it will
   yet change them and Christ will be their king.

   A second and most awful change is also foretold by the incident in our
   text, namely, the effect which a sight of Christ enthroned will have
   upon the proud and obstinate, who in this life rebelled against Him.
   Here they fearlessly jested

   concerning Him and insultingly demanded, "Who is the Lord, that we
   should obey Him?" Here they boldly united in a conspiracy to break His
   bands asunder and cast His cords from them. But when they wake up at
   the blast of the trumpet and see the Great White Throne, which, like a
   mirror, shall reflect their conduct upon them, what a change will be in
   their minds!

   Where now your quibs and your jests? Where now your malicious speeches
   and your persecuting words? What? Is there not one among you who can
   play the man and insult the Man of Nazareth to His face? No, not one!
   Like cowardly dogs they slink away! The infidel's bragging tongue is
   silent! The proud spirit of the atheist is broken--his blustering and
   his carping are hushed forever! With shrieks of dismay and clamorous
   cries of terror, they entreat the hills to cover them and the mountains
   to conceal them from the face of that very Man whose Cross was once the
   subject of their scorn! O take heed, you sinners, take heed, I pray you
   and be you changed this day by Divine Grace, lest you be changed
   by-and-by by terror, for the heart which will not be bent by the love
   of Christ shall be broken by the terror of His name!

   If Jesus upon the Cross does not save you, Christ on the Throne shall
   damn you! If Christ dying is not your life, Christ living shall be your
   death! If Christ on earth is not your Heaven, Christ coming from Heaven
   shall be your Hell! O may God's Grace work a blessed turning of Grace
   in each of us, that we may not be turned into Hell in the dread day of
   reckoning!

   We shall now draw nearer to the text and in the first place, analyze
   the general mourning around the Cross. Secondly, we shall, if God shall
   help us, endeavor to join in the sorrowful chorus. And then, before we
   conclude, we shall remind you that at the foot of the Cross our sorrow
   must be mingled with joy.

   I. First, then, let us ANALYZE THE GENERAL MOURNING which this text
   describes. "All the people that came together to that sight, beholding
   the things which were done, smote their breasts and returned." They all
   smote their breasts, but not all from the same cause. They were all
   afraid, not all from the same reason. The outward manifestations were
   alike in the whole mass, but the grades of difference in feeling were
   as many as the minds in which they ruled. There were many, no doubt,
   who were merely moved with a transient emotion.

   They had seen the death agonies of a remarkable Man, and the attendant
   wonders had persuaded them that He was something more than an ordinary
   being, and therefore they were afraid. With a kind of indefinite fear,
   grounded upon no very intelligent reasoning, they were alarmed because
   God was angry and had closed the eye of day upon them and made the
   rocks to split. Burdened with this indistinct fear, they went their way
   trembling and humbled to their homes. But perhaps before the next
   morning light had dawned they had forgotten it all and the next day
   found them greedy for another bloody spectacle and ready to nail
   another Christ to the cross, if there had been such another to be found
   in the land.

   Their beating of the breast was not a breaking of the heart. It was an
   April shower, a dewdrop of the morning, a hoar-frost that dissolved
   when the sun had risen. Like a shadow the emotion crossed their minds
   and like a shadow it left no trace behind. How often, in the preaching
   of the Cross, has this been the only result in tens of thousands! In
   this house, where so many souls have been converted, many more have
   shed tears which have been wiped away and the reason of their tears has
   been forgotten. A handkerchief has dried up their emotions. Alas! Alas,
   that while it may be difficult to move men with the story of the Cross
   to weeping, it is even more difficult to make those emotions permanent.

   "I have seen something amazing, this morning," said one who had
   listened to a faithful and earnest preacher, "I have seen a whole
   congregation in tears." "Alas!" said the preacher, "there is something
   more amazing still, for the most of them will go their way to forget
   that they ever shed a tear." Ah, my Hearers, shall it be always
   so--always so? Then, O you impenitent, there shall come to your eyes a
   tear which shall drip forever--a scalding drop which no mercy shall
   ever wipe away--a thirst that shall never be abated! There shall come
   to you a worm that shall never die and a fire that never shall be
   quenched! By the love you bear your souls, I pray you escape from the
   wrath to come!

   Others among that great crowd exhibited emotion based upon more
   thoughtful reflection. They saw that they had shared in the murder of
   an innocent Person. "Alas," they said, "we see through it all now. That
   Man was no offender. In all that we have ever heard or seen of Him, He
   did good and only good! He always healed the sick, fed the hungry and
   raised the dead. There is not a word of all His teaching that is really
   contrary to the Law of God. He was a pure and holy Man. We have all
   been duped. Those priests have egged us on to put to death One whom it
   were a thousand mercies if we could restore to life again at once. Our
   race has killed its Benefactor."

   "Yes," says one, "I thrust out my tongue. I found it almost impossible
   to restrain myself when everybody else was laughing and mocking at His
   tortures. But I am afraid I have mocked at the innocent, and I tremble
   lest the darkness which God has sent was His reprobation of my
   wickedness in oppressing the innocent." Such feelings would abide, but
   I can suppose that they might not bring men to sincere repentance--for
   while they might feel sorry that they had oppressed the innocent--yet,
   perceiving nothing more in Jesus than mere evil-treated virtue and
   suffering manhood, the natural emotion might soon pass away and the
   moral and spiritual result be of no great value.

   How frequently have we seen in our hearers that same description of
   emotion! They have regretted that Christ should be put to death. They
   have felt like that old king of France, who said, "I wish I had been
   there with 10,000 of my soldiers--I would have cut their throats sooner
   than they should have touched Him." But those very feelings have been
   evidence that they did not feel their share in the guilt as they ought
   to have done and that to them the Cross of Jesus was no more a saving
   spectacle than the death of a common martyr. Dear Hearers, beware of
   making the Cross to be a commonplace thing with you! Look beyond the
   sufferings of the innocent Manhood of Jesus and see upon the Cross the
   atoning Sacrifice of Christ, or else you look to the Cross in vain.

   No doubt there were a few in the crowd who smote upon their breasts
   because they felt, "We have put to death a Prophet of God. As of old
   our nation slew Isaiah and put to death others of the Master's
   servants, so today they have nailed to the Cross one of the last of the
   Prophets and His blood will be upon us and upon our children." Perhaps
   some of them said, "This man claimed to be Messiah and the miracles
   which attended His death prove that He was so. His life betokens it and
   His death declares it. What will become of our nation if we have slain
   the Prince of Peace? How will God visit us if we have put His Prophet
   to death!"

   Such mourning was in advance of other forms. It showed a deeper thought
   and a clearer knowledge and it may have been an admirable preparation
   for the later hearing of the Gospel--but it would not of itself suffice
   as evidence of Grace. I shall be glad if my hearers in this house today
   are persuaded by the Character of Christ that He must have been a
   Prophet sent of God and that He was the Messiah promised of old. And I
   shall be gratified if they, therefore, lament the shameful cruelties
   which He received from our apostate race. Such emotions of compunction
   and pity are most commendable and under God's blessing they may prove
   to be the furrows of your heart in which the Gospel may take root. He
   who thus was cruelly put to death was God over all blessed forever, the
   world's Redeemer and the Savior of such as put their trust in Him! May
   you accept Him today as your Deliverer and so be saved, for if not, the
   most virtuous regrets concerning His death--however much they may
   indicate your enlightenment--will not manifest your true conversion.

   In the motley company who all went home striking their breasts, let us
   hope that there were some who said, "Certainly this was the Son of
   God," and mourned to think He should have suffered for their
   transgressions and been put to grief for their iniquities. Those who
   came to that point were saved! Blessed were the eyes that looked upon
   the slaughtered Lamb in such a way as that and happy were the hearts
   that then and there were broken because He was bruised and put to grief
   for their sakes. Beloved, aspire to this! May God's Grace bring you to
   see in Jesus Christ no other than God made flesh, hanging upon the
   Cross in agony to die, the Just for the unjust, that we may be saved!

   O come and repose your trust in Him and then strike upon your breasts
   at the thought that such a Victim should have been necessary for your
   redemption! Then may you cease to strike your breasts and begin to clap
   your hands for very joy--for they who thus bewail a Savior may rejoice
   in Him--for He is theirs and they are His!

   II. We shall now ask you To JOIN IN THE LAMENTATION, each man according
   to his sincerity of heart, beholding the Cross and striking upon his
   breast. We will by faith put ourselves at the foot of the little knoll
   of Calvary. There we see in the center, between two thieves, the Son of
   God made flesh, nailed by His hands and feet and dying in an anguish
   which words cannot portray. Look well, I pray you. Look steadfastly and
   devoutly, gazing through your tears. 'Tis He who was worshipped of
   angels who is now dying for the sons of men!

   Sit down and watch the death of Death's Destroyer! I shall ask you
   first to strike your breasts, as you remember that you see in Him your
   own sins. How great He is! That crown of thorns is on the head once
   crowned with all the royalties of Heaven and earth! He who dies there
   is no common man! King of kings and Lord of lords is He who hangs on
   yonder Cross. Then see the greatness of your sins which required so
   vast a Sacrifice. They must be infinite sins to require an infinite
   Person to lay down His life in order to their removal. You can never
   compass or comprehend the greatness of

   your Lord in His essential Character and dignity. Neither shall you
   ever be able to understand the blackness and heinousness of the sin
   which demanded His life as an Atonement.

   Brothers and Sisters, strike your breast and say, "God be merciful to
   me, the greatest of sinners, for I am such." Look well into the face of
   Jesus and see how vile they have made Him! They have stained those
   cheeks with spit! They have lashed those shoulders with a felon's
   scourge! They have put Him to the death which was only awarded to the
   meanest Roman slave! They have hung Him up between Heaven and earth as
   though He were fit for neither! They have stripped Him naked and left
   Him not a rag to cover Him!

   See here, then, O Believer, the shame of your sins! What a shameful
   thing your sins must have been. What a disgraceful and abominable
   thing, if Christ must be made such a shame for you! O be ashamed of
   yourself, to think your Lord should thus be scorned and made nothing of
   for you! See how they aggravate His sorrows! It was not enough to
   crucify Him--they must insult Him! Nor that enough, they must mock His
   prayers and turn His dying cries into themes for jest while they offer
   Him vinegar to drink. See, Beloved, how aggravated were your sins and
   mine!

   Come, my Brothers and Sisters, let us all strike upon our breasts and
   say, "Oh, how our sins have piled up their guiltiness! It was not
   merely that we broke the Law, but we sinned against light and
   knowledge. We sinned against rebukes and warnings. As His griefs are
   aggravated, even so are our sins!" Look still into His dear face and
   see the lines of anguish which indicate the deeper inward sorrow which
   far transcends mere bodily pain and suffering. God, His Father, has
   forsaken Him! God has made Him a curse for us.

   Then what must the curse of God have been against us? What must our
   sins have deserved? If when sin was only imputed to Christ and laid
   upon Him for awhile, His father turned His head away and made His Son
   cry out, "Lama Sabacthani!" Oh, what an accursed thing our sin must be
   and what a curse would have come upon us! What thunderbolts, what coals
   of fire, what indignation and wrath from the Most High must have been
   our portion had not Jesus interposed! If Jehovah did not spare His Son,
   how little would He have spared guilty, worthless men if He had dealt
   with us after our sins and rewarded us according to our iniquities!

   As we still sit down and look at Jesus, we remember that His death was
   voluntary--He need not have died unless He had so willed. Here, then,
   is another striking feature of our sin, for our sin was voluntary, too.
   We did not sin as of compulsion, but we deliberately chose the evil
   way. O Sinner, let both of us sit down together and tell the Lord that
   we have no justification, or extenuation, or excuse to offer--we have
   sinned willfully against light and knowledge, against love and mercy.
   Let us strike upon our breasts, as we see Jesus willingly suffer and
   confess that we have willingly offended against the just and righteous
   Laws of a most good and gracious God.

   I could gladly keep you looking into those five wounds and studying
   that marred face and counting every purple drop that flowed from hands
   and feet and side, but time would fail us. Only that one wound--let it
   abide with you-- strike your breast because you see in Christ your sin.
   Looking again--changing, as it were, our standpoint, but still keeping
   our eye upon that same, dear Crucified One, let us see there the
   neglected and despised remedy for our sin. If sin itself, in its first
   condition, as rebellion, brings no tears to our eyes, it certainly
   ought, in its second manifestation, as ingratitude.

   The sin of rebellion is vile. But the sin of slighting the Savior is
   viler still. He that hangs on the Cross in groans and griefs
   unutterable, is He whom some of you have never thought of--whom you do
   not love, to whom you never pray--in whom you place no confidence and
   whom you never serve. I will not accuse you. I will ask those dear
   wounds to do it, sweetly and tenderly. I will rather accuse myself,
   for, alas! Alas, there was a time when I heard of Him as with a deaf
   ear! There was a time when I was told of Him and understood the love He
   bore to sinners and yet my heart was like a stone within me and would
   not be moved! I stopped my ears and would not be charmed, even with
   such a master fascination as the disinterested love of Jesus!

   I think if I had been spared to live the life of an ungodly man for 30,
   40, or 50 years and had been converted at last, I should never have
   been able to blame myself sufficiently for rejecting Jesus during all
   those years. Why, even those of us who were converted in our youth and
   almost in our childhood cannot help blaming ourselves to think that so
   dear a Friend who had done so much for us, was so long slighted by us!
   Who could have done more for us than He, since He gave Himself for our
   sins? Ah, how we did wrong Him while we withheld our hearts from Him! O
   Sinners, how can you

   keep the doors of your hearts shut against the Friend of Sinners? How
   can we close the door against Him who cries, "My head is wet with dew
   and My locks with the drops of the night: open to Me, my Beloved, open
   to Me"?

   I am persuaded there are some here who are His elect--you were chosen
   by Him from before the foundation of the world and you shall be with
   Him in Heaven one day to sing His praises and yet, at this moment,
   though you hear His name, you do not love Him. And though you are told
   of what He did, you do not trust Him. What? Shall that iron bar always
   fast close the gate of your heart? Shall that door be always bolted? O
   Spirit of the living God, win an entrance for the blessed Christ this
   morning! If anything can do it, surely it must be a sight of the
   Crucified Christ--that matchless spectacle shall make a heart of stone
   relent and melt--subdued by Jesus' love! O may the Holy Spirit work
   this gracious melting, and He shall have all the honor!

   Still keeping you at the foot of the Cross, dear Friends, every
   Believer here may well strike upon his breast this morning as he thinks
   of who it was that smarted so upon the Cross. Who was it? It was He who
   loved us before the world was made! It was He who is this day the
   Bridegroom of our souls, our Best-Beloved. He who has taken us into the
   banqueting house and waved His banner of love over us. It is He who has
   made us one with Himself, and has vowed to present us to His Father
   without spot. It is He, our Husband, our Ishi, who has called us His
   Hephzibah because His soul delights in us. It is He who suffered thus
   for us.

   Suffering does not always excite the same degree of pity. You must know
   something of the individual before the innermost depths of the soul are
   stirred, and so it happens to us that the higher the character and the
   more able we are to appreciate it, the closer the relation and the more
   fondly we reciprocate the love--the more deeply does suffering strike
   the soul. You are coming to His Table, some of you, today, and you will
   partake of bread--I pray you remember that it represents the quivering
   flesh that was filled with pain on Calvary! You will sip of that
   cup--then be sure to remember that it betokens to you the blood of One
   who loves you better than you could be loved by mother, or by husband,
   or by friend!

   sit down and strike your breasts that He should grieve! That heaven's
   Sun should be eclipsed! That Heaven's Lily should be spotted with blood
   and Heaven's Rose should be whitened with a deadly pallor! Lament that
   Perfection should be accused, Innocence struck and Love murdered--and
   that Christ, the happy and the holy, the ever blessed, who had been for
   ages the delight of angels--should now become the sorrowful, the
   acquaintance of grief, the bleeding and the dying! Smite upon your
   breasts, Believers and go your way! Beloved in the Lord, if such grief
   as this should be kindled in you, it will be well to pursue the subject
   and to reflect upon how unbelieving and how cruel we have been to Jesus
   since the day that we have known Him.

   What? Does He bleed for me and have I doubted Him? Is He the Son of God
   and have I suspected His fidelity? Have I stood at the foot of the
   Cross unmoved? Have I spoken of my dying Lord in a cold, indifferent
   spirit? Have I ever preached Christ Crucified with a dry eye and a
   heart unmoved? Do I bow my knee in private prayer and are my thoughts
   wandering when they ought to be bound hand and foot to His dear
   bleeding self? Am I accustomed to turn over the pages of the
   Evangelists which record my Master's wondrous Sacrifice and have I
   never stained those pages with my tears? Have I never paused spellbound
   over the sacred sentence which recorded this miracle of miracles, this
   marvel of marvels?

   Oh, shame upon you, hard Heart! Well may I strike you! May God strike
   you with the hammer of His Spirit and break you to shivers! O you stony
   Heart, you granite Soul, you flinty spirit--well may I strike the
   breast which harbors you, to think that I should be so doltish in the
   presence of love so amazing, so Divine! Brethren, you may strike upon
   your breasts as you look at the Cross and mourn that you should have
   done so little for your Lord. I think if anybody could have sketched my
   future life in the day of my conversion and have said, "You will be
   dull and cold in spiritual things and you will exhibit but little
   earnestness and little gratitude!" I should have said, like Hazael, "Is
   your servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?"

   1 suppose I read your hearts when I say that the most of you are
   disappointed with your own conduct as compared with your too-flattering
   prophecies of yourselves! What? Am I really pardoned? Am I in very deed
   washed in that warm stream which gushed from the riven side of Jesus,
   and yet am I not wholly consecrated to Christ? What? In my body do I
   bear the marks of the Lord Jesus and can I live almost without a
   thought of Him? Am I plucked like a brand from the burning and have I
   small care to win others from the wrath to come? Has Jesus stooped to
   win me and do I not labor to

   win others for Him? Was He all in earnest about me and am I only half
   in earnest about Him? Dare I waste a minute, dare I trifle away an
   hour? Have I an evening to spend in vain gossip and idle frivolities?

   O my Heart, well may I strike you, that at the sight of the death of
   the dear Lover of my soul, I should not be fired by the highest zeal
   and be impelled by the most ardent love to a perfect consecration of
   every power of my nature, every affection of my spirit, every faculty
   of my whole man! This mournful strain might be pursued to far greater
   lengths. We might follow up our confessions, still striking, still
   accusing, still regretting, still bewailing. We might continue upon the
   bass notes evermore and yet might we not express sufficient contrition
   for the shameful manner in which we have treated our blessed Friend. We
   might say with one of our hymn writers--

   "Lord, let me weep for nothing but sin,

   And after none but You.

   And then I would--O that I might

   A constant weeper be!"

   One might desire to become a Niobe and realize the desire of Jeremy, "O
   that my head were waters." Even the holy extravagance of George Herbert
   does not surprise us, for we would even sing with him the song of
   GRIEF--

   "Oh, who will give me tears?

   Come, all you springs,

   Dwell in my head and eyes!

   Come, clouds and rain!

   My grief has need of all

   The watery things

   That nature has produced.

   Let every vein

   Suck up a river to supply my eyes, My weary weeping eyes, too dry for
   me, Unless they get new conduits, new supplies To bear them out and
   with my state agree. What are two shallow fords, two little spouts Of a
   less world? The greater is but small. A narrow cupboard for my griefs
   and doubts, Which need provision in the midst of all. Verses, you are
   too fine a thing, too wise, For my rough sorrows. Cease! Be dumb and
   mute. Give up your feet and running to my eyes, And keep your measures
   for some lover's lute, Whose grief allo ws him music and a rhyme For
   mine excludes both measure, tune and time, Alas, my God!"

   III. Having, perhaps, said enough on this point--enough if God blesses
   it--too much if without His blessing--let

   me invite you, in the third place, to remember that AT CALVARY,
   DOLOROUS NOTES ARE NOT THE ONLY

   SUITABLE MUSIC. We admired our poet when, in the hymn which we have
   just sung, he appears to question with himself which would be the most
   fitting tune for Golgotha. "It is finished"--shall we raise songs of
   sorrow or of praise? Mourn to see the Savior die, or proclaim His
   victory?--

   "If of Calvary we tell,

   How can songs of triumph swell!

   If of man redeemed from woe,

   How shall notes of mourning flow?" He shows that since our sin pierced
   the side of Jesus, there is cause for unlimited lamentation, but since
   the blood which flowed from the wound has cleansed our sin, there is
   ground for unbounded thanksgiving! And, therefore, the poet, after
   having balanced the matter in a few verses, concludes with--

   " 'It is finished,'let us raise Songs of thankfulness and praise."
   After all, you and I are not in the same condition as the multitude who
   had surrounded Calvary--for at that time our Lord was still dead--now
   He is risen, indeed! There were yet three days from that Thursday
   evening (for there is much reason to believe that our Lord was not
   crucified on Friday), in which Jesus must dwell in the regions of the
   dead. Our Lord, therefore, so far as human eyes could see Him, was a
   proper object of pity and mourning and not of thanksgiving.

   But now, Beloved, He ever lives and gloriously reigns! No grave
   confines that blessed body! He saw no corruption, for the moment when
   the third day dawned, He could no longer be held with the bonds of
   death, but He manifested Himself alive unto His disciples! He tarried
   in this world for 40 days. Some of His time was spent with those who
   knew Him in the flesh. Perhaps a larger part of it was passed with
   those saints who came out of their graves after His Resurrection, but
   certain it is that He is gone up, as the first-fruit from the dead. He
   is gone up to the right hand of God, even the Father!

   Do not bewail those wounds--they are lustrous with supernal splendor!
   Do not lament His death--He lives no more to die! Do not mourn that
   shame and spitting--

   "The head that once was crowned with thorns, Is crowned with glory
   now."

   Look up and thank God that death has no more dominion over Him. He ever
   lives to make intercession for us and He shall shortly come with
   angelic bands surrounding Him to judge the quick and the dead. The
   argument for joy overshadows the reason for sorrow! Like as a woman
   when the child is born remembers no more her anguish, for joy that a
   child is born into the world, so, in the thought of the risen Savior
   who has taken possession of His crown, we will forget the lamentation
   of the Cross and the sorrows of the broken heart of Calvary.

   Moreover, hear the shrill voice of the high sounding cymbals and let
   your hearts rejoice within you, for in His death our Redeemer conquered
   all the hosts of Hell. They came against Him furiously, yes, they came
   against Him to eat up His flesh, but they stumbled and fell. They
   compassed Him about, yes, they compassed Him about like bees, but in
   the name of the Lord did the Champion destroy them! Against the whole
   multitude of sins and all the battalions of the Pit, the Savior stood,
   a solitary soldier fighting against innumerable bands but He has slain
   them all! "Bruised is the dragon's head." Jesus has led captivity
   captive! He conquered when He fell! And let the notes of victory drown
   forever the cries of sorrow!

   Moreover, Brothers and Sisters, let it be remembered that men have been
   saved! Let there stream before your gladdened eyes this morning the
   innumerable company of the elect. Robed in white they come in long
   procession--they come from distant lands, from every clime. They were
   once scarlet with sin and black with iniquity--they are now all white
   and pure, and without spot before the Throne forever. They are beyond
   temptation, beatified and made like Jesus! And how? It was all through
   Calvary. There was their sin put away! There was their everlasting
   righteousness brought in and consummated! Let the hosts that are before
   the Throne, as they wave their palms and touch their golden harps,
   excite you to a joy like their own and let that celestial music hush
   the gentler voices which mournfully exclaim--

   "Alas, and did my Savior bleed? And did my Sovereign die?

   Would He devote that sacred head For such a worm as I?"

   Nor is that all. You yourself are saved! O Brother! This will always be
   one of your greatest joys, that others are converted through your
   instrumentality! This is occasion for much thanksgiving, but your
   Savior's advice to you is, "Notwithstanding in this, rejoice not that
   the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice because your names
   are written in Heaven." You, a spirit meet to be cast away! You whose
   portion must have been with devils--you are this day forgiven, adopted,
   saved, on the road to Heaven! Oh, while you think that you are saved
   from Hell, that you are lifted up to Glory, you cannot but rejoice that
   your sin is put away from you through the death of Jesus Christ, your
   Lord!

   Lastly, there is one thing for which we ought always to remember with
   joy, Christ's death, and that is that although the crucifixion of Jesus
   was intended to be a blow at the honor and glory of our God--though in
   the death of Christ the world did, so far as it was able, put God
   Himself to death and so earn for itself that hideous title, "a deicidal
   world," yet

   never did God have such honor and glory as He obtained through the
   sufferings of Jesus! Oh, they thought to scorn Him, but they lifted His
   name on high!

   They thought that God was dishonored when He was most glorified! The
   image of the Invisible, had they not marred it? The express image of
   the Father's Person, had they not defiled it? Ah, so they said! But He
   that sits in the heavens may well laugh and have them in derision, for
   what did they do?! They did but break the alabaster box and all the
   blessed drops of infinite mercy streamed forth to perfume all worlds!
   They did but rend the veil and then the Glory which had been hidden
   between the cherubim shone forth upon all lands!

   O Nature, adoring God with your ancient and priestly mountains,
   extolling Him with your trees which clap their hands, and worshipping
   with your seas which, in their fullness, roar out Jehovah's praise!
   With all your tempests and flames of fire, your dragons and your deeps,
   your snow and your hail--you cannot glorify God as Jesus glorified Him
   when He became obedient unto death! O Heaven, with all your jubilant
   angels, your ever-chanting cherubim and seraphim, your thrice holy
   hymns, your streets of gold and endless harmonies--you cannot reveal
   the Deity as Jesus Christ revealed it on the Cross!

   O Hell, with all your infinite horrors and flames unquenchable and
   pains and griefs and shrieks of tortured ghosts! Even you cannot reveal
   the Justice of God as Christ revealed it in His riven heart upon the
   bloody Cross! O earth and Heaven and Hell! O time and eternity, things
   present and things to come, visible and invisible--you are dim mirrors
   of the Godhead compared with the bleeding Lamb! O heart of God, I see
   you nowhere as at Golgotha, where the Word Incarnate reveals the
   justice and the love, the holiness and the tenderness of God in one
   blaze of Glory! If any created mind would gladly see the Glory of God,
   he need not gaze upon the starry skies, nor soar into the Heaven of
   heavens! He has but to bow at the foot of the Cross and watch the
   crimson streams which gush from Emmanuel's wounds!

   If you would behold the Glory of God, you need not gaze between the
   gates of pearls! You have but to look beyond the gates of Jerusalem and
   see the Prince of Peace expire! If you would receive the most noble
   conception that ever filled the human mind of the loving kindness and
   the greatness and the pity, and yet the justice and the severity and
   the wrath of God, you need not lift up your eyes, nor cast them down,
   nor look to Paradise, nor gaze on Tophet--you have but to look into the
   heart of Christ all crushed and broken and bruised and you have seen it
   all!

   Oh, the joy that springs from the fact that God has triumphed after
   all! Death is not the victor! Evil is not master! There are not two
   rival kingdoms, one governed by the God of good and the other by the
   god of evil--no, evil is bound, chained and led captive! Its sinews are
   cut, its head is broken! Its king is bound to the dread chariot of
   Jehovah-Jesus, and as the white horses of triumph drag the Conqueror up
   the everlasting hills in splendor of glory, the monsters of the Pit
   cringe at His chariot wheels!

   Therefore, Beloved, we close this discourse with this sentence of
   humble yet joyful worship, "Glory be unto the Father and to the Son and
   to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall
   be, world without end. Amen."

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Luke23:27-56.
     __________________________________________________________________

Broken Bones

   A sermon

   (No. 861)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, MARCH 21, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which You have broken
   may rejoice."- Psalm 51:8.

   BACKSLIDING is a most common evil, far more common than some of us
   suppose. We may ourselves be guilty of it and yet may delude our hearts
   with the idea that we are making progress in spiritual life. As the
   cunning hunter always makes the passage into his pits most easy and
   attractive, but always renders it most difficult for his victim to
   escape, so Satan makes the way of apostasy to be very seductive to our
   nature, but alas, the path of return from backsliding is very hard to
   tread and were it not for Divine Grace, no human feet would ever be
   able to make progress in it.

   If I should be successful, this morning, in calling attention to
   decline in the spiritual life, especially in calling the attention of
   those to the matter whom it most concerns--I mean those who are
   themselves declining--I shall feel happy, indeed. At the same time, if
   I should so speak that those who have backslidden may be encouraged to
   hope for restoration and to seek, with earnestness and eagerness, that
   they may even now be restored, a second good result will have followed
   and unto God shall be double praise!

   Dear Friends, we make little enough advance in the spiritual life, as
   it is--it were a thousand follies in one to be going back. When I look
   at my own standing on the road to Heaven, I am so dissatisfied with
   that to which I have attained, that to give up an inch of what I have
   gained would be excess of madness! A rich man may lose a thousand
   pounds or more and not feel it--but he whose purse is scant cannot
   afford to lose a shilling. Those who abound much in Divine Grace,
   might, perhaps, be able to bear some spiritual losses--but you and I
   cannot afford it! We are too near bankruptcy as it is and so
   poverty-stricken in many respects that it well behooves us to look to
   every one of the pennies of Grace--to watch our little drains and
   expenditures and to neglect no means by which even a little might be
   gained in the spiritual life.

   May God grant to us, now, that while we are listening to His Word we
   may derive a blessing. There are three things to which I shall call
   your attention this morning. The first is, the plight in which David
   was--he speaks of his bones as having been broken. Secondly, the remedy
   which he sought, "Make me to hear joy and gladness." And then, thirdly,
   the expectation which he entertained, namely, that the bones which had
   once been broken would yet be able to rejoice.

   I. In commencing, let us notice THE PLIGHT IN WHICH DAVID WAS. His
   bones had been broken. We hear persons speak very flippantly of David's
   sin--boldly offering it as an accusation against godliness and as an
   excuse for their own inconsistent conversation. I wish they would look,
   also, at David's repentance, for if his sin was shameful, his sorrow
   for it was of the most bitter kind. And if the crime was glaring,
   certainly the afflictions which chastised him were equally remarkable.

   From that day forward, the man whose ways had been ways of pleasantness
   and whose paths had been paths of peace, limped like a cripple along a
   thorny road and traversed a pilgrimage of afflictions almost
   unparalleled. Children of God cannot sin cheaply! Sinners may sin and
   in this life they may prosper, yes, and sometimes prosper by their
   sins. But those whom God loves will always find the way of
   transgression to be hard. Their follies will cost them their peace of
   mind. It will cost them their present comfort and even cost them all
   but their souls, so that they are saved, but so as by fire. David had
   sinned and for awhile the sin was pleasurable--all the attendant
   circumstances appeared to be favorable to his escape from punishment.

   He had managed to conceal his crime from the injured Uriah and then he
   had, with horrible craftiness, effected the death of the injured
   husband. Every circumstance in Providence seemed to favor the
   concealment of the monarch's sin. His conscience slept. His passions
   rioted. But his heart was estranged and his Grace was at its lowest
   ebb. Perhaps he even persuaded himself that his adultery, which might
   have been a great sin in others, was excusable in himself because of
   his

   position as a despotic sovereign, who, according to Oriental notions,
   had almost absolute power over the persons of his subjects. It is so
   easy to persuade ourselves that what custom concedes to us, it is right
   to take.

   But because David was a man after God's own heart, his ease in sin
   could not long continue--the Lord would not allow such a disease to
   destroy His servant. David's rest was abruptly broken. The stern
   Prophet, Nathan, delivers to him a parable with a personal application.
   The sense of right in the king is awakened. Conviction of sin, like a
   lightning flash, destroys the towers of his joy and lays his peace
   prostrate in ruins! He trembles before God, whom in his heart he loved,
   but whom he had, for awhile, forgotten.

   The king goes into his chamber mourning and lamenting before the Lord,
   followed by the chastising rod which drives the word home upon his
   conscience! The Holy Spirit becomes the spirit of bondage to him and
   makes him again to fear. By the rough north wind of conviction all his
   joys are withered and his delights cut off. He becomes one of the most
   wretched of mortals. His sighs and groans resound through his palace,
   and where once his harp had poured forth melodies of pleasant praise,
   nothing is heard but dolorous notes of plaintive penitence! Alas, for
   you, O conscience-stricken monarch! Your couch is watered with your
   tears and your bread made bitter with your grief. Well do you compare
   your sorrow to the pain of broken bones!

   Brothers and Sisters, let us open up that poetical metaphor before us.
   We may gather from this that David's plight was very painful. "His
   bones," he says, "were broken." A flesh wound is painful--and who would
   not wish to escape from it? But here was a more serious injury, for the
   bone was reached and completely crushed. No punishment was probably
   more cruel than that of breaking poor wretches, alive, upon the wheel
   when a heavy bar of iron smashed the great bones of the arms and of the
   legs--the pain must have been excruciating to the last degree! And
   David declares that the mental anguish which he endured was comparable
   to such extreme agony.

   You are on your way home today and in affecting a passage across one of
   our most perilous roads, you are startled by a fearful cry, for some
   poor unwary passenger has been dashed down by a huge and impetuous
   vehicle! You rush to the rescue, but it is too late--the unhappy victim
   is pale and death-like--and the word sounds terribly on your
   compassionate ears when you are informed that his bones are broken. We
   think comparatively little of wounds which only tear the curtains of
   flesh--but when the solid pillars of the house of manhood are snapped
   in two and the supports of the body are broken--then every man
   confesses that the pain is great, indeed.

   David declares that such was his pain of mind. His soul was racked and
   tortured, anguished and tormented. The pain of a broken bone is as
   constant as it is excruciating. It prevents sleep by night and ease by
   day. The mind cannot be diverted from it. Men cannot shake off the
   remembrance that this, their frame, is so seriously injured. O beware,
   you Believers who are just now tempted by the sweets of sin and
   remember the wormwood and gall which will be found in the dregs
   afterwards! You who feel the soft blandishments of sin to be so
   pleasing to your flesh and are ready to yield to its gentle
   fascinations, remember that when it reveals itself, the softness of its
   touch will all be gone and it will be towards you as a huge hammer, or
   like the crushing wheels of the chariot of Juggernaut, crushing your
   spirit with anguish! The velvet paw of the tiger of sin conceals a
   lacerating claw!

   The metaphor also signifies that the result of his sin and of his
   repentance was exceedingly serious. A trifling thing is superficial.
   That which is merely on the surface is not a matter which may cause us
   deep anxiety--but a broken bone is not a thing to laugh at! Such an
   injury compels a man to change his lightheartedness for apprehension.
   Had it been but a skin wound, he might have wrapped his handkerchief
   about it and have gone his way and have said, "It will heal in due
   time." But in the case of a broken bone he anxiously sends for the
   surgeon and knows that he must lie by awhile--he feels the accident is
   no mere trifle.

   Believe me, dear Friends, genuine sorrow for sin is not as some suppose
   it--mere sentimentalism. Under sorrow for sin I have seen men driven
   almost out of their senses--until it seemed as if their minds would
   fail them under their apprehensions of guilt and its heinousness. Yes,
   some of us have personally felt it, and we bear witness that if all
   forms of bodily pain could be heaped upon us at once, we had sooner
   bear them all than the burden of sin! O believe me, as I am sure you
   will who have felt the same--guilt upon the conscience is worse than
   the body on the rack. Even the flames of the stake may be cheerfully
   endured--but the burnings of a conscience tormented of God are beyond
   all measure unendurable. Many have felt this soul-anguish and have
   endured this month after month, but have at last found rest, so

   that there is comfort in this misery, for it ends well and profitably.
   May you who now feel your bones to be broken, now plead, as David did,
   "Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which You have broken
   may rejoice."

   The plight into which David fell was more than serious and painful--it
   was complicated. The setting of one broken bone may puzzle the surgeon,
   but what is his task when many bones are broken? In one bone a compound
   fracture will involve great difficulty in bringing the divided pieces
   together, in the hope that yet new bone may be formed and so the member
   may be spared. But if it should come to a broken arm, and leg, and
   rib--if in many places the poor human frame has become injured--how
   exceedingly careful must the surgeon be! Often the very treatment which
   may be useful to one member may be injurious to the other--disease in
   one limb may act upon another. The cure of the whole, where all the
   bones are broken, must be a miracle! If a mass of misery--a man full of
   broken bones--shall yet become healthy and strong, great credit must be
   given to the surgeon's skill. Brothers and Sisters, you see the case of
   a man, then, who has sinned against God by backsliding from his ways
   and who is heavily struck by his conscience and by the Holy Spirit! It
   is a complicated sorrow which he endures.

   The metaphor of broken bones also seems to indicate that the greater
   powers of the soul are grieved and afflicted. The bones are the more
   important part of the structure of the body. In our spirits there are
   certain Graces which are, so to speak, the bones of the spiritual
   man--to these David refers. Our heavenly Father is pleased, sometimes,
   when we have sinned, to allow our faith to become weak like a broken
   bone. We cannot grasp the promises we once delighted in. We cannot
   voice the encouraging Word as we did in happier days. Our faith brings
   us pain rather than rest. He suffers our hope to lose its joy-creating
   power, and like a broken bone, our very hope for a better land where
   rest remains, becomes a pining disquietude at our present forlorn
   condition.

   Even love, that notable limb of strength which makes the soul to run so
   nimbly, is full of weakness and anguish and makes us cry, "Do I love my
   Lord at all, and if so, how could I have offended Him so greatly? When
   I have backslidden so far, surely for me to talk about love to God
   would be to take a holy word upon polluted lips!" At that time the
   great master Graces within our spirit seem, each of them, to minister
   to our woe. And though they are there--as the broken bone is still in
   the man's body--they are so injured and weakened, and all but powerless
   that their only vitality is the sad vitality of pain!

   Our faith in the Scriptures leads us to tremble at their threats. Our
   hope shocks us because, though we have hope for others, we cannot
   rejoice for ourselves. And our very love to God, yet alive within us,
   makes us hate and despise ourselves to think we should have acted thus
   towards One so good and kind. O Brethren, you who are lingering on the
   brink of sin and are beginning to slip with your feet, may the thought
   of these broken bones awaken you from your dangerous lethargy as with a
   thunderclap! And may you fly at once to the Cross and to the fountain
   filled from Jesus' blood and begin your spiritual career anew with more
   earnestness and watchfulness than you have ever shown before! The case
   was painful, serious and complicated.

   In the fourth place, it was extremely dangerous, for when several bones
   are broken, every surgeon perceives how very likely it is that the case
   will end fatally. Around each shattered bone there lingers the danger
   of gangrene and if that grievous ill should intervene, the healing is
   in vain. When a heart is broken with repentance, the gangrene of
   remorse is most urgent to enter it. When the spirit is humbled, the
   gangrene of unbelief covets the opportunity to take possession of the
   man. When the heart is really emptied and made to feel its own
   nothingness, then the demon, Despair, beholds a dark cavern in which to
   fix his horrible abode. It is a dreadful thing to have faith broken,
   hope broken and love broken--and the entire man, as it were--reduced to
   a palpitating mass of pain. It is a dreadfully dangerous condition to
   be in, for, alas, my Brothers and Sisters, when men have sinned and
   have been made to suffer afterwards, how often have they turned to
   their sins again with greater hardness of heart than ever!

   With many, the more they are struck the more they revolt. When the
   whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint and they seem to be
   nothing but "wounds and bruises and putrefying sores" through the
   afflictions they have suffered-- yet they still return to their
   idols--and the more they are chastened the more they revolt! Think, I
   pray you, how many professors have backslidden and have been chastened
   but have continued in their backsliding until they have gone down to
   Hell! I did not say children of God--I said professors--and how do you
   know but what you may be a mere professor yourself?

   Ah, my Friend, if you are living in known sin at this time and are
   happy in it, you have great cause to tremble! If you can go on from day
   to day and from week to week in neglected prayer and neglected reading
   of the Word. If you can live without the means of Grace in the week
   days. If you are cold and indifferent towards our Lord and Master. If
   you are altogether becoming worldly and covetous and vain--fond of
   levity and the things of this world and yet are at ease-- you have
   grave cause to suspect that you are a bastard in the family and not one
   of the true children of the living God! I use that hard expression,
   remembering how the poet puts it--

   "Bastards may escape the rod, Plunged in sensual, vain delight. But the
   trueborn child of God, Must not, would not, if he might" Ah, indeed, he
   would not if he might! Great God, never let us sin without a smart!
   Never suffer us to turn to the right or to the left without receiving
   at once a reproof for it, that we may be driven back into the strait
   and narrow path and may so walk all our lives with You! The danger is,
   when the bones get broken, the gangrene of despair, or the
   mortification of indifference may set in and the man becomes a
   castaway. How this ought to keep any of you who know the Lord from
   indulging in the beginnings of declension! How jealous should you be
   lest you run these frightful risks!

   Yet again, David's case was most damaging. Supposing the danger to be
   over, yet a broken bone is never a gain, but must always a loss. Poor
   man! While his bone is broken he is quite unable to help himself, much
   less to help others! His being unable to help himself makes a draft
   upon the strength of the Church of God. Power which might otherwise be
   employed has to be turned into the channel of succoring him, so that
   there is a clear demand upon the Christian power of the Church which
   ought to be expended mainly in seeking after lost souls--there is a
   damage to the whole Church in the declension of one backsliding
   Believer.

   Moreover, while the man is in this state he can do no good to others.
   Of what service can he be who does not know his own salvation? How can
   he point others to a Savior when he cannot see the Cross himself? How
   shall he comfort another man's faith while his own faith can scarcely
   touch the hem of your garment? By what energy and power shall he help
   the weak when he, himself, is the weakest of all? Yes, and let me say
   even after God, in His mercy, has healed every broken bone, it is a sad
   detriment to a man to have had his bones broken at all! Somehow or
   other there is never the freedom of action and degree of energy in the
   healed arm that there is in the one that was never broken. It is a
   great blessing for the cripple to be helped to walk with a crutch--but
   it is a greater blessing never to have been a cripple.

   It is an unspeakable blessing to have been able always to run without
   weariness and walk without fainting. When a man's bone has been broken
   in his boyhood, if it is ever so well set, yet, I have heard say, it
   will feel the changes of the weather and will feel starts and shocks
   unknown before--unpleasant reminders that it was once broken. So it is
   with us--if we have fallen into a sin, even though we have recovered
   from it--there is a weakness left and a tendency to pain. We never are
   the men, after backsliding, that we were before. And we never make,
   altogether, a recovery from great spiritual decline, so as to be, all
   things considered, quite what we were before.

   I grant that in some points we may become superior, as, for instance,
   in knowledge of self and in experience of the spiritual life. We may
   have made an advance, but still, in holy agility, in sacred vivacity,
   in consecrated exultation, we are not what we were. I will defy David
   to dance before the Ark of God with all his might after the sin with
   Bathsheba had crippled him. Yes, and there is no giant killing. There
   is no slaying his ten thousands. There is very little of high and
   mighty exploit in Israel's cause after the sin, even though succeeded
   by a gracious recovery. I grant you, David exhibited virtues of another
   class and excellences of another kind--but even these are not such as
   to tempt us to risk the experiment for ourselves!

   God grant that our bones may not be broken, lest our soul be damaged
   for life. May we never be like a ship which has been all but wrecked
   and just escaped the rocks--tugged into harbor with extreme difficulty,
   her hull all but waterlogged, her cargo spoiled, her masts gone by the
   board, her streamers gone, her crew and passengers all wet and saved as
   by the skin of their teeth--a mere hulk dragged into haven by infinite
   mercy! God grant, instead of that, that we may have an abundant
   entrance into the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, sails
   all filled, with a goodly cargo on board to the praise of the glory of
   His Grace who has made us accepted in the Beloved!

   One more reflection on this point and that is, although David's case
   was very painful, very serious, very complicated, very dangerous and
   very damaging, yet it was still hopeful. The saving clause lies
   here--"The bones which You have

   broken." What? Did God break those bones? Then the breaking was not
   done by accident, but by design! Did God, in chastisement, deal with
   David's spirit and bring him into this killing sorrow? Then He who
   wounds can bind up! Infinite power rests in God, and if He has, in
   wisdom, been pleased to break, He will, in mercy, be pleased to reset
   the bones. O you wounded spirits, far be it from Me to wound you yet
   more! Far rather would I help to bind on the splints and the strapping.
   Let this, then, be your consolation, like a piece of heavenly plaster
   may this be to you--"The Lord kills and makes alive. The Lord wounds
   and He makes whole."

   None but He can do it! If your sorrow is a hatred for sin, depend upon
   it, the devil did not give you that sorrow and your own nature did not
   breed it--it is a Heaven-given sorrow! Those bones of yours shall yet
   be healed! Yes, and they shall yet rejoice! The lesson for this first
   part of the subject, then, is, let as many as are now possessing any
   spiritual health and enjoyment be careful that they do not lose it. Let
   such as have lost their nearness to God be anxious to regain it before
   worse evils shall come. Let those who are almost in despair take heart,
   for they cannot be in a worse plight than David was and the God who
   rescued David can rescue them! Let them not sit down in despair, but,
   with the Psalmist, let them rise up with humble hope and address
   themselves, as we do now, in the second place, to the remedy.

   II. THE REMEDY WHICH THE PSALMIST RESORTED TO. Observe, negatively, he
   did not lie down sullenly or in despondency--he turned to his
   chastening God in prayer! He did not offer sacrifices, nor attempt good
   works of his own. He turned not to himself in any measure, but to God
   alone. He did not cast away his confidence in God. He believed, still,
   that there was power in Heaven to save him and therefore, by humble
   faith, he lifted up the voice of his cry to the Most High in these
   words--"Make me to hear joy and gladness."

   Now notice, Brothers and Sisters, in this, first of all, David believed
   that there was joy and gladness even for such as he was. Notice the
   verse which comes before this text, "Purge me with hyssop and I shall
   be clean: wash me and I shall be whiter than snow." Yes, there is the
   key to his meaning. He believed that there was pardon and that pardon
   would restore his joy and gladness to him! He was confident that God
   could pardon--that He could pardon completely--that He had already
   provided the means of pardon. David alludes to that in the hyssop--that
   God could thoroughly pardon even him, "Wash me and I shall be whiter
   than snow."

   Now, beloved Mourner, I pray you believe the same precious fact. There
   is forgiveness with God, that He may be feared! Great as your sin may
   be, whether as a sinner or as a fallen Christian, yet still it cannot
   exceed the boundless extent of Jehovah's compassion! He is able to
   forgive the greatest sins through the blood of His dear Son. There
   cannot be so much enormity in your sin as there is merit in the
   Savior's Atonement. What? Though you should have sinned against light
   and knowledge and so far as you could do so, have crucified the Lord
   afresh and put Him to an open shame, yet, without injury to His justice
   or taint upon His holiness, God can stretch out the silver scepter and
   forgive you, even you! And He can do that at this instant! Believe
   that! Believe that, now, for it is most certainly true!

   In the next place, David knew that this joy and gladness must come to
   him by hearing. Observe, "Make me to hear joy and gladness." He did not
   expect it by doing--he did not look for it merely by praying--he
   certainly did not expect it by feeling! He expected it by hearing. Oh,
   those fops and fools, what good is it, in all they do, who attempt to
   preach the Gospel, as they say (which gospel is no Gospel), through the
   eyes--by their vestments and pantomimes! Why, the gate of mercy is the
   ear! Salvation comes to no man through what he sees, but through what
   he hears! As says the Scripture, "Incline your ear and come unto Me:
   hear and your soul shall live."

   As it was well observed this week by an eminent Brother in Christ,
   there are some who despise sermons and imagine that public prayer is
   everything. But these should remember that nowhere in the New Testament
   did Jesus commission special men to go forth and celebrate public
   prayer! Nowhere did He give even a hint of a ritual! Nowhere did He
   prescribe a liturgy. He did not ordain morning prayer and vespers, or
   so much as a formal prayer for the day! But He did say to His
   disciples--"Go you into all the world and preach the Gospel." Far are
   we from undervaluing the assembling of ourselves together for public
   prayer! But yet it is suggested that so little should be said of that
   which we call public worship in the New Testament--while the same Book
   teems with references to the preaching of the Word--and plainly
   declares that, by the foolishness ofpreaching God will save them that
   believe!

   Our Lord Himself was, throughout His whole life, a Preacher--and among
   the greatest signs of His Messiahship He mentioned that the poor had
   the Gospel preached unto them! The fact is, the sermon reverently heard
   and earnestly delivered, is the highest act of worship! And the
   preaching of the Gospel is, in the hands of the Holy Spirit, the
   greatest

   instrumentality for the salvation of men! Though all the liturgies that
   were ever said or sung had remained unwritten. Though all the notes of
   pealing organs had been silent. Though every morning celebration and
   evening chant had been unknown. Though every "performing of service"
   had been foresworn--the world might have been all the better for the
   loss!

   The Gospel faithfully proclaimed is God's gate of mercy--the preaching
   of His Word by earnest lips, touched with the consecrating fire--is the
   power of God unto salvation! The hearing of the Word is the great
   horror alike of papists and infidels--but it is the greatest of all
   means of Divine Grace! Let those who are disconsolate and cast down
   remember the Master's precept and be diligent in listening to the
   preaching of the Gospel of Jesus. God asks no sacraments of you--"You
   desire not sacrifice, else would I give it." David turned away from
   ceremonies and his truly evangelical prayer was, "Make me to hear," for
   there is the point of healing.

   Notice that the hearing which David intended was an inward and
   spiritual hearing with his whole soul. One is struck with the
   expression, "Make me to hear." What? David, have you no ears? Does he
   mean, "Lord, send me a Prophet"? No, there was Nathan, there was
   Gad--Israel was not without her Prophets in those days. He does not ask
   for a preacher. What, then, did he seek? What? Had the man's ear become
   deaf? Spiritually that was the case. He heard the Word of comfort, but
   he did not hear it aright. He was distracted. His soul was
   tempest-tossed. His conscience tormented him. The threats of the Law
   thundered in his ears, so that when the good Word came, "The Lord has
   put away your sin, you shall not die," he did not hear it as being his
   own. He took it with him into his prayer closet and he remembered the
   words, but he could not feel the inward sense to be true to himself.

   Therefore does he ask for the hearing ear. "Lord," he seems to say,
   "Cleanse these ears of mine! O give my poor heart the power to grasp
   these absolving words lest I should be like those who, having ears,
   hear not. And having eyes, see not, and do not understand." Believe me,
   I can make some of you hear well enough with your outward ear--but one
   of my most earnest prayers is that God would make you all hear
   within--and especially those who are desponding--and those who refuse
   to be comforted. I suggest this prayer to mourners, today, to take home
   with them and I beg God's people to join in supplication for them.
   "Make me to hear! Make me to hear that precious Gospel! Make me to hear
   and to receive Your own true Word! It has comforted so many, Lord, let
   it comfort me!

   "I know Your blood has pardoned others, O help Your poor broken-hearted
   servant to get pardon as well as they! I do not doubt Your power or
   Your willingness to save others, but, Lord, there are such obstacles
   and difficulties about my case! I beseech You, roll away the stone from
   the sepulcher of my poor dead hopes and make me to live in Your sight.
   It is really a making, Lord--a creation, a work of Omnipotence--a work
   in which the attributes of Your power and Your Grace will be
   resplendent. Make me to hear! You who have made the ear at first can
   make it new. O make me to hear joy and gladness!"

   Do you catch the meaning of the Psalmist? He knows that the comfort
   must come by hearing, but he knows it must be a spiritual hearing and
   therefore he asks for it of the Lord.

   III. And now, as time fails us, though we might have enlarged here, we
   shall turn in the last place to THE HOPE

   WHICH THE PSALMIST ENTERTAINED. What was it? "That the bones which You
   have broken may rejoice."

   Notice--not, "that the bones which You have broken may grow quiet and
   be calm and at rest"--that was not enough. Not, "that the bones which
   You have broken may become callous, indifferent, painless." No, no!
   That he would have vehemently disapproved--but, "that the bones which
   You have broken may rejoice." He dares to ask for great mercy! Yes, the
   greatest mercy!

   When a great sinner comes to a great God, if he pleads at all, he will
   do well to plead for great things. For since he deserves nothing at
   all, all that comes to him must come of Grace and, therefore, the same
   mercy which freely gives the little may as well give the much!
   Therefore, seeking Sinners, make bold to open your mouths wide, for He
   will fill them! Let us look at these words more closely--"that the
   bones which You have broken may rejoice." He means, then, that if he is
   enabled by faith to look to Christ, whose blood is sprinkled by the
   hyssop upon the soul. If he receives perfect pardon through the atoning
   Sacrifice which makes sinners white as snow, then he will possess a
   deeper and truer joy than before.

   In times past his tongue rejoiced, but now his bones will rejoice!
   Before, his flesh rejoiced, now his bones and marrow will rejoice! The
   deep pain which he had felt within the inmost depths of his nature
   would now be exchanged for an

   equally deep content, which, like an artesian well, gushes up from the
   very heart of the earth all clear and fresh! It would rise in continual
   flood from the heart of his nature, all fresh with holy exultation! He
   would now know what sin meant as he never knew before! He would know
   what chastisement for sin was as he could not have dreamed before! He
   would know what mercy meant as he had not before understood! And
   therefore his inmost nature shall praise and bless God in a way in
   which he had never done until that hour!

   That deeply experimental, painful, and yet blessed experience of his
   weakness and of God's power to save, taught him a heart-music which
   only broken bones could learn. You know, Brothers and Sisters, there is
   a great deal of flash about many of our spiritual joys. They are, in
   the grosser parts, very near akin to carnal excitement--and especially
   with young beginners the gladness is too apt to trail in the mire of
   mere mental pleasure. Our gladness is frequently far from being deep as
   we could wish--but after the bone-breaking everything is solid--after
   the bone-healing everything is true! What our joy lacks in vividness it
   makes up in stability and depth. So David means, "the innermost core of
   my nature. The very essentials of my spiritual being shall sing and
   rejoice."

   Note again, he means that his joy would be more than ever a matter of
   his whole soul. "My bones which were broken shall all of them," in the
   plural, "rejoice." He had been a mass of misery--mercy shall make him a
   mass of music! It is not easy to get the whole man to praise God. You
   can bless God, sometimes, in His House with your heart and with your
   voice, too, but your thoughts will wander after the sick child, or
   after the bad debt. Some faculty or other is unstrung-- the 10 strings
   are not all in tune. But when the bone-breaking process has been
   suffered. When the man feels himself thoroughly crushed before God--all
   his thoughts are concentrated, then, upon his misery--and when he
   obtains relief, then all his thoughts are concentrated upon the mercy.
   And he blesses God with a unanimity of all his powers never before
   reached!

   The bones which God has broken, without discord, every one of them
   praise Him! That rejoicing expected was peculiar to the brokenness
   which would be apparent in it. Every broken bone would then become a
   mouth with which to bless God! But there would always be a humility,
   gentleness, softness and tenderness in such praise. I must confess I
   like to listen to the high sounding cymbals and I can shout as loudly
   as any, "Praise the Lord with the harp. Blow upon the trumpet in the
   new moon." I can cry with ardor, "O for a shout, a sacred shout, to
   God, the Sovereign King." But the dulcimer's soft notes often have the
   most music in them to my weary ears. Trumpet notes of triumph may be
   too much like the noise of those who go forth to the battles of earth
   or make merry in the feast.

   But the soft music of broken bones is peculiarly sacred and reminds one
   of the Master's sacred joy--the soft and solemn music of His soul when
   He said, "My praise shall be of You in the great congregation. I will
   pay My vows before them that fear Him," when He blessed God on the
   Cross, that a seed should serve Him--that it should be unto the Lord
   for a generation, His joy was true and deep. "Still waters run deep."
   The brokenness of heart has not in it the roaring as when the sea roars
   and the fullness thereof, but it has the gentle flow of that silver
   river, "the streams which make glad the city of God."

   Once again, the joy which the Psalmist expected would have much of God
   in it, for you observe that the Lord appears in this verse twice--"He
   breaks the bones and He makes the ear to hear joy and gladness." God is
   appealed to as the Breaker and the Healer. After having been sorely
   struck and having at last found comfort, we always think more of our
   Lord Jesus than we did before. If I have grown in anything since I have
   known the Lord, I think it is in this one thing-- in having more
   frequent and realizing thoughts of God the Father, Son and Spirit
   personally considered. There was a day when I thought doctrine the
   first thing and all-important. And there was a time when I conceived
   inward experience to be most exceedingly worthy of my regard.

   I think the same now, but over and above all that my soul possesses a
   deep sense of God and a longing to be in daily personal fellowship with
   the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. Surely this being filled with
   God is a more excellent way, for doctrine may be but food untasted and
   experience may turn out to be but fancy. To live upon God by faith and
   to serve Christ with the heart--and to feel the Holy Spirit's
   indwelling--this is reality and truth! When a man has had such dealings
   with God as David had and received such mercy from Him, then his joy
   will be fuller of God than it ever was before.

   You will notice in the verse, too, that David sets no end whatever to
   his joy. "The bones which You have broken may rejoice," but how long?
   Ok, as long as ever they please! Once let the bone be set, the ground
   of joy is constant and

   continuous! A pardoned sinner never needs to pause in his sacred
   gratitude! Let the Lord visit the most broken-hearted among His people
   and light their candle and the devil cannot blow it out. And Death
   itself, that last of foes, shall not quench the sacred flame! O see, my
   Brethren, how blessed a remedy Christ has provided for all the evils of
   your backsliding! See how to get at it, by an earnest prayer to God
   through Christ! Go to your chambers and breathe out a prayer, you
   daughters of sorrow, and you sons of woe, for--

   "The Mercy Seat is open still--

   There let your souls retreat."

   God waits to be gracious! He comes today in the Gospel to meet His poor
   prodigal and to receive him with arms of love! Christ, this morning, by
   our ministry, is sweeping the house to search for His lost piece of
   money! The Good Shepherd is seeking His wandering sheep! O be joyful
   and thankful that you are in the land of mercy, in the place where the
   heart of God yearns over His dear wandering ones! Come to Jesus now! O
   come, now, by faith and let your prayer be the words of the text, "Make
   me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which You have broken may
   rejoice."
     __________________________________________________________________

Winnowing Time

   A sermon

   (No. 862)

   Delivered on Thursday Evening, JANUARY 17, 1867, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "What is the chaff to the wheat? says the Lord."- Jeremiah 23:28.

   IT is remarkable that God has traced so much of the misery of the
   children of Israel in the period of their degradation to the
   unfaithfulness of those governors, priests and prophets who ruled over
   them. The crying evil of a nation's crimes lay at the door of these
   foolish shepherds. At first it would seem that the main stress of
   calamity rested on the common people--and the time-serving rulers
   enjoyed ease and affluence as the fruit of their own corruption. But
   when the Most High arises to judgment, He begins with those "pastors"
   who have foully betrayed their sacred trust. As one who has seen their
   way with His watchful eyes and heard their lies with His ever-listening
   ears, He denounces them with terrible threats.

   While, on the other hand, He looks with compassion on the unhappy
   victims of strange delusion and cruel oppression--and compares them to
   a flock hard driven and mercilessly scattered. No, more, He claims this
   people as His own flock, whose wrongs He will avenge, whose rights He
   will restore, whose fears He will relieve and whose prosperity He will
   secure. The sin of those false prophets is exposed in terms which leave
   them no shadow of excuse. It was a profanity that dared to invoke the
   Divine name for their horrible wickedness. It was a folly that
   perverted every kind of truth--and it was a mischief that made the land
   mourn and dried up all its pleasant places. Therefore the anger of the
   Lord went forth like a whirlwind in its fury, yet like arrows shot from
   His bow it singled out the head of the wicked and executed vengeance on
   the real offenders.

   Here, then, in this chapter, we have some of God's most withering
   threats and some of His most gracious promises. The abettors of sin are
   made a prey and the victims of sin are delivered. Is not this according
   to the manner of God? Whenever God's Word deals with things truthful,
   be they material objects or living persons, however weak and feeble
   they are, it always speaks of them tenderly and handles them gently.
   God Himself has an eye of respect for everything that is real and
   veritable. Notwithstanding a delicacy of texture or an infirmity of
   constitution, He considers the things that are in their own order with
   generous condescension. His care is lenient and His mercy very
   tender--He does not quench the smoking flax, nor will He break the
   bruised reed.

   But God hates every false thing. He scorns the hypocrite and the
   dissembler. The words of Jehovah are keen and cutting, sometimes even
   sarcastic, as He withers the specious with a laugh of ridicule. There
   is a sacred bitterness in the tone with which the Prophets and the
   Apostles--and far above them, the Lord and Master of Apostles and
   Prophets-- speak of everything that is false and feigned, hollow and
   equivocal. You find no sparing in the rod of His hand, nor any
   gentleness in the rod of His mouth. What words could be more terrible
   than such denunciations as these--"O generation of vipers, who has
   warned you to escape from the wrath to come"? "Woe unto you, Scribes
   and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you compass sea and land to make one
   proselyte and when he is made you make him twofold more the child of
   Hell than yourselves"?

   The Savior cannot endure specious guile, however fair its show. True
   image of the invisible God, Himself, He hates the cursed trailing
   serpent. He speaks right--but when beneath that which seems to be
   honest and of good report, treachery lurks unseen--He conceals not such
   a holy detestation as becomes One whose eyes are too pure and holy to
   look upon iniquity or countenance a fraud. Let me beg you to notice the
   peculiar sharpness and biting severity of the text--"What is the chaff
   to the wheat? says the Lord." Like the edge of a razor it cuts. As a
   saber flashing over one's head--a sword gleaming to the very point, a
   fire lurid with coals of juniper--we are appalled as we glance at it!
   It strikes with implacable resentment.

   There is no word of mercy towards the chaff--not a thought of clemency
   or forbearance. He blows at it as though it were a worthless thing, not
   to be accounted of, a nothing that vanishes with a puff. The wheat He
   gathers and stores up. He houses it in His garner, for there will be
   many a plowing of the fields and many a sowing of the seed and many a
   harvest-time to follow for the precious grain. But as for the chaff, He
   has nothing to say of it--He scatters it with the blast--"What is the
   chaff to the wheat?" Let this apprehension of the severity of God
   towards everything that is fictitious, counterfeit and false, move us
   to enquire scrupulously into those matters concerning which our
   truthfulness must be brought into judgment.

   I. IN APPLICATION TO ALL MINISTRIES of God's Word, let us, first of
   all, face the question, "What is the chaff to the wheat?" It is quite
   certain that there always have been some faithful ministries--weighty,
   powerful, full of thought and emotion--ministries ordained of God, by
   which the Spirit of God works and through which the saints are gathered
   together, edified, sanctified and perfected. On the other hand, in all
   ages of the Church's history there have been ministries which, with
   much appearance of well-doing--much glitter of oratory, much garnish of
   eloquence--have yet never been serviceable to the Church of God!

   These ministries may have been of service to the outside world. They
   have been ministries, indeed, which have preached, "Peace, peace,"
   where there was no peace. They have been ministries dispensing
   sedatives and narcotics to men's consciences--ministries that have not
   appealed to the hearts--but pandered to the tastes and passions of the
   hearers. In every age and in every place that the Gospel has been
   proclaimed, some have been found ready to mistake the force of rhetoric
   for the power of the Holy Spirit--the persuasiveness of impassioned
   speech for the convictions of saving

   faith.

   Nor can we doubt, no, we know without doubt that it is so now--even at
   this present time there is the ministration of wheat and the
   ministration of chaff. If the spiritual man, who discerns all things,
   should just traverse the streets of this metropolis--take the round of
   its religious Meeting Houses and begin to examine the ministry in
   each--he would soon find that there are some which bear the stamp of
   Divine Truth and energy, while there are others, alas, which stand only
   in the wisdom of men--equipped with the learning of the schools, but
   destitute of the power which comes from above!

   What comparison, now, can these two vocations bear in the sight of God?
   He has in His heart a high esteem for that ministry which He has
   ordained and for every minister whom He has anointed. But as to the
   other, He accounts it as a thing of nothing--less than nothing and
   vanity. "What is the chaff to the wheat? says the Lord." What is it? Of
   what use is it? What service can it render? Men follow it with much
   approbation and applause and accept it as though it were a service to
   be thankful for--an institution to be highly prized! But God snuffs it
   out and He says, "To what end? Where is the profit? What is the chaff
   to the wheat?" O that some of us who are called to preach and some who
   are called to teach here in different ways, may remember that we, as
   well as others, are being tried and tested by the Most High God! And
   that the question which, perhaps, we are ready enough to apply to our
   neighbors, is no less suitable to ourselves! God may be saying
   concerning us, "What is the chaff to the wheat?" if our ministry is
   also chaff, as well as theirs.

   Well, it behooves us to take heed, for the day shall declare it. He
   that has built wood, hay and stubble shall find his work perish in the
   fire! And happy shall it be for him if he, himself, shall be saved, for
   it shall be in his case, "so as by fire." That ministry which comes
   from God is distinguished altogether from that which is not of His own
   sending by its effects. It is sure to be heartbreaking. Have you been
   from your childhood under the ministry of the Word and have you never
   been made to loathe yourself in the sight of God? Has the sword of the
   Spirit never pierced you? Have you never felt rebuked, accused? Has the
   rebuke of the Almighty never staggered you as with a heavy blow which
   felled you to the earth? Have you never gone out of the sanctuary to
   weep, to be ashamed, to clothe yourself in sackcloth and ashes and to
   be afraid to look up to Heaven?

   If this has never been your case, either you must be a hardened one,
   indeed, or else the ministry under which you have been sitting is not a
   true ministry at all, for God says, "My Word is like a hammer which
   breaks the rock in pieces." If the Word, therefore, which you have been
   accustomed to listen to has never broken you in pieces, it matters not
   how melodious the voice you may have been listening to! The external
   accessories of worship may have been provided with ever so much care
   and taste and lavish expenditure. Yes, and the solemn swell of the
   organ, the gorgeous pomp of architecture and the comely array of
   vestments may all have helped to charm you! Yet be sure of this, it is
   not the voice of God to you if it has not broken your heart! If you
   have not been made to feel yourself lost, ruined and undone by the

   Word of God, I charge you by the living God to be dissatisfied with
   yourself, or else with the ministry under which you are sitting! For if
   it were God's ministry to your soul, it would break your heart in
   shivers and make you cry, "God be merciful to me a sinner!"

   Not less, also, is a God-sent ministry clothed with power by God's
   Spirit to bind up the heart so broken. Oh, this is a test of many
   ministries! A sinner who never had a broken heart on account of sin can
   sit down comfortably in any place of worship. But he who has ever
   really felt the plague of sin, will soon distinguish between the true
   physician and him who, though he pretends to have the diploma, knows
   nothing of the art of heavenly surgery! When God sends peace and pardon
   and mercy to your soul through a ministry, that ministry will be proven
   at once to your satisfaction to be of God's appointment! It is the
   instrument through which God's voice has spoken to you! Have you ever
   found it so when the Word has been preached?

   I know that those ministries which consist only of fine sounding words,
   stories, stage productions and all the ornate strains and paltry tricks
   of actors, can never satisfy the thirst of a living soul! These are not
   true preachers, but mimics who retail that empty stuff--that scum upon
   the pot--that froth which will never satisfy a bleeding heart! O
   Beloved, you may sing what songs you will to a sad heart, but no music
   can charm away its griefs! Only let a ministry be full of Jesus--let
   Christ be lifted up and set forth, evidently crucified in the midst of
   the assembly--let His name be poured forth like a sweet perfume and it
   shall be as ointment to the wounded heart! And then it will be
   recognized as the ministry of wheat, and not a ministry of chaff to
   your souls.

   Further, the ministry which God does not send is of no service in
   producing holiness. Dr. Chalmers tells us that when he first began to
   preach, it was his great end and aim to produce morality and in order
   to do so he preached the moral virtues and their excellences. This he
   did, he says, till most of the people he thought honest turned thieves
   and he had scarcely any left that knew much about practical morality.
   But no sooner did Chalmers begin to understand, as he afterwards did so
   sweetly, the power of the Cross and to speak about the atoning blood in
   the name and strength of the Eternal Spirit, than the morality, which
   could not be developed by preaching moral essays, became the immediate
   result of simply proclaiming the love of God in Christ Jesus!

   After all, dear Friends, we look to you as our crown of rejoicing in
   the day of the Lord Jesus. If the members of our Church are unholy, our
   ministry must lack power. Or if, on the other hand, the ministry is, by
   the Grace of God, blessed to the promotion of holiness in the hearers
   so that they cannot sin cheaply, or transgress in any way without doing
   violence to an enlightened conscience--and if many are led, step by
   step, to the attainment of purity and excellence through the power of
   the Truth of God which is delivered--then the ministry is proved to be
   a ministry of wheat and not a ministry of chaff.

   Now, I do not, in saying this, intend an incriminating criticism upon
   any particular Christian man, or any individual Christian minister. I
   make a close search into my own ministry, now, and the ministry of
   others necessarily comes in view while so doing. I counsel you, my dear
   Friends, when you have a choice of the ministry you can attend, do not
   select a man merely for his learning--nor according to his standing in
   society--nor according to the excellence of his speech. Remember, all
   these may be but as sounding brass and as a tinkling cymbal--they may
   mean nothing and less than nothing! But, on the other hand, should the
   preacher be illiterate, if God's Spirit evidently rests upon the man
   and he speaks from his heart to your heart and God has blessed his
   message to you, it will be better for you to frequent the most humble
   shed where God is present than to worship in the most respectable
   edifice where you will have nothing but the words of man, without the
   living power of the living God!

   My soul is growing more and more convinced that the great need of some
   of us is not to cull the flowers of rhetoric tastefully and polish our
   sentences till they glide daintily into your ears, but to let the
   speech come forth with unchecked freedom--the outpouring of our hearts
   in simplicity under the power of the Spirit! When we have really put
   ourselves into God's hands to feel the Truths of God that we have to
   say, we need not be overly nice about picking our words. To come up
   into our pulpits without thinking both of the subject itself and the
   order of stating it would seem to me a species of presumption. But,
   having well pondered the matter, we should come with this stern
   resolve--"I will cast off that glittering metaphor. I will neglect that
   glowing period.

   "I will not seek any sort of oratorical praise for myself, but I will
   deliver God's Word in such words as shall seem to be nearest to my own
   heart and most likely to get at men's hearts and men's consciences. And
   with God's help, whether

   they shall have the ring of the cymbal, or the tune of the tinkling
   brass about them or not, I shall be able to truthfully say that I have
   not made your faith stand in the wisdom of man, nor in the power of
   words, but in the power of the Gospel itself and of the Divine energy
   of the Holy Spirit, which must go with that Word, or else it will not
   be a savor of life unto life unto your soul."

   O dear Hearers, what you need--what we all need--is to have less and
   less of that which comes from ourselves and savors of the creature, and
   to have more and more of that which comes from our God, who, though we
   cannot see Him, is still in our midst--the Mighty to will and to
   do--for His power is the only power and His life is the only life by
   which we can be saved, ourselves, and those that hear us!

   II. Turning aside, now, from that point with all the lessons it might
   suggest, let us for a few minutes APPLY THE TEXT, AS INDIVIDUALS, TO
   OURSELVES. "What is the chaff to the wheat? says the Lord." Beloved, I
   trust there are many of us here who are genuine in our profession of
   religion--who cannot and who dare not allow the suspicion of hypocrisy
   to rest upon us! We feel that, unless we have been awfully deceived, we
   have put our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are the subjects of a
   very great change--we know we are--we would be false to our own
   consciousness if we were to say that we doubted it.

   Moreover, we are at the present moment in the possession of enjoyments
   which will not let us think ourselves to be in the gall of bitterness.
   We know what communion with Christ means. We know the power of prayer.
   We have had such answers to prayer that for us to hesitate in avowing
   it would be perfidious mock-modesty, wicked deception, lying before
   God. We know Christ and we are found in Him, not having our own
   righteousness, but wrapped about with His righteousness. No doubt, we
   are all well aware that if we have wheat in us, there is chaff, too.
   Which is more, it may be difficult for us to tell.

   Some Christians are greatly puzzled when we begin to talk about the
   experimental riddle which the Christian finds in himself. But, if they
   are perplexed, we cannot help them out of the difficulty except by
   describing the case. I know in my own soul that I feel myself to be
   like two distinct men. There is the old man--as base as ever. And the
   new man that cannot sin, because he is born of God. I cannot, myself,
   understand the experience of those Christians who do not find a
   conflict within--for my experience goes to show this, if it shows
   anything, that there is an incessant contention between the old
   nature--O that we could be rid of it!--and the new nature, for the
   strength of which God be thanked! Do you not find it so?

   Though old Ralph Erskine's remark, in his, "Believer's Riddle," may be
   a little strong, still we can find the marrow of truth in it. He says--

   "Down like a stone, I sink and dive, Yet daily upward soar and thrive.
   To Hea ven I fly, to earth I tend, Still better grow, yet never mend.
   As all amphibious creatures do, I live in land and water, too. To good
   and evil equal bent, I'm both a devil and a saint."

   You know how he means it--not that the Christian is such in his
   life--but that he finds within himself very strong tendencies to evil,
   as well as powerful tendencies to good. Though in his general character
   faith overcomes, for he is so kept that the Evil One touches him not,
   yet while he is preserved among the godly he cannot help discovering
   his kindred with the children of disobedience--among whom he sometime
   walks. I know that saying of Solomon's, "I am black, but comely," would
   suit me. I have serious doubts, sometimes, about the latter part of it,
   but never much doubt about the former, "I am black."

   It strikes me that the more we look at ourselves in the mirror of God's
   Word and in the light of God's Holy Spirit and compare ourselves with
   the blessed Person and the perfect Character of the Lord Jesus, the
   more we shall have to hold up our hands and say, "Look not upon me, for
   I am black, because the sun has looked upon me." I think we cannot have
   looked into our hearts and not find chaff to be there as well as wheat.
   This suggests great searching of heart in connection with the question,
   "What is the chaff to the wheat?" O Brethren, let us feel that the
   chaff is to be all gotten rid of! Let us feel that it is a heavy burden
   to moan and groan under--that it is not a grievance we should be
   content

   with! Let us make no provision for the flesh! Let us not ask that any
   chaff may be spared to us! May such a strong and mighty hurricane of
   Divine Grace go through our souls that every particle of chaff shall be
   taken from us and only the pure wheat be left in the garner, to the
   glory of God!

   I hope that although we feel the tendency to sin, there is not one sin
   that charms or enslaves us. That every vain thought shocks us. And that
   there is not one particle of evil which we would not be happy enough to
   lose--

   " The dearest idol I have known.

   Whatever that idol be.

   Help me to tear it from its throne,

   And worship only You!"

   The principal thought I have on this subject, however, is that there is
   not only a great deal of our sin which is palpably chaff, but that a
   great deal of our religiousness is chaff, likewise. Do you ever find
   yourselves borrowing other people's experience? What is that but chaff?
   Do you ever find yourselves at a Prayer Meeting glowing with somebody
   else's fervor? What is that but chaff? Does not your faith sometimes
   depend upon companionship with some fellow Christians? Well, I will not
   say that your faith is chaff, but I think I may say that such growth in
   faith as is altogether the result of second causes and not immediately
   of God is very much like chaff.

   I wonder how much religion some of us would have if it were all set to
   cool! There seems to be a great volume of it now while we are living in
   a warm and genial atmosphere with our friends and comrades in the
   Gospel. Suppose we were exposed to the trial of a bleak night? Suppose
   we were taken away from the Church of which we are members and made to
   live in the country where we had no fellow Christians to talk with? I
   wonder how much of the substance and fervor of our religion we should
   preserve! It is wonderful how great appearances often diminish and grow
   small when circumstances change. Remember, Christian, just so much and
   no more than would survive such an ordeal is the total that you possess
   now! The rest that seems to be, counts for nothing.

   I am afraid we sometimes think we grow very fast, when, in fact, our
   progress is like the growth of the mushroom rather than the growth of
   an oak. When the Christian sees not his signs and fears that he does
   not grow, he often is growing in Divine Grace--growing downwards, being
   rooted in humility, getting a deeper sense of his own nothingness and
   unworthiness--and consequently a higher sense of his Lord's fullness
   and loving kindness. Then he is truly growing! Alas, that he should
   sometimes think, "Now I am strong. Now I am rich, increased in goods
   and have need of nothing." Then it is he deceives himself. He is
   priding himself in chaff where he needs to have wheat. I would pray the
   Lord, dear Brethren, that you and I may never cheat our own souls with
   shams. O that our attainments may stand the test! Let us ask God to
   take out of us everything that is not real!

   Depend upon it, that is a great prayer to offer, "Lead us not into
   temptation." All temptations are treacherous. But self-congratulation
   is the very essence of guile. "Lord, take from me all the gilt. Leave
   me nothing but the gold. Take from me all the paint, the graining and
   the varnish and leave me nothing but what is veritable and bolla fide."
   It is a prayer for every Christian to offer. "Search me, O Lord, let me
   know the worst of my case. Do not let me stand dressed in borrowed
   plumes, but let me be to my own consciousness, so far as may be, what I
   really am." "He that thinks himself to be something when he is
   nothing," says the Apostle, "deceives himself." The Lord grant that we
   may not perpetrate that folly. We may deceive ourselves, but we cannot
   deceive God. "What is the chaff to the wheat? says the Lord."

   Perhaps, Brethren, some of you are passing, just now, through a severe
   ordeal. You have been tried, exercised, tempted, and much tossed about,
   and you think you are losing a great deal. So you are, but what a
   blessed loss if you are only losing your chaff! When the goldsmith puts
   the lump of gold into the firing pot, he may perhaps think, "Now, the
   precious metal is dissolving and getting smaller and smaller in
   quantity." But, oh, what beautiful losing it is, when the loss is
   nothing but the withdrawal of the dross and the pure gold shines and
   sparkles with a yet brighter luster because of that loss which it has
   endured! May your loss and mine be only the loss of our chaff!

   III. And now, very briefly, THIS TEXT MAY HAVE A VERY STRONG BEARING
   UPON THE CHRISTIAN

   CHURCH. "What is the chaff to the wheat? says the Lord." What a vision
   is that which salutes the eyes of the seer as he now looks upon the
   visible Church of God! It is a great threshing floor! Was there ever
   such a one before? On it are piled heaps and heaps upon heaps! Men
   rejoice and are glad and they say, "This is the threshing floor of
   Zion, and these are the sheaves from Israel's garners." Be it so.

   Soon the threshing time arrives and the wheat and the chaff are there.
   Do you see these men congregated and massed together? You may call them
   by different names, but God regards not that. He looks upon that
   threshing floor as one and He sees lying together the heaps of chaff
   and of wheat. Now, imagine that we could have, back again, among us the
   days in which Popery was rampant. Suppose that a strong blast of
   persecution were to come and sweep through our Churches, whether
   established or nonconforming--where would they be? Do you believe that
   all those multitudes who go up to a House of Prayer, now, would go
   there if by so doing their lives were placed in jeopardy?

   Take any of our Churches. Take this Church and do you suppose that all
   of you who now profess to be Christians would be willing to burn at the
   stake for your Master? I wish we could believe it, but we cannot. I
   dare not tell you we believe it, because some of you have been put to
   much smaller tests than that--and what has become of you? There have
   been Church members who, because they have been laughed at--and
   laughter breaks no bones--have been ashamed of their profession! There
   have been some who could not bear even a taunt or a jeer--and many a
   young man has not dared to pray at night, lest those who slept in the
   same room should ridicule him.

   "If you have run with the footmen and they have wearied you, how can
   you contend with the horses?" And if, in this land of peace, you have
   grown weary under a little temptation, what will you do when the floods
   are out--how will you do in the swelling of Jordan? The nautilus is
   often seen sailing in tiny fleets in the Mediterranean sea, upon the
   smooth surface of the water. It is a beautiful sight! But as soon as
   ever the tempest wind begins to blow and the first ripple appears upon
   the surface of the sea, the little mariners draw in their sails and
   betake themselves to the bottom of the sea and you see them no more.
   How many of you are like that?

   When all goes well with Christianity, many go sailing along fairly in
   the summer tide, but no sooner does trouble, or affliction, or
   persecution arise--where are they? Ah, where are they? They have gone!
   "They went out from us, because they were not of us, for if they had
   been of us, doubtless they would have continued with us." Yes, in all
   Churches there is no doubt that the wheat and the chaff are mixed
   together. I think those whose lot it is to look after the Church--and,
   my dear fellow Members, you have all an interest in it--ought to guard
   well the admissions into the Church. We must not shut out one of the
   Lord's lambs, but, at the same time we must watch that we do not in any
   way add to the Church without due care and anxious prudence, for "what
   is the chaff to the wheat?"

   I do fear that sometimes, during revivals, there have been great
   additions which have been no enriching of the Church. Names have come
   only to encumber the Church books and persons, also, have come only to
   disgrace the holy name by which we are called. O may God grant that if
   there must be chaff with the wheat, it may not be our fault--that we
   may not encourage it! The Savior says that while men slept, the enemy
   came and sowed the tares among the wheat. I suppose the best farmers do
   sleep and must sleep sometimes. And, consequently, the enemy comes in
   and the tares spring up among us, let us watch as we may! But, at any
   rate, let us not suffer these tares to be sown in open daylight before
   our very face. Watch and pray, as a Christian Church, each one of you
   as members of it, that we may not be allowed to flatter ourselves with
   a nominal increase unless it is a real increase from God, for "what is
   the chaff to the wheat?"

   Suppose the report should be that there are so many added to the
   Church, but suppose that they are not added to the Lord, now, nor found
   in Christ hereafter? We have done those people serious damage by, as it
   were, endorsing their pretensions to Christianity when they have no
   real claim to it. We may have helped their delusion! We may have sewed
   pillows to their armholes, yes--we may have rocked the cradle of
   delusive slumber into which they have fallen and out of which they will
   never wake until they open their eyes in Hell! "What is the chaff to
   the wheat?" I wish that such a text as this would go whistling through
   some of the Churches! I would like to hear of its being preached from
   every pulpit in London and I would pray the Holy Spirit to make the
   application of it to the conscience of every hearer.

   Your admission into the Church by infant sprinkling. Your admission
   into the Church by confirmation. Your admission into the Church by the
   right hand of fellowship, or your admission into the Church by
   Believers' immersion-- all go for nothing unless you have been admitted
   into union with Christ! Your sitting at the Lord's Table. Your coming
   often to holy communion. Your being found regularly occupying your
   place in public worship. Your joining in the solemn hymn. Your bending
   with others in earnest prayers--these things are all nothing and less
   than nothing and mockery--unless your heart has been renewed! Unless
   you have the Spirit of Christ you are none of His. "You must be born
   again."

   O that some such a protest as this would go through professing
   Christianity! Alas, that so much of it is only gingerbread--nothing but
   mere confectionery-religion! Many of our spiritual fortifications are
   like the Chinese forts that were made of brown paper. O for a single
   shot from Christ's cannon of Gospel Truth--and how much of our nominal
   Christianity would stand? People say, "How severe! How uncharitable!"
   No, Sirs, everything that falls, falls because it ought to fall.
   Whenever the preacher is stern and severe and tries the Truth of God in
   the crucible, that which melts ought to melt. That which crumbles ought
   to crumble. But God's Truth never can be overthrown. It can stand any
   test! "The grass withers and the flower thereof fades away, but the
   Word of our God endures forever."

   True religion has nothing to fear from discussion and criticism. It is
   only the false and the pretentious that have to fear when God sends the
   winnowing fan into His Church--for, "What is the chaff to the wheat?
   says the Lord."

   IV. And now, lastly, we may use this text and use it sorrowfully and
   solemnly WITH REGARD TO THE WHOLE MASS OF HUMAN SOCIETY. The whole mass
   of our population may be divided into the wheat and the chaff. Both are
   mixed up together now, and it would be impossible for you or for me to
   divide them. They are in courts of law and the houses of commerce. They
   are in the Exchange and in the committee rooms. They are in busy
   thoroughfares with their various shops and in the open streets among
   those that ply different callings. They are in here in this Tabernacle
   and in the many Churches and Chapels where multitudes assemble. We are
   all mixed up together--the wheat and the chaff.

   And it is amazing how united the chaff is with the wheat, for look, the
   wheat once slept in the bosom of the chaff! The chaff was the outward
   husk which was necessary to the wheat's production and yet the very
   chaff in which the wheat was nursed is to be burned--while the wheat is
   to be saved! Think of that, mother! Think of that, father, if you have
   godly children and you yourselves are not saved. Your children were
   nursed upon your knees and were cherished in your bosom and yet if that
   fair girl, if that dear boy shall find Christ, while you shall be left,
   unsaved--the nearness of the relation between the father and the child
   will not avail you any more than the nearness of relation between the
   husk and the grain! The wheat and the chaff must be separated--must be!

   In this world the separation does not take place, but when this passing
   world is done, it will surely occur. The farmer is not always in a
   hurry to separate his wheat from the chaff, but when the due time comes
   it must be done. You do not find him indulging in any hesitant thought,
   or saying to himself, "I will not tear away that chaff from the wheat,
   after all." No, but without a touch of pity, when the winnowing fork
   has to be used, the chaff is driven away while the good wheat is
   secured. You have a godly wife, but you are unconverted. Oh, how will
   you like to be separated from her whom you love? Ah, you have babes in
   Heaven, taken away from some of you before you ever heard their speech
   in an audible sound--or perhaps taken away as soon as they could lisp
   their first plaintive syllables and give the tokens of their loving
   recognition of your relationship.

   They have gone up to Heaven--and, Father, will you be lost? Mother,
   will you be divided from them? You must be! You must be unless you find
   the Savior, through whose precious blood they also have been saved! God
   makes short work with you, you see. "What is the chaff to the wheat?"
   as if He had nothing to say to it, but just lets it go. It is the wheat
   He cares for. Let the harshness of the expression, which is apparent
   rather than real, awaken you and make you ask yourselves--

   "When You, my righteous Judge, shall come

   To fetch Your ransomed people home,

   Shall I among them stand? Shall such a worthless worm as I

   Who sometimes am afraid to die,

   Be found at Your right hand? I love to meet among them now, Before Your
   gracious feet to bo w,

   Though vilest of them all.

   But can I bear the piercing thought--

   What if my name should be left out,

   When You for them shall call?" There is chaff on the best threshing
   floor. There are ungodly sons and daughters in the best families.
   Unconverted persons are to be found in intimate association with the
   holiest men and women. Two shall be grinding at the mill--one

   shall be taken and the other left. Two shall be in one bed and one
   shall be taken and the other left. God will make a division--sharp,
   decisive, everlasting--between the chaff and the wheat. O you
   thoughtless, frivolous, light, chaffy, giddy spirit--can you bear the
   thought of being thus separated forever? When the farmer parts the
   wheat from the chaff, I suppose it is not reasonable to expect that he
   ever does it perfectly. Let him do it as well as he may, there will be
   some portion of chaff left in with the wheat.

   Not so when God holds the fan in His hand! He dispatches the work with
   inimitable precision. None of the chaff shall escape, nor shall a grain
   of the wheat be lost! No specious professor shall be spared, nor shall
   the humble disciple be driven away. God will make all the sheep pass
   under the hand of Him that tells them, "The Lord knows them that are
   His." In that day He will soon detect the impostor and sever him from
   the real saints. And this division, when it is made, will be final! The
   chaff and the wheat will never come together again! Saint and sinner
   will have no more communion with each other! Ponder well the
   distinction between their state. There is the wheat--there, in that
   blessed land we love to sing of, where there are robes of whiteness and
   eyes that know not tears--there, there is the wheat!

   And there is the chaff--there, in that land of which we cannot speak
   without alarm--a land of darkness, as darkness itself. A land of
   confusion, where there is no order. A land of death and ruin and
   despair. A land that eats up the inhabitants with pain and anguish and
   lamentation! That is where the chaff must go! Are you prepared to go
   there? Alienated from God. Out of Christ. You will be out of Heaven and
   out of Heaven means to be in Hell! There are but two places of destiny.
   Are you ready for this? "No," you say, "God forbid it!" And so say I,
   too--God forbid it! May you and I be found in peace in the day of His
   appearing, for, "What is the chaff to the wheat? says the Lord."

   The way of salvation is to trust Christ, trust Jesus! Jesus died for
   our sins! Jesus took our guilt upon Himself and was punished for all
   who trust Him. Trust Him! Christ was the sinner's Substitute and took
   the sinner's guilt and now God can be just in punishing Christ instead
   of you, and in saying to you, "Go free, through the blood of My dear
   Son." God give you Divine Grace to trust in Jesus. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Jeremiah23:23.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Stone Rolled Away

   A sermon

   (No. 863)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, MARCH 28, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "The angel of the Lord descended from Heaven and came and rolled back
   the stone from the door, and sat upon it."- Matthew 28:2.

   As the holy women went towards the sepulcher in the twilight of the
   morning, desirous to embalm the body of Jesus, they recollected that
   the huge stone at the door of the tomb would be a great impediment in
   their way and they said one to another, "Who shall roll away the
   stone?" That question gathers up the mournful enquiry of the whole
   universe. They seem to have put into language the great sigh of
   universal manhood, "Who shall roll away the stone?" In man's path of
   happiness lies a huge rock which completely blocks up the road. Who
   among the mighty shall remove the barrier? Philosophy attempted the
   task, but miserably failed. In the ascent to immortality the stone of
   doubt, uncertainty and unbelief stopped all progress. Who could remove
   the awful mass and bring life and immortality to light?

   Men, generation after generation, buried their fellows--the
   all-devouring sepulcher swallowed its myriads. Who could stop the daily
   slaughter, or give a hope beyond the grave? There was a whisper of
   resurrection, but men could not believe in it. Some dreamed of a future
   state and talked of it in mysterious poetry, as though it were all
   imagination and nothing more. In darkness and in twilight, with many
   fears and few guesses at the truth, men continued to enquire, "Who
   shall roll away the stone?"

   Men had an indistinct feeling that this worm could not be all--that
   there must be another life--that intelligent creatures could not all
   have come into this world that they might perish. It was hoped, at any
   rate, that there was something beyond the fatal river. It scarcely
   could be that none returned from Avernus--there surely must be a way
   out of the sepulcher. Difficult as the pathway might be, men hoped that
   surely there must be some return from the land of death shade, and the
   question was, therefore, ever rising to the heart, if not to the lips,
   "Where is the coming man? Where is the predestinated deliverer? Where
   is he and who is he that shall roll away the stone?"

   To the women there were three difficulties. The stone of itself was
   huge. It was stamped with the seal of the Law. It was guarded by the
   representatives of power. To mankind there were the same three
   difficulties. Death itself was a huge stone not to be moved by any
   strength known to mortals. That death was evidently sent of God as a
   penalty for offenses against His Law--how could it, therefore, be
   averted, how could it be removed? The red seal of God's vengeance was
   set upon that sepulcher's mouth--how should that seal be broken? Who
   could roll the stone away?

   Moreover, demon forces and powers of Hell were watching the sepulcher
   to prevent escape--who could encounter these and bear departed souls
   like a prey from between the lion's teeth? It was a dreary question,
   "Who shall roll away the stone from the sepulcher?" "Can these dry
   bones live? Shall our departed ones be restored to us? Can the
   multitudes of our race who have gone down to Hades ever return from the
   land of midnight and confusion?" So asked all heathendom, "Who?" And
   Echo answered, "Who?"

   No answer was given to sages and kings, but the women who loved the
   Savior found an answer! They came to the tomb of Christ, but it was
   empty, for Jesus had risen! Here is the answer to the world's
   enquiry--there is another life! Bodies will live again, for Jesus
   lives! O mourning Rachel, refusing to be comforted, "Refrain your voice
   from weeping and your eyes from tears: for your work shall be rewarded
   and they shall come again from the land of the enemy." Sorrow no
   longer, you mourners, around the grave, as those that are without
   hope--for since Jesus Christ is risen, the dead in Christ shall rise
   also!

   Wipe away those tears, for the Believer's grave is no longer the place
   for lamentations--it is but the passage to immortality! It is but the
   dressing room in which the spirit shall put aside, for awhile, her
   travel-worn garments of her

   earthly journey--to put them on again on a brighter morrow--when they
   shall be fair and white as no fuller on earth could make them!

   I purpose, this morning, to talk a little concerning the Resurrection
   of our exalted Lord Jesus, and that the subject may the more readily
   interest you, I shall, first of all, bid this stone which was rolled
   away, preach to you. And then I shall invite you to hear the angel's
   homily from his pulpit of stone.

   I. First, LET THE STONE PREACH. It is not at all an uncommon thing to
   find in Scripture stones bid to speak. Great stones have been rolled as
   witnesses against the people. Stones and beams out of the wall have
   been called upon to testify to sin. I shall call this stone as a
   witness to valuable Truths of God of which it was the symbol. The river
   of our thought divides into six streams.

   1. First, the stone rolled must evidently be regarded as the door of
   the sepulcher removed. Death's house was firmly secured by a huge
   stone. The angel removed it and the living Christ came forth. The
   massive door, you will observe, was taken away from the grave--not
   merely opened--but unhinged, flung aside, rolled away! And now Death's
   ancient prison is without a door! The saints shall pass in, but they
   shall not be shut in. They shall tarry there as in an open cavern, but
   there is nothing to prevent their coming forth from it in due time.

   As Samson, when he slept in Gaza and was beset by foes, arose early in
   the morning and took upon his shoulders the gates of Gaza--posts and
   bars and all--and carried all away and left the Philistine stronghold
   open and exposed, so has it been done unto the grave by our Master,
   who, having slept out His three days and nights, according to the
   Divine decree, arose in the greatness of His strength and bore away the
   iron gates of the sepulcher, tearing every bar from its place. The
   removal of the imprisoning stone was the outward type of our Lord's
   having plucked up the gates of the grave--posts, bars and all--thus
   exposing that old fortress of Death and Hell and leaving it as a city
   stormed and taken and bereft of power.

   Remember that our Lord was committed to the grave as a Hostage. "He
   died for our sins." Like a debt they were imputed to Him. He discharged
   the debt of obligation due from us to God on the Cross--He suffered to
   the full the great substitutionary equivalent for our suffering and
   then He was confined in the tomb as a Hostage until His work should be
   fully accepted. That acceptance would be notified by His coming forth
   from vile durance. And that coming forth would become our
   justification! "He rose again for our justification." If He had not
   fully paid the debt He would have remained in the grave. If Jesus had
   not made effectual, total, final Atonement, He would have continued a
   captive.

   But He had done it all. The, "It is finished," which came from His own
   lips, was established by the verdict of Jehovah, and Jesus was set
   free. Mark Him as He rises--not breaking out of prison like a felon who
   escapes from justice--but coming leisurely forth like one whose time of
   release from jail is come. Rising, it is true, by His own power, but
   not leaving the tomb without a sacred permit--the heavenly officer from
   the court of Heaven is deputized to open the door for Him by rolling
   away the stone. And Jesus Christ, completely justified, rises to prove
   that all His people are, in Him, completely justified and the work of
   salvation is forever perfect!

   The stone is rolled from the door of the sepulcher as if to show that
   Jesus has so effectually done the work that nothing can shut us up in
   the grave again. The grave has changed its character. It has been
   altogether annihilated and put away as a prison, so that death to the
   saints is no longer a punishment for sin, but an entrance into rest!
   Come, Brethren, let us rejoice in this! In the empty tomb of Christ we
   see sin forever put away--we see, therefore, death most effectually
   destroyed! Our sins were the great stone which shut the mouth of the
   sepulcher and held us captives in death and darkness and despair. Our
   sins are now forever rolled away and therefore death is no longer a
   dungeon, dark and drear, the antechamber of Hell, but rather it is a
   perfumed bed chamber, a withdrawing room, the vestibule of Heaven!

   As surely as Jesus rose, so must His people leave the dead--there is
   nothing to prevent the resurrection of the saints. The stone which
   could keep us in the prison has been rolled away! Who can bar us in
   when the door itself is gone? Who can confine us when every barricade
   is taken away?--

   "Who shall rebuild for the tyrant his prison?

   The scepter lies broken that fell from his hands!

   The stone is removed. The Lord is risen!

   The helpless shall soon be released from their bands."

   2. In the second place, regard the stone as a trophy, set up. As men of
   old set up memorial stones and as at this day we erect columns to tell
   of great deeds of prowess, so that stone rolled away was, as it were,
   before the eyes of our faith

   consecrated that day as a memorial of Christ's eternal victory over the
   powers of Death and Hell. They thought that they had vanquished Him.
   They deemed that the Crucified was overcome. Grimly did they smile as
   they saw His motionless body wrapped in the winding-sheet and put away
   in Joseph's new tomb. But their joy was fleeting! Their boasting was
   but brief, for at the appointed moment He who could not see corruption
   rose and came forth from beneath their power! His heel was bruised by
   the old serpent, but on the Resurrection Morning He crushed the
   dragon's head--

   "Vain the stone, the watch, the seal,

   Christ has burst the gates of Hell!

   Death in vain forbids His rise,

   Christ has opened Paradise!

   Lives again our glorious King!

   'Where, O Death, is now your sting?'

   Once He died our souls to save--

   'Where's your victory, boasting grave?'" Brethren beloved in Christ, as
   we look at yonder stone, with the angel seated upon it, it rises before
   us as a monument of Christ's victory over Death and Hell and it becomes
   us to remember that His victory was achieved for us and the fruits of
   it are all ours! We have to fight with sin, but Christ has overcome it!
   We are tempted by Satan--Christ has given Satan a defeat. We by-and-by
   shall leave this body unless the Lord comes speedily. We may expect to
   gather up our feet like our fathers and go to meet our God. But Death
   is vanquished for us and we can have no cause to fear! Courage,
   Christian soldiers, you are encountering a vanquished enemy!

   Remember that the Lord's victory is a guarantee for yours! If the Head
   conquers, the members shall not be defeated. Let not sorrow dim your
   eyes--let no fears trouble your spirit--you must conquer, for Christ
   has conquered! Awaken all your powers to the conflict and nerve them
   with the hope of victory. Had you seen your Master defeated, you might
   expect yourself to be blown like chaff before the wind. But the power
   by which He overcame He lends to you! The Holy Spirit is in you! Jesus
   Himself has promised to be with you always, even to the end of the
   world and the mighty God is your Refuge. You shall surely overcome
   through the blood of the Lamb! Set up that stone before your faith's
   eye this morning and say, "Here my Master conquered Hell and Death and
   in His name and by His strength I shall be crowned, too, when the last
   enemy is destroyed."

   3. For a third use of this stone, observe that here is a foundation
   laid. That stone rolled away from the sepulcher, typifying and
   certifying, as it does, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, is a
   foundation stone for Christian faith. The fact of the Resurrection is
   the keystone of Christianity. Disprove the Resurrection of our Lord and
   our holy faith would be a mere fable! There would be nothing for faith
   to rest upon if He who died upon the Cross did not also rise again from
   the tomb! Then "your faith is in vain," said the Apostle, "you are yet
   in your sins," while, "they, also, which are fallen asleep in Christ
   are perished."

   All the great doctrines of our Divine religion fall asunder like the
   stones of an arch when the keystone is dislodged-- in a common ruin
   they are all overthrown--for all our hope hinges upon that great fact.
   If Jesus rose, then is this Gospel what it professes to be! If He rose
   not from the dead, then is it all deceit and delusion! But, Brothers
   and Sisters, that Jesus rose from the dead is a fact better established
   than almost any other in history. The witnesses were many--they were
   men of all classes and conditions. None of them ever confessed himself
   mistaken or deceived. They were so persuaded that it was a fact, that
   the most of them suffered death for bearing witness to it!

   They had nothing to gain by such a witness! They did not rise in power,
   nor gain honor or wealth. They were truthful, simple-minded men who
   testified what they had seen and bore witness to that which they had
   beheld. The Resurrection is a fact better attested than any event
   recorded in history whether ancient or modern. Here is the confidence
   of the saints--our Lord Jesus Christ who witnessed a good confession
   before Pontius Pilate and was crucified, dead and buried, rose again
   from the dead and after 40 days ascended to the Throne of God.

   We rest in Him! We believe in Him! If He had not risen, we had been of
   all men most miserable to have been His followers. If He had not risen,
   His Atonement would not have been proved sufficient. If He had not
   risen, His blood would not have been proven to us to be efficacious for
   the taking away of sin! But as He has risen, we build upon this Truth
   of God--all our confidence we rest upon it and we are persuaded that--

   "Raised from the dead, He goes before;

   He opens Heaven's eternal door;

   To give His saints a blest abode,

   Near their Redeemer and their God." My dear Hearers, are you resting
   your everlasting hopes upon the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
   dead? Do you trust in Him, believing that He both died and rose again
   for you? Do you place your entire dependence upon the merit of His
   blood certified by the fact of His rising again? If so, you have a
   foundation of fact and truth--a foundation against which the gates of
   Hell shall not prevail! But if you are building upon anything that you
   have done, or anything that priestly hands can do for you--you are
   building upon the sands which shall be swept away by the all-devouring
   flood and you and your hopes, too, shall go down into the fathomless
   abyss wrapped in the darkness of despair! Oh, to build upon the living
   Stone of Christ Jesus! Oh, to rest on Him who is a tried Cornerstone,
   elect, precious! This is to build safely, eternally and blessedly!

   4. A fourth voice from the stone is this--here is rest provided. The
   angel seemed to teach us that as he sat down upon the stone. How
   leisurely the whole Resurrection was effected! How noiselessly, too!
   What an absence of pomp and parade! The angel descended. The stone was
   rolled away. Christ rose and then the angel sat down on the stone--he
   sat there silently and gracefully--breathing defiance to the Jews and
   to their seal, to the Roman legionaries and their spears, to Death, to
   earth, to Hell. He did as good as say, "Come and roll that stone back
   again, you enemies of the Risen One! All you infernal powers who
   thought to prevail against our ever-living Prince, roll back that stone
   again, if you dare or

   can!"

   The angel said not this in words, but his stately and quiet sitting
   upon the stone meant all that and more. The Master's work is done and
   done forever and this stone, no more to be used, this unhinged door, no
   more employed to shut in the tomb, is the type that, "it is
   finished"--finished so as never to be undone--finished so as to last
   eternally! Yon resting angel softly whispers to us, "Come here and rest
   also." There is no fuller, better, surer, safer rest for the soul than
   in the fact that the Savior in whom we trust has risen from the dead!
   Do you mourn departed friends today? O come and sit upon this stone
   which tells you they shall rise again!

   Do you expect to die soon? Is the worm at the root? Have you the flush
   of consumption on your cheek? O come and sit down upon this stone and
   remember that Death has lost its terror, now, for Jesus has risen from
   the tomb! Come, too, you feeble and trembling ones and breathe defiance
   to Death and Hell. The angel will vacate his seat for you and let you
   sit down in the face of the enemy. Though you are but a humble woman,
   or a man broken down and pale and languid with long years of weary
   sickness, yet may you well defy all the hosts of Hell while resting
   upon this precious Truth of God, "He is not here, but He is risen! He
   has left the dead, no more to die."

   I was reminded, as I thought over this passage of my discourse, of that
   time when Jacob journeyed to the house of Laban. It is said he came to
   a place where there was a well and a great stone lay upon it and the
   flocks and herds were gathered round it, but they had no water till one
   came and rolled away the great stone from the well's mouth and then
   they watered the flocks. Even so the tomb of Jesus is like a great well
   springing up with the purest and most Divine refreshment--but until
   this stone was rolled away none of the flocks redeemed by blood could
   be watered there! But now, every Sunday, on the Resurrection Morning,
   the first day of the week, we gather round our Lord's open sepulcher
   and draw living waters from that sacred well!

   O you weary sheep of the fold, O you who are faint and ready to die,
   come here! Here is sweet refreshment! Jesus Christ is risen! Let your
   comforts be multiplied!--

   "Every note with wonders swell, Sin overthrown and captive Hell; Where
   is Hell's once dreaded king? Where, O Death, your mortal sting?
   Hallelujah."

   5. In the fifth place, that stone was a boundary appointed. Do you not
   see it so? Behold it, then--there it lies and the angel sits upon it.
   On that side what do you see? The guards frightened, stiffened with
   fear, like dead men. On this side what do you see? The timid trembling
   women, to whom the angel softly speaks, "Fear not: for I know that you
   seek Jesus." You see, then, that stone became the boundary between the
   living and the dead--between the seekers and the haters--between the
   friends and the foes of Christ. To His enemies His Resurrection is "a
   stone of stumbling and a rock

   of offense." As of old on Mar's Hill, when the sages heard of the
   Resurrection, they mocked. But to His own people, the Resurrection is
   the headstone of the corner.

   Our Lord's Resurrection is our triumph and delight! The Resurrection
   acts much in the same manner as the pillar which Jehovah placed between
   Israel and Egypt--it was darkness to Egypt, but it gave light to
   Israel! All was dark amidst Egypt's hosts, but all was brightness and
   comfort among Israel's tribes! So the Resurrection is a doctrine full
   of horror to those who know not Christ and trust Him not. What have
   they to gain by resurrection? Happy were they could they sleep in
   everlasting annihilation!

   What have they to gain by Christ's Resurrection? Shall He come whom
   they have despised? Is He living whom they have hated and abhorred?
   Will He bid them rise? Will they have to meet Him as a Judge upon the
   Throne? The very thought of this is enough to strike through the loins
   of kings! But what will the fact of it be when the clarion trumpet
   startles all the sons of Adam from their last beds of dust? Oh, the
   horrors of that tremendous morning, when every sinner shall rise and
   the risen Savior shall come in the clouds of Heaven and all the holy
   angels with Him! Truly there is nothing but dismay for those who are on
   the evil side of that Resurrection stone!

   But how great the joy which the Resurrection brings to those who are on
   the right side of that stone! How they look for His appearing with
   daily growing transport! How they build upon the sweet Truth of God
   that they shall arise and with these eyes see their Savior! I would
   have you ask yourselves, this morning, on which side you are of that
   boundary stone. Have you life in Christ? Are you risen with Christ? Do
   you trust alone in Him who rose from the dead? If so, fear not! The
   angel comforts you and Jesus cheers you! But oh, if you have no life in
   Christ, but are dead while you live, let the very thought that Jesus is
   risen strike you with fear and make you tremble--for tremble well you
   may at that which awaits you.

   6. Sixthly, I conceive that this stone may be used and properly, too,
   as foreshadowing ruin. Our Lord came into this world to destroy all the
   works of Satan. Behold before you the works of the devil pictured as a
   grim and horrible castle, massive and terrible, overgrown with the moss
   of ages, colossal, stupendous, cemented with blood of men, ramparted by
   mischief and craft, surrounded with deep trenches and garrisoned with
   fiends! A structure dread enough to cause despair to everyone who goes
   round about it to count its towers and mark its bulwarks.

   In the fullness of time our Champion came into the world to destroy the
   works of the devil. During His life He sounded an alarm at the great
   castle and dislodged here and there a stone--for the sick were healed,
   the dead were raised and the poor had the Gospel preached to them! But
   on the Resurrection morning the huge fortress trembled from top to
   bottom! Huge rifts were in its walls--and tottering were all its
   strongholds! A stronger than the master of that citadel had evidently
   entered it and was beginning to overturn, overturn, overturn, from
   pinnacle to basement! One huge stone, upon which the building much
   depended--a cornerstone which knit the whole fabric together--was
   lifted bodily from its bed and hurled to the ground. Jesus tore the
   huge granite stone of Death from its position and so gave a sure token
   that every other would follow!

   When that stone was rolled away from Jesus' sepulcher, it was a
   prophecy that every stone of Satan's building should come down and not
   one should rest upon another of all that the powers of darkness had
   ever piled up--from the days of their first apostasy even unto the end!
   Brothers and Sisters, that stone rolled away from the door of the
   sepulcher gives me glorious hope! Evil is still mighty, but evil will
   come down! Spiritual wickedness reigns in high places--the multitude
   still clamor after evil--the nations still sit in thick darkness. Many
   worship the scarlet woman of Babylon. Others bow before the crescent of
   Mohammed and millions bend themselves before blocks of wood and stone.
   The dark places and habitations of the earth are still full of cruelty.

   But Christ has given such a shiver to the whole fabric of evil that,
   depend upon it, every stone will be certain to fall. We have but to
   work on--use the battering ram of the Gospel, continue each one to keep
   in his place, and like the hosts around Jericho, to sound the
   trumpet--and the day must come when every hoary evil, every colossal
   superstition shall be laid low! And the prophecy shall be fulfilled,
   "Overturn, overturn, overturn it! And it shall be no more, until He
   comes whose right it is. And I will give it to Him."

   That loosened stone on which the angel sits is the assurance of the
   coming doom of everything that is base and vile! Rejoice, you sons of
   God, for Babylon's fall draws near! Sing, O heavens and rejoice, O
   earth, for there shall not an evil

   be spared. Verily, I say unto you, there shall not be one stone left
   upon another which shall not be cast down. Thus has the stone preached
   to us--we will pause awhile and hear what the angel has to say.

   II. THE ANGEL PREACHED two ways--he preached in symbol and he preached
   in words. Preaching in symbol is very popular with a certain party
   nowadays. The Gospel is to be seen by the eyes, they tell us, and the
   people are to learn from the change of colors, at various seasons, such
   as blue and green and violet--exhibited on the priest and the altar and
   by lace and by candles and by banners and by cruets and shells full of
   water! They are even to be taught or led by the nose, which is to be
   indulged with smoke of incense--and drawn by the ears--which are to
   listen to hideous chants or to dainty canticles.

   Now, mark well that the angel was a symbolical preacher with his brow
   of lightning and his robe of snow! But you will please to notice for
   whom the symbols were reserved. He did not say a word to the
   keepers--not a word. He gave them the symbolic Gospel, that is to say,
   he looked upon them--and his glance was lightning! He revealed himself
   to them in his snow-white garments and no more. Mark how they quake and
   tremble! That is the Gospel of symbols, and wherever it comes it
   condemns.

   It can do no other. Why, the old Mosaic law of symbols, where did it
   end? How few ever reached its inner meaning! The mass of Israel fell
   into idolatry and the symbolic system became death to them. You who
   delight in symbols. You who think it is Christian to make the whole
   year a kind of practical charade upon the life of Christ. You who think
   that all Christianity is to be taught in semi-dramas, as men perform in
   theaters and puppet shows, go your way, for you shall meet no Heaven on
   that road--no Christ, no life! You shall meet with priests and
   formalists and hypocrites and into the thick woods and among the dark
   mountains of destruction shall you stumble to your utter ruin!

   The Gospel message is, "Hear and your soul shall live." "Incline your
   ear and come unto Me." This is the life-giving message, "Believe in the
   Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved." But, O perverse generation!
   If you look for symbols and signs, you shall be deluded with the
   devil's Gospel and fall a prey to the Destroyer! Now we will listen to
   the angel's sermon in words. Thus only is a true Gospel to be
   delivered. Christ is the Word and the Gospel is a Gospel of words and
   thoughts. It does not appeal to the eyes--it appeals to the ears and to
   the intellect and to the heart. It is a spiritual thing and can only be
   learned by those whose spirits are awakened to grasp at the spiritual
   Truths of God.

   The first thing the angel said was, "Fear not." Oh, this is the very
   genius of our risen Savior's Gospel--"Fear not." You who would be
   saved. You who would follow Christ, you need not fear! Did the earth
   quake? Fear not! God can preserve you though the earth is burned with
   fire! Did the angel descend in terrors? Fear not! There are no terrors
   in Heaven for the child of God who comes to Jesus' Cross and trusts his
   soul to Him who bled there. Poor women, is it the dark that alarms you?
   Fear not! God sees and loves you in the dark and there is nothing in
   the dark or in the light beyond His control.

   Are you afraid to come to a tomb? Does a sepulcher alarm you? Fear not!
   You cannot die. Since Christ has risen, though you were dead yet should
   you live. Oh, the comfort of the Gospel! Permit me to say there is
   nothing in the Bible to make any man fear who puts his trust in Jesus.
   Nothing in the Bible, did I say? There is nothing in Heaven, nothing on
   earth, nothing in Hell that need make you fear who trust in Jesus.
   "Fear not." The past you need not fear--it is forgiven you. The present
   you need not fear--it is provided for. The future, also, is secured by
   the living power of Jesus. "Because I live," says He, "you shall live
   also."

   Fear! Why that were comely and seemly when Christ was dead, but now
   that He lives there remains no space for it! Do you fear your sins?
   They are all gone, for Christ had not risen if He had not put them all
   away! What is it you fear? If an angel bids you, "Fear not," why will
   you fear? If every wound of the risen Savior and every act of your
   reigning Lord consoles you, why are you still dismayed? To be doubting
   and fearing and trembling, now that Jesus has risen, is an inconsistent
   thing in any Believer! Jesus is able to succor you in all your
   temptations, seeing He ever lives to make intercession for you, He is
   able to save you to the uttermost--therefore, do not fear!

   Notice the next word, "Fear not: for I know." What? Does an angel know
   the women's hearts? Did the angel know what Magdalene was about! Do
   spirits read our spirits? 'Tis well. But oh, 'tis better to remember
   that our heavenly Father knows. Fear not, for God knows what is in your
   heart. You have never made an avowal of anxiety about your soul, you
   are too bashful even for that--you have not even proceeded so far as to
   dare to say that you hope you love Jesus--but God knows your desires.

   Poor Heart, you feel as if you could not trust and could not do
   anything that is good! But you do at least desire, you do at least
   seek. All this God knows. With pleasure He spies out your desires. Does
   not this comfort you--this great fact of the knowledge of God? I could
   not read what is in your spirit and perhaps you could not tell me what
   is there. If you tried, you would say after you had done, "Well, I did
   not tell him exactly what I felt. I have missed the comfort I might
   have had, for I did not explain my case." But there is One who deals
   with you and knows exactly where your difficulty is and what is the
   cause of your present sorrow. "Fear not," for your heavenly Father
   knows! Lie still, poor Patient, for the surgeon knows where the wound
   is and what it is that ails you. Hush, my Child, be still upon your
   great Parent's bosom, for He knows all. And ought not that content
   you--that His care is as infinite as His knowledge?

   Then the angel went on to say, "Fear not: for I know that you seek
   Jesus, which was crucified." There was room for comfort here. They were
   seeking Jesus, though the world had crucified Him. Though the many had
   turned aside and left Him, they were clinging to Him in loving loyalty.
   Now, is there anyone here who can say, "Though I am unworthy to be a
   follower of Christ and often think that He will reject me, yet there is
   one thing I am sure of--I would not be afraid of the fear of man for
   His sake. My sins make me fear, but no man could do it. I would stand
   at His side if all the world were against Him.

   "I would count it my highest honor that the Crucified One of the world
   should be the adored One of my heart. Let all the world cast Him out,
   if He would but take me in, poor unworthy worm as I am, I would never
   be ashamed to own His blessed and gracious name"? Ah, then, do not
   fear, for if that is how you feel towards Christ, He will own you in
   the Last Great Day. If you are willing to own Him now, "Fear not." I am
   sure I sometimes feel, when I am looking into my own heart, as if I had
   neither part nor lot in the matter and could claim no interest in the
   Beloved at all. But, then, I do know this--I am not ashamed to be put
   to shame for Him--and if I should be charged with being a fanatic and
   an enthusiast in His cause, I would count it the highest honor to plead
   guilty to so blessed an impeachment for His dear sake.

   If this is truly the language of our hearts, we may take courage. "Fear
   not: for I know that you seek Jesus, which was crucified." Then he
   adds, "He is not here: for He is risen." Here is the instruction which
   the angel gives. After giving comfort, he gives instruction. Your great
   ground and reason for consolation, Seeker, is that you do not seek a
   dead Christ and you do not pray to a buried Savior! He is really alive!
   Today He is as able to relieve you, if you go to your closet and pray
   to Him, as He was to help the poor blind man when He was on earth. He
   is as willing today to accept and bless you as He was to bless the
   leper, or to heal the paralytic. Go to Him, then, at once, poor Seeker!

   Go to Him with holy confidence, for He is not in the tomb--He would be
   dead if He were--He is risen, living and reigning, to answer your
   request! The angel bade the holy women investigate the empty tomb, but,
   almost immediately after, he gave them a commission to perform on their
   Lord's behalf. Now, if any seeker here has been comforted by the
   thought that Christ lives to save, let him do as the angel said--let
   him go and tell others of the good news that he has heard. It is the
   great means for propagating our holy faith, that all who have learned
   it should teach it. We have not some ministers set apart to whom is
   reserved the sole right of teaching in the Christian Church! We have no
   belief in a clergy and a laity!

   Believers, you are all God's clerics--all of you! As many of you as
   believe in Christ are God's clergy and bound to serve Him according to
   your abilities. Many members there are in the body, but every member
   has its office--and there is no member in the body of Christ which is
   to be idle, because, indeed, it cannot do what the Head can do. The
   foot has its place and the hand its duty, as well as the tongue and the
   eyes. O you who have learned of Jesus, keep not the blessed secret to
   yourselves! Today, in some way or other, I pray you make known that
   Jesus Christ is risen! Pass the watchword round, as the ancient
   Christians did! On the first day of the week they said to one another,
   "The Lord is risen, indeed."

   If any ask you what you mean by it, you will then be able to tell them
   the whole of the Gospel, for this is the essence of the Gospel--that
   Jesus Christ died for our sins and rose again the third day, according
   to the Scriptures. He died the Substitute for us criminals! He rose the
   Representative of us pardoned sinners! He died that our sins might die
   and lives again that our souls may live! Diligently invite others to
   come and trust Jesus. Tell them that there is life for the dead in a
   look at Jesus crucified! Tell them that that look is a matter of the
   soul! Tell them it is a simple confidence! Tell them that none ever did
   confide in Christ and were cast away! Tell them what you have felt as
   the result of your trusting Jesus and who can tell, many disciples may
   be added to His Church, a risen Savior will be glorified and you will
   be comforted by what you have seen!

   The Lord follow these feeble words with His own blessing, for Christ's
   sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Matthew 28.
     __________________________________________________________________

Life's Ever-Springing Well

   A sermon

   (No. 864)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, APRIL 4, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water
   springing up into everlasting life."- John 4:14.

   YOU have been busy all the week with external things. You have had to
   deal with the questions, "What shall we eat and what shall we drink and
   with what shall we be clothed?" It is well that at least on this one
   day in seven we should turn our eyes away from the external to the
   internal--from the less to the greater--for as life is more than meat
   and the body than raiment, so is the soul more important than all that
   which surrounds it. It were most unwise in any man to be so continually
   attending to the exterior of his house as to neglect the comforts of
   the inner apartments and the warmth of the fireside. It were extreme
   folly in any of us to be very careful in the dressing of our person and
   meanwhile to permit our body to pine away under some dreadful disease.

   That which is the more important should have the most of our thoughts,
   and if it must, necessarily, be otherwise during the week, at least let
   it be so now. Let us forget our buying and selling, toiling and
   suffering, caring and enjoying! And turning away from all that lies
   abroad, let us look at home and view our inner natures by the light of
   the Word of God. We have a great tendency, dear Friends, to make even
   our religion too much external. There are certain externals of religion
   which are exceedingly important, but the danger is lest in our great
   zeal for these, we forget that, after all, there is something better
   and higher to be thought about.

   I pity the man who takes no interest in the great discussion of the
   hour with regard to the separation of Church and State, but I should
   far more pity him if he were so absorbed in that discussion as not to
   enquire whether he was, himself, a member of the true Church of Jesus
   Christ. Assuredly the questions concerning ritualism, liturgies,
   episcopacy and so on, are very important and a man who takes no
   interest in them is unmindful of great interests. But still, if a man
   were so occupied with the circumstances of outward worship as to forget
   the inward drawing near unto God with heart and soul, it were a thing
   to be deeply deplored.

   I shall invite you, this morning, to forget everything that has to do
   with the external part of religion, whether correct or incorrect.
   Forget the form of worship, the mode of song, the manner of prayer, the
   way of celebrating ordinances--all these may, for awhile, be put upon
   the shelf and left there. We have now to do with the interior life, the
   secret power which dwells within--we have to consider that water which
   the Lord Jesus gives to Believers, which is in them, "a well of water
   springing up into everlasting life."

   In a word, the subject of this morning is the spiritual life--the
   inward work of Divine Grace--the life which proves a man to be saved.
   The life which comes from God and labors to ascend to God. The life on
   earth which is the bud of the eternal life in Heaven.

   I. Our first observation is that THE SPIRITUAL LIFE IS A DIVINE GIFT.
   Observe the words, "The water that I shall give him." First, the new
   life is a gift. It is not a principle dwelling in the man naturally and
   to be brought out from obscurity. I have heard it said and I have been
   horrified when I have heard so gross a falsehood, that there is in man
   something good, noble, spiritual and that the object of the Christian
   minister in delivering the Gospel is to take away the ignorance and
   folly that may overlay this innate nobility and so to bring out and
   train up the precious vital principles which otherwise had lain latent
   within the human heart.

   Taking holy Scripture to be the Truth of God, the doctrine I have just
   stated is, of all lies, one of the grossest! There is nothing
   spiritually good in man whatever by nature. The carnal mind is enmity
   against God and is not reconciled to God, neither indeed can be. We
   might long enough rake the dunghill of human nature before we found the
   priceless jewel of spiritual life concealed within it. Man is dead in
   sin! How long will you hunt the sepulcher before you shall discover
   life

   within the ribs of death? Long enough may you ransack yonder moldering
   bones in the cemetery before you shall discover the germs of
   immortality within the ashes of the departed.

   If man were but faint, we might, perhaps, by a sort of spiritual
   friction or electricity, arouse him to life. If he were lying in a
   state of coma, we might, by some gracious surgery, at length rekindle
   the embers and make the life burn forth in its strength. But when we
   are informed, over and over again, by the Holy Spirit Himself, that man
   is not only dead, but that he is corrupt--where is the hope of finding
   life within him? The living and incorruptible seed of Divine Grace is a
   gift, yet further, because it is not produced in men by efforts of
   their own, through the imitation of good example, or through early
   instruction, or gradual reform.

   Though for centuries the dead should be located in the neighborhood of
   the living, they will not, thereby, come to life. The example of life
   is lost upon dead men! For many a day might you read a homily upon life
   in the ears of the corpse before you shall thereby cause the skeleton
   to make any effort towards vitality. In fact, efforts after life are
   efforts of life. Life is where there is a desire for life. Life is
   already, in a measure, kindled in that heart where there is a true and
   sincere effort made to lay hold on eternal life. Life, spiritual life,
   is a gift, wholly a gift. It is given according to the good-will and
   purpose of God. If the Lord gives the new life to some and not to
   others, He is perfectly free to do as He wills with His own.

   Gifts are not regulated according to the law of debts. If God owes to
   any man eternal life, he shall have it, for God will be debtor to no
   man. But He owes nothing to sinful man but wrath! And if He chooses
   according to His good pleasure to give a new and spiritual life to His
   chosen, none shall dare to question Him, or say to Him, "What are You
   doing?" The Divine challenge is, "May I not do as I will with My own?
   Is your eye evil because Mine is good?" The spiritual life which is
   possessed by any man was given to him as the result of an eternal
   purpose on God's part, framed absolutely according to His Sovereign
   good will and pleasure--concerning which He has Himself told us--that
   He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy and He will have
   compassion on whom He will have compassion.

   This life is never received in any other way than as a gift. It is not
   obtainable in any other way but as a gift and, coming as a gift, it
   always illustrates the sovereign rights of God to give or to withhold
   as may please Him. Now, I said that it is not only a gift, but
   according to the text it is a Divine gift. Christ has put it--"the
   water that I shall give him," by which we are to understand that Jesus
   Christ does not give us the inner life apart from the Father and the
   Holy Spirit, but that still He does give it.

   The fact is that the Father causes spiritual life in us in some
   respects, for He has begotten us again unto a lively hope by the
   resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. As we are the children of
   God the Father, we, therefore, salute Him by the name, "Abba, Father."
   But this life also comes to us through Jesus Christ. "In Him was life
   and the life was the light of men." He is the medium of life. It is as
   the result of His atoning sacrifice that we receive it. It is when by
   faith we look to Him that we begin to live and it is in proportion as
   we live upon Him that we enjoy true life.

   At the same time, this life comes to us from the Holy Spirit and is a
   result of the Holy Spirit's graciously dwelling in us. He consecrates
   our hearts into a temple. He resides within our spirits. Then we, who
   once were dead, are made to live. It is the indwelling of the Holy
   Spirit within the soul which is the great secret Source and spring of
   the Divine Grace which wells up within us and causes us to live in the
   life of Christ. Observe, then, if you or I would be real and true
   Christians, renewed and quickened into celestial life, we must receive
   a mysterious life from God Himself as a gift.

   Take this doctrine to be true! And what is the practical lesson of it
   but this? If this day I tremble lest I have it not, let me learn the
   way by which this life must come to me if it come at all. Certainly not
   by my own striving and struggles in the way of merit, for it is
   represented not as a reward, but as a gift. Certainly not by any power
   of my own apart from God, for it is spoken of as coming from Jesus
   Christ and not as growing out of human nature. What, then, had I better
   do than make a solemn appeal to the mercy of God?

   This is the only attribute which smiles upon me! Justice awards me
   nothing but death. Grace alone can bring me life! If the Lord should
   refuse the living water to me, I could not complain, but His name is
   love and I know that He has made a promise that whoever believes in
   Christ shall not perish, but have everlasting life. Let me come as an
   undeserving sinner, then, this day and appeal to the bounty of God, and
   ask Him for His name's sake and for His mercy's sake, to have pity upon
   me!

   Some of you think, perhaps, because you have been to a place of worship
   from your youth up and have been doing your best to lead reputable and
   respectable lives, that perhaps you shall obtain salvation as a matter
   of course! But it is not so. You must learn that saving Grace can only
   come to you as the gift of mercy--to that end you must feel that you do
   not deserve any good thing from God and you must confess your
   unworthiness, as I beseech you to confess it this morning. You must
   turn to the Lord your God with penitential confession on your lips and
   pray Him in all His infinite compassion to give to you a life which you
   cannot create for yourself and cannot find within yourself, but which
   He alone can bestow according to the riches of His mercy in Christ
   Jesus.

   I wish not, this morning, to preach mere dry doctrine which may seem to
   be an iron bar to shut up a sinner in the prison of despair, but,
   rather, I desire to turn this Truth of God to a practical and
   stimulating purpose. You Sinners, seek the favor of your offended God
   in Christ Jesus, for He is the Lord and Giver of life and your
   quickening must come from Him and from Him alone!

   II. Secondly, we gather from the text that the principle which makes
   the Christian is something INWARD AND PERSONAL. "The water that I shall
   give him shall be in him." "In him." Put the emphasis on another word
   and we get another sense, "In him," that is, in the man himself. The
   worth of true religion, like the value of gold, prompts men to
   counterfeits. Where there is a life within, it naturally shapes for
   itself some kind of outward manifestation. Unconverted men find it too
   much trouble to look after the inward life, so they take an easier
   method and carefully imitate its outward manifestation.

   If a man who really hears God does this and that, then, although they
   do not sincerely fear the Lord, they count it decorous to do the same.
   Do they suppose that it is as easy to deceive the Lord as to satisfy
   themselves, or having the imitation of godliness are they satisfied to
   enquire no further and to rest without the reality? Many of the
   superstitions which encrust the Christian religion, have, no doubt,
   taken their rise from some harmless eccentricities on the part of
   really gracious men. In them a practice might be pardonable and
   possibly commendable, which in others, who have not their holy zeal,
   has degenerated into a vain oblation. Life demands and should be
   allowed great latitude of methods in its display--even Siamese twins,
   dwarfs and giants must not be slain--but to set up mere monstrosities
   of life as models is ridiculous! We can endure the odd ways of a really
   fervent lover of Jesus, but the mere wax-work of superstition is not to
   be tolerated.

   I frequently see persons coming into a place of worship looking into
   their hats, or shading their eyes with their hands, as if they were
   praying to God to grant a blessing on what they were about to hear. But
   I suppose, in three cases out of four, they are doing nothing of the
   sort--it is only because it happened to be the custom with some good
   people thus to pray, that, therefore, formalists must pretend, at any
   rate, to do the same. In days gone by, certain Christian people set
   apart days of fasting and then, in due time, everybody took to a course
   of salt fish. True Christians love the Cross of Christ, therefore
   formalists must needs wear crosses of wood or ivory on their bosoms.

   If earnest Believers practice true family prayer, others must sham the
   doing of it, though their heart is not in it. There is no Christian
   practice, there is no Christian habit but what has been, or will be
   before long, imitated by people who have no vital godliness whatever!
   If there is no good cheer within, at least the landlord will hang out a
   sign. If there is no kernel, men put up with the shell. Let all washers
   of the outside of cups and platters remember that true religion is not
   an outward but an inward thing! It is not a matter of the surface, but
   of the core of our nature! It is not a robe to be put on and to be
   taken off--it is a life, an inward principle which becomes a part of
   the man's self! And if it is not so, it is not real at all. "The water
   that I shall give him shall be in him."

   How like to a Christian a man may be and yet possess no vital
   godliness! Walk through the British Museum and you will see all the
   orders of animals standing in their various places and exhibiting
   themselves with the utmost possible propriety. The rhinoceros demurely
   retains the position in which he was set at first. The eagle soars not
   through the window. The wolf howls not at night. Every creature,
   whether bird, beast, or fish, remains in the particular glass case
   allotted to it. But you all know well enough that these are not the
   creatures, but only the outward semblances of them! Yet in what do they
   differ? Certainly in nothing which you could readily see, for the
   well-stuffed animal is precisely like what the living animal would have
   been!

   And that glass eye even appears to have more of brightness in it than
   the natural eye of the creature itself--yet you know well enough that
   there is a secret inward something lacking, which, when it has once
   departed, you cannot restore.

   So in the Churches of Christ! Many professors are not living Believers,
   but stuffed Believers, stuffed Christians! There are all the externals
   of religion--everything that you could desire--and they behave with a
   great deal of propriety, too! They all keep their places, and there is
   no outward difference between them and the living, except upon the
   vital point-- the life which no power on earth could possibly confer!
   There is this essential distinction--the life is absent.

   It is almost painful to watch little children when some little pet of
   theirs has died, how they can hardly realize the difference between
   death and life! Your little boy's bird moped for awhile upon its perch
   and at last dropped down in the cage--do you not remember how the
   little fellow tried to set it up, and gave it seed and filled its glass
   with water--and was quite surprised to think that Birdie would not open
   his little eyes for his friend as it did before and would not take its
   seed, nor drink its water? Ah, you had at last to make him know that a
   mysterious something had gone from his little favorite and would not
   come back again.

   There is just such a spiritual difference between the mere professor
   and the genuine Christian. There is an invisible, but most real
   indwelling of the Holy Spirit--the absence or the Presence of which
   makes all the difference between the sinner and the saint. Beloved, as
   saving Grace is an inward thing, so I also remark that it must be a
   personal matter. The presence of life in 50 relatives of a family is of
   no service to the 51st person if he is dead. If in the midst of this
   vast congregation there should be one dead person, the existence of
   life in us all could have no power whatever to resuscitate that corpse.
   Everybody knows that is true and the remark is therefore trite, but
   everybody does not appear to perceive that in religion the same
   statement is correct!

   "We are all Christians"--that is the common talk--"Why, we belong to a
   Christian nation--are we not born Christians?" Or, "Surely we must all
   be right. We have always attended our parish Church and is not that
   enough?" Or, with some, "Our parents were always godly. We were born
   into the Church, were we not? Did they not take us up in their arms
   when we were little and make us members of Christ? What more do we
   need?" Our solemn answer is that all the religion which is not personal
   is vain and void! Men have no spiritual birthrights which can take them
   into Heaven that come to them by the way of the flesh, for that which
   is born of the flesh is flesh!

   All Covenant heritages come by the new birth. We are not heirs of God
   after the flesh but by the Spirit! You must be born of the Spirit in
   order to partake of spiritual things! And if you are not so born, there
   is no truth that you need more to hear than this, "You must be born
   again." All the virtue that adorned your ancestors cannot save you. The
   Divine Grace that was in your grandmother, Lois, or your mother,
   Eunice, can be of no good to you unless you are a Timothy and love the
   Scriptures for yourself!

   Unless you unfeignedly repent and heartily believe in Jesus Christ, you
   might as well, perhaps better, have been a Caffer than a Christian!
   Unless you, yourself, lay hold on eternal life, you might as well be a
   street Arab as the son or the daughter of the most godly saint in our
   Zion! The water which Jesus gives us must be in each of us if we would
   be saved. I shall now pause again and invite you to heart-searching,
   for my one object is to be practical and to deal with each one
   personally.

   Dear Hearer, what about this matter? How fares it with you? Have you
   this life within you? I do not ask, "Have you been baptized?" I make no
   enquiry about whether you have taken the communion of late. Have you
   within you a life which only God can give? Is your religion only a
   thing of saying prayers and reading chapters and singing hymns, or is
   it a life? Come, now, suppose there were no Churches, no Chapels, no
   sermons, no assemblies for worship--would you still be a Christian?
   Have you a secret something within you which cannot be weighed in the
   scales, nor measured, nor comprehended in the balance? Have you a
   secret something within you which the eagle's eyes have not seen and
   which the lion's whelps have not discerned--a secret inner life which
   philosophy cannot detect, which carnal reason will not perceive, but
   which is most sure and true--the incorruptible seed within your soul?

   Have you a life within you, strange, unearthly, supernatural? Do your
   prayers come from within? Do your praises well up from the deeps of
   your spirit? Have you had personal dealings with God? Say, have you
   ever told Him your sins out of a broken heart? Have you looked to Jesus
   with tearful, but believing eyes and for yourself rested on Him? For
   oh, remember, as surely as this Book was written by the finger of God,
   so is it true that you can never enter Heaven unless you have within
   your own heart the Holy Spirit dwelling there and unless you are
   yourself renewed in the spirit of your mind. "Except you be converted
   and become as little children, you cannot enter into the kingdom." You
   must be born again! How is it with you? God help you to search yourself
   and give a just and true answer.

   III. We must pass on to a third point which is clearly in the text. The
   inward principle which Christ implants within those who are His is a
   VIGOROUS AND ACTIVE PRINCIPLE. "The water that I shall give him shall
   be in him a well of water springing up." Not a pool of water standing
   still and becoming stagnant. Nor even a stream of water gently gliding
   on--but a spring perpetually forcing itself upward. You have seen
   springs at work and you have noticed that they never cease, they never
   pause--there is never a moment in which they are quiet. Let all things
   else change their occupation, the spring could fairly say--

   "Men may come and men may go, But I go on forever."

   In the silent night watches, when no eyes gaze upon them, the springs
   bubble on. And when the hot and broiling sun is parching the meadows,
   cool and clear is the ever-flowing springs. Springs are in perpetual
   motion and no known power can stop them. If for mischief heaps of
   rubbish are piled upon them, they somehow percolate the mass, upheave
   and find a vent for themselves at last--for their force must win a
   course for itself. So Brethren, when God puts the new life into a man,
   it is a very active and vigorous principle! How have I seen Divine
   Grace well up from under a mass of ignorance! The man hardly understood
   the Gospel, but yet he had a love to Christ and that love displayed
   itself despite his defects.

   Even when a man falls into error, if Divine Grace is in his heart it
   will yet reveal itself. Even in the case of Romanists, where there has
   been a true and genuine love to Christ, it is apparent in their looks
   to every candid spiritual eye. Though all around it is the desert of
   superstition, the gracious heart, like a wellhead, makes a little
   verdure and creates a few lovely flowers which none could disdain. We
   have known persons who could not read the Scriptures and have,
   therefore, had very crude notions of what the doctrines of the Gospel
   were and have, in fact, been much misled and much mistaken, to their
   own sorrow and injury. But yet, for all that, God the Holy Spirit being
   in them, they have shown a crystal life like sparkling well water for
   purity.

   How am I to account for it that there have been men of every extreme of
   doctrine, from Dr. Hawker down to Fletcher of Madeley--men ranging from
   semi-Pelagianism right up to the verge of Antinomianism--who,
   nevertheless, were so eminently holy that one has hardly room for
   selection, because they have been equally seraphic, equally consecrated
   to Christ! Their doctrinal sentiments were so divergent that in some of
   their minds it is clear that there must have been much confusion. But
   the life-spring within was not to be stopped by the rubbish of their
   misapprehensions-- and through all their mistakes of doctrine the
   Divine life came welling up in all its delightful purity and produced
   its legitimate results!

   God forbid we should foster ignorance, or that we should for a moment
   settle down quietly under any errors of creed! But still it is a
   delightful thought that the inner life is not destroyed by our
   misapprehensions or lack of knowledge--it still gushes upward a
   vigorous and powerful principle, overcoming all. The Divine life is
   such a thing of force that surrounding circumstances do not operate
   upon it as you might have supposed. In frosty weather, when we have
   seen the rivers frozen across, we have been told by peasants that the
   old springhead on the side of the hill was flowing on the same as ever.
   Decorated with icicles up to the edge of the old spout, still the
   stream gushes out!

   So a Christian may be placed in the worst imaginable circumstances. He
   may live in a family so ungodly that the name of Christ is only used to
   blaspheme with. He may scarcely ever meet with a Christian associate.
   He may even be denied the means of Grace--the Bible itself may be taken
   from him--but if the inner life is there, such is its native heat that
   you cannot freeze it! Such is its constant force and power that it will
   continue flowing, still! It might have been more happy with the man--it
   certainly would have been more for his comfort and usefulness--if he
   had been under other conditions. But here is joy for our heart to
   recollect that under the worst possible conditions such is the energy
   of the Divine Grace which God implants, that it will continue to spring
   upward into everlasting life!

   Brothers and Sisters, pause a minute to remember that the life which
   Jesus Christ places in our souls is one which passes through the most
   severe ordeals and yet survives them. Some of you have been in acute
   bodily suffering, but your love to Christ was not destroyed by that
   long period of sickness. You have been very poor, but your faith made
   you rich. You have been slandered--a trial always hard to bear--but
   your heart was not broken. You still maintained and upheld your
   integrity. Perhaps you have been under desertions of God's Spirit,
   which are worst of all--the light of the Divine

   Countenance has been hidden from you--still you have said, "Though He
   slay me, yet will I trust in Him." And when you have walked in
   darkness, and seen no light, you have still continued to trust in God.

   Rough usage from God's hand is a severe trial to the life of the
   true-born Christian and yet it is a trial in which the true Christian
   life has triumphed a thousand times and it has come forth out of the
   furnace like gold seven times purified. No afflictions, however severe,
   can separate the child of God from Christ! None of the trials which
   surround the believing heart can stamp out the vital spark of heavenly
   flame. Temptations, too--how frequently they threaten to devour our
   spiritual life! Have not some of you known temptations of so severe a
   character that you would not like to communicate them to your closest
   friends?

   Or, there have been times with some of us, when the temptation which
   has beset us has been perfectly horrible, devilish! We have stood still
   and wondered with amazement how such a thing could be suggested to us
   and, on the other hand, how we have marveled that we came out of it
   untouched, without the smell of fire having passed upon us! Ah, there
   may be temptations yet to assail us of which we have not dreamed. Satan
   is studying us. He knows most of our weak points already. Every day he
   is considering the Lord's servants to see where will be the best joint
   in their armor through which to send a poisoned arrow--and he will
   probably assail us from some fresh quarter in a way quite new to us.

   But here is the blessed part of it--let man cast what rubbish he may or
   will into a living spring, the spring will still, by degrees, purify
   itself and eject the filth and still continue to flow--and so will the
   truly living Christian! Whatever may be the temptations that would
   beset him, his life within him will conquer all, to the praise and the
   glory of Divine Grace. If afflictions and temptations thus are
   overcome, so is it with prosperity. Many a professed Christian has been
   ruined by his prosperity. When the man was poor, he was well enough,
   but when he grew rich--then he did not like to associate with the poor
   saints--he carried his head much too high to enter the gates of Heaven.

   Alas! Alas! Alas, Prosperity! If Adversity has slain its thousands, you
   have slain your ten thousands! Garnished as you are with gold and
   silver, yet are your robes purple with the blood of men who have
   fallen, slain under you. But the genuine Christian is not destroyed by
   his prosperity. He might be rich as Croesus, yet would he serve his
   God. He might be wrapped in purple and fine linen and fare sumptuously,
   yet would he still banquet with Christ! As poverty could not make him
   envious, so wealth could not make him vain!

   Brethren, the inward spiritual life is so vigorous that it is not
   suffered to be destroyed by negligence and sins. I speak guardedly
   here--I wish to do so, at any rate. Alas, alas, some Believers have
   become very negligent in spiritual things. Who among us must not
   confess that he has been? But though I hope we shall never try this in
   order to discover what comes of it, yet we are bound to say that such
   is the power of life in a genuine Christian that no Believer ever could
   be happy while living in disobedience and backsliding! Whenever I have
   been base enough to restrain prayer, I have never been at peace. There
   was no one to drag me to my knees, but I could not help praying! Nobody
   would report upon me whether I spent so many minutes or so many hours
   in supplication, but, for all that, I could as soon cease to breathe as
   cease to pray!

   What if I could not rise from my bed, or reach my accustomed place to
   kneel, it did not matter--the inward life pleaded, "Forget not to draw
   near unto God. Lift up your heart! And if the monitor was put aside and
   multiplicity of work called one away, yet if there was a minute's
   peace, the inner life could be felt welling up and producing a
   condemnation of conscience not to be endured. "You have forgotten your
   God today! You are not walking in communion with Him today as you
   should!" Such voices as these would ring in the ears and the conscience
   would whisper, "You are out of joint today with yourself and out of
   order with your God."

   A true Christian finds it impossible to live long away from his
   God--the Divine life will not let him leave his Father's house. Though
   he may sin and this is a dreadful possibility--he may even sin
   foully--yet this Divine life checks him the moment the sin is past.
   "How could you do this great wickedness and sin against God?" He cannot
   go on in sin as another man does! His heart smites him! And when the
   heart smites, it is a strike, indeed! A wandering Believer is not
   merely pricked by conscience, but all the powers of the mind together
   cry to him, "After such love, such mercy and such goodness and such
   favor, can you, the elect of God, redeemed by Jesus' blood, act as you
   have acted? Oh, what shame is upon you! What a disgrace are you to the
   name of Christian, that after receiving so much you could act so
   ungratefully!"

   No, the Divine life will not be quiet! Like the troubled sea, it will
   not rest! If it is really in a man, he will have no peace except when
   he is walking in conformity with God's will. And when he once gets out
   of the straight and narrow

   path of obedience and of communion, the Divine life will be a continual
   source of pain to him. Like David in the penitential Psalms, he will
   groan and cry out because his heart feels the Divine displeasure--till
   with many a sigh and many a cry he comes back again to the Cross where
   his Master waits to be gracious, still--receives once more pardon
   through the precious blood and goes on his way restored to acceptance
   with God and to conscious enjoyment of communion with Him.

   Thus you see, Beloved, the power of the inner life as it works within
   the soul. It is a living, active, energetic principle, like a spring
   within a man. I shall earnestly ask all of you again, before leaving
   this point--are you conscious of the existence within yourself of such
   an active power as this? I pause to let every man give the reply
   honestly. "My spiritual life seems very dead," says one. But do you
   mourn your deadness? Do you feel you cannot be happy while it is so
   dead? Well, that mourning is one of the signs that you are alive! It is
   a poor sign, but still it is a true one. "Ah," says one," I am not what
   I want to be." No, my dear Friend, I am glad to hear you say that, for
   if you were all you wanted to be, I should be afraid you had set up a
   very poor standard of what a Christian ought to be.

   "Alas!" cries another, "I am very conscious that my private prayers, my
   secret inner life, is not at all in the healthy state it should be."
   Then amend it, my dear Brother! Earnestly seek to improve it, but at
   the same time be very thankful that you do not feel satisfied. Bless
   God that you are not content, that you do not say, "Peace, peace,"
   where there is no peace. I tell you the living spring cannot be stopped
   in its action. If you have but a cistern full of water, it will be
   quiet enough, but if it is a spring, it is forever seething, bubbling,
   gushing.

   When I have watched certain springs, I have seen them apparently
   casting up little particles of sand and dust, making and casting down
   little circular mounds of earth--and so the inner life within the
   spirit often brings to light to our own minds, our faults and our
   imperfections, so that nothing appears to be so active as our
   corruptions! Then we anxiously ask, "Is it living water that is
   bubbling up, or is it only the sand of my sin that is so full of
   energy?" Beloved, Grace lives and aspires! It is a rising flame, a
   springing well and not a waterfall flowing down! It is a great mercy
   when the master principle within our spirits is not a going down, but a
   springing up! Be thankful for upward tendencies and say unto the Lord--

   "You of life the fountain are-- Freely let me take of You. Spring up
   within my heart, Rise to all eternity."

   IV. I shall now turn, in the fourth place, to another Truth of God
   taught us by the text. This Divine life is A CONTINUAL AND EVERLASTING
   THING--"It shall be in him a well of water, springing up into
   everlasting life." Jesus was sitting upon Jacob's well and He might
   well have brought to the woman's memory how many classes of people had
   gathered around that well and had passed away forever. Men had gone.
   Harvests had been reaped. Cattle had drunk and flocks had been watered.
   Generations of men and beasts innumerable had come and gone--but there
   was the old well unchanged.

   So all in the world may change and alter, but the life within the
   Christian is intrinsically identical. It is evermore the same. Because
   Jesus lives we live, also. Some tell us of a godliness which comes and
   goes--beware of it, it is of no use! I have heard some speak of a grace
   that may be in a man and yet he may lose it! Brethren, lose it? It is
   not worth having-- lose it at once and so avoid disappointment! But
   there is a Grace--and of that the text speaks--which cannot be expelled
   from a man, but springs up into everlasting life! Get it, my Brethren!
   And if you get it, it shall hold you fast and abide in you, not to some
   degree of life--but to life everlasting!

   What is the reason why the inward principle in a Christian does not
   decay? Is it not because it is essentially immortal? This flesh would
   soon corrupt, but it is kept from corruption by the presence of the
   soul which acts as a refined salt to preserve the frame! Genuine Grace
   is preserving and is in itself incorruptible! The Christian's spring
   never dries up for this reason--he has struck the main fountain. I have
   heard of some wells which are drained dry by drought, or because some
   deeper well has taken away the supplies. The well which strikes the
   main fountain can never be dried under the severest drought.

   I am not afraid that anybody will reach a deeper life than the true
   Christian has found, for his life is hid with Christ in God! All his
   fresh springs are in God! He has struck into the eternal fountains of
   the Divine life in Christ Jesus! None can go deeper! None can deprive
   him, therefore, of the hidden sustenance of his soul! You who live upon
   excitement will

   be but deceitful brooks. You whose religion depends upon the elocution
   of the preacher, you whose piety depends on sacraments, you whose
   godliness rests in your own doings--you may very well become like the
   dry and stony beds of occasional torrents--but those who depend upon
   the work of Christ which He has finished and upon the indwelling power
   of the Holy Spirit, who shall abide with them forever--shall renew
   their strength like the eagle's! They shall run and not be weary! They
   shall walk and not faint!

   V. The last point is this. According to the text, this inward principle
   is PRE-EMINENTLY AND CONSTANTLY

   SATISFACTORY. Read the whole verse--"Whoever drinks of the water that I
   shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him
   shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."
   That is to say, he who has Christ in him, the hope of Glory, is
   perfectly satisfied. He could not have been content with all the world
   beside-- learning would only have revealed his ignorance! Fame would
   only have made him more ambitious! Wealth would have bowed him down
   with avarice! But Christ in his soul has filled him--he is perfectly
   satisfied!

   His heart is satisfied. He needs no better Person to love than Christ.
   Once he pined for a lover worthy of his immortal nature, but he has
   found the Son of God and his soul goes out in rapturous affection
   towards Him. As for his intellect, the more that expands with ripening
   years and enlarged experience, the more satisfied he is with the Truth
   which is in Christ Jesus. He believed it once, but he perceives its
   Truth more clearly now! He accepted it before on the testimony of
   others--he receives it now on the testimony of the Holy Spirit within
   his own spirit! As year rolls after year, he becomes more in love with
   his Savior than ever he was.

   Other things lose their novelty, but Jesus has the dew of his youth.
   Strange is it, but I am sure it is so, the Gospel never seems so fresh
   to a man as when he is just about to close his eyes on earth! It never
   beams with so new and glorious a light as when he has known it longest.
   The babe in Christ thinks that he has perceived the whole of the
   doctrines of the Gospel, but the veteran soldier feels that he is at
   the doorsteps, and has scarcely entered upon the knowledge of Christ
   Crucified.

   Dear Hearers, I shall leave you when I have put to you again the same
   question which I have before suggested, namely, "Have you a satisfying
   life within your soul? Have you a life which makes you feel that there
   is nothing more for you to desire except to know more of God and more
   of Christ? Is your soul at peace?" Now suppose the result of these
   questions should be to make you reply, "I am persuaded I do not know
   anything about this!" I shall be much more happy if you come to that
   conclusion, than if you should merely listen to my sermon and think of
   the preacher only. Forget me, but do, I pray you, reason with yourself,
   "This man has told us very simply and in plain language, about a
   spiritual, supernatural, inward life--I do not understand it. Then is
   the man mistaken, or am I in deplorable ignorance?--Which of the two is
   the fact?"

   I invite you to try that question by the standard of God's Word. If you
   find I am mistaken according to the tenor of this Book, why it need
   give you no further anxiety! You may pity me for my fanaticism! But if
   you find that I am right, as I am sure you will, O then, do not
   hesitate to condemn yourself for ignorance, but rather confess it and
   seek your chamber and say, "Now, in the name of God, if there is this
   new life to be had, I will have it! If there is no entering Heaven
   without it, I will not live without it! If I must be cast away if I
   possess it not, then I will find it--I will find it now."

   Never did a man sincerely seek but what he found the Lord willing to
   give! Go to your chamber. Look at your past life-- survey your mistakes
   and your sins and confess them! And then lift up your eyes to the Cross
   and say, "O Jesus, given for sinners, have mercy upon a guilty
   one--have mercy upon me!" He cannot refuse you! As I read in an old
   Puritan this week, he says, "Come to Jesus, Sinner! And if you are
   lame, come lame! And if you say you have no feet, come on your stumps!
   Come as you can, for He cannot reject you till He denies Himself. He
   must cease to be faithful before He can reject any sinner that comes
   humbly to rest upon Him."

   Try Him today, you aged people! Seek Him and He will be found of you!
   You young people, turn not your backs upon Him! And you in middle life,
   O close in with Him this day, and may He give you the water of life!
   Did not He say to that woman, "If you knew the gift of God and who it
   is that says to you, Give Me to drink, you would have asked of Him and
   He would have given you living water"?

   Ask and He will give! What? Not ask when it is to be had for the
   asking? Ah, Lord, we ask! Grant it now for Jesus' sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Romans 8
     __________________________________________________________________

Deep Calls Unto Deep

   A sermon

   (No. 865)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, APRIL 11, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Deep calls unto deep."- Psalm 42:7.

   IN the grandeur of Nature there are awful harmonies. When the storm
   agitates the ocean below, the heavens above hear the tumult and answer
   to the clamor. Down comes a deluge of sonorous hail or swift-descending
   rain, attended with peals of thunder and flashes of flame. Frequently
   the waterspout, of which David speaks in the next sentence, evidences
   the sympathy of the two great waters above and beneath the
   firmament--the great deep above stretches out its hands to the great
   deep below and in voice of thunder their old relationship is
   recognized. It is almost as if the twin seas remembered how once they
   lay together in the same cradle of confusion till the decree of the
   Eternal appointed each his bounds and place.

   "Deep calls unto deep"--one splendor of creation holds fellowship with
   another. Amazed and overwhelmed by the spectacle of some tremendous
   tempest upon land, you have yet been able to observe how the clouds
   appear to be emptying themselves each into each and the successive
   volleys of Heaven's artillery are answered by rival clamors, the whole
   chorus of sublimities lifting up their voices. It has seemed to me that
   a strange wild joy was moving all the elements and that the angels of
   wind and tempest were clapping their awful hands in glorious glee.
   Among the Alps, in the day of tempest, the solemnly silent peaks break
   through their sacred quiet and speak to each other in that dread
   language which is echoing the voice of God--

   "Far along,

   From peak to peak the rattling crags among,

   Leaps the live thunder!

   Not from one lone cloud,

   But every mountain now has found a tongue,

   And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,

   Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud." Height calls unto
   height even as "deep calls unto deep." David, perceiving these solemn
   harmonies, uses the metaphor to describe his own unhappy experience. I
   suppose that when he wrote this Psalm he was an exile from his throne
   and country, driven out by the rebellion of his favorite son. He
   crossed the brook Jabbok in fear and hastened by night over Jordan and
   withdrew to a dry and thirsty land where there was no water. He was
   saddened, most of all, at the remembrance of the sacred shrine to which
   he had so often gone with the multitude that kept holy day, because he
   was now unable to join with that hallowed throng in worship so
   refreshing to his soul.

   Everything around the Psalmist was like an ocean tossed with
   tempest--his outlook was unmingled trouble. His sorrows were like Job's
   messengers followed on one another's heels. His griefs came wave upon
   wave. There was no intermission to his woe. At the same time his heart
   sank within him. The deep outside called to the deep within.
   Conscience, as with a lightning flash, lit up the abyss of the
   sufferer's inward depravity and made him see the darkness of the sin
   into which he had fallen with the wife of Uriah in days gone by and
   filled him with despondency and sad forebodings.

   While outside everything was comfortless, within him there was nothing
   to cheer him. Bitterly did he enquire, "Why are you cast down, O my
   Soul? Why are you disquieted within me?" Externally and internally,
   rest was removed far from him. Outside were fights, within were fears.
   Deep called unto deep at the noise of God's waterspouts--all the waves
   and billows of God's Providence had gone over him.

   But now, no longer confining so grand a thought to the mere manner in
   which David employed it, namely, to the double trouble of many of God's
   saints when two seas meet and when internal and external sorrows
   combine, I purpose to use the general principle in other directions and
   to show that everywhere where there is one deep it calls to another and
   that especially in the moral and spiritual world every vast and sublime
   truth has its correspondent, which, like another deep, calls to it
   responsively.

   I. First, we shall consider this fact in connection with THE ETERNAL
   PURPOSES OF GOD AND THEIR FULFILMENT IN FACT. The eternal purpose--what
   a deep! He who pretends to understand predestination, misunderstands
   himself! We have no unit for measurement when we strive to fathom the
   decrees of God. We are like the astronomers in attempting to measure
   the distances of those stars which are as remote from the ordinary
   fixed stars as the fixed stars are from us--they fail from lack of a
   measuring-line which may serve as a unit--scarcely does the diameter of
   the earth's orbit suffice for a basis of numeration. They have no unit
   by which to estimate.

   What do you and I know of infinity, Omnipresence, and self-existence?
   We are far beyond our depth when we come to the ocean of Divine
   purposes. We may gaze into the mystery with awe, but to profess to
   comprehend it is vanity itself. What a depth! What an inscrutable
   mystery, that the infinitely pure and holy God should have determined
   to allow the intrusion of sin into His universe! That He should allow
   evil to drag down an angel and debase him into a devil! That the
   adoring hosts of Heaven should be thinned by sinful desertion from a
   loyalty so well deserved! How came it that moral evil was suffered to
   come into this fair world, to spoil Eden, to pollute mankind, to fill
   the grave and populate Hell?

   Why was it that after sin had broken out in the universe, it was
   permitted to remain in existence? Why not shut up the first devil as in
   a plague ward, build a jail in Tophet--surround it with walls of flame
   and never let the demon wander forth? Why should the Evil One be
   permitted, like a roaring lion, to roam abroad seeking whom he may
   devour? When sin infected the race of men, why not destroy them all and
   stamp out the disease, as we did lately when the disease came among our
   cattle? Why not purge it with fire till the last speck of the leprosy
   was burned out? What mattered the destruction of a race if sin were
   destroyed with them?

   Strange decree that sin should be tolerated--permitted first, to
   enter--and then allowed afterwards to spread its mischievous poison.
   What a depth, my Brethren, is revealed in the Divine decree of
   election, that there should be vessels unto honor, fitted for the
   Master's use--men chosen to show forth the riches of His Grace, not for
   any good thing in them--but because the Lord will have mercy upon whom
   He will have mercy and will have compassion on whom He will have
   compassion! And what a more solemn depth, still, is revealed in those
   whom He passed by--that there should be vessels of wrath fitted to
   destruction--men permitted to continue in sin and to harden themselves
   against the Gospel and so to illustrate the awful wrath of God
   throughout eternity!

   Brothers and Sisters, I cannot contemplate the doctrines connected with
   predestination, true as they are, without a shudder of reverential awe!
   Read that ninth chapter of Romans and while you are silenced by the
   voice of Paul, "No, but O man, who are you that replies against God?
   Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, Why have You made me
   thus?" Yet a thrill of awe passes through your souls and you whisper--

   "Great God, how infinite are You, What worthless worms are we!"

   If we could turn over those awful pages in which every event has been
   recorded. If it were permitted to us to see that book of fate chained
   to the Throne of God, in which every angel's form and size is drawn by
   the eternal pen. In which everything is written down--from the falling
   of a sere leaf from an oak to the tumbling of an avalanche from its
   Alp--in which God has as much arranged the course of yonder dust blown
   in the wind as of the planet which He steers in its mighty orbit. If we
   could see it all, we should exclaim, "O wondrous depth, how can I
   measure you? My plummet utterly fails. I will adore, for I cannot
   comprehend."

   Beloved Friends, we need not allow ourselves to be depressed by the
   mystery of the doctrine of Eternal Decrees, for even if these decrees
   were not in existence, there would still remain the other deep, the
   mystery offact. It is a fact that sin is in the world. It is a fact
   that sorrow is here. It is a fact that death is here--and how can you
   understand these things? Shut your eyes to the depth above the
   firmament if you will, but here is depth nearer home which will still
   amaze you! Remember that all men are not saved. It is a dreadful Truth
   of God that multitudes tread the broad road and reach eternal
   destruction! Why is this when God is good and Omnipotent? Can you
   understand Providence?

   Is not Providence, as we see it, quite as mysterious as predestination?
   Are not the mysteries rather in the facts, themselves, than in the
   purposes which ordained them? Are they not, both the facts and the
   decrees, mysteries and equal mysteries? But what a wonderful harmony
   there is between the two depths! And to this it is I call your
   attention. Observe how deep has called unto deep! Whatever God ordained
   has been accomplished! His will has been done! You will tell me that
   this is nothing amazing, since God is Omnipotent. I reply, yes, but you
   will remember that He was pleased to create beings who should be free
   agents and to that extent actors independent of Himself.

   Therefore, it is not to the solitary attribute of Omnipotence that you
   can refer the fact that Providence coincides with predestination. Here
   were angels free in their will and yet they sinned. Here are men upon
   this stage of action willful and resolute and yet fulfilling the
   unknown foreordination. Herein lies the marvel--that with voluntary
   agents, who do as they will--yet the eternal purpose in every jot and
   tittle has to this moment been fulfilled! And as the impression answers
   to the die, so has the history of the universe answered to the eternal
   purpose and to the solemn decree of the Most

   High.

   My Brothers and Sisters, listen in solemn awe to the voices of these
   twin depths as they call to one another. Famine, plague, pestilence,
   devastated nations, fallen empires, wars and bloodsheds--who shall
   understand why these are permitted? How shall we reconcile our souls to
   them at all, until we look up to the great Father sitting on the Throne
   of Wisdom and Love, and say, "You know what the end will be. You have
   ordained all things and from the seeming evil You will bring forth good
   and from the good a something better and from the better a something
   better still, in infinite progression, to the praise and glory of Your
   name"? "Deep calls unto deep." The deep of Predestination answers to
   the deep of Providence and both together magnify the name of God!

   II. We now come to another case somewhat akin to this, more nearly
   concerning ourselves and perhaps more practical. Brethren, SOME OF YOU
   ARE ENDURING DEEP AFFLICTION. All are not tried alike. God has not been
   pleased to deal out the wormwood and the gall to all in a cup of the
   same fashion and the same measure. There are some whose pathway to the
   skies is comparatively smooth. Others go through fire and through
   water--men ride over their heads.

   My Brethren who have done business in the great waters, I speak to you.
   Yours has been a stormy and tried life. Well, I can sympathize with
   you, for with all the mercy of God, the preacher has not been free from
   many and severe trials and, oh, they are deep, indeed--when a depressed
   spirit unites with our outward afflictions--when Church troubles,
   family troubles, personal troubles and the world's troubles, all aided
   and abetted by Satanic temptation and by an evil heart of unbelief. Do
   not, however, think yourselves harshly dealt with, my dear Brothers and
   Sisters, in being singled out as a special target for the arrows of
   grief.

   Do not wish that you could be the obscurest of all the saints, to find
   some quiet nook in which you might be left alone to rest in
   forgetfulness! Rather let me remind you that if in your experience
   there is a deep of extraordinary trial, there is most surely another
   deep answering to it. Open now your ears and your hearts to hear the
   calling of this deep unto its brother deep. Hearken while I translate
   the echoes of the Truth of God. Inasmuch as you have many trials,
   remember the depth of the Divine faithfulness. You have not been able
   to comprehend the reason for your trials, but I beseech you believe in
   the firmness and stability of the Divine affection towards you.

   In proportion to your tribulations shall be your consolations! If you
   have shallow sorrows, you shall receive but shallow Graces. But if you
   have deep afflictions, you shall obtain the deeper proofs of the
   faithfulness of God! I could gladly lay down and die when I think of
   the trials of this life, but I recover myself and laugh at them all,
   even as the daughter of Zion shook her head and laughed at her foes,
   when I remember that the mighty God of Jacob is our refuge and that He
   will not fail us, nor take away His hand till He has effected His
   purpose concerning us! Great deeps of trial bring with them great deeps
   of promise!

   For you much afflicted ones, there are words, great and mighty, which
   are not meant for other saints of easier experience. You shall drink
   from deep golden goblets reserved for those giants who can drink great
   potions of wormwood and are men of capacity enough to quaff deep
   draughts of the wines on the lees well refined. Trials are mighty
   enlargers of the soul! We are contracted, narrowed, pent up and we
   rightly pray, "Lord, enlarge my heart." Yes, but the opening of
   capacious reservoirs within us can only be effected by the spade of
   daily tribulation, and then, being dug out by pain and trouble, there
   becomes room for the overflowing promise!

   A great adversity will, to the Believer, bring with it great Grace.
   Whenever the Lord sets His servants to do extraordinary work He always
   gives them extraordinary strength. Or if He puts them to unusual
   suffering He will give them unusual patience. When we enter upon war
   with some petty New Zealand chief, our troops expect to have their
   charges defrayed and accordingly we pay them gold by the thousands, as
   their expenses may require. But when an army marches against a grim
   monarch in an unknown country who has insulted the British flag, we
   pay, as we know to our cost, not by thousands but by millions!

   There is a difference in the payment of an attack upon petty chieftains
   and a war against an emperor. And so, my Brethren, if God calls you to
   common and ordinary trials, He will pay the charges of your warfare by
   thousands, but if He commands you to an unusual struggle with some
   tremendous foe, He will discharge the liabilities of your war by
   millions--according to the riches of His Grace in which He has abounded
   towards us through Christ Jesus! I would not, then, in my better mind,
   if I could, escape great labors or great trials since they involve
   great Graces! If one deep calls to the other deep, let the Lord lay on
   the strokes and let Him add to the burden! If as my days so shall my
   strength be, then let the days be long and dark, for so the strength
   shall be mighty and God shall be glorified and His servants shall be
   blessed!

   I would earnestly urge every tried Christian to dwell upon this Truth,
   for it may be of great comfort to you. You may, perhaps, have had a
   comparatively easy life until just lately, but you have reached a
   turning point where disaster has befallen you. You are fallen into
   poverty, or else that time for the break-up of your family has lately
   come upon you. Your father is gone. Your mother is on the verge of the
   grave. Your friends have one by one been taken from you. Yes, feel the
   loneliness of life! Here is a dreadful deep for you to sail on and a
   tempestuous deep much to be feared, for your little boat may easily be
   wrecked.

   But don't forget that there is another deep, whose remembrance will
   remove from you the bitterness of your present sorrow--there is love in
   Heaven towards you which will never grow cold--immortal and unchanging
   love! And besides, there is a royal oath which never can be broken, a
   Covenant ratified with blood that never can be dishonored! You must be
   helped through--you cannot be left. God might sooner cease to be than
   cease to be faithful! You must be borne up amid the billows and safely
   landed. Be of good courage and He shall strengthen your heart this day!

   III. We have not time to linger. We must pass on to a third point.
   "Deep calls unto deep." HUMAN

   WRETCHEDSESS IS PARALLELED BY DIVINE GRACE. Brothers and Sisters, into
   what an awful state our race

   fell! We were tainted with high treason through the sin of our father,
   Adam. The dignity and honor of our race were forfeited. We were, each
   one of us, born in sin and shaped in iniquity--with a natural tendency
   towards evil we came into this world--and since we have been in this
   world, we have wickedly and willfully rebelled against God.

   We have rendered ourselves obnoxious to the Divine justice. We deserve
   to be driven from the Glory of His Presence by the power of His wrath!
   And beside all this, we are desperately set upon rejecting any offers
   of mercy on the part of God. Our will has become stubborn, our heart is
   hard. There are no known human means which can bring a soul to God. Man
   is such an enemy to God that he will not be reconciled to Him. Human
   eloquence and human sympathy are, alike, powerless against human
   depravity.

   This leviathan laughs at our sword and spear. Oh, sad, sad, sad case is
   that of fallen man! Sinner, sad, sad is your case--lost, utterly,
   hopelessly, everlastingly lost are you by nature! As in yourselves
   considered, there is no remedy for the disease which rages within you!
   There is no escape from that eternal fire which must consume you! I
   would never, for a moment, attempt to make out the abyss of the Fall to
   be less deep than it is--it is bottomless! The miseries of mankind
   cannot be exaggerated. Could our tears forever flow--could we be turned
   each one into a Jeremiah--yet could we never weep enough for the slain
   of the daughter of our people. Human misery is deep beyond expression.

   But what shall I say? How shall I speak? Where shall I find words to
   express the delight of my soul that I have such a Truth to tell you?
   There is a deep which answers to the deep of human ruin and it is the
   deep of Divine Grace. There can be no evil in man which the infinite
   mercy of God cannot overcome! Behold, God Himself, Incarnate in the
   Person of the Nazarene! Behold the Son of God spending on earth a life
   of service and of condescension! Behold Him dying a death of ignominy
   and pain! The Atonement of Christ is such a Red Sea that all the
   Egyptians of a Believer's sins shall be drowned in it! There is such
   virtue in the redemption offered up by Christ, that it meets the full
   extent of the guilt which any sinner who seeks Him may have incurred!

   Moreover, to meet the obstinacy and depravity of our hearts, behold how
   deep calls unto deep! God's Eternal Spirit has deigned to dwell in
   these hearts of ours! He quickens death into life! He fills the thirsty
   soul with rivers of Divine Grace! He turns the stone to flesh and makes
   the adamant palpitate with tenderness. Blessed be His name, He has done
   wonders in our souls! He has brought Christ home to our hearts and made
   us willing to rejoice in Christ and to be saved by Him! Myriads of
   spirits now before the Throne attest to the fact that the Grace of God
   is deeper than the depths of our sin, higher than the heights of our
   rebellion, broader and longer than the breadths and lengths of our
   depravity! Oh, the exceeding riches of the Grace of God!

   "Oh, the depth," says the Apostle, and we may well say the same. My
   Hearer, ought not this to encourage you? Are you a burdened,
   conscience-stricken sinner, brought so low as to be all but a damned
   sinner? You are only just this side of Hell! You almost smoke like a
   brand in the fire, yet is there mercy enough to rescue you and to give
   you a place among them that are glorified at the right hand of God! The
   deep of your misery calls to the deep of sacred mercy and faith shall
   hear a favorable answer.

   IV. Fourthly and with brevity, THE DEPTH OF DIVINE LOVE TO THE SAINTS
   CALLS FOR A DEEP OF

   CONSECRATION IN EVERY BELIEVING HEART. Study, my dear Brothers and
   Sisters, quietly, the depth of the love of God to you, His people. He
   loved you without a cause--

   "What was there in you that could merit esteem, Or give the Creator
   delight? 'Twas even so, Father,'you ever must sing, For so it seemed
   good in Your sight.'" He loved you without beginning. Before years and
   centuries and millenniums began to be counted, your name was on His
   heart. Eternal thoughts of love have been in God's bosom towards you!
   He has loved you without a pause--there never was a minute in which He
   did not love you. Your name, once engraved upon His hands has never
   been erased, nor has He ever blotted it out of the Book of Life.

   Since you have been in this world He has loved you most patiently. You
   have often provoked Him. You have rebelled against Him times without
   number, yet He has never stopped the outflow of His heart towards you.
   And, blessed be His name, He never will! You are His and you always
   shall be His. Jesus says, "Because I live, you shall live also." God's
   love to you is without boundary. He could not love you more, for He
   loves you like a God--and He never will love you less. All His heart
   belongs to you. "As the Father has loved Me," says Jesus, "even so have
   I loved you."

   Contemplate for a moment what you have received as the result of this
   love. You have received, first of all, the gift of the only begotten
   Son. He left the Throne of honor for the Cross of shame, the brightness
   of Glory for the darkness of the tomb. Oh, the depths of the love which
   is revealed in Calvary! You will never, never be able to fathom the
   depth of the love of God towards you in the gift of His dear Son to be
   your Redeemer! Think, now--the Holy Spirit brought Jesus Christ to you!
   And what were you then? It is a shame to speak of some of the things
   which you then loved, but you are washed, you are cleansed and
   sanctified. Oh, that blessed bath filled with blood!

   Oh, the depth of love there is in the forgiveness of sins according to
   the riches of His Grace! What a work of Divine Grace was that which
   changed your nature to make you love what once you hated! And what a
   work it has been to keep the helm of your vessel right--oftentimes the
   current would have drifted you back again to the old rock and wrecked
   you--but a strong hand has kept the head of the vessel heavenward. A
   blessed wind has filled the sail. And though you have made but slow
   progress, you are still on the way to the fair haven. The love of God
   which has been manifested in you is a very Heaven of love.

   I cannot measure the love which God has shown towards me, poor me,
   though I am only one of His family. I feel as if it were deeper than
   Hell and higher than Heaven--as long as eternity and wide as immensity.
   I cannot understand it. But what does this love say to me and to you
   but this--it calls to another deep! Oh, how I ought to love my God who
   has so loved me! Oh, how I ought to hate the sin which made my Savior
   bleed! Deeps of the Savior's grief, you call to deeps of spiritual
   repentance. The agonies of Christ call us to the slaughter of our sins.
   Brethren, if God so loved us, it calls to another deep--we ought also
   so to love one another! If God forgave us, behold another deep of
   obligation to forgive all those who have offended us!

   How can I love the saints of God enough who are the Brethren of Him who
   loved me even to the death? As for poor sinners, if God saved me, how I
   ought to lay out my life to try and save them! If I have, indeed, found
   peace with God

   through the blood of the Cross, how I ought to seek the lost sheep,
   still lost and wandering, as I also once was! If Jesus has so loved me,
   how I ought to love Him! Brethren, I dare not, at this hour, say a word
   against other Christian people, though I might fairly do so. But I will
   accuse myself and admit that I have hardly caught so much as an idea of
   what a consecrated man ought to be.

   I have read the lives of those of God's servants whose enthusiasm has
   been fervent and whose consecration has been complete and I have felt
   that they were like a huge Colossus and I a dwarf walking under their
   huge legs. Oh, but to serve Christ as He ought to be served does not
   mean giving Him a trifle, now and then, out of our estate and never
   knowing that we have given it! It means pinching ourselves right
   cheerfully to serve His cause. It does not mean saying a good word,
   sometimes, for Him when it would be shameful to be silent! It means
   making our whole life a testimony to His dear love. It does not mean
   giving Him the candle ends and cheese parings of our soul, stingingly
   doling out to Him what we would give a beggar at the door. It means the
   rendering up of body, soul and spirit--the surrender of our entire
   nature to be offered in sacrifice!

   As the bullock was brought to the altar--bound to the horns thereof,
   killed and offered up--with the fat and the inwards, so must we be
   entirely given up to our Lord! O for more real consecration! Jesus has
   done so much for us--let us endeavor to do more for Him! And this
   morning let the deeps of Divine Love call to the deeps within our
   grateful souls and let those deeps cry to the deeps of the Eternal
   Spirit as we ask to be perfectly given up to the cause and honor of our

   Lord!

   V. Time fails me, therefore I must notice another deep. There is a
   depth in this world, A DEPTH OF DIVINE FORBEARANCE towards impenitent
   and graceless men. And depend upon it, it answers to another deep, A
   DEEP OF

   IMMEASURABLE AND NEVER-ENDING WRATH IN THE WORLD TO COME. It is a very
   solemn subject and I

   desire to speak most solemnly. Therefore I entreat you to hear most
   earnestly, especially you unconverted ones.

   It is a very great mystery that God permits the ungodly to go on as
   they do. Walk down some of our streets at night, if you dare, and mark
   what you see. You inwardly exclaim, "I wonder why God permits it! Here
   is a reeking Sodom in the heart of a so-called Christian city." Step
   into some of the dens of infamy and you will feel, "God could, if He
   would, suppress this in a minute--why doesn't He?" Hearken for a moment
   to the talk of blasphemers--what atrocious insults they perpetrate upon
   the Majesty of Heaven. They go out of their way to imprecate curses
   upon themselves, their limbs, their eyes, their souls. What are they
   doing? If they will not obey God, could they not at least let Him alone
   and not insult Him to His face?

   We have heard in these days a blasphemer stand upon a public platform
   and say, "There is no God and if there is a God," taking out his watch,
   "let him strike me dead in five minutes." When he still found himself
   alive, he argued that there was no God. The fact was, God was much too
   great to be put out of patience by such an insignificant wretch as he!
   Had God been less than God He would have struck him dead, but being God
   He passed him by with sublime indifference, as a hero would pass by the
   chirping of a grasshopper. Yet the Divine forbearance is certainly very
   wonderful, very marvelous.

   I have heard say that when Mr. John Ryland was present at a certain
   meeting when the slave-trade question was first agitated, a story was
   told in that meeting of atrocities perpetrated in the middle passage
   between Africa and the States. And those atrocities were so enormous
   that John Ryland, in the exuberance of his wrath, knelt down and said
   to God, "Lift up Your thunderbolt and damn these wretches, O righteous
   God." I know that in sight of oppression and cruelty I have felt a
   longing for speedy vengeance on the tyrant and have been very thankful
   to think that I had not the handling of the thunderbolts. But God has
   looked on, calmly looked on, and suffered infamies which were nothing
   less than infernal to be perpetrated, again and again! He appears to
   wink at men's sins.

   Ah, my Brethren, can you think for a minute what you and I would do if
   some cruel wretches should take our children and torture them and burn
   them alive? How would our wrath be up and how would we strike in their
   defense! But remember that from the days of Christ until now the dear
   children of God, dearer to Him than our children are to us, have been
   shut up in prison to rot. They have been sawn asunder. They have
   wandered about in sheep skins and goat skins. They have been burned at
   Smithfield and a thousand other places and have crimsoned the snows of
   the Alps with their blood. And yet God, in the great deeps of His
   forbearance, has been still.

   There has been, it is true, a vengeance in Providence in the long
   run--the reader of history knows how God has avenged every persecution.
   Still, the recompense was slow. There were no fiery arrows to pierce
   Bishop Bonner when he condemned Anne Askew. There were no immediate
   lightning flashes to wither Domitian or Nero when they insultingly put
   the people of God to death. No, the Lord bears long with them and His
   longsuffering is a deep--a great deep! In this house, to come back to
   ourselves, what deeps of forbearance have been shown in the cases of
   some of you! You have often heard of Jesus Christ, my dear Hearers, but
   you have not received Him. You have known the way of salvation, but you
   have not run in it.

   I have pleaded with you--I hope with all honesty and earnestness--and
   you have been awakened, too, and aroused, but you have stifled your
   convictions! You have deliberately chosen your sins and you have
   presumptuously turned away from the blood of Christ. O my unconverted
   Hearers, those of you, especially, who still continue regularly to come
   to these seats until I almost wonder to see you here--I cannot imagine
   what pleasure you can derive from having your consciences continually
   whipped up! I beg you to consider that men, and women, too, among you
   have chosen the lusts of the flesh and ungodly gain, or drunkenness,
   when you know better, know much better! Some of you have had a degree
   of Divine light shed across your souls and yet you have deliberately
   chosen to rebel against God! I fear you have, some of you, done so to
   the hardening of your hearts even to final impenitence!

   Listen, now, I pray you! As surely as God has shown towards you a great
   deep of forbearance, He will show an equal depth of justice. He may pay
   slowly, but He will pay in full! God's mill grinds slowly, but it
   grinds most surely and thoroughly, even to powder. The feet of the
   avenging angels are shod with wool, but they never turn aside from
   their path. According to this Book there is a Hell into which those who
   reject Christ will be cast, the misery of which is dimly to be guessed
   at, but can never be fully described--a misery of which it is said,
   "Their worm dies not and their fire is not quenched"--a misery which
   will last as long as the enjoyments of Heaven shall last! For while the
   saints shall go away into everlasting joy, the punishment of the
   ungodly has, according to the testimony of Jesus, the same eternal
   duration.

   Do not deceive yourselves by any dream of annihilation! Do not imagine
   there shall come an end to your woe! If there were the shadow of a
   ground for that statement, Hell would cease to be Hell, for
   hopelessness is of the essence of Hell. O, by the boundless love
   treasured up in Christ Jesus, remember there is equal terror in His
   wrath! The hand that is mighty to save is equally mighty to destroy!
   All Omnipotence has been put out to save, but this rejected, an equal
   Omnipotence shall be put out to crush. Tempt not the Lord! The deeps of
   your sin are already challenging the deeps of His justice. "Turn you,
   turn you, why will you die?"

   Awaken not the fury which you cannot endure, overcome, or avoid! Kindle
   not the fire which, like flames among stubble, will burn furiously and
   cannot be stopped! O dash not your souls upon the bosses of Jehovah's
   buckler! Cast not yourselves upon the point of His glittering spear!
   God grant of His eternal mercy that you may not tempt those deeps. '
   VI. Now to close with a more cheerful theme. There is, Brethren, A
   BLESSED DEEP OF HOLY HAPPINESS AND

   BLISS FOR THE SAINTS IN HEAVEN, AND TODAY IT CALLS TO THE DEEP OF JOY
   AND THANKFULNESS

   WITHIN SAINTLY HEARTS who are lingering here below. Yes, the day is
   coming and all the wings of time are bringing it nearer, when we shall
   be emancipated from the body of this death! We are not forever to be
   sickly, sinful and sorrowing. We shall soon be set free from everything
   that encumbers us.

   If Christ come not in our lifetime to take us to Himself, we shall go
   to Him to dwell with Him where He is. And what are the delights of
   being in Heaven! To be with Christ! The spouse forever with the
   Bridegroom! The child forever in His Father's bosom! What must it be to
   dwell above! Forever pure! Forever beyond the danger of temptation!
   Safe and blessed! Shielded from all fear! Enriched with all
   blessedness! Christian, you shall soon be like Jesus as well as with
   Him. You shall be crowned as He is and blessed as He is. Oh, how
   satisfied shall you be when you wake up in His likeness!

   I cannot go further, for though I were to talk of the harps of gold, of
   the streets that shine with unearthly light, of gates of pearl, of the
   never-ending song and of the gentle flowing river of the Water of Life
   amidst the trees that yield their 12 manner of fruits, yet all would be
   less than what I have said already. You shall be with Christ and you
   shall be like He is! Indeed, Heaven is a great deep! The glorious
   history of the Church of God in years to come is a great deep, too.
   That reigning of Christ on the earth. That judging of the angels. That
   being caught up together with the Lord in the air. That resurrection of
   the body in the likeness of His glorious body. That being forever with
   the Lord--why, these are things which eye has not seen and ear has not
   heard! Heaven is a blessed deep.

   I see it as a sea of glass mingled with fire and almost hear the
   harpers who stand forever harping on that glassy sea. O let the thought
   of it awaken the deeps of your souls! Heaven is yours, for He has said,
   "I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for
   you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself; that where I am,
   there you may be also." "For we know that if our earthly house of this
   tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made
   with hands." I blush to think that I should ever be downcast! I am
   ashamed to think that I should dare to be sad! Oh, it is blessed work
   to anticipate that joy, yet it makes one ashamed of the depression
   which our present light afflictions so easily cause to our feeble
   minds!

   O you mourning saints, you have been putting on your sackcloth today,
   and you arranged it so carefully, for there is a kind of foppery about
   grief that makes it strew its ashes with deliberation. O Sirs, could
   you not have spent some of your time at another wardrobe and in putting
   on another dress? Come, you afflicted one, array yourself, for a
   minute, with the robe of whiteness, without spot or blemish! How well
   it will become you! How soon you will wear it! Now, put that unfading
   crown upon your head. You are a poor servant or a working man, and, ah,
   that head has often ached with weariness and woe--but put on the crown
   now! How royally it adorns your brow! It would not fit any other head,
   it was made for you--and you will soon have it! In a few days, or a few
   months, you will go by the way of the sepulcher, or else by the way of
   the second coming up to your throne and your kingdom!

   Now hold that palm branch in your hand! How delightful it looks! How
   your eyes gleam at the thought of the victory which it betokens! Arise,
   I say, and put the silver sandals upon those weary feet! Bedeck
   yourself with the jewels and ornaments prepared for your wedding. Take
   down the harp and try your fingers among its celestial strings. "Wake
   up, my glory! Wake, psaltery and harp! I myself will awake right
   early." Blessed be the Lord who has prepared for His people rivers of
   pleasure at His right hand forevermore!

   Our souls anticipate the day of enjoyment! And at this hour, by faith,
   we eat the fruit of the trees of life and drink from the living
   fountains of waters. O clap your hands, you righteous! Sound the
   cymbals, even the high-sounding cymbals, and give praise unto your God
   even forever, who has prepared for you the rest that knows no end!

   Thus "deep calls unto deep." May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
   the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit abide
   with you forever. Amen and Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Psalm 77.
     __________________________________________________________________

Rest

   A sermon

   (No. 866)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, APRIL 18, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "For we who have believed do enter into rest."- Hebrews 4:3.

   REST! A dainty word, indeed! Too rich a syllable for this unstable
   earth! Is it not a stray word from the language of the celestials?
   REST! Is it obtainable? Is it possible? Can there ever be rest for the
   race who were driven out of Paradise to till the ground from where they
   were taken and to eat bread in the sweat of their face? Rest! Is it
   possible for a soul polluted with sin, tossed to and fro with lusts and
   agitated with outward temptations? Is not man like the dove sent forth
   from the ark, when towards evening, it longed for a rest for the sole
   of its feet, but found none? Is it not the fate of man's soul to use
   her wings as long as they will last her--forever flitting to and fro in
   vain pursuit of rest--seeing far and wide mocking wastes of
   disappointments, but never reaching a place of repose for her flagging
   pinions?

   How apt was the simile of the old Saxon chieftain when he compared the
   unenlightened soul to the bird which flew in at the open windows of the
   banquet hall, was scared by the uproarious shouts of boisterous
   warriors around the fire and passed out again by another window into
   the cold and the darkness! Our spirit, attracted by the tempting glare,
   darts into the halls of pleasure, but soon is frightened and alarmed by
   the rough voice of conscience and the demands of insatiable passions
   and away it flies from the momentary gleam of pleasure and dream of
   happiness into the thick darkness of discontent and the snow storm of
   remorse.

   Man, without God, is like the mariner in the story, condemned to sail
   on forever and never to find a haven. He is the real wandering Jew,
   immortal in his restlessness. Like the evil spirit, man by nature walks
   through dry places, seeking rest and finding none. Of our race, by
   nature, it might almost be said as of our Redeemer, varying but a
   little His words, "Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have
   nests, but the soul of man has not where to lay its head." I speak to
   many this morning to whom this has been exceedingly true from their
   childhood onward. They have been vainly hoping for enduring contentment
   and striving after solid satisfaction. Piloted first in one direction
   and soon in the opposite, they have compassed the whole world and
   investigated all pursuits, but as yet in vain.

   I see you today weary and disquieted, like galley-slaves chained to the
   oar and I mark the fears which reveal themselves in your countenances,
   for the whip of the taskmaster is sounding in your ears. Long have you
   tugged the oar of ambition, or of the lust of pleasure, or of avarice,
   or of care. Rest but a moment, I pray you, and listen to the witness of
   those who declare to you that escape from bondage is possible and that
   rest is to be found even now! As your galley floats along on the stream
   of the Sabbath and your toil is a little while suspended, hear the
   sweet song of those redeemed by the blood of Jesus--for they sing of
   rest, even of rest this side the grave!

   Listen for awhile and perhaps you will discover how they found their
   rest and learn how you may find it, too. What if your chains should be
   broken today and your labors should be ended and you should enter into
   perfect peace! If so, it will be the best Sabbath that your soul ever
   knew! And others shall share in the gladness, for we who may be
   privileged to help you, shall participate in your joy and even spirits
   before the Throne of God shall rejoice when they hear that another
   weary one has found rest in Christ Jesus!

   In handling our text, we shall first try to describe the rest of the
   Christian. We shall, secondly, mention how he obtained it. Thirdly, we
   shall enumerate the grounds upon which that rest is settled, and then
   we shall say a few words by way of practical reflection.

   I. First, it appears from the text that even now persons of a certain
   character enjoy rest. Of the NATURE OF THIS REST we are to speak. It is
   not a rest merely to hear of, to speak of and to desire--but a rest
   into which Believers have entered. They have passed into it and are in
   actual enjoyment of it today. "We who have believed do enter into
   rest." That rest is pictured in some degree by its types. Canaan was a
   representation of the rest of Believers. By some it has been

   thought to picture Heaven and it may be so used without violence. But
   remember that in Heaven there are no Hivites or Jebusites to be driven
   out, while in the rest which God gives to His people here on earth,
   there yet remain struggles with inbred sins and uprising corruptions
   which must be dethroned and destroyed.

   Canaan is a fair type of the rest which belongs to the Believer this
   side the grave. Now what a sweet rest Canaan must have been to the
   tribes after 40 years' pilgrimage! In the howling wilderness they
   wandered in a solitary way amid discomforts which only desert wanderers
   can imagine. Forever were they on the move. The tents which were
   pitched but yesterday must be struck today, for the trumpets are
   sounding and the cloudy pillar is leading the way. What packing and
   unpacking! What harnessing and unharnessing! What marches through
   clouds of dust and over unyielding beds of sand! What variations of
   temperature, from the heat of the burning desert by day to its
   chilliness at night! What discomforts of constant travel and frequent
   warfare!

   In those 40 years, with all the mercy which sustained them, with all
   the manna which dropped from Heaven and the crystal stream which
   followed them from the struck Rock, they were men of weary feet and
   they must have longed for green fields and cities which have
   foundations. They must have pined for the time when they could, every
   man, sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree and possess his
   lot in the land flowing with milk and honey. Such is the Christian's
   rest. He was led out by Moses, the Law--out of the Egypt of sin into
   the wilderness of conviction and seeking after God. And now Jesus, the
   true Joshua, has led him into perfect acceptance and peace! And since
   the discomforts of conviction and the troubles of unpardoned sin are
   over, he sits down under the vine and fig tree of the gracious promise
   and rejoices in Christ Jesus.

   Think, then, of Canaan as a type of the peace which God's people at
   this present time by faith enjoy. So also is the Sabbath. That is a
   blessed standing ordinance, reminding Believers of their delightful
   privileges. Work during the six days, for it is your duty--"six days
   shall you labor"--but on the Sabbath enjoy perfect rest, both in body
   and in soul. Yet look to the higher meaning of the Sabbath and learn to
   cease from your own works. If you were to be saved by works, you must
   work without a moment's pause, for you could never complete the toil
   since absolute perfection would be demanded.

   But when you come to Christ your works are finished! There is no hewing
   of wood nor drawing of water. There is no keeping of commandments with
   a view to merit, no toilsome tugging at ceremonies and ordinances with
   a view to acceptance. "It is finished" is the silver bell that rings
   your soul into a marriage of peace and joy in Christ Jesus. Take care,
   Believer, that you live in a perpetual Sabbath of rest in the finished
   work of your ascended Lord. Remember that your legal righteousness is
   complete--you have ceased from your own works as God did from His--and
   let none provoke you to go back to the old bondage of the Law! Stand
   fast in the blessed liberty of Divine Grace, rejoicing in the perfect
   work of your Substitute and Surety.

   What a wonderful type of the Christian's rest the Sabbatic year would
   have been if the Jews had possessed faith enough to keep it! Once in
   seven years they were not to plow the ground nor prune the vines, nor
   do anything of agricultural labor. They were to eat during the whole
   year that which grew of itself, and I suppose there would have been
   such an abundance in the sixth year that they would have been able to
   live on the seventh without toil. We have heard, but only heard, of a
   peaceful period in store for us in which we are to be untaxed by our
   Government. May we live to see it! But here was a period in which men
   were to live without toil during a whole 12 months and so would be able
   to consecrate their entire time to the worship of their gracious God
   with joy and thankfulness.

   That year was the type of the Christian's life in the matter of his
   salvation. So he ought to live rejoicing in his God, resting from all
   servile labors--his soul fed upon the spontaneous bounty of Heaven and
   his heart rejoicing in the fullness which is treasured up in Christ
   Jesus. If the types may help us to a guess at the peace of the
   Christian, we may, perhaps, come at it a little more clearly and
   practically by remembering the oppositions to peace which are removed
   in the Believer. Can there ever be rest to a heart which has sinned?
   Answer, yes! The Believer rests from the guilt of sin because he has
   seen his sins laid upon Christ, his Scapegoat, and knowing well that
   nothing can be in two places at one time, he concludes that if sin were
   laid on Christ, it is not on him!

   And thus he rejoices in his own deliverance from sin, through its
   having been imputed to his glorious Substitute. The Believer in Christ
   Jesus sees sin effectually punished in Christ Jesus and knowing that
   Justice can never demand two penalties for the same crime, or two
   payments for the same debt, he rests perfectly at peace with regard to
   his past sins.

   He has, in the Person of his Surety, endured the Hell that was due on
   the account of transgressions. Christ, by suffering in his place, has
   answered all the demands of Justice, and the Believer's heart is
   perfectly at rest. How does he deal with his inbred sins and tendencies
   to evil? Can a man rest while those are within him? Yes! He rests even
   though those are struggling within him for the mastery, because there
   is a new life within him which holds them by the throat and keeps them
   under foot.

   Though his corruptions strive and wrestle, yet while the saint firmly
   believes in Christ, he knows that the struggles of his sins are but a
   gasp for life and that the weapons of victorious Grace will slay them
   all and end the strife forever. He is assured that Christ has broken
   the dragon's head and that sin was crucified with Christ and,
   therefore, he regards his inward lusts as being dying malefactors. And
   though they may show some threatening signs of strength, yet he sees
   the nails in their hands and in their feet and knows that before long
   death will follow upon crucifixion. But has the Christian no care?
   Other men are sorely beset with perplexing anxieties--have Believers
   none of these? The rich find cares in their wealth--how shall they
   increase it? How shall they retain it? The poor have cares in their
   scant and poverty--how shall they make ends meet and provide things
   honest in the sight of men?

   Yes, but in this matter the Believer has learned to cast his care on
   Him who cares for him. He has heard the voice which says, "Be careful
   for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication make known
   your requests unto God." "Consider the lilies of the field, how they
   grow. They toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that
   even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." Oh,
   but what rest it gives to the soul when it feels that God appoints
   everything and that Providence is not for us to arrange but is all
   settled and determined by Infinite Wisdom!

   I thank God that I am not the pilot of my own destiny, called to peer
   anxiously into the storm and murky darkness and to thread with awful
   fear the narrow channel between rocks and quicksand! I have taken a
   Pilot on board whose infallible wisdom forbids any error! Let my soul
   go sweetly to her rest in full assurance that all is ordered rightly
   where God commands all things. But has not the Christian his troubles
   and temptations? Is he not sometimes vexed with bodily pain? Does he
   not resort to the grave with many tears over departed ones? Has he not
   a checkered life like others? Ah, yes, he has no exemption from the war
   of sorrow! But he knows that all things work together for good to them
   that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose! He
   sees no Divine anger in his losses and fears no wrath from God in his
   chastisements.

   He believes that mercy mixes all his cups. That goodness and truth,
   like a silver thread, run through the texture of his outer life. It is
   while he believes that he thus rests--and, mark you, it is only while
   he believes and in proportion as he believes, that he enters into rest.
   If his faith is strong enough, not a wave of trouble shall roll across
   his spirit, though all God's waves and billows may go over his head.
   "Still," says one, "has not the Christian service to perform? How then
   can it be said that he has rest?" I know that he has service, but in
   this service he does rest, like birds of which I have heard that sleep
   upon the wing. It is rest to labor for the Lord Jesus! A believing soul
   is never more at ease than when she is putting forth her full strength
   in the service of God!

   I suppose it is no toil to larks to sing as they mount and certainly it
   is no trouble to Christians to pour forth a holy life, which is their
   soul's song. Christian service is the outflow of the Believer's inner
   nature--the spontaneous outburst of indwelling Grace--that though it
   may be toil to the lip and toil to the brain, it is perfect rest to the
   spirit. This I know--there is no unrest I feel more heavily than that
   of not being at work for my Lord! And if I am made to stay at home by
   sickness, or any other cause and may not serve my Master, it is no rest
   to me. I gather, then, that it is possible to be still but not to
   rest--and certainly possible to be indefatigable in service and to be
   resting all the while.

   "Still," adds one, "does the Christian who believes ever rest in the
   matter of the approach of death? He must die as other men, however
   favored of Heaven!" Yes, and this is one of the points in which his
   rest is exceedingly complete, for he comes to look at death not only as
   no enemy, but as a friend and he counts on his departure even as a
   thing to be desired! What is there, here, that should cause him to
   wait? What is there upon earth that should detain an immortal spirit?
   To depart and to be with Christ, is, to him, far better! Do not the
   groans and dying strife, the breaking up of the bodily system and the
   pains and anguish which generally precede death--do not these break the
   Christian's rest? I tell you, no!

   When faith is steadfast, he looks at these discomforts connected with
   the removal of his earthly tabernacle as being appointed of his Father
   and he resigns himself to them, expecting to receive, with the increase
   of his bodily pain, an

   increase of inward consolation. He reckons that if he loses the silver
   of bodily strength and gets the gold of heavenly experience, he shall
   be a great gainer! Boldly he laughs at death and rejoices in the
   thought of departure, that he may be with Christ eternally! In a word,
   Brothers and Sisters, the rest of the Believer, while his faith is
   sustained by the Spirit of God, is such a one as no stranger
   intermeddles with--such as the sinner can hear of with the ear, but
   cannot imagine in his heart.

   Sinner, you have had wealth lavished on you. You have enjoyed growing
   prosperity. You have been young and merry. You have mixed with company
   who laugh by day and dance far into the night, but you do not know--you
   cannot even guess--what our rest is who have taken Jesus Christ to be
   our Savior! We have God to be our Father and the Holy Spirit to be our
   Comforter. I wish you did know, for I believe that if you once
   understood the rest of the Believer's life, you would give up all that
   this world calls good and great without one lingering look for the sake
   of the solid joy and lasting treasure which only Zion's children know!

   Still, to give you a complete idea, as far as possible, of the rest
   which belongs to Believers I would notice that some conception of this
   rest may be gathered from the Graces which a true faith begets and
   fosters in the Christian mind. After all, a man makes his own
   condition. It is not the dungeon or the palace that can make misery or
   happiness. We carry palaces and dungeons within ourselves, according to
   the constitution of our natures. Now, faith makes a man heavenly in
   mind. It makes him care more for the world to come than for that which
   now is. It makes the invisible precious to him and the visible
   comparatively contemptible. Do you not see, therefore, what rest a true
   faith gives us, amidst the distresses of this mortal life?

   You are very poor, but if you set small store by riches, poverty will
   not distress you. If you have learned to consider spiritual things as
   the better part, you will not pine because the waters of the nether
   springs are scant. Have you ever heard of the Persian King who gave his
   various counselors different gifts? To one he gave a golden goblet, but
   to another a kiss--whereupon all the counselors of the court were
   envious of the man who had the kiss and they counted the goblets of
   gold and jewels and caskets of silver to be less than nothing as
   compared with that familiar token of royal favor. O poor but favored
   saints, you will never envy those who drink golden cups of fortune if
   you obtain the kiss from Jesus' mouth! You know that His love is better
   than all the world beside and the enjoyment of it will yield you the
   richest rest. How can you feel the miseries of envy when you possess in
   Christ the best of all portions? Who wants cisterns by the river? Who
   cries for pebbles when he possesses pearls?

   The Grace of faith, moreover, works in us resignation. He who fully
   trusts his God becomes perfectly resigned to His Father's will. He
   knows that all God's dealings must be right, since the Lord is much too
   wise to err and much too full of loving kindness to deal harshly with
   His people. This resignation is another source of rest to the spirit.
   The habit of resignation is the root of peace. A godly child had a ring
   given him by his mother and he greatly prized it, but on a sudden he
   unhappily lost his ring and he cried bitterly.

   Recomposing himself, he stepped aside and prayed--after which his
   sister laughingly said to him, "Brother, what is the good of praying
   about a ring? Will praying bring back your ring?" "No," he said,
   "Sister, perhaps not, but praying has done this for me--it has made me
   quite willing to do without the ring if it is God's will--and is not
   that almost as good as having it?" Thus faith quiets us by resignation,
   as a babe is hushed in his mother's bosom. Faith makes us quite willing
   to do without the mercy which once we prized. And when the heart is
   content to be without the outward blessing, it is as happy as it would
   be with it, for it is at rest.

   Besides, faith works humility. Dependence upon the merit of Christ and
   a sense of pardoned sin work in us a low esteem of our own merits and
   rights. Then we do not strive after mastery. If others think ill of us,
   it does not break our heart, for we say, "If they knew me, they might
   think still worse of me." If some do not respect us as we deserve, we
   make small account of that, for we think it a little matter for such
   poor worms as we are to be respected, or the reverse. And if there are
   some who speak evilly of us, we take it joyfully because we never
   thought ourselves worthy to be exempted from reproach. Surely we were
   sent here on purpose that we might take part with the great Head of the
   Church by suffering for the promotion of the Divine purposes! A humble
   heart is fitted to be filled with rest.

   Faith furthermore promotes unselfishness by kindling worthier
   affections. So much is this for our peace, that it is most true that
   were a man perfectly unselfish it would be impossible for him to be
   disturbed with discontent. All our unrest lies at the root of self. If
   a man could be perfectly content to be anything that God would have him
   be and have no

   desires except for God's Glory, he could never be banished, for all
   places would be alike to him! He could never be poor, for in every
   condition he would have what his heart desired. Brothers and Sisters, I
   cannot continue this long catalog, but wherever faith rules, it brings
   with it a refining fire which, as it burns up our corruptions, also
   stops the raging of our passions and creates a peace of God which
   passes all understanding.

   It creates a peace warranting the Apostle's declaration that, "we who
   have believed do enter into rest." Faith tones us down into little
   children. It casts our heart in a fresh mold. It brings us into harmony
   with the universe and we who were out of tune with God and Nature are
   once more reconciled to the Divine One, His purposes and Providences.
   All goes well with the man who trusts in God--the beasts of the field
   are at peace with him and the stones of the field have made a league
   with him! All must be right when the heart is right, and the heart is
   right when faith rejoicingly reconciles the soul to God through the
   death of Jesus Christ. Thus I have, as best I am able, described the
   Christian's rest. I only hope--to use John Bunyan's language--that many
   of your mouths are watering to get a personal share in this rest.

   II. The second point to consider is, HOW DOES THE CHRISTIAN OBTAIN THIS
   REST?--"We who have believed." Notice this--that the way in which the
   Believer comes to his rest is entirely through belief or trust. How I
   love to think of this word! If the Apostle had said, "We who have been
   eminently consecrated do enter into rest," I could have wept over the
   text with shame and dismay. If he had said, "We that have been mightily
   useful and earnest and indefatigable in service--we do enter into
   rest," I should have looked at it very wistfully, and have said, "I am
   afraid I shall never reach it."

   But, "we who have believed." Why, that will suit thousands here! It
   will suit some of you who have been mourning all week because you
   cannot be what you want to be--because you cannot serve God as you
   would like to do. "We who have believed." So, then, the gate of the
   fold of rest, the pearly doorway into the New Jerusalem is simply
   belief in the Lord Jesus! What? Nothing else but believing? I see
   nothing else in the text--nothing but believing. And what is this
   believing? Why it is a simple trust--it is a trusting upon Christ as
   God's appointed Savior! It is trusting the Father and believing in His
   infinite love to us! It is trusting the Holy Spirit and giving up
   ourselves to the sway of His Divine indwelling!

   Trusting brings rest. This is a simple Truth of God, and yet it is a
   Truth we need to remember, consider and be assured upon! Peace does not
   come to the Believer through his works. He ought to have works--he must
   have them if he has the life of Divine Grace within his heart. He
   should attend to Baptism, to the Lord's Supper and to all Christian
   ordinances, but he does not get rest through these. The rest comes
   through his faith, not through the ordinances. "Means of Divine Grace,"
   men call those ordinances and some have gone to great lengths as to
   what comes to us through sacraments--but I say most boldly that the
   Apostle goes to greater lengths in another direction, namely, in
   neglecting to say anything in such a case as this about Baptism or the
   Lord's Supper and in laying all our rest at the door of believing!

   "We who have believed." He is of the same mind as our Lord Himself,
   when He declares that whoever believes on the Son has everlasting
   life--as if the only essential thing were this believing and where this
   is, all the privileges of the Covenant were to be enjoyed. Dearly
   Beloved, we ought to pant after sanctification! It should be the
   ambition of our spirits to be useful--we ought to be crying and sighing
   everyday after conformity to Christ! But, remember, it is neither in
   our sanctification, nor in our usefulness, nor in our conformity that
   we find our rest--our rest comes to us through believing in Jesus
   Christ. The Apostle indirectly tells us in these words, that those who
   believe in Christ Jesus enter into rest, notwithstanding anything and
   everything beside.

   "We who have believed," he says, "do enter into rest." What? Paul, have
   you no corruptions? "Alas," he cries, "Wretched man that I am, who
   shall deliver me?" Yet he entered into rest. What? Paul, have you no
   doubts? Hear him-- "I keep under my body and bring it into subjection:
   lest that by any means when I had preached to others, I myself should
   be a castaway." Had he no vexing troubles? He answers, "Without were
   fights and within were fears." And yet, O Apostle, did you enter into
   rest? Yes, by believing! But had you no sins, Paul? Yes, verily, he
   confesses himself the chief of sinners, but, believing made him enter
   into rest!

   Mark the variations of the Apostle's experience were far greater than
   ours. As his mind was more capacious than ours and his outward
   experience more varied, his trials were more and heavier than ordinary.
   A night and a day had he been in the deep, yet, believing, he did enter
   into rest. With his feet fast in the stocks in the jail of
   Phillipi--stoned by infuriated mobs and before Nero the lion at
   Rome--in all kinds of dangers and difficulties, surrounded by imminent

   perils by night and by day he was ever in afflictions and yet he
   declares that, having believed, he did enter into rest, a rest which no
   outward circumstances could disturb!

   Oh, blessed lesson! My Soul, ask for Grace to learn by experience the
   blessed fact that faith, altogether by itself, and it alone can give
   you rest! When the pillars of Heaven tremble and the cornerstone of the
   earth is removed, faith can make the soul steadfast and keep it
   confident! The Apostle seems to intimate in the words before us, that
   the entering into rest, while it depends on nothing else but believing,
   does depend on that. It is, "we who have believed do enter into rest."
   Then why do not some professed Christians have rest? Why do not we,
   ourselves have rest at all times? Answer--because faith is not always
   in vigorous exercise, and though the possession of a weak, but genuine
   faith brings to a Christian unfailing and unchanging security, yet it
   brings not to him an abiding rest.

   Our faith must take God at His Word, or it cannot taste the sweetness
   of His abounding peace. The child that cannot trust its parent cannot
   expect to have the freedom from care which is childhood's dear
   inheritance. But the more fully we can rest upon our Father's promises,
   the more we can feel that it is not for us to inquire how He can do
   this, nor how He can do that--nor when He will deliver us--but can
   altogether leave everything with Him and lean on Him alone without a
   second helper. Then it is that our rest becomes profound and
   undisturbed.

   you who are in the Church and yet cannot rest as you would wish, ask
   the Lord to increase your faith! O you who trust Him, but are often
   staggered, go again to the foot of the Cross and look to Him who
   suffered there! Look again to the precious sin-atoning blood! Look up
   once more into the great Father's face who accepts those that trust in
   Jesus and you shall yet have the perfect rest which God gives only to
   Believers! I cannot readily tear myself away from this point. My soul
   hovers about it and lingers lovingly on it because I am so anxious that
   you all should win this rest and enjoy it today!

   1 know that some of you are complaining of what you do or do not
   feel--but this is not to the point. My message, as contained in the
   text, proclaims no blessing on feeling, but on BELIEVING! Oh, can you
   not trust the Son of God to save you? Can you not believe the promise
   which is so freely given to all who will but trust in Him? Have done, I
   pray you, with raking the kennel of your heart in search of golden
   consolations! Go to Christ--you shall get all your soul needs, in Him.
   Oh, it may be you are saying, "I have not the rest I used to have. I
   will read the Bible more and I will pray more and I will go to a place
   of worship more often," and so on. All which is right, but none of
   these things will bring you rest! Rest for a soul is found in Jesus!
   The dove never found rest till she came to the ark--nor will you till
   you come back to Christ!

   O dear Heart, all the sacraments in the world cannot give you rest! Nor
   can all the preachers that ever spoke give rest to your weary spirit.
   Come now with nothing to trust in of your own! Come to the infinite
   mercy of God as treasured up in the once-pierced heart of the
   Well-Beloved and He will give you rest! O come, poor fluttered Dove,
   fly into Jesus' bosom because you cannot help it. Driven by stress of
   weather, put in to this port of peace. Believe me, Jesus cannot reject
   you! It is impossible! Believe me, if you trust Him you shall have rest
   today--you shall have the same rest as those who have been 50 years His
   servants! You shall have rest through the blood of the Atonement,
   "which speaks better things

   than that of Abel."

   III. So now the last point, which is this--what is THE GROUND AND
   REASON OF A CHRISTIAN'S REST? It is a dreadful thing to be at rest in
   extreme peril, lulled by false security. It is perilous to sleep in a
   house built on a foundation of sand when the floods are rampant and the
   winds are about to sweep all away! It is horrible to be at peace in a
   condemned cell, when already the scaffold has been put up and the hour
   of execution is hastening on! Such peace may God preserve us from!

   But the Believer has good reason for being at peace and why? He has
   these reasons, among others. He trusts to be saved by a way which God
   has appointed. It is God's ordinance that Jesus Christ should be the
   Propitiation for sin and He has solemnly declared that whoever believes
   in Him shall not perish. Now, whether or not a soul believing in Christ
   can perish, if the devil tells me he can, I am prepared to risk it, for
   God's way of appointment, if I accept it, takes all responsibility off
   of me. If I perish, God's honor is injured as well as my soul. But I
   know that God will stand to His appointment. He gave Christ for my
   salvation--I feel there is no risk in my resting on Him--I do rest on
   Him and if God is true, my soul is safe--therefore I am perfectly at
   rest.

   Next, the Believer rests in the Person of Jesus. "Why," he says, "He
   that I commend my soul unto is no other than God Himself and though
   born of a virgin, as to His Manhood, yet is He very God of very God,
   most certainly Divine. Therefore--

   'I know thatsafe with Him remains, Protected by His power, What I've
   committed to His hands Till the decisive hour.'"

   Here is a firm rock to rest on. What better Person can we depend upon
   than Jesus, the Son of God? The Believer, moreover, knows that all
   things which were necessary to save him and all the elect are already
   performed. The debts which were due on our account have been paid by
   our Surety. The Believer is not afraid, then, of being sued in the
   Court of King's Bench and cast into prison to pay the uttermost
   farthing because every penny has been paid.

   The Resurrection of Jesus Christ was God's receipt for the sin which
   had been laid on the Surety. "He rose again for our justification." And
   the Christian says, "Though my sins are as the sands on the seashore,
   yet all that was due for sin was laid on Christ and, therefore, no
   penalty can be laid on me." This is good ground for peace, is it not?
   Then, moreover, the Believer says, "He who died for me ever lives. He
   rose again. The great One who undertook my cause is not dead and
   buried. I have not lost my Friend. He lives at the right hand of God
   and makes intercession for me! Strong to deliver and mighty to save, He
   is ever ready to manifest His power towards His people. Why, then,
   should I be disturbed? Since Christ lives, I must live also."

   The Believer, moreover, knows that the Lord has entered into an
   Everlasting Covenant with him and he rests upon the veracity and
   faithfulness of God that every Covenant promise shall be fulfilled.
   Surely God's Truth is good ground for a soul to rest on! There can be
   no fear when here is our mainstay and refuge. Though the pillars of the
   earth are removed and all the wheels of Nature break, there can be no
   fear that the Eternal Himself should lie. If the foundations of Divine
   veracity were removed, indeed, the righteous would be lost! But no such
   calamity can happen. Believers do well to rest on a ground so safe as
   this.

   "Ah, well," says one, "shall I ever have such ground for comfort as
   that?" Poor Soul, you may have. But you can have no ground for comfort
   at all until you do comply with the Divine command to believe in Jesus.
   For you, as unbelievers, there is no rest! There cannot be any. You may
   be what you like and do what you choose and try what you please, but so
   long as you refuse the Divine way of salvation, rest is not possible
   for you. If you will today throw down your self-will and give up the
   obstinacy of your unbelief and trust in the Incarnate God who on the
   bloody tree poured out His heart's blood, you shall have forgiveness
   and acceptance--and then the Holy Spirit shall come upon you and your
   peace shall be deep and profound--the beginning of the peace of Heaven!
   A peace which shall go on widening and deepening through this mortal
   life as you know more of Christ and become more like He is--a peace
   which shall expand into the ocean of eternal joy.

   All through believing! All through trusting! Nothing is said of the
   sinnership of the truster! Nothing about the greatness or littleness of
   his sins! Nothing about the softness or tenderness of his heart!
   Nothing about his fitness or unfitness, but it is said only that he
   believes! "We who have believed," whoever we may be, if we have but
   trusted--if we have taken God at His Word and rested on it--we do
   enter, we do now enter into and enjoy a most Divine and blessed rest!

   In conclusion, there are three practical words. The first is to the man
   who never has rested. It is, try God's way of rest. How I pity you who
   have not entered the rest of God! You are so morally good, so amiable,
   so truly loveable. You adorn the households in which you move. But for
   lack of one thing you are not happy and you never can be till you get
   that one thing. Oh, I wish you had it! I wish you had it today! I do
   remember well when I first found rest, I did not think it was so simple
   a matter. I could not believe it and I fear I should not have believed
   it till now if the Holy Spirit had not enlightened me. I could not
   believe that rest came simply by trusting. I used to say, "What? Only
   believe?" But now I have found out that only believing is one of the
   richest things in the world--for it brings 10,000 other things with it.

   It brings with it seven other spirits as blessed as itself when it
   enters in and dwells in the human heart. This morning the Truth of God
   is certain--if you can believe, all things are possible to you. If you
   can now trust in Him who came to be a Man to save men and who suffered
   that men might not suffer--and who is risen and gone up to Heaven and
   is coming again a second time to judge the world--if you can put your
   soul into His hands, it will be quite safe! He cannot

   lose it and He will not. O that you would confide in Jesus this
   morning! Then you would become another witness to the rest which God's
   people enjoy! O may it be so at once! We desire to see God's kingdom
   come! We want Christ to see of the travail of His soul and we hope that
   you are one of those who shall forever illustrate His mighty love!
   Yield your heart now! Yield to the sweet influences of the Holy Spirit
   who is breathing upon you now. Trust and you shall rest!

   The next word is to those of you who once did rest, but do not now. You
   Backslider, this is your word--return unto your rest. You never will
   find rest out of Christ--especially you. An ungodly man does, after a
   certain sort, rest in sin. For a time he is satisfied with its gaieties
   and its frivolities appear to delight him, as husks satisfy swine, but
   you cannot ever have such rest as this! If you are a child of God, you
   will never be easy in sin. As Rutherford would say, "If you have once
   eaten the white bread of Heaven, your mouth is out of taste for the
   brown bannocks of earth." You cannot be content as a swine, after
   having once feasted with angels.

   If Christ has given you heavenly emotions and desires, you must go back
   to Him to have them satisfied, for away from Him your state is present
   misery, and will wax worse and worse. Return, return, O Backslider, at
   once! O that I could make my voice a silver trumpet to you, this
   morning, and that you could hear it as the proclamation of jubilee,
   bidding you return to your inheritance! What fruit have you had in all
   your sins since you have wandered from your first Husband? What joy,
   what happiness have you known? Oh, it has been all disappointment,
   vexation, delusion! Come back! Come back! Come back! The Mercy Seat is
   still open! The heart of Jesus beats lovingly towards you still! The
   Grace of God waits for you still. "Turn, O backsliding children, says
   the Lord; for I am married unto you." "I will heal their backsliding, I
   will love them freely: for My anger is turned away from them."

   Lastly, to you who are at rest now. Endeavor to keep it. And the way to
   keep it is the way you first gained it. You obtained it by
   believing--keep it by believing. Believe in the promise of Divine Grace
   in the teeth of your sins and corruptions. It is little or no faith to
   trust Christ when you feel your Graces growing and your lusts
   weakening. But, oh, it is faith when you feel burdened and cast down
   with a sense of sin, still to say, "I know that Jesus came not to save
   the righteous but sinners. I know He came not to save men from some
   slight disease of sin, but He is a Physician able to grapple with the
   most virulent and mortal of diseases.

   "I, therefore, confide in Him without a doubt and if I were a bigger
   sinner than I am, I would still trust Him! If my spots were more
   scarlet than they are, I would still believe that the crimson fount
   could make me white as snow. I will still come to Him--not with a
   staggering faith which would try to make sin little in order to believe
   it possible that He could take it away--but with a faith which knows
   sin to be great beyond conception and yet believes that the Savior is
   greater, still, and the merit of His blood more potent than the demerit
   of human transgression."

   O abide, Believer, always at the Cross and never go away from it! Let
   no advancements in Grace make you say, "Excelsior" to the Cross, for
   there is no higher than Calvary! Your wisdom is to remain a sinner
   washed with blood at the foot of the Cross, for you build wretched
   rubbish when you build above the Cross. If you have ever been on the
   top of Snowdon or the Righi, you will have seen little platforms and
   heaps piled up for tourists to stand on. Now these may be blown over,
   but it is not the mountain that moves--it is only those trumpery
   platforms.

   So if you build up your little rickety experiences above the genuine
   work of Christ and they come tumbling down, do not wonder at it! On the
   contrary, be rather glad of it than not. To lie down on what Christ has
   done is safest and best--

   "I the chief of sinners am, But Jesus died for me."

   "Having nothing, yet possessing all things." Guilty in myself, but
   accepted in the Beloved! Naked, poor, miserable and wretched to the
   last degree, as I am in myself considered, yet in Christ Jesus I am
   dear to God, as dear as if I had never sinned! I am one with Jesus and
   heir with Him to all the inheritance of God! And shortly I shall be
   with Jesus where He is at His right hand, where there are pleasures
   forevermore. The Lord bless you with such a faith, for Jesus' sake,
   Amen.

   PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Hebrews 3 andPsalm 62
     __________________________________________________________________

Tearful Sowing and Joyful Reaping

   A sermon

   (No. 867)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, APRIL 25, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "He that goes forth and weeps, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless
   come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."- Psalm
   126:6.

   THE whole of our life we are sowing. In activity, in suffering, in
   thought, in word we are always scattering imperishable seed. Some sow
   amidst laughter and merriment--they sow unto the lusts of the flesh and
   shall of the flesh reap corruption. Theirs is easy work and suitable to
   their inclinations. All around them siren songs cheer them in the
   fields of transgression as they go forth with the seed of hemlock to
   scatter it broadcast in the furrows. Alas, for them, they shall reap
   under other skies--they shall gather sheaves of flame in the harvest of
   fire--in the day of vengeance of our God. They have sown the wind and
   they shall reap the whirlwind and who shall help them in that hour of
   terror?

   A chosen company are sowing unto the spirit and in their case, albeit
   that they are blessed among men and shall reap amid eternal songs, they
   sow in sadness, for sowing unto the spirit involves a self-denial, a
   struggling against the flesh, a running counter to the fallen instincts
   of our depraved nature--a wrestling and a life of agony involving
   plentiful showers of tears. To sow unto the spirit, in the field of
   obedience or patient endurance, is such a work as only the Holy Spirit
   can enable us to accomplish. And even then the oppositions from outward
   circumstances, from the powers of Hell and from the depravity of our
   nature is oftentimes so severe that we are compelled with bitter tears
   and strong cries to lift up our heart unto God out of the depths of
   anguish.

   They who sow unto the spirit, as a rule, have to sow in tears, but
   their reaping will so compensate them that even in the prospect of it
   they may dry their eyes, reckoning that these light afflictions which
   are but for a moment, are not worthy to be compared with the Glory
   which shall be revealed in them. Our momentary weeping, while we let
   fall the precious seed, is scarcely to be thought of in comparison with
   the mighty sheaves of the exceeding Glory in the land where tears are
   Divinely and finally wiped from every eye.

   The principle that the mournful sowing of the saints will end in a
   joyful reaping stands good in regard to the whole spiritual life, but
   it is equally applicable to individual incidents in that life. For
   instance, many prayers are offered under circumstances of great
   depression of spirit, with mighty vehemence and desire, but perhaps
   under strong temptations to unbelief. Over such prayers, cataracts of
   tears are poured forth, and, Brethren, you may count it a blessed sign
   when you can sigh and cry in your supplications, for your tears are
   like the prevalent wrestling of Jacob when he won the name of Israel.
   Your agony of spirit, like the plea of Moses, shall hold the Lord and
   bind His hand.

   There is a conquering power in the heart's tears in prayer. You shall
   have what you desire when you desire it unto weeping. Take the anguish
   of your spirit to be the premonition of the fulfillment of the promise.
   You shall come again out of your closet crying, like Luther, "I have
   conquered." You shall see sheaves of blessing, since you have sown your
   prayer amid a shower of tears.

   Some Believers also sow in sadness through daily sufferings. It is
   appointed unto some to be the daughters of affliction, the sons of
   pain. Happy is it when those who are thus called to suffer continue to
   sow while they suffer. It is not always so easy to be practically
   useful when one has at the same time to maintain patience and
   resignation. We are apt to think that one form of service at a time is
   enough and perhaps it may be so, but if we can add another, our
   blessedness will be doubled! To shed tears and yet to sow! To be racked
   with pain and to turn the couch into a pulpit! To make the sick bed a
   tribune from which to tell of the love of Christ--oh, this is blessed
   living! To work for Christ Jesus under such terrible disadvantages
   shall surely win a double recompense--and if the preacher fails from
   the pulpit--yet shall not the sick saint be successful from his bed?

   And if the orator shall not prevail in the strength of his manhood, yet
   shall the pining consumptive, when he warns his friend to escape from
   the wrath to come, assuredly win success--his weakness shall be his
   strength and his sickness shall put force into his speech. I doubt not
   that the text may be so read as to imply that the heart-sorrow of men
   engaged in the Lord's service shall help to secure for them from the
   hand of Divine mercy a double reward. Those who can sow while yet they
   weep, shall, beyond all question, come again rejoicing, bringing their
   sheaves with them.

   There are many other instances which I might thus detain you with, but
   I prefer at once to proceed to the main business of this morning and
   that is to consider this text in its relation to every Christian
   worker. Let us first describe his service--"He that goes forth and
   weeps, bearing precious seed." Let us, secondly, contemplate his
   reward--"He shall come again with rejoicing, bearing his sheaves with
   him." Let us in the third place, notice the certainty which, like a
   golden link, binds these two things together--the weeping service and
   the rejoicing success.

   I. First, then, dear Friends, behold THE CHOSEN WORKER FOR GOD, the man
   who shall reap an abundant harvest. It is said of him that he goes
   forth. Every word here is instructive. What is intended by going forth?
   Does it mean, first, that he goes forth from God? Observe that our text
   speaks of his coming again--but where is he to return at the last with
   his sheaves but to his God? Then, as he returns to the place from which
   he went forth, surely he goes forth from God! And I understand by this
   that the chosen servant of God has received consciously a Divine
   commission from Heaven.

   If he has never in the temple seen the glory of God, high and lifted
   up. If he has never seen an angel fly with the golden tongs to bear a
   live coal from off the altar to touch his lips. If he has never heard
   the voice saying, "Whom shall we send? And who will go for us?" yet his
   heart has said, "Here am I, send me." He has felt within his soul a
   yearning to be useful, a panting which could no more be quenched,
   unless he can win souls, than the panting of the deer could be stopped
   unless it could bath itself in the water brooks. I will not believe
   that any man can be useful in the Church of God unless he feels a
   Divine vocation. Especially is it a sin beyond all others for a man to
   take up the ministry as a mere profession and to follow it as though he
   might have followed something else.

   I remember the saying of an old divine who was asked by a young man
   whether he should enter the ministry. He replied, "Not if you can help
   it." No man has any right to be a preacher unless he is one who cannot
   help it. He must be one who feels that he is driven into it, and that
   woe is unto him unless he preach the Gospel! In the same way is it in
   the other departments of Christian service. You Christian people all
   have a duty, you all have responsibilities--but your duties and
   responsibilities, somehow or other, never move you until they take the
   active form of a vocation. I would to God that every Christian in this
   Church felt that he had a call as from the Christ of God exalted on His
   Throne to go out and tell others of the way of salvation!

   I wish that the men and women who have here banded themselves together
   in a sacred confraternity felt every one of them commissioned of God,
   each one according to his ability, to pluck brands from the burning, to
   rescue souls from going down into the Pit. It is in going forth from
   God with His call upon you that you have the prospect of coming back
   successful--no way else! This going forth from God seems to me to imply
   that the worker had been with God in prayer. We must go fresh from the
   Mercy Seat to the field of service if we would gather plenteously. Our
   truest strength lies in prayer.

   I am persuaded, Brethren, that we are losing much of blessing which
   might come upon the Church through our negligence in private
   supplications. I cannot pry into your prayer closets, but I believe
   that in the conscience of many of you there will be an affirmative
   voice to the charge I lay against some of you--you have restrained
   prayer before God. Your restraining of prayer, if you seek to serve
   God, is binding your own hands and cutting the sinews of your strength!
   As you could not expect to be vigorous if you denied yourselves food,
   so neither can you hope to be strong if you deny yourselves prayer. Get
   close to God, for strength flows out of Him. Keep at a distance from
   Him and you lose all power and become weak as water.

   "He that goes forth," must mean, then, that he has stood before the
   Mercy Seat. That he has told out the story of his needs where the blood
   is sprinkled and then has gone forth in the power which prayer alone
   can bring from Heaven to scatter his precious seed among men. Does not
   this going forth from God imply, also, that the man has been in
   communion with God? He wears a shining face who has looked into the
   face of God and in the power of that brightness he shall make the
   desert bloom and the wilderness rejoice! He has looked up to the God of
   miracles and held fellowship

   with Him! The Lord lends much of Himself to the man who is much with
   Him. He endows with marvelous power the man who has learned to live
   close to Him and to walk in the light of His Countenance.

   To "go forth," however, may be looked at from another angle. Does it
   not refer to whether the man is to go as well as to the place from
   which he comes? "He that goes forth," that is, away from the world,
   outside the camp. If you would be serviceable, you must come right out
   from the common track and in holy decision step out of the ranks for
   Christ. Of all the men who lived on the face of the earth, the most
   remarkable and the most singular in His age was the Lord Jesus Christ.
   There was no man who was so manly, no man so unlike a mere monk or
   separatist as Christ. He eat and drank just as other men did and yet
   there was a something about His Character which distinguished Him
   altogether from the whole mass of humanity.

   He had gone forth, evidently, outside the camp--holy, harmless,
   undefiled and separate from sinners. If you want to win golden sheaves
   for Christ, you must come out, my dear Brother, as your Lord did.
   Depend upon it, the world's religion is not that which breeds useful
   men! Nor, though I may be rebuked for saying it, is the ordinary
   character of our Churches equal to the production of successful
   servants of Christ. Common religion has become, nowadays, so cold and
   dead and sleepy a thing, that unless you can come out of it and get
   above it, you cannot expect to be one of those who shall come again
   rejoicing in abundant sheaves.

   Aspire to be something more than the mass of Church members! Lift up
   your cry to God and beseech Him to fire you with a nobler ambition than
   that which possesses the common Christian--that you may be found
   faithful unto God at the last and may win many crowns for your Lord and
   Master, Christ. He that goes forth taking up Christ's Cross, leaving
   the multitude and separating himself for service--he shall win the
   great service! Going forth may represent, also, entire giving up of
   yourself to that particular field of labor to which God has called you.
   As when the day dawns, as the laborer goes forth to plow in the field,
   so the consecrated man hastens to his department of service.

   He is not running here and there wasting time, but, like a man who
   knows his vocation, he goes straight to it and abides in it until the
   evening of his life. I am inclined to think that there is a version of
   these words which may be very useful to enterprising Believers. "He
   that goes forth"--that is, gets beyond the range of ordinary Christian
   labor--he shall find a double harvest. The most successful servants of
   God have been those who have not built upon other men's foundations,
   but have ventured to break up new soil.

   There comes very little reward to me from preaching to the many who
   regularly attend this Tabernacle, because the most of you have heard
   the Gospel so long that if there were any probabilities of its
   converting you, in all likelihood you would have been converted long
   ago. The probabilities seem to be that the soil upon which the seed
   will germinate is already plowed and only rock remains--that the elect
   of God have been gathered out of my congregation and that we may not
   expect, in our ministry, to see great results in the future among our
   older hearers. But whenever we have broken up fresh ground--when we
   have gone someplace not usually occupied for worship, when we have got
   at a new piece of unbroken prairie--what wonderful results have always
   followed!

   Why, I fear there were more conversions in the Surrey Music Hall than
   there ever have been here. In Exeter Hall, God converted more in
   proportion by our ministry than He has done of late in this house--not
   because the ministry has changed, nor the blessing upon it--but because
   continuing to plow upon the same old soil, again and again, we can
   hardly expect to reap much of a harvest! Hearts have become seared!
   Consciences have become callous! By going forth to get fresh ears to
   hear and fresh hearts to know the joyful sound, we may hope to see
   golden sheaves.

   I say, then, to you Christian workers, reach out after those who have
   been thought to be beyond the range of hope! Seek to convert those who
   have been neglected! Let it be the effort of Christian people to go
   after those that nobody else is going after--the best fruit will be
   gleaned from boughs up to now untouched. And let our missionary
   operations be continually breaking forth, on the right hand and on the
   left, as opportunity may be given. If the Burmans rejected the Gospel,
   the Karens received it. Sometimes, when a superior race, so called, has
   rejected the Truth of God, those who have been downtrodden pariahs of
   the land have been made ready by God to accept the Gospel.

   There is more hope, I think, of conversion work to be done in Italy and
   in Spain than in any other parts of the world. Where the ministry of
   Christ has been all but silenced, the Truth will come like an angel's
   hymn and there it is that we may expect to hear glad hearts welcoming
   the Good News. "He that goes forth"--not he that sits at home, throwing
   random handfuls out of his window and expecting the corn to spring up
   on his doorstep--but he who obeys the Word,

   "Go you into all the world," and leaps over the hedges which shut in
   the narrow sphere of nominal Christendom and labors to have fresh
   lands, fresh provinces, fresh wildernesses broken up for Christ! He is
   the man most likely to win the

   reward.

   The next word is, "and weeps." What does this mean? I take it,
   Brethren, that, as in the first words, "he that goes forth," we see the
   man's mode of service, so here we note a little of the man, himself. He
   goes forth and weeps. The man likely to be successful is a man of like
   passions with ourselves, not an angel, but a man, for he weeps. But
   then he is very much a man. He is a man of strong passions, weeping
   because he has a sensitive heart. The man who sleeps, the man who can
   be content to do nothing and is satisfied with no result is not the man
   to win sheaves. God chooses, usually, not men of great brains and a
   vast mind, but men of true-hearted, deep natures--with souls that can
   desire and pant and long and heave and throb!

   It is a great thing that makes a genuine man weep. Tears do not lie
   quite so fleet with most of us. But the man who cannot weep cannot
   preach, at least, if he never feels tears within, even if they do not
   show themselves without, he can scarcely be the man to handle such
   themes as those which God has committed to His people's charge. If you
   would be useful, dear Brothers and Sisters, you must cultivate the
   sacred passions. You must think much upon the Divine realities until
   they move and stir your souls. Men are dying and perishing! Hell is
   filling! Christ is dishonored! Souls are not converted to Christ! The
   Holy Spirit is grieved! The kingdom does not come to God, but Satan
   rules and reigns--all this ought to be well considered by us and our
   heart ought to be stirred until, like the Prophet, we say, "O that my
   head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears."

   The useful worker for Christ is a man of tenderness, not a stoic--not
   one who does not care whether souls are saved or not. He is not one so
   wrapped up in the thought of Divine Sovereignty as to be absolutely
   petrified, but one who feels as if he died in the death of sinners and
   perished in their ruin--as though he could only be made happy in their
   happiness, or find a paradise in their being caught up to Heaven. The
   weeping, then, shows you what kind of man it is whom the Lord of the
   Harvest largely employs.

   He is a man in earnest, a man of tenderness, a man in love with souls,
   a man wrapped up in his calling, a man carried away with compassion, a
   man who feels for sinners--in a word, a Christ-like man. Not a stone,
   but a man who is touched with a feeling of our infirmities, a man of
   heart, a man ready to weep because sinners will not weep. "Why does he
   weep?" asks someone--"He is on an honorable work and he is to have a
   glorious reward." My Brethren, he weeps as he goes forth because he
   feels his own insufficiency. He often sighs within himself, "Who is
   sufficient for these things?" He did not know what a weak creature he
   was until he came into contact with other men's hearts. He fancied it
   was easy work to serve God, but now he is somewhat of Joshua's mind,
   "You cannot serve the Lord."

   Every effort that he makes betrays to him his own lack of natural
   strength. Well may he weep! He never teaches in the Sunday school
   class--he never prays at the sick bed but what he feels ashamed when he
   has done his work that he did not do it better. He never takes a little
   child on his knee to talk to it of Jesus, but he wishes that he could
   have spoken more tenderly of the sweet gentleness of the Lover of
   little children. He is never satisfied with himself, for he forms a
   right estimate of himself and he weeps to think that he is so poor an
   instrument for so good a Master.

   Moreover, he weeps because of the hardness of men's hearts. He thought,
   at first, he should only have to tell these great Truths of God and men
   would leap for joy. Have you ever seen fancy pictures at the head of
   our missionary magazines--of respectable gentlemen dressed in black
   suits, landing out of boats manned by devout sailors, carrying Bibles
   in their hands--and these well-to-do evangelists are surrounded by
   Turks and Chinese, black people, and copper-colored people, who are
   running down to the seashore and taking these precious Bibles in their
   hands and looking as if they had found a priceless treasure?

   All, it is all in the picture, it is nowhere else--the thing does not
   occur! Natives of barbarous isles and heathen kingdoms do not receive
   the Gospel in that way. Heralds of the Cross have to do a deal of rough
   work and toil! The Gospel, which ought to be welcomed, is rejected! And
   as there was no room for Christ in the inn when He became Incarnate, so
   there is no room for the Gospel in the hearts of mankind. Yes, and this
   makes us weep, since where there should be so much readiness to accept,
   there is so much obstinacy and rebellion.

   The Christian worker weeps because, when he does see some signs of
   success, he is often disappointed. Blossoms come not to be fruit, or
   fruit half-ripe drops from the tree. He has to weep before God,
   oftentimes, because he is afraid that

   these failures may be the result of his own lack of tact or need of
   Divine Grace. I marvel not that the minister weeps, or that any worker
   for Christ bedews the seed with his tears--the wonder is he does not
   lament far more than he does! Perhaps we should all weep more if we
   were more Christ-like, more what we should be. And perhaps our working
   would have about it more Divine results if it came more out of our very
   soul, if we played less at soul-saving and worked more at it. If we
   cast soul and strength and every energy of our being into the work,
   perhaps God would reward us at a far greater rate.

   The next point is he "bearsprecious seed." Here, indeed, is a special
   point of all success. There is no soul-winning by untruthful preaching.
   We must preach the Truth of God as it is in Jesus. Workers for God must
   tell out the Gospel and keep to the Gospel. You must continually dwell
   upon the real Truth as it is in God's Word, for nothing but this will
   win souls. Now in order to this, my fellow workers for Christ, we must
   know God's Truth. We must know it by an inward experience of its power
   as well as in theory. We must know it as precious Truth. It must be
   precious seed to us for which we should be prepared to die if it were
   necessary. We must understand it as being precious because it comes
   from God. Precious because it tells to man the best of news. Precious
   because sprinkled with the blood of Jesus. Precious because Christ
   values it and all holy men esteem it beyond all price.

   We must, therefore, not deliver it with flippancy, not talk of solemn
   themes with levity, not tell out the Gospel as though we were retelling
   a mere tale from the Arabian Nights, a romance meant for amusement, or
   to beguile a passing hour. O Brethren, we who sow for God must sow
   solemnly and in right good earnest, because the seed is precious seed,
   more precious than we can ever estimate! Work for God, dear Brethren,
   as those who know that the Truth is a seed. Do not speak of it and
   forget it. Do not tell the Gospel as though it were a stone and would
   lie in the ground and never spring up. Tell out the Truth as it is in
   Jesus with the firm conviction that there is life in it and something
   will come of it.

   Be on the alert to see that and you will be the man who will have
   results. Our estimate of the preciousness of the seed will have much to
   do with the result of the seed. If I do not esteem thoroughly and
   heartily the Gospel which I teach, if I do not teach it with all my
   heart, I cannot expect to see the sheaves. But if, valuing the Gospel,
   I tell it out to my fellow men as being priceless beyond all cost and
   tell it out, therefore, with due vivacity and with an earnestness that
   brings me to tears, I am the man who shall come again rejoicing,
   bringing my sheaves with me.

   I do not know whether I have brought out what I meant, but we have, I
   think, in our text a full description of the successful worker.

   II. You have in the text, THE WORKER'S SUCCESS. It is said of him, "He
   shall come again." What does that mean but that he shall come again to
   his God? And this the worker should do after he has labored. You sought
   a blessing--go and tell your God of what you have done and if you have
   seen a blessing come, give Him thanks. Those men always come back to
   God with their sheaves who went from God with their seed. Some workers
   can see souls converted and take the honor to themselves, but never
   that man who sowed in tears--he has learned his own weakness in the
   school of bitterness. And now, when he sees results, he comes back
   again. He comes back to God, for he feels that it is a great wonder
   that even a single soul should be convicted or converted under such
   poor words as his.

   Oh, I know some of you have had your sheaves. Dear Brother, beyond a
   doubt, if you had those sheaves as the result of a holy vehemence in
   prayer, you will be sure to come back with a holy ardor of thanksgiving
   and lay those sheaves in their honor and their praise at the foot of
   God who gave them to you. "He shall doubtless come again." Does not
   that mean in the longest and largest sense, he shall come again to
   Heaven? He did, as it were, go forth from Heaven. His body had not been
   there, but his soul had. He had communed with God. Heaven was his
   portion and his heritage, but it was expedient for him to tarry a
   little while here for the sake of others, and so, in a certain sense he
   leaves the Heaven of his rest to go into the field of sorrow among the
   sons of men. But he shall come again.

   Ah, blessed be God, we are not banished by our service. We are kept
   outside the pearl gate for a little while--thanks be to God for the
   honor of being permitted thus to be absent from our joys for
   awhile--but we are not shut out, we are not banished, we shall
   doubtless come again! Here is your comfort! You go, perhaps, into the
   mission field. You journey to the remotest parts of the earth to serve
   God, but you shall come again. There is a straight road to Heaven from
   the most remote field of service and in this you may rejoice.

   But the text adds, "He shall come again with rejoicing." What will he
   rejoice in? Take the whole text and wrap it up together and it seems to
   me to say that he shall come again rejoicing even in his very tears. I
   reckon that at the last, when

   Christian service shall be done and Christian reward shall be rendered,
   the toils endured in serving God--the disappointment and the racking of
   heart will all make raw material for everlasting song. Oh, how we shall
   bless God to think that we were counted worthy to do anything for
   Christ!

   Was I enlisted in the host that stood the shock of battle? Did the
   Master suffer me to have a hand upon the standard that waved so proudly
   aloft amidst the smoke of the battle? Did He suffer me to leap into the
   ditch, or scale the rampart of the wall among the forlorn hope? Or did
   He even suffer me to watch by the baggage while the battle was raging
   afar off? Then am I thankful that He, in any way whatever, permitted me
   to have a share in the glory of that triumphant conflict! And then,
   Brethren, as old soldiers show their scars and as the warriors in many
   conflicts delight to tell of hair-raising escapes in "the imminent
   breach," and of dangers grim and ghastly, so shall we rejoice as we
   return to God to tell of our going forth and of our weeping when we
   carried the precious seed.

   There is not a single drop of gall which will not turn to honey. There
   is not, this day, one drop of sweat upon your aching brow but shall
   crystallize into a pearl for your everlasting crown! Not one pang of
   anguish or disappointment but shall be transmuted into celestial glory
   to increase your joy, world without end! But the main rejoicing will be
   doubtless in their success. O you Sunday school teachers, if you go
   forth as the text has told you and as I have explained to you, you
   shall not be without fruits! I have heard many discussions among my
   Brothers and Sisters, about whether or not every earnest laborer may
   expect to have fruit.

   I have always inclined to the belief that such is the rule and though
   there may be exceptions and perhaps some men may be rather a savor of
   death unto death than of life unto life, yet it seems to me that if I
   never won souls I would sigh till I did. I would break my heart over
   them if I could not break their hearts! If they would not be saved and
   were not saved, I would almost cry with Moses, "Blot out my name out of
   the Book of Life." Though I can understand the possibility of an
   earnest sower never reaping, I cannot understand the possibility of an
   earnest sower being content not to reap! I cannot comprehend any one of
   you Christian people trying to win souls and not having results and
   being satisfied without results!

   I can suppose that you may love the Lord and may have been trying your
   best unsuccessfully for years, but then I am sure you feel unhappy
   about it. I can not only suppose that to be the case, but I am thankful
   that you are unhappy! I hope the unhappiness will increase with you
   till at last, in the anguish of your spirit, you shall cry, like
   Rachel, "Give me children or I die! Give me fruits or I cannot live!"
   Then you will be the very person described in the text--you go forth
   weeping, bearing seed that is precious to you--and you must have
   results, you must come again rejoicing, bringing your sheaves with you!

   The last point is coming back rejoicing with sheaves. I do not suppose
   the text means that the reaper is to bring home all his sheaves on his
   own back, but, as an old expositor says, he comes with the wagons
   behind him, with the wagons at his heels, bringing his sheaves with
   him. Yes, they are his sheaves. "How so? All saved souls belong to
   Christ. They are God's." Yes, but for all that they belong to the
   worker. There is a kind of sacred property which exists and which God
   acknowledges in the case of men and women who bring souls to Christ. I
   am persuaded there is no love in this world more pure and crystal, more
   celestial and enduring, than the love of a convert to the person
   through whose agency he or she may have been brought to Christ.

   All earthly love has a tinge of the flesh about it, but this is
   spiritual--this is worthy of immortal spirits--this will therefore
   endure. While the converts that are brought to Christ are all the
   Lord's own, yet they belong, also, to those who brought them in--so God
   puts it, "bringing his sheaves with him." And, ah, I like to think of
   that! If God shall privilege me to bring souls to Him, I shall count
   them all and say, "Here am I and the children which You have given me."
   Oh, it is blessed to give all the glory to Christ! It is a great honor
   to give all the honor to Him! But you must have the glory first, or you
   cannot give it to Him! The sheaves must be yours, or evidently you
   cannot carry them honestly and offer them to Him.

   Souls are saved through God's Word, yes, but Christ prays for those who
   shall believe, "through their word," that is, through the preachers'
   word. The Apostle gives much honor to workers, for in one place he
   speaks of himself as though he were the mother of souls, "Little
   children for whom I have travailed in birth." In another place he
   speaks of himself as though he were a father of souls, as though both
   relations were centered in the true laborer. Thus does God put high
   honor upon Christian workers by making the souls, as it were,
   completely theirs--the sheaves their sheaves.

   They threw themselves into the work. They made the work their very
   life. They wept. They cried and pleaded as they sowed.

   And now God does not come in to take away all property in the sheaves,
   but as they come back, the workers have an interest and a share in all
   the results of the blessed Gospel and God makes those sheaves their
   sheaves! He gives them honor in the sight of men and angels through
   Jesus Christ His Son!

   III. And now I have not time, as I ought to have, for the conclusion,
   which is upon THE GOLDEN LINK OF "DOUBTLESS," therefore I must just
   launch rapidly these concise hints. The true worker will be a reaper. I
   am afraid I have put this in the shape as though I were speaking to
   ministers, but I am not. I am trying to talk to every Christian here.
   If you are a true worker, you doubtless will be a reaper. Why? First,
   because the promise of God says so. "My Word shall not return to Me
   void: it shall prosper in the thing where I sent it."

   Secondly, God's honor in the Gospel requires it. If there is a failure
   and you have preached the true Gospel rightly, it will be the Gospel
   that will fail. But God's attributes are all wrapped up in the
   Gospel--it is His wisdom and His power. And shall God's wisdom be
   nonplussed and God's power be put back? Again, you must reap because
   the analogy of Nature assures you of it. The poor peasant whose little
   stock of corn is all but spent, takes a little wheat, which is very
   precious to him, and with many tears he drops it into the soil in the
   wintry months. And God gives him a harvest. In due time, in the mellow
   autumn days, he gathers in the sheaves, which reward him for his
   self-denial.

   It shall be so with you. God mocks not the farmer. He appoints the
   seedtime and He brings round the harvest. As He does not change the
   ordinances of Nature, so will He not change the ordinances of Divine
   Grace. Be satisfied with this. Moreover, Christ, the model of the
   Christian life, assures you of this. He went forth weeping, sowing
   drops of bloody sweat, sowing with pierced hands and feet that dropped
   with blood. He went forth sowing living seeds of love and they are
   springing up today already in the Glory and in the multitudes that are
   gathered into it. And soon, in the coming and the superior splendor
   that shall envelop it, the Christ who sowed in tears will reap in joy!

   Even thus it must be with you. And if this is not enough to comfort
   you, remember those who have gone before you in this service who have
   proved this fact. Think of those you have known who have not been
   unsuccessful--when, with hearts broken and bruised, they have spent
   their life-power in their Lord's work. Remember Judson and the
   thousands of Karens that this day sing of the Savior whom he first
   taught to them. Think of Moffat, in his old age still in the kraals of
   the Bechuanas, not without glorious seals to his ministry!

   Think of our own missions in Jamaica, of the wonders and trophies of
   Grace in the South Sea Islands, the multitudes that were turned to
   Christ during revival seasons in our own land and in the United States,
   and you have proof that those that know how to weep and sow and who go
   forth from God to the sowing, shall, beyond a doubt, come again
   rejoicing with their sheaves! Up, you laborers, sow in hope! Sow
   broadcast and enlarge your spheres! Up, you desponding ones who are
   wrapping your cloaks about you and seeking consolation in indolence
   because you think your toil too desperate! Up, I beseech you, for the
   harvest comes!

   O miss not your share in the shouting and the rejoicing--but you will
   so miss it if you miss your part in the weeping and in the sorrowing!
   Would God I could put zeal into your hearts, but that I cannot. May the
   Holy Spirit do it and as a band of Christian men, may we be resolved
   that henceforth, while we live, and until we die, we will with
   passionate longing--with all the forces of our manhood worked up and
   strained to the utmost pitch--seek to tell the good news of Jesus
   Crucified to the sons of men, knowing that our work of faith cannot be
   in vain in the Lord!

   O you who are not saved at all, I ask you not to work! I ask you not to
   sow! But come to Christ Jesus! Look to His Cross! One look at Christ
   will save you! Trust in Him and you shall live. The Lord bless these
   words for His name's sake. Amen.

   PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Psalms126,127,129
     __________________________________________________________________

Mature Faith--Illustrated By Abraham's Offering Up Isaac

   A sermon

   (No. 868)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, MAY 2, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "And He said, Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love,
   and get you into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt
   offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell you of."- Genesis
   22:2.

   I DO not intend to enter into this narrative in its bearing upon our
   Lord, although we have here one of the most famous types of the
   Only-Begotten, whom the Great Father offered up for the sins of His
   people. Perhaps that may be the subject this evening. But as I have, in
   the recollection of some of you, already given you three sermons upon
   the life of Abraham, [See Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit--Volume
   14--Nos. 843, 844, 845--"Effectual Calling--Illustrated by the Call of
   Abram" "Justification by Faith--Illustrated by Abram's Righteousness."
   "Consecration to God--Illustrated by Abraham's Circumcision."]
   illustrating his effectual calling, his justification and his
   consecration to the Lord, we will now complete the series by dwelling
   upon the triumph of Abraham's faith when his spiritual life had come to
   the highest point of maturity.

   Opening your Bibles at this chapter, you will please observe the time
   when God tried Abraham with the severest of his many ordeals. It was
   "after these things," that is to say, after nine great trials, each of
   them most searching and remarkable. After he had passed through a great
   flight of affliction and had through the process been strengthened and
   sanctified, he was called to endure a still sterner test. From which
   fact it is well to learn that God does not put heavy burdens upon weak
   shoulders and He does not allot ordeals fit only for full-grown men to
   those who are but babes. He educates our faith, testing it by trials
   which increase little by little in proportion as our faith has
   increased.

   He only expects us to do man's work and to endure man's afflictions
   when we have passed through the childhood state and have arrived at the
   stature of men in Christ Jesus. Expect then, Beloved, your trials to
   multiply as you proceed towards Heaven! Do not think that as you grow
   in Divine Grace the path will become smoother beneath your feet and the
   heavens serener above your heads. On the contrary, reckon that as God
   gives you greater skill as a soldier, He will send you upon more
   arduous enterprises. And as He more fully fits your boat to brave the
   tempest and the storm, so will He send you out upon more boisterous
   seas and upon longer voyages, that you may honor Him and still further
   increase in holy confidence.

   You would have thought that Abraham had now come to the land Beulah,
   that in his old age, after the birth of Isaac and especially after the
   expulsion of Ishmael, he would have had a time of perfect rest. Let
   this warn us that we are never to reckon upon rest from tribulation
   this side of the grave. No, the trumpet still sounds the note of war.
   You may not yet sit down and bind the wreath of victory about your
   brow--no garlands of laurel and songs of victory for you, yet--you have
   still to wear the helmet and bear the sword. You must still watch and
   pray, and fight, expecting that, perhaps, your last battle will be the
   worst and that the fiercest charge of the foe may be reserved for the
   end of the day.

   Having thus observed the time when God was pleased to try the great
   pattern of Believers, we shall now look at the trial itself. We shall
   next see Abraham's behavior under it, and shall, in conclusion, spend a
   little time in noting the reward which came to him as the result of his
   endurance.

   I. And first, THE TRIAL ITSELF. Every syllable of the text is
   significant. If George Herbert were speaking of it, he would say the
   words are all a case of knives cutting at Abraham's soul. There is
   scarcely a single syllable of God's address to him, in the opening of
   this trial, but seems intended to pierce the Patriarch to the quick.
   Look. "Take now your son." What? A father slay his son! Was there
   nothing in Abraham's tent that God would have but his son? He would
   cheerfully

   have given Him sacrifices of bullocks and flocks of sheep! All the
   silver and the gold he possessed he would have lavished from the bag
   with eager cheerfulness!

   Will nothing content the Lord but Abraham's son? If one must be offered
   of humankind, why not Eliezer of Damascus, the steward of his house?
   Must it be his son? How this tugs at the father's heartstrings! His
   son, the offspring of his own loins, must be made a burnt offering!
   Will not God be content with any proof of his obedience but the
   surrender of the fruit of his body? The word only is made particularly
   emphatic by the fact that Ishmael had been exiled at the command of
   God. Very much to Abraham's grief Hagar's child had been driven out.
   "Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman
   shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac." So said Sarah--and God
   bade the Patriarch regard the voice of his wife, so that now Isaac was
   his only son.

   If Isaac shall die, there is no other descendant left and no
   probabilities of any other to succeed him. The light of Abraham will be
   quenched and his name forgotten. Sarah is very old, as he himself is
   also--no infant's cry will again gladden the tent--and Isaac is his
   only son, a lone star of the night, the only son, the lamp of his
   father's old age. Nor is that all--"Your only son, Isaac." What a
   multitude of memories that word, "Isaac," awoke in Abraham's mind! This
   was the child of promise, of a promise graciously given, of a promise,
   the fulfillment of which was anxiously expected, but long, long, long
   delayed.

   Isaac, who had made his parents' hearts to laugh--the child of the
   Covenant--the child in whom the father's hopes all centered, for he had
   been assured, "In Isaac shall your seed be called." What? After all
   must the gift of God be retracted? Must the Covenant of God be
   nullified, and the channel of the promised blessings be dried up
   forever? Oh, trial of trials! "Your son." "Your only son." "Your only
   son, Isaac." And it was added, "whom you love." Must he be reminded of
   his love to his heir at the very time when he is to lose him? Oh, stern
   word that seems to have no heart of compassion in it! Was it not enough
   to take away the loved one, without at the same instant awakening the
   affections which were so rudely to be shocked?

   Isaac was very rightly beloved of his father, for in addition to the
   ties of nature and his being the gift of God's Divine Grace, Isaac's
   character was most lovely. His behavior on the occasion of his
   sacrifice proves that in his spirit there was an abundance of humility,
   obedience, resignation and gentleness--indeed, of everything which can
   make up the beauty of holiness! And such a character was quite sure to
   have won the admiration of his father, Abraham, whose spiritual eyes
   were well qualified to discern the excellences which shone in his
   beloved son. Ah, why must Isaac die? And die, too, by his father's
   hand! Oh, trial of trials!

   Contemplative imagination and sympathetic emotion can better depict the
   father's grief than any words which it is in my power to use. I cast a
   veil where I cannot paint a picture! But note, not only was this tender
   father to lose the best of sons, but he was to lose him in the direst
   way. He must be sacrificed--he must be sacrificed by the father
   himself! If the Lord had said, "Speak with Eliezer and charge him to
   offer up your son," it would have softened the trial. But so far as
   Abraham could understand the command, it seemed to say, you Abraham,
   you must be the priest. Your own hand must grasp the sacrificial knife
   and you must stand there with breaking heart to drive the knife into
   the breast of your son and see him consumed, even to ashes, upon the
   altar.

   All this appeared to him to be involved in God's word, although the
   Lord meant not so, but meant to accept the will for the deed.
   Everything was designed to make the trial severe. The friend of God was
   tried in such a way as probably never fell to the lot of man before or
   since. In addition to the sacrifice, Abraham was commanded to go to a
   mountain which God would show him. It is easy, on the spur of the
   moment, and under the influence of sacred impulse, to hastily perform
   an heroic deed of self-sacrifice. But it is not so easy for men of
   passions, such as ours, to deliberate over the sacrifices demanded of
   us.

   But Abraham must have three days to chew this bitter pill which was,
   indeed, hard enough, merely, to swallow and all the more unpalatable
   when a man is made to learn in detail the wormwood and the gall--he
   must journey on with that dear son before his eyes all day--listening
   to that voice so soon to be silent and gazing into those bright eyes so
   soon to swim with tears and to be dimmed in death. Abraham would have
   to remember in him his mother's joy and his own delight, and all the
   while meditating upon that fatal stroke which, so far as he knew, God
   required of him. Oh, this laying siege to us by long and careful
   barricade is that which tries us! A sharp assault we might far better
   bear!

   To be burnt to death quickly upon the blazing firewood is comparatively
   an easy martyrdom. But to hang in chains roasting at a slow fire--to
   have the heart, hour by hour, pressed as in a vice--this it is that
   which tries faith! And this it was that Abraham endured through three
   long days! Only faith, mighty faith, could have assisted him to look in
   the face the grim trial which now assailed him. The Patriarch was, no
   doubt, moved and tried and exercised not merely by the words which God
   pronounced in his hearing, but by natural and painful suggestions
   which, however readily they may have been disposed of, were, it would
   appear to us, certain to arise.

   He might have said, "I am called upon to perform an act which violates
   every instinct of my nature, I am to offer up my child! Horrible!
   Murderous! I am to burn my slaughtered child as a religious
   act--terrible, barbarous, detestable! I am, myself, to offer him upon
   the altar deliberately. How can I do it? How can God ask me to do that
   which tears up by the roots every one of the affections which He
   Himself has implanted--which runs counter to the whole of my noblest
   humanity? How can I do this?"

   Brothers and Sisters, coming home to ourselves and trying to make a
   personal application of this, we may be called by the Word of God to
   acts of obedience which may seem to us to do violence to all our
   natural affections. Christians are sometimes commanded to come out from
   the world by decided acts which provoke the hatred of those who are
   nearest and dearest. Now, if they love God, they will not love father
   nor mother, nor husband, nor brother, nor sister in comparison with
   Him. And though Christians will ever be among the most tender-hearted
   of men, they will count their allegiance to God to be such that they
   must give up all for His sake, and deny every natural affection sooner
   than violate the Divine Law.

   Perhaps today you are suffering under an affliction which is grieving
   all the powers of your nature. Perhaps the Lord has been pleased to
   take away from you one dearer than life--for whom you could have been
   well content to die. Oh, learn with Abraham to kiss the rod! Let not
   Isaac stand before God! Let Isaac be dear, but let Isaac die sooner
   than God should be distrusted! Bow your head and say, "Take what You
   will, my God. Slay me, or take all I have, but I will still bless Your
   holy name." This was a main part of Abraham's trial--that it appeared
   to crush rudely all the tender outgrowths of the heart. And it may have
   suggested itself to Abraham that he would in this way, by the slaughter
   of his son, be rendering all the promises of God futile.

   A very severe trial, that, for in proportion as a man believes the
   promise and values it, will be his fear to do anything which might
   render it of no effect. Brethren, there are times with us when we are
   called to a course of action which looks as though it would jeopardize
   our highest hopes. A Christian man is sometimes bound by duty to
   perform an action which, to all appearances, will destroy his future
   usefulness. I have often heard men urge, as a plea for remaining in a
   corrupt Church, that they would lose the influence they had obtained in
   its midst by reason of their position if they followed their conscience
   and were true to God. But they are bound to lose all their supposed
   influence and renounce their apparent vantage ground sooner than commit
   the least trespass upon their conscience! As much bound to do so as
   Abraham was bound to offer up Isaac--in whom all the promises of God
   were centered.

   It is neither your business nor mine to fulfill God's promise, nor to
   do the least wrong to produce the greatest good. To do evil that good
   may come is false morality and wicked policy! For us is duty--for God
   is the fulfillment of His own promise and the preservation of our
   usefulness. Though He dash my reputation into shivers and cast my
   usefulness to the four winds, yet if duty calls me, I must not hesitate
   a single second--for in that hesitation I shall be disobedient to my
   God! At the behest of God, Isaac must be offered though the heavens
   fall! And faith must answer all polite suggestions by the assurance
   that what God ordains can never, in its ultimate issue, produce
   anything but good! Obedience can never endanger blessings, for commands
   are never in real conflict with promises--God can raise up Isaac and
   fulfill His own decree.

   Further, Abraham may have felt--one would think must have felt--the
   thought that the death of Isaac was the destruction of all his comfort.
   The tent shall be darkened for Sarah and the plain of Mamre barren as a
   wilderness for her lamenting heart. Alas for the wretched parent who
   has lost the hope of his old age and the stay of his decrepitude! The
   sun grows black at noon and the moon is eclipsed in darkness if Isaac
   dies. Better that all calamities should have happened than this dear
   child be taken away! He must have felt thus, but it did not make him
   hesitate. Sometimes the course of duty may lie right over the dead body
   of our dearest comfort and our brightest hope. It may be our duty to do
   that which will involve a succession of sorrows all but endless.

   But you must do right come what may. If the Lord bids you, you must
   seek faith to do it, though from that moment never should another joy
   make glad your heart until you are fully compensated for the loss of
   all by entering into the joy of your Lord at the last. It must also, I
   should think, have occurred to Abraham, though he did not let it weigh
   with him, that from that time forth he would make himself many enemies.
   Many would distrust his character. Many would count him a perfect
   wretch--he would find wherever he went that he was shunned as a
   murderer of his own child. How should he bear to meet Sarah again?
   "Where is my son? Surely a bloody husband are you to me," she would
   say, with far greater truth than Zipporah to Moses.

   How could he meet his servants again? How could he bear their looks
   which would say to him, "You have slain your son! Embraced our hands in
   the blood of your own offspring!" How could he face Abimelech and the
   Philistines? How would the wandering tribes which roamed about his tent
   all hear of this strange massacre and shudder at the thought of the
   monster who defiled the earth on which he trod! And yet observe the
   holy carelessness of this godlike man as to what might be thought or
   said of him. What mattered it to him? Let them count him a devil--let a
   universal hiss consign him to the lowest Hell of hatred and
   contempt--he reckons not of it. God's will must be done! God will take
   care of His servant's character, or if He does not, His servant must
   suffer the consequences for his Lord's sake.

   Abraham must obey! No second course is open to him. He will not think
   of disobedience. He knows that God is right and he must do God's will,
   come what may. This, mark you, is one of the most grand points about
   the faith of the father of the faithful--and if you and I shall be
   called to exhibit it, may we never be found lacking--but brave calumny
   and reproach with cheerfulness, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

   How Luther's lips must at first have trembled when he ventured to say
   that the Pope was Antichrist! Why, Man, how can you dare to say such a
   thing? Millions bow down before him! He is the vicar of God on earth!
   Do they not worship our Lord God the Pope? "Yet he is Antichrist and a
   very devil," said Luther. And at first he must have felt his ears burn
   and his cheeks grow red at such a piece of apparent wickedness. And
   when he found himself shunned by the ecclesiastics who once had courted
   Doctor Martin Luther's company, think of what emptiness he must have
   felt!

   And when he heard the common howl that went up--even from the refuse of
   mankind--that the monk was a drunkard and, inasmuch as he chose to
   marry a nun, was filled with lust and sold to Satan and I know not what
   beside, it must have been a grand thing when Luther could feel, "They
   may call me what they will, but I know that God has spoken unto my soul
   the great Truth that man is to be saved by faith in Jesus Christ and
   not by ceremonies which the Pope ordains, nor the indulgences which he
   grants. And if my name is consigned to the limbo of the infernal, yet
   will I speak out the Truth of God which I know, and in God's name I
   will not hold my tongue." We must be brought to this--to be willing to
   put aside the verdict of our times and of all times past or future and
   to stand alone, if need be, in the midst of a howling and infuriated
   world, to do honor to the command of God which is the only necessity to
   us. It is imperative for us to obey, even though it should bring shame
   or death itself.

   Here, then, was Abraham's faith made perfect, that, inasmuch as the
   outward circumstances were severe and the suggestions arising out of
   the circumstances were peculiarly perplexing, he put aside both and
   dared the ills of all in order that he might, without delay or
   objection, fulfill his Master's will to the full extent--firmly
   believing that no hurt would come of it, but rather he, himself, should
   be more blessed and God more glorified.

   II. We shall now notice THE PATRIARCH UNDER THE TRIAL. In Abraham's
   bearing during this test everything is delightful. In trying to mention
   each detail, I fear that I may mar the effect of the whole. His
   obedience is a picture of all the virtues in one, blended in marvelous
   harmony! It is not so much in one point that the great Patriarch excels
   as in the whole of his sacred deed.

   First notice the submission of Abraham under this temptation. His
   submission, I say, because you will observe that there is no record
   kept of any answer which Abraham gave to God, verbally, or in any other
   form. I suppose, therefore, that there was none. Strange and startling
   command, "Take your only son and offer him for a burnt sacrifice!" But
   Abraham does not argue the point. It is natural to expect that he
   should have said, "But, Lord, do You really mean it? Can a human
   sacrifice ever be acceptable to You? I know it cannot. You are love and
   kindness--can You take delight, therefore, in the blood of my dear son?
   It cannot be."

   But there is not a word of argument! Not one solitary question that
   even looks like hesitation. "God is God," he seems to say and it is not
   for me to ask Him why, or seek a reason for His bidding. He has said
   it. "I will do it." There

   does not appear to have been a word of entreaty or prayer. Prayer
   against so dread a trial might not have been sinful. If the man had
   been less a man it might have been not only natural, but right for him
   to say, "O my God, spare my child! Put me on some other trial, but not
   on this, so strange, so mysterious. My Lord, for Sarah's sake and for
   Your promise sake, test me not so."

   I say that such a prayer as that might not have been sinful from an
   ordinary man. It might have been, perhaps, even virtuous and
   commendable--but from this grand soul there is no such prayer! He does
   not ask to escape. He does not pray to be delivered when he once knows
   God's will. Much less is there the semblance of murmuring. The man goes
   about the whole business as if he had been only ordered to sacrifice a
   lamb ordinarily taken from the flock. There is a coolness of
   deliberation about it which does not prove that he was a stoic, but
   which does prove that he was gigantic in his faith! "Not staggering,"
   says the Apostle--and that is just the word.

   You and I, if we had done right, would have done it in a staggering,
   hesitating manner--but Abraham--not a nerve quivers, not a muscle is
   paralyzed. He knows that God commands him and with awful sternness, and
   yet with childlike simplicity, he sets about the sacrifice. The lesson
   I gather from this (and we may as well collect these lessons as we go,
   as gleaners who gather the ears as they walk down the furrows)--the
   lesson is this--when you know a duty, never pray to be excused but go
   and do it in God's name in the power of faith. If ever you clearly see
   your Master's will, do not begin to argue it or wait for better
   opportunities and so on--do it at once!

   I know not how much of joy and honor some of you may have missed by the
   evil habit of beating around the bush with your consciences. It is a
   very terrible thing to begin to let conscience grow hard, for it soon
   sears as with a hot iron. It is like the freezing of a pond. The first
   film of ice is scarcely perceptible--keep the waters stirring and you
   will prevent the ice from hardening it. But once let it film over and
   remain so, it thickens over the surface and it thickens still and at
   last it is so solid that a wagon might be drawn over the solid water.
   So with conscience. It films over gradually and at last it becomes
   hard, unfeeling--and it can bear up with a weight of iniquity. Ah, it
   is not for us to delay obedience under the pretense ofprayer, but to
   yield prompt service.

   I have been sometimes surprised and staggered with Christian people who
   have said in the matter of Baptism, for instance, "I am persuaded that
   it is my duty as a Believer to be baptized, but it has never been laid
   home to my conscience." Never laid home to your conscience?! You know
   that God commands and yet you dare confess your conscience has become
   so base that you do not feel it your duty to obey?! "Oh, but I have not
   felt that it is impressed on me." Felt! And is feeling to be the
   measure of your allegiance to God, the clipper and the cutter of God's
   Law? If you know it to be the right, I charge you on your faith, obey!

   O Sirs, this world has come to a sad pass because of the tricks men
   play with their consciences! This is the cause of all those unnatural
   senses that people give to texts and creeds! This is the secret reason
   why the religion of this land which claims to be Protestant, is
   becoming Popish to its very core--because evangelical men have sworn to
   a Popish catechism and given it another sense--and instead of coming
   out of a corrupt Church, have dallied with their consciences and so by
   their practice have nullified their preaching and taught men to lie!
   Small wonder is it that traders rob and cheat when men professing
   godliness use words in senses which they can never bear to
   unsophisticated minds. If professing men were but jealous for the glory
   of God and exact and precise in all their walking before the Most High,
   they would have more of the honor, more of the blessedness of
   Abraham--and their influence upon the world would be more like salt and
   less like the evil leaven which corrupts the mass.

   But we must pass on to notice next Abraham's prudence. Prudence, some
   of us heard this last week, may be a great virtue, but often becomes
   one of the meanest and most beggarly of vices. Prudence rightly
   considered is a notable handmaid to faith. And the prudence of Abraham
   was seen in this, that he did not consult Sarah as to what he was about
   to do. Naturally, Prudence, as we call it, would have said, "This is a
   strange command. You had better consult with the wise about it. You
   believe it comes from God, but you may be mistaken in your impression.
   At least, it is due to Sarah, having such an interest in her own child,
   to take her judgment in the matter. Moreover, there is that good man
   Eliezer-- he has often helped and guided you in a dilemma--you had
   better have a talk with him."

   "Yes," but Abraham probably thought, "these beloved ones may weaken me.
   They cannot strengthen my resolution or alter my duty," and, therefore,
   like Paul, he did not consult with flesh and blood. After all, my
   Brethren, what is the good of consulting when we know the Lord's mind?
   If I go to the Bible and see very plainly there that such-and-such a

   thing is my duty--for me to consult with man as to whether I shall obey
   God or not is treason against the Majesty of Heaven! It is vile for us
   to consult with men when we have the plain command of God! Fancy an
   inferior officer in an army, when ordered in the hour of battle to lead
   an attack, turning round to a fellow soldier to ask his opinion of the
   orders he has received from the commander-in-chief! Let the man be
   tried by court-martial, or shot down upon the field--he is utterly
   unloyal! It needs no overt act. The thought is mutiny! The words of
   enquiry a flat rebellion. When God commands, we have nothing left but
   to obey. Consultations with flesh and blood are sins of scarlet dye.

   Notice, further, Abraham's alacrity. He rose early in the morning. Oh,
   but the most of us would have taken a long sleep! Or if we could not
   nave slept, we would have lain till dinner time at least, tossing
   restlessly. "What? Slay my son-- my only son Isaac? The command does
   not specify the hour--there is no peremptory word as to the time of
   starting upon the awful journey. At least let us postpone it as long as
   we may, for the dear young man's sake! Let him live as long as
   possible." But no. Delay was not in the Patriarch's mind. Is it not
   grand? The holy man rises early! He will let his God see that He can
   trust him and that he will do His bidding without reluctance.

   O Believers, always be prompt in doing what God commands you! Hesitate
   not! The very pith of your obedience will lie in your making haste and
   delaying not to keep the Lord's commandment. He showed his alacrity,
   again, by the fact that he prepared the wood himself. It is expressly
   said that he "split the wood." He was a sheik and a mighty man in his
   camp, but he became a wood-splitter, thinking no work menial if done
   for God and reckoning the work too sacred for other hands. With
   splitting heart he splits the wood. Wood for the burning of his heir!
   Wood for the sacrifice of his own dear child! Herein you see the
   alacrity of Abraham and may it be ours to obey God with such a ready
   zeal that in every little circumstance of our obedience it shall be
   seen that we are not unwilling slaves chained to the oar of duty and
   flogged to service by the threats of the Law, but loving children of a
   Father whom we count it our highest joy to serve, even though that
   service should involve the sacrifice of our dearest Isaacs.

   Further, I must ask you to notice Abraham's forethought. He did not
   desire to break down in his deeds. Having split the wood, he took with
   him the fire and everything else necessary to consummate the work. Some
   people take no forethought about serving God and then if a little hitch
   occurs, they cry out that it is a Providential circumstance and make an
   excuse of it for escaping the unpleasant task. Oh, how easy it is when
   you do not want to involve yourselves in trouble, to think that you see
   some reason for not doing so! "You know," says one, "we must live."
   "Ah," says another, "why should I throw myself out of a situation
   merely because of a small point of conscience? And, indeed, there has
   just now happened a circumstance which almost compels me to act against
   my belief, at least for a time. Indeed, Providence dearly bids me
   remain as I am. I know the Bible says I ought to act differently, but
   still, you know, we must take circumstances into consideration, and if
   they do not quite alter the commandments, they may, you know, be an
   excuse for postponing obedience."

   Abraham, the wise, thoughtful servant of God, takes care, as far as
   possible, to forestall all difficulties that might prevent his doing
   right. "No," he says, "there is no compromise for me, my duty is clear.
   Does God command it? I will provide all that is necessary for the
   fulfillment of His will. I want no excuse for drawing back, for draw
   back I will not, come what may." Observe, further, Abraham's
   perseverance. He continues three days in his journey, journeying
   towards the place where he was as much to sacrifice himself as to
   sacrifice his child. He bids his servants remain where they were,
   fearful, perhaps, lest they might be moved by pity to prevent the
   sacrifice.

   Now you and I would have liked to provide ourselves with some friend
   who might have stepped in to prevent and have taken the responsibility
   off our shoulders. But, no, the good man puts everything aside that may
   prevent him going to the end. Then he puts the wood on Isaac. Oh, what
   a load he placed on his own heart as he lay that burden on his dear
   son! He carried the fire himself in the censer at his side, but what a
   fire consumed his heart! How sharp was the trial when the son said, "My
   Father, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb?" Was there
   no tear for the Patriarch to brush away? He made but a short reply.

   We have every reason to believe that other replies followed which are
   not recorded, in which he explained to his son how the case stood and
   what it was that God had commanded. It is hard to suppose that Isaac
   would have blindly yielded, unless first an explanation had been given
   that such a command had come from the highest Authority and must be
   obeyed. Oh, the unhappiness of the father's mind! But let me rather say
   the majesty of the father's faith that he puts

   down all his feelings and though Nature speaks, yet Faith speaks
   louder, still. And if the deep of his affliction calls out loud, yet
   the deeper faith in his God calls louder still.

   Now see him! See the holy man as he gathers up the loose stones which
   lie upon Mount Moriah! See him take them and with the assistance of his
   son, place them one upon another till the altar has been built. Do you
   see him next lay the wood upon the altar in order? No signs of flurry
   or trepidation. See him bind his son with cords! Oh, what cords were
   those binding his poor, poor heart! He lays his son upon the altar as
   though he were a victim! Now he unsheathes the knife and the deed is
   about to be done!

   But God is content. Abraham has truly sacrificed his son in his heart
   and the command is fulfilled. Notice the obedience of this friend of
   God--it was no playing at giving up his son--it was really doing it. It
   was no talking about what he could do and would do, perhaps--his faith
   was practical and heroic. I call upon all Believers to note this! We
   must not only love God so as to hope that we should be ready to give up
   all for Him, but we must be literally and actually ready to do it! We
   must ask for more faith, that when the trial comes, we shall not be
   proved to have been mere windbag pretenders--mere wordy talkers--but
   true to God in very deed.

   "Ah," said one the other night, "I thought I had great faith, but now
   that I am racked with pain, I find I have scarcely any." "Oh," might
   some of us say, "my God, I thought I had faith in You, but now it comes
   to the endurance of this affliction which You put upon me, I am ready
   to kick against You and cannot say, 'Your will be done.'" Ah, how many
   professors love God until it comes to losing their pence and their
   pounds! They will obey God until it involves penury and poverty. They
   will be faithful to God till it comes to scoffing and shame and then
   straightway they are offended and thereby prove who is their god--for
   they turn away from the unseen and look for what they call the main
   chance--for the interest of time and their own gain and their own
   pleasures. God is no God of theirs except to talk about. Let Christ's
   commands be pleasing and men will accept them. Let them grind a little
   too severely and men turn aside, for, after all, most professors serve
   their God up to a certain point, but no further and so show that they
   love not God at all.

   I have but very feebly brought out into the light the obedience of
   Abraham. I must not, however, leave the picture till I have mentioned
   what was at the bottom of it all. Paul tells us in the 11th chapter of
   Hebrews, that "by faith Abraham offered up Isaac." Now what was the
   faith that enabled Abraham to do this? Although many expositors think
   not, I adhere to the opinion that Abraham felt in his own mind that God
   could not lie and God's Word could not fail, and therefore hoped to see
   Isaac raised from the dead. "Now," he said to himself, "I have had an
   express promise that in Isaac shall be my seed. And if I am called to
   put him to death, that promise must still be kept and perhaps God will
   raise him from the dead. Even if his body is consumed to ashes the Lord
   can yet restore my son to life."

   We are told in the New Testament that he believed in God, that He could
   raise Isaac from the dead, from which he also received him in a figure.
   Some have said, "But this lessens the trial." Granted, if you will, but
   it does not lessen the faith--and it is the faith which is most to be
   admired. He was sustained under the trial by the conviction that it was
   possible for God to raise his son from the dead and so to fulfill His
   promise. But under that, and lower down, there was in Abraham's heart
   the conviction that by some means, if not by that means, God would
   justify him in doing what he was to do--that it could never be wrong to
   do what God commanded him--that God could not command him to do a wrong
   thing! And therefore doing it he could not possibly suffer the loss of
   the promise made in regard to Isaac.

   In some way or other, God would take care of him if he did but
   faithfully keep to God's command. And I think the more indistinct
   Abraham's idea may have been of the way in which God could carry out
   the promise, the more glorious was the faith which still held to it
   that nothing could frustrate the promise and that he would do his duty,
   come what might. Brethren beloved in the Lord, believe that all things
   work together for your good, and if you are commanded by conscience and
   God's Word to do that which would bankrupt you or cast you into
   disrepute, it cannot be a real hurt to you! It must be all right!

   I have seen men cast out of work owing to their keeping the Lord's-Day.
   Or they have been, for a little time, out of a situation because they
   could not fall into the tricks of trade and they have suffered awhile.
   But, alas, some of them have lost heart after a time and yielded to the
   evil! O for the faith which never will, under any persuasion or
   compulsion, fly from the field! If men had strength enough to say, "If
   I die and rot I will not sin. If they cast me out to the carrion crow,
   yet still nothing shall make me violate my conscience, or do what God
   commands me not to do, or fail to do what God

   commands me to perform!" This is the faith of Abraham! Would to God we
   had it! We should have a glorious race of Christians if such were the
   case!

   III. I have left myself only a few minutes for the last point, which
   is, let us OBSERVE THE BLESSING WHICH

   CAME TO ABRAHAM THROUGH THE TRIAL OF HIS FAITH. The blessing was
   sevenfold. First, the trial was

   withdrawn--Isaac was unharmed. The nearest way to be at the end of
   tribulation is to be resigned to it. God will not try you when you can
   fully bear any trial. Give up all and you shall keep all. Give up your
   Isaac and Isaac shall not need to be given up! But if you will save
   your life, you shall lose it.

   Secondly, Abraham had the expressed approval of God--"Now I know that
   you fear God." The man whose conscience bears witness with the Holy
   Spirit enjoys great peace and that peace comes to him because under
   that trial he has proved himself a true and faithful servant. O
   Brothers and Sisters, if we cannot stand the trials of this life, what
   shall we do in the Day of Judgment? If in the common scales held in the
   hand of Providence we are found wanting, what shall we do before that
   Great White Throne where every thought shall be brought into judgment
   before the Most High? How will you run with the horsemen at the last if
   you cannot run with the footmen now? If we are afraid of a little loss
   and a little scorn, what should we have done in days of the
   martyrs--when men counted not their lives dear to them that they might
   win Christ?

   Abraham next had a clearer view of Christ than ever he had before--no
   small reward. "Abraham saw My day," said Christ--"He saw it and was
   glad." In himself, ready to sacrifice his son, he had a representation
   of Jehovah who spared not His own Son. In the ram slaughtered instead
   of Isaac, he had a representation of the great Substitute who died that
   men might live. More than that, to Abraham God's name was more fully
   revealed that day. He called Him Jehovah-Jireh, a step in advance of
   anything that he had known before. "If any man will do His will, he
   shall know of the doctrine." The more you can stand the test of trials,
   the better instructed shall you be in the things of God. There is light
   beyond if you have Grace to press through the difficulty.

   To Abraham that day the Covenant was confirmed by oath. The Lord swore
   by Himself! Brothers and Sisters, you shall never get the Grace of God
   so confirmed to you as when you have proved your fidelity to God by
   obeying Him at all costs. You shall then find how true are the
   promises, how faithful is God to the Covenant of Grace. The quickest
   road to full assurance is perfect obedience! While assurance will help
   you to obey, obedience will help you to be assured--"If you keep My
   commandments, you shall abide in My love. Even as I have kept My
   Father's commandments and abide in His

   love."

   Then it was that Abraham had, also, a fuller promise with regard to the
   seed. Out of 10 promises which Abraham received, the first are mainly
   about the land. But the last are concerning his seed. We get to love
   Christ more, to value Him more, to see Him and to understand Him better
   the more we are consecrated to the Lord's will. And last of all, God
   pronounced over Abraham's head a blessing, the like of which had never
   been given to man before! And what if I say that to no single
   individual in the whole lapse of time has there ever been given,
   distinctly and personally, such a blessing as was given to Abraham that
   day?! First in trial, he is also first in blessing! First in
   faithfulness to his God, he becomes first in the sweet rewards which
   faithfulness is sure to obtain!

   Brothers and Sisters, let us ask God to make us like Abraham, His true
   children, that we may gain such rewards as he obtained. May He help us
   to make a surrender this morning in our hearts of all that we have of
   the dearest objects of our affections. May we by faith take all to the
   altar today in our willingness to give all up, if so the Lord wills.
   This day may we feel the spirit of perfect faith, believing that God's
   promises must be kept though circumstances of outward Providence and
   even our own inward feelings should seem to belie the sure Word of God.
   Let us labor to know the reality of life by faith! May we believe God
   in the same literal way in which we believe our friends--but only after
   a higher and surer sort!

   Let us from this day so believe in God that we shall never ask a
   question about consequences whenever we have a conviction of duty. May
   we never pause to ask whether this shall make us rich or poor,
   honorable, or despised--whether this will bring us peace or bring us
   anguish--but onward, right onward, as though God had shot us from the
   eternal bow, let us go right on in the full conviction that if there is
   temporary darkness it must end in everlasting light! If there is
   present loss, it must end in eternal gain! Let us set to our seal that
   God is true, that the rewards are to the righteous, and

   true peace to the obedient! Let us believe that in the end it must be
   our highest gain to serve God though that service should, for the
   present, bring with it dire loss!

   O that there may be trained in this House a race of much enduring
   Believers, who can endure hardness, but cannot endure sin! May you, my
   Brothers and Sisters, obey your convictions as constantly as matter
   obeys the laws of gravitation and may you never sell your birthright
   for the world's wretched pottage. Could this House be filled with such
   men and women, London would shake beneath the tramp of our army! This
   whole land would perceive that a new power had arisen up in the land!

   Truth and righteousness would exalt their horn on high and then would
   deceitful trading and greed for gold and Jesuitical faltering with
   words--this flirting with the Popish harlot--would be put to an end
   once and for all. O that the flag of truth and righteousness might be
   unfurled by a valiant band--for that banner shall wave in the day of
   the last triumph when the banners of earth shall be rolled in blood!
   May our God thus bless us and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.
   The Lord make us true men like Abraham, true because believing, and may
   He help us to sacrifice our all, if need be, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Genesis 22.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Gospel of Abraham's Sacrifice of Isaac

   A sermon

   (No. 869)

   Delivered on Sunday Evening, MAY 2, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all." -
   Romans 8:32.

   We have selected this verse as our theme, but our true text you will
   find in the 22nd chapter of Genesis, the narrative which we read to you
   this morning at full length and upon which we spoke in detail in our
   discourse. I thought it meet to keep to one point this morning, on the
   ground that one thing at a time is best and therefore I endeavored to
   lead your undivided contemplations to the peerless example of holy,
   believing obedience which the father of the faithful presented to us
   when he offered up his son.

   But it would be a very unfair way of handling Holy Scripture to leave
   such a subject as this, so full of Christ, without dwelling upon the
   typical Character of the whole narrative. If the Messiah is anywhere
   symbolized in the Old Testament, He is certainly to be seen upon Mount
   Moriah where the beloved Isaac, willingly bound and laid upon the
   altar, is a lively foreshadowing of the Well-Beloved of Heaven yielding
   His life as a ransom! We doubt not that one great intent of the whole
   transaction was to afford Abraham a clearer view of Christ's day. The
   trial was covertly a great privilege, unveiling as it did to the
   Patriarch, the heart of the great Father in His great deed of love to
   men and displaying at the same time the willing obedience of the great
   Son who cheerfully became a burnt offering unto God.

   The Gospel of Moriah, which is but another name for Calvary, was far
   clearer than the revelation made at the gate of Paradise, or to Noah in
   the ark, or to Abraham, himself, on any former occasion. Let us pray
   for a share in the privilege of the renowned friend of God, as we study
   redemption in the light which made Abraham glad. Without detaining you
   with any lengthened preface, for which we have neither time nor
   inclination, we shall first draw the parallel between the offering of
   Christ and the offering of Isaac. Then, secondly, we shall show how the
   Sacrifice of Christ goes far beyond even this most edifying type. O
   blessed Spirit of God, take of the things of Christ at this hour and
   show them unto us!

   I. First, THE PARALLEL. You know the story before you. We need not
   repeat it, except as we weave it into our meditation. As Abraham
   offered up Isaac, it might be said of him that he, "spared not his own
   son," so the ever blessed God offered up His Son Jesus Christ and
   spared Him not. There is a likeness in the person offered. Isaac was
   Abraham's son and in that emphatic sense, his only son--therefore the
   anguish of resigning him to sacrifice.

   There is a depth of meaning in that word, "only," when it is applied to
   a child. Dear as life to a parent's heart is his only child, no gold of
   Ophir nor sparkling gems of India can be compared with it. Those of you
   blessed with the full quiver, having many children, would yet find it
   extremely difficult if one had to be taken from you, to say which it
   should be. A thousand pangs would rend your hearts in making a choice
   of one out of the seven or the 10, upon whose clay-cold brow you must
   imprint a last fond kiss.

   But what would be your grief if you had but one?! What agony to have
   torn from you the only token of your mutual love, the only
   representative of your race! Cruel is the wind which uproots the only
   heir of the ancient tree! Rude is the hand which dashes the only
   blossom from the rose. Ruthless spoiler, to deprive you of your sole
   heir, the cornerstone of your love, the polished pillar of your hope!
   Judge, then, the sadness which pierced the heart of Abraham when God
   bade him take his son, his only son, and offer him as a burnt offering!
   But I have no language with which to speak of the heart of God when He
   gave up His only begotten Son!

   Instead of attempting the impossible, I must content myself with
   repeating the words of Holy Writ: "God so loved the world, that He gave
   His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish,
   but have everlasting life." Nothing but infinite love to man could have
   led the God of Love to bruise His Son and put Him to grief. Christ
   Jesus, the Son of God, is, in His Divine Nature, one with God, co-equal
   and co-eternal with Him, His only begotten Son

   in a manner mysterious and unknown to us! As the Divine Son the Father
   gave Him to us--"Unto us a Son is given, and His name shall be called
   the Mighty God."

   Our Lord, as Man, is the Son of the Highest, according to the angel's
   salutation of the Virgin--"The Holy Spirit shall come upon you and the
   power of the Highest shall overshadow you: therefore also that holy
   Thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God." In
   His human Nature Jesus was not spared, but was made to suffer, bleed
   and die for us. God and Man in one Person, two Natures being wondrously
   combined, He was not spared but delivered up for all His chosen. Here
   is love! Behold it and admire! Consider it and wonder! The beloved Son
   is made a Sacrifice! He, the Only-Begotten is struck of God and
   afflicted and cries, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"

   Remember that in Abraham's case Isaac was the child of his heart. I
   need not enlarge on that. You can readily imagine how Abraham loved
   him. But in the case of our Lord what mind can conceive how near and
   dear our Redeemer was to the Father? Remember those marvelous words of
   the Incarnate Wisdom, "I was by Him as One brought up with Him: and I
   was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him." Our glorious
   Savior was more the Son of God's love than Isaac could be the darling
   of Abraham! Eternity and infinity entered into the love which existed
   between the Father and the Son!

   Christ in human Nature was matchlessly pure and holy, and in Him dwelt
   the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Therefore was He highly delightful
   to the Father and that delight was publicly attested in audible
   declarations, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." Yet
   He spared Him not, but made Him to be the Substitute for us sinners,
   made Him as a curse for us to be hanged on a tree. Have you a favorite
   child? Have you one who nestles in your bosom? Have you one dearer than
   all other? Then, should you be called to part with him, you will be
   able to have fellowship with the great Father in delivering up His Son.

   Remember, too, that Isaac was a most lovely and obedient son. We have
   proof of that in the fact that he was willing to be sacrificed, for
   being a vigorous young man, he might have resisted his aged father--but
   he willingly surrendered himself to be bound and submitted to be laid
   on the altar. How few there are of such sons! Could Abraham give him
   up? Few, did I say, of such sons? I cannot apply that term to Christ,
   the Son of God, for there was never another such as He! If I speak of
   His humanity, did anyone ever obey his father as Christ obeyed His God?
   "Though He were a Son yet learned He obedience." It was His meat and
   His drink to do the will of Him that sent Him.

   "Don't you know," He said, "that I must be about My Father's business?"
   And yet this obedient Son, this Son of sons, God spared not, but
   unsheathed His sword against Him and gave Him up to the agony and
   bloody sweat, the Cross and death itself! What mighty love must have
   led the Father to this! Impossible is it to measure it--

   "So strange, so boundless was the lo ve Which pitied dying men, The
   Father sent His equal Son, To give them life again."

   It must not be forgotten, too, that around Isaac there clustered
   mysterious prophecies. Isaac was to be the promised seed through which
   Abraham should live down to posterity and evermore be a blessing to all
   nations. But what prophecies gathered about the head of Christ?! What
   glorious things were spoken of Him before His coming!

   He was the conquering Seed destined to break the dragon's head. He was
   the Messenger of the Covenant, yes, the Covenant itself! He was
   foretold as the Prince of Peace, the King of kings and Lord of lords.
   In Him was more of God revealed than in all the works of creation and
   of Providence. Yet this august Person, this heir of all things, the
   Wonderful, the Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the
   Prince of Peace, must bow His head to the stroke of sacred vengeance,
   being given up as the Scapegoat for all Believers, the Lamb of our
   Passover, the Victim for our sin.

   Brethren, I have left the shallows and am far out to sea tonight. I am
   swimming in a great deep. I find no bottom and I see no shore. I sink
   in deeps of wonder! My soul would rather meditate than attempt to utter
   herself by word of mouth. Indeed, the theme of God's unspeakable Gift,
   if we would comprehend its breadth and length, is rather for the closet
   than for the pulpit! It is rather to be meditated upon when you muse
   alone at eventide than to be spoken of in the great assembly. Though we
   speak with the tongues of men and of angels, we cannot attain to the
   height of this great argument.

   God gave such a One to us that the world could not find His fellow nor
   Heaven reveal His equal. He gave to us a Treasure so priceless that if
   Heaven and earth were weighed like the merchants' golden wedge, they
   could not buy the like

   thereof. For us was given up the Chief among ten thousand and the
   altogether Lovely! For us the Head of most fine gold was laid in the
   dust, and the raven locks stained with gore. For us those eyes which
   are soft as the eyes of doves were red with weeping and washed with
   tears instead of milk! For us the cheeks which were as a bed of spices
   were defiled with spit and the Countenance like Lebanon, excellent as
   the cedars, marred more than the sons of men! And all this was by the
   Father's appointment and ordaining according to the eternal purpose
   written in the volume of this Book.

   The parallel is very clear in the preface of the sacrifice. Let us show
   you in a few words. Abraham had three days in which to think upon and
   consider the death of his son. Three days in which to look into that
   beloved face and to anticipate the hour in which it would wear the icy
   pallor of death. But the Eternal Father foreknew and foreordained the
   Sacrifice of His only begotten Son, not three days nor three years, nor
   3,000 years, but before the earth was, Jesus was to His Father, "the
   Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." Long before His birth at
   Bethlehem it was foretold, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have
   turned, every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the
   iniquity of us

   all."

   It was an eternal decree that from the travail of the Redeemer there
   should arise a seed that should serve Him, being purchased by His
   blood. What perseverance of disinterested love was here! Brothers and
   Sisters, suffer me to pause and worship, for I fail to preach! I am
   abashed in the Presence of such wondrous love! I cannot understand You,
   O great God! I know You are not moved by passions, nor affected by
   grief as men are. Therefore I dare not say that You did sorrow over the
   death of Your Son. But oh, I know that You are not a God of
   stone--impassible, unmoved. You are God and therefore we cannot
   conceive You, but yet You do compare Yourself to a father having
   compassion on a prodigal. Do we err, then, if we think of You as
   yearning over Your Well-Beloved when He was given up to the pangs of
   death?

   Forgive me if I transgress in so conceiving of Your heart of love, but
   surely it was a costly Sacrifice which You did make, costly even to
   You! I will not speak of You in this matter, O my God, for I cannot,
   but I will reverently think of You and wonder how You could have looked
   so steadily through the long ages and resolved so unwaveringly upon the
   mighty Sacrifice--the immeasurable generosity of resigning Your dear
   Son to be slaughtered for us!

   Remember, Brothers and Sisters, that Abraham prepared with sacred
   forethought everything for the sacrifice. As I showed you this morning,
   he became a Gibeonite for God, acting as a hewer of wood, while he
   prepared the fuel for his son's burning. He carried the fire and built
   the altar, providing everything necessary for the painful service. But
   what shall I say of the great God who, through the ages, was constantly
   preparing this world for the grandest event in its history--the death
   of the Incarnate God? All history converged to this point! I venture to
   say it, that every transaction, whether great or small, that ever
   disturbed Assyria, or aroused Chaldea, or troubled Egypt, or chastened
   Jewry, had for its ultimate object the preparing of the world for the
   birth and the sacrifice of Christ!

   The Cross is the center of all history! To it, from ancient ages,
   everything is pointing! Forward from it everything in this age proceeds
   and backward to it everything may be traced! How deep is this subject,
   yet how true! God was always preparing for the giving up of the
   Well-Beloved for the salvation of the sons of men! We will not tarry,
   however, on the preface of the sacrifice, but advance in lowly worship
   to behold the act itself. When Abraham came,, at last, to Mount Moriah,
   he bade his servants remain at the foot of the hill. Now, gather up
   your thoughts and come with me to Calvary, to the true Moriah. At the
   foot of that hill God bade all men stop. The 12 have been with Christ
   in His life-journey, but they must not be with Him in his death throes.

   Eleven go with him to Gethsemane--only three may draw near to Him in
   His passion. But when it comes to the climax of all, they forsake Him
   and flee! He fights the battle by Himself. "I have trod the wine-press
   alone," said He, "and of the people there was none with Me." Although
   around Calvary there gathered a great crowd to behold the Redeemer die,
   yet spiritually Jesus was there alone with the avenging God. The
   wonderful transaction of Calvary as to its real essence and spirit was
   performed in solemn secrecy between the Father and the Son. Abraham and
   Isaac were alone. The Father and the Son were equally alone when His
   soul was made a Sacrifice for sin.

   Did you observe, also, that Isaac carried the wood!--a true picture of
   Jesus carrying His Cross! It was not every malefactor who had to bear
   the tree which was afterwards to bear him--but in our Lord's case and
   by an excess of cruelty, wicked men made Him carry His Cross. With a
   felicity of exactness to the prophetic type, God had so ordered it,
   that as Isaac bore the wood up to the altar, so Christ should carry His
   Cross up to the place of doom. A point worthy of notice is that it is
   said, as you will find if you read the chapter of Abraham and Isaac,
   "that they went both of them

   together." He who was to strike with the knife and the other who was to
   be the victim, walked in peaceful converse to the altar.

   "They went both together," agreeing in heart. It is to me delightful to
   reflect that Christ Jesus and His Father went both together in the work
   of redeeming love. In that great work by which we are saved, the Father
   gave us Christ, but Christ equally gave us Himself. The Father went
   forth to vengeance dressed in robes of love to man and the Son went
   forth to be the victim of that vengeance with the same love in His
   heart. They proceeded together and at last, Isaac was bound, bound by
   his father. So Christ was bound and He says, "You could have no power
   against Me unless it were given to you of My Father."

   Christ could not have been bound by Judas, nor Pilate, nor Herod if the
   Eternal Father had not virtually bound Him and delivered Him into the
   hands of the executioner. My Soul, stand and wonder! The Father binds
   His Son--'tis God your Father who binds your elder Brother and gives
   Him up to cruel men that He may be reviled, spit upon and nailed to the
   Cross to die! The parallel goes still further, for while the father
   binds the victim, the victim is willing to be bound. As we have already
   said, Isaac might have resisted, but he did not. There are no traces of
   a struggle. There are no signs of so much as a murmur. Even so with
   Jesus. He went cheerfully up to the slaughter--willing to give Himself
   for us. Said Jesus, "No man takes My life from Me, but I lay it down of
   Myself. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again."

   You see how the parallel holds and as you behold the earthly parent,
   with anguish in his face, about to drive the knife into the heart of
   his dear child, you have before you, as nearly as earthly pictures can
   paint heavenly things, the mirror of the Divine Father about to give up
   the Well-Beloved, the Just, for the unjust, that He may bring us to
   God! I pause here. What further can I say? It is not, as I have said
   before, a theme for words, but for the heart's emotions, for the kisses
   of your lips and the tears of your soul.

   Yet the parallel runs a little further. After having been suspended for
   a moment, Isaac was restored again. He was bound and laid upon the
   altar. The knife was drawn and he was in spirit given up to death, but
   he was delivered. Leaving that gap, wherein Christ is not typified
   fully by Isaac, but by the ram, yet was Jesus also delivered. He came
   again, the living and triumphant Son, after He had been dead. Isaac was
   for three days looked upon by Abraham as dead. On the third day the
   father rejoiced to descend the mountain with his son. Jesus was dead,
   but on the third day He rose again! Oh, the joy on that mountain
   summit! The joy of the two as they returned to the waiting servants,
   both delivered out of a great trial.

   But, ah, I cannot tell you what joy there was in the heart of Jesus and
   the great Father when the tremendous Sacrifice was finished and Jesus
   had risen from the dead! Brothers and Sisters, we shall know some day
   for we shall enter into the joy of our Lord! It is a bold thing to
   speak of God as moved by joy or affected by grief, but still, since He
   is no God of wood and stone, no insensible block, we may, speaking
   after the manner of men, declare that God rejoiced over His risen Son
   with exceeding joy--while the Son rejoiced, also, because His great
   work was accomplished. Remembering that passage in the Prophet, where
   God speaks of His saints and declares that He will rejoice over them
   with singing, what if I say that much more He did this with His Son
   and, resting in His love, He rejoiced over the Risen One, even with joy
   and singing?

   What followed the deliverance of Isaac? You heard, this morning, that
   from that moment the covenant was ratified. Just at the base of that
   altar the angel declared the oath wherein God swore by Himself.
   Brothers and Sisters, the risen Savior, once slain, has confirmed the
   Covenant of Grace, which now stands forever fast upon the two immutable
   things wherein it is impossible for God to lie. Isaac, also, had that
   day been the means of showing to Abraham the great provision of God.
   That name, Jehovah-Jireh, was new to the world. It was given forth to
   men that day from Mount Moriah, and in the death of Christ men see what
   they never could have seen--and in His Resurrection they behold the
   deepest of mysteries solved.

   God has provided what men wanted. The problem was, How can sinners be
   forgiven? How can the mischief of sin be taken away? How can sinners
   become saints and those who were only fit to burn in Hell be made to
   sing in Heaven? The answer is yonder, where God gives up His
   Only-Begotten to bleed and die instead of sinners and then bids that
   Only-Begotten return in Glory from the grave. "Jehovah-Jireh," is to be
   read by the light which streams from the Cross! "The Lord will provide"
   is beheld on the Mount of Calvary as nowhere else in Heaven or earth!

   Thus have I tried to show the parallel, but I am sadly conscious of my
   lack of power. I feel as if I were only giving you mere sketches, such
   as schoolboys draw with chalk or charcoal. You must fill them in. There
   is abundance of room-- Abraham and Isaac, the Father and Christ. In
   proportion to the tenderness and love with which you can enter into the
   human wonder, so, I think by the loving and affectionate teaching of
   the Holy Spirit, you may enter into the transcendent wonder of the
   Divine Sacrifice for men.

   II. But now, in the second place, I have to HINT AT SOME POINTS IN
   WHICH THE PARALLEL FALLS

   SHORT. The first is this, that Isaac would have died in the course of
   nature. When offered up by his father, it was only a little in
   anticipation of the death which eventually must have occurred. But
   Jesus is He "who only has immortality," and who never needed to die.
   Neither as God nor Man had He anything about Him that rendered Him
   subject to the bands of death. To Him Hades was a place He need never
   enter and the sepulcher and the grave were locked and barred fast to
   Him, for there were no seeds of corruption within His sacred frame.
   Without the taint of original sin, there was no need that His body
   should yield to the mortal stroke.

   Indeed, though He died, yet His body did not see corruption. God had
   shielded Him from that. So Isaac must die, but Jesus need not. His
   death was purely voluntary and herein stands by itself, not to be
   numbered with the deaths of other men. Moreover, there was a constraint
   upon Abraham to give Isaac. I admit the cheerfulness of the gift, but
   still the highest law to which his spiritual nature was subject
   rendered it incumbent upon believing Abraham to do as God commanded.
   But no stress could be laid upon the Most High. If He delivered up His
   Son, it must be with the greatest freeness. Who could deserve that
   Christ should die for Him? Had we been perfection itself and like the
   sinless angels, we could not have deserved such a gift as this.

   But, my Brothers and Sisters, we were, instead, full of evil! We hated
   God! We continued to transgress against Him! And yet out of pure love
   to us He performed this miracle of Grace--He gave His Son to die for
   us. Oh, unconstrained love--a fountain welling up from the depth of the
   Divine Nature, unasked for and undeserved! What shall I say of it? O
   God, be You ever blessed! Even the songs of Heaven cannot express the
   obligations of our guilty race to Your free love in the gift of Your
   Son!

   Furthermore, remember that Isaac did not die after all, but Jesus did.
   The pictures were as nearly exact as might be, for the ram was caught
   in the thicket, and the animal was slaughtered instead of the man. In
   our Lord's case He was the Substitute for us, but there was no
   substitute for Him. He took our sins and bore them in His own body upon
   the tree. He was personally the Sufferer. Not by proxy did He redeem
   us, but He Himself suffered for us. In propria Persona He yielded up
   His life for us. And there is one other point of difference, namely
   that Isaac, if he had died, could not have died for us. He might have
   died for us as an example of how we should resign life, but that would
   have been a small gift. It would have been no greater blessing than the
   Unitarian Gospel offers when it sets forth Christ as dying as our
   exemption.

   Oh, but Beloved, the death of Christ stands altogether alone and apart
   because it is a death altogether for others and endured solely and only
   from disinterested affection to the fallen! There is not a pang that
   rends the Savior's heart that needed to have been there if not for love
   to us! There is not a drop of blood that trickled from that crown of
   thorn on His head or from those pierced hands that needed to be spilled
   if it were not for affection to such undeserving ones as we.

   And look at what He has done for us! He has procured our pardon! We who
   have believed in Him are forgiven! He has procured our adoption! We are
   sons of God in Christ Jesus!

   He has shut the gates of Hell for us! We cannot perish, nor can any
   pluck us out of His hands! He has opened the gates of Heaven for us! We
   shall be with Him where He is. Our very bodies shall feel the power of
   His death, for they shall rise again at the sound of the trumpet at the
   last day. He was delivered for us, His people, "for us all." He endured
   all for all His people--for all who trust Him--for every son of Adam
   that casts himself upon Him! For every son and daughter of man that
   will rely, alone, upon Him for salvation, He was a Sacrifice. Was He
   delivered for you, dear Hearer? Have you a part in His death? If so,
   shall I need to press upon you as you come to this Table to think of
   the Father's gift and of the Father Himself?

   Do I need to urge you with tearful eyes and melting heart as you
   receive the emblems of our Redeemer's passion, to look to His Father
   and to Him, and with humble adoration to admire that love which I have
   failed to depict, and which you will fail to measure? I never felt, I
   think, in all my life, more utterly ashamed of words and more ready to
   abandon speech. The thoughts of God's love are too heavy for the
   shoulders of my words! They burden all my sentences and crush

   them down! Even thought itself cannot bear the stupendous load. Here is
   a deep, a great deep and our boat knows not how to sail on it! Here
   deep calls unto deep and our mind is swallowed up in the vastness and
   immensity of the billows of love that roll around us.

   But what reason cannot measure, faith can grasp! And what our
   understanding cannot comprehend, our hearts can love! And what we
   cannot tell to others we will whisper out in the silence of our spirits
   to ourselves, until our souls bow with lowest reverence before the God
   whose name is Love. As I close, I feel bound to say that there may be
   some here to whom this is but an idle tale. Ah, my heart breaks as I
   think of you, that you should continue to sin against your Maker and
   forget Him from day to day as most of you do. Your Maker gives His own
   Son to redeem His enemies and He comes to you tonight and tells you
   that if you will repent of your sins and trust yourselves in the hands
   of His dear Son, who died for sinners, you shall be saved!

   But, alas, you will not do so! Your heart is so evil that you turn
   against your God and you turn against His mercy! Oh, do you say, "I
   will not turn against Him any more"? Are your relentings kindled? Do
   you desire to be reconciled to the God you have offended? You may be
   reconciled! You shall be reconciled tonight, if you do now but give
   yourselves up to God your Father and to Christ your Savior! Whoever
   believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life, for this
   is His Gospel--"He that believes and is baptized shall be saved. But he
   that believes not shall be damned." What that damnation is may you
   never know, but may His Grace be yours. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Hebrews 6
     __________________________________________________________________

Things Present

   A sermon

   (No. 870)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, MAY 9, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Things present, all are yours."- 1 Corinthians 3:22.

   SOME of the Corinthians had attached themselves to one great religious
   teacher and others to another. There was a disposition among them to
   set up rival leaders of opposing parties--a band would follow Paul,
   another company admired Apollos--and a third extolled Peter. The
   Apostle, in order to take the minds of Believers off estimating any one
   of their blessings at too high a rate, leads them to contemplate the
   exceeding length and breadth of the treasures which God had given to
   them. Why should they glory in man when all things were theirs? It is
   the part of a poor man to set a great value upon the one thing in which
   he delights.

   As in the parable of Nathan, the poor man had but one ewe lamb. This
   lay in his bosom, and was fed from his own table. He who was possessor
   of 10,000 sheep in the valley of Jezreel thought but little of any one
   lamb. Even so, if Believers were poor and God had given them but one
   mercy and that one mercy were either Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, it
   were but according to nature that they should exalt the gift and prize
   it at the highest conceivable rate. But when the bounteous Lord has
   given to His people all ministries and countless spiritual blessings,
   it becomes unseemly in those who are so rich, to glory in any one part
   of their portion.

   Even as it has been said--

   "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,

   Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring," so the sense of possession
   exercised upon a little will contract and hamper the soul, but a sense
   of great, yes, infinite possession, will enlarge and ennoble us. If our
   mind, enlarged and stimulated by faith, can stretch its arms like seas
   and grasp the whole shore of the present and of the future--and seize
   upon all things as given us by the bounty of Heaven-- we shall be cured
   of the tendency to exaggerate the value of our merely temporal mercies.
   And all shall so be delivered from covetousness.

   How shall they thirst who swim in the cool clear stream? How shall they
   hunger who sit down at banquets where the provision is beyond all
   measure? Happy are they who are too rich to care for gold, too happy to
   hunt after joy, too exalted to be proud, too high to be lifted up!
   Among the matters which Paul catalogs as belonging to Believers, he
   enters this item, which contains a mass of mercy, "things present."
   This is a huge nugget of virgin gold and one which the mind is ever
   ready to appreciate. We reckon present things at the highest rate--as
   the old proverb has it--"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

   Things present--though in very truth they may be far inferior to things
   to come, or even in certain respects less precious than the things of
   the past--yet usually exercise the greatest influence over us from
   their nearness. It is so even as the moon, though far less than the
   sun, has the greater power over the earth because she is so much nearer
   to it. A present mercy rates higher in the market than a great blessing
   which was received years ago and now only lives in our memory. A crust
   for present hunger is better than the festival of last year, and a
   small inconvenience, if pressing upon us at this present moment, will
   distress us far more than the great trial which is threatened, or the
   still greater affliction which has passed over us.

   A slight shower of rain today will more inconvenience you than the
   heavy snowstorm which overtook you on the Alps seven years ago. The
   little present, to our apprehension, eclipses the great past or the
   greater future. Since, then, from the constitution of our nature, we
   are so out of all proportion affected by present things, it is well for
   us to look at them until we can see them in the bright light which this
   text casts upon them. Then we shall be all the happier and, being

   the happier, all the stronger for good. Present things, then, Believer,
   be they bright or dark, present things--through the Covenant of
   Grace--are yours today!

   I. Subdividing this great and comprehensive term, we shall first
   observe that in the ease of the true Christian, HIS TEMPORAL
   POSSESSIONS are his own. You will say that this is a most trite remark.
   So be it. Yet, as a brown husk may hide a golden seed, so may there be
   important truths within a plain sentence. The ungodly man for awhile
   engrosses the good things of this life, but they are sent to him
   oftentimes in anger. They bring a curse with them and are taken away
   again in wrath. They are not his in the same cheering sense in which
   they belong to the children of God.

   As for you, O true Believer, whatever of earthly good the Lord has
   apportioned you is in a peculiar sense and in a most blessed manner,
   your own. I grant you that all our worldly goods belong to God and that
   we are but stewards of whatever He bestows upon us. Yet, for all that,
   the good things of this life are ours by a deed of gift far more valid
   than the title-deeds of noble families or the charters of kings! God
   gives us all things richly to enjoy, and rights established upon Divine
   gift are beyond dispute.

   When the Lord makes our lines to fall in pleasant places, we are not to
   receive the gifts of Providence with fear and trembling, as if they
   were not lawful to be held by Christians. Nor are we to look at them
   with shy suspicion, as if they could not be consecrated to noblest
   ends. The temporal gifts of Heaven are ours, as the text declares, and
   we are bound to regard them as love gifts of our Covenant God. It is a
   great comfort when a man knows in his conscience, "What I have, be it
   little or much, is mine, at least in this sense, that I have honestly
   come by it." The Christian owns no stolen property or unrighteous gain.

   A thief may secure his goodly Babylonian garment and his wedge of gold,
   but when he has gotten it, though no other man claims it, yet it is not
   his--he must bury it in the earth, it is a stolen thing--a thing
   accursed and bringing evil with it. How can men live in peace with
   fraudulent property about them? David, when he gets the water from the
   well at Bethlehem, acts towards it as every honest spirit would act
   towards gold and silver accumulated in unjustifiable speculations, or
   coined out of the savings of the defrauded poor, or gathered by
   adulteration and trickery--David would not drink the water, but poured
   it out! And some men's riches might well be poured out even into Hell
   itself, where devils might rue the draught if they dared to drink
   there.

   Ill-gotten substance will rot the belly which is filled with it.
   Dishonest persons may be purse-proud and live in great style, but none
   of their riches are, in truth, their own. Like the jackdaw in the
   fable, they wear borrowed plumes. Though no man may get back his own
   from the man of fraud and no court of law may make him disgorge, yet
   his gettings are not his, or only his so as to sting him in the end as
   does a viper. But what you have, Believer, is your own! In the getting
   of it you remembered your Master's word and abstained from
   covetousness. You strained not after it with an unhallowed greed and
   now, when it comes to you, though it is not your god and you do not
   value it in comparison with spiritual blessings, yet it comes with this
   satisfaction--that you have not gathered it with unrighteous hands.

   The Believer's possessions are his own because acknowledged to the
   great Giver with becoming gratitude. Gratitude is, as it were, the quit
   rent to the great superior Owner and until we discharge the claim, our
   goods are not lawfully ours in the court of Heaven. Some lands are held
   upon the tenure of a peppercorn--so are our daily mercies. At each meal
   there should be this payment of the peppercorn in the giving of thanks,
   which is peculiarly a Christian custom to be carefully observed. On our
   anniversary occasions--our birthdays and times of memorial--there
   should be special seasons for blessing the name of the Lord, and,
   indeed, whenever any great blessing is brought home (and what if I say
   any blessing, for, to such as we are, all blessings are great?), there
   should be the payment of hearty gratitude, for then only, the mercy
   becomes legitimately ours!

   Wealth is not truly ours till we thank the Lord for it. We have not
   paid the royal dues upon it--it is contraband and we are illegally
   using it. Beloved, as you have not failed to give unto the Lord your
   loving thanks, your mercies are now yours to enjoy as in His sight. I
   hope, too, that the most of my Brethren can feel that their temporal
   possessions are theirs because they have conscientiously consecrated
   the due portion which belongs to God. From the loaf there should be cut
   the crust for the hungry. From the purse there should come the help for
   the Lord's work. The tithing of the substance is the true title to the
   substance. It is not altogether yours till you have proved your
   gratitude by your proportionate gift to the cause of the Master.

   Cheerfully may we look upon the heap which remains when of the gold and
   the silver a portion has been given to God to conserve the rest from
   the rust and the canker. You may eat of your harvest with gladness when
   the Lord's sheaf has been waved and your increase shall be sweet when
   the first fruits have been laid on the altar. All things are yours in a
   special manner when dedicated in tithe and sanctified by gratitude. Our
   mercies are our own, too, because we seek to be graciously guided in
   the use of them. We dare not spend them on our lusts--they are not ours
   for such a purpose. They are not bestowed upon us so absolutely that we
   may set them up and cry, "These are your gods, O Israel." They are ours
   within the lines of Law and Gospel--ours within bounds of sobriety and
   holiness--ours not as gods, but as gourds. Ours not as masters, but as
   mercies.

   We eat and drink feeling that God, even our own God, has blessed our
   basket and our store. And therefore whether we eat or drink, or
   whatever we do, we do all to His Glory! We put on our raiment with joy
   because the Lord thus clothes us. That which we possess the Lord has
   cleansed and therefore we count it no longer common or unclean. The
   benediction of Heaven sweetens the lawful use of earthly goods. The
   nether springs are the more delightful because drops from the upper
   springs fall into them. To see God's hand in every temporal mercy is to
   enjoy life! But, alas, some men will not so see the hand of God, but
   only see the bare mercy and fall in love with the creature to the
   neglect of the Creator. Their worldly goods are perverted into
   stumbling-stones and are no longer as they should be, a ladder to lift
   us nearer to God.

   Beloved in Christ Jesus, whatever God has given you in this life, upon
   the conditions which I have already mentioned, are yours, ceded to you
   by Divine love! Need I say it is not required of you to play the
   ascetic? John came neither eating nor drinking--you are not John's
   disciple! The Son of Man, who is your Master, came both eating and
   drinking. There is no piety whatever in your accounting the gifts of
   Providence as necessarily temptations. You can make them so, but that
   is your folly and no fault of theirs. If God has blessed you with
   wealth or competence, use your substance with joy for His Glory and the
   good of your fellow men and see upon all that you have the smile of
   Heaven! Sit not down sullenly to hoard up your gold as though it were a
   thing of darkness to be concealed, but arise and use the gifts of God
   in the light and in gladness!

   Vain are those who sneer at Nature and the lavish bounty thereof. To me
   the sunshine is Jehovah's smile and the grass which grows beneath my
   feet is beaming with 10,000 flowers, all speaking out my Father's
   thoughts of kindness towards me. "The earth is the Lord's and the
   fullness thereof." This planet is no Pandemonium or Topher! It is no
   sin to gaze with delight upon verdant valleys and majestic mountains!
   It is no crime to enjoy the beauties of Nature, but a sign of idiocy to
   be unaffected thereby! Fair scenes, sweet sounds, balmy odors and fresh
   gales--your Father sends them to you--take them and be thankful!

   If there are any men in this world to whom Nature belongs, these men
   are the children of the living God! I count it squeamish, sickly
   sentimentalism and not manly piety, which leads certain excellent men
   to depreciate their Maker's works and speak of river and forest and
   lake and ocean as if evil spirits haunted every scene and the whole
   earth were a temple of Satan! My Brothers and Sisters, it is true that
   the creation has been made subject to vanity, but not willingly! And
   that unwillingness of God causes a sunlight upon Nature which Mercy
   would have her children perceive and rejoice in--

   "The earth with its store Of wonders untold, almighty! Your power has
   founded of old; Has stablish'd it fast By a changeless decree, And
   round it has cast, Like a mantle, the sea. Your bountiful care What
   tongue can recite? It breathes in the air, It shines in the light, It
   streams from the hills, It descends to the plain,

   And sweetly distils In the dew and the rain. O measureless might!
   Ineffable love! While angels delight To hymn You above The humbler
   Creation, Though feeble there lays, With true adoration Shall lisp to
   Your praise."

   There is no sin in trees and winds, brooks and lakes and oceans! And in
   towering mountains, virgin snows and silent glaciers there are no
   promptings to evil. The sin is in ourselves and if we will but be
   right-hearted and ask God to enable us to behold His works with clear
   and anointed eyes, we may see God Himself mirrored in Creation. At all
   events, all these present things are ours, neither shall any man rob me
   of my right to rejoice in the works of God's hands. Let us note well
   before we leave this point, that any of God's saints who are in straits
   and have but little of this world's goods--and these are generally the
   majority of the Church and the holiest and the best--may yet remember
   that all things are theirs, so that up to the measure of their
   necessities God will be quite sure to afford them sustenance.

   The Lord is your Shepherd and you shall not want. You may be pinched,
   but you shall not perish. Your strength shall be equal to your day.
   Your bread shall be given you, your water shall be sure. And, Brother
   or Sister, remember that a man's life is not to be judged of by what he
   has or has not, but by the contentment of his heart--for there lies all
   true treasure. Are you content, and can you cast your cares upon God?
   Then you are richer than a thousand anxious misers and wealthier, far,
   than 10,000 who eat the bread of carefulness. Are you satisfied to
   sing--

   "Father, I wait Your daily will.

   You shall divide my portion still--

   Give me on earth what seems You best,

   Till death and Heaven reveal the rest"? Then you are truly rich! Envy
   makes men poor--this it is that strips the purple from the prince and
   dashes the goblet with gall.

   Strange is it and yet most true, that covetousness which seems to be
   the common sin of professors nowadays, is never attributed in God's
   Word to any one child of God. They had many faults, but never
   covetousness! No heir of Heaven was charged with that in the Word of
   God--that is the vice of Judas, the Son of Perdition and not of Peter,
   or David, or Lot, or Samson! This evil touches not the saints. Into the
   deep ditch of greed the saints shall not fall. My poor, but believing
   Brother, you will thank God that you have but little, believing that it
   is all that would be good for you. You do ask the Lord to give you, day
   by day, your daily bread and you have it in answer to prayer and in
   proof of Divine faithfulness.

   Your heavenly Friend may suffer you to be brought very low, but He will
   not utterly leave you, nor suffer your soul to famish. I pray God the
   Holy Spirit to enable my dear Brothers and Sisters in their poverty to
   believe that their need is overruled for their true riches. Whereas an
   abundance of possessions may bring a blessing, the lack of that
   abundance is far more constantly a source of good. Our present
   circumstances, whether prosperous or painful, are Covenant blessings
   from the God of Grace--

   "If peace and plenty crown my days,

   They help me, Lord, to speak Your praise.

   If bread of sorrows is my food,

   Those sorrows work my real good." II. In the long list of things
   present we must include TEMPORAL TRIALS. Tribulations are treasures,
   and if we were wise, we should reckon our afflictions among our rarest
   jewels. The caverns of sorrow are mines of diamonds. Our earthly
   possessions may be silver, but temporal trials are, to the saints,
   invariably gold. We may grow in Divine Grace through what we enjoy, but
   we probably make the greatest progress through what we suffer. Soft
   gales may be pleasant for Heaven-bound vessels, but rough winds are
   better. The calm is our way, but God has His way in the whirlwind and
   He rides on the wings of the wind.

   Saints gain more by their losses than by their profits. Health comes
   out of their sicknesses and wealth flows out of their poverties. Heir
   of Heaven, your present trials are yours in the sense of medicine. You
   need that your soul, like your body, should be dealt with by the
   beloved Physician. A thousand diseases have sown their seeds within
   you--one evil will often bring on another and the cure of one too
   frequently engenders another. You need, therefore, oftentimes to gather
   the produce of the garden of herbs which is included in your
   inheritance--a garden which God will be sure to keep well stocked with
   wormwood and bitters.

   From these bitter herbs a potion shall be brewed, as precious as it is
   pungent, as curative as it is distasteful. Would you root up that herb
   garden? Would you lay those healing beds all to waste? Ah, then, when
   next a disease attacks you, how could you expect help? I know the good
   Physician can heal without the lancet if He wills and restore us
   without the balm, but for all that, He does not choose to do so, but
   will use the means of affliction--for by these things men live and in
   all these is the life of their spirit. Be thankful, therefore, for your
   trials and count them among your treasures.

   Our present afflictions also strengthen us greatly. No man becomes a
   veteran except by practice in arms. We shall not man our fleet with
   able-bodied seamen at home, on the boisterous deep and in the
   thundering battle, if we search among mere landsmen and gentlemen whose
   boldest voyage was on the glassy Thames! Experience works patience and
   patience brings with it a train of virtues--and all these make the man
   a man, and cause him to be mighty among his peers! Be grateful, then,
   for that without which probably you would be always children--apart
   from which you must remain always untried and consequently unskillful.
   Be grateful for your present trials and count them the choicest of your
   goods.

   Brothers and Sisters, our trials ought to be greatly valued by us as
   windows of agates and gates of carbuncle through which we get the
   clearest views of our Lord Jesus Christ. Trial is the telescope through
   which we gaze upon the blessed Star of Bethlehem more clearly. Christ
   says to us, "Come, My Beloved, let us go forth into the field; there
   will I give you My loves." When there fails a blight on creature
   comforts and the withering blast goes out against terrestrial joys, oh,
   then how bright is the Rose of Sharon and how fair the Lily of the
   Valley in the esteem of His people! "Come up with Me to My Cross," says
   Christ--and the mystic invitation, though it involves so deep an
   anguish, is not to be rejected!

   Do you understand what it is to come up to Christ's Cross and to be
   conformed unto His death? It is only as you do this that you will have
   fellowship with Jesus and understand what His love is towards you. The
   sufferings of Christ are not learned by the hearing of the ear--though
   we set them forth constantly to you, yet you will not really comprehend
   them--it is in the drinking of His cup and being baptized with His
   baptism, that by sympathy you will comprehend what your Lord really
   endured for you. Thus will you be more effectually planted with Him in
   the likeness of His death, that you may be planted in the likeness of
   His Resurrection.

   Brothers and Sisters, you who are cross-bearers this morning! I would
   remind you for your comfort that you have to bear the cross, but not
   the curse. Your Lord endured both Cross and curse, but to you there is
   not so much as a drop of Divine anger in all that you are suffering!
   There may be much vinegar, but no venom! There may be anguish, but
   there is no anger! Christ has exhausted the penal result of sin--He
   endured it all and now the cross that comes to you is garlanded with
   love. All over it is inscribed with lines of affection. I know that
   this is hard to be believed, especially while you are carrying a green
   cross, new to your shoulder, for this always frets the soul. It is when
   you become accustomed to sorrow by having borne the yoke in your youth
   that you fret not and mourn not, as though some strange thing had
   happened to you.

   I cannot speak so favorably of some men's crosses as I can of the
   crosses of Believers who patiently wait upon their God, for some make
   their own crosses in wantonness of discontent. There are crosses made
   of crab tree, put together by our own wicked temper! And these we ought
   to burn at once. I can promise you no cures for crosses which you make
   for yourself. If you plait your own crown of thorns and find your own
   nails, your own vinegar and sponge, it is your own crucifixion and you
   may find your own comfort. But when it is Christ's Cross, a cross that
   Christ sends, a cross that Providence ordains--remember it is a thing
   of mercy to be rejoiced in as a blessing of Heaven!

   So too, Believer, remember that your Lord sends you a cross but not a
   crush. It is meant to bear you down, but not to break you and grind you
   in the dust. Your cross is proportioned to your strength. In all the
   potion there is not one chance atom--the medicine has been compounded
   by no ordinary skill! Infinite Wisdom, which balanced the clouds and
   fixed the cornerstone of the world, has been employed to compound the
   ingredients of your present trial. Your affliction

   shall not be too much for you--it shall be just such a trial as you
   require. There shall be no more and no less of weight in it.

   It may help to comfort you if you remember that your cross is not a
   loss. It may look like a loss, but it shall only be a putting out to
   interest that which is taken from you that it may be returned soon with
   usury. Weep not because the vessel of your present comfort has gone out
   to sea and you have lost sight of the white sails. It shall come back
   again to you laden with nobler treasure. Weep not because the sun has
   gone done, for it descends that the dews may be brought forth and the
   earth may be watered and the flowers may drip with perfume. Wait awhile
   and the sun shall come back to you again and the morn shall be the
   brighter because of the gloom of the night.

   sorrow not, Heir of Heaven, because the skies are clouded--the clouds
   are big with mercy and each cloud is the mother of 10,000 blossoms and
   harvests He concealed in yonder darkness! O be confident that among all
   your jewels, all your precious ornaments and tokens of love that God
   has given you, you have nothing brighter than the jet jewels of
   affliction! No diamonds of a finer water than those of trouble! May we
   understand by faith, then, the great Truth of God that our present
   trials are our treasures, to be looked upon with thankfulness.

   III. In the third place, all our CIRCUMSTANTIAL SURROUNDINGS ought to
   be regarded by us as ours. I have already touched upon a branch of this
   subject, namely, that all our outward circumstances are meant to be
   conducive to our perfection. I have already said that our trials and
   troubles are, by God's Grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit, really
   made to promote our growth. So ought all, whether of brightness or
   darkness in our present lot, to be helpful in preparing us for the
   better land and the mansions of Glory.

   1 shall also insist upon another point--all our circumstances are ours
   as subservient to our usefulness. Has this ever struck you? You wish to
   win souls? Before you enter upon the actual service, you say to
   yourself, "I wish I were a minister," but very probably you have not
   the gift of utterance. You have a family round about you and you are
   evidently tied to something far other than a pulpit. You have to keep
   to that farm, to manage the shop. Now the temptation with you will be
   to say, "These plows and harrows, these bullocks and horses--I do not
   see how I am to serve God with all these! These scales and yard
   measures, these groceries and draperies--I cannot see how these can be
   instruments with which I may serve God."

   Now, my dear Friend, begin by correcting that mistake! All these things
   are yours and you are, therefore, to look upon them as being not
   detriments, but assistants to the discharge of your peculiar life-work.
   You are to consider that the position which you occupy is, all things
   considered, the most advantageous that you could possibly have occupied
   for doing the utmost that you are capable of doing for the Glory of
   God! Suppose the mole should cry, "How I could have honored the great
   Creator if I could have been allowed to fly"? It would have been very
   foolish, for a mole flying would be a very ridiculous object--while a
   mole fashioning its tunnels and casting up its castles is viewed with
   admiring wonder by the naturalist who perceives its remarkable
   suitability to its sphere.

   The fish of the sea might say, "How could I display the wisdom of God
   if I could sing, or mount a tree, like a bird!" But you know fish in a
   tree would be a very grotesque affair and there would be no wisdom of
   God to admire in fishes climbing trees! But when the fish cuts the wave
   with agile fin, all who have observed it say how wonderfully it is
   adapted to its habitat--how exactly its every bone is fitted for its
   mode of life! Brother, it is just so with you. If you begin to say, "I
   cannot glorify God where I am, and as I am," I answer, neither could
   you anywhere if not where you are! Providence, which arranged your
   surroundings, appointed them so that, all things being considered, you
   are in the position in which you can best display the wisdom and the
   Grace of God.

   Now, if you can once accept this as being a fact, it will make a man of
   you. My Christian Brother, or my dear Sister, it will enable you to
   serve God with a force which you have not yet obtained, for then,
   instead of panting for spheres to which you will never reach, you will
   enquire for immediate duty, asking, "What does my hand find to do?" You
   need not use your feet to traverse half a nation to find work--it lies
   close at hand. Your calling is near at home--your vocation lies at the
   door, and within it. What your hands find to do, do at once and with
   all your might and you will find such earnest service the best method
   in which you can glorify the Lord Jesus Christ.

   "A large family," says one, "what can I do?" Train them in the fear of
   God--these children are yours to serve the Lord with! What nobler
   service can a mother render to the republic upon earth and to the
   kingdom in Heaven, than to educate her children for Christ? "Working in
   a large factory with ungodly men, what can I do?" Needless enquiry!
   What

   cannot the salt do when it is cast among the meat? You, as a piece of
   salt, are just where you should be! Confine Christians in monasteries
   and nunneries--why it is like putting salt into a strong iron box and
   burying it in the ground! No, but the salt of the earth must be cast
   all over that which is to be conserved by it and each of us must be put
   in a position where our influence as a Christian will be felt.

   "I am sick," says another, "I am chained to the bed of languishing."
   But, my Friend, your patience will magnify the power of Divine Grace
   and your words of experience will enrich those who listen to you! Your
   experience will yield a richer wine than ever could have come from you
   had you not been cast into the winepress and trod by the foot of
   affliction. I tell you, Brothers and Sisters, I cannot go into
   instances and details, but it is a most certain fact that all about
   you, though it is a blind eye, a disabled arm, a stammering tongue, a
   flagging memory, poverty in the house, or sickness in the
   chamber--though it is derision and scorn and contempt--everything about
   you is yours! And if you know how to use it rightly, you will turn
   these disadvantages into advantages and prosper by them.

   Look at the seaman when he finds himself out at sea! Does he sit down
   and fret because the wind will not blow from the quarter that he would
   most prefer? No, but he tacks about and catches every cupful of wind
   that can be of use to him and so reaches the haven at last. You are not
   to expect that God would ordain everything just as you would like to
   have it--spoon feed you with pabulum like babes upon the lap! But He
   will train and try you and you must make use of all that He sends for
   the promotion of His Glory. Look at a good commander, he not only
   selects a good position for his troops, but if he occupies a bad
   position, he turns that to account and often makes the worse become the
   better!

   To use a very homely illustration, look at yon miller on the village
   hill. How does he grind his grist? Does he bargain that he will only
   grind in the west wind, because that is so full of health? No, but the
   east wind, which searches joints and marrow, makes the millstones
   revolve and the north and the south are all yoked to service. Even so
   with Believers--all your ups and your downs, your successes and your
   defeats are all yours that you may turn them to the Glory of God!
   Standing here now, and taking a somewhat broader range than our own
   individualities, let me remind you, Brethren, that on the great and
   broad scale of Providence all things belong to the Church of God.

   There are great changes in politics just now--there will be greater
   changes still. Fancy not that anything is stable that is of merely
   human appointing. Imagine not that any form of government can eternally
   survive the waves of change which break at its base. The ensign of this
   age is, "Overturn, overturn, overturn, till he shall come whose right
   it is, and he shall have the kingdom." But there shall be no crumbling
   columns. There shall be no bowing wall or tottering fence but what
   shall minister to the solidity of the Church of God! All changes,
   however radical! All catastrophes, however horrible, shall all happen
   to the advantage of the cause of Christ!

   All things are yours. Earthquakes of popular opinions may make
   dynasties shake and reel and at last be prone in ruin. Opinions,
   institutions and customs, which we would gladly conserve at the peril
   of our lives may be rolled up and cast aside like worn out vestures!
   Heaven and earth may shake and stars may fall like fig leaves from the
   tree, but everything must subserve the progress of the conquering
   kingdom of Christ! His Glory shall fill the earth! All flesh shall see
   it together! From land and sea there must yet go up the universal
   hallelujah unto the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the Wonderful,
   the Counselor, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. All things
   then, O Church of God, are yours!

   IV. I have somewhat outstripped my time and therefore I must only give
   a hint or two on the last point. SPIRITUAL PRIVILEGES, which are many
   of them present things, belong to Believers. Now what are they? The
   favor of God is not for Heaven only--it is ours today. Adoption into
   His family is not for eternity only--it is for this present time. We
   are today heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ Jesus! Today to be
   instructed, to be fed, to be clothed, to be housed, to have the
   Father's kiss and live in the Father's heart! All things are ours! God
   Himself is ours, our eternal inheritance! Lift up your eyes, O heir of
   Grace and see what a treasure is opened up to you!

   Again, Christ is present and He is ours. There is today a "fountain
   filled with blood," which puts away all sin. It is ours! There is a
   Mercy Seat where all prayer is prevalent--it is open today. It is
   ours--come to it boldly. There is an Intercessor who takes our prayers
   and offers them. He is ours, and all His mighty pleas and Divine
   authority, which makes Him so successful an Advocate, are all at our
   service today! Not were ours yesterday, nor shall be ours in some
   happier hour, but they are ours now!

   Are any of you depressed, do you feel yourselves great sinners? Then
   the fountain is yours as sinners, the Intercessor is yours while you
   are yet guilty, for it is written, "If any man sins, we have an
   advocate with the Father." O lay hold

   upon these present things and rejoice! The Holy Spirit, too, is a
   present blessing to you! The Comforter comes to you as a present
   blessing from Christ and He brings you present enlightenment, present
   guidance, present strength, present consolation! All these are
   yours--all beams of the seven-branched golden candlestick and all the
   oil that is treasured up for the lamps. The light and the Source of the
   light are alike yours and yours, now.

   And if, Beloved, there is any promise today written in the Word of
   God--if there is any blessing today guaranteed to the elect family. If
   there is any mindfulness of Providence, or any abundance of Divine
   Grace--all these are yours, and yours, now. Come, then! Why do you
   pine, you Saints? Why do you mourn and lie upon your dunghills till the
   dogs of Hell lick your sores? Come, wrap yourselves in your scarlet and
   fine linen, you Heirs of Heaven! Live according to your portion! Fare
   according to the banquet! All things are yours! Let those harps be
   taken from the willows and let that sackcloth and ashes be laid aside.
   Put on the beautiful apparel of gratitude and sing the song of
   thankfulness unto the Shepherd who has promised that you shall not
   want, and whose all-sufficiency will fill your heart, till like a cup
   it runs over!

   May God bless these words and especially bless them to the unconverted,
   that while they look over the hedge, as it were, and see the fruit that
   grows from God's people, they may wish that they had right to enter. If
   any of you do so wish, let me remind you that there is a door to enter
   by and that door is Christ! Whoever trusts in Him shall have every
   mercy of the Covenant to be his present and eternal portion. May you be
   led so to trust in Jesus and unto God shall be the Glory, world without
   end. Amen.

   PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Psalm 23 and John 14.
     __________________________________________________________________

To Those Who Are "Almost Persuaded"

   A sermon

   (No. 871)

   Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, MAY 16, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Then Agrippa said unto Paul, You almost persuade me to be a
   Christian."- Acts 26:28.

   NOTWITHSTANDING his bonds, Paul is to be envied that he had an
   opportunity of addressing himself to kings and rulers and that once, at
   least, in his life he stood before the great master of the Roman world,
   the Emperor himself. To reach the ignorant who sit on thrones is no
   mean feat for benevolence. Alas, the Gospel seldom climbs the high
   places of rank and dignity. It is a great act of mercy towards nobles
   and princes, when they have the opportunity of hearing a faithful
   Gospel discourse. Highly favored was Edward VI to have such a preacher
   as Hugh Latimer, to tell him to his face the Truth of God as it is in
   Jesus!

   And much favored was Agrippa, though he scarcely appreciated the
   privilege, to listen to so earnest an advocate of the Gospel of Jesus
   as Paul the Apostle. We ought to pray much more than we do for men in
   high places, because they have many bewitching temptations and less
   gracious opportunities than even the humblest paupers. There is less
   likelihood of the Gospel ever affecting their hearts than of its
   converting the poor and needy. We should make them, therefore,
   especially the subjects of supplication and then we might hope to see
   consecrated coronets far more frequently. Should a preacher be called
   to address himself to kings, he could not follow a better model than
   the Apostle Paul whom we may fitly call the king of preachers and the
   preacher to kings.

   His speech is extremely forcible and yet exceedingly courteous. It is
   powerful in matter, but graceful in manner. It is bold, but remarkably
   unobtrusive--never cringing, but never impertinent. The Apostle speaks
   much of himself, for so his argument required, but still, nothing for
   himself, nor by way of self-commendation. The whole address is so
   adroitly shaped with such a sacred art and yet with such a holy
   naturalness, that if any human persuasion could have converted Agrippa
   to the faith, the address of the Lord's prisoner was most likely to
   have done so. The line of argument was so suited to the prejudices and
   tastes of Agrippa as to be another instance of Paul's power to become
   "all things to all men."

   Now, it may be, this morning, while we are speaking upon the Apostle's
   teaching and the results of it, that a great blessing may rest upon us
   so that many of you may be persuaded to be Christians by the very
   arguments which failed with the Herodian king. Not many great men after
   the flesh, not many mighty are called--but this assembly is of another
   order and, O may the Lord extend His Sovereign Grace along our ranks,
   through Jesus Christ our Lord!

   I. This morning I shall ask you to spend a little time in considering
   THE GREAT OBJECT OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTER'S PERSUASIONS. Agrippa said,
   "You almost persuade me to be a Christian.''" I do not recollect a
   single sermon from this text that is fairly upon the words as they
   stand. They are all discourses upon being almost Christians, which,
   begging the pardon of the venerable divines, has nothing to do with the
   text, for the Apostle never persuaded Agrippa to be an
   "almost-Christian"--but he almost persuaded him to be a Christian!

   Agrippa certainly never was an almost-Christian! His life and character
   displayed a spirit very far removed from that condition. He was not
   like the young man in the Gospel to whom the name "almost-Christian" is
   far more applicable, although I gravely question its propriety in any
   case. There is a great difference between being almost a Christian and
   being almost persuaded to be a Christian. A man may be almost a
   Calvinist and so may hold most of the Doctrines of Grace, but another
   who has been on a certain occasion almost persuaded to be a Calvinist,
   may be, as a matter of fact, a complete Arminian. A man who is almost
   an artist knows something of painting, but a man almost persuaded to be
   an artist may not even know the names of the colors.

   Now the great drift of Paul's preaching, according to Agrippa's
   confession, was to persuade him to be a Christian. And the Apostle
   himself acknowledges the same design in his concluding sentence, "I
   would to God, that not only you, but also all that hear me this day,
   were both almost and altogether such as I am." In that parting word of
   goodwill he

   unveiled the desire of his heart--he sought not release from his
   chains, but the deliverance of the souls of his hearers from the
   bondage of sin.

   My Brethren, the preaching of the Gospel minister should always have
   soul-winning for its object. Never should we seek that the audience
   should admire our excellency of speech. I have in my soul a thousand
   times cursed oratory and wished that the arts of elocution had never
   been devised, or at least had never profaned the sanctuary of God.
   Often, as I have listened with wonder to speech right well conceived
   and sentences aptly arranged, I have yet felt as though I could weep
   tears of blood that the time of the congregation on the Sabbath should
   be wasted by listening to wordy rhetoric, when what was needed was a
   plain, urgent pleading with men's hearts and consciences. It is never
   worth a minister's while to go up his pulpit stairs to show his
   audience that he is adept in elocution.

   High-sounding words and flowery periods, are a mockery of man's
   spiritual needs. If a man desires to display his oratory, let him study
   for the bar, or enter Parliament, but let him not degrade the Cross of
   Christ into a peg to hang his tawdry rags of speech. The Cross is only
   lifted up aright when we can say, "Not with enticing words of man's
   wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power." Every
   minister should be able to say with Paul, "Seeing, then, that we have
   such hope, we use great plainness of speech." No, my dear Hearers, may
   it never be in any measure or degree an object of ours to flash and
   dazzle and astonish--but may we keep this one aim in view--to persuade
   you to be Christians!

   Neither would the Apostle have been content if he could have persuaded
   Agrippa to take the name of a Christian, or to be baptized as a
   Christian. His object was that he might in very deed be a Christian. To
   seem is nothing, but to be is everything. I grant you that the Apostle
   would have been glad enough to see Agrippa avowedly a Christian. Why
   should he not take the name if he had received the essential Grace? He
   would have rejoiced to have baptized him! Why should he not, if he
   believed in Jesus? But the Apostle was not anxious to confer misleading
   names. Nominal Christians he had no desire to create. To be or not to
   be was his great question--names and rites were secondary matters.

   It would not be worth the snap of a finger to Christianize a nation
   after the manner in which the zealous Francis Xavier made converts by
   sprinkling their heathen foreheads with a brush of holy water! It were
   scarcely worth rising from one's bed to persuade an avowed son of
   Belial to put on the cloak of a religious profession and practice his
   vices in decorous secrecy. No, the persuasion of the Apostle aims at
   Agrippa being a Christian, indeed, and of a truth! Thus should we labor
   in seeking converts--the adoption of a certain dress or mode of speech
   is little. Union with our denomination is almost as unimportant--the
   true embracing of Jesus as the Savior of men is the vital matter. To
   bring men to be Christians, "this is the work, this the labor."

   The Apostle does not appear to have aimed at merely making the man a
   convert as to his judgment, or a trembler as to his feelings, or an
   enthusiast as to his passions. Is it not sometimes evidently the drift
   of Christian ministers to make men weep for weeping's sake? Funeral
   rites are paraded and sepulchers unveiled--mournful memories are
   awakened and half-healed wounds ruthlessly torn open--and this
   laceration of the natural feelings is supposed to be a process
   peculiarly conducive to conversion! I have no faith in such appeals! I
   want men's tears for other sorrows than those connected with the dead!
   I beg their heart's regard to a far more important occupation than
   garlanding the memories of the departed.

   Is it not very possible to work up a congregation to the highest
   possible state of excitement upon their bereavements, and yet, after
   all, have gained no step in advance in the direction of their eternal
   salvation? The deaths of the Herod family might have been worked into a
   touching appeal to Agrippa, but Paul was too manly to attempt the
   sentimentalist's effeminate discoursing. Neither did the Apostle excite
   Agrippa's patriotic sensibilities by rehearsing the glorious deeds of
   ancient Jewish valor with which the world had rung! No glowing stanzas
   of heroic verse or thrilling legend of chivalry were embossed upon his
   address--but in all simplicity the Apostle aimed at this one thing--to
   convince the monarch's judgment as to change his heart. He wished to
   affect Agrippa's passions as by the power of the Holy Spirit to make a
   new man of him! This, this only, would content the Apostolic
   orator--that his hearer might be a Christian! That he might be such a
   one as Paul also was, the Lord's servant, relying upon Christ's
   righteousness and living for Christ's Glory.

   Now, it is well for the preacher to know what he is at and it is well
   for the hearers to know what the preacher desires to have them do or
   be. Why, Brothers and Sisters, I trust my heart's desire is precisely
   that which ruled the Apostle. I

   long that every one of you may be a Christian! Ah, my Lord, I pray You
   bear me witness that the one thing I strive after is that this people
   may know Your Truth and trust Your Son and be saved by Your Holy
   Spirit--saved in their outward lives and eternally saved in the day of
   Your appearing!

   Brothers and Sisters, whatever else shall come out of my preaching,
   though your liberality should be superabundant, though your morality
   should be untarnished, though your assembling together should never
   decrease in numbers, though your enthusiasm should never abate in
   intensity, yet if you are not altogether Christians, made so by the new
   birth and by the power of the Holy Spirit, I shall regard my ministry
   as a miserable failure--a failure full of grief to me and of confusion
   to you! O may God grant that many here may be altogether and at once
   persuaded to be Christians, for nothing but this will content me!

   If you desire a definition of a Christian, the Apostle has given it to
   you in the 18th verse of the chapter from which the text is selected.
   He there gives a fivefold description of the true Christian. He is one
   whose eyes are opened, who has been turned from darkness to light--that
   is to say, he knows the Truth of God and perceives it in quite a
   different manner from any knowledge of it which he possessed in the
   past. He sees his sins and feels their heinousness. He knows the plan
   of salvation and rejoices in its all-sufficiency. His knowledge is not
   superficial and a thing of the head, but internal and a matter of the
   heart. He knows now truly what he only knew theoretically before.

   Knowledge is essential to a Christian. Romanism, that owl of night, may
   delight in ignorance, but true Christianity prays evermore for light.
   "The Lord is my light and my salvation"--light, first, and salvation
   afterwards. May you all have the opened eye, which is the Spirit's
   early gift. But the next point of the Christian is conversion, "To turn
   them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God." The
   Christian is emancipated from the tyranny of evil and is free to follow
   after holiness and to delight in the commands of God. He is a citizen
   of a new world, alienated from his former loves and desires, made a
   fellow citizen of a city with which he had no acquaintance before. He
   owes no more service to the flesh and the lusts thereof, but the Lord
   is his Lawgiver and his King.

   Thirdly, he has received forgiveness of sin. He is pardoned through the
   precious blood of Christ and rejoices in the full remission of his
   sins. Faith has brought him to the foot of the Cross. Faith has led him
   to the fountain filled with blood. The Holy Spirit has applied the
   Atonement, his conscience is clear--he has received redemption, to wit,
   the forgiveness of sins. The next and, indeed, the essential point in a
   Christian is faith--"By faith that is in Me," says the Lord. Faith in
   the crucified and risen Savior. From this root will spring all the
   other characteristics of the genuine Christian.

   Once again, the Christian is a man who is sanctified--that is, set
   apart, a separated man, a holy man, a sin-hating man--one who loves the
   commandments of God and counts it his pleasure to be obedient to them.
   Such a man has salvation. He has already a part of the inheritance of
   saints and he is on his way to that blessed place where he shall
   receive its full fruition. It is after this that the Christian minister
   is always striving, that his hearers may be Christians-- be
   enlightened, be converted, have real and true faith--be sanctified by
   the Spirit, be forgiven all their sins and made heirs of immortality.

   Has the ministry which you have attended effected, under God, this for
   you? If not, is this great failure the fault of the ministry or your
   own? O dear Hearers, if the blame lies in the ministry, if it is not
   such preaching as God will really bless, forsake it and attend some
   other! But if you are conscious that it is a Gospel ministry to which
   you have listened, because it has been blessed to others by the Holy
   Spirit, then I ask you, how will you answer for it at the bar of God,
   that so great a blessing of Heaven has been slighted and how will you
   excuse yourself for resisting cogent, earnest, affectionate
   persuasions, all intended to lead you to be a Christian?

   O confess your sin, that you still halt between two opinions and remain
   in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity despite the
   pleadings of the Word and the rebukes of your conscience! God grant
   that such enquiries may have the practical result of humbling and
   arousing you.

   II. Secondly, let us spend two or three minutes in considering THE
   APOSTOLIC MANNER OF PERSUADING. Read carefully the notes of Paul's
   sermon as given in the chapter before us. In what way did he endeavor
   to persuade the king? I reply it is noteworthy that Paul made constant
   appeals to Scripture. We say not that he quoted one or more passages,
   but he insisted from first to last that he spoke no other things than
   Moses and the Prophets wrote and nothing but what the 12 tribes were
   looking for.

   My dear Hearers, this ought always to be a powerful argument with you.
   You are as yet unconverted, you are not yet persuaded to be Christians,
   but yet you believe the Bible to be true. From your childhood you have
   accepted with reverence the Book of God as being inspired. Now, if this
   Book is of God, it is your highest wisdom to be a follower of Christ!
   And as you dare not reject the Book--you have not yet come to that--I
   ask you how you make it consistent with reason, how you reconcile it
   with conscience and with sound sense that you remain disobedient to its
   high behests? That Book declares that no foundation can be laid for our
   eternal hopes but in Christ Jesus and yet you have not built on that
   foundation!

   This Book testifies that those who reject the Lord Jesus and His
   Atonement must perish without mercy! Are you prepared to so perish? It
   also invites you to build on the foundation of Christ's sacrificial
   work and it promises you infinite security in so doing. Are you willing
   to reject so great a blessing? If you did not believe the Bible, no
   argument drawn from it could have any force with you, and therefore the
   Apostle did not quote Scripture to the philosophers on Mars' Hill. But
   granted that you accept the Scriptures as God's Word, as Agrippa did,
   the Apostolic form of reasoning from that Word ought not merely to
   convince your judgments, but to persuade your hearts! And it would do
   so, if there were not something radically wrong in your
   hearts--something to be repented of, something to be removed by the
   power of God's Holy Spirit!

   Observe next, the Apostle's persuasion of Agrippa lay mainly in his
   personal testimony to the power of Divine Grace in his own soul. We
   need not repeat the story of Paul on the road to Damascus and the
   bright light and the sacred voice and the sinner rising up converted to
   go forth to bear witness to others of Jesus and of His Grace. Personal
   testimony ought always to weigh with men. Convince me that a man is
   honest and then, if he bears witness to facts which are matters of his
   own personal consciousness, not merely the gleanings of hearsay, but
   things which he has tasted and handled, I am bound to believe him. And
   especially if his testimony is backed up by others, I dare not deny
   it--I could not be so unjust.

   A great part of the preaching of every Christian minister should lie in
   his bearing his personal testimony to what Christ has done for him. It
   was my privilege only last Thursday night to tell you over again for
   perhaps the thousandth time, how the Grace of God has converted,
   consoled, supported and benefited me. I did not hesitate to tell how
   the Holy Spirit led me to the foot of the Cross and by one look at the
   crucified Redeemer, banished all my guilty fears. I know I speak the
   truth! My conscience witnesses that I lie not when I declare that trust
   in Jesus Christ has changed me so totally that I scarcely know my
   former self! It has unbound my sackcloth and girded me with gladness!
   It has taken the ashes of sorrow from my head and anointed me with the
   oil of joy!

   Moreover, my testimony does not stand alone, but there are hundreds and
   thousands who consistently and without hesitation declare that faith in
   Christ has blessed and saved them. Such testimony ought to weigh with
   you and it would convince you, were you not desperately set against the
   Lord's Truth and so fond of sin. Our testimony to the joy, peace,
   comfort and strength, which faith in Jesus brings, ought to be
   accepted, being corroborated by the witness of thousands of men of
   undoubted truth and unblemished character. O that men were wise and
   would not resist the counsel of God against themselves!

   The Apostle added to this twofold reasoning, a clear statement of the
   facts of the Gospel. Notice how he piles precious Truths of God
   together and compresses them as with an hydraulic press, in the 23rd
   verse--"That Christ should suffer and that He should be the first to
   rise from the dead and should show light unto the people and to the
   Gentiles." He was about to complete this summary of Christian divinity
   when Festus interrupted him. In that verse you have most of the grand
   Truths of the Gospel. It is a ready way to convince men, so far as
   instrumentality can do it, to tell them clearly that God became
   Incarnate in Christ Jesus--that the Incarnate God bore the sin of
   Believers and suffered in man's place that justice might be vindicated.
   That Jesus rose again and ascended into Heaven to plead the cause of
   Believers before the Throne of God and that pardon, free and full, is
   proclaimed to every sinner who will simply come and trust in the
   sufferings of Jesus.

   Where the Gospel statement is clearly given, even if no reasoning is
   used, it will, under God, frequently convince, for it is so marvelously
   self-evident, indeed, it would convince men universally were not the
   human heart harder than the nether millstone and carnal reason deaf as
   the adder that will not hear the wisest charmer! The Apostle did not
   close his sermon until he had made a home appeal to Agrippa. "King
   Agrippa," said he (in something like the style of Nathan when he said,
   "You are the man!") "King Agrippa, do you believe the Prophets? I know
   that you believe." He looked him

   through and through, and read his heart--and to escape that glance the
   king suddenly complimented him--and to avoid such close applications of
   unpalatable Truth withdrew from the place of hearing.

   Oh, but this is the way to preach! We must not only argue from the
   Scriptures, relate our experience, and give clear statements of Gospel
   Truth, but we must also carry the war into the heart! The minister of
   Christ must know how to take the scaling ladder and fix it against the
   wall of the conscience and climb it, sword in hand, to meet the man
   face to face in sacred duel--for the capture of his heart he must not
   flinch to tell the faults he knows, or deal with the errors he
   perceives. There must be a consecrated self-denial about the preacher,
   so that it matters not to him, even though he should draw down the
   wrath of his hearer upon his head. One thing he must aim at, that he
   may persuade him to be a Christian and for this he must strike home,
   coming to close quarters, if perhaps by God's Grace, he may prick the
   man in his heart, slay his enmity and bring him into captivity to
   Jesus!

   Thus have I shown you the modes of persuasion which the Apostle used,
   and the object for which he used them. O that such pleadings would
   persuade you!

   III. Thirdly, consider THE DIFFERING DEGREES OF SUCCESS ATTENDING SUCH
   PERSUASIONS. How

   did Paul succeed? We can hardly expect to persuade more successfully
   than he, for we have neither his ability nor his Apostolic authority.
   Note, then, that he failed with Festus, a rough soldier, an officer of
   decent character--one of the most respectable of the Roman governors
   who ruled Judea (as a whole a wretched band). He was an administrator
   of stern, ready justice--very apt, according to Josephus--in the art of
   hunting down robbers and generally a shrewd, vigorous, independent, but
   severe ruler of the province entrusted to him.

   He was the type of those commonsense, business people who are very
   practical, very just, very fond of facts, but who consider nothing to
   be worth their thoughts that has anything like sentiment in it or that
   deals with abstract truth. "You are beside yourself," is the way in
   which Festus puts Paul down. And as if he noticed in Agrippa's face
   some little sympathy with the captive Jew, for the monarch's sake he
   tones down the roughness of his remark, by adding, "Much learning has
   made you mad."

   The rough legionary neither knew nor cared much about learning himself,
   but he felt it a nuisance to be worried with Jewish trivia concerning
   rites and dogmas, and questions about one Jesus that was dead, whom
   Paul affirmed to be alive. He put such speculations all aside, saying
   to himself, "People who attach importance to such romantic speculations
   must assuredly be crazed or imbecile." Wherever the Gospel is preached
   there are people of that kind. "By all means," say they,
   "toleration--by all means, and if people like to believe this, or that,
   or the other, well--let them believe it. Of course, you know, we men of
   the world do not care a button about such matters! We know too much to
   commit ourselves to any set of dogmas--we have more practical and
   rational business to attend to."

   As to investigating the claims of the Truth of God--as to asking what
   is Divinely revealed, as to giving themselves the trouble to study--no,
   no, no! Everlasting matters are by them, (so wise are they), thought to
   be trifles. Time is everything! Eternity is nothing! This transient
   life is all--the life everlasting is a thing to be sniffed at! Well, if
   such men bring grief to the preacher nowadays, he must not marvel, for
   such was Paul's burden in his day.

   Now let us turn our gaze upon the young scion of the house of Herod, a
   man of very different mold. He listened attentively. He had always
   taken an interest in religious questions. He was sprung of a family
   that, with all their frightful vices, had trembled before the voice of
   prophecy and Scripture and like the Herod who heard John gladly, he
   listened with great attention and interest to Paul. As he weighed the
   arguments in his mind, he felt that there was a great deal to be said
   for Paul's view of the question. He did not half-know but what Paul
   might be right. Still he had an "if." He would rather not think that
   the prisoner before him was better informed than he, or that such stern
   teaching demanded obedience from him and, therefore, he closed the
   discourse with a remark intended to be pleasing to the orator and he
   went his way.

   Oh, but these Agrippas! These Agrippas! I would almost sooner deal with
   Festus, for I know what Festus means and I am not disappointed! And one
   of these days it may be the Lord will direct an arrow between the
   joints of Festus's harness. But this Agrippa utterly deceives me! He is
   a fair blossom that never knits and so turns not to fruit! He is almost
   persuaded. Yes, and therefore he takes a sitting at our chapel and he
   attends the ministry and look, he even drops a tear--but then he would
   do the same if he sat in a smoke-filled room! He will remember what is
   said, too, and when he

   hears a pungent remark he will repeat it at the dinner table and
   commend the speaker--but then he would have done the same if he had
   been gratified by an actor at the theater.

   We are told that he is a good fellow and well inclined! It may be so,
   but alas, he is almost persuaded and not quite and so he is no
   Christian. He is not in any measure a Christian, although he listens to
   Christian preaching. He is almost persuaded, yet nothing more. I wonder
   whether in Paul's congregation there was a third sort of hearer! I hope
   there was--for there were present not only Festus and Bernice and
   Agrippa, but doubtless many of the attendants and certainly, according
   to the 23rd verse of the 25th chapter, the chief captains and principal
   men of the city were there. Perhaps--though we are not so
   informed--while Paul was failing with Festus and disappointed with
   Agrippa, there sat somewhere in the back seats a centurion, or a
   private soldier, or a Jewish ruler upon whom the Truth of God was
   falling like soft dew, and into whose heart it was being received as
   the ocean absorbs the falling shower!

   Surely he was not left without witness! The seed he was casting on the
   waters was found again--and though he came up from his dungeon to
   preach on that occasion bearing precious seed with many tears,
   doubtless in Heaven he rejoices over sheaves which sprang up from that
   morning's preaching! Blessed be God, our labor is not in vain in the
   Lord!

   IV. We will now enquire WHY THE HALF-CONVINCED HEARER WAS ONLY "ALMOST
   PERSUADED"! Look at Agrippa again. Fix your attention fully upon him,
   for with some of you he is a photograph of yourselves. The arguments
   which Paul drew from Scripture and his own personal experience were
   very appealing to the intellect. His way of putting these arguments was
   exceedingly forcible and therefore, if Agrippa were not altogether
   persuaded, it was not the fault of the preacher's matter or manner.
   Nothing could have been more powerful in either case.

   Where, then, did the fault lie? I stand now in the court and I look
   around and I ask myself, "What is the reason why Agrippa is not
   persuaded?" The argument seemed feasible to me, why not to him? As I
   look around I notice on the right hand of Agrippa a very excellent
   reason why he is not convinced, for there sat Bernice, of whom there
   were very unsavory stories afloat in Josephus's day. She was Agrippa's
   sister and is accused of having lived in incestuous communion with him.
   If so, with such a woman at his right hand, I marvel not that Paul's
   arguments did not fully persuade. The reason why sinners are not
   persuaded is, in 99 cases out of a 100, their sin--their love of sin!

   They see, but they will not see--for if they did see, they would have
   to tear out that right eye sin or cut off that right arm lust--and they
   cannot consent to that. Most of the arguments against the Gospel are
   bred in the filth of a corrupt life. He makes the best reasoner as an
   infidel who is most unholy, because the devil and his soul together
   will never keep him short of the fiery arrows of Hell. If it were true
   that Agrippa lived in such degrading sin, it is no wonder that when
   Paul reasoned so soberly and so truthfully, Agrippa was almost, but not
   altogether, persuaded! If the charge brought against Bernice as to her
   brother was not altogether true, yet she was beyond all question a
   shameless woman. She had been originally married to her own uncle,
   Herod, and was therefore both his niece and his wife. And her second
   marriage was soon broken by her unfaithfulness.

   Now Agrippa's public and ostentatious associating with her, proved at
   least that he was in evil company. This is quite sufficient to account
   for his never being altogether persuaded to be a Christian. Evil
   company is one of Satan's great nets in which he holds his birds until
   the time shall come for their destruction. How many would gladly
   escape, but they are afraid of those around them whom they count to be
   good fellows, and whose society has become necessary to their mirth!
   Oh, you know it, some of you! You know it! You have often trembled
   while I have told you of your sins and of the wrath to come--but you
   have met your bad companion at the door, or you have gone home and
   attended parties of gaiety--and every godly thought has been quenched
   and you have gone back like a dog to his vomit and like a sow that was
   washed to her wallowing in the mire. Ah, you Agrippas, your Bernices
   will lead you down to Hell!

   But if Agrippa has his Bernice, Bernice has her Agrippa! And so men and
   women become mutual destroyers. The daughters of Eve and the sons of
   Adam assist each other in choosing their own delusions. Now that I am
   in the court, I look around again and think I notice that Agrippa is
   easily influenced by Festus. Festus is a commonsense rough-and-ready
   governor and such men always have power and influence over gentlemen of
   taste like Agrippa, for somehow the greater the diversity of character
   the more influence a man will have upon another.

   The rough Festus appears to the gentle Agrippa to be his superior and
   if he sneers and calls Paul mad--well, Agrippa must not go the length
   of being persuaded, although he may demonstrate his expertness in
   Jewish questions by giving a favorable opinion on the case, which may,
   a little, put Festus down--yet how could he go and dine with the

   governor if he became quite convinced? What would Festus say? "Ah, two
   madmen! Is Agrippa, also, beside himself?" The king can hardly put up
   with the sarcasms which he foresees. Some people's sneers he could
   bear, but Festus is a man of shrewdness and common sense and is so
   prominent a ruler that a sneer from him would cut him to the quick.

   Alas, how many are influenced by fear of men! Oh, you Cowards, will you
   be damned out of fear? Will you sooner let your souls perish than show
   your manhood by telling a poor mortal that you defy his scorn? Dare you
   not follow the right though all men in the world should call you to do
   the wrong? Oh, you cowards! You cowards! How you deserve to perish who
   have not soul enough to call your souls your own, but cower down before
   the sneers of fools! Play the man, I pray you, and ask God's Grace to
   help you to do the right as soon as you are convinced, let Festus scoff
   as he will.

   Do you not think, too, that Paul himself had something to do with
   Agrippa's not being convinced? I do not mean that Paul had one grain of
   blame in the case, but he wore decorations during his preaching which
   probably were not of a pleasing and convincing character to a man of
   Agrippa's taste for pomp and ease. Though better than golden ornaments
   were his chains, Paul seems to have perceived that Agrippa was shocked
   at Christianity in that peculiar garb, for Paul said, "Except these
   bonds." It often happens that looking abroad upon the sorrows of God's
   people, ungodly men refuse to take their portion with them. They find
   that righteous men are frequently sneered at and called names. Their
   self-love can hardly run the risk of such inconvenience.

   Be a Methodist? No! Presbyterian? No! Truth is all very well, but gold,
   they say, can be bought too dearly. Men are so moved by the fear of
   contempt and poverty that they turn aside from the narrow path and no
   reasoning can convince them to follow it, for they are unwilling to
   encounter the dangers of the heavenly pilgrimage. O that men were wise
   enough to see that suffering for Christ is honor! That loss for the
   Truth of God is gain! That the truest dignity rests in wearing the
   chain upon the arm rather than endure the chain upon the soul!

   The great reason why Agrippa was not convinced lay in his own
   heart--partly in the love of pomp, partly in the dread of his master
   Nero at Rome, partly in his superficial and artificial character--but
   mainly in his love of sin and in the struggling of his passions against
   the Divine restraints of the Gospel. The main reason why men are not
   persuaded to be Christians lies in their own hearts. It is not a flaw
   in the preacher's logic. It is a flaw in the hearer's nature. It is no
   mistake in the logic--it is an error in the hearer's will. It is not
   that the reasonings are not powerful--it is that the man does not wish
   to feel their power and so endeavors to elude them. I ask your
   consciences, you who are not convinced, whether I have not fairly
   stated some of the causes which create and prolong your halting between
   two opinions and, if I have, may God's Grace help you to confess them,
   and then may it deliver you from their power.

   V. Lastly, I have to show THE EVIL THAT WILL FOLLOW UPON BEING ONLY
   ALMOST PERSUADED. The first evil is that if a man is only almost
   convinced, he misses altogether the blessing which being fully
   persuaded to be a Christian would have brought him. A leaky ship went
   out to sea and a passenger was almost persuaded not to trust his life
   in it, but he did so and he perished. A bubble speculation was started
   in the city and a merchant was almost persuaded not to have shares in
   it, but he bought the scrip and his estate went down in the general
   shipwreck. A person exceedingly ill heard of a remedy reputed to be
   most effectual and he was almost persuaded to take it, but he did not
   and therefore the disease grew worse and worse. A man who proposed to
   go into a subterranean vault in the dark was almost persuaded to take a
   candle, but he did not and therefore he stumbled and fell.

   You cannot have the blessing by being almost persuaded to have it! Your
   hunger cannot be appeased by almost eating, nor your thirst quenched by
   almost drinking. A culprit was almost saved from being hanged, for a
   reprieve came five minutes after he was hung, but alas, he was
   altogether dead despite the almost escape. A man who has been almost
   persuaded to be saved, will at the last be altogether damned! His being
   almost convinced will be of no conceivable service to him. This seems
   so grievous, that the life of God and the light of God and the Heaven
   of God should glide by some of you and you should be almost persuaded
   and yet should miss them through not being Christians.

   Worse still, in addition to the loss of the blessing, there certainly
   comes an additional guilt to the man who, being almost persuaded, yet
   continues in his sin. A person has rebelled against the government--in
   hot haste he has taken side with the rioters. But he is afterwards very
   sorry for it and he asks that he may be forgiven--let mercy have free
   course. But another offender has been reasoned with. He has been shown
   the impolicy of treason. He has seen clearly the evil of taking up arms
   against the commonwealth and he has been almost persuaded to be loyal.

   I say when he becomes a rebel, he is a traitor with a vengeance to whom
   no mercy can be shown! The man who is almost persuaded to be honest and
   yet deliberately becomes a thief, is a rogue ingrain. The murderer who
   almost saves his victim's life in the moment of passion, pausing
   because almost persuaded to forego revenge and, after all, deliberately
   kills his enemy, deserves death beyond all others. The man who is
   deliberately an enemy to Christ. Who presumptuously rejects the offer
   of peace. Who in calm moments puts from him the precious blood. Who is
   almost persuaded, but yet by desperate effort overcomes his
   conscience--such a man shall go down to the Pit with a millstone about
   his neck that shall sink him to the lowest Hell! You almost persuaded
   ones, I pray you look at this and tremble!

   Once more. To have been almost persuaded and yet not to be a Christian
   will lead to endless regrets for will not this thought bubble up in the
   seething soul amidst its torments forever--"I was almost persuaded to
   repent. Why did I go on in my sin? I was almost persuaded to put my
   trust in Jesus. Why did I cling, still, to my self-righteousness and
   vain ceremonies? I was almost persuaded to forsake my evil companions
   and to become a servant of God--but I am now cast away forever--where
   no more persuasions can melt my heart. Oh, my cursed sin! Alas, that I
   should have been fascinated by its temporary sweetness and for the sake
   of it should have incurred this never-ending bitterness! Oh, my
   madness! Oh, my insanity, that I should have chosen the lies which did
   but mock me and suffered my Savior and His salvation to pass

   me by!"

   I dare not attempt to picture the remorse of spirits shut up in the
   cells of despair. Suffice it to say the dread truth is clear--a man
   cannot come so near to the verge of persuasion and yet with desperate
   obstinacy start back from the great salvation without incurring the hot
   displeasure of the God of Mercy--without bringing upon himself, also,
   the doom of a suicide in having destroyed his own soul and put from him
   the mercy of Jesus Christ! How I wish I knew how to plead with you this
   morning! How earnestly I would persuade those of you who are halting
   between two opinions! Some of you have but a little time to be
   halting--your wavering will soon be over--for your death warrants are
   signed and the Angel of Death has spread his wings to the blast, to
   bring the fatal summons down!

   The grave is appointed for some of you within a few weeks or months.
   You shall not trifle with God long. O, I pray you, I beseech you! If
   you have any concern for yourselves and have any sound reason left,
   seek that your peace may be made with God through the precious blood of
   Christ! Seek that you may be ready to stand before your Maker's bar,
   for stand there you must and will, before many days are past. If you
   should live another 30 or 40 years, how short that time is and how soon
   will it pass!

   Consider your ways now. Today is the accepted time, today is the day of
   salvation! The Lord persuade you. I have done my best. He can do it.
   The Lord the Holy Spirit create you anew and make you Christians and
   His shall be the Glory forever. Amen and Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Acts 26.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Perseverance of the Saints

   A sermon

   (No. 872)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, MAY 23, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work
   in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ."- Philippians
   1:6.

   THE dangers which attend the spiritual life are of the most appalling
   character. The life of a Christian is a series of miracles. See a spark
   living in mid ocean, see a stone hanging in the air, see health
   blooming in a leper colony, and the snow-white swan among rivers of
   filth and you behold an image of the Christian life. The new nature is
   kept alive between the jaws of death, preserved by the power of God
   from instant destruction--by no power less than Divine could its
   existence be continued. When the instructed Christian sees his
   surroundings, he finds himself to be like a defenseless dove flying to
   her nest, while against her, tens of thousands of arrows are leveled.
   The Christian life is like that dove's anxious flight as it threads its
   way between the death-bearing shafts of the enemy and by constant
   miracle escapes unhurt.

   The enlightened Christian sees himself to be like a traveler standing
   on the narrow summit of a lofty ridge--on the right hand and on the
   left are gulfs unfathomable, yawning for his destruction. if it were
   not that by Divine Grace his feet are made like hinds' feet, so that he
   is able to stand upon his high places, he would long before this have
   fallen to his eternal destruction.

   Alas, my Brothers and Sisters, we have seen too many professors of
   religion thus fall. It is the great and standing grief of the Christian
   Church, that so many in her midst become apostates. It is true they are
   not truly of her, but beforehand it is not possible for her to know
   this. Not a few of her brightest stars have been swallowed up by night.
   Those who seemed the most likely to be fruitful trees in Christ's
   vineyard have turned out to be cumberers of the ground, or very upas
   trees, dripping poison on all around.

   The young Christian, therefore, if he is observant, fears lest after
   putting on his burnished harness amid the congratulations of friends,
   he may return from the battle ingloriously defeated. He does not pride
   himself because, like some gallant knight, he puts on his glittering
   harness--but as he buckles on his helmet and grasps his sword, he fears
   lest he should be brought back into the camp with his escutcheon marred
   and his crest trailed in the dust. To such a one, conscious of
   spiritual perils and fearful lest he should be overcome by them, the
   doctrine of the text will afford richest encouragement.

   If we are helped to set forth the doctrine of the Final Perseverance of
   the Saints, so as to commend this Truth of God to your understandings
   and confirm it upon your souls, we shall be glad at heart, because the
   Truth will make you glad and strong and thankful. Without further
   preface, we shall expound the Apostle's words, in order to show in
   detail the matter of his confidence. We shall then, in the second
   place, support that confidence by further arguments. And then, thirdly,
   we shall seek to draw out certain excellent uses from the doctrine
   which the text undoubtedly teaches.

   I. First, let us EXPOUND THE APOSTLE'S OWN WORDS. He speaks of a good
   work commenced in "all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at
   Philippi." By this he intended the work of Divine Grace in the soul
   which is of the operation of the Holy Spirit. This is eminently a good
   work, since it works nothing but good in the heart that is the subject
   of it. To bring a man from darkness into light is good. To deliver him
   from the bondage of his natural corruption and make him the Lord's free
   man, must be good. It is good for himself. It is good for society. It
   is good for the Church of God. It is good for the Glory of God Himself.

   It is so good a thing, that he who receives it becomes the heir of all
   good and moreover, the advocate and author of further good! This good
   is the best that a man can receive. To make a man healthy in body and
   wealthy in estate, to educate his mind and train his faculties--all
   these are good, but in comparison with the salvation of the soul, they
   sink into insignificance! The work of sanctification is a good work in
   the highest possible sense, since it influences a man by

   good motives. It sets him on good works, introduces him among good men,
   gives him fellowship with good angels and in the end makes him like
   unto the good God Himself.

   Moreover, the inner life is a good work because it springs and
   originates from the pure goodness of God. As it is always good to show
   mercy, so it is pre-eminently good on God's part to work upon sinful
   and fallen men so as to renew them again after the image of Him that
   created them. The work of Grace has its root in the Divine goodness of
   the Father. It is planted by the self-denying goodness of the Son and
   it is daily watered by the goodness of the Holy Sprit. It springs from
   good and leads to good and so is altogether good.

   The Apostle calls it a "work," and, in the deepest sense, it is indeed
   a work to convert a soul. If Niagara could suddenly be made to leap
   upward instead of forever dashing downward from its rocky height, it
   were not such a miracle as to change the perverse will and the raging
   passions of men! To wash the Ethiopian white, or remove the leopard's
   spots, is proverbially a difficulty--yet these are but surface works!
   To renew the very core of manhood and tear sin from its hold upon man's
   heart--this is not only the finger of God, but the baring of His arm.

   Conversion is a work comparable to the making of a world. He, only, who
   fashioned the heavens and the earth could create a new nature. It is a
   work that is not to be paralleled. It is unique and unrivalled, seeing
   that Father, Son and Spirit, must all cooperate in it--for to implant
   the new nature in the Christian, there must be the decree of the
   Eternal Father, the death of the ever-blessed Son and the fullness of
   the operation of the adorable Spirit. It is a work indeed! The labors
   of Hercules were but trifles compared with this! To slay lions and
   Hydras and cleanse Augean stables--all this is child's play compared
   with renewing a right spirit in the fallen nature of man!

   Observe that the Apostle affirms that this good work was begun by God.
   He was evidently no believer in those remarkable powers which some
   theologians ascribe to "free will"! He was no worshipper of that modern
   Diana of the Ephesians. He declares that the good work was begun by
   God, from which I gather that the faintest gracious desire which
   ultimately blossoms into the fragrant flower of earnest prayer and
   humble faith is the work of God. No, Sinner, you shall never be before
   God! The first step towards ending the separation between the prodigal
   son and his father is taken by the Father, not by the son!

   Midnight never seeks the sun--long would it be before darkness found
   within itself the germs of light. Long ages might revolve before Hades
   should develop the seeds of Heaven, or Gehenna discover in its fires
   the elements of everlasting glow. But till then it shall never happen
   that corrupt nature shall educe from itself the germs of the new and
   spiritual life, or sigh after holiness and God! I have heard lately, to
   my deep sorrow, certain preachers speaking of conversions as being
   developments. Is it so, then, that conversion is but the development of
   hidden graces within the human soul? It is not so! The theory is a lie
   from top to bottom!

   There lies within the heart of man no grain or vestige of spiritual
   good. He is to all good, alien, insensible, dead and he cannot be
   restored to God except by an agency which is altogether from without
   himself and from above! If you could develop what is in the heart of
   man, you would produce a devil--for that is the spirit which works in
   the children of disobedience! Develop that carnal mind which is enmity
   against God and you cannot by any possibility be reconciled to Him and
   the result is Hell. The fact is that the Divine life has departed from
   the natural man--man is dead in sin and life must come to him from the
   Giver of life, or he must remain dead forevermore.

   The work that is in the soul of a true Christian is not of his own
   beginning, but is commenced by the Lord! It is implied in the text
   further, that He who began the work must carry it on. "He who has begun
   a good work in you will perform it," will complete it, will finish it,
   as the margin puts it. The Apostle does not say as much, but still it
   is in the run of the sense, if not of the words, that God must perform
   it or else it never will be performed. Along the road from sin to
   Heaven, from the first leaving of the swine trough right up to the
   joyful entrance into the banquet and the music and dancing of glorified
   spirits--every step we take must be enabled by Divine Grace.

   Every good thing that is in a Christian, not merely begins, but
   progresses and is consummated by the fostering Grace of God through
   Jesus Christ. If my finger were on the golden latch of Paradise and my
   foot were on its jasper threshold, I should not take the last step so
   as to enter Heaven unless the Divine Grace which brought me so far
   should enable me fully and fairly to complete my pilgrimage. Salvation
   is God's work, not man's! This is the theology which Jonah learned in
   the great fish college, in the university of the great deep--to which
   college it would be a good thing if many of our divines in these days
   could be sent!

   Human learning often puffs up with the idea of human sufficiency--but
   he that is schooled and disciplined in the college of a deep experience
   and made to know the vileness of his own heart, as he peers into its
   chambers of imagery-- will confess that from first to last salvation is
   not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows
   mercy! But the Apostle's main drift in the verse is that this good work
   which is begun in Believers by God, which can only be further performed
   by God, most certainly will be so carried on.

   You observe he declares himself to be confident of this Truth of God.
   Why did Paul need to write so positively, "being confident of this very
   thing"? Surely, as an inspired man, he might simply have written, "He
   who has begun a good work in you"! But he gives us over and above the
   inspiration of the Holy Spirit--the confidence which had been worked in
   him as the result of his own personal faith. He had been, himself, very
   graciously sustained and he had been favored personally with such clear
   views of the Character of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ that he felt
   quite confident that God would not leave His work unfinished.

   He felt in his own mind that whatever anybody else might affirm, he was
   fully assured and would stand to the Truth and defend it with all his
   might, that He who has begun a good work in His people will surely
   finish it in due season. Indeed, dear Friends, in the Apostle's words
   there is good argument. If the Lord began the good work, why should He
   not carry it on and finish it? If He stays His hand, what can be the
   motive? When a man commences a work and leaves it half complete, it is
   often from lack of power--men say of the unfinished tower, "This man
   began to build and was not able to finish."

   Lack of forethought, or of ability, must have stopped the work. But can
   you suppose Jehovah, the Omnipotent, ceasing from a work because of
   unforeseen difficulty which He is not able to overcome? He sees the end
   from the beginning! He is almighty! His arm is not shortened! Nothing
   is too hard for Him! It were a base reflection upon the wisdom and
   power of God to believe that He has entered upon a work which He will
   not, in due time, conduct to a happy conclusion! God did not begin the
   work in any man's soul without due deliberation and counsel. From all
   eternity He knew the circumstances in which that man would be placed,
   and He foresaw the hardness of the human heart and the fickleness of
   human love.

   If, then, He deemed it wise to begin, how can it be supposed that He
   shall change and amend His resolve? There can be no conceivable reason
   with God for leaving off such a work--the same motive which dictated
   the commencement must be still in operation and He is the same
   God--therefore, there must be the same result, namely, His continuing
   to do what He has done. Where is there an instance of God's beginning
   any work and leaving it incomplete? Show me for once a world abandoned
   and thrown aside half-formed! Show me a universe cast off from the
   Great Potter's wheel, with the design in outline, the clay
   half-hardened and the form unshapely from incompleteness!

   Direct me, I pray you, to a star, a sun, a satellite--no, I will
   challenge you on lower ground--point me out a plant, an ant, a grain of
   dust that has about it any semblance of incompleteness! All that man
   completes, let him polish as he may--when it is put under the
   microscope it is but roughly finished, because man has only reached a
   certain stage and cannot get beyond it. It is perfection to his feeble
   optics, but it is not absolute perfection. But all God's works are
   finished with wondrous care! He as accurately fashions the dust of a
   butterfly's wing, as those mighty orbs that gladden the silent night.

   Yet, my Brethren, some would persuade us that this great work of the
   salvation of souls is begun by God and then deserted and left
   incomplete! And that there will be spirits lost forever upon whom the
   Holy Spirit once exerted His sanctifying power--for whom the Redeemer
   shed His precious blood, and whom the eternal Father once looked upon
   with eyes of complacent love! I believe no such thing! The repetition
   of such beliefs curdles my blood with horror! They sound like
   blasphemy!

   No, where the Lord begins He will complete. And if He puts His right
   hand to any work, He will not stop until the work is done, whether it
   is to strike Pharaoh with plagues and at last to drown his chivalry in
   the Red Sea, or to lead His people through the wilderness like sheep
   and bring them in the end into the land that flows with milk and honey.
   In nothing does Jehovah turn from His intent. "Has He said and shall He
   not do it? Has He purposed it, and shall it not come to pass?" "He is
   God and changes not and therefore the sons of Jacob are not consumed."

   There is a world of argument in the quiet words which the Apostle uses.
   He is confident, knowing what he does of the Character of God, that He
   who has begun a good work in His saints will perform it until the day
   of Christ. Notice the

   time mentioned in the text--the good work is to be perfected in the day
   of Christ, by which we suppose is intended the Second Coming of our
   Lord. The Christian will not be perfected until the Lord Christ shall
   descend from Heaven with a shout, with the trumpet of the archangel and
   the voice of God.

   But what about those, you say, who have died before His coming? How is
   it with them? I answer, their souls are doubtless perfect and made meet
   to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. But Holy
   Scripture does not regard a man as perfect when the soul is
   perfected--it regards his body as being a part of himself--and as the
   body will not rise again from the grave till the coming of the Lord
   Jesus, then we shall be revealed in the perfection of our manhood, even
   as He will be revealed.

   That day of the Second Coming is set as the day of the finished work
   which God has begun, when, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing,
   body, soul, and spirit, shall see the face of God with acceptance and
   forever and ever rejoice in the pleasures which are at God's right
   hand. This is what we are looking forward to--that God who taught us to
   repent--will sanctify us wholly! That He who made the briny tear to
   flow, will wipe every tear from that same eye! That He who made us gird
   ourselves with the sackcloth and the ashes of penitence, will yet gird
   us with the fair white linen which is the righteousness of the saints!

   He who brought us to the Cross will bring us to the crown! He who made
   us look upon Him whom we pierced and mourn because of Him, will cause
   us to see the King in His beauty and the land that is very far off. The
   same dear hand that struck and afterwards healed, will, in the latter
   days, caress us! He who looked upon us when we were dead in sin and
   called us into spiritual life, will continue to regard us with favor
   till our life shall be consummated in the land where there is no more
   death, sorrow nor sighing! Such is the Truth of God which the text
   evidently teaches us.

   One remark I here feel bound to make, though it is running somewhat
   from the theme. It is this--I marvel beyond measure at those of our
   Christian Brethren who hold the doctrine of the Final Perseverance and
   yet remain in the Anglican Church, because their so remaining is
   utterly inconsistent with such a belief. You will say, "How? Is not the
   doctrine of Final Perseverance taught in the Articles?" Undoubtedly it
   is! But it is a flat contradiction to what is taught in the Catechism.
   In the Catechism and in parts of the liturgy we are distinctly taught
   that children are born again and made members of Christ in Baptism.

   Now, to be regenerated, or born again, is surely the beginning of a
   good and Divine work in the soul. And then, according to this text and
   according to the doctrine of Final Perseverance, such a Divine work
   being begun, will most certainly be performed until the day of Christ.
   Now, no one will be so foolhardy as to assert that the good work which,
   according to the Prayer-Book, is begun in an infant at its so-called
   "baptism," is beyond all question perfected in the day of Christ--for,
   alas, we see these regenerated people drunk, lying, swearing! We have
   them in prison, convicted of all kinds of crimes! We have even known
   them to be hanged!

   If I were an evangelical clergyman and believed in the doctrine of
   Final Perseverance, I must at once renounce a Church which teaches a
   lie so intolerable as that--that there is a work of Grace begun on an
   unconscious infant in every case when water is sprinkled from priestly
   hands! No such work is begun and consequently no such work is carried
   on! The whole business of infant baptism, as practiced in the Anglican
   Episcopal Church, is a perversion of Scripture, an insult to God, a
   mockery of Truth and a deceiving of the souls of men! Let all who love
   the Lord, and hate evil, come out of this more and more apostatizing
   Church, lest they be partakers of the plague which will come upon her
   in the day of her visitation!

   II. Secondly, WE SHALL SHOW FURTHER GROUND FOR OUR BELIEF IN THE
   DOCTRINE OF THE

   FINAL PERSEVERANCE OF THE SAINTS. Our first ground shall be the express
   teaching of Holy Scripture. But, my dear Friends, to quote all the
   Scriptural passages which teach that the saints shall hold on their way
   would be to quote a large proportion of the Bible, for, to my mind,
   Scripture is saturated through and through with this Truth of God.

   And I have often said that if any man could convince me that Scripture
   did not teach the perseverance of Believers, I would at once reject
   Scripture altogether as teaching nothing at all--as being an
   incomprehensible book of which a plain man could make neither heads nor
   tails, for this seems to be of all doctrines the one that lies most
   evidently upon the surface. Take the ninth verse of the 17th chapter of
   the book of Job and hear the testimony of the Patriarch: "The righteous
   also shall hold on his way and he that has clean hands shall be
   stronger and stronger."

   Not, "the righteous shall be saved, let him do what he will"--that we
   never believed and never shall--but "the righteous shall hold on his
   way"--his way of holiness, his way of devotion, his way of faith--he
   shall hold to that and he shall make a growth in it, for he that has
   clean hands shall add "strength to strength," as the Hebrew has it, or,
   as we put it, "shall be stronger and stronger."

   In the 125th Psalm, read the first and second verses, "They that trust
   in the Lord," that is the special description of a Believer, "shall be
   as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abides forever. As the
   mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His
   people from henceforth even forever." Here are two specimen ears pulled
   out of those rich sheaves which are to be found in the Old Testament.
   As for the New Testament, how peremptory are the words of Christ in the
   10th of John, 28th verse, "I give unto them eternal life"--not life
   temporal which may die--"and they shall never perish, neither shall any
   man pluck them out of My hands. My Father, which gave them to Me, is
   greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father's
   hands."

   The Apostle tells us, 11th Romans, 29th verse, that, "the gifts and
   calling of God are without repentance." That is, whatever gifts the
   Lord gives, He never changes his mind of having given them so as to
   take them back again. And whatever calling He makes of any man, He
   never retracts it, but he stands to it still. There is no playing fast
   and loose in Divine mercy! His gifts and calling are without
   repentance. Following that terrible passage in the sixth of Hebrews,
   which has raised so many questions, you find the Apostle, who seems at
   first sight to have taught that Believers might turn away--you find him
   in the ninth and 10th verses disclaiming any such idea! "Beloved," he
   says, "we are persuaded better things of you and things that accompany
   salvation, though we thus speak. For God is not unrighteous to forget
   your work and labor of love which you have showed toward His name, in
   that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister."

   The Apostle Peter, who is in no way given to administer too much
   comfort to the saints, but deals very sternly with hypocrisy, has put
   it very strongly in the first chapter of his first Epistle, at the
   fifth verse, where he says of all the elect according to the
   foreknowledge of God--they are "kept by the power of God through faith
   unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." Brothers and
   Sisters, the 54th of Isaiah, which I read in your hearing this morning,
   with many more to the same effect, are scarcely to be understood if it
   is true that God's children may be cast away and that God may forsake
   those whom He did foreknow!

   Yonder Bible seems to be disemboweled and stripped of its life, if the
   unchanging love of God is denied! The Word of God is laid on the
   threshing floor and the chaff, alone, is gathered and the wheat is cast
   away, if you take out of it its constant and incessant teaching that
   the "path of the just is as the shining light, that shines more and
   more unto the perfect day." But further, in addition to the express
   testimonies of Scripture, we have to support this doctrine all the
   attributes of God, for if those who have believed in Christ are not
   saved, then surely all the attributes of God are in peril!

   If He begins and does not finish His work, all the parts of His
   Character are dishonored. Where is His wisdom? Why did He begin that
   which He did not intend to finish? Where is His power? Will not evil
   spirits always say "that He could not do what He did not do"? Will it
   not be a standing jeer throughout the halls of Hell that God commenced
   the work and then stayed from it? Will they not say that the obstinacy
   of man's sin was greater than the Grace of God, that the hardness of
   the human heart was too hard for God to dissolve?

   Would there not be a slur at once cast upon the Omnipotence of Divine
   Grace? And what shall we say of the Immutability of God, if He casts
   away those whom He loves--how shall we think that He does not change?
   How will the human heart ever be able to look upon Him, again, as
   Immutable if after loving He hates? And, my Brothers and Sisters, where
   will be the faithfulness of God to the promises which He has made over
   and over again and signed and sealed with oaths by two immutable
   things, wherein it was impossible for God to lie? Where will be His
   Grace if he casts away those that trust in Him, if after having
   tantalized us with sips of love He shall not bring us to drink from the
   fountainhead?

   It is all in vain for us, therefore, to trust if His promise can be
   forgotten and His mind can be turned. Therefore we need not talk of
   Ebenezers in the past as though they comforted us for the future, if
   the Lord does cast away His children, for the past is no guarantee
   whatever as to what He may do in days to come. But the veracity of God
   to His promise, the faithfulness of God to His purpose, the
   Immutability of God in His Character and the love of God in His
   Essence--all these go to prove that He cannot and will not leave the
   soul that He has looked upon in mercy until the great work is done.

   Further, how can it be that the righteous should, after all, fall from
   Grace and perish, if you recollect the doctrine of the Atonement? The
   doctrine of Atonement, as we hold it and believe it to be in Scripture,
   is this--that Jesus Christ rendered to Divine justice a satisfaction
   for the sins of His people--that He was punished in their place. Now if
   He were so, and I do not believe any other atonements worth the turning
   of a finger, if He were really our satisfactory vicarious Sacrifice,
   then how could the child of God be cast into Hell? Why should he be
   cast there? His sins were laid on Christ-- what is to condemn him?
   Christ has been condemned in his place! In the name of everlasting
   justice, which must stand, though Heaven and earth should rock and
   reel, how can a man for whom Christ shed His blood be held as guilty
   before God, when Christ took his guilt and was punished in his place?

   He who believes must surely be ultimately brought to Glory--the
   Atonement requires it--and since he cannot come to Glory without
   persevering in holiness, he must so persevere, or else the Atonement is
   a thing that has no efficacy and force. The doctrine of justification,
   in the next place, proves this. Every man that believes in Jesus is
   justified from all things from which he could not be justified by the
   Law of Moses. The Apostle Paul regards a man who is justified as being
   completely set free from the possibility of accusation. Have you not
   the rolling thunder of the Apostle's holy boasting still in your ears:
   "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" If nothing can
   be laid to their charge--if there is no accuser--who is he that
   condemns? If God considers Believers just and righteous through the
   righteousness of His dear Son. If they put on His wondrous mantle--the
   fair white linen of a Savior's righteousness-- where is there room for
   anything to be brought against them by which they can be condemned? And
   if not accused, nor condemned, they must hold on their way and be
   saved!

   Further still, my Brethren, the intercession of Christ in Heaven is a
   guarantee for the salvation of all who trust Him. Remember Peter's
   case--"Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has desired to have you that he may
   sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, that your faith fail
   not." And the prayer of Christ preserved Peter and made him weep
   bitterly after he had fallen into sin. The like prayer of our
   ever-watchful Shepherd is put up for all His chosen--day and night he
   pleads, wearing the breastplate as our great High Priest before the
   Throne of God--and if He pleads for His people, how shall they perish
   unless, indeed, His intercession has lost its authority?

   Moreover, do you not remember that every Believer is said to be "one
   with Christ"? "For you are members of His body," says the Apostle, "of
   His flesh, and of His bones." And is your imagination so depraved that
   you can picture Christ, the Head, united to a body in which the members
   frequently decay--hand and foot and eyes, perhaps, rotting off so as to
   need fresh members to be created in their place? The metaphor is too
   atrocious for me to venture to enlarge upon it! "Because I live you
   shall live also," is the immortality that covers every member of the
   body of Christ! There is no fear that the righteous will turn back to
   sin and give themselves up to their old corruptions, for the holiness
   that is in Christ by the vital energy of the Holy Spirit penetrates the
   entire system of the spiritual body and the least member is preserved

   by the life of Christ!

   Once more--The inner life of the Christen is a guarantee that he shall
   not go back into sin. Take such passages as these, "Being born again,
   not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God,
   which lives and abides forever" (1 Peter 1:23). Now, if this seed is
   incorruptible and lives and abides forever, how say some among you that
   the righteous become corrupt and fall from Grace? Hear the Master--"The
   water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing
   up into everlasting life." How say you, then, that this water which
   Jesus gives dries up and ceases to flow? Hear Him yet again--"As the
   living Father has sent Me and I live by the Father, so He who feeds on
   Me, even he shall live by Me... He that eats of this bread shall live
   forever" (John 6:57, 58).

   The life which Jesus implants in the heart of His people is allied to
   His own life--"For you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in
   God." "When He who is your life shall appear, then shall you also
   appear with Him in Glory." The Holy Spirit dwells in us. "Know you not
   that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?" O Beloved, God
   Himself shall as soon die as the Christian, since the life of God is
   but eternal and that is the life which Christ has given to us! "I give
   unto My sheep eternal life and they shall never perish, neither shall
   any pluck them out of My hand."

   I leave the doctrine with your understandings, the Word of God being in
   your hands, and may the Spirit of God put it beyond a doubt in your
   souls that it is even so. Remember, it is not the doctrine that every
   man that believes in Christ shall be saved, let him do as he
   wishes--but it is this doctrine--that each man believing in Jesus shall
   receive the spirit of

   holiness and shall be led on in the way of holiness from strength to
   strength until he comes unto the perfection which God will work in us
   at the coming of His own dear Son.

   III. Lastly, we have to DRAW CERTAIN USEFUL INFERENCES from this
   doctrine. One of the first is this-- there is much in this Truth of God
   by way of comfort to a child of God who today walks in darkness and
   sees no light. You know that sometime ago the Lord revealed Himself to
   you. You remember times when the promises were peculiarly sweet, when
   the Person of Christ was revealed to your spiritual vision in all its
   Glory. Then, Beloved, if some temporary depression of spirit should
   just now overwhelm you. If some heavy personal trial should pass over
   you, hear the words, "I am the Lord, I change not."

   Believe that if He hides His face, He still loves you. Do not judge Him
   by outward Providences--judge Him by the teaching of His Word. Do as
   the bargemen on the canals do when they push backwards to drive their
   boat forwards. Take comfort from the past--snatch firebrands of comfort
   from the altars of yesterday to enkindle the sacrifices of today--

   "Determined to save, He watched over your path, When Satan's blind
   slave, you sported with death. And can He ha ve taught you to trust in
   His name, And thus far ha ve brought you to put you to shame?"

   This doctrine should suggest to every Christian the need of constant
   diligence, that he may persevere to the end. "What?" says one, "Is that
   an inference from the doctrine? I should have thought the very reverse,
   for if the Believer is to hold on his way, what need of diligence?" I
   reply that the misunderstanding lies with the objector. If the man is
   to be kept in holiness till life's end, surely there is need that he
   should be kept in holiness--and the doctrine that he shall be so kept
   is one of his best means of producing the desired result. If any of you
   should be well assured that, in a certain line of business, you would
   make a vast sum of money, would that confidence lead you to refuse that
   business? Would it lead you to lie in bed all day, or to desert your
   post altogether?

   No, the assurance that you would be diligent and would prosper would
   make you diligent! I will borrow a metaphor from the revelries of the
   season, such as Paul borrowed from the games of Greece--if any rider at
   the races should be confident that he was destined to win, would that
   make him slacken speed? Napoleon believed himself to be the child of
   destiny, did that freeze his energies? To show you that the certainty
   of a thing does not hinder a man from striving after it, but rather
   quickens him, I will give you an anecdote of myself.

   It happened to me when I was but a child of some 10 years of age, or
   less. Mr. Richard Knill, of happy and glorious memory--an earnest
   worker for Christ, felt moved, I know not why, to take me on his knee,
   at my grandfather's house and to utter words like these, which were
   treasured up by the family and by myself especially--"This child," said
   he, "will preach the Gospel and he will preach it to the largest
   congregations of our times." I believed his prophecy and my standing
   here today is partly occasioned by such belief. It did not hinder me in
   my diligence in seeking to educate myself because I believed I was
   destined to preach the Gospel to large congregations--not at all--the
   prophecy helped forward its own fulfillment

   I prayed and sought and strove, always having this Star of Bethlehem
   before me, that the day should come when I should preach the Gospel.
   Even so, the belief that we shall one day be perfect never hinders any
   true Believer from diligence, but is the highest possible incentive to
   make a man struggle with the corruptions of the flesh and seek to
   persevere according to God's promise. "Well, but," says one, "if God
   guarantees final perseverance to a man, why need he pray for it?" Sir,
   dare he pray for it if God had not guaranteed it? I dare not pray for
   what is not promised, but as soon as ever it is promised, I pray for
   it! And when I see it in God's Word I labor for it. "Say what you
   will," says one, "you are inconsistent." Ah, well, my dear Friend, we
   are bound to explain as best we can, but we are not bound to give
   understanding to those who have none!

   It is hard trying to make things appear aright to eyes that squint. It
   will sometimes happen that people cannot see Truths of God which they
   do not particularly want to see. But the practical is the main thing,
   and I hope it shall be ours, by practical argument, to prove that while
   those who think that they can fall from Grace run awful risks and do
   fall. But those who know they cannot, if they have truly believed, yet
   seek to walk with all carefulness and circumspection! I would seek to
   live as if my salvation depended on myself and then go back to my Lord,
   knowing that it does not depend on me in any sense at all.

   We would live as the opposite doctrine is supposed to make men live,
   which is exactly as the Calvinistic doctrine actually does make men
   live--namely, with earnestness of purpose and with gracious gratitude
   to God, which is, after all, the mightiest influence--gratitude to God
   for having secured our salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord.

   Another matter drawn from the text is this--let us learn from the text
   how to persevere. Brothers and Sisters, you will observe that the
   Apostle's reason for believing that the Philippians would persevere was
   not because they were such good and earnest people, but because God had
   begun the work! So our ground for holding on must be our resting in
   God. There is a dear Brother sitting here this morning, a member of
   this Church, who was once a member of another denomination of
   Christians. One night, when he was quite young and lately converted, he
   knelt down to pray and he felt himself cold and dead and did not pray
   many minutes, but went to bed.

   No sooner had he laid down than a horror of darkness came over him and
   he said to himself, "I have fallen from Grace." Dear good soul as he
   was and is, he rose from his bed, began to pray, but got no better, and
   at five o'clock in the morning, away he went to his class leader! He
   began knocking at the door and shouting to awaken him. "What do you
   want?" said the class leader, as he opened the window. The reply was,
   "Oh, I have fallen from Grace!" "Well," said the class leader, "if you
   have fallen from Grace, go home and trust in the Lord." "And," said my
   Friend, "I have done so ever since."

   Yes, and if he had known the great Truth before, he would not have been
   taken up with such nonsense as that of having fallen from Grace.
   "Fallen from Grace? Then go and simply trust in the Lord." Yes and this
   is what we must all do, fallen or not! We must not trust within, but
   always rely on that dear Christ who died on the Cross. Lord, if I am
   not a saint, and I often fear I have nothing to do with saintship, yet,
   Lord, I am a sinner and You have died to save sinners and I will cling
   to that! O precious Blood, if I never did experience Your cleansing
   power! If, up till now, I have been in the gall of bitterness and the
   bonds of iniquity, yet there stands the grand old Gospel of the
   Cross--"He that believes and is baptized shall be saved." Lord, I
   believe today if I never did before! Help my unbelief! This is the true
   theory of perseverance--it is to persevere in being nothing and letting
   Christ be everything! It is to persevere in resting wholly and simply
   in the power of the Grace which is in Christ Jesus.

   Lastly, this doctrine has a voice to the unconverted. I know it had to
   me. If anything in this world first led me to desire to be a Christian,
   it was the doctrine of the Final Perseverance of the Saints. I had seen
   companions of my boyhood, somewhat more advanced than myself, who were
   held up to me as patterns of all that was excellent. I had seen them
   apprenticed in large towns, or launching out in business for themselves
   and soon their moral excellences were swept away. Instead of being
   patterns, they came to be persons against whom the young were warned
   for their supremacy in vice. This thought occurred to me--"That may
   also be my character in years to come! Is there any way by which a holy
   character can be ensured for the future? Is there any way by which a
   young man, by taking heed, may be kept from uncleanness and iniquity?"

   And I found that if I put my trust in Christ, I had the promise that I
   should hold on my way and grow stronger and stronger! And though I
   feared I might never be a true Believer and so get the promise
   fulfilled to myself, for I was so unworthy, yet the music of it always
   charmed me. "Oh, if I could but come to Christ and hide myself like a
   dove in His wounds, then I should be safe! If I could but have Him to
   wash me from my past sins, then His Spirit would keep me from future
   sin, and I should be preserved to the end." Does not this attract you?
   Oh, I hope there may be some who will be allured by such a salvation as
   this!

   We preach no rickety Gospel which will not bear your weight! It is no
   chariot whose axles will snap, or whose wheels will be taken off. This
   is no foundation of sand that may sink in the day of the flood. Here is
   the everlasting God pledging Himself by Covenant and oath that He will
   write His Law in your heart--that you shall not depart from Him--He
   will keep you! That you shall not wander into sin but if for awhile you
   stray, He will restore you again to the paths of righteousness!

   O young men and maidens, turn in here! Cast in your lot with Christ and
   His people. Trust Him! Trust Him! Trust Him and then shall this
   precious Truth be yours and the experience of it be illustrated in your
   life--

   "My name from the palms of His hands

   Eternity will not erase!

   Impressed on His heart it remains

   In marks of indelible Grace.

   Yes, I to the end shall endure,

   As sure as the earnest is given;

   More happy, but not more secure,

   Are the glorified spirits in Heaven."

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Isaiah 54
     __________________________________________________________________

Christ Made a Curse for Us

   A sermon

   (No. 873)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, MAY 30, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse
   for us: for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree."-
   Galatians 3:13.

   The Apostle had been showing to the Galatians that salvation is in no
   degree by works. He proved this all-important Truth of God, in the
   verses which precede the text, by a very conclusive form of double
   reasoning. He showed, first, that the Law could not give the blessing
   of salvation, for, since all had broken it, all that the Law could do
   was to curse. He quotes the substance of the 27th chapter of
   Deuteronomy, "Cursed is everyone that continues not in all things which
   are written in the book of the Law to do them." And as no man can claim
   that he has continued in all things that are in the Law, he pointed out
   the clear inference that all men under the Law had incurred the curse.

   He then reminds the Galatians, in the second place, that if any had
   ever been blessed in the olden times, the blessing came not by the Law,
   but by their faith--and to prove this, he quotes a passage from
   Habakkuk 2:4 in which it is distinctly stated that the just shall live
   by faith--so that those who were just and righteous did not live before
   God on the footing of their obedience to the Law, but they were
   justified and made to live on the ground of their being Believers. See,
   then, that if the Law inevitably curses us all, and if the only people
   who are said to have been preserved in gracious life were justified not
   by works, but by faith--then is it certain beyond a doubt that the
   salvation and justification of a sinner cannot be by the works of the
   Law, but altogether by the Grace of God through faith which is in
   Christ Jesus.

   But the Apostle, no doubt feeling that now he was declaring that
   doctrine he had better declare the foundation and root of it, unveils
   in the text before us a reason why men are not saved by their personal
   righteousness, but saved by their faith. He tells us that the reason is
   this--that men are not saved by any personal merit but their salvation
   lies in Another--lies, in fact, in Christ Jesus, the representative Man
   who alone can deliver us from the curse which the Law brought upon us.
   And since works do not connect us with Christ, but faith is the uniting
   bond, faith becomes the way of salvation.

   Since faith is the hand that lays hold upon the finished work of
   Christ--which works could not and would not do, for works lead us to
   boast and to forget Christ--faith becomes the true and only way of
   obtaining justification and everlasting life. In order that such faith
   may be nurtured in us, may God the Holy Spirit this morning lead us
   into the depths of the great work of Christ! May we understand more
   clearly the nature of His substitution and of the suffering which it
   entailed upon Him. Let us see, indeed, the truth of the stanzas whose
   music has just died away--

   "He bore that we might never bear

   His Father's righteous ire."

   I. Our first contemplation this morning will be upon this question,
   WHAT IS THE CURSE OF THE LAW HERE INTENDED? It is the curse of God. God
   who made the Law has appended certain penal consequences to the
   breaking of it and the man who violates the Law becomes at once the
   subject of the wrath of the Lawgiver. It is not the curse of the mere
   Law of itself--it is a curse from the great Lawgiver whose arm is
   strong to defend His statutes. Therefore, at the very outset of our
   reflections, let us be assured that the curse of the Law must be
   supremely just and morally unavoidable.

   It is not possible that our God, who delights to bless us, should
   inflict an atom of curse upon any one of His creatures unless the
   highest right shall require it. And if there is any method by which
   holiness and purity can be maintained without a curse, rest assured the
   God of Love will not imprecate sorrow upon His creatures. The curse
   then, if it falls, must be a necessary one--in its very essence
   necessary for the preservation of order in the universe and for the
   manifestation of the holiness of the universal Sovereign.

   Be assured, too, that when God curses, it is a curse of the most
   weighty kind. The curse causeless shall not come, but God's curses are
   never causeless and they come home to offenders with overwhelming
   power. Sin must be punished and when by long continuance and
   impenitence in evil, God is provoked to speak the malediction, I know
   that he whom He curses is cursed, indeed. There is something so
   terrible in the very idea of the Omnipotent God pronouncing a curse
   upon a transgressor that my blood curdles at it and I cannot express
   myself very clearly or even coherently. A father's curse, how terrible!
   But what is that to the malediction of the great Father of Spirits?

   To be cursed of men is no mean evil, but to be accursed of God is
   terror and dismay! Sorrow and anguish lie in that curse! Death is
   involved in it and that second death which John foresaw in Patmos and
   described as being cast into a lake of fire (Rev. 20:14). Hear the Word
   of the Lord by His servant Nahum and consider what His curse must
   be--"God is jealous and the Lord revenges. The Lord revenges and is
   furious. The Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries and He
   reserves wrath for His enemies...The mountains quake at Him and the
   hills melt and the earth is burned at His Presence, yes, the world and
   all that dwell herein. Who can stand before His indignation? And who
   can abide in the fierceness of His anger? His fury is poured out like
   fire and the rocks are thrown down by Him."

   Remember, also, the prophecy of Malachi: "For behold, the day comes
   that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yes, and all that do
   wickedly, shall be stubble. And the day that comes shall burn them up,
   says the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor
   branch." Let such words, and there are many like they, sink into your
   hearts that you may fear and tremble before this just and holy Lord! If
   we would look further into the meaning of the curse that arises from
   the breach of the Law, we must remember that a curse is, first of all,
   a sign of displeasure.

   Now, we learn from Scripture that God is angry with the wicked every
   day. Though towards the persons of sinners God exhibits great
   longsuffering, yet sin exceedingly provokes His holy mind. Sin is a
   thing so utterly loathsome and detestable to the purity of the Most
   High, that no thought of evil, or an ill word, or an unjust action, is
   tolerated by Him. He observes every sin and His holy soul is stirred
   thereby. He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. He cannot endure
   it. He is a God that will certainly execute vengeance upon every evil
   work. A curse implies something more than mere anger. It is suggested
   by burning indignation, and truly our God is not only somewhat angry
   with sinners, but His wrath is great towards sin.

   Wherever sin exists, there the fullness of the power of the Divine
   indignation is directed. And though the effect of that wrath may be,
   for awhile, restrained through abundant longsuffering, yet God is
   greatly indignant with the iniquities of men. We wink at sin, yes, and
   even harden our hearts till we laugh at it and take pleasure in it. But
   oh, let us not think that God is such as we are! Let us not suppose
   that sin can be beheld by Him and yet no indignation be felt. Ah, no,
   the most holy God has written warnings in His Word which plainly inform
   us how terribly He is provoked by iniquity, as, for instance, when he
   says, "Beware, you that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces and there
   be none to deliver."

   "Therefore, says the Lord, the Lord of hosts, the mighty One of Israel,
   Ah, I will ease Me of My adversaries and avenge Me of My enemies." "For
   we know Him that has said, Vengeance belongs to Me, I will recompense,
   says the Lord." And again, the Lord shall judge His people. "It is a
   fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Moreover, a
   curse imprecates evil and is, as it comes from God, of the nature of a
   threat. It is as though God should say, "By-and-by I will visit you for
   this offense. You have broken My Law which is just and holy and the
   inevitable penalty shall certainly come upon you."

   Now, God has, throughout His Word, given many such curses as these--He
   has threatened men over and over again. "If he turns not, He will whet
   his sword. He has bent His bow and made it ready." Sometimes the threat
   is wrapped up in a plaintive lamentation. "Turn you, turn you from your
   evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?" But still it is
   plain and clear that God will not suffer sin to go unpunished--and when
   the fullness of time shall come and the measure shall be filled to the
   brim and the weight of iniquity shall be fully reached and the harvest
   shall be ripe, and the cry of wickedness shall come up mightily into
   the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth--then will He come forth in robes
   of vengeance and overwhelm His adversaries.

   But God's curse is something more than a threat. He comes at length to
   blows. He uses warning words at first, but sooner or later He bares His
   sword for execution. The curse of God, as to its actual infliction, may
   be guessed at by some occasions where it has been seen on earth. Look
   at Cain, a wanderer and a vagabond upon the face of the earth! Read the

   curse that Jeremiah pronounced by the command of God upon
   Pashur--"Behold, I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your
   friends. And they shall fall by the sword of their enemies and your
   eyes shall behold it." Or, if you would behold the curse upon a larger
   scale, remember the day when the huge floodgates of earth's deepest
   fountains were unloosed and the waters leaped up from their habitations
   like lions eager for their prey!

   Remember the day of vengeance when the windows of Heaven were opened
   and the great deep above the firmament was confused with the deep that
   is beneath the firmament and all flesh were swept away--except only the
   few who were hidden in the ark which God's Covenant mercy had prepared.
   Consider that dreadful day when sea-monsters whelped and stabled in the
   palaces of ancient kings! When millions of sinners sank to rise no
   more! When universal ruin flew with raven wings over a shoreless sea
   vomited from the mouth of death! Then was the curse of God poured out
   upon the earth!

   Look, yet again, further down in time. Stand with Abraham at his tent
   door and see towards the east the sky all red at early morning with a
   glare that came not from the sun--sheets of flames went up to
   Heaven--which were met by showers of yet more vivid fire received the
   curse of God, and Hell was rained upon them out of Heaven until they
   were utterly consumed! If you would see another form of the curse of
   God, remember that bright spirit who once stood as servitor in
   Heaven--the son of the morning, one of the chief of the angels of God!

   Think how he lost his lofty principality when sin entered into him! See
   how an archangel became an archfiend and Satan, who is called Apollyon,
   fell from his lofty throne, banished forever from peace and
   happiness--to wander through dry places, seeking rest and finding
   none--to be reserved in chains of darkness unto the judgment of the
   Last Great Day. Such was the curse that it withered an angel into a
   devil! It burned up the cities of the plain! It swept away the
   population of a globe!

   Nor have you yet the full idea. There is a place of woe and horror--a
   land of darkness as darkness itself and of the shadow of death--without
   any order and where the light is darkness. There those miserable
   spirits who have refused repentance and have hardened themselves
   against the Most High, are forever banished from their God and from all
   hope of peace or restoration. If your ear could be applied to the
   gratings of their cells. If you could walk the gloomy corridors wherein
   damned spirits are confined, you would, then, with chilled blood and
   hair erect, learn what the curse of the Law must be--that dread
   malediction which comes on the disobedient from the hand of the just
   and righteous God!

   The curse of God is to lose God's favor, and, consequently, to lose the
   blessings which come upon that blessing--to lose peace of mind, to lose
   hope, ultimately to lose life itself--for "the soul that sins, it shall
   die." And that loss of life and being cast into eternal death is the
   most terrible of all, consisting as it does in everlasting separation
   from God and everything that makes existence truly life. It is a
   destruction lasting forever. According to the Scriptural description of
   it, it is the fruit of the curse of the Law.

   Oh, heavy tidings have I to deliver this day to some of you! Hard is my
   task to have to testify to you the terrible justice of the Law! But you
   would not understand or prize the exceeding love of Christ if you heard
   not the curse from which He delivers His people--therefore hear me
   patiently! O unhappy men, unhappy men, who are under God's curse today!
   You may dress yourselves in scarlet and fine linen. You may go to your
   feasts and drain your full bowls of wine. You may lift high the
   sparkling cup and whirl in the joyous dance, but if God's curse is on
   you, what madness possesses you! O Sirs, if you could but see it and
   understand it, this curse would darken all the windows of your mirth!

   O that you could hear, for once, the voice which speaks against you
   from Ebal, with doleful repetition--"Cursed shall you be in the city
   and cursed shall you be in the field. Cursed shall be your basket and
   your store. Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the fruit of
   your land, the increase of your cattle and the flocks of your sheep.
   Cursed shall you be when you come in and cursed shall you be when you
   go out." How is it that you can rest while such sentences pursue you?
   Oh, unhappiest of men are those who pass out of this life still
   accursed! One might weep tears of blood to think of them! Let our
   thoughts fly to them for a moment, but O, let us not continue in sin,
   lest our spirits be condemned to hold perpetual companionship in their
   grief! Let us fly to the dear Cross of Christ, where the curse was put
   away, that we may never come to know, in the fullness of its horror,
   what the curse may mean!

   II. A second enquiry of great importance to us this morning is
   this--WHO ARE UNDER THIS CURSE? Listen with solemn awe, O sons of men!
   First, especially and foremost, the Jewish nation lies under the curse,
   for such I gather from the connection. To them the Law of God was very
   peculiarly given beyond all others. They heard it from Sinai and it was
   to them surrounded with a golden setting of ceremonial symbols and
   enforced by solemn national Covenant.

   Moreover, there was a word in the commencement of that Law which showed
   that in a certain sense it peculiarly belonged to Israel. "I am the
   Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the
   house of bondage."

   Paul tells us that those who have sinned without Law shall be punished
   without Law. But the Jewish nation, having received the Law, if they
   broke it, would become peculiarly liable to the curse which was
   threatened for such breach. Yet further, all nations that dwell upon
   the face of the earth are also subject to this curse for this
   reason--that if the Law were not given to all from Sinai, it has been
   written by the finger of God, more or less legibly, upon the conscience
   of all mankind. It needs no Prophet to tell an Indian, a Laplander, a
   South Sea Islander, that he must not steal--his own judgment so
   instructs him. There is that within every man which ought to convince
   him that idolatry is folly, that adultery and unchastity are
   villainies, that theft and murder and covetousness are all evil.

   Now, inasmuch as all men in some degree have the Law within, to that
   degree they are under the Law. The curse of the Law for transgression
   comes upon them. Moreover, there are some in this House this morning
   who are peculiarly under the curse. The Apostle says, "As many as are
   of the works of the Law are under the curse." Now, there are some of
   you who choose to be under the Law--you deliberately choose to be
   judged by it. How so? Why, you are trying to reach a place in Heaven by
   your own good works! You are clinging to the idea that something you
   can do can save you! You have therefore elected to be under the Law and
   by so doing you have chosen the curse--for all that the law of works
   can do for you is to leave you still accursed--because you have not
   fulfilled all its commands. O Sirs, repent of so foolish a choice, and
   declare from now on that you are willing to be saved by Divine Grace
   and not at all by the works of the Law!

   There is a little band here who feel the weight of the Law, to whom I
   turn with brightest hope, though they themselves are in despair. They
   feel in their consciences today that they deserve from God the severest
   punishment. This sense of His wrath weighs them to the dust. I am glad
   of this, for it is only when we come consciously and penitently under
   the curse that we accept the way of escape from it. You do not know
   what it is to be redeemed from the curse till you have first felt the
   slavery of it. No man will ever rejoice in the liberty which Christ
   gives him till he has first felt the iron of bondage entering into his
   soul.

   I know there are some here who say, "Let God say what He will against
   me, or do what He will to me, I deserve it all. If He drives me forever
   from His Presence and I hear the Judge pronounce that awful sentence,
   'Depart, accursed one,' I can only admit that such has been my heart
   and such my life that I could expect no other doom." O you dear Heart,
   if you are thus brought down, you will listen gladly to me while I now
   come to a far brighter theme than all this! You are under the curse as
   you now are, but I rejoice to tell you that the curse has been removed
   through Jesus Christ our Lord! O may the Lord lead you to see the plan
   of substitution and to rejoice in it!

   III. Our third and main point, this morning, is to answer the question,
   HOW WAS CHRIST MADE A CURSE FOR US? The whole pith and marrow of the
   religion of Christianity lies in the doctrine of "Substitution," and I
   hesitate not to affirm my conviction that a very large proportion of
   Christians are not Christians at all, for they do not understand the
   fundamental doctrine of the Christian creed. And alas, there are
   preachers who do not preach, or even believe this cardinal truth.

   They speak of the blood of Jesus in an indistinct kind of way and
   descant upon the death of Christ in a hazy style of poetry--but they do
   not strike this nail on the head and lay it down that the way of
   Salvation is by Christ's becoming a Substitute for guilty man! This
   shall make me the more plain and definite. Sin is an accursed thing.
   God, from the necessity of His holiness, must curse it. He must punish
   men for committing it. But the Lord's Christ, the glorious Son of the
   everlasting Father, became a Man and suffered, in His own proper
   Person, the curse which was due to the sons of men, that so, by a
   vicarious offering, God, having been just in punishing sin, could
   extend His bounteous mercy towards those who believe in the Substitute.

   Now for this point. But, you enquire, how was Jesus Christ a curse? We
   beg you to observe the word "made." "He was made a curse." Christ was
   no curse in Himself. In His Person He was spotlessly innocent, and
   nothing of sin could belong personally to Him. In Him was no sin. "God
   made Him to be sin for us." And the Apostle expressly adds, "who knew
   no sin." There must never be supposed to be any degree of
   blameworthiness or censure in the Person or Character of Christ as He
   stands as an Individual. He is in that respect without spot or wrinkle,
   or any such thing--the immaculate Lamb of God's Passover.

   Nor was Christ made a curse of necessity. There was no necessity in
   Himself that He should ever suffer the curse--no necessity except that
   which His own loving suretyship created. His own intrinsic holiness
   kept Him from sin and that same holiness kept Him from the curse. He
   was made sin for us, not on His own account--not with any view to
   Himself--but wholly because He loved us and chose to put Himself in the
   place which we ought to have occupied. He was made a curse for us not,
   again, I say, out of any personal want, or out of any personal
   necessity, but because He had voluntarily undertaken to be the Covenant
   Head of His people and to be their Representative and as their
   Representative to bear the curse which was due to them.

   We must be very clear here because very strong expressions have been
   used by those who hold the great Truth of God which I am endeavoring to
   preach, which strong expressions have conveyed the Truth they meant to
   convey, but also a great deal more. Martin Luther's wonderful book on
   Galatians, which he prized so much that he called it his Catherine Born
   (that was the name of his beloved wife and he gave this book the name
   of the dearest one he knew)--in that book he says plainly, but be
   assured did not mean what he said to be literally understood, that
   Jesus Christ was the greatest sinner that ever lived--that all the sins
   of men were so laid upon Christ that He became all the thieves and
   murderers and adulterers that ever were, in one.

   Now, he meant that God treated Christ as if He had been a great
   sinner--as if He had been all the sinners in the world in one--and such
   language teaches that Truth very plainly. But Luther, in his
   boisterousness, overshoots his mark and leaves room for the censure
   that he has almost spoken blasphemy against the blessed Person of our
   Lord. Christ never was and never could be a sinner--and in His Person
   and in His Character, in Himself considered, He never could be anything
   but well-beloved of God, and blessed forever and well-pleasing in
   Jehovah's sight! So that when we say, today, that He was a curse, we
   must lay stress on those words, "He was made a curse." He was
   constituted a curse, set as a curse.

   And then, again, we must emphasize those other words, "for us"--not on
   His own account at all--but entirely out of love to us that we might be
   redeemed. He stood in the sinner's place and was reckoned to be a
   sinner and treated as a sinner, and made a curse for us. Let us go
   farther into this Truth of God. How was Christ made a curse? In the
   first place, He was made a curse because all the sins of His people
   were actually laid on Him. Remember the words of the Apostle--it is no
   doctrine of mine, mark you, it is an Inspired sentence, it is God's
   doctrine--"He made Him to be sin for us."

   And let me note another passage from the Prophet Isaiah, "The Lord has
   laid on Him the iniquity of us all." And yet another from the same
   Prophet, "He shall bear their iniquities." The sins of God's people
   were lifted from off them and imputed to Christ--and their sins were
   looked upon as if Christ had committed them. He was regarded as if He
   had been the sinner! He actually and in very deed stood in the sinner's
   place. Next to the imputation of sin came the curse of sin. The Law,
   looking for sin to punish, with its quick eye detected sin laid upon
   Christ and, as it must curse sin wherever it was found, it cursed the
   sin as it was laid on Christ. So Christ was made a curse.

   Wonderful and awful words, but as they are Scriptural words, we must
   receive them. Sin being on Christ, the curse came on Christ and in
   consequence our Lord felt an unutterable horror of soul. Surely it was
   that horror which made Him sweat great drops of blood when He saw and
   felt that God was beginning to treat Him as if He had been a sinner.
   The holy soul of Christ shrunk with deepest agony from the slightest
   contact with sin. So pure and perfect was our Lord, that never an evil
   thought had crossed His mind, nor had His soul been stained by the
   glances of evil. And yet He stood in God's sight a sinner and therefore
   a solemn horror fell upon His soul.

   The heart refused its healthful action and a bloody sweat bedewed his
   face. Then He began to be made a curse for us, nor did He cease till He
   had suffered all the penalty which was due on our account. We have been
   accustomed in divinity to divide the penalty into two parts, the
   penalty of loss and the penalty of actual suffering. Christ endured
   both of these. It was due to sinners that they should lose God's favor
   and Presence and therefore Jesus cried, "My God, My God, why have You
   forsaken Me?" It was due to sinners that they should lose all personal
   comfort--Christ was deprived of every consolation and even the last rag
   of clothing was torn from Him and He was left like Adam, naked and
   forlorn. It was necessary that the soul should lose everything that
   could sustain it, and so did Christ lose every comfortable thing. He
   looked and there was no man to pity or help. He was made to cry, "But I
   am a worm and no man; a reproach ofmen and despised of the people."

   As for the second part of the punishment, namely, an actual infliction
   of suffering, our Lord endured this, also, to the uttermost, as the
   Evangelists clearly show. You have read full often the story of His
   bodily sufferings. Take care that you never depreciate them. There was
   an amount of physical pain endured by our Savior which His body never
   could have borne unless it had been sustained and strengthened by union
   with His Godhead. Yet the sufferings of His soul were the soul of His
   sufferings.

   That soul of His endured a torment equivalent to Hell itself. The
   punishment that was due to the wicked was that of Hell and though
   Christ suffered not Hell, He suffered an equivalent of it.

   And now, can your minds conceive what that must have been? It was an
   anguish never to be measured, an agony never to be comprehended. It is
   to God and God, alone, that His griefs were fully known. Well does the
   Greek liturgy put it, "Your unknown sufferings," for they must forever
   remain beyond guess of human imagination. See, Brothers and Sisters,
   Christ has gone thus far--He has taken the sin, taken the curse and
   suffered all the penalty. The last penalty of sin was death, and
   therefore the Redeemer died. Behold, the mighty Conqueror yields up His
   life upon the tree! His side is pierced! The blood and water flows
   forth and His disciples lay His body in the tomb.

   As He was first numbered with the transgressors, He was afterwards
   numbered with the dead. See, Beloved, here is Christ bearing the curse
   instead of His people. Here He is, coming under the load of their sin,
   and God does not spare Him but smites Him as He must have struck us. He
   lays His full vengeance on Him. He launches all His thunderbolts
   against Him. He bids the curse wreak itself upon Him and Christ suffers
   all, sustains all.

   IV. And now let us conclude by considering WHAT ARE THE BLESSED
   CONSEQUENCES OF CHRIST'S HAVING THUS BEEN MADE A CURSE FOR US. The
   consequences are that He has redeemed us from the curse of the Law. As
   many as Christ died for, are forever free from the curse of the Law,
   for when the Law comes to curse a man who believes in Christ, he says,
   "What have I to do with you, O Law? You say, 'I will curse you,' but I
   reply, "You have cursed Christ instead of me. Can you curse twice for
   one offense?"

   Behold how the Law is silenced! God's Law, having received all it can
   demand, is not so unrighteous as to demand anything more. All that God
   can demand of a believing sinner, Christ has already paid, and there is
   no voice in earth or Heaven that can accuse a soul that believes in
   Jesus. You were in debt, but a Friend paid your debt! No writ can be
   served on you. It matters nothing that you did not pay it, it is paid
   and you have the receipt. That is sufficient in any court of equity. So
   with all the penalty that was due to us, Christ has borne it. It is
   true I have not borne it--I have not been to Hell and suffered the full
   wrath of God--but Christ has suffered that wrath for me and I am as
   clear as if I had myself paid the debt to God and had myself suffered
   His wrath.

   Here is a glorious foundation to rest upon! Here is a rock upon which
   to lay the foundation of eternal comfort! Let a man once get to
   this--my Lord outside the city's gate bleeding and dying for me as my
   Surety on the Cross--He discharged my debt. Why, then, great God, Your
   thunders I no longer fear! How can You strike me now? You have
   exhausted the quiver of Your wrath--every arrow has been already shot
   forth against the Person of my Lord and I am in Him clear and clean and
   absolved and delivered--even as if I had never sinned! "He has redeemed
   us," says the text.

   How often I have heard certain gentry of the modern school of theology
   sneer at the Atonement, because they charge us with the notion of its
   being a sort of business transaction, or what they choose to call, "the
   mercantile view of it." I hesitate not to say that the mercantile
   metaphor expresses rightly God's view of redemption, for we find it so
   in Scripture. The Atonement is a ransom--that is to say, a price paid.
   And in the present case the original word is more than usually
   expressive--it is a payment for, a price instead of.

   Jesus did, in His sufferings, perform what may be forcibly and fitly
   described as the payment of a ransom, the giving to justice, a quid pro
   quo for what was due on our behalf for our sins. Christ, in His Person,
   suffered what we ought to have suffered in our persons. The sins that
   were ours were made His--He stood as a sinner in God's sight, though
   not a sinner in Himself. He was punished as a sinner and died as a
   sinner upon the tree of the curse. Then having exhausted His imputed
   sinnership by bearing the full penalty, He made an end of sin and He
   rose again from the dead to bring in that everlasting righteousness
   which at this moment covers the persons of all His elect, so that they
   can exultingly cry, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's
   elect? It is God that justifies. Who is he that condemns? It is Christ
   that died, yes, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right
   hand of God, who also makes intercession for us."

   Another blessing flows from this satisfactory Substitution. It is this,
   that now the blessing of God, which had been up to then arrested by the
   curse is made most freely to flow. Read the verse that follows the
   text--"That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through
   Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through
   faith." The blessing of Abraham was that in his seed all nations of the
   earth should be blessed. Since our Lord Jesus Christ has taken away the
   curse due to sin, a great rock has been lifted out from the riverbed of
   God's mercy and the living stream comes rippling, roiling, swelling on
   in crystal tides--sweeping before it all human sin and sorrow and
   making glad the thirsty who stoop down to drink there.

   my Brothers and Sisters, the blessings of God's Grace are full and free
   this morning! They are as full as your necessities. Great Sinners,
   there is great mercy for you! They are as free as your poverty could
   desire them to be, free as the air you breathe, or as the cooling
   stream that flows along the waterbrook. You have but to trust Christ
   and you shall live! Be you who you may, or what you may, or where you
   may--though at Hell's dark door you lie down to despair and die--yet
   the message comes to you, "God has made Christ to be a propitiation for
   sin. He made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be
   made the righteousness of God in Him." Christ has delivered us from the
   curse of the Law, being made a curse for us.

   He that believes, has no curse upon him. He may have been an adulterer,
   a swearer, a drunkard, a murderer, but the moment he believes, God sees
   none of those sins in him! He sees him as an innocent man and regards
   his sins as having been laid on the Redeemer and punished in Jesus as
   He died on the tree. I tell you, if you believe in Christ this morning,
   my Hearer, though you are the most damnable of wretches that ever
   polluted the earth, yet you shall not have a sin remaining on you after
   believing! God will look at you as pure! Even Omniscience shall not
   detect a sin in you, for your sin shall be put on the Scapegoat, even
   Christ, and carried away into forgetfulness so that if your
   transgression is searched for, it shall not be found.

   If you believe--there is the question--you are clean! If you will trust
   the Incarnate God, you are delivered! He that believes is justified
   from all things. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be
   saved," for, "he that believes and is baptized, shall be saved. And he
   that believes not shall be damned."

   1 have preached to you the Gospel--God knows with what a weight upon my
   soul and yet with what holy joy! This is no subject for gaudy eloquence
   and for high-flying attempts at oratory. This is a matter to be put to
   you plainly and simply. Sinners--you must either be cursed of God, or
   else you must accept Christ as bearing the curse instead of you. I do
   beseech you, as you love your souls, if you have any sanity left,
   accept this blessed and Divinely-appointed way of salvation! This is
   the Truth of God which the Apostles preached and suffered and died to
   maintain. It is this for which the Reformers struggled. It is this for
   which the martyrs burned at Smithfield. It is the grand basic doctrine
   of the Reformation and the very Truth of God.

   Down with your crosses and rituals! Down with your pretensions to good
   works and your crouching at the feet of priests to ask absolution from
   them! Away with your accursed and idolatrous dependence upon yourself!
   Christ has finished salvation-work, altogether finished it! Hold not up
   your rags in competition with His fair white linen--Christ has borne
   the curse--bring not your pitiful penances and your tears all full of
   filth to mingle with the precious fountain flowing with His blood! Lay
   down what is your own and come and take what is Christ's! Put away,
   now, everything that you have thought of being or doing by way of
   winning acceptance with God! Humble yourselves and take Jesus Christ to
   be the Alpha and Omega, the first and last, the beginning and end of
   your salvation.

   If you do this, not only shall you be saved, but you are saved! Rest,
   you weary one, for your sins are forgiven. Rise, you lame man, lame
   through lack of faith, for your transgression is covered. Rise from the
   dead, you corrupt one, rise, like Lazarus from the tomb, for Jesus
   calls you! Believe and live. The words in themselves, by the Holy
   Spirit, are soul-quickening. Have done with your tears of repentance
   and your vows of good living until you have come to Christ! Then take
   them up as you will.

   Your first lesson should be none but Jesus, none but Jesus, none but
   Jesus! O come to Him! See, He hangs upon the Cross. His arms are open
   wide and He cannot close them, for the nails hold them fast. He tarries
   for you. His feet are fastened to the wood, as though He meant to
   tarry, still. O come to Him! His heart has room for you. It streams
   with blood and water--it was pierced for you. That mingled stream is--

   "Of sin the double cure, To cleanse you from its guilt and power." An
   act of faith will bring you to Jesus. Say, "Lord, I believe, help my
   unbelief." And if you do so, he cannot cast you out, for His Word is,
   "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out."

   I have delivered to you the weightiest Truth of God that ever ears
   heard, or that lips spoke--put it not from you! As we shall meet each
   other at the last tremendous day, when Heaven and earth are on a blaze
   and the trumpet shall ring and raise the dead--as we shall meet each
   other then--I challenge you not to put this from you. If you do, it is
   at your own peril and your blood is on your own heads. I plead with you
   to accept the Gospel I have delivered to you. It is Jehovah's Gospel.
   Heaven itself speaks in the words you hear today! Accept Jesus Christ
   as your substitute. O do it now, this moment, and God shall have Glory,
   but you shall have SALVATION. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Psalm 22.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Overflowing Cup

   A sermon

   (No. 874)

   Delivered on Sunday Morning, JUNE 6, 1869, by

   C.H.SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "My cup runs over."- Psalm 23:5.

   THE fault of being too happy, if it exists anywhere, must be a very
   scarce one. A far more prevalent vice is that of dwelling upon the dark
   shades of life, to the forgetfulness of its brighter lights. We drink
   our wormwood in ostentatious publicity, but eat our honey behind the
   door. It is noteworthy that if a man's life is prosperous, it glides
   away rapidly and leaves little trace upon his memory. We write sorrows
   in marble and mercies in the sand! The history of nations becomes dull
   and unromantic when it flows happily, so that it has been wisely
   written, "Blessed is that nation which has no history."

   When affliction comes, there is an event to mark, a notch to be scored
   on the tally--war, famine, pestilence--these are landmarks of history.
   But when nations continue in an even flow of peace, history is like a
   vast unbroken dead level. Our mind tenaciously retains the remembrance
   of its sorrow, but human nature is so constitutionally ungrateful as to
   forget its mercies without an effort. How much of the staple of our
   conversation consists in complaint! It is so cold for the season, it is
   so intolerably hot--there is too much drought, or the rain is perfectly
   awful. Business is shocking The young wheat is turning yellow for want
   of dry weather, or the turnips are just good for nothing for lack of
   rain.

   We are great experts in discovering reasons for murmuring--like
   ill-humored curs, we bark at everything or nothing. And I suppose if we
   should fail to discover any reasons for discontent, we should think it
   quite sufficient cause for utter weariness of this mortal life. More or
   less we are all bitten with this madness. It comes so natural to us to
   detail our grievances and hardships, and only by mere accident, or as a
   conscientious duty, do we relate the story of the Lord's goodness
   towards us.

   Come, my Brothers and Sisters, let us see if we cannot touch a sweeter
   string this morning. Let us lay aside the trombone and try the
   dulcimer. With Christians, a cheerful carriage should be the rule. Of
   all the men that live, we are the most fitted to rejoice. We have the
   most reasons for it and the most precepts for it--let us not fall
   behind in it. Heaven is our portion and the thoughts of its amazing
   bliss should cheer us on the road. Christ has given to us such large
   and wide domains of Grace and glory that it would be altogether
   unseemly that there should be poverty of happiness where there is such
   an affluence of possession.

   In considering our own portion, which must be a blessed one, since "the
   Lord is the portion of our inheritance and of our cup," let us see if
   we cannot find themes for song and abundant cause to stir all that is
   within us to magnify the Lord.

   I. Our privileged lot is described in the text as a cup and a view of
   that happy portion will, I trust, be suggestive of gratitude. I shall
   invite you, in the first place, TO SURVEY YOUR PRIVILEGED PORTION. You
   have a cup. There is no small privilege implied in the use of such a
   term as that to describe your lot. Remember you were once, (and not so
   long ago but what your memory may well carry you back to it), wandering
   in a dry and thirsty land where there was no water. Hungry and thirsty,
   your soul fainted within you. You hastened to the broken cisterns, but
   they held no water.

   All your former confidences were as deceitful brooks which fly before
   the hot breath of summer. The wells of pleasure were empty and you were
   in a parched land where hope smiled not. Your former delights proved to
   be but a mirage, fair to look upon, but unsubstantial as a dream. You
   crouched at the foot of Sinai and even presumptuously attempted to
   climb its ragged sides--but you failed to find a drop of water there.
   Do you remember when Christ said to you--

   "Behold, I freely give Living water, thirsty one, Stoop down and drink
   and live"? Oh, what a change for you! You thirst no longer, for within
   your soul Jesus has an ever-springing well of living water. You believe
   in Him and all the cravings of your nature are supplied. Think of the
   full cup which Jesus holds to

   your lips--contrast it with your former poverty when you were ready to
   perish in despair--and rejoice this morning that you have a royal cup
   to drink of which will never fail you. Time was, too, when you were in
   something more than need--you were in a degradation whose remembrance
   crimsons your cheek. Your riotous living ended in a mighty famine and
   you gladly would have filled your belly with the husks that swine did
   eat.

   A trough was then far more your portion than a cup. Many of us
   recollect with shame and confusion of face, to what excess of riot we
   ran. And wonderful, indeed, it is that the cup of a holy God should be
   at our lips! In many cases blasphemy defiled the lips and
   lasciviousness polluted the body. But we are washed, renewed,
   sanctified, by God's Divine Grace, and now, with rags removed and a
   fair white robe girt about our loins, we are permitted to sit at the
   table of the banquet where music and dancing make glad the heart and
   the wines on the lees well-refined refresh the guests.

   From such need to such abundance, from such shame to such honor, what a
   change! Our portion is no longer that of the forlorn or the degraded.
   We do not pine in despair or wallow in pollution, but we sit as
   children at the table, drinking with joy from our allotted cup.
   Remember too, Beloved, and the contrast will, I hope, inflame your
   gratitude, that another cup was once set at our place at the table and
   of it we should have been compelled to drink had it not been for the
   interposition of the Surety of the Covenant.

   That deep and direful cup of the Lord's wrath, into which He wrings out
   the wormwood and the gall till its bitterness is beyond degree, was
   once ours. Of that black cup you and I must have been made to drink
   forever and ever-- for we could never have emptied it--but must
   eternally have been filled with the horror and amazement which are its
   dregs. Now, as we showed you last Lord's-Day morning [CHRIST MADE A
   CURSE FOR US, NO. 873] our Divine Redeemer has drained that cup on our
   behalf, for He was made a curse for us and now we have to bless God
   that our portion is not with the wicked whom the Lord shall destroy,
   but with the chosen whom the Lord accepts in the Beloved.

   Ours is not the cap of damnation, but the cup of salvation--not the
   vial of wrath, but the flagon of consolation. We have nothing to do
   with that cup, the dregs whereof "all the wicked of the earth shall
   wring them out and drink them," but ours is a golden goblet which to
   the last drop is full of bliss and immortality. From the depths of
   condemnation to our present standing in the heavenly places in Christ
   Jesus, what a change! As we think of the portion of our inheritance
   this morning, how shall we sufficiently admire that amazing love which
   brought us from the jaws of gaping Hell and set our standing on a rock
   at the very gates of Heaven?

   To make this cup, which represents our present privileged position,
   stand out yet more brightly before you, let me now speak of it at
   length. The intention of the Psalmist was to picture himself as a
   favored guest in the house of the Lord. When you are entertained in an
   Oriental house, a portion of meat is served out for you which
   constitutes your mess or portion. To highly esteemed and welcomed
   guests, a further honor is given--oil is poured upon the head. And yet
   further, a certain cup is placed before the favored one containing the
   portion which he is to drink.

   Now David felt himself to be not a beggar knocking at the door of
   mercy, receiving a crust and a sip by the way, but he felt that he had
   been received by the great Master of the feast and permitted to sit
   down to receive the supply of all his necessities and, what was more,
   to receive of the luxuries of the feast as one who was thoroughly and
   heartily welcomed to all that was provided. Brothers and Sisters, a
   little while ago you and I were among the blind and the halt and the
   lame lurking in the hedges and the highways, far off from the heavenly
   banquet--but Eternal Mercy has brought us, by living faith, to sit down
   at the feast which Mercy has prepared.

   This day ours is the lot of those who are saved! Ours is a portion with
   the justified! We sit at the table, this day, with Abraham, with Isaac
   and with Jacob--having been made children and heirs of God, even as
   they were. We participate in the pardon, the justification and the
   security which God gave to his saints in the olden times and which
   Christ clearly revealed to His Apostles in the latter days. All
   heavenly things are ours! We are denied none of the luxuries of the
   banquet of mercy. Whatever belonged to any child of God belongs to us!
   Whatever was enjoyed by the brightest of the saints may be enjoyed by
   us, if by faith we are sitting at the table of Divine Grace!

   This day we are no more strangers and foreigners, no more excluded and
   shut out--we are brought near by the blood of Jesus and our portion
   today is like that of the ewe lamb which ate of its master's bread and
   drank from his cup. In David's use of the term, "cup," far more is
   included, for I take it he refers to accepted worship. In some of the
   rites of the Jewish law, you will remember that after the sacrifice the
   worshippers and the priest together sat down and partook of the
   remainder of the thank offering. God had received His portion of the
   meat offering. Then the drink offering was poured or laid upon the
   altar, and then the worshipper, himself, in token of God's acceptance,
   was permitted to eat and drink of the same.

   Now, Beloved, at this moment every Believer here is accepted in the
   Beloved. That precious Christ, who has satisfied God on our behalf, has
   now become our satisfaction, too. He who offered Himself to God an
   offering of a sweet smell, has become to us our meat, indeed, and our
   drink, indeed--what God feeds upon, we feed upon, too. As He feels an
   intense satisfaction in the life, and work and death of His dear Son,
   we find the very same kind of satisfaction after our measure and
   degree. Is it not most delightful to think that it is a part of my
   life's privilege, as a child of God, to live as an accepted worshipper,
   dear to the heart of God? It is a high joy to know that my prayers and
   praises, my soul's high desires to honor her God, her sighs, her tears
   and her works, are all accepted of God. Oh, greatly blessed is that
   life which is thus honored! He has made us priests unto God and we
   drink from the bowls before the altar with holy joy and reverent
   exultation.

   But by the cup was meant yet more than loving entertainment and
   sacrificial acceptance, for the Psalmist, in the 116th Psalm, at the
   13th verse, speaks of taking the "cup of salvation." Such a heavenly
   cup belongs to every Believer throughout the world! It is a part of
   your heritage this day, Beloved, that your sins are forgiven. That you
   are justified through the righteousness of Christ. That you are saved
   from the wrath of God--so saved as to be preserved in future and to be
   ultimately brought into the kingdom and the Glory. You have, at this
   hour, salvation as your portion! Some of God's people only hope that
   they are saved. Such can scarcely sing that their cup runs over. Others
   conceive that they are saved for the present, but are not thereby saved
   eternally.

   Oh, but those who have come to know that God never plays fast and loose
   with us! That if He has saved us once, our salvation is secured beyond
   all risk. That the love of God is everlasting love and cannot be
   removed. That the blood of Jesus Christ does not in part redeem, but
   effectually redeems--those, I say, who have come to understand the
   fullness, the infinity, the immutability, the eternity, of the mercies
   of God in Christ Jesus--those are they who can rejoice in an
   overflowing cup! The lines have fallen unto them in pleasant places and
   they have a goodly heritage. The lot of the saved is a lot to be
   envied--theirs is a right royal heritage.

   Jeremiah further mentions a "cup of consolation," and that cup of
   consolation, O Believer, is also yours this morning! You have your
   trials, but, oh, what a comfort to know that your trials work your
   lasting good! You are vexed with adversities, but what bliss to learn
   that they last but for a moment and end in eternal Glory! We mind not
   the black clods of trouble when we learn that light is sown in them for
   the righteous. It is true we are sometimes, if need be, in heaviness
   through manifold temptations, but our mourning ends at morning. Our
   dark nights will soon be ended and then a daylight comes of which the
   sun shall go down no more forever.

   The cup of comforts, which the Holy Spirit fills and brings to us, is
   so rich, so suitable, so operative upon our nature that we may well
   rejoice as we think of it this morning. The saint's lot has its blacks,
   but it has also its whites. Drops of wormwood are ours, but milk and
   honey are not denied us. We mourn at Marah, but we sing at Elim. Bochim
   still stands, but Bethel is ours, too. The lion roars, but the
   turtledove also yields her cheering note. Clouds are above us, but the
   stars smile on us. Our sea has its ebbs, but, by turns, it comes to the
   flood. Winters bluster and freeze, but summer comes soon and blossoms
   with merry joys, and autumn follows with its mellowness. We are cast
   down, but we are not destroyed--no, we are not even injured--for if for
   a little time we seem to be losers by our castings down, we before long
   discover our greater gain.

   Happy are the people that are in such a case, yes, blessed are the
   people whose God is the Lord. The cup of tried David is far better than
   that of proud Belshazzar. None are so comforted as those to whom the
   Holy Spirit is Comforter. Still let us dwell for a minute or two longer
   upon the portion of the righteous. We read in the New Testament of the
   "cup of blessing," and although that alludes to the cup at the Lord's
   Supper, yet without wresting the words, we may say that the whole
   portion of God's saints is a cup of blessing. You are blessed in all
   respects, Believer.

   As last Sabbath morning it was our painful duty to remind the
   unconverted that they were cursed everywhere--in basket and in store,
   in their home and abroad, in all that they had and did--so now with joy
   we remind you that those who love the Lord are blessed in all respects!
   Their cup, that is to say, their lot in life, is all blessing. Even
   that which you like least is filled with blessing. You are blessed by
   every morning's sun--its beams speak benediction. You are blessed with
   every setting sun--the darkness is but a curtain to screen your rest.
   You are blessed in your poverty--contentment shall cheer you. You are
   blessed in your abundance--Grace shall consecrate it. Every way you are
   blessed. Your cup has not a single drop in it from the surface to the
   bottom but what is sweetened with the unchanging love of your Divine
   Father.

   The cup of our life is, moreover, a cup of fellowship. The whole of a
   Christian's life ought to be fellowship with Jesus. What the cup is at
   the Lord's Table, that our entire life should be. If we suffer, we
   suffer with Christ. If we rejoice, we

   should rejoice with Him. Bodily pain should help us to understand the
   Cross and mental depression should make us apt scholars at
   Gethsemane--while the high joys which our soul sometimes partakes of
   should conduct us to Tabor and lead us upward even to the place where
   the Conqueror sits high aloft on His Father's Throne. It is a great
   blessing to a child of God, whatever happens to him, if he can see it
   overruled to the conducting of him in the footsteps of his Master into
   fellowship with his Covenant Head.

   I shall notice but one more matter about this cup, though, indeed, the
   phrase seems to me to be rich even to excessiveness with suggestions
   for thought. Our life cup is distinctly connected with the Covenant.
   "This cup," said the Lord at the table, "is the New Covenant," and so
   the whole of life which is compared in our text to a cup, manifests the
   Covenant faithfulness of God. Nothing happens to a child of God but
   what was in the Covenant. The whole of Christian life is studded with
   God's fulfillment of the Covenant. You have your troubles, but it was
   promised that you should have them. In your sadness you are revived
   with consolation, for it was promised you that God would set the bow in
   the cloud that you might look upon it and see that He was faithful,
   still.

   Oh yes, if you did but know it, the smallest event of your history as
   well as the largest incident in your biography-- all would fit together
   like pieces of mosaic and when all fitted together you would read
   clearly, "Covenant love and Covenant faithfulness." To come back to our
   simile, all the wine of the cup of human life is to the Believer warm
   with the spices of eternal faithfulness. There is not a single drop in
   all the contents which is not aromatic with the unchangeable, immutable
   veracity and faithfulness of our Covenant God. Will you, dear Hearers,
   put these things together, which I have poured from the cornucopia of
   the text?

   Look upon the whole of your life, O Christian, in that light now cast
   upon it--for life is a very sacred thing with us, and though the many
   say death is a very solemn thing--we have learned that life is equally
   so. Regard a Christian's life as sublime--reaching far beyond the level
   of the unbeliever's barren existence--because the spiritual is
   elevated, pure, heavenly. It is God in man struggling with Satan--the
   Christ of God fighting with evil. Heaven and Hell in the Believer's
   life find a battlefield where hottest warfare rages. Our life in Christ
   is a sublime thing, a thing that angels look down upon with wonder and
   astonishment. The cup which is set on our Master's table for us is no
   common cup--it is a celestial chalice for solemnity. It is a royal bowl
   for dignity--a golden cup for richness.

   The portion of every Believer, when it shall be seen by clearer eyes
   and understood by loftier intellects, will be perfectly amazing in its
   rare displays of the loving kindness and faithfulness of God!

   II. Secondly, I invite every Believer here to REJOICE IN THE ABUNDANCE
   OF HIS PRIVILEGE. "My cup runs over." Two or three words about this as
   far as it may relate to temporals. A small number of Believers are
   entrusted with much of this world's goods--their cup runs over with
   wealth. Here is cause for thankfulness, for God has never taught us to
   deprecate riches, nor to wring our hands in sorrow if they happen to
   fall to our lot. Be thankful to the bounteous Lord for your abundance!

   At the same time, here is a note of danger. Our Lord Jesus once said
   and He has never retracted the saying, "It is easier for a camel to go
   through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the
   kingdom of God." That is to say, in plain language, it is impossible
   for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of Heaven, unless something
   more than ordinary is done. Our Lord has told us, however, that while
   it is impossible with man, it is possible with God--and we rejoice to
   constantly find a slender line of these camels going through needles'
   eyes. Rich men are led into the kingdom of Heaven--the human
   impossibility becomes Divine fact! Still, riches are no small hindrance
   to those who would run in the ways of the Truth of God.

   The danger is lest these worldly goods should become our gods--lest we
   should set too great store by them. Andrew Fuller one day went into a
   bullion merchant's and was shown a mass of gold. Taking it into his
   hand, he very suggestively remarked, "How much better it is to hold it
   in your hand than to have it in your heart!" Gold in the hand will not
   hurt you, but gold in the heart will destroy you! Not long ago, a
   burglar, as you will remember, escaping from a policeman, leaped into
   the Regent's Canal and was drowned--drowned by the weight of the silver
   which he had plundered! How many there are who have made a god of their
   wealth and in hastening after riches have been drowned by the weight of
   their worldly substance!

   Notice a fly when it alights upon a dish of honey. If it just sips a
   little and away, it is fed and is the better for its meal. But if it
   lingers to eat again and again, it slides into the honey, it is
   bedaubed--it cannot fly--it is rolling in the mass of the honey to its
   own destruction. If God makes your cup run over, beware lest you
   perish, as too many have done through turning the blessing into a
   curse. If your cup runs over, take care to use what God has given you
   for His Glory.

   There is a responsibility attached to wealth which some do not seem to
   realize. Among our great men, how few use money as they should! Their
   gifts are nothing in proportion to their possessions.

   Alas, things are even worse than this with some who are miscalled
   honorable and noble. Our hereditary legislators are some of them a
   dishonor to their ancient houses and a disgrace to the peerage from
   which they ought to be ignominiously expelled. What right have gamblers
   to be making laws? How shall we trust those with the affairs of the
   nation who bring themselves down to poverty by their gambling and set
   an example which the poorest peasant might well scorn to follow? God
   will visit our land for this! Wickedness reigns in high places and
   there the reckoning will begin. Would to God that our great men would
   remember that they are responsible and that wealth is not given them to
   lavish upon their passions, but to employ for God and for the common
   cause. If your cup runs over, call the poor to catch the drops and give
   an extra spill that they may have the more!

   Moreover, the Church of God needs your substance. Thank God we can,
   some of us, say with regard to our Churches, there is not so much a
   lack of Divine Grace, or a need of men, or of anything as of the
   financial means--and the gold and the silver are somewhere. God has
   given it to His Church--it is somewhere. But there are very many Church
   members who hold back the wealth which they ought to consecrate to the
   cause of God--and if they do this, their running-over cup will witness
   to their judgment and will not be to their honor and glory in the day
   when God shall judge the world in righteousness by Jesus Christ!

   But I do not intend to dwell on that. I shall speak rather of
   spirituals. I want each Believer here now to look at his lot in a
   spiritual light and in it to feel that his cup is running over. Our cup
   overflows because of the infinite extent of the goodness itself which
   God has bestowed. The spiritually good things which God has given to us
   are so many that we never can contain them all! If the capacity of our
   mind could be enlarged a thousand-fold, yet such are the exceeding
   riches of God's Christ that we never could contain all that God has
   laid up in Him as the portion of His people. Think for a minute--the
   Lord God has given to every Believer here, a whole Christ, a full
   Christ, an everlasting Christ, an exalted Christ--to be his eternal
   portion!

   Now who can hold the whole of Christ? Behold His matchless Godhead, His
   immaculate Manhood, His power, His wisdom, His beauty, His Grace! Look
   at His works, His life of innocence, His death of disinterested
   affection, His triumph over Hell and the grave! Look at His Second
   Coming and the splendors of His millennial reign. Now all these belong
   to us if we belong to God. And how shall we compass them all? Must not
   our cup of necessity run over? Remember next that God has made with
   every one of you who love Him, even the poorest and the weakest, a
   Covenant of Grace of which the beginning is beyond all human doubt--for
   that Covenant was made before the earth was--a Covenant which is
   ordered in all things and sure and which will never run out because it
   is the Everlasting Covenant and will stand as long as eternity endures.

   In that Covenant all things are yours! God has given over to you even
   Himself! "I will be their God and they shall be My people." God the
   Father is yours! God the Son is yours! God the Holy Spirit is yours!
   Oh, what can you say if all this is yours? Your soul cannot hold them
   all, your cup must run over! Look again, Beloved, at the promises which
   are given us in holy Scripture. Why, any one promise is more than
   enough for us. "I will never leave you nor forsake you." Why, there is
   a meal for a man for the next 12 months if he will never read another
   verse. "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have
   compassion on the son of her womb? Yes, they may forget, yet will I not
   forget you. Behold, I have engraved you upon the palms of My hands."

   Oh, do but let that lie under your tongue like a wafer made with honey!
   Take but one such promise and you shall be like Ruth, who did eat and
   was satisfied, "and left"--for you cannot receive it all. But then take
   the range of the promises from Genesis to Revelation. How is this Book,
   like a beehive, filled with 10,000 cells and every cell distilling
   virgin honey such as enlightens the eyes of the man that tastes of it!
   Oh, who can hold the fullness of the promise? Who can contain all the
   words which the Holy Spirit has written, full of consolation to the
   mourning children of God? But suppose you could, by some enlarged
   capacity, grasp all the promises? Yet, Beloved, how would you be able
   to receive God Himself, and yet He is yours! The Infinite God is the
   portion of the faithful!

   You have enjoyed, sometimes, the visits of the Holy Spirit. You know
   what it means for the Holy Spirit to be at work in your soul. Now, I am
   sure you will bear witness that at such times you have been conscious
   of the narrowness of your soul. You have felt, "O that I could hold my
   God. This sweet love of His, of which I am now conscious, is more than
   a match for me. Holy Spirit, how can You come to dwell with such a poor
   one as I am? I am but a bush and You a fire, and matched with You I am
   like a glowing, burning bush. How can I bear such Glory? I tremble lest
   I am consumed with over excess of bliss and love."

   Many of God's saints have been ready to die while they have had vivid
   impressions of the love of God and of the Glory which God had prepared
   for His elect. Their joy has been too great! One heart could not
   palpitate fast enough! One soul could not hold one 10th of the bliss
   which God was pleased to pour into it! By reason, then, of the
   greatness of the blessings themselves and the infinity of their number,
   it often happens that our cup runs over. O you that are sad today and
   yet Believers. You who are poverty-stricken today, and yet heirs of all
   this wealth! I would lovingly chide you and ask how you can thirst when
   your cup can no more contain all that God provides for you than the
   hollow of an infant's hand can hold the wide, wide sea?

   Furthermore, does not our cup often run over because of our sinful
   contractions of its capacity? I have already hinted at the necessary
   narrowness of our capacity because we are mortal. But how often you and
   I fill up our soul with carnal joys and cares and then if God's love
   does come into us, it must soon run over, for there is so little room!
   How often, too, are we sadly straitened in our longings after Divine
   things, so that when they come to us we have not room enough to receive
   them! I must confess that I have enjoyed more of God than my desires
   have ever aspired after. Oh, what stinted desires we have! He has said,
   "Open your mouth wide and I will fill it." But we scarcely open our
   mouths at all. Men who are eager after wealth stretch their arms like
   seas to grasp in all the shore--but we win a little of Divine Grace and
   then we sit down basely content.

   We have not the consecrated ambition we ought to have. O that our
   desires were like the horseleech, so that concerning God they should
   always cry, "Give, give." O that we never felt we had attained, were
   always dissatisfied with ourselves, seeking to do more, to know more,
   to love more, to kill self more and to be more consecrated to our dear
   Lord! Oh, our flat desires! I have heard that in the old times in
   England, on Christmas morning, the poor villagers were allowed to call
   at the house of the lord of the manor, each one with his basin, which
   it was the custom to fill to the brim. I guarantee you the basins grew
   sensibly larger every year, till one would think they had rather
   brought the bushel measure from the barn than the basin from the
   cupboard!

   It was wise of the poor folk, for His Lordship could not do less than
   fill whatever they brought. Alas, we are not so wise! We rather lessen
   our vessels than increase their size. You have not because you ask not,
   or because you ask amiss. God has done exceeding abundantly above what
   we have asked, or even thought. Mind how you read that text, it does
   not say, "above what we can ask"--no, no! We can ask for what we will
   and can think of boundless things and God can make us think of as great
   things as He can do, but above what we have asked, or think, God
   frequently gives to us. Beloved, I will now ask you a question. How
   would it be with you if God had filled your cup in proportion to your
   faith? How much would you have had in your cup?

   Alas, I lament to say, while my God has never once failed me, but has
   been very faithful, constantly faithful, abundantly and richly
   faithful, yet my poor faith, if it were unusually tried, would hardly
   be found to His honor and Glory, unless He should be pleased to greatly
   enlarge and graciously to sustain it. Sad that we should have to make
   such a confession, but we do, with shame. Is not that the confession
   many of us must make? If it were only to us according to our faith and
   God did not, in Sovereignty, step beyond His own rule in the kingdom,
   how poor should we be, measured by our faith! Our cup runs over,
   indeed.

   Suppose, my Brethren, our portion were to be measured by the returns
   that we have ever made to God for mercies we have enjoyed? Ah, should
   not we be starved from this day forth? What have I done for Him that
   died to save my wretched soul? Will you dare turn to the page in which
   memory records the service you have rendered to your Lord in
   thankfulness for His great love--ah, cover it up, it is not worth
   remembering. You have taught a child or two, you have preached to a
   congregation, you have offered a few prayers. Oh, our teaching, how
   feeble! Our preaching, how little in earnest! Our praying, how
   heartless! Our giving, how scant and how grudging! Oh, how little are
   our returns compared with what we owe to Him from whom we have received
   all we possess! We are, indeed, unprofitable servants.

   If our portion of meat were measured out according to our labor and
   devotion, long fasts would be our lot and feast days would be few and
   far between. But the Lord's thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are
   His ways our ways, for such is the abundance of His forgiveness and
   longsuffering that our cup still runs over. I shall only detain you
   with one more remark on this point. Note the supreme excellence of
   every blessing which God has given, for this tends to make the cup
   overflow. Every Covenant mercy which the child of God enjoys has this
   distinguished excellence in it--that it is eternal. The sinner's best
   lot is only for a time. Ours, if it were slender, would far exceed the
   sinner's, because it lasts forever! Better that a man have but a
   shilling a day forever, than that he have a gold piece but once in his
   life, which, being spent, he has no more.

   If the Lord pardons you, it is forever. If He adopts you, it is
   forever. If He accepts you, it is forever. If He saves you, it is
   forever! There is eternity set as a Divine stamp upon every mercy.
   Believer, does not this make your cup run over, to think that
   everlasting love is yours? Moreover, your portion, whatever it may be,
   is received direct from God. Ishmael was sent into the desert with a
   bottle, but the bottle dried up, and Ishmael was thirsty. But we read
   of Isaac that he lived by the well Lahai-roi. There was always an
   abundance for Isaac, for he lived by the well. You have seen a rustic
   lad lie down at full length at the springhead on a summer's day and
   drink--behold in him a picture of the Believer's life.

   The saint does not drink of the stream far down in the valley, warmed
   by the world's sun and mired by the world's sin. He drinks at the
   wellhead where the current leaps up all cool and living from the great
   deep. There is another quality about the Sovereign gifts of Grace--they
   come to us in living union with Christ. If I get a mercy apart from
   Christ, it is like a rose plucked from the bush--it delights me with
   its perfume and appearance for an hour, but soon it withers and I put
   it away. But a spiritual mercy is like a living rose on the bush--it
   blooms and lasts and we smell it again and again and again. Our
   blessings are dear, indeed, as they come to us through Christ Jesus.

   And what is best of all, every one of these blessings in the Covenant
   are best to us because they are brought home to the heart by the Holy
   Spirit. You know a table may be well spread and yet a man may not be
   satisfied because he has no appetite, or he cannot reach the food. But
   the Holy Spirit has a way of making our cup run over because He gives
   us an appetite--He brings the food to us and helps us to receive it. He
   enables us to digest it and inwardly to be satisfied as with marrow and
   fatness. The mercies of the Infinite are the more choice because the
   Holy Spirit understands how to break the bread for us and feed us. He
   makes us to lie down in green pastures.

   We would fumble with mercies and spoil them like bad cooks that spoil
   good meat--but the Holy Spirit knows how to bring up the meat ready
   dressed for us and to give us the appetite and to make us feed upon His
   dainties with spiritual palates and refined tastes.

   IV. Now to close, I call upon those who have this cup to RESOLVE ON
   SUITABLE ACTION, seeing that this is their position, "My cup runs over,
   then let me, at any rate, drink all I can. If I cannot drink it all as
   it flows away, let me get all I can." "Drink," said the spouse, "yes,
   drink abundantly, O my Beloved." The Master's message at the communion
   table always is, "Take, eat!" And again, "Drink, drink all of it."

   Oftentimes, when the Lord says to us, "Seek My face," we answer, "But,
   Lord, I am unworthy to do so." The proper answer is, "Your face, Lord,
   will I seek." If you bring a man to a table and he is not hungry, you
   tell him to eat, but he may be bashful and he does not like to help and
   cut and carve for himself, and he takes but little. I guarantee you,
   however, if his hunger becomes very vehement, he will not wait for two
   permissions--he will cut and carve for himself after a mighty rate! O
   that our spiritual hunger were greater, for Christ never thinks
   believing sinners presumptuous in applying the promises, or laying hold
   upon the provisions of Divine Grace!

   The worst form of presumption is not to take what Christ offers. I know
   some in this House, today, who are very presumptuous, for they might
   have peace, but they will not. God has provided comfort for them, but
   they will not receive it, and they write bitter things against
   themselves. Month after month and week after week their cup runs over
   and yet they do not drink. There are promises exactly suitable to their
   case, but they think they are too humble to drink. It is not so, it is
   always proud humility--wicked, base, bastard humility--rank pride, that
   makes us think Christ is unwilling to forgive, or accept, or bless us.
   O dear Heart, never be hungry for lack of will to come and take! Let
   God's invitations be your persuasions. Let His precepts to believe be
   ac