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        Title: Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 20: 1874
   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
     __________________________________________________________________

Life More Abundant

   (No. 1150)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JANUARY 4, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "I am come that they might ha ve life, and that they might have it more
   abundantly." John 10:10.

   "THE thief comes not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy."
   False teachers, whatever their professions, seriously injure and
   endanger the souls of men and in the end cause their destruction. Their
   selfish ends can only be answered by the ruin of their dupes. The Lord
   Jesus, the true Teacher of men, causes injury to none, and brings death
   to no man's door. His teaching is full of goodness, kindness and love.
   It works most effectually for human happiness and benefit. Error is
   deadly. The Truth of God is life-giving. The coming of the old serpent
   worked our death. The Advent of the woman's Seed has brought us life.
   We shall omit all preface and ask you to note that, according to the
   text, Jesus Christ is come, first, that His people may have life. And,
   secondly, that where life is already given it may be enjoyed more
   abundantly.

   I. The first Truth is that JESUS CHRIST HAS COME THAT MEN MAY HAVE
   LIFE. I will not dwell upon the thought that even the prolonged natural
   life of the sinner is due, in a large measure, to the coming of Christ.
   That barren tree would not stand so long in the garden of life if it
   were not that the dresser of the vineyard intercedes and cries, "Spare
   it yet another year, until I dig about it and fertilize it." The
   interposition of the Mediator accounts for the lengthened lives of
   gross offenders whose crimes tax the long-suffering of Heaven. If the
   prayers of our great Intercessor should cease for a single hour, the
   ungodly among mankind would, perhaps, sink down quickly into Hell, as
   Korah, Dathan and Abiram did when the Lord's anger broke forth upon
   them.

   That, however, is not the drift of the text. Life, in the sense of
   pardon and deliverance from the death penalty, is a great result of
   Christ's coming. All men in their natural condition are under sentence
   of death, for they have sinned, and they must be shortly taken to the
   place of execution, there to suffer the full penalty of the second
   death. If any of us are delivered at this time from the sentence of
   death and have now the promise of the crown of life, we owe the change
   to the coming of the Redeemer to be a Sacrifice for our sins. Every man
   among us must go down to the endless death unless, through Him who came
   to earth and hung upon the tree as the sinner's Substitute, we obtain
   full remission for all offenses--and the verdict of life instead of
   death. There is life in a look at Jesus, but apart from Him, the sons
   of Adam are under sentence of death.

   Moreover, we are all, by nature, "dead in trespasses and sins." In the
   day when our first parents broke the Law, they died spiritually, and
   all of us died in them. And now, today, apart from Christ, we are all
   dead to spiritual things, being devoid of that living Spirit which
   enables us to have communion with God and to understand and enjoy
   spiritual things. All men are by nature without the Spirit which
   quickens to the highest form of life. Unregenerate men have physical
   life and mental life, but spiritual life they have not--nor will they
   ever have it except as Jesus gives it to them. The Spirit of God goes
   forth according to the Divine will and implants in us a living and
   incorruptible seed which is akin to the Divine Nature. He confers on us
   a new life, by virtue of which we live in the realm of spiritual
   things, comprehend spiritual teachings, seek spiritual objects and are
   alive unto God, who is a Spirit.

   No one among us has any life of this kind by birth, neither can it be
   bestowed upon us by ceremonial rites, nor obtained by human merit. The
   dead cannot rise to life except by miracle--neither can man rise to
   spiritual life except by the working of the Spirit of God upon him, for
   it is He, alone, who can quicken us. Christ Jesus has come to call us
   from the graves of sin. Many have already heard His voice and live.
   This spiritual life is the same life which will be continued and
   perfected in Heaven. We shall not, when we rise again from the grave,
   obtain a life which we do not possess on earth--we must be alive unto
   God here or take our places among those whose worm dies not and whose
   fire is not quenched.

   There beats within the Believer's heart this day the same life which
   shall enjoy the fullness of joy in the Divine Presence. If you have
   only looked to Jesus a few minutes ago, yet there is now in your heart
   the blessed life. The incorruptible seed is sown in you which lives and
   abides forever. The heavenly life is within you and this Jesus Christ
   came to bestow upon us. The Truth that Jesus is the life-giver is clear
   enough in the text and it leads to the following practical
   reflection--life for your soul is only to be had in Jesus. If, then,
   you are, this day, seeking salvation, you are instructed as to the only
   source of it!

   Spiritual life is not the result of working--how can the dead work for
   life? Must they not be quickened, first, and then will they not rather
   work from life than for life? Life is a gift and its bestowal upon any
   man must be the act of God. The Gospel preaches life by Jesus Christ.
   Sinner, see where you must look! You are wholly dependent upon the
   quickening voice of Him who is the Resurrection and the Life. "This,"
   says one, "is very discouraging to us." It is intended to be! It is
   kindness to discourage men when they are acting upon wrong principles.
   As long as you think that your salvation can be effected by your own
   efforts, or merits, or anything else that can arise out of yourself,
   you are on the wrong track--and it is our duty to discourage you.

   The way to life lies in the opposite direction. You must look right
   away from yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ! You must rely upon what He
   has done and not upon what you can do. And you must have respect not to
   what you can work in yourself, but to what He can work in you. Remember
   that God's declaration is that, "Whoever believes in Jesus has
   everlasting life." If, therefore, you are enabled to come and cast
   yourselves upon the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ, you have
   that eternal life immediately--which all your prayers, tears,
   repentance, church-going, chapel-going and sacraments could never bring
   to you!

   Jesus can give it to you freely at this moment, but you cannot work it
   in yourself. You may imitate it and deceive yourself. You may garnish
   the corpse and make it seem as though it were alive--and you can
   galvanize it into a spasmodic motion--but life is a Divine fire and you
   can not steal the flame, or kindle it for yourself! It belongs to God,
   alone, to make alive, and therefore I charge you look alone to God in
   Christ Jesus! Christ has come that we may have life! If we could have
   obtained life without His coming, why did He need to come? If life
   could come to sinners apart from the Cross, why nail the Lord of Glory
   to the shameful tree? Why Your bleeding wounds, Immanuel, if life could
   come by some other door?

   Yet, further, why did the Spirit of God descend at Pentecost, and why
   does He still abide among men if they can be quickened without Him? If
   life is to be obtained apart from the Holy Spirit, to what end does He
   work in the human heart? The bleeding Savior and the indwelling Spirit
   are convincing proofs that our life it not from ourselves, but from
   above. Away, then, from yourself, O Trembler! Seek not the living among
   the dead! Search not in the sepulcher of self for the Divine Life. The
   life of men is in yonder Savior and whoever believes in Him shall never
   die!

   II. But we intend to spend the most of our time at this time upon the
   second Truth of God, namely, that JESUS HAS

   COME THAT THOSE TO WHOM HE HAS GIVEN LIFE MAY HAVE IT MORE ABUNDANTLY.
   Life is a matter of

   degrees. Some have life, but it flickers like a dying candle and is
   indistinct as the fire in the smoking flax. Others are full of life and
   are bright and vehement, like the fire upon the blacksmith's forge when
   the bellows are in full blast. Christ has come that His people may have
   life in all its fullness.

   Increase of life may be seen in several ways. It may be seen in
   healing. A man lies sick upon his bed--he is alive, but he can hardly
   move a limb--he is helplessly dependent upon those around him. His life
   is in him, but how little is its power! Now, if that man recovers,
   rises from his bed and takes his place in the world's battle, it is
   evident that he has life more abundantly than in his illness! Even thus
   there are sick Christians of whom we need to say, "Strengthen you the
   weak hands and confirm the feeble knees." Their spiritual constitution
   is weak, they do but little. When the Lord Jesus restores them,
   strengthens their faith, brightens their hope and makes them healthy,
   then they not only have life, but they have it yet more abundantly!

   Our Lord desires to have us in spiritual health. He has for that end
   become the Physician of our souls. He heals all our diseases and is the
   health of our countenance. A person may, however, be in health and yet
   you may desire he had more life. Yonder little child, for instance, is
   in perfect health, but as yet it cannot run alone. Put it upon the
   ground, it totters a little way, and is ready to fall. Those bones must
   harden, those muscles must gather strength. When the boy becomes a man,
   he will have life more abundantly than when he was a babe. We grow in
   Divine Grace, we advance in

   knowledge, in experience, in confidence and in conformity to the image
   of our Lord. From babes in Christ Jesus we advance to young men. And
   from young men we become fathers in the Church. Jesus would have us
   grow. This is one of the designs of His coming and thus do we possess
   life more abundantly.

   A person might, however, have both health and growth, and yet enjoy a
   stinted measure of life. Suppose he is confined as a prisoner in a
   narrow cell where chains and granite walls perpetually bound his
   motions--can you call his existence, life? Might it not be accurate to
   speak of him as dead while he lives and to describe his dungeon as a
   living tomb? Can that be life which is forbidden pure air which is the
   poorest man's estate? Denied the sun which shines for all that breathe?
   He lives, for he consumes that piece of dry bread and empties the
   pitcher placed daily upon the stone floor, but in the truest sense he
   is shut out from life, for he is denied liberty. When the poor prisoner
   once more climbs the hill, crosses the ocean's wave and wanders where
   he will, he will gratefully know what it is to have life more
   abundantly.

   Now, mark well that if the Son of God shall make you free, you shall be
   free, indeed, and in that freedom find life sparkling, flashing and
   overflowing like the streams of a fountain! To be under bondage through
   fear of death is scarcely life. To be continually fretted with
   mistrusts and receive the spirit of bondage, again, to fear, genders
   unto death. But it is truly life to be able to cry, "You have loosed my
   bonds!" Yet I can suppose a man at liberty and in health who might have
   still more abundant life. He is extremely poor. He may wander where he
   wills, it is true, but no foot of ground can he call his own. He may
   live where he chooses, if he can live, but he has scarcely bread for
   his body, covering for his limbs, or shelter from the night. He is
   extremely poor.

   The poor man works from before the sun proclaims the morning till far
   into the night to earn a miserable pittance. This toil is exacting to
   the last degree and his remuneration barely sufficient to provide
   necessities. He can scarcely keep body and soul together. Is this life?
   It is almost a sarcasm to name it so! When we have met with persons
   compelled to sleep upon the bare floor, or who have for many hours been
   without a morsel to eat, we have said, "These poor creatures exist, but
   they do not live." This saying is true. And so, sometimes, there are
   Believers who rather exist than live. They are starving. They do not
   feed upon the promises. They do not enjoy the rich things which Christ
   has stored up in the Covenant of Grace. When the Lord Jesus enables
   them to partake of the "fat things full of marrow," and the wines on
   the lees well-refined, then they not only have life, but they have it
   "more abundantly."

   I can still suppose a person who is free, in health and in the
   enjoyment of abundance, who needs more life. He is mean and despised--a
   pariah and a castaway. He has none to love him or look up to him with
   respect. He does not even respect himself! He slinks along as if the
   mark of Cain were upon him. He has forgotten hope and bid farewell to
   love. You pity such a man every time you think of him. To possess the
   love and esteem of our fellows is necessary if we would live. When
   under conviction of sin a man has felt himself to be less than nothing,
   a sinner unworthy to lift his eyes to Heaven, a leper fit to be shut up
   among the unclean, or as a dead man, forgotten and out of mind--then, I
   tell you by experience--he finds it a mighty addition to his life when
   the Lord Jesus lifts him up from the dunghill and puts him among
   princes, even the princes of His people!

   Brothers and Sisters, to know that you are no longer a slave, but a
   son, an heir of Heaven, a joint heir with Jesus Christ for whom the
   saints are companions and to whom the angels are servitors--this is to
   have life more abundantly! Is it not? I have thus hastily hinted at
   some of the points in which increased life reveals itself. I will now
   set forth the same subject in another way. I would lay before you seven
   particulars in which Christians should seek after more abundant life.
   First, let them desire more stamina. An embankment is to be thrown up,
   or a cutting to be dug out. You need laborers. Here are your spades,
   your picks and your wheelbarrows--only men are required. Look, a number
   of persons offer themselves for hire. They are very thin, they have
   singularly bright eyes, sunken cheeks and hollow churchyard coughs--
   they are a choice company from the Consumptive Hospital!

   Will you hire them? Why do you look so dubious? These men have life.
   "Oh, yes," you say, "but I wish they had it more abundantly--they
   cannot do such work as I have to offer them." We must send these poor
   men away, they must go to the doctor and be taken care of. Look
   yonder--another band of rough, stalwart fellows! These men will suit
   your purpose. Look at their ruddy faces, their broad shoulders, their
   mighty limbs--hand them the picks and the spades and the barrows and
   you will see what British workers can do! What is the difference
   between the two sets of men--these laborers and those consumptives?

   Why the difference lies in the presence or absence of stamina in their
   constitutions! There is a something--we cannot exactly say what it is,
   perhaps the physician himself cannot put his finger upon it--but the
   one set of men without it are weak, and the others with it are full of
   force! Our Lord Jesus has come that, in a spiritual sense, we may have
   stamina, may have a well-founded, well-furnished, well-established,
   confirmed and vigorous life so that we may be capable of arduous
   service and powerful action! He would have us walk without weariness
   and run without fainting. He would have us quit ourselves like men and
   be strong.

   Beloved, do you not see how great a difference there is between some
   Christian men and others? Are not some of them spiritual invalids? They
   believe, but their favorite prayer is, "Lord, help our unbelief!" They
   hope, but fear is almost as fully in possession of their hearts. They
   have love to Christ, but they often sing--

   "Do I love the Lord or not? Am I His or am I not?"

   They need medicine and nursing. Give them any work to do for the Lord
   and how soon they grow weary! Discourage them a little and they are in
   despair! Oh that the Spirit of God would give them life more
   abundantly! I am afraid that a very large proportion of Christian men
   in this day are on the sick list. They are in a decline from need of
   deep-seated principle and sound vitality of godliness, which is what I
   mean by stamina.

   It is sad to see how some professing Christians are led astray by any
   error which is plausibly put before them. If all Christians were alike,
   then Popery might easily become the universal religion of the country,
   for they have no Protestant principle, no grounding in doctrine, no
   firmness in the faith! They believe, but they know not why or what, and
   cannot give a reason for the hope which is in them. It is to be feared
   that they do not profess the Truth of God because others go this way
   and that, and some eloquent preacher wins their affection and becomes
   their oracle. They have not the stuff in them of which martyrs are
   made. They have no grit in their nature, no decision, no tenacity of
   belief, no firmness of grip!

   Consequently, whenever persecuting times come over this land, they will
   be our weakness. We shall have to look after such puny camp followers
   and put them in the rear--or the enemy will make sad havoc among them.
   Those who have life more abundantly are good soldiers of Jesus Christ.
   They have learned to stand fast in the Truth, and by the blessing of
   God they are more than a match for the teachers of error, for they know
   what they know and are able to put to silence the fair speeches of
   deceivers. They are not carried away with every wind of doctrine, but
   abide in the Truth of God as they have been taught. They cry, "O God,
   my heart is fixed!" They are "strong in the Lord and in the power of
   His

   might."

   I pray that every member of this Church may be a man of inward
   stamina--not one of those spiritual babies whom we have to be looking
   after every day and feeding with spiritual spoon victuals every
   Sunday--but men who, by the blessing of God, have got something in them
   which they know the value of, and which they could not give up if all
   the world should tempt or threaten them! I compared such strong
   Believers to navigators and I shall not withdraw the comparison, for we
   need men who can say to the mountains, "Be you removed," and to the
   valleys, "Be you exalted." It is by such agents that the Lord will make
   straight in the wilderness a highway for His march of mercy.

   In a second sense we have life more abundantly by the enlargement of
   the sphere of our life. To some forms of human life the range is very
   narrow. Wordsworth's farmer had no great abundance of life, for--

   "The primrose by the river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And
   nothing more."

   To plow and sow, and reap and mow, were his philosophy. The seasons
   preached no sacred homilies to him. The birds sang, but he would have
   been as much pleased if they had been silent. The hills were a
   weariness to climb and the view from their summit he thought nothing
   of. His soul was inside his smock frock and his corduroys, and never
   wished to go beyond them.

   Nor in the fields, alone, are there such beings. Our streets swarm with
   men in broadcloth of the same race, to whom "the music of the spheres"
   means the clink of sovereigns--and whose choice quotations relate to
   the price of stocks and changes of the market. Over the Exchange we
   read, "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof," but they read
   it, "This earth is our God and the fullness thereof is our all." The
   souls of such men live like squirrels in cages, and each day their
   wheel revolves--it is all the world they know. Jesus Christ has come to
   give His people a wider, broader life than this!

   True, there are many men upon whom Christ has never looked, whose life
   traverses wider areas than those which content the baser sort. Such men
   map out the stars and fathom the sea--they read the mysterious story of
   the rocks and of the ages past. They are deep in philosophy and force
   their way into the secret chambers where the immature principles of
   things are nestling. They have a life which is bounded only by time and
   space. But, Beloved, when Jesus comes, He enlarges the sphere of the
   most capacious mind and makes the greatest intellect to feel that it
   was but "cabined, cribbed, confined," until He set it free. Beyond time
   and space does Jesus lead us! The life which He has given us has been
   tossed upon the stormy sea of sin and has descended into the deeps of
   the tremendous ocean of terror.

   We have been like Jonah at the bottom of the mountains, where the earth
   with her bars seemed about us forever. The Grace of our pardoning God
   has now set us on a rock and given us to behold the paradise of pardon!
   What a blessed thing it is to be forgiven, to be dear to the Father's
   heart and to feel the Father's kiss! This is a new world to us--to live
   as they live who live at home with God--to see His smile and feast upon
   His love! This is a life of no mean dimensions, for we dwell in God and
   are in fellowship with the Infinite. We are no longer shut up to self,
   but we hold conversation with the spirits before the Throne of God and
   commune with all the saints redeemed by blood!

   Now we have seen those mysteries which were before hidden from our
   eyes. The path which the eagle's eyes have not seen we have gazed upon,
   and the way which the lion's whelp has not trod we have traversed! We
   have entered into the mysteries of the invisible and have stood within
   the veil! We were as little birds within their shells, but the Lord has
   broken our prison and His Spirit has led us into all Truth and shown us
   that which was hid from ages and from generations. In this sense we
   have life more abundantly.

   Thirdly, our life in Christ becomes more abundant as our powers are
   brought into exercise. I suppose all the powers of the man are in the
   child, but many of them are dormant and will only be exercised when
   life is more abundant. None of us know what we may be, we are but in
   our infancy. Christ has come to give us a fuller life than we have yet
   attained. Look at the Apostles! Before Pentecost they were mere junior
   scholars, only fit to occupy the lower forms. They were often ambitious
   and contentious among themselves--but when Jesus had given them the
   Spirit, what different men they were! Would you believe that the Peter
   of the Gospels could be the same person as the Peter of the Acts? Yet
   he was the same man! Pentecost had developed in him new powers.

   When I hear him saying, "I know not the Man," and a few weeks after see
   him standing up in the midst of the Parthians, Medes, and Elamites,
   boldly preaching Christ, I ask, What has happened to this man? And the
   reply is, Christ has given him life more abundantly and he has
   developed in himself powers which were concealed before! Beloved, you
   pray, yes, but if God gives you more life, you will pray as prevalently
   as Elijah! Even now you seek after holiness, but if you have life more
   abundantly, you will walk before the Lord in glorious uprightness as
   Abraham did! I know that you praise the Lord, but if the more abundant
   life fills you, you will rival the angels in their songs! I repeat what
   I have already said to you--we do not know what we may become.

   Gladly would I fire you with a holy ambition! Pray to Jesus to make you
   all you can be. Say to Him, "Lord, nurture in me all the Graces, powers
   and faculties by which I can glorify You. To the fullness of my manhood
   use me. Send a full stream of life upon me that all my soul may wake up
   and all that is within me may magnify You. Get all out of me that can
   possibly come out of such a poor thing as I am. Let Your Spirit work in
   me to the praise of the glory of Your Grace." I desire, Brethren, for
   myself and you, that we may be alive all over, for some professors
   appear to be more dead than alive! Life has only reached a fraction of
   their manhood! Life is in their hearts, blessed be God for that--but is
   only partially in their heads--for they do not study the Gospel nor use
   their brains to understand its Truths. Life has not touched their
   silent tongues, nor their idle hands, nor their frost-bitten pockets.
   Their house is on fire, but it is only at one corner, and the devil is
   doing his best to put out the flame.

   They remind me of a picture I once saw in which the artist had labored
   to depict Ezekiel's vision of the dead bodies in course of
   resurrection. The bones were coming together and flesh gradually
   clothing them--and he represents one body in which the head is
   perfectly formed, but the body is a skeleton--while in another place
   the body is well covered, but the arms and legs remain bare bones. Some
   Christians, I say, are much in the same state--they are alive only in
   parts--and in some it must be some very hidden part which is quickened,
   for little or nothing is to be seen of practical love or zeal. Oh for
   men who are alive from head to feet! Whose entire existence is full of
   consecration to Jesus and zeal for the Divine Glory--these have life
   "more abundantly."

   Fourthly, an increased degree of energy is intended in the text. We may
   have the powers, but may not exercise them, and no doubt many men have
   great spiritual capacities, but they lie still for lack of intensity of
   purpose. Now, when is a man most alive? Some are so alive when they are
   in determined pursuit of a favorite purpose. They have formed a
   resolution and they mean to carry it out. You can see their whole man
   pressing forward upon the track, all aroused and full of eagerness.
   Now, the Lord Jesus has furnished us with a purpose which is sure to
   stimulate us to energetic life, for "the love of Christ constrains us."

   He has given us a motive and an impulse which we cannot resist and we
   are in covenant with Him that we will glorify His name so long as we
   have any being. We are solemnly resolved and earnestly set to seek His
   honor. This gives an intensity to life which increases its abundance by
   arousing it all. A man is said to be full of life when he is worked up
   into excitement and livid with passion. Enthusiasm is life
   effervescing, life in volcanic eruption. Where there is determined
   resolve, if you arouse the man by opposition, you will see his whole
   life come into action. He was quiet enough before, but you have
   awakened the lion in him! His life was slumbering at ebb--now it is
   dashing up at flood.

   The man is carried right away! In his look and speech he is all alive.
   And in his actions he is energetic to the last degree. Our Divine
   Master has aroused the flame of our life by inspiring us with the
   glorious passion of love to Himself. This provides us with stimulus and
   impetus. A heart which is wholly surrendered to the love of Jesus is
   capable of thoughts and deeds to which colder souls must forever be
   strangers! Energetic, forceful, triumphant life belongs to souls
   enamored with the Cross and espoused in ardent love to the heavenly
   Bridegroom!

   Abundance of a kind of life is painfully manifest in insane persons.
   The demoniac in the Scripture burst the chains with which he was bound,
   for he had unusual strength when the sudden outburst of his rage was on
   him. Now, if possession by an evil spirit arouses men to an unusual
   force of life, how much more shall possession by the Divine Spirit gird
   a man with extraordinary energy! It is not possible for us to tell how
   potent for good any man among us may become. As the man who was feeble
   enough before, when he became possessed with an evil spirit refused to
   be held in bondage, so the man possessed by the Divine Spirit becomes
   supernaturally strong and refuses to be the captive of sin or Satan!

   Look at Martin Luther! Could you have believed that such a poor monk
   would shake the Vatican? And yet in his zeal for the Truth of God and
   hatred of error he did it! Look at other men in other times who have
   been raised up of God for a special purpose--what abundant life their
   holy ardor gave them! They were like Samson of old. Go up to Samson,
   feel his flesh, look at his bones--he is no larger than another man!
   Though his thighs indicate enormous strength, yet he does not seem so
   surprisingly superior to others. But wait till the Spirit of God moves
   him in the camp of Dan, and then woe to the thousands of the
   Philistines! Look how he piles them heaps upon heaps, while hip and
   thigh he smites them! See how he takes the pillars of their temple and
   rocks them to and fro and brings the edifice down upon their heads! The
   Spirit of God is on the man and He works wondrously! If the Spirit of
   God shall come upon you, it will make you do greater things than these
   and achieve loftier victories. Only believe it, and come to Christ, for
   abundant life is yet to be

   had.

   We will change the line of our thought, and, coming to the fifth point,
   we will say that abundance of life is often seen in the overflow of
   enjoyment. On a spring morning, when you walk in the field and see the
   lambs frisking so merrily, you have said, "There is life for you." You
   see a company of little children, all in excellent health--how they
   amuse themselves and what pranks they play! You say, "What life there
   is in those children!" Catch one of the little urchins and see if he
   does not wriggle out of your arms, and you say, "Why, he is all life."
   Just so, and therefore his happiness! In youth there is much life and
   overflow of spirits. When Israel came out of Egypt, she was young
   Israel, and how merrily did she smite her timbrels and dance before
   Jehovah!

   When Churches are revived, what life there is in them, and then what
   singing! Never comes a revival of religion without a revival of
   singing! As soon as Luther's Reformation comes, the Psalms are
   translated and sung in all languages! And when Whitfield and Wesley are
   preaching, then Charles Wesley and Toplady must be making hymns for the
   people to sing, for they must show their joy, a joy born of life! When
   the Lord gives you, dear Friend, more life, you also will have more
   joy. You will no more go moping about the house, or be thought
   melancholy and dull when the Lord gives you life more abundantly!

   I should not wonder but what you will get into the habit of singing at
   work and humming tunes in your walks. I should not wonder if people
   ask, "What makes So-and-So so happy? What makes his eyes twinkle as
   with some strange delight? He is poor. He is sick, but how blissful he
   appears to be!" This will be seen, Brothers and Sisters, when you not
   only have life, but when you have it more abundantly!

   Now, sixthly, this is a somewhat peculiar fact, but I think it should
   not be omitted. The abundance of life will be seen in delicacy of
   feeling. No doubt there is a very great deal of difference as to the
   amount of pain which persons suffer under the same operation. There are
   persons so constituted that you might cut off an arm and they would
   scarcely feel more than another person would suffer during the drawing
   of a tooth. There are some, on the other hand, to whom the slightest
   pain involves a thrill of horror, they are so sensitive. Whether it is
   an advantage or a disadvantage I cannot tell, but it has certainly been
   observed by skillful physicians that those persons who have strong
   mental constitutions--who use their brains a lot and have a fine mental
   organization--are usually those who suffer most when subjected to pain.
   There is more life in them of a certain sort, and they are more
   sensitive for that reason.

   Now, when the Lord Jesus Christ gives His people life in its higher
   forms, they become more capable of pain. The same sin will pain them a
   hundred times more than it used to do--and they will shrink from it
   with greater anxiety to avoid it. If you are only just a Christian, you
   may do wrong and you will be penitent. But if you have much life and
   you do wrong, ah, then your heart will be wrung with anguish and you
   will loathe yourself before God! The man full of delicate life will not
   only suffer more, but he has probably more pleasure--he is sensitive to
   joys unknown to others-- and his whole constitution thrills with a
   pleasure which another but faintly perceives.

   The name of Jesus is inexpressibly sweet to those who have abundant
   life! It is precious if you only have life, but it is beyond all price
   to those who have very tender hearts which swell with exuberant life. I
   have met with some Christians who say they cannot understand Solomon's
   Song, and I have often wondered at it, myself. That is a test book for
   sensitive souls--and when men have much of the life of love--that
   sacred canticle suits their feelings better than any other book in the
   Bible, because it is a tender book of sacred love and glows like altar
   coals! Oh, I pray you, have much of the tenderness of the intense life!

   Nor is this all I mean by delicacy. I mean this. There is a delicacy of
   hands which a man may acquire by long practice which renders that
   wonderful member a great worker of feats. The fingers and palms are all
   life and can execute manipulations of a most surprising kind. Even so,
   the hands of educated faith can not only grasp but handle the good Word
   of Life. When gifted with this faculty, we pry into the mysteries of
   the heart of Jesus as others cannot! The lips, also, can become
   sensitive. Laura Bridgman learned to read with her lips, the raised
   letters--blind persons very generally have a wonderful life in the ends
   of their fingers which others of us have not yet developed. So the Lord
   would have His people enjoy a sensitively discerning life which shall
   reveal to them what they would never have felt and known. Oh, when your
   soul is blest with holy delicacy! When every part of your nature has
   become full and brimming over with intense sensitiveness! And, when you
   have an educated sensitiveness to the Divine mind and will, then are
   you getting where Christ would have you to be!

   Once more, this delicacy shows itself in a marvelous apprehensiveness
   and keenness of perception which had not been there before, The Indian
   will put his ear to the ground and say, "There is an enemy on the way,"
   while you cannot hear a sound. When he comes to a turn in the forest,
   "There is the trail," he says, "to the right," though you cannot see
   that a stick has been moved, or that a single blade of grass has been
   bent. His faculties are full of life and therefore he has a better ear
   and a better eye than you. Remember the story of the Siege of Lucknow?
   When the Highland woman said, "Dinna you hear it?--dinna you hear it?"
   She could hear the sound of the Highland music when it was far away. I
   do not doubt she heard it, though others did not--her ear was quicker
   then theirs.

   Jesus would have us quick of understanding in the fear of the Lord so
   that we shall say, "He is coming--He is coming! I can hear His
   footsteps!" And the world will say, "You are mad! Let us eat, and
   drink, and be married and given in marriage." We want to be able to
   say, "I can hear the Bridegroom's voice," when others will say, "Not
   so, it is mere imagination." We need eyes which will see the land which
   is very far off so that the golden gates of our heavenly home shall be
   visible to us. Thus shall we have life "more abundantly."

   The seventh point is this--life, when it is in abundance, becomes
   supreme. Some races of men have physical life, but have it not
   abundantly. For instance, the Red Indian and the Australian races have
   life, but after awhile they perish and

   die from off the face of the earth, while other races of more vigorous
   life battle with their surroundings and survive. Christians should have
   such abundant life that their circumstances should not be able to
   overcome them--such abundant life that in poverty they are rich, in
   sickness they are in spiritual health, in contempt they are full of
   triumph--and in death full of glory!

   Glorious is that life which defies circumstances! Christ has given to
   us, Brothers and Sisters, a supreme life, supreme in its tenacity--it
   cannot be destroyed, none can cut its thread. "Who shall separate us
   from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord?" Neither things
   present, nor things to come shall ever avail to do this. We have life
   so abundantly that it triumphs over all. What I desire for us, beyond
   everything is to have this life so abundant that it may be supreme over
   our entire selves. There is death within us and that death struggles
   with our life. Our life has dashed Death down and holds it beneath its
   feet--but tremendous is the struggle of Death to rise again and get the
   mastery.

   Brethren, we must hold Death down, we must grip him as with bands of
   iron and hold him down--and plant the knee of prayer upon his bosom and
   press him to the earth. We must not suffer sin to have dominion over
   us, but life more abundant must, through Divine Grace, triumph over
   inward corruption! There is yet much beyond you, Christian Brethren,
   but that much is attainable. You are not to sit down and say, "We must
   be always captives to the flesh, to yield it obedience." Beloved, you
   may overcome! God's Grace being in you, you may overcome!

   You shall not, this side of the grave, congratulate yourselves upon
   perfection--such boasting be far from you! But in the strength of God,
   the life of God which is in you may be increased and shall be
   increased, for Christ has come to increase it, till Death shall be trod
   down and you shall be more than conquerors through Him that has loved
   you!

   My time has gone, the subject is too large for me. Only this I conclude
   with--if you need life, you must get it from Christ. If you need more
   life, you must go to the same place. Do not look to Christ for the
   beginnings and then somewhere else for the ending! Christ has come that
   you might have more life. Come to Him by faith. Do not look to
   ceremonies or outward services or anything else for growth in Grace,
   apart from Jesus, but fly to Him and He will give it to you--and you
   shall be rich to all intents of bliss.

   God grant that all the members of this Church may have this great
   blessing for Christ's sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--JOHN 10. HYMN FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--46 (VERSION II) 798, 818.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Revival Promise

   (No. 1151)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JANUARY 11, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the
   dry ground: I will pour My Spirit upon your seed, and My blessing upon
   your offspring: and they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows
   by the watercourses. One shall say, I am the Lord's; and another shall
   call himself by the name of Jacob; and another shall subscribe with his
   hand unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel" Isaiah
   44:3-6.

   IN the Christian Church at this moment there is a very general desire
   for a revival of religion. You may go where you may among Christian
   people and you will find that they are mourning over the present state
   of things and saying, one to the other, "When will a greater blessing
   come? How can we obtain it? When shall we make some impression upon the
   masses of the ungodly? When shall our houses of prayer be filled with
   attentive hearers? When will the Lord's kingdom come and His right arm
   be made bare in the eyes of all the people?"

   I am delighted to hear the inquiry My soul magnifies the Lord as I
   discern tokens of growing anxiety about the cause and kingdom of Jesus
   and the perishing sons of men. This is an omen of better times. "As
   soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children." Searchings of
   heart, anguish, groans which cannot be uttered and abounding
   intercession are the heralds of blessing! They are the sound in the
   tops of the mulberry trees which calls Believers to bestir themselves
   in hope of victory! May the movement among the saints continue and
   deepen till it brings forth a movement among sinners far and wide.

   At this time, also, there are manifest the most pleasing signs that God
   is about to work among His people. A very notable gathering of converts
   has taken place in the town of Newcastle and the two Brothers whom God
   honored to be the means of it have now moved to the city of Edinburgh.
   There the ministers of all denominations are united in helping them and
   in earnestly imploring the Divine blessing of the gracious visitation
   which has already come upon Edinburgh is such as was probably never
   known before within the memory of man. The whole place seems to be
   moved from end to end! When we hear of many thousands coming together
   on weekdays, to quite ordinary meetings, and crying, "What must we do
   to be saved?" there is, we are persuaded, the hand of God in the
   matter!

   Now, there is among earnest Christians a general feeling that what has
   been done for Edinburgh is greatly needed for London and must be done
   for London if prayer and earnest effort can obtain it. Our prayers must
   go up incessantly that God will be pleased to send forth His saving
   health among the people of this great city of four million souls and
   turn many to righteousness, to the praise of the glory of His Divine
   Grace. Our growing anxiety for Christ's Glory and our faith in the
   energy of His Spirit will be two hopeful signs of a coming blessing. As
   a Church we have always felt a delight in any work which has to be done
   for God of this kind and we have enjoyed, for many years, a continuous
   visitation of the Holy Spirit.

   That which would be a revival anywhere else has been our ordinary
   condition--for which we are thankful. By the space of these 20 years,
   almost without rise or fall, God has continued to increase our numbers
   with souls saved by the preaching of His Truth. Unto Him be all the
   praise! But now we are anxious to take a part in a yet further
   advance--we want a greater blessing! What we have had has not
   decreased, but rather stimulated our appetite. Oh, for more
   conversions! More hearts for Jesus! Would God that the dews of Heaven
   would fall in sevenfold abundance upon us and our fellow
   Christians--and the past be put to the blush by the future! That this
   desire may be fanned to a flame in all our hearts is my earnest prayer.

   I have taken this text as one which is full of encouragement, that we
   may be all moved with hope and excited with expectation. I shall handle
   it in this way. First, we have before us the great Covenant blessing of
   the Church. Secondly, we

   have the glorious result of that blessing described. And when we have
   spoken thus, we shall spend the rest of our time in speaking of the
   conduct which is consistent with the desire, that this blessing and its
   results may come to us.

   I. In our text we have THE GREAT COVENANT BLESSING OF THE CHURCH. It is
   the gift of the Holy Spirit. Whatever metaphor is used, this is the
   meaning of it. He is the refreshing, life-giving, fertilizing
   water--the living water of which Jesus spoke. The first promise of the
   text, "I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the
   dry ground," is explained by the second, "I will pour My Spirit upon
   your seed, and My blessing upon your offspring." While speaking upon
   this, it is well for us to remember, first, that this blessing has been
   already given. We must never underrate the importance of the ascension
   of our Lord and the gift of the Spirit which followed.

   God forbid that we should think lightly of Pentecost--the Holy Spirit
   then descended and we have no record that the Spirit has since ascended
   and departed from the Church. He is the Church's perpetual heritage and
   abides with us always. I like to sing--

   "The Holy Spirit is here,

   Where saints in prayer agree, As Jesus 'parting gift He's near Each
   pleading company. Not far away is He,

   To be by prayer brought near, But here in present majesty, As in His
   courts on high."

   He is permanently resident in the midst of the Church. But when are
   have received that Truth of God, we may still go on to use the language
   which is very frequent among us and pray for the outpouring of the
   Spirit. If the language is not exactly accurate, the meaning is most
   excellent. So far as any one assembly or person is concerned, we may
   request the Holy Spirit to be poured forth upon us in His gracious
   operations. We desire to see the Spirit of God working more mightily in
   the Church--we long, each one of us, to be more completely subject to
   His influences and more filled with His power--so that we may be full
   of faith and of the Holy Spirit.

   We want the Holy Spirit poured upon those who have Him not--upon the
   dead in sin that they may be quickened, upon the desponding that they
   may be consoled--upon the ignorant that they may be illuminated and
   upon seekers that they may find Him who, alone, is our peace. We, being
   evil, give good gifts unto our children, and therefore we are persuaded
   that our heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask
   Him. We do but enlarge upon the prayer of the Apostolic benediction
   when we cry for the blessing peculiar to the Holy Spirit. It is the
   Spirit that quickens--neither the letter of the word nor the energy of
   our manner can give life! Therefore we feel that when we have
   prophesied to the dry bones we must also prophesy to the Wind, for
   unless the Divine Breath shall come, the dry bones will never live.

   Notice, Beloved, that this great Covenant blessing of the Spirit is, in
   our text, the subject of a promise. "I will pour water upon him that is
   thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour My Spirit upon
   your seed, and My blessing upon your offspring." We may always be
   confident of receiving those blessings which are promised by the Lord.
   The general promise, "No good thing will I withhold from them that walk
   uprightly," is very comforting. Under its broad cover we are encouraged
   to plead for many favors for which we have no special note of
   promise--but when we can put our finger upon a plain and specific word,
   by which a certain good thing is guaranteed to us, our faith rises to
   full assurance, and we feel confident of receiving an answer to our
   prayer!

   "You have said, 'I will pour My Spirit upon your seed,' therefore, O
   Lord, fulfill this word unto Your servant, in which You have caused him
   to hope." You have God's word for it--place your finger upon it and on
   your knees beseech the Lord to do as He has said. He cannot lie, He
   will never revoke His Word. Has He said and shall He not do it?--

   "As well might He His being quit As break His promise or forget." He
   has spontaneously made the promise and He will Divinely make it good.
   Upon every promise the blood of Jesus Christ has set its seal, making
   it, "yes and amen" forever. Test Him here, then, and you shall find Him
   faithfulness itself! A promise of God is the essence of the Truth of
   God, the soul of certainty, the voice of faithfulness and the substance
   of blessing. What a right royal promise it is! How lofty and full of
   assurance is the language! "I will pour water upon him that is
   thirsty." It is for God to say, "I will" and, "I will."

   We may venture as far as declaring, "I will if I can." But there are no
   limits to His power. Our wisdom is to say, "I hope I shall be able to
   do as I desire." But there are no impossibilities with the Almighty.
   His Spirit falls upon men as a dew from the Lord, waiting not for man,
   neither tarrying for the sons of men. When the time has come for a
   shower, God asks not the potentates of earth to give their consent, but
   down come the blessed drops! When the season for spring has arrived,
   the Lord does not ask man to help Him to remove the ice from the
   streams, or the snow from the hills, or the dampness from the air. He
   asks no human aid in quickening the seeds and awaking the plants, so
   that the sleeping flowers may open their lovely eyes and smile on all
   around. He does it all!

   His mystic influences, as Omnipotent as they are secret, come forth,
   and the work is done. And so, glory be to God, we have a promise, here,
   which is the word of Omnipotence, and when we plead it we need not be
   at all dismayed by the question, "Can such a thing be?" We know that
   dry bones can live when the Spirit breathes upon them and we are
   equally well persuaded that the life-giving Spirit can so breathe, for
   we have a Divine promise that He shall be given to the people. We hear
   the double "I will, I will," and we are certain that the Lord can and
   will "pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry
   ground."

   It becomes us also, Brothers and Sisters, to notice that this gift,
   which is the subject of a promise, is a most necessary blessing. I have
   sometimes heard it sneeringly remarked that we know very well we need
   the Holy Spirit, but there is no need to be everlastingly talking about
   it. But, Brethren, we need to make frequent acknowledgment of this
   Truth--it is due to the Holy Spirit, Himself, that we should do so. If
   we do not honor the Holy Spirit, we cannot expect Him to work with us.
   He will be grieved and leave us to find out our helplessness. Moreover,
   I fear that, however generally the doctrine of the necessity of the
   Spirit's work may be believed as a matter of theory, it is not acted
   upon--and what is not believed in practice is, in fact, not believed at
   all.

   I am very suspicious of a man who tires of a Truth of God so vitally
   important and dares to call it a platitude. We shall not hesitate to
   repeat the doctrine again and again--and we feel persuaded that God's
   people will not tire of it. Without the Spirit of God we can do
   nothing! We are as ships without wind, or chariots without steeds,
   without the Holy Spirit. We are like branches without sap, we are
   withered without the Holy Spirit! We are like coals without fire. We
   are as useless as an offering without the sacrificial flame, without
   the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit we are unaccepted. I desire
   both to feel and to confess this fact whenever I attempt to preach. I
   do not wish to get away from it, or to conceal it, nor can I, for I am
   often made to feel it to the deep humbling of my spirit.

   I pray that you who teach in the Sunday school, you who visit the poor,
   you who work in any way for God may acknowledge your impotence for good
   and look for power from on high. To our hands the Holy Spirit is the
   force, to our eyes He is the light. We are but the stones and He the
   sling, we are the arrows and He the bow. Confess your weakness and you
   will be fit to be strengthened. Acknowledge your emptiness and it will
   be a preparation for receiving Divine fullness. For, observe, the
   promise of the living water is to "him that is thirsty," or, as it may
   be better rendered, and the figure would be more clear, "I will pour
   water upon it (the land) that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry
   ground."

   The blessing is to come where it is needed--upon the desert, the
   parched places which are as the Valley of Death till the rain comes. If
   you think yourself to be as the well-watered plain of Sodom, God will
   pour no food upon you. It is upon the thirsty land, upon the heart
   which laments its barrenness and confesses its own unworthiness, that
   the Spirit of God shall come! I do pray that as a Church we may never
   imbibe the idea that we have a lock on God's blessing, or a monopoly on
   His benediction, so that He is sure to grant His approval to any one
   particular ministry, or any form of Church government.

   The Lord might leave us, and will, unless we lie low before Him and
   acknowledge our nothingness. Remember His Word which He spoke to His
   erring people when they boasted of their pedigree and called themselves
   His temple--"Go you, now, unto My place which was in Shiloh, where I
   set My name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness
   of My people Israel." He may leave His garden to be overgrown with
   briers, and His vineyard to be marred with stones. God is not tied to
   any one place or people--He can remove the candlestick and set it up in
   another chamber--let the seven churches of Asia Minor serve as a
   warning to us in this thing. O blessed Spirit of the living God, we do
   confess the barrenness of our soil and the drought of our land, and we
   beseech You never to withdraw Your dew, or cause Your rain to depart
   from us! What greater curse could You inflict than to let us alone? Oh,
   come upon us, we beseech You, and let the Divine promise be fulfilled!

   It should be very comfortable to us to reflect that, while we need the
   Spirit of God, His working is most effectual to supply all our needs
   when He does come upon us. In the east, you can generally tell where
   there is a stream or a river by the line of emerald which marks it. If
   you stood on a hill, you could see certain lines of green, made up of
   grass, reeds, rushes and occasional trees which have sprung up along
   the watercourses. Nothing is required to make the land fertile but to
   water it. We are told by travelers that they have seen plains looking
   completely barren, apparently covered with dry dust and powder--yet a
   heavy shower has fallen, and in a space of time which seems incredible
   in our colder climate--the most lovely flowers and the most refreshing
   verdure have clothed the plains till the wilderness and the solitary
   places have been glad--and the desert has rejoiced and blossomed as the
   rose! Yes, it has blossomed exceedingly--and an excellency as of Carmel
   and Sharon has been upon it.

   Even thus, let the Spirit of God come upon any Church, and He is all
   that it needs to make it living and fruitful! Church machinery, apart
   from the Spirit of God, lacks the motive power. The motive power
   coming, your machinery will do its work. Of course, if it is imperfect
   machinery, the Holy Spirit will not make it do all the work which
   better organizations have done. Still, even the most imperfect shall
   accomplish so much as to astonish all who behold it! What a blessing it
   is when the Church does really receive the Spirit of God abundantly!
   Her minister may be slow in utterance-- like Moses, the leader of the
   people may be a man of stammering speech--or, like Paul, his personal
   appearance may be mean and his speech contemptible. But this matters
   not when the Spirit of God is upon the man and in the people! The
   Church may be very small, the members may be very poor, and many of
   them illiterate, too, but as the barley cake of the soldier's dream
   smote the royal pavilion of Midian, so that it lay along, so the Lord,
   by the hands of the most feeble, shall do His greatest deeds and get to
   Himself renown! Where the Spirit of God is, there is the majesty of
   Omnipotence!

   I, here, call your attention to the fact that the promise in our text
   is liberal and unstinted. "I will pour water upon the thirsty land, and
   floods upon the dry ground." The Lord does not need to stint His gifts.
   When He gives a blessing He gives it like a king. His treasury will not
   be exhausted by giving, or replenished by withholding. I have seen in
   Italy the fields watered by the processes of irrigation--there are
   trenches made to run along the garden and smaller gutters to carry the
   lesser streams to each bed--so that each plant gets its share of water.
   But the gardener has to be very careful, for he has but little water in
   his tank, and only an allotted share of the public reservoir.

   No plant must have too much. No plot of ground may be drenched. How
   different is this from the methods of the Lord! He pours the water. He
   deluges the land! "The parched ground shall become a pool, and the
   thirsty land springs of water; in the habitation of dragons, where each
   lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes." Oh that He would pull up
   the sluices, now, and let a torrent of Divine Grace rush through this
   Tabernacle! Oh that at this moment He would open the windows of Heaven
   and send us a flood of Grace, like the deluge of vengeance in Noah's
   day, till the tops of our loftiest expectations should be covered! He
   is able to do exceeding abundantly above what we ask, or even think. He
   gives liberally, and upbraids not!

   Our abounding sin and death need abounding life and power! In such a
   city as this the largest blessing will be none too great. Let us open
   our mouths wide, that He may fill them. The Lord is illimitable in His
   wealth of Grace and boundless in His goodness and power. Let us take
   the promise as it stands, and plead it at the Throne of God, "Have You
   not said, 'I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon
   the dry ground'? Lord, do it, to the praise of the glory of Your
   Grace." One other remark and I leave this point. This Covenant blessing
   is, in our text, peculiarly promised to a certain class of persons who
   are especially dear to us. "I will pour My Spirit upon your seed, and
   My blessing upon your offspring."

   Parents, lay hold greedily upon these points of the promise! I am
   afraid we do not think enough of the promise which the Lord has made to
   our children. Grace does not run in the blood--we have never fallen
   into the gross error of birthright membership, or the supposition that
   the child of godly parents has a right to Christian ordinances! We know
   that religion is a personal matter and is not of blood nor of birth. We
   know, also, that all children are heirs of wrath till the Grace of God
   regenerates them. But still, there is some meaning in that gracious
   saying, "The promise is unto you and your children, even to as many as
   the Lord your God shall call."

   Paul was assuredly not wrong, but sweetly right, when he said to the
   jailer, in answer to his question, "What must I do to be saved?"
   "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, and your
   house." Lay hold of those words, Christian parents, and do not be
   content to get half the promise. Pray to God to fulfill it all. Go to
   Him this very day,

   you mothers and fathers, and implore Him to have pity upon your
   offspring. Cry unto Him, and say, "You have said, 'I will pour My
   Spirit on your seed, and My blessing upon your offspring.' Do it, Lord,
   for Jesus Christ's sake."

   II. We are now to consider THE GLORIOUS RESULT OF THIS COVENANT
   BLESSING. The certain result of the outpouring of the Spirit is the
   springing up of spiritual life. Wherever the water comes in Palestine,
   as I said before, the grass will be sure to follow and vegetation
   becomes at once lively. Wherever the Spirit of God comes, there will be
   life in the Church and life in the ministry, life in prayer, life in
   effort, life in holiness, life in brotherly love. The next effect will
   be seen in the calling out of numerous converts by the Holy Spirit.
   "They shall spring up as among the grass, and as willows by the
   watercourses."

   Who can count the blades of grass? They are a fine symbol of the
   greatness of number and might as justly be used for that purpose as the
   sands of the seashore. Where the Spirit of the Lord comes, converts are
   not few as the cedars of Lebanon, but they flourish like the grass of
   the earth! They fly as a cloud and as doves to their dovecots. Can we
   be satisfied with having in a year a dozen or so added to the Church?
   Yet do I meet with some of my Brothers--and far be it from me to judge
   them--who say they have had a happy year and are very comfortable
   though they have had only three or four persons added to the Church.
   Surely, however small the congregation, that must be a very
   unsatisfactory reward for a year's ministry!

   My Brothers and Sisters, where, in this day, do we see results
   attending the Gospel which should satisfy us? Hundreds may be added to
   the Church in a year, as has been our common blessing, but what are
   hundreds? If 400 were brought into our fellowship last year, what is
   that out of four million? What are these saved ones among so many? The
   headway made by the Church is next to nothing! It hardly keeps pace
   with the growth of the population. We need more of the Spirit of
   God--and if we had it--I have no doubt, whatever, the converts would at
   once be counted by thousands and tens of thousands! And there is no
   reason whatever why the Church of God, which is now in a pitiful
   minority, should not become in many a district a triumphant
   majority--and the influences of the Divine Grace of God be felt far and
   near!

   Observe that the text tells us that the converts called out by the
   Spirit of God are vigorous and lively. "They shall spring as the
   grass." Now the grass in the east springs up without any sowing,
   cultivating, or any other attention. It comes up of itself from the
   fruitful soil. There is the water--and there is the grass! So where the
   Spirit of God is with a Church there are sure to be conversions, it
   cannot be otherwise. True, we are bound to use all agencies that are
   fit and right for the promotion of the good end. But where the Spirit
   of God is we shall often be astonished to find the life has extended
   far beyond the usual result of agencies! The willows, also, are
   mentioned, to indicate great vitality. How rapidly the willow grows!

   There is a proverb in Cambridgeshire that a willow will buy a horse,
   where an oak won't buy a saddle, because the willow grows so quickly
   and yields such frequent boughs to the cutter. You may cut it this
   year, and in a short time you may remove its pliant boughs again, for
   they will come anew. So truly saved ones will bear discouragement and
   trial but still spring up. If you cut every bough from the willow tree
   it will be green again next spring--and if you even cut it down to the
   root it does not matter--at the scent of water it will bud! Do you not
   remember when you were children taking little twigs of willow to make
   hoops around your little garden? You thought them dead and used them as
   a little fence. But in a short time, to your astonishment, they were
   all sprouting out with green! The willow is full of life.

   Now, where the Spirit of God is, the newly converted are full of life.
   You may check them, but they will not be repressed. You orthodox
   people, who happen to have surly tempers, may go round with your
   pocketknives and snip at their boughs cruelly, and say, "We do not need
   these young people. We do not need revivals," but they will grow in
   spite of you! Blessed be God, you elder Brothers and Sisters cannot
   turn the penitent prodigals out of doors! Should you even be so unkind
   to the newly grown willows as to cut them right down, they will spring
   up again, for if they are plants of the Lord's own right hand planting,
   and of the Spirit's watering, they will outlive the worst of usage!
   They will grow as the grass and as willows by the watercourses.

   We may expect, then, if the Spirit of God shall work among us, that
   there will be an abundance of converts, and those of the most vigorous
   kind. These conversions will come from all quarters. The text says, one
   shall say, and another shall call, and another shall subscribe. Here is
   one who is the son of a deacon--we expected him to give his heart to
   Jesus. Here is another--he is not the child of a religious professor,
   but comes from an ungodly family. Ah, here is another, he

   had grown up and come to ripe years, having followed after folly and
   confirmed himself in sin--yet he comes forward, for the Grace of God
   has called him! One comes from the wealthy, another comes from the
   poor, a third comes from nobody knows where--but they will and must
   come--for God knows His own and will call them!

   They shall come from all trades and occupations, from all churches and
   denominations! From these little boys below me, I hope, and from you
   gray-headed people over yonder--one here, another there! We shall be
   wonderstruck as we hear from all corners, and parts, and places, "I am
   the Lord's." And again, "I am called by the name of Jacob." And again,
   "I am surnamed this day by the name of Israel." The vessel of Divine
   Grace does not run in a groove, but breaks out where it seems least
   likely to do so! At one time it creates a revival at Samaria. At
   another time it saves a widow at Joppa, or the eunuch on the road to
   Gaza. Lord, call whomever You will, but do call many, for Jesus' sake!

   One memorable thing about the conversions worked by the Holy Spirit is
   this--that these converted people shall be led to acknowledge their
   faith. They shall not, like Nicodemus, come to Jesus by night. They
   shall not hope to go to Heaven creeping all the way behind the hedge,
   but they shall avow their allegiance. "One shall say, I am the Lord's;
   and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob, and another shall
   subscribe with his hand unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name
   of Israel." The God of Israel shall be their God and the people of
   Israel shall be their people. I love to see both these things in young
   converts. Some appear to dedicate themselves to God, but they feel
   themselves such superior beings that they do not join with any Church.
   Rather they hold themselves in the isolation which practically means,
   "Stand by, I am holier than you."

   They do not think any Church good enough for them, but my private
   opinion is that they are not good enough for any Church! On the other
   hand, some will join a Church, but do not seem to have had enough
   respect to the inward, vital part of religion in giving themselves up
   to the Lord and, therefore, no Church will find them to be any great
   gain. There must be the two together--a surrender to God and then a
   union with the people of God. Consider the first of these points--One
   shall say, "I am the Lord's." He shall confess that from head to foot,
   body, soul and spirit--he is not his own, but Christ's. He will feel,
   "I have been washed in His blood. I have been pardoned all my sins and
   been renewed in heart. And now I am the Lord's, and I desire to live to
   His praise. Tell me what I can do, and how I can serve the Lord, for I
   am His and mean to be His forever." This is delightful. Oh, to hear
   hundreds of you saying this! I would give my life to see it!

   Another convert is said to subscribe with his hand to the God of Jacob.
   He gives himself over to God and he does it deliberately--as
   deliberately as a person who signs a deed by which he makes over an
   estate. He writes his name and places his finger on the seal, and
   calmly says, "This is my act and deed." We do not recommend persons to
   write out covenants with God and sign them--they are apt to gender unto
   bondage--but we do recommend them to make such a covenant in their
   hearts before the Most High, saying--

   "'Tis done, the great transaction's done!

   I am my Lord's and He is mine!

   He drew me, and I followed on,

   Charmed to obey the voice Divine." The text may have another rendering,
   for, if you notice, the word "with" in the text is in italics, to show
   that it was inserted by the translators. It might run thus--"Another
   shall subscribe his hand unto the Lord." This alludes to the custom
   which still exists, but which was more common in those days, of a
   servant being marked or tattooed on the hand with his master's name.

   So was it with soldiers--frequently, when they were enthusiastic for a
   leader, they would print his name on some part of their body, but very
   often upon the palms of their hands. There are constant allusions to
   this in the classics. We know that devout worshippers dedicated
   themselves to the god they worshipped and were stamped with a secret
   mark. Paul alludes to this when he says, "Henceforth let no man trouble
   me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus," as much as to
   say, "I am Christ's--I have had His name branded upon me." When he
   suffered from being scourged and beaten with rods, he called it bearing
   the marks of the Lord Jesus, and did as good as say, "Flog away, you
   will only engrave His name into my flesh, for I am Christ's."

   Now it would be a very superstitious and foolish thing for any man to
   be tattooed with the name of the Lord, or with a cross, for all that
   such an act meant in those who did it of old, we ought to mean, namely,
   that we are forever and beyond recall, the property of Jesus. Our ear
   is bored. We are servants, as long as we live. to our dear Master. They
   may

   sooner kill us than lead us away from Him whose we are, and whom we
   serve. Who shall separate us from the love of

   God?--

   "High Heaven that heard the solemn vow, That vow renewed shall daily
   hear, Till in life's latest hour I bow, And bless in death a bond so
   dear." There was dedication to God of the fullest kind, but side by
   side with it went unity with the Church, for the declaration, "I am the
   Lord's," was parallel with, "calling himself by the name of Jacob." Now
   the name of Jacob was the first, the lower, the common name of God's
   people--they were the seed of Jacob. "Ah," says the man who is
   converted, "I do not care what they call Christian people, they may
   call me by the same title if they will, and I will not complain. They
   may call us Puritans, Methodists, Ranters, Quakers--or whatever they
   like--I am one of them."

   I have read of a certain nobleman who was also a saint, that when he
   heard religious persons scoffed at as Puritans, he was accustomed at
   once to declare, "I am a Puritan, too. I glory in being one of them!"
   They felt that it was of little use to mock at him--he was too stout a
   soldier and too bold a speaker. It is a grand thing when a man can say
   in company, "It does not matter what you think of religion, I belong to
   such-and-such Christian people, and I am not ashamed of it. I know
   their name is a mockery and their minister is despised, but it does not
   matter, I am one of them." It is mentioned, also, that one surnamed
   himself by the name of Israel. That was the grand name of the Church in
   those days--Israel, the prevailing prince.

   We ought to feel that to be a Christian is to possess a patent of
   nobility second to none. Duke, earl, knight, esquire--we covet none of
   these--call us by the name of Christ and we have honor enough! The name
   of Caesar is a poor thing compared with the name of Christ! Better be
   known as a disciple of Jesus than as an emperor of emperors! Oh, may
   the Spirit of God be poured out upon this place, that many of you may
   be savingly converted, and then say, "I will give myself to the Lord,
   and will also cast in my lot with His people. Where they dwell I will
   dwell. Where they die there would I die. Their people shall be my
   people, since their God has become my God." Pray, dear Brothers and
   Sisters, that the promise before us may be fulfilled in this Church,
   and in all the Churches of our Lord Jesus Christ.

   III. Now, lastly, I have to speak upon THE CONDUCT SUITABLE IF WE
   OBTAIN THIS BLESSING. First, O my Brothers and Sisters in Christ, if we
   would obtain these floods of blessing we must confess how dry, how
   thirsty, how wilderness-like we are! Humble yourselves, therefore,
   under the hand of God, and He will exalt you in due time. "He has
   filled the hungry with good things, but the rich He has sent empty
   away." Oh, for the spirit of humiliation throughout

   the Church!

   Next to that let us cultivate prayer. "For this will I be enquired of
   by the house of Israel to do it for them." If you have a man's check
   for a thousand pounds, it would be very wicked of you to say, "I cannot
   get my money, this paper is not paid," if you have never taken it to
   the bank. And so, if you have God's promise and have never pleaded it,
   it is your own fault if you have not obtained the blessing. The very
   least thing God can ask of us is that we shall ask of Him. "Ask and it
   shall be given you: seek and you shall find: knock and it shall be
   opened unto you." Plead more earnestly in private. Make your Prayer
   Meetings more energetic, attend them more often, throw your hearts more
   fully into them and God's Spirit will be surely given.

   Next to that, if we want the blessing we must put forth our own
   personal effort. It would be a most absurd thing for a man to pray for
   a harvest, and neither plow nor sow! I cannot conceive anything more
   insulting to the majesty of God than for us to pray and meanwhile, fold
   our arms! It is not thus that we prove our sincerity. I desire to
   preach to you as if the conversion of these sinners around us depended
   wholly upon me, but then I delight to fall back upon the Truth of God
   that it wholly depends upon the Lord God! Sunday school teachers, use
   the means for the conversion of your children! Try and speak personally
   to every one of them. If you can find opportunity, pray alone with
   them, one by one. You will win young hearts for Jesus in that way.

   Try, dear Friends, to get hold of individuals. You who come here
   continually, look out for individuals in the congregation and endeavor
   to tell them what you have experienced of the love of Christ. If you
   cannot speak to them, write letters to them! An earnest letter is as
   good as a sermon. Do anything, do everything, to bring souls to Jesus!
   While we are working we shall find God working with us, for He is never
   slower than His people. If we are building, He will be the Master
   Builder, and will build through us. For a man to pray that he may have
   a safe journey and then to go to

   bed--and not start from home would be wickedness! And to pray to God to
   convert sinners and then not to preach or teach them the Gospel would
   be a piece of impudent mockery of God. Beloved, see to this. I cannot
   pause to stir you up about it, for our time is going, but I pray the
   Holy Spirit to stir you, that everyone here may become a soul-winner.

   Once more, I have a word to say to those who are not the people of God.
   O beloved ones who are not saved, all our concern is about your
   salvation! We are always preaching and praying about you! How can you
   obtain saving faith? I would urge you to labor after a clear idea of
   your real position. O unconverted people, try to know where you are,
   and what you are. It might, perhaps, awaken you from your present
   indifference. If you would really and distinctly understand that you
   are out of Christ, condemned already--an enemy to God by wicked works,
   with the wrath of God abiding on you and in danger of eternal Hell--it
   might startle you and lead you to desire salvation.

   I would think hopefully of you if I knew that you were taking stock and
   estimating your condition before God. I ask you, when you get home, to
   sit down and write, every one of you, on a piece of paper, "Saved," if
   you are saved, and "Condemned," if you are not a Believer. For that is
   your condition! I want you to realize whose you are and where you are
   going. When you have done so, I pray that a sense of your condition and
   prospects may be deepened upon your mind! Sinners, do you think enough?
   Do you consider enough? You are busy about a thousand things, but do
   you really think about your souls, death, judgment and eternal Hell? Do
   you think enough about the Savior's love? Do you ponder your sin and
   the blessed fact that it may be pardoned?

   Oh, that you would reflect, consider and turn your whole mind to God!
   But I am beating around the bush! I have a much more important precept
   to which to exhort you. Remember, the Gospel command is, "Believe in
   the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved." Every minute that you
   remain an unbeliever you are adding to your sin! You are increasing
   your iniquity and confirming yourself in condemnation. Oh, that you
   would believe the Divine Testimony concerning Jesus, for that is the
   object of faith! What you are asked to believe is true. He whom you are
   commanded to trust in is able to save you--and the promise that you
   shall be saved if you trust is a sure and certain one!

   Do not, therefore, fling away your souls and despise the mercy of God!
   May it please the Eternal Spirit to lead you, at this very moment, to
   put your trust in Jesus Christ and to be saved! Then you will be one of
   those who spring as the grass, and as the willows by the watercourses.
   May God bless you, every one of you, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Isaiah 44. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--98, 95 (SONG II), 67.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Lesson from the Life of King Asa

   (No. 1152)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Herein you have done foolishly: therefore from henceforth you shall
   have wars." 2 Chronicles 16:9.

   OUR text leads us to speak upon historical matters, and for this I
   shall by no means apologize, although I have sometimes heard very
   foolish professors speak slightingly of the historical part of
   Scripture. Remember that the historical books were almost the only
   Scripture possessed by the early saints and from those they learned the
   mind of God. David sang the blessedness of the man who delighted in the
   Law of the Lord, yet he only had the first five books and, perhaps,
   Joshua, Judges and Ruth--all books of history in which to meditate day
   and night. The Psalmist, himself, spoke most lovingly of these books,
   which were the only statutes and testimonies of the Lord to him, with,
   perhaps, the addition of the Book of Job.

   Other saints delighted in the histories of the Word before the more
   spiritual books came in their way at all. If rightly viewed, the
   histories of the Old Testament are full of instruction. They supply us
   both with warnings and examples in the realm of practical morals. And
   hidden within their letter, like pearls in oyster shells, lie grand
   spiritual Truths of God couched in allegory and metaphor. I may say of
   the least important of all the books what our Lord said of children,
   "Take heed that you despise not one of these little ones." To take away
   from Holy Writ involves a curse upon the daring deed--may we never
   incur the penalty!

   I feel Scripture is given by Inspiration and is profitable--be it ours
   to gain the profit. Let us see whether we cannot get a lesson from the
   life of King Asa. We will commence by noticing who he was and what he
   had done in his better days, for this will help to understand more
   clearly the fault into which he fell. He was a man of whom it is said
   that his heart was perfect before God all his days. It is a great thing
   to have said of anyone--indeed, it is the greatest commendation which
   can be pronounced on mortal man! When the heart, the intention, the
   master affection is right--the man is reckoned a good man before the
   Lord, notwithstanding that there may be a thousand things which are not
   commendable--yes, and some things which are censurable in the man's
   outward career.

   Asa is noticeable, in the early part of his life, for the fact that he
   set up the worship of God and carried it out with great diligence,
   though his mother was an idolater and his father, Abijah, was little
   better. He had enjoyed no training as a youth that could lead him
   aright, but quite the contrary. Yet he was very decided, even in the
   first days of his reign, for the Lord, his God, and acted in all things
   with an earnest desire to glorify Jehovah and to lead his people away
   from all idols to the worship of the true God.

   Now, a life may begin well, and yet may be clouded before its close.
   The verdure of earnestness may fade into the sere and yellow leaf of
   backsliding. We may have the Grace of God in our earliest days, but
   unless we have, day by day, fresh help from on high, dead flies may
   pollute the ointment and spoil the sweet odor of our lives. We shall
   need to watch against temptation so long as we are in this wilderness
   of sin. Only in Heaven are we out of gunshot of the devil. Though we
   may have been kept in the ways of the Lord, as Asa was, for 50 or 60
   years, yet if left by the Master for a single moment we shall bring
   discredit upon His holy name.

   In the middle of his reign Asa was put to the test by a very serious
   trial. He was attacked by the Ethiopians and they came against him in
   mighty swarms. What a host to be arrayed against poor little Judah--an
   army of a million footmen and 300,000 chariots! All the host that Asa
   could muster--and he did his best--was but small compared to this
   mighty band. And it appeared as if the whole land would be eaten up,
   for the people seemed sufficient to carry away Judea by handfuls. But
   Asa believed in God and, therefore, when he had mustered his little
   band, he committed the battle to the Lord his God. Read attentively
   that earnest believing prayer which he offered. "And Asa cried unto the
   Lord his God and said, Lord, it is nothing with You to help, whether
   with many, or with them that have no power: help us, O Lord

   our God; for we rest on You, and in Your name we go against this
   multitude. O Lord, You are our God; let not man prevail against You."

   How grandly he threw all his burden upon God! He declared that he
   rested in the Most High and believed that God could just as well
   achieve the victory by a few and feeble folk as by a vast army. After
   this prayer he marched to the battle with holy confidence--and God gave
   him the victory. The power of Ethiopia was broken before him and
   Judah's armies returned laden with spoil. You would not have thought
   that a man who could perform that grand action would become, a little
   after, full of unbelief! But the greatest faith of yesterday will not
   give us confidence for today unless the fresh springs which are in God
   shall overflow again. Even Abraham, who at one time staggered not at
   the promise through unbelief, yet did stagger some time afterwards
   about a far less difficult matter. The greatest of God's servants, if
   their Lord hides His face, soon sink even below the least. All the
   strength of the strongest lies in Him.

   After Asa had thus, by Divine strength, won a great victory, he did
   not, as some do, grow proud of it, but he set to work, in obedience to
   a prophetic warning, to purge his country by a thorough reformation. He
   did it, and did it well. He did not show any partiality towards the
   rich and great in his country who were guilty of the worship of false
   gods. His own mother was a great fosterer of idolatry and she had a
   grove of her own with a temple in it--in which was her own peculiar
   idol. But the king put her away from her eminent position, took her
   idol and not merely broke it, but stamped upon it and burned it, with
   every sign of contempt, at the brook Kidron, into which ran the sewage
   of the temple--to let the people know that, whether in high places or
   among the poor--there should be nothing left to provoke the Lord
   throughout the land.

   This was well done. Oh that such a reformation might happen in this
   land, for the country is beginning to be covered with idols and mass
   houses! Everywhere they are setting up the altars of their broaden
   deity, shrines to the queen of heaven, the crucifix and the saints,
   while the spiritual worship of God is put aside to make room for vain
   shows and spiritual masquerades. The God of the Reformation--how much
   is He forgotten nowadays! Oh for a return of the days of Knox and his
   covenanting brethren! Asa was for a root and branch reform and he went
   through with it bravely. You would not have thought that a man so
   thorough--a man who, like Levi of old, knew not his own mother when it
   came to the matter of serving God, but made "through stitch" with it,
   as the old writers used to say--you would not have supposed that he
   would be the man who, when he came to another trial, would be running
   after an idolater and cringing before him and praying him to help him!

   Alas, the best of men are men at the best! God, alone, is unchangeable!
   He, alone, is always good, or, indeed, at all! "There is none good save
   one, that is God." We are only good as He makes us good. And if His
   hand is withdrawn, even for a moment, we start aside like a deceitful
   bow, or a broken bone which has been badly set. Alas, how soon are the
   mighty fallen and the weapons of war broken if the Lord upholds not!
   Asa, who could do marvels, and who walked so well and thoroughly before
   his God, yet, nevertheless, came to do foolishly and bring upon himself
   lifelong chastisement. I have thus brought before you his character
   because it was most fitting to start with this. It was due to his
   memory and due to ourselves, for we must remember that whatever we
   shall have to say against him, he was assuredly a child of God.

   His heart was right. He was a sincere, genuine, gracious Believer. If
   any object that he had grievous faults and, therefore, could not be a
   child of God, I shall be obliged to answer that they must, first of
   all, produce a faultless child of God this side Heaven before they will
   have sufficient ground for such an objection. I find that the holiest
   of men in Scripture had their imperfections, with the sole exception of
   our Master, the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, in whom was
   no sin. His garments were whiter than any fuller could make them, but
   all His servants had their spots. He is Light and in Him is no darkness
   at all. But we, with all the brightness His Grace has given us, are
   poor dim lamps at best.

   I make no exceptions, even of those who claim perfection, for I have no
   more faith in their perfection than in the Pope's infallibility! There
   is enough of the earthen vessel left about the best of the Lord's
   servants to show that they are earthen--and that the excellency of the
   heavenly treasure of Divine Grace which is put within them may be
   clearly seen to be of God and not of them.

   I. Now, we shall turn to notice the GRAVE ERROR INTO WHICH ASA
   FELL--the foolishness for which the Prophet rebuked him. He was
   threatened by Baasha, the king of the neighboring territory of Israel.
   He was not directly assailed by war, but Baasha began to build a
   fortress which would command the passages between the two countries--

   and prevent the people of Israel from coming to settle in the land of
   Judah, or make their annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Now, one would
   naturally have expected, from Asa's former conduct, that he would
   either have thought very little of Baasha, or else that he would have
   taken the case to God, as he did, before, in the matter of the
   Ethiopians.

   And this was a smaller trouble, altogether, and somehow, I fancy, it
   was because it was a smaller trouble, Asa thought that he could manage
   it very well himself by the help of an arm of flesh. In the case of the
   invasion by countless hordes of Ethiopians, Asa must have felt that it
   was of no use calling in Benhadad, the king of Syria, or asking any of
   the nations to help him, for with all their help he would not have been
   equal to the tremendous struggle. Therefore he was driven to God. But
   this, being a smaller trial, he does not seem to have been so
   thoroughly divorced from confidence in man. He looked about him and
   thought that Benhadad, the heathen king of Syria, might be led to
   attack the king of Israel and so draw him away from building the new
   fort. It would also divide his attention, cripple his resources and
   give Judah a fine opportunity of attacking him.

   Believers frequently behave worse in little trials than in great ones.
   I have known some children of God who have borne with equanimity the
   loss of almost everything they had, who have been disturbed and
   distracted and led into all sorts of doubt and mistrust by troubles
   that were scarcely worth the mentioning. How is it that vessels which
   bear a hurricane may, nevertheless, be driven upon a sandbank when
   there is but a capful of wind--that ships which have navigated the
   broad ocean have yet foundered in a narrow stream? It only proves this,
   that it is not the severity of the trial, it is the having or not
   having of God's Presence that is the main thing! In the great trial
   with the Ethiopians, God's Grace gave Asa faith, but in the little
   trial with Baasha, king of Israel, Asa had no faith and began to look
   about him for help from men.

   Observe that Asa went off to Benhadad, the king of Syria, who was a
   worshipper of a false God--with whom he ought to have had no connection
   or alliance whatever! And, what was worse, he induced Benhadad to break
   his league with Baasha. Here was a child of God teaching the ungodly to
   be untrue--a man of God becoming an instructor for Satan, teaching a
   heathen to be false to his promise! This was policy. This is the kind
   of thing which the kings of the earth practice towards one
   another--they are always ready to break treaties, though bound by the
   most solemn pledges. They make but light of covenants. The great matter
   with ambassadors even nowadays is to see which can entangle the other,
   for, as a statesman once said, "An ambassador is a person who is sent
   abroad to lie for the good of his country."

   Oh, the tricks, plots, deceptions, equivocations and intrigues of
   diplomacy! No chapter in human history shows up our fallen nature in
   more mournful colors. Asa, I have no doubt, thought that all was fair
   in war. He took the common rule, the common standard of mankind, and
   went upon that. Whereas, as a child of God, he ought to have scorned
   anything that was dishonorable or untrue. And as to saying to a heathen
   king, "Break your league with Baasha and make a league with me"--why,
   if he had been in a right state of heart, he would sooner have lost his
   tongue than have uttered such disgraceful words! But, child of God as
   he was, when he once got off the plain simple way of believing in God
   and taking his trouble to God, there was no telling what he would do.

   When you set the helm of your vessel towards the point to which you
   mean to steer, and steer right on, whatever comes in your way, your
   course will be well enough if you have a motive power within
   independent of wind and tide. But when you take to tacking this way,
   then you will have, in due time, to tack the other way--and when policy
   makes you do this wrong thing, policy will lead you to do another wrong
   thing--and so on, to a most lamentable degree. When our walk is with
   the Lord, it is a safe, holy, honorable walk. But the way of the flesh
   is evil and ends in shame. If you follow the way of the world, though
   always a crowded way, it will turn out, before long, to be a miserable,
   pettifogging, cringing, humiliating, dishonorable and wretched way to
   the true-born heir of Heaven!

   Dust shall be the serpent's meat and if we practice the crawling,
   twisting, slimy arts of the serpent, we shall have to eat the dust,
   too. Should a child of God degrade himself in that fashion? If he acts
   as he should act, he acts like a nobleman, no, like a prince of the
   blood imperial of Heaven, for is he not a son of God, one of Heaven's
   true aristocracy? But when he degenerates to acting as worldlings do,
   then, alas, he stains his garments in the mire! I charge you, my dear
   Brothers and Sisters, to look well to this. Perhaps I may be speaking
   as God's mouth to some of you who are now entering upon a testing time,
   a trouble in the family, a trial in business, or a difficulty in
   reference to a contemplated marriage, and you are asking, "What course
   shall I take?"

   You know what a man of the world would do and it has been suggested to
   you that such a course is the right one for you to follow. My dear
   Brother, remember you are not of the world, even as Christ is not of
   the world! Mind you act accordingly. If you are a worldly man and do as
   worldly men do, why, I must leave you--for them that are without God He
   judges. But if you are a man of God and an heir of Heaven, I beseech
   you, do not follow custom or do a wrong thing because others would do
   it! Do not do a little evil for the sake of a great good, but in your
   confidence possess your soul and abide faithful to conscience and to
   the eternal law of rectitude. Let others do as they please, but as for
   you, set the Lord always before you and let integrity and uprightness
   preserve you.

   Ask the Lord to help you. Is it not written that He will, with the
   temptation, make a way of escape? "Cast your burden upon the Lord: He
   will sustain you. He will never suffer the righteous to be moved." Do
   not put forth your hand to iniquity. You may, in order to help
   yourself, do in five minutes what you cannot undo in 50 years! And you
   may bring upon yourself a lifelong of trial by one single unbelieving
   action. Beware of staying yourself on Egypt and sending for help to
   Assyria, for these will distress you and help you not! Cry, "Lord,
   increase our faith!" That is what you greatly need in the trying hour,
   lest you should, like Asa, first of all, turn from confidence in God
   and, then, looking to an arm of flesh, should be tempted to use
   illegitimate means in order to induce the creature to let you rely upon
   it.

   Asa, having advanced so far in the wrong path, did worse, still, if
   worse could be, for he took of the gold and silver which belonged to
   the House of the Lord, in order to purchase the alliance of the Syrian
   monarch! I will say nothing about what belonged to his own house. He
   might do as he liked with that, so long as he did not spend it upon
   sin. But he took of the treasure that belonged to the House of the Lord
   and gave it to Benhadad--to bribe him to break his league with
   Baasha--and be in league with himself! Thus God was robbed, that the
   unbelieving king might find help in an arm of flesh. And, "Will a man
   rob God?"

   A Christian never doubts God and looks to the creature without robbing
   Him. If you rob Him of nothing else, you rob Him of His honor. Shall a
   father find his child trusting a stranger rather than his own father?
   Shall the husband see his wife putting confidence in his enemy? Will
   not that rob him of that which is far more precious than gold? Is it
   not a breach of that undivided affection, and that complete confidence
   which ought to exist in the conjugal relationship? And shall I mistrust
   my heavenly Father, my almighty Helper, and put confidence in a poor,
   broken reed? Shall I cast my burden upon a poor fellow sinner and
   forget to rest in my Savior? Shall the Well-Beloved of my soul be only
   trusted in fair weather? And shall I have such a sorry opinion of Him
   that when it comes to a little storm, I run to someone else and ask him
   to be my refuge?

   Beloved, let it not be so with us, or we shall surely grieve the Lord
   and bring ourselves into much perplexity! Have we not already been
   guilty enough of this? Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we
   bent upon grieving His Holy Spirit? Can we not take warning from Asa?
   Need we run upon this rock when we can see the wrecks of others all
   around? The Lord grant we may take heed according to His Word! So this
   good man, by his lack of faith, fell into many sins. I am compelled to
   add that he had to bear the blame of the consequences of his conduct,
   for when Benhadad, the king of Syria, came up and attacked Israel, he
   did not content himself with a battle or two, but he fell to plundering
   the Israelites and murdering them wholesale, so that great sorrows were
   brought upon the people of Israel. And who was to blame for these
   sorrows but the king of Judah, who had hired the Syrians for that very
   purpose?

   He who ought to have been a brother to the Israelites became their
   destroyer! Every time the cruel sword of the Syrians slew the women and
   children of Israel, the poor afflicted people had Asa to thank for it.
   The beginning of sin is like the letting out of waters--none can
   foresee what devastation the floods may cause. Brethren, we can never
   tell what may be the consequences of one wrong action! We may kindle a
   fire in the forest merely to warm our hands, but where the sparks may
   fly--and how many leagues the conflagration may spread--an angel cannot
   prophesy! Let us jealously keep away from every doubtful deed lest we
   bring evil consequences upon others as well as ourselves. If we carry
   no matches, we shall cause no explosions.

   Oh, for a holy jealousy, a deep conscientiousness and, above all, a
   solemn conscientiousness on the point of faith! To rest in the
   Lord--that is our business! To stay ourselves only upon Him--that is
   our sole concern! "My Soul, wait you only upon God, for my expectation
   is from Him." Unbelief is, in itself, idolatry! Unbelief leads us to
   look to the creature, which is folly. To look to the creature is, in
   effect, to worship the creature, to put it into God's place and so to
   grieve God and set up a rival in the holy place.

   I want you to listen yet a little while longer to this story of Asa. It
   came to pass that Asa's hiring Benhadad turned out to be a fine thing
   for him and, in the judgment of everybody who looked on, I dare say it
   was said that it was a fortunate stroke of business. According to God's
   mind, the king's course was evil, but it did not turn out badly for him
   politically. Now, many people in the world judge actions by their
   immediate results. If a Christian does a wrong thing and it prospers,
   then at once they conclude he was justified in doing it, but, ah,
   Brothers and Sisters, this is a poor, blind way of judging the actions
   of men and the Providence of God! Do you not know that there are
   devil's providences as well as God's Providences?

   I mean this. Jonah wanted to go to Tarshish to flee from God and he
   went down to Joppa--and what? Why, he found a ship just going to
   Tarshish. What a providence! What a providence! Are you so foolish as
   to view it in that light? I do not think Jonah was of that mind when he
   cried unto God out of the deeps! When the chief priests and Pharisees
   would take Jesus, they found Judas ready to betray Him. Was this also a
   providence? May not Satan have some hand in the arrangement which lays
   a weapon so near a murderer's hand, or renders robbery and fraud so
   easy? Do you think it an instance of Divine goodness that the tares
   often grow plentifully when the wheat suffers from drought? Often have
   we observed people who wanted to do wrong and things have just happened
   rightly to help them--and they have, therefore, said, "What a
   providence!"

   Ah, but a Providence that was meant to test and try, not a providence
   that was intended to aid and abet in the doing of a wrong thing--a
   Providence not to rejoice in, but concerning which we are taught to
   pray, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." A wrong
   is a wrong, whatever comes of it! If by uttering one falsehood you
   could become a rich man forever, it would not change the nature of the
   falsehood. If by doing one wrong transaction you could rid yourself
   from all liabilities in business and be, from now on, in competent
   circumstances, that would not, before God, take off the edge of the
   evil! No, not a single jot! God was pleased, for wise reasons, to allow
   the policy of His erring servant Asa to prosper, but now you will see
   that Asa was put in a worse place than ever because of it.

   The trial of Asa's spirit, the testing of his unswerving
   faithfulness--whether he would walk before God or not-- became more
   severe than before, for God sent His servant the Prophet to him, and he
   said to him, "When you came to God, and trusted Him about the
   Ethiopians, did not God prosper you? Though there were so many of them,
   did not the Lord give you the victory? And now you have gone away from
   your faith, you have lost a great blessing by it; for if you had
   trusted in God, you would have gone to war against Baasha and Benhadad,
   and you would have beaten them both, and your own kingdom would have
   grown strong by the putting down of these rival kingdoms. But you have
   lost that; you have acted very foolishly, and God means to chasten you
   for it, for from this very day you will have no more peace, but you
   will have war so long as you are a king."

   Now, observe, if king Asa had met with a trouble when he acted
   unjustifiably, he would have been humble, I have no doubt. Then he
   would have seen how wrong he was and he would have repented. But
   inasmuch as what he had done did not bring disaster with it--and God
   did not chasten him--the king's heart grew proud and he said, "Who is
   this fellow that he should come to tell his king his duty? Does he
   think I do not know, as well as he can tell me, what is right and what
   is wrong? Put the arrogant intruder in prison." When a Prophet came to
   Rehoboam, who was a bad king, Rehoboam did not put him in prison--he
   respected and reverenced the Word of the Lord. A bad man may do better
   than a good man on some one particular occasion--and so Rehoboam did
   better in that matter than Asa did.

   But Asa was now all wrong, he was in a high bullying spirit--and this
   was but what we might have expected, for whenever a man will cringe
   before his fellow men, you may be sure he is beginning to walk proudly
   before God. In his haughtiness of heart he put the Prophet in prison!
   Instead of weeping and humbling himself for what he had done, he
   imprisoned his reprover! And then, being in an irritable temper and a
   domineering humor, he began to oppress certain of his people. I do not
   know who they may have been, but probably they were godly persons who
   sympathized with the Prophet, and said, "We shall surely meet with a
   terrible judgment for dealing thus with God's servant." Perhaps they
   spoke freely about it and so Asa put them in prison, too.

   Thus God's own child had become the persecutor of God's servant and of
   other faithful ones. Oh, it was very sad, very sad! Well might God,
   then, resolve that the angry should smart for his faults very severely,
   that the rod should come home to his bone and his flesh, and render his
   remaining days exceedingly sorrowful. O beloved Friends, among your
   most earnest prayers pray God never to let your sins prosper, for if
   they do, they will breed a gangrene in your spirit

   which will lead on to yet more dangerous diseases of your soul! And
   they will inevitably entail upon you a dreary inheritance of
   affliction. God does not always whip His children the next minute after
   they do wrong. Sometimes He tells them that the rod will come and so
   makes them smart in apprehension before they smart in actual
   experience, for they are thinking of what it will be and that may be
   even a worse trial to them than the trial itself.

   But as surely as they are His own peculiar people, they must and shall
   be taught that sin is an exceedingly great evil, and they shall have no
   joy of their dalliance with it. Thus I have shown you who Asa was, and
   what faults he fell into, and how this led to other faults.

   II. And now we have to show you what God did with him when he came to a
   close reckoning. "Now," He seemed to say, "I will take you in hand
   Myself," and He sent him a disease in his feet--a very painful disease,
   too. He had to suffer night and day. He was tormented with it and found
   no rest. God's own hand was heavy upon him and some of us know to our
   regret that disease in the feet can become a very grievous affliction,
   second, indeed, to none, unless it be a malady of the brain. Now did
   the king learn that embroidered slippers give no ease to gouty feet and
   that sleep flies when disease bears rule.

   This should have driven Asa to repentance, but, to show that
   afflictions of themselves will not set a man right, Asa had fallen into
   such an unbelieving spirit that, instead of sending to God for help,
   and crying for relief to Him who sent the disease, he sent for the
   physicians! It is not wrong to send for physicians, it is quite
   right--but it is very wrong to send for physicians in place of crying
   to God--thus putting the human agency before the Divine. Besides, it is
   very probable that these physicians were only heathen magicians,
   sorcerers and pretenders to magical arts, and could not be consulted
   without implicating the patient in their evil practices. Though Asa
   would not approve of their heathenism, yet he might think, "Well, they
   are famous for their cures, and who they may be is not so much my
   concern. I will put up with that--if they can cure me, they may come."

   So his unbelief deprived him of the cure which God could readily enough
   have given him and he had his physicians and their medicine, but they
   were miserable comforters to him, giving him no relief, and probably
   causing him to suffer more than he would have suffered without them.
   They were physicians of no value, and their medicines were a delusion.
   How often is it so when we persist in looking away from God? He who has
   God has all, but he who has all besides God has really nothing at all!
   Asa's life, after that period, was a life of war and pain. His evening
   was clouded and his sun set in tempest. Have you ever noticed the
   career of David? What a happy life David's was up to one point! In his
   youth he was hunted like a partridge upon the mountains, but he was
   very merry. What joyful Psalms he used to sing when he was a humble
   shepherd boy!

   And when, afterwards, he was an exile in the caves of Engedi, how
   gloriously he poured out notes of gratitude and joy! He was at that
   period, and for years after, one of the happiest of men. But that hour
   when he walked on the roof of his house and saw Bathsheba--and gave way
   to his unholy desires--that hour, I say, put an end to the happy days
   of David. And though he was still a child of God and God never cast him
   away, yet his heavenly Father never ceased to chasten him. From that
   day his life teemed with trouble--troubles from his own children one
   after another, ingratitude from his subjects--and annoyance from his
   enemies. Afflictions sprang up for him as plenteously as hemlock in the
   furrows. He became a weeping monarch instead of a rejoicing one. The
   whole tenor of his life changed--a somber shade was cast over his
   entire image. You recognize him as the same man, but his voice is
   broken. His music is deep bass, he cannot reach one high note of the
   scale. From the hour in which he sinned he began to sorrow more and
   more.

   So will it be with us if we are not watchful. We may have led very
   happy lives in Christ up to this moment--and we know the Lord will not
   cast us away--for He does not cast away His people whom He did
   foreknow. But if we begin to walk distrustfully and adopt wrong
   actions, and dishonor His name, He may from that moment, say, "You only
   have I known of all the people of the earth, therefore I will punish
   you for your iniquities. Because I love you I will chasten you, for I
   chasten every son whom I love. And now, because you have thus gone
   astray, you shall be filled with your own backslidings. Your own
   vanities shall become your vexation throughout the rest of your days."

   Asa does not appear to have had any peace until at last he fell asleep,
   and then, I trust, his dying bed was as sweetly perfumed with penitence
   and pardon as his funeral couch was odoriferous with fragrant spices.
   The sweet spices of forgiving love and reviving faith were there and he
   died rejoicing in his God through the great Sacrifice. Brought back
   after a time of wandering, the cloudy day, at last, ended in a calm,
   bright evening. But who wishes to go so far astray,

   even if he is, at length, restored? O Brothers and Sisters, we do not
   merely want to go to Heaven, but we desire to enjoy a Heaven on the
   road to Heaven! We would like not only to come up from the wilderness,
   but to come up from the wilderness leaning on our Beloved! We would not
   wish to be saved, "so as by fire," but to have an abundant entrance
   administered to us into the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus
   Christ.

   Asa's character was well known among the people and they loved and
   respected him. The mistake he had made grieved many of the godly, I do
   not doubt, but for all that, they felt that one fault must not blot out
   the recollection of nearly 40 years of devoted service to God. So they
   loved him and they honored him with a funeral worthy of a king--a
   funeral by which they expressed both their sorrow and their esteem. But
   may it never be said of you and of me, "He led a good life. He was
   eminent in the service of God and did much, but there was an unhappy
   day in which the weakness of the flesh mastered the inner life."

   dear Sister, if you have brought up your children and have seen your
   family about you--and they have been proofs to all the world of the way
   in which you have walked with God and of your care to discharge your
   duties--do not let your old age be given up to petulance and murmuring
   and complaining so that your friends will have to say of you, "At the
   last she was not the happy Christian woman that she used to be." My
   dear Brother, you have been a merchant and you have resisted a great
   many temptations. You have been noted for your honorable character--do
   not now, in a moment of extreme trial, begin to doubt your God! May the
   Holy Spirit preserve you from so great an ill. In the time of your need
   you will find the Lord to be Jehovah-Jireh. He is no fair weather
   Friend, but He is a shelter from the storm, a covert from the tempest.

   Stand fast in your faith in Him! Do not question your God and do
   questionable things in consequence, for, if you do, it will be said by
   those who come after you, and perhaps even while you live by those who
   love you. "He was a good man, but there was a sad period of weakness
   and inconsistency. And though he was deeply penitent, yet from that
   unhappy day he went limping to his tomb." What a precious Christ we
   have, who saves such sinners as we are! What a dear and blessed Lord we
   have, who does not cast us away, notwithstanding all our slips and
   falls and shameful wanderings! Beloved, let us not be so base as
   wantonly to grieve Him--

   "We ha ve no fear that You should lose

   One whom eternal love could choose.

   But we would never this Grace abuse.

   Let us not fall. Let us not fall."

   With such a warning as this of Asa before us, now, do not let us relax
   our watchfulness and insensibly turn aside. "The path of the just is as
   the shining light which shines more and more unto the perfect day."

   That is your model--that is the promise which Scripture sets before
   you. Plead it and try to realize it. Let us go from strength to
   strength. Let us ask to grow in Divine Grace and in the knowledge of
   our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If we have wanted props up to
   now--outward and visible props--and have not been altogether able to
   rely upon God, may the Lord help us to grow stronger so that we may
   have done with Ready-to-Halt's crutches! May we walk uprightly before
   the Lord because we rely upon Him, trusting always in His sure
   faithfulness, and in the power which guarantees that His promise shall
   be fulfilled.

   1 do not know to whom I may be speaking a necessary word, except that I
   know it is necessary for myself. Perhaps there are some here to whom it
   may be just the word that is needed. Dear Brother, the life of faith is
   a blessed one! A Believer's course is a tried one--it is a
   warfare--but, for all that, all the sorrows of faith put together do
   not equal in bitterness one drop of the sorrow of sin, or one grain of
   the misery of unbelief. The king's highway may be rough, but By-Path
   Meadow, in the long run, is the rougher way of the two! It looks very
   pleasant to walk on the green turf, but remember, it is only in
   appearance that By-Path Meadow is smooth. The ways of Christ are ways
   of pleasantness and all His paths are peace as compared with any other
   paths in the world. And if they were not--if to serve the Lord led us
   only into sorrow and trouble--I trust the loyal hearts here, the virgin
   souls whom Christ has chosen, would resolve through floods or flames,
   if Jesus led the way, to follow still!

   O Beloved, may you cleave to the Lord by a simple faith! May you cleave
   to Him when the many turn aside! May you witness that He has the Living
   Word and none upon earth beside! Because your hearts are frail and
   feeble, ask Him, now, to cast the bands of His love about you and the
   cords of a man to bind you fast to His altar that you may not go away
   from it. For except He holds you fast, you must, you will decline and
   prove apostates after all. But He will hold you! He

   will keep the feet of His saints! Only trust not in yourselves. "He
   that trusts in his own heart is a fool." If any man says, "I stand,"
   let him take heed lest he fall!

   Beware of that self-confidence and spiritual boasting which is becoming
   common among Christians! Some even brag of their attainments--when, if
   they did but know themselves, they would confess that they are nothing
   better, even at the best, than poor, naked, miserable sinners! We all
   have need to look to Jesus, for we are nothing but empty boasters apart
   from Him! Only in Christ are we anything. "When I am weak, then am I
   strong," but at no other time. When I think I have a reason to glory,
   then am I, indeed, despicable! I know not myself and have become nearly
   blind, so as only to see what my own pride makes me think I see.

   May the Holy Spirit keep us humble--keep us at the foot of the
   Cross--keep us flat on the promise, resting on the eternal Rock and
   crying, "I am nothing Lord--nothing! You are All in All. I am all
   emptiness--come and fill me. I am all nakedness--come and clothe me. I
   am all weakness--come and glorify Your power, by making use of me!" God
   bless you, dear Friends, and if there are any among you who have not a
   God to trust in, or a Savior to love, may you seek Jesus now! If you
   seek Him, He will be found of you, for whoever believes in Him is
   saved! Whoever trusts Christ is saved! Pardon and salvation belong to
   every soul that hangs its hope upon the Cross! May God bless you
   richly, for Christ's sake. Amen.

   PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Parts of 2 Chronicles
   14,15.16. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--668, 667.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Matchless Mystery

   (No. 1153)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones"
   Ephesians 5:30.

   I DO not hesitate to say that this is one of the most wonderful texts
   in the whole compass of Revelation. It sets forth the mystery of
   mysteries, the very pith and marrow of the loftiest divinity. It is
   fitted rather to be the theme for a hundred elaborate discourses than
   for one brief homily. Most assuredly it is a deep that knows no
   sounding, an abyss where thought plunges into never-ending
   contemplations. He who handles it had need, first of all, to be filled
   with all the fullness of God. Therefore we feel incapable of dealing
   with it as it should be dealt with--it is all too great and vast for
   us--we can no more hope to compass it than a child can hold an ocean in
   his hand.

   Beloved, it is a text that must not be looked upon with the eyes of
   cold, theological orthodoxy which might make us content to say, "Yes,
   that is a great and important Truth," and there leave it. It is a text
   to be treated as the manna was that fell from Heaven, namely, to be
   tasted, to be eaten, to be digested and to be lived upon from day to
   day! It is a text for the quietude of your meditation, when you can sit
   still and turn it over and, like Mary, ponder it in your hearts. Long
   and loving should be your gaze upon the facets of this diamond of
   Truth, this diamond of Revelation.

   It is a golden sentence fitted for those choice hours when the King
   brings us into His banqueting house and His banner over us is love.
   When the distance between earth and Heaven has become less and less,
   till it scarcely exists--those undisturbed times when all is rest round
   about us, because He who is our Rest enables us to lean upon His bosom
   and to feel His heart of love beating true to us. I ask you, O my
   Brothers and Sisters, therefore, as though you were quite alone in your
   own chamber, to pray for that frame of mind which is suitable to the
   subject, and to pray for me that I may be placed in that condition of
   heart which shall best enable me to speak upon it. We need our thoughts
   to be focused before they can reveal to us the great sight before us.
   Get to the place where Mary sat at Jesus' feet and then will this text
   sound like music in your ears.

   Without any accompaniment of exposition from me, it will have all
   Heaven's music in it--"We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of
   His bones." Sevenfold will be the happiness of the spirit which knows
   how to sit down and to taste of the marrow and the fatness, to drink of
   the "wine on the less well-refined," which are to be found in this
   Inspired declaration. Before I preach upon it, there is one thing which
   it is necessary for us to do. They have a way in Scotland, before the
   communion, of "fencing the table," that is to say, warning all those
   who have no right to come to the table to avoid the sin of unlawful
   intrusion, and so of eating and drinking condemnation unto themselves.
   They help the hearers to self-examination, lest they should come
   thoughtlessly and participate in that which does not belong to them.

   Now, my text is like a table of communion richly loaded, and far from
   you to whom it does not belong, unless you learn the sacred way of
   coming in by the Door, into this sheepfold, where the pasture is so
   rich and green. If you come by Christ, the Way, come and welcome! If
   you rest in Him, if His dear wounds are the fountains of your life, and
   if His atoning Sacrifice is your soul's only peace, come and
   welcome--for of you, and such as you, and all of us who are trusting in
   Jesus, it may be truly said--"We are members of His body, of His flesh,
   and of His bones."

   But if not Believers in Him, this heavenly verse has nothing to do with
   you. It is "the children's bread." It belongs only to the children. It
   is Israel's manna--it falls for Israel. It is the stream which leaps
   from Israel's smitten rock and comes neither for Edom, nor for
   Amalek--but only for the chosen seed, alone. Look back, then, to the
   beginning of the Epistle, and see of whom the Apostle was speaking when
   he said, "we." This little word, "we," is like the door of Noah's
   ark--it shuts out and shuts in. Does it shut us out or in?

   Now, the Apostle wrote his Epistle to those of whom he said, "Blessed
   be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with
   all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as He
   has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should
   be holy and without blame before Him in love." Answer this question,

   you who would enjoy this text--Have you made your calling and election
   sure? Has that matter ever been decided in your spirit after honest
   search and inquiry into the grounds of your confidence? Have you been
   led to choose your God, for if so, your God had long ago chosen you!
   That matter is ascertained beyond all question and out of it springs
   the undoubted assurance that you are one with Him, since of all whom He
   has chosen it is true--"We are members of His body, of His flesh, and
   of His bones."

   The Apostolic description is before you, I pray you read on--"Having
   predestinated us into the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to
   Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will." Do you know
   anything about adoption? Have you been taken out of the family of Satan
   and enrolled in the family of God? Have you the Spirit of adoption in
   you? Does your soul cry, "Abba, Father," at the very thought of God?
   Are you an imitator of God as a dear child? Do you feel that your
   nature has been renewed, so that, whereas you were a child of wrath,
   even as others, you have now become a child of God? Judge, I pray you,
   and discern concerning these things, for on your answer to this
   question depends your condition before God, your union with Christ, or
   your separateness from Him.

   Note, still, the Apostle's words as you read on, "To the praise of the
   glory of His Grace, wherein He has made us accepted in the Beloved."
   Dear Hearer, do you know the meaning of those last words, "Accepted in
   the Beloved"? You can never be accepted in yourself--you are sinful,
   and undone, and unworthy--but have you come and cast yourself upon the
   work, the blood and the righteousness of Jesus? Are you, therefore,
   accepted, "Accepted in the Beloved"? Have you ever enjoyed a sense of
   acceptance so that you could draw near to God, as no longer a servant
   beneath the curse, but a son beneath the blessing? If so, come and
   welcome to the text! It is all your own!

   But note the next verse--"In whom we have redemption through His
   blood." Oh, dear Brothers and Sisters, do you know the blood? I do not
   care what else you know if you do not know the blood. Nor do I much
   mind what else you do not know. You may differ very widely in doctrine
   from some of the Truths of God which I think I have learned from the
   Word of God, but do you know the blood? Were you ever washed in it?
   Have you seen it sprinkled overhead and on the side posts of the house
   where you dwell, so that the destroying angel passes you by? Is the
   blood of Christ the lifeblood of your hope? God save me from preaching,
   and you from believing in a bloodless theology! It is a dead theology!
   Take Christ away, take the Atonement by a substitutionary Sacrifice
   away--and what is there left? But, oh, if we in very deed have
   redemption through His blood, then we are "members of His body, of His
   flesh, and of His bones."

   The Apostle adds, "The forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of
   His Grace." And here, again, I press home the question upon the
   consciences of the members of this Church, and upon the members of
   every professing Church of Christ--Have you tasted forgiveness? Have
   you felt the burden of sin? Have you gone with that burden to the foot
   of the Cross? Has the Heavenly Father ever said to you, "Your sins are
   forgiven you"? Do you believe in the forgiveness of sins, and that in
   reference to yourselves? Oh, do not be satisfied unless you do! Do not
   be put off with a bare hope that perhaps your sin is forgiven you, but
   struggle after that blessed full assurance which is able to say--

   "Oh, how sweet to view the flowing Of my Savior's precious blood, With
   Divine assurance knowing He has made my peace with God!" And if you do
   know, possess and enjoy the forgiveness of sins, then are you "members
   of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones."

   Oh, how this last sentence concerning pardon and rich Grace seems to
   cheer my soul! If none might come but those who never sinned, my guilty
   soul could never venture near the Lord! If none might come but those
   who have committed little sin, then I must be debarred. But it is "the
   forgiveness of sins" on a grand scale! Let me read the words--"The
   forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His Grace." So it is
   great forgiveness, the forgiveness of great sin, because of great love.
   O beloved Hearer, great sinner as you have been, yet if you are
   "accepted in the Beloved," and have "redemption through His blood,"
   then all that is in the text belongs to you!

   So I will keep you waiting in the vestibule no longer, but set the door
   wide open, saying, "Come in, you blessed of the Lord. Why do you stand
   outside?" I pray the Holy Spirit to help you come in to this high
   festival, give you a sacred appetite and enable you, now, to appreciate
   the extraordinary sweetness of the words before us! First, I shall try
   and expound--and it must be but feebly what the text means and,
   secondly, what the text secures.

   I. First, WHAT DOES THE TEXT MEAN? "We are members of His body, of His
   flesh, and of His bones." Read it in the light of the second chapter of
   the book of Genesis, for it is evident that there is a distinct
   allusion to the creation of before. The very words of Adam are quoted
   and we are mentally conducted to that scene in the Garden of Eden when
   the first man gazed upon the first woman, created to be his dear
   companion and helpmeet. What did Adam mean when he used these words?
   The great Husband of our souls must mean the same, only in a more
   spiritual and emphatic sense.

   First, there was meant here similarity of nature. Adam looked at Eve
   and he did not regard her as a stranger, as some creature of a
   different genus and nature, but he said, "She is bone of my bones, and
   flesh of my flesh." He meant that she was of the same race, a
   participant in the same nature. He recognized her as a being of the
   same order as himself. Now, that is a low meaning of the text, but it
   is one meaning.

   Beloved Brethren, think of this Truth for a moment. Jesus, the Son of
   God, counted it not robbery to be equal with God. "Without Him was not
   anything made that was made." He is "very God of very God." Yet He
   deigned, for love of us, to take upon Himself our nature, and He did it
   completely, so that He assumed the whole of human nature, apart from
   its sin. And in that respect we may say of ourselves--that we are "bone
   of His bone, and flesh of His flesh." The very nature which we wear on
   earth, Christ Jesus once carried about among us, and at last carried
   aloft to Heaven. You believe in His Godhead--take heed never to
   commingle His Godhead and His humanity. Remember, Christ was not a
   deified man, neither was He a humanized God.

   He was perfectly God, and at the same time perfectly Man, made like
   unto His brethren in all things. Dwell for a moment upon this Truth of
   God, for the text sets it forth. Born of a human mother and swaddled
   like any other child, He was, from His birth, as perfectly human even
   as you are. In nothing did He differ from you except in this, that He
   never wandered from God and broke His Commandments, and He was not
   defiled with that hereditary taint of Original Sin which dwells in you
   by nature. The like depressions--those which sadden your spirit--He
   knew. The temptations of our nature assailed Him. Men and devils both
   sought to influence Him. He was amenable to all the external physical
   arrangements of the globe.

   On Him the shower pelted down and wet His garments. And on Him the
   burning sun poured forth its undiminished heat. Upon His sacred Person
   on the lone mountainside, the dews descended till His head was wet with
   them, and His locks with the drops of the night. For Him there were
   poverty, hunger, thirst, reproach, slanders and treachery. For Him the
   sea tossed the boat as it will for you. And for Him the land yielded
   thorn and thistle, as it does to you. He suffered, He ate, He toiled,
   He rested, He wept and He rejoiced, even as you do, sin, alone,
   excepted. A real kinsman was He, not in fiction, but in substantial
   reality. Are you man? Jesus was a Man! Do not doubt it. Do not look at
   your Lord as standing up there on a pinnacle of superior nature where
   you cannot come near Him, but view Him as your own flesh and blood, "a
   Brother born for adversity."

   For so he is. He comes to you and says, "Handle Me and see. A spirit
   has not flesh and bones as you see I have." He invites your faith to
   look at the prints of the nails and the scar of the spear. Did He not,
   after He had risen from the dead, prove His true humanity by eating a
   piece of a broiled fish and of a honeycomb? And that same humanity has
   gone to Heaven! The clouds received it out of our sight, but it is
   there--

   "A Man there was, a real Man, Who once on Calvary died; And streams of
   blood and water ran Down from His wounded side."

   That same blest Man exalted sits high on His Father's throne. Believe
   this, and you will see how He is bone of your bone, and flesh of your
   flesh. And then remember that, as His Nature is as yours, so, in
   another sense, He has made your nature as His, for you are born-again
   and gifted with a higher life. You were carnal--He has now made you
   spiritual. You could not drink of His cup, or be baptized with His
   baptism till His Spirit had come upon you.

   But now you are made "partakers of the Divine Nature"--strong words,
   but Scriptural--"partakers of the Divine Nature, having escaped the
   corruption that is in the world through lust." "For as you have borne
   the image of the earthy Adam, you shall also bear the image of the
   heavenly." Now, you, as spiritual men, cry out to God in prayer, and so
   did He when He was here. Now you are in an agony as you strive with God
   and so was He, but the bloody sweat is a part of His substitutionary
   work in which He trod the winepress alone. His meat and drink was to do
   the will of Him that sent

   Him, and it is yours, I trust--at any rate, it should be if you are
   your Lord's. He lived for God. He lived and died for love of men. And
   that same love of God and man, though in a feebler measure, burns
   within your heart.

   You are, therefore, now made, by His Grace, to participate in His moral
   and spiritual Nature, and you will never be satisfied till you awake in
   His likeness. And you will awake in His likeness, so that when He sees
   you and you see Him, then it shall be abundantly manifest to you that
   you are a member "of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones"--

   "Such was Your Grace, that for our sake

   You did from Heaven come do wn.

   You did of flesh and blood partake,

   In all our sorro ws one.

   Ascended now, in glory bright,

   Still ours with us You are.

   Nor life, nor death, nor depth, nor height.

   Your saints and You can part.

   Oh, teach us, Lord, to know and own

   This wondrous mystery,

   That You with us are truly one,

   And we are one with Thee!

   Soon, soon shall come that glorious day,

   When, seated on Your Throne,

   You shall to wondering worlds display,

   That you with us are one!" Similarity of Nature, then, is the first
   meaning of the text.

   Regard, I pray you, Brothers and Sisters, with much solemn attention, a
   higher step of the ladder. It signifies intimate relationship, for I
   hardly think that Adam would have said quite so strongly, "She is bone
   of my bones, and flesh of my flesh," if he had thought that the woman
   would disappear, or would become the wife of another. It was because
   she was to be his helpmeet and they were to be joined together in bonds
   of the most intimate communion, that, therefore, he said, "Not only is
   she of the same bone and flesh as I am, but she is bone of my bones,
   and flesh of my flesh. She is related to me." What a near and dear and
   loving relationship marriage has bestowed upon us! It is a blessing for
   which good men dwelling with affectionate wives praise God every day
   they live.

   Marriage and the Sabbath are the two choice gifts of primeval love that
   have come down to us from Paradise--the one to bless our outer and the
   other our inner life. Oh, the joy, the true, pure, elevated peace and
   joy which many of us have received through that divinely ordained
   relationship! We cannot but bless God every time we repeat the dear
   names of those who are now parts of ourselves. Marriage creates a
   relationship which ends only when death parts us. Only then may it may
   be dissolved. Alas, sin enters even here! A dark crime may be
   committed, but, with the exception of that, it is for life--for better,
   for worse--only the mortal stroke can part.

   Now think of it. As is your relation, O woman, to your husband, and as
   is your relation, O man, to your wife, such is the relation which
   exists between you, as a believer in Jesus, and Christ Jesus your Lord!
   It is the nearest, dearest, closest, most intense and most enduring
   relationship that can be imagined. I love and bless God, forever
   declaring that His relationship to us may be likened to that of a
   father or a mother to a child. Did you ever hear those words without
   tears--(I think I never did)--"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."

   And yet there is a closer intimacy, somehow, in the relationship which
   is declared in the text, because there is a kind of equality between
   the married ones, tempered by that headship of which the Apostle speaks
   and which we delight to recognize in our beloved Lord towards
   ourselves. The child cannot, while it is yet a babe, at any rate, enter
   into its mother's feelings. It is far below the mother. But the wife
   communes with her husband--she is lifted up to his level! She is made a
   partaker of his cares and sorrows, of his joys and his successes, and
   the intimacy arising out of their conjugal union is of the closest
   kind.

   Now--again I say it, and I cannot open it up further than to say
   it--such is the relationship between the Believer's soul and the Lord
   Jesus. Well did the spouse break out with the rapturous language, which
   forms the first word of the song--"Let Him kiss me with the kisses of
   His mouth, for His love is better than wine," as if she did not need to
   describe

   her relationship, but longed to enjoy the sweets of it. My Brothers and
   Sisters, I pray you may so enjoy it, that now, if you are poor in this
   world, if you are an orphan, if you are almost alone in this great
   city, you may feel, "No longer am I an orphan, no longer am I alone. My
   Maker is my Husband. The Lord of Hosts is His name, and my Redeemer,
   the Mighty One of Israel. And from this day forth will I rejoice that I
   am bone of His bones, and flesh of His flesh." Similarity of Nature and
   closeness of relationship are evidently in the text.

   But I clearly see another and deeper meaning. It meant, from Adam's
   lips, mysterious extraction. I will not make bold to say that he knew
   what had occurred to him in his sleep. He might not have known all, but
   he seems to have had a mystic enlightenment which made him guess what
   had occurred--at least the words seem to me to have that ring in them.
   "She is bone of my bones"--for a bone had been taken from him, "and
   flesh of my flesh," for out of him had she been taken. He seems to have
   known that somehow or other she sprang from him. Whether he knew it or
   not, Christ knows right well the origin of His spouse! He knows where
   His Church came from. There is still the mark in His side-- there is
   the memorial in the palms of His hands and on His feet.

   From where came this new Eve, this new mother of all living? From where
   came this spouse of the second Adam? She came of the second Adam. She
   was taken from His side, right near His heart. Have you never read,
   "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone;
   but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit"? Had Jesus never died, He
   would have been made to abide alone as to any who could be helpmeets
   for Him, and could enter into fellowship with Him. But, inasmuch as He
   has died, He has brought forth much fruit and His Church has sprung
   from Him. And in that sense she is bone of His bones, and flesh of His
   flesh.

   "What do I mean by the Church?" asks one. I mean by the Church all the
   people of God, all the redeemed, all Believers, as I explained at the
   commencement. Do you think I mean by the Church the harlot of the seven
   hills? God forbid that Christ should have fellowship with her! How can
   He so much as look upon her except with horror? Do you think He means,
   by the Church, the politically supported corporation that men call a
   Church nowadays? No, but the spiritual, the quickened, the living, the
   believing, the holy people--wherever they may be--or by whatever name
   they may be called. These are they that sprang of Christ, even as Levi
   from the loins of Abraham. They live because they receive life from Him
   and at this day they are dead in themselves--and their life is hid with
   Christ in God. So the text leads us to a deep meditation as to
   mysterious extraction.

   But I find the time goes too swiftly for me and I must observe, next,
   that I am sure that in the text there is more than this. There is, in
   the fourth place, loving possession. He said, "She is bone of my bones,
   and flesh of my flesh." He felt she was his own and belonged solely to
   him. Of anything there might be in the Garden, Adam was but owner in
   the second degree. But when he saw her, he felt she was all his own. By
   bonds and ties which did not admit of dispute, his bone and his flesh
   was she. Now, Beloved, at this moment let this thought dance through
   your soul--you belong to Jesus-- altogether you belong to Jesus! Let
   not your love go forth to earthly things, so soiled and dim, but send
   it all away, up to Him to whom you belong--yes, send it all to Him.

   "Set not your affection upon things on the earth," but set it all upon
   things above, for you belong wholly to your Lord. All that there is of
   your spirit, soul and body--the treble kingdom of your nature--Christ
   has purchased by His blood. It were a dark thought to cross a man's
   mind, that his spouse belonged in part to some other. It could not be!
   And will you provoke your Lord to jealousy? Will you suffer it to seem
   so by your actions or your words? No, rather say tonight, anew--

   "'Tis, done, the great transaction's, done!

   I am my Lord's and He is mine!

   He drew me, and I followed on,

   Charmed to confess the voice Divine.

   High Heaven, that heard the solemn vow,

   That vow renewed shall daily hear,

   Till in life's latest hour I bow,

   And bless in death a bond so dear." "For you are not your own, you are
   bought with a price." "We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of
   His bones." We belong entirely to Him.

   And to close this exposition--this skimming of the surface,
   rather--there is one more matter and this is the very essence of the
   meaning. A vital union exists between us and Christ. When the Apostle
   wrote, showing that we were one with Christ, as the wife is with the
   husband, he felt that the metaphor, though it set forth much, did not
   set forth all. He would have us know that we are more closely knit to
   Jesus than is a woman to her husband, for they are, after all, separate
   individualities, and they may act and too often do so, far too
   distinctly for themselves. But here he puts it, "We are members of His
   body." Now, here is a vital union, the closest imaginable! It is not
   unity--it is identity! It is more than being joined to--it is being
   made a part of--and an essential part of the whole!

   Do you think I strain the text and go beyond the fact? Listen to this
   word. The Apostle, in speaking of the Church, said, concerning Christ,
   that the Church was His body, "the fullness of Him that fills all in
   all." And note the majesty of that speech--that the Church should be
   the fullness of Christ! Now, Christ, without His fullness, is evidently
   not full-- He must have His people--they are essential to Him. The idea
   of a Savior is lost, apart from the saved. He is a head without a body
   if there are no members. Without His people Jesus is but a king without
   subjects, and a shepherd without a flock. It is essential to any true
   thought of Christ that you think of His people! They must come in. They
   are one with Him in every true view of Jesus Christ our Lord.

   How are we one with Him? Ah, Brothers and Sisters, much might be said,
   but I fear little would be explained by words. I want you to feel it
   and to be comforted by the fact of the vital union of Jesus and His
   people. Have you never heard Him say to you--

   "I feel in My heart all your sighs and your groans,

   For you are most near Me, My flesh and My bones.

   In all your distresses, your Head feels the pain,

   They all are most necessary, not one is in vain"? Oh, do get to know
   this, you tried and tempted ones, you poor poverty-stricken people of
   God! Get to know this, you who could not help coming here tonight, wet
   as it was, because you must have spiritual meat, you were so hungry
   after your Lord! Oh, do get this morsel now, and feed on it! You are
   one with Him! You were "buried in Him in baptism unto death," wherein
   also you have risen with Him! You were crucified with Him upon the
   Cross! You have gone up into Heaven with Him, for He has raised us up
   together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ
   Jesus. And surely you shall be actually in your very person with Him
   where He is, that you may behold His Glory! You are one with

   Him!

   Now, tie up these five Truths of God like five choice flowers in a
   nosegay. Band them, like sweet spices, and let them be a bundle of
   camphire and a cluster of myrrh to lie all night upon your bosom to
   give you rest and to sweeten your repose. There is between you and your
   Lord a similarity of Nature and an intimate relationship! You have a
   mysterious extraction from Him and He has a loving possession of
   you--and a vital union with you. Come, now, we must only have a few
   minutes to catch some of the juice that will flow out of these clusters
   of Eshcol while we tread them for a moment, just to show what the wines
   of the kingdom are like.

   II. WHAT DOES THE TEXT SECURE? First, it seems to me, that the text
   secures the eternal safety of everyone who is one with Christ. You know
   the figure we often use, that when a man's head is above water you
   cannot drown his feet--and as long as my Head is in Glory, though I am
   but the sole of His foot--and only worthy to be trod in the mire, how
   can He drown me? Is it not written, "Because I live you shall live
   also"--all of you who are one with Him? The idea of Christ losing
   members of His body is to me grotesque and at the same time ghastly.
   Does He change His members like some aquatic creatures which lose their
   limbs and get fresh joints? I know it is not so with Christ, the second
   Adam! Will He lose His members? Can He lose one member? NO! Then can He
   lose all?--

   "Ifever it should come to pass That sheep of Christ could fall away, My
   fickle, feeble soul, alas, Would fall a thousand times a day."

   But herein lies our safety--"I give unto My sheep eternal life, and
   they shall never perish; neither shall any pluck them out of My hand."
   I know that some have perverted this blessed Truth of God into the
   wicked lie that the Christian man may live as he likes and yet be safe.
   No such doctrine is to be found between the covers of this Book! The
   doctrine of the safety of the saints is far other than that! It is that
   the renewed man shall live as God likes, shall persevere in holiness

   and hold on his way until he arrives at the blessed perfection of his
   Lord, changing from glory to glory into that image which he shall reach
   and possess forever. I see--I pity those who do not see it, but I will
   not blame--I see, I think, strong reason for believing in the security
   of every soul which is one with Christ.

   But, next, I see here a very sweet thought. If I am one with Christ,
   then I certainly enjoy, above all things, His love. Last Saturday week,
   in the evening, I was trying to turn over this text to preach to you
   from it in the morning, but I was wrung with bitter pains which made me
   feel that I should not preach, and kept me wearily waiting through the
   night watches. But do you know what comforted me very much about the
   text? It was that sentence which is a near neighbor of it--"No man ever
   yet hated his own flesh." I seized upon that and my sad heart cried
   out, "Surely the Man Christ Jesus never yet hated His own flesh." If we
   are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones, He may
   chasten, He may correct and lay on heavy strokes, and give sharp
   twinges, and make us cry out--He may even thrust us in the fire, and
   heat the furnace seven times hotter--but He never can neglect and abhor
   His own flesh!

   There is still love in His heart. I hate no part of my body, not even
   when it aches. I hate it not, but love it still--it is a part of
   myself--and so does Jesus love His people. And you, poor Sinners, who
   feel that you are not worthy to be called His people, nevertheless His
   love goes out to you, despite your imperfections. Having loved His own,
   which were in the world, He loved them to the end and He has left it on
   record--"As My Father has loved Me, even so have I loved you. Continue
   you in My love."

   Another most enchanting thought also arises from our subject. The
   Apostle goes on to say, "No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but
   nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord of the Church." Oh, those
   two words, "nourishes it." Are you living in a district where you do
   not get the Gospel? Well, then, go to the Gospel's Lord and say to Him,
   "Lord, hate not Your own flesh, but nourish me." Have you been for a
   while without visits from Christ? Have you lost the light of His
   countenance? Do not be satisfied with nourishing--go further and plead
   for cherishing! Ask for those love tokens, for those gentle words, for
   those secret blandishments known to saints, and to none but saints,
   for, "the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him and He will
   show them His Covenant." Go and ask for both these forms of love and
   you shall be nourished and cherished!

   The good husband does not merely bring so much bread and meat into the
   house and fling it down, saying, "There, that will nourish you." Oh,
   not so--there are tender words and kind acts by which he cherishes as
   well as nourishes. And your Lord will not only give you bread to eat
   which the world knows not of, but He will give it to you according to
   His lovingkindness and the multitude of His tender mercies, for He
   makes us to lie down in green pastures, He leads us beside the still
   waters, gently guiding as a shepherd conducts his flock. Rejoice, then,
   that your nourishing and your cherishing are secure!

   I will not keep you longer when I have said this much. If we are
   members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones, then He will one
   day present us to Himself, "without spot, or wrinkle, or any such
   thing," for the whole body must be so presented. Alas, our spots are
   many, and sadly mar our beauty! Brothers and Sisters, I love not to
   think little of my spots. I wish I had not even a speck. Alas, our
   wrinkles! Let us not talk lightly of them. It is most sad that on the
   Beloved's darling there should be a solitary blot. It is the worst
   wrinkle of all when a man does not see his own wrinkles, or when he
   does not mourn over them. But there are spots and wrinkles. I hope we
   do not say, "Yes, they are there," and then add, "And they must be
   there." No, Beloved, they ought not to be there--there ought to be no
   sin in us.

   If there is a sin which ought to be upon us, why it is clear it is no
   sin! A thing that ought to be is not a sin. If we served our Master as
   He deserves to be served, we should never sin, but our lives would be
   perfect. Therefore it is our daily burden that the spots and wrinkles
   still will show--but this is our consolation--that He will one day
   present us to Himself, holy and without blemish, "not having spot or
   wrinkle, or any such thing."--

   "Oh, glorious hour, oh, blest abode; I shall be near, and like my God.
   Nor spot nor wrinkle shall remain, His perfect image to profane."

   It will be a blessed thing, indeed, to have attained to this, to wear
   the image of the heavenly and be perfect even as our Bridegroom is
   perfect.

   Then, remember, all the glory Christ has we shall share in. You cannot
   honor a warrior who returns from the wars, and say to him, "Great
   general, we honor your head." Oh, no, he who fought his country's
   battles and won the victory,

   when he was honored was altogether honored as a man. And when the
   Master, at the last, shall have finished all His work and the whole
   battle that He undertook is finished and the victory gained. When He
   enters perfectly into His joy, we, too, shall enter into the joy of our
   Lord! Does He sit upon a throne? He has said we shall sit upon His
   Throne. Has He triumphed? We shall bear the palm branch, too. Whatever
   He has, we shall share. Are we not heirs of God, joint heirs with Jesus
   Christ? My soul feels ready to leap right away from this body at the
   thought of the glory that shall be revealed in us--not in Paul and
   Peter only, but in us!

   Poor things, poor things, that struggle hard each day with infirmities
   and trials, you shall be with Him where He is, and shall behold His
   Glory forever! So shall we ever be with the Lord. Comfort one another
   with these words."--

   "Since Christ and we are one,

   Why should we doubt or fear?

   If He in Heaven has fixed His Throne,

   He'll fix His members there."

   In this spirit come to the Communion Table and find your Master there!
   But oh, if you are not resting in Him. If the blood was never upon you,
   you are condemned already because you have not believed on the Son of
   God! I pray that your bed may be cold and hard as a stone to you
   tonight and your eyes may forget to sleep--and your heart may know no
   rest till you have said--"I will arise, and go to my Father, and will
   say unto Him, Father, I have sinned." Then take with you Jesus as a
   Mediator and draw near to the Throne of Grace! Plead His blood and
   merits, and you shall live! And then you, too, shall be able to join
   with the saints who say, "We are members of His body, of His flesh, and
   of His bones." Amen. Amen.

   PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Genesis 2:18;
   Ephesians5:22-33. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--761, 762.

   A MESSAGE:

   I have revised this sermon at Cannes, to which place I have come for
   health. I am happy to inform all friends that I am already much better.
   The influences of a warm, sunny climate and rest from great labor are
   being blessed by Infinite Mercy to my restoration. I commend the work I
   am obliged to leave to the prayers of God's people and I desire, also,
   to thank numerous friends for their substantial help to the College and
   Orphanage, so that I am not tempted to be anxious about funds for these
   at a time when ease of mind is especially desirable. With this I send
   most loving salutations to all my readers. May the Lord send to our
   beloved land a great revival of true religion.

   C. H. SPURGEON.
     __________________________________________________________________

                          Daniel Facing the Lions' Den

   (No. 1154)

   Delivered by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the [1]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   "Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his
   house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he
   kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks
   before his God, as he did aforetime"— Daniel 6:10.

   Daniel was of royal race, and, what is far better, he was, of royal
   character. He is depicted on the pages of scriptural history as one of
   the greatest and most faultless of men. How grand and impressive his
   first appearance as a young man, when he was introduced to
   Nebuchadnezzar! The Chaldeans and magicians and astrologers had all
   failed to divine the secret which perplexed the king and troubled his
   spirit; till at length there stood up before him this young prince of
   the house of Judah to tell his dream and the interpretation thereof. No
   wonder that the excellent spirit which shone in him led to his being
   made a great man, procured for him rich gifts, and led to his promotion
   amongst the governor, of Babylon. In after days he showed his dauntless
   courage when he interpreted the memorable dream of Nebuchadnezzar, in
   which the king's pride was threatened with a terrible judgment. It
   needed that he should be a lion-like man to say to the king, "Thou, O
   king, shalt be driven from among men, and eat grass as oxen, and thy
   body shall be wet with the dew of heaven, till thy hairs are grown like
   eagles' feathers, and thy nails like birds' claws." Yet what he told
   him came true, for all this, came upon the king Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel
   discharged his duty to his conscience, so there was nothing to disquiet
   him. Well might he have said—

   "I feel within me
   A peace above all earthly dignities,
   A still and quiet conscience."

   In lurid light, in terrible grandeur, Daniel comes forth again, on the
   last night of Belshazzar's reign, when the power of Babylon was broken
   for ever. Persians had dried up the river, and were already at the
   palace doors. "Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting,"
   said the prophet, as he pointed to the mysterious handwriting on the
   wall. After this he appears again, and this time in a personal dilemma
   of his own. Great as he was in the palace, and great in the midst of
   that night's carousel, he appears, If possible, greater, because the
   faith that animates him shines more radiantly when he is upon his
   knees. The princes have conspired against him. They have, by fraud,
   perverted the king's mind, so that he has passed an edict. Though
   Daniel knows that it is contrary to the law of the realm for him to
   pray or ask a Petition of any god or man save of king Darius, yet he
   does pray and give thanks before his God. In the higher sovereignty of
   the King of kings he believes; and to the edicts of his everlasting
   kingdom he yields fearless and unqualified obedience. The sequel shows
   that the Most High God delivers him. Of this Daniel we are about to
   speak to you.

   I. Our first point will be that DANIEL'S PRAYERFULNESS WAS THE SECRET
   OF HIS POWER. Daniel was always a man of prayer. If you saw him great
   before the people, the reason was because he was great before his God.
   He knew how to lay hold of divine strength, and he became strong. He
   knew how to study divine wisdom, and he became wise.

   We are told that he went to his house to pray. He was a great man—the
   highest in the land—consequently he had great public duties. He would
   sit as a judge probably a large part of the day. Life would be engaged
   in the various state offices distributing the favors of the king; but
   he did not pray in his office, save of course that his heart would go
   up in adoration of his God all day long. He was in the habit of going
   to his house to pray. This showed that he made a business of prayer,
   and finding it neither convenient to his circumstances nor congenial to
   his mind to pray in the midst of idolaters, he had chosen to set apart
   a chamber in his own house for prayer. I don't know how you find it,
   but there are some of us who never pray so well as by the old
   arm-chair, and in that very room where many a time we have told the
   Lord our grief, and have poured out before him our transgressions. It
   is well to have, if we can have, a little room, no matter how humble,
   where we can shut to the door, and pray to our Father who is in heaven,
   who will hear and answer.

   He was in the habit of praying thus three times a day. He had not only
   his appointed seasons of morning prayer and of evening prayer, as most
   believers have; but he had his noon-day retirement for prayer, as
   perhaps only a few have. He was an old man, over eighty years of age at
   this time, but he did not mind taking three journeys to his house to
   pray. He was a very busy man. Probably no one here has half so much
   important business to transact daily as Daniel had, for he was set over
   all the empire, and yet he found time regularly to devote three stated
   intervals for prayer. Perhaps he thought that this was prudent economy,
   for, if he had so much to do, he must pray the more; as Martin Luther
   said, "I have got so much to do to-day that I cannot possibly get
   through it with less than three hours of prayer." So, perhaps, Daniel
   felt that the extraordinary pressure of his engagements demanded a
   proportionate measure of prayer to enable him to accomplish the weighty
   matters he had on hand. He saluted his God, and sought counsel of him
   when the curtains of the night were drawn, and when his eyelids opened
   at the day dawn, as well as when the full sunlight was poured out from
   the windows of heaven. Blessing the Lord of the darkness, who was also
   the Lord of the light, Daniel thrice a day worshipped his God.

   A singularity in his manner is noticeable here. He had been in the
   habit of praying with his windows open towards Jerusalem. This had been
   his wont: by long use it had become natural to him, so he continues the
   practice as heretofore; though it was not essential to prayer, he
   scorns to make any alteration, even in the least point. Now that the
   decree had been signed that he must not pray, he would not only pray,
   but he would pray just as often as he had done, in the same place and
   the same attitude, and the same indifference to publicity, with the
   windows open. Thus openly did he ignore the decree! With such a royal
   courage did he lift his heart above the fear of man, and raise his
   conscience above the suspicion of compromise. He would not shut the
   window, because he had been accustomed to pray with it open. He prayed
   with his window open towards Jerusalem, the reason being that the
   temple was being built, and if he could not go himself at any rate he
   would look that way. This showed that he loved his native land. Great
   man as he was, he did not scorn to be called a Jew, and everybody might
   know it. He was "that Daniel of the children of the captivity of
   Judah." He was not ashamed to be accounted one of the despised and
   captive race. He loved Jerusalem, and his prayers were for it. Hence he
   looked that way in his prayer. And I think also he had an eye to the
   altar. It was the day of symbol. That day is now past. We have no altar
   save Christ our Lord; but, beloved, we turn our eyes to him when we
   pray. Our window is open to Jerusalem that is above, and towards that
   altar whereof they have no right to eat that serve the tabernacle with
   outward religiousness. We worship with our eye to Christ. And during
   that age of symbol Daniel saw by faith the realities that were
   foreshadowed. His eyes were turned towards Jerusalem, which was the
   type and symbol of the one Lord Jesus Christ. So he prayed with his
   window open. I cannot help admiring the open window, because it would
   admit plenty of fresh air. There is much good in fresh air; the more
   the better. We do not want our bodies to be sleepy, or our senses
   sluggish, for if they are we cannot keep our souls awake and our
   spirits lively.

   And it would appear that whenever Daniel prayed he mingled his
   supplication with thanksgiving. He "prayed and gave thanks." I wonder
   if he sang a psalm; perhaps he did. At any rate prayer and praise,
   orisons and p3/4ans, sweetly blend in his worship. He could not ask for
   more grace without gratefully acknowledging what he had already
   received. Oh, mix up thanks with your prayers, beloved! I am afraid we
   do not thank God enough. It ought to be as habitual to us to thank as
   to ask. Prayer and praise should always go up to heaven arm in arm,
   like twin angels walking up Jacob's ladder, or like kindred aspirations
   soaring up to the Most High.

   I will not say more of this feature of Daniel's character. Oh, that we
   might all emulate it more than we have ever done! How few of us fully
   appreciate and fondly cultivate that communion with God to which secret
   prayer, continuously, earnestly offered, is the key and the clue! Could
   we not all of us devote more time to seeking the Lord in the stillness
   of the closet greatly to our advantage? Have not all of us who have
   tried it found an ample recompense? Should we not be stronger and
   better men if we were more upon our knees? As to those of you who never
   seek unto the King eternal, how can ye expect to find him? how can you
   look for a blessing which you never ask for? How can you hope that God
   will save you, when the blessings he does give you you never thank him
   for, but receive them with cold ingratitude, casting his word behind
   your backs Oh, for Daniel's prayerful spirit!

   II. We pass on to DANIEL'S DIFFICULTIES, OR THE PRIVILEGES OF PRAYER.
   Daniel had always been a man of prayer; but now there is a law passed
   that he must not pray for thirty days, for a whole calendar month. I
   think I see Daniel as he reads the arriving. Not proud and haughty in
   his demeanour, for, as a man used to govern, it was not likely that he
   would needlessly rebel; but as he read it, he must have felt a blush
   upon his cheek for the foolish king who had become the blind dupe of
   the wily courtiers who had framed a decree so monstrous. Only one
   course was open to him. He knew what he meant to do: he should do what
   he always had done. Still, let us face the difficulty with a touch of
   sympathy. He must not pray. Suppose we were under a like restriction. I
   will put a supposition for a minute. Suppose the law of the land were
   proclaimed, "To man shall pray during the remainder of this month, on
   pain of being cast into a den of lions,"—how many of you would pray? I
   think there would be rather a scanty number at the prayer-meeting. Not
   but what the attendance at prayer-meetings is scanty enough now! but if
   there were the penalty of being cast into a den of lions, I am afraid
   the prayer-meeting would be postponed for a month, owing to pressing
   business, and manifold engagements of one kind and another. That it
   would be so, not here only, but in many other places, I should he prone
   to anticipate. And how about private prayer? If there were informers
   about, and a heavy reward was offered to tell of anybody who bowed the
   knee night or morning, or at any time during the day, for the next
   thirty days, what would you do? Why, some persons will say, "I will
   give it up." Ah, and there are some who would boastfully say, "I will
   not give it up," whose bold resolve would soon falter, for a lion's den
   is not a comfortable place. Many thought they could burn in Queen
   Mary's days that did not dare to confront the fire, though I think it
   almost always happened that whenever any man through fear turned back,
   he met with a desperate death at last. There was one who could not burn
   for Christ, but about a month afterwards he was burnt to death in bed
   in his own house. Who has forgotten Francis Spira, that dreadful
   apostate, whose dying bed was a foretaste of hell? It is left on
   record, as a well authenticated narrative of the miseries of despair,
   though it is scarcely ever read now-a-days, for it is far too dreadful
   for one to think upon. If we quail at suffering for Christ, and evade
   his cross, we may have to encounter a fiercer doom than the terror from
   which, in our craven panic, we shrunk. Men have declined to carry a
   light burden, and been constrained to bear a far heavier one. They have
   fled from the bear, and the lion has met them; they have sought to
   escape from the serpent, but the dragon has devoured them. To shrink
   from duty is always perilous. To demoralize yourselves in demoralized
   times is a desperate alternative. Better go forward, better go forward.
   Better, I say, even though you may have no armor. The safest thing is
   to go on. Even if there are lions in front, it is better to go ahead,
   for if you turn your back the stars in their courses will fight against
   you. "Remember Lot's wife! "She looked back, and was turned into a
   pillar of salt. The apostate is of all creatures the most terrible
   delinquent; his crime is akin to that of Satan, and the apostate's doom
   is the most dreadful that can be conceived. Master Bunyan
   pictures—(what was the man's name? I forget for the moment)—one
   Turnaway (was it not?) who was bound by seven devils, and he saw him
   taken by the back way to hell, for he had been a damnable apostate from
   the faith as it is in Jesus. It may be hard going forward, but it is
   worse going back.

   Now it is a great privilege that we enjoy civil and religions liberty
   in our favored land; that we are not under such cruel laws, as in other
   times or in other countries laid restrictions upon conscience; and that
   we may pray, according to the conviction of our judgment and the desire
   of our heart. But as I want you to value the privilege very much, I
   will put a supposition to you. Suppose there was only one place in the
   world where a man might pray and offer his supplications unto God.
   Well, I think there is not a man among us that would not like to get
   there at some time or other, at least to die there. Oh, what pains we
   should take to reach the locality, and what pressure we would endure to
   enter the edifice! If there were only one house of prayer in all the
   world, and prayer could be heard nowhere else, oh, what tugging and
   squeezing and toiling, there would be to get into that one place! But
   now that people may pray anywhere, how they slight the exercise and
   neglect the privilege!

   "Where'er we seek him he is found,
   And every place is hallowed ground."

   Yet it would argue sad ingratitude, if seeking were therefore less
   earnest or prayer less frequent. And suppose there was only one man in
   the world who might pray, and that one man was the only person who
   might be heard, oh, if there was to be an election for that man, surely
   the stir to get votes for that man would be far more exciting than for
   your School Boards or your representatives in Parliament. Oh, to get to
   that man and ask him to pray for us; what overwhelming anxiety it would
   cause! When the promoters and directors of railways had shares to
   dispose of during the old mania, how they were stopped in the streets
   by others who wished to get them and secure the premiums they carried
   in the market! But the man who was entrusted with the sole power of
   prayer in the world would surely have no rest day or night: we should
   besiege his house with petitions, and ask him to pray for us. But now
   that we may each pray for ourselves, and the Lord Jesus waits to hear
   those who seek him, how little is prayer regarded! And suppose nobody
   could pray unless he paid for the privilege, then what "rumblings there
   would be from the poor, what meetings of the working men, because they
   could not pray without so many pounds of money. And what a spending of
   money there would be! What laying out of gold and silver to have the
   privilege of speaking to God in prayer! But now that prayer is free,
   without money and without price, and the poorest need not bring a
   farthing when he comes to have audience with God, oh, how prayer is
   neglected! Perhaps it would not be a bad thing on some accounts if
   there could be a law to prevent men from praying; because some would
   say, "We will pray." They would pray. They would get over the traces
   and stoutly protest, "We are not to be kept down, we must pray."
   Suppose I were bound to tell you now that God would not hear your
   prayers all next week, you would be afraid to abide in your houses, and
   you would be equally afraid to leave them. You would be scared with
   terrors in your bed, and you would be afraid to get up and face the
   perils of moving about. You would say, "Whatever happens, I cannot ask
   God for his blessing; whatever I do, I cannot expect his blessing on
   it, for I must not pray." Then perhaps, you would begin to wish that
   you could pray. Oh, dear soul, do not live this night through without
   prayer! Get you to the mercy seat! Let sin be confessed to God. Let
   pardon be sought, and all the blessings of grace. Do not despise or
   turn away from that blessed mercy seat which stands open to every soul
   that desires to draw near unto God.

   III. Having thus dwelt upon Daniel's difficulty, I now want to draw
   your attention to DANIEL'S DECISION. The king says he must not pray.
   Daniel did not deliberate for a single minute. When we know our duty,
   first thoughts are the best. If the thing be obviously right, never
   think about it a second time; but straightway go and do it. Daniel did
   not deliberate. He went to his house and prayed in the morning, he went
   to his house and prayed at noon; and he retired to his house and prayed
   at eventide. "He kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed,
   and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime."

   I greatly admire one feature in Daniel's decision. He did not alter his
   accustomed habit in any single particular. Without disguise and without
   parade he pursued the even tenor of his way. As we have already said,
   the time was the same, the attitude was the same, the open window was
   the same. There was no precaution whatever to conceal the fact that he
   was going to pray, or to equivocate in the act when he was praying. He
   does not appear to have taken counsel of his friends, or to have
   summoned his servants, and charged them not to let any intruder come
   in. Neither did he adopt any measure to escape his enemies. Not one jot
   of anxiety did he betray. His faith was steadfast, his composure
   unruffled, his conduct simple and artless. Doubtless Daniel felt that
   as he was the greatest man in Persia, if he, a worshipper of Jehovah,
   the God of the Hebrews, failed in any degree, he would set a bad
   example to others, and greatly discourage any poor Jew who might have
   grace enough to stand out, provided his example led the way. Persons
   who occupy high positions should know that God expects more of them
   than of other people. England expects every man to do his duty, but
   especially the men that are put to the front. If the standard-bearer
   fall, how is the battle to hold? Now, Daniel, thou art much looked at
   and watched; God has put thee in an eminent place; therefore take care
   that thou dost not flinch one solitary jot: go and do as thou hast been
   wont, though the sky look overcast with clouds of evil omen. It would
   have been foolish daring rather than self-possessed courage in Daniel,
   had he been accustomed ordinarily to shut his window, should he have
   selected this crisis to open it; and if he had been accustomed to pray
   twice a day, I do not see why he should go now and pray three times;
   but he did as aforetime; it was his habit, and he would not be put out
   of it. He would show that his conscience was obedient to God, and owed
   no allegiance to man. He could not and would not yield anything through
   menace. What a despot might lay down as law, a degraded sycophant might
   accept as equity; but a just man is proof against the corruption of an
   unjust judge.

   It might be asked, perhaps, "Should not Daniel obey the king?
   "Certainly kings' laws are to be respected; but any law of man that
   infringes the law of God is, ipso facto, null and void at once. It is
   the duty of every citizen to disregard every law of earth which is
   contrary to the law of heaven. So Daniel felt that whatever he owed to
   his temporal sovereign, he owed to his God a vast deal more. "But
   should not a man take care of his life? Life is valuable; should he run
   such a risk? "Remember that if a man were to lose his soul, in order to
   save his life, he would make a wretched bargain. If a man lost his life
   to save his coat he would be a fool; and a man who loses his soul to
   save his life is equally a fool, and more so still. So Daniel felt that
   the risk of being put into a den with lions was nothing to the risk of
   being put into hell, and he chose the smaller risk, and in the name of
   God he went straight on. And I will tell you what Daniel would have
   said, if he lived in these days and had he been like some of my
   brethren—I mean like some of my brethren in the ministry—clergymen of a
   political church, by law established. He would have said, "This is not
   quite right! The decree of his Majesty's Privy Council is utterly at
   variance with my creed; but you see I occupy a position of great
   usefulness, and would you have me give up that position of usefulness
   that I hold, to let these governors and counsellors, that are all such
   bad fellows, have the entire management of the realm? Everything will
   go wrong if I do not compromise my profession. Although it perhaps may
   not be quite consistent with conscience, it is pardonable in the light
   of policy, and thirty days will soon pass away; so for the sake of your
   usefulness," he would have said to himself, "for the sake of your
   usefulness, you had better stop where you are." Oh, I have heard men
   who teach little children to repeat the words, "In my baptism I was
   made a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the
   kingdom of heaven," and who know that that is a lie, and yet stick in
   their un-protestant church, and say, "I remain here because of my
   usefulness,"—my precious usefulness!—"for if I were to go out of the
   church I should be leaving it to those bad persons who are in it." To
   know that as long as I am there, I am in complicity with men who are
   dragging back the church to Romanism, as fast as ever they can, and yet
   to say, "I am so useful, and I should injure my usefulness"! In the
   name of Almighty God, are we to do evil that good may come? If I
   thought I could save every soul in this place, or do any other
   stupendous thing by making the slightest compromise with my conscience,
   I dare not in the sight of the living God do it, for so have I not been
   taught by the Spirit of God. Consequences and usefulness are nothing to
   us: duty and right—these are to be our guides. These were Daniel's
   guides. The empire of Persia might go wrong; Daniel could not help
   that, he would not go wrong himself. It might be that these villanous
   courtiers and lords of the council might have the sway. Be it so. Leave
   God to manage them. It was not for Daniel even for thirty days to give
   up prayer. "Ah, but," they would say, "you can pray in your heart; you
   need not boor the knee; you can pray in your soul." But it will not do
   to sell principle, or to bide with strict integrity and sterling truth
   in the smallest degree. Every jot and little has its intrinsic value.
   Our bold Protestant forefathers were of a different breed from the
   present race of temporizing professors. Talk ye of apostolic
   succession! By what strange process ye suppose that Fuller, Ridley,
   Latimer, Donue, and the like worthies, did transmit their mitres and
   their benefices to the craven seed who now hold their titles and enjoy
   their livings, we are at a loss to understand. The identification
   baffles us. Do they inherit the same spirit, defend the same doctrines,
   or observe uncompromising allegiance to the same gospel? We trow not.
   It seems to us that progenitors and progeny are wide apart as the
   poles. If Jesus Christ were here to-day, there are plenty of people who
   would sell him for two groats; they would not want thirty pieces of
   silver, but would sell him for a smile of patronage or a nod of
   approbation. Oh that we had book the old covenantors who would not
   swerve an inch! Look at John Bunyan when they bring him up before the
   magistrates and tell him he must not preach! "But I will preach," said
   he, "I will preach to-morrow by the help of God." "But you will be put
   in prison again." "Never mind, I will preach as soon as I get out."
   "But you will be hanged, or kept in prison all your life." "If I lie in
   prison," said he, "till the moss grows upon my eyelids, I can say
   nothing more than this, that with God's help, I will preach whenever I
   get a chance." Do not tell me that these are non-essentials. To men
   that will follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth, even the opening or
   the shutting of a window, if need be, is essential. Be jealous over
   what are called "trifles." They may be mere straws, but they show which
   way the wind blows. We want the race of grand old bigots back again. We
   have been howling at bigots these many years and praising up universal
   "charity," which means nothing else than denying that there is any
   truth in the world to defend, or any army of saints in which to enlist.
   A Protestant on one occasion was bidden to bow down before the cross
   when he was about to be knighted, and many others did so. "It is only a
   form, you know," they said. "But," said he, "by God, I won't." And they
   called him "By God," and afterwards others who stood out boldly in the
   same way were called "By Gods," or "Bigots." So that tone of refusal
   has become a term of reproach. Here is a grandest bigot of all! Daniel
   is his name. He will pray. They will throw him into a lions' den. "The
   bigoted fool! "Ah, yes, but God did not discountenance his unswerving
   uprightness. He had said before his God that he would do the right, and
   the right thing he did, whatever might happen. Young men and young
   women, I would like you to go to school before Daniel and learn to say,
   "Whatever happens, we cannot lie, cannot do the wrong thing; are cannot
   believe what men teach us, when contrary to God's teaching; we cannot
   give up prayer and personal holiness, whether there be a lions' den or
   no lions' den. We will stand fast by that for God's own sake." May that
   same spirit come back to Englishmen, and if it ever does, then I
   warrant you the shavelings of Rome will need to pack up and get
   straight away, for it is the bending men, the willow men, that will
   sell truth any price. Oh that we may learn to sell it at no price, but
   to stand fast like pillars of iron for God, for Christ, for truth, for
   every holy thing!

   Now I fear me I ought to say, before I leave this series of
   reflections, that there are some who have no decision of character at
   all, because they are not Christians. Some men are Christians, perhaps,
   though they have not decision enough to avow it—sneaking Christians!
   They have, they say, with their heart, but never with their mouth,
   confessed Christ. They have never been baptised as he bids them, and as
   they ought to be, according to his word. And there are some that have
   made a profession, but it is a smuggled profession. Their friends at
   home hardly know it, and they do not want them to know it. Oh, if I
   enlisted in Her Majesty's service, and had my regimentals given me to
   wear, I would wear them. I should not like to have them packed away and
   go about in other clothes, for I should be afraid of being taken up as
   a deserter. There are others who dishonor their profession, and do not
   live as they should. And there are those who, if they were persecuted,
   would speedily throw off their profession. They can go with Christ with
   silken slippers over smooth-shaven lawns, but as to walking through
   mire and mud with him, that they cannot do. Oh for the heart of a
   Daniel, every one of us, to follow Christ at all hazards.

   IV. Our last point is DANIEL'S DELIVERANCE. With that we will conclude.
   The evil that threatened Daniel did come. He was to be put into a
   lions' den, and into a lions' den he was put. So, young man, you say,
   "I will not do wrong." You hope to escape unscathed. Yet it may be that
   you will be discarded by your friends, and discountenanced by your
   associates. Expect it, go through it. If you are a tradesman, and by
   saying you will not subunit to an evil custom of the trade you will
   become a loser, be willing to be a loser; expect that the lions' den
   will be there, and that you will be put into it. Daniel came there, but
   there was not a scratch upon him when he came out of it. What a
   splendid night he must have spent with those lions! I do not wonder
   that in after days he saw visions of lions and wild beasts; it seems
   most natural that he should; and he must have been fitted by that night
   passed among these grim monsters to see grand sights. In any case he
   must have had a glorious night. What with the lions, and with angels
   all night to keep him company, he was spending the night-watches in
   grander style than Darius. And when he came out the next morning, so
   far from being a loser, he was a gainer. The king approved him, admired
   him, loved him. Every body in the city had heard that Daniel had been
   put into the lions' den. He was a great man, and it was like putting
   the prime minister into the lions' den. And when he came out, with what
   awe they looked upon him! The king was not regarded as half so much a
   god as Daniel. Daniel had a smooth time of it afterwards. The
   counsellors never troubled him again; the lions had taken care of them.
   There would be no more plotting against him. Now he would mount to the
   highest place in the empire, and no man would dare to oppose him, for
   very dread of the same fate that had fallen upon his enemies and
   accusers. So Daniel had to the end of his days smooth sailing to the
   port of peace.

   Now, believe me, to be decided for the right is not only the right
   thing but the easiest thing. It is wise policy as well as true probity.
   If you will not yield an inch, then somebody else must move out of the
   way. If you cannot comply with their proposals, then other people will
   have to rescind their resolutions. So you will find that, if you
   suffer, and perhaps suffer severely at first, for decision of
   character, you will get speedy recompense for all you endure, and a
   grand immunity in the future. There will be an end to the indignities
   that are offered you. If it be not obstinacy, but real conscience that
   prompts you, you will rise to a position which otherwise you could not
   have attained. The opposition so strong against you at first will very
   likely lead to your enemies endorsing your views, and the dishonor you
   have meekly to bear will be followed by a deference flattering to your
   vanity, if not perilous to your future consistency. Only put your foot
   down now, be firm and unfaltering now. If you yield to-day, you will
   have to yield more to-morrow. Give the world an inch, and it will take
   many an ell. Be resolved, therefore, that no inch you will give, that
   to the lions' den you would sooner go than there should be
   equivocation, prevarication, or anything approaching to falsehood.
   However great the difficulty may be at the outset, yet do it, and you
   will be unhurt: you will be an immediate gainer by it, and, to the rest
   of your days, God will give you a better and happier life than ever you
   have had before. "When a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his
   enemies to be at peace with him." You Christian soldiers in the
   barracks, be decided; stand up for Jesus. You will be ridiculed at
   first, but you will live that down before long. But if you are
   cowardly, the ridicule will last many and many a day, and your
   fellow-soldiers will take delight in laughing at you. If any of you are
   in a workshop, take courage, do not yield. Why should not we have our
   way, as they have theirs? Young men in business, take care how you
   begin your business in an honest, straightforward manner; for, if you
   begin it with artifice and crooked stratagem, it will go on crooked,
   and then, it you try to get straight, you will find it very difficult.
   But begin as straight as a line, never swerve from it. Act on the
   outset as a Christian should. What if employers should frown, or
   customers be vexed, or friends fail? Bear it! It will be the best
   policy in the long run. That is not, however, for you to consider. Do
   the right thing, whatever happens. Let us be as Daniel. Oh that the
   young among you would emulate the purpose of heart with which Daniel
   began life! Oh that the active and vigorous among you would seek with
   Daniel's constant prayerfulness for that high gift of wisdom equal to
   all emergencies with which God so richly endowed him! And, oh, that the
   harassed, tempted, and persecuted among you would learn to keep a clean
   conscience in the midst of impurities, as Daniel did; to preserve, like
   him, faith and fellowship with the faithful and true God, though living
   among strangers and foreigners, profane in all their thoughts and
   habits; and to hold the statutes and commandments of the Lord as more
   to be desired than wealth or honor—yea, dearer to you, as Daniel
   accounted them, than even life itself! So shall you honor God, and
   glorify Christ, and bless and praise his precious name in a way in
   which nothing else but decision of character can possibly lead you to
   do. God grant us all to have Christ for a Savior, and to live to his
   praise. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON—Daniel 6.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Chariots Of Amminadib

   (No. 1155)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Before I was even aware, my soul made me like the chariots of
   Amminadib." Song of Solomon 6:12.

   WE cannot be quite sure at this date what these chariots of Amminadib
   were to which the Inspired poet here refers. Some suppose that he may
   have alluded to a person of that name who was renowned, like Jehu of
   old, for his furious driving. Therefore it might have been familiar at
   the time and afterwards have become proverbial to speak in metaphor of
   the chariots of Amminadib. The conjecture seems harmless, still it is
   only a conjecture, and cannot be verified. It is quite possible,
   however, that our translators may have retained as a proper name a
   conjunction of two words, which, taken separately, are capable of being
   interpreted.

   You remember the word "Ammi" as it occurs in the prophet Hosea? "Say
   unto your brethren, Ammi," which signifies "you are My people," even as
   before He had said, "Call his name Loammi, for "you are not My people."
   The one word Ammi, thus stands for "people," and the other word,
   "Nadib," means "willing," so that the two united may be rendered
   "willing people"--"like the chariots of a willing people." Or the words
   may be read, I think, more correctly, "The chariots of the princely
   people"--the princely chariots, the chariots of the prince.

   Some have understood them to mean the chariots of God, of the people
   that surround the Great Prince, Himself, that is to say, the chariots
   of the angels, according as we read, "The chariots of God are twenty
   thousand, even thousands of angels." In this case the figure would be a
   very striking one--"Before I was even aware, my soul made me like the
   chariots of the attendants upon the Great King. I was like the cherubim
   themselves, all aglow with consecrated fire." In whatever way the
   critical point is deciphered, the practical solution appears to be
   this--the writer's soul was quickened because full of life, full of
   energy, full of might, full of spirit and full of princely dignity,
   too. And not only stimulated to a high degree, but also elevated,
   lifted up from dullness, indifference, and apathy--"Before I was even
   aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadib."

   To whom does this text refer? Probably those of us who would never
   raise a doubt about the Song being a dialogue between Christ and the
   spouse--a matter we have no intention to canvass just now--as we take
   it for granted. We might find no small difficulty in determining to
   which of the two sacred personages this speech belongs, whether it was
   to Solomon or to Shulamite (the masculine or the feminine variety of
   the same name)--the Prince the husband, or the princess the
   spouse--whether, in a word, it was Christ or the Church. There is very
   much to be said for its being Christ Himself that is speaking.

   You will notice in this chapter that, from the fourth verse, He has
   been referring to His Church. "You are beautiful, O My love, as Tirzah,
   comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners. Turn away your
   eyes from Me, for they have overcome Me," and so on. He is speaking of
   His Church on to the 10th verse. "Who is she that looks forth as the
   morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army
   with banners?" Then the 11th verse proceeds, "I went down into the
   garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the
   vine nourished, and the pomegranates budded. Before I was even aware,
   My soul made Me like the chariots of Amminadib." May it not be the Lord
   Himself who is speaking here?

   We may entertain the question for a moment without absolutely fixing
   upon this as its proper solution. If it refers to Christ, it means just
   this--that He had been, for a while, away from His people. They had
   grieved Him and He had hid His face from them. Out of very love and
   faithfulness He felt bound to chasten them, by hiding from them the
   brightness of His Countenance. But He began to think tenderly of His
   people--His heart turned towards His Church--and while He was thinking
   of her, He saw such beauties in her that His soul was melted with her
   charms. Oh, what an extraordinary thing that He should see loveliness
   in His poor imperfect Church!

   And He saw such a loveliness about her, as her image rose up before His
   face, that He said, "You have ravished My heart, My Sister, My Spouse;
   you have ravished My heart with one of your eyes." "Turn away your eyes
   from Me, for they have overcome Me." And then, musing upon her, still,
   and coming into her garden and seeing the various Graces like plants
   and flowers in their different stages of development, His heart began
   to grow warm again towards her and all that concerned her. It had never
   really been cold--it only seemed so in the deviation of His accustomed
   manner. But, like Joseph before his brethren, He could not refrain any
   longer.

   When He saw some of His people budding with desires, others bursting
   into the realization of those desires. When He saw some like ripe and
   mellow fruit upon the bough, ready for Heaven. When He saw others just
   commencing the Divine life, He was charmed to be in the garden of
   nuts--before He was even aware, He found He must be with His people--He
   must return in the fullness of His love to His Church! Not her beauties
   only, but the kindling of His own soul began to stir Him. His Free
   Grace sought free hope--His Infinite love became more than a match for
   the temporary prudence that had made Him hide His face, and, swift as
   the chariots of Amminadib, did He speed back to His people to let them
   see Him again--to let them enjoy His fellowship again.

   There are other Scripture passages where the Savior is spoken of as
   being like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether, or
   division, because He is so willing to come to His people--so willing to
   make matters up with them--and end the days in which they mourn because
   the Bridegroom is absent. When He has hidden His face for a while out
   of love for them, and out of desire to reveal to them their faults--I
   say again, He is so willing to blot out their faults once more and to
   return to them again with mercies--that His return is compared for
   swiftness and irresistibleness to the motions of the chariots of
   Amminadab!

   It is a delightful thought that if communion between our souls and
   Jesus is suspended, it is not because He takes pleasure therein. His
   delights are with the sons of men. He a thousand times invites His
   chosen to abide in Him, to continue in His love and to remain in His
   company. In this Song He cries again and again, "Come with Me, My
   Spouse." This should encourage us to seek Him for renewed love-tokens,
   however serious may have been our departures from Him, and however dark
   our prospects under the hiding of His face. If He who is the aggrieved
   party is eager to be reconciled, the matter is easy and we may at once
   rise to the blessed condition from which our sin has cast us down.
   Jesus longs to embrace us! His arms are opened wide--do not our hearts
   warm at the sight? Do we not at once rush to His bosom and find a new
   Heaven in a fresh sense of His boundless love? Why hesitate? What
   possible cause can there be for abiding in darkness? Lord, we fall upon
   Your bosom and our joy returns!

   Not that I intend to adopt that view as the groundwork of our present
   reflections. It appears to me that without the slightest degree of
   twisting the passage, or deviating from an honest interpretation, we
   may understand that this is the language of the Church concerning
   Christ. If so, Christ's words conclude at the end of the 10th verse and
   it is the Church that speaks at the eleventh. There is not an instance
   in the whole Song, so far as I can remember, of the Prince, Himself,
   speaking in the first person singular. Therefore, this would be a
   solitary exception, or else, following the current plan, where the same
   pronoun is used, the Church is speaking to Christ and telling Him of
   herself.

   "I went down into the garden of nuts, to see the fruits of the valley,
   and to see whether the vine flourished and the pomegranates budded.
   Before I was even aware, my soul made me like the chariots of
   Amminadib." Taking the text, then, as referring to the Church in
   particular, and more generally to the Lord's people, there will be four
   observations which we would pointedly make and prayerfully meditate.
   May God bless us, now, in fulfilling this purpose!

   I. Our first observation shall be this. What is most needed in all
   religious exercises is THE MOTION, THE EXERCISE OF THE SOUL. "Before I
   was even aware, my soul made me"--or my soul became--"like the chariots
   of Amminadib." Soul-worship is the soul of worship and if you take away
   the soul from the worship, you have killed the worship--it becomes dead
   and barren. Let us turn over that well-known thought.

   It may benefit us if we look at the many sides of it. There are
   professors in this world who are perfectly content if they have gone
   through the mechanical part of public devotion. If they have occupied
   their seats, joined in the hymns and the prayers, and listened to the
   preaching, they go away quite content and easy. They would not like to
   be absent from the solemn assembly and their conscience would prick
   them if they neglected the outward ordinances. And having gone through
   them and complied with the accustomed form, they are perfectly content
   with themselves--and think they have done that which is lawful and
   right--comely and excellent.

   Now, it is never so with the child of God. If his soul is awakened from
   the torpor of death, and his sensibilities quickened into the vigor of
   life, he will feel that unless in the song he has really praised God in
   strains of gratitude with emotions of thankfulness, he has rather
   mocked his heavenly Father than acceptably adored Him. He knows that in
   prayer, if it is not the soul that speaks with God, it is but the
   carcass of prayer, destitute of the sweet savor which can find
   acceptance with God, and of the sweet satisfaction that can bring
   refreshment to one's own breast. When he hears the Word preached, he
   longs to feel it penetrate his heart, even as the rain soaks into the
   soil. And if he cannot so receive the Truth of the Gospel when it
   breaks on his ears as the engrafted Word that saves his soul, and so
   feed upon it as the Bread of Life which nourishes his soul, he goes
   away sad at heart, deploring that, while others were feasting at the
   banquet, he was there without appetite and had not the pleasure or the
   profit which they derived.

   Beloved, in our public services we ought to account nothing truly and
   rightly done which is not done with the heart. That is one reason why
   in this Tabernacle we have tried to lay aside everything of outward
   show or external form which might distract the thoughts or disturb the
   simplicity of waiting on the Lord. As far as I can, I try to avoid the
   use of all symbols, except the two which Scripture has ordained--lest
   the symbol should tempt you to rest satisfied with itself, as I believe
   it generally does--and so prevent your reaching the Lord with your
   heart. We try to lay aside everything that would at all touch your
   senses in the worship--anything which appeals to the ear in the way of
   sweet music--anything of the aesthetic that would appeal to the eye.

   If you do not worship God with your souls, I hope you will get tired of
   our fellowship. Yet, be it confessed, I painfully feel that it is
   almost as easy not to worship God with the bald plainness of Quakerism
   as it is not to worship God with the studied pomp of Ritualism! In any
   form, or without any form of worship, the amount of real devotion must
   be measured by the quantity of soul that is in it--provided the quality
   is pure, sincere, guileless. If the soul is there in the full exercise
   of its powers and passions, knowing what is revealed and feeling what
   is Inspired, I believe God is gracious to pity and forgive a thousand
   mistakes in outward fashion and skill of execution.

   The preacher's modulation may be faulty and the people's singing may be
   ill-timed to barbarous tunes without peril of the unpardonable sin. But
   if the soul is lacking, though you should have worshipped according to
   the pattern given on the Mount and have never had a word uttered or a
   sound made but such as, in itself, would be accredited by men and
   acceptable with God had it been quickened by the Spirit, yet without
   that Divine Spirit, which alone can give force and fervor to the human
   soul, it is all null and void!

   I think every genuine Christian knows it is so and feels it is so. He
   says, "My heart cries out for God, for the living God!" Nor can he be
   satisfied unless he finds God and draws near before Him. As in public
   worship, it is precisely the same in our own private and personal
   transactions with the Most High. The religious worldling will say a
   prayer when he wakes in the morning, and perhaps, unless he is out
   late, or too sleepy at home, he will have a bit of prayer at night,
   again, in the way of the repetition of some collect, or something which
   he has learned by rote. And very likely he has family prayer, too. It
   is not so much a custom as it was, but there are some who think they
   cannot go through the day unless they have what they call, "Prayers."

   But mark how the Christian prizes private prayers above everything that
   has to do with the ordering of his daily habits! And look how he
   esteems family prayer to be a necessity of every Christian household!
   At the same time he is not content because he prays for a few minutes
   unless he draws near to the Lord. He is not satisfied because he
   gathered his children together and read the Scriptures and prayed with
   them, if, on adding up the sum total of the day, he is compelled to
   say, "It was heartless worship. When I awoke it was heartless worship.
   When I gathered my children and my servants it was the same. And it was
   sleepy, heartless worship when I knelt by my bedside and professed to
   seek the Lord

   at nightfall."

   If it is heartless it is unacceptable! God cannot receive it. If we
   have not thrown our heart into it, depend upon it, God will never take
   it to His heart and be pleased with it. Only that prayer which comes
   from our heart can get to God's heart. If we pray only from the lips,
   or from the throat, and not low down from the very heart of our nature,
   we shall never reach the heart of our Father who is in Heaven. Oh, that
   we may be more and more scrupulous and watchful in these things! In the
   diary of Oliver Heywood, one of the ejected ministers, he often says,
   "God helped me in prayer in my chamber and in the family." And once he
   writes thus--"In my chamber this morning I met with more than ordinary
   incomings of Divine Grace and outgoings of heart to God."

   I am afraid we may get satisfied with ourselves, especially if we are
   regular in private Scripture reading, private prayer, family prayer and
   public prayer. Instead of being satisfied with these exercises we ought
   to be weeping over them and deploring the formal and heartless manner
   in which we are prone to discharge them. Be it always remembered that
   we do not pray at all unless the soul is drawn out in pleading and
   beseeching the Lord. Si nil curarem, nil orarem, said Melanchthon,
   "Were I without cares, I should be without prayers."

   Now, perhaps you may know a friend of yours who thinks himself a poet.
   He can make poetry at any time, all the year round! Just pull him by
   the sleeve and he will make you, very soon, a verse or two at the spur
   of the moment to show the readiness of his wit and the versatility of
   his talent. Yet I dare say you think that he is about as far off from
   being a poet as a sparrow is from being an eagle! You know if he were a
   poet he would not be able to command the glow of imagination at one
   time and at another time he would hardly be able to control it. He
   would sometimes have a Divine melting upon him, as some call it, and
   then noble thoughts in appropriate words would flow from his pen.
   Otherwise he would be just as dull and insipid as ordinary mortals. He
   would tell you indignantly that he could not write verses to order like
   those who scribble rhyme to advertise a tailor's wares. Unless the
   inspiration comes upon me, he would say, I cannot compose a line!

   In like manner, a man cannot always pray--and the man who pretends he
   can, only utters jargon! He never prays at all, as the other never
   makes poetry at all. Prayer is a Divine art. It is a thing which needs
   the Inspiration not of the muses, but of the Spirit of God, Himself,
   and it is when the Spirit comes upon us with Divine force and makes our
   soul like the chariots of Amminadib that we can pray! And at other
   times when that Spirit is not with us, we cannot pray as we did before.
   Every living child of God knows this. We must measure our prayers by
   the state of soul that we were in. Take another illustration from the
   painter. One person, who thinks himself a painter, can paint any day
   you like anything you ask him--a mountain, a river, a horse, an insect,
   or a flower--it is all the same to him. He takes a brush and soon
   produces something which ordinary people might think to be a picture.

   But send that daub of his to the Royal Academy and they will tell you
   that it may do for a tea tray, but not for the walls of a gallery. But
   the man that can paint, how does he mix his colors? The great painter
   will tell you that he mixes his brains with his colors--and when he
   takes his brush and dips it into the paint, he lays it on with his
   soul. In a great picture, such as sometimes we have seen by a Titiens,
   or a Raphael, it is not the color, but the man's heart that has got out
   onto the canvas. Somehow he has managed to drop his brush into his
   soul! That is real painting. And so it is with prayer. The most humble
   man that prays to God with his soul understands the fine art of prayer.
   But the man who chants a pompous liturgy, or repeats an extemporaneous
   effusion has not prayed. He has dashed off what he thinks to be a
   picture, but it is not a picture, it is not a prayer.

   Had it been a prayer it would have had a palpable inspiration in its
   light and shade. A painting may consist of few lines, but you will see
   the painter's hand in it. And a prayer may consist of only half a dozen
   words, but you can see the hand of God in it. The formality repels you
   in the one case--the vitality attracts you in the other. So we will
   come back to the proposition with which we started. We can only pray
   according to the proportion in which our soul puts forth its force and
   feeling. And it is the same with praise. We have praised God up to the
   amount of soul that was in the sense as well as in the sound--be it
   with an organ or without an organ--with good music or with groans that
   cannot be uttered. We may have praised God either way, but only if our
   soul has been in full swell. With every kind of religious exercise, the
   soul is the standard of the whole compass of worship.

   II. We proceed to a second remark. SOMETIMES IT HAPPENS THAT THE HEART
   IS NOT IN THE BEST

   STATE FOR DEVOTION. If religion is a matter of soul, it cannot always
   be attended to with equal pleasure and advantage. You can always grind
   a barrel organ--it will invariably give you the same discordant noise
   which people call music--but the human voice will not admit of being
   wound up in the same fashion, nor will it, for the most part, discharge
   the same monotonous functions. The great singer finds that his voice
   changes and that he cannot always use it with the same freedom. If the
   voice is a delicate organ, how much more delicate is the soul! The soul
   is continually the subject of changes.

   Ah, how often it changes because of its contact with the body! If we
   could be disembodied, oh, how we would praise God and pray to Him! "The
   spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak." I sat among some
   Brethren the other day who were devout, and I tried to be, but I had a
   splitting headache. I do not know whether you could pray under so
   grievous a

   disability--let me confess to you that I could not. At another time,
   not long ago, I was one of a solemn assembly, when various disturbances
   occurred in the room--somebody getting up and others coming in late, as
   some of you do--and I could not get into a right frame as I ought to
   have done. Little things will affect little minds and our minds, many
   of them, are little. In that case I could not pray because my mind was
   being distracted and my attention was being taken away.

   Such distractions frequently happen and they bitterly remind us of our
   infirmities. The Apostles, themselves, fell to sleeping when they ought
   to have been praying. And under Paul's preaching, Eutychus went to
   sleep, and Paul never blamed him. He died as the result of it, but he
   got raised again from the dead, so I suppose there was no fault in him.
   We may sometimes, without any willfulness on our part, as a necessary
   result of the weakness of our nature, or the stress of our toil and
   care, have brought ourselves into a condition in which we cannot feel
   like the chariots of Amminadab--and it is no use for us to attempt it!
   The body affects the soul materially and a thousand outside agencies
   will tell upon our mental susceptibilities.

   I have known persons come into this Tabernacle who have, perhaps, been
   annoyed with somebody in their pew, or somebody outside. It ought not
   to be so, but it is so. A little fly buzzing about one's face--as small
   a thing as that--will disturb one's devotion so that you cannot pray as
   you would and as you desire. And then, alas, our sins are a much more
   serious hindrance to our devotion. A sense of guilt puts us into such a
   state that we cannot be bold in our faith and childlike in our
   confidence when we appear before God. Perhaps we have been angry. How
   can we come before the Lord calmly when our spirit has been just now
   tossed with tempest? Probably we have been seeking the world and going
   after it with all our might. How can we suddenly pull up and put all
   our strength into a vigorous seeking of the Kingdom of God and His
   righteousness in a moment?

   It is possible, too, that there is a sick child at home, or a wife
   lying suffering, or serious losses and crosses about business and
   domestic affairs. Perhaps one has a very heavy heart to bring before
   the Lord. Now God's Grace can help us to overcome all these things and
   can even make our souls like the chariots of Amminadab! We need Divine
   Grace for such emergencies. The soul, in its different phases and
   states, has need of help from the sanctuary to which it repairs.
   "Well," perhaps one here will say, "I always do what I think right
   every Sunday in much the same manner. I always pray the same and I
   don't know but what I can always sing God's praises the same." Yes, let
   me answer our good friend, I have no doubt of your thorough sameness,
   or of your habitual self-content.

   If you were to ask one of the statues in St. Paul's Cathedral how it
   felt, I have no doubt it would say that it always felt the same because
   it never had any feeling. Appeal to anything destitute of life and you
   will find that it has no change. But where there is life, and that
   which is intensely delicate--spiritual life--and where it is placed in
   circumstances so hostile to it as the circumstances which surround us
   here, there, I say, you will find that not only the revolutions of the
   seasons, but the variations of the temperature affect it. And every man
   who has this life in him experiences such changes. We have read of
   those who have no changes--and therefore they do not fear God. The fact
   that a Believer cannot, at all times, draw near to God as his spirit
   would desire, becomes accordingly the key which interprets to him the
   Grace and goodness whereby he sometimes gains access after a manner
   that surprises and delights his spirit.

   III. This leads cheerfully up to our third observation--THERE ARE
   SEASONS WHEN OUR HEART IS SWEETLY MOVED TOWARDS GOD. "Before I was even
   aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadib."

   Have you not proved welcome opportunities when all your thoughts have
   been quickened, enlivened and stimulated to activity in the highest
   degree about your highest interests? We have ceased to moan--

   "Our souls, how heavily they go

   To reach eternal joys,"

   and we have been all wings, and could soar and mount aloft Like David!
   We could have danced before the ark of God for very joy! And if any had
   said to us that we might, ourselves, fall by our enthusiasm while we
   seemed vile by our hilarity, we should have replied that we purposed to
   be viler still!

   All within us was awake--there was not a slumbering faculty. Our memory
   told us of the goodness of the Lord in days gone by and our hopes were
   regaled by the mercy which we had not tasted yet, but which was made
   sure to us by promise and brought near to us by faith. Our faith was
   active and bright of eye. Our love, especially, shed a clear light over
   all our prospects. Oh, we have had blessed times when our soul has been
   light and rapid as the chariots of

   Amminadib! And at such times we were conscious of great elevation. The
   chariots of Amminadib were those of a prince. And oh, we were no more
   mean and low, beggarly and groveling--we saw Christ!--and were made
   kings and princes and priests with Him!

   Then we longed to crown His head. Then we could have performed martyrs'
   deeds. Then we were no cowards, we were afraid of no foes. We sat down
   at the feet of Jesus and thought everything little compared with Him!
   Suffering for His sake would have been a gain! And reproach would have
   been an honor! We had princely thoughts, then--large, liberal,
   generous, capacious thoughts concerning Christ and His people, His
   cause and His conquests--our souls were like the chariots of Amminadab!
   At the same time they were full of power, for, when the chariots of
   Amminadib went forth, who could stop them? Who could lay his hand upon
   the reins and turn the coursers as they went onward in their mighty
   tramping? Such was our spirit! We laughed at thoughts of death and
   poured contempt upon the trials of life. We were "strong in the Lord
   and in the power of His might." Oh, what splendid times we have had
   when God has been with us!

   Do you remember when you had them? I remember, when newly converted,
   how full my spirit was of love and holy triumph, like the chariots of
   Amminadab! Yours, no doubt, were much like mine. The love of your
   espousals was upon you. With what pleasing rapture you embraced your
   Lord and said, "I will never let You go." Stronger is love than death
   or Hell. You felt it to be so. You flamed and burned and glowed--and
   though in yourself you were like low brushwood--yet you were like the
   bush in the desert that burned with fire because God was in your soul!
   Do you remember that? Well, since then, in private prayer, you have
   sometimes had gracious access, and meditation has been added to prayer,
   and the love of Christ has come in upon you like a great flood tide and
   drowned everything in your soul except itself.

   There have been periods when a sense of the eternal, immutable,
   never-ending love of God--His electing sovereign favor, the love of God
   in giving His Son for you--have been upon your spirit with a mighty
   influence that has laid you prostrate for very joy! You could not speak
   because words were too poor to express the emotions of your soul! You
   had to feel the force of James Thomson's hymn of the seasons--"Come,
   then, expressive silence, muse His praise," for you could not speak it.
   You know it has been so with you. sometimes--and has not it been so,
   sometimes, under the Word, when you have been ready to stand up and
   clap your hands for joy?

   Have not I seen gratitude and exultation reflected on your faces,
   sometimes, when the Lord has been present in the preaching of the
   Gospel? When the Truth of God has come to you like marrow and fatness
   from the King's own hands till Dr. Watts has proved to be a faithful
   interpreter of the very scene and circumstance that ravished your
   heart?--

   "The King Himself draws near

   And feasts His saints today.

   Here we may sit and see Him here,

   And love, and praise, and pray." Oh, yes, in God's House you have known
   the days of Heaven upon earth! Might I speak for the rest of you I
   should pronounce the choicest periods of fellowship those we have found
   at the Lord's Table. When the bread has been broken and the wine poured
   out down in the Lecture Hall, He has been with us in the breaking of
   bread! If ever we have come near to Christ, surely it has been in that
   blessed communion!

   There are the windows of agate and the gates of carbuncle through which
   Christ comes to His people in the ordinances He has ordained. By His
   Grace we will never slight them! We cannot! The Master puts such
   reality and fullness of joy into them--apart from Him they are idols.
   But with Him, when He is there, when we have the real Presence--not the
   superstitious presence some speak about--but the real Presence which
   His own Spirit imparts and our waiting souls participate--ah, then we
   have said--

   "No beams of cedar or of fir

   Can with His courts on earth compare,

   As myrrh new bleeding from the tree,

   Such is a dying Christ to me."

   Not infrequently, too, have I known that the Lord has appeared to His
   people and warmed their hearts when they have been working for Him.
   Some idle, indolent, sluggish professors who have used the ordinances
   have not found benefit in the ordinances because the Lord has intended
   to rebuke their sloth.

   But when they have got up and gone forth among the poor. When they have
   gone forth to visit the sick, the sorrowful and the dying, they have
   heard such delightful expressions from the lips of holy, suffering men
   and women, or felt their hearts so kindled by a sight of Divine
   compassion in the midst of desperate poverty and gracious pardon for
   grievous sin, that a quickening has come over them! And whereas they
   did not seem to care, before, whether souls were lost or saved, they
   have gone out into the world with zeal to win fresh trophies for the
   Messiah! Their hearts have been, by His Grace, like the chariots of
   Amminadib through the benefits they have received from Christian
   service!

   A great many Christian people never will be happy and never fully alive
   to the destinies that wait on their Redeemer till they get something to
   do to give them an interest in those mighty issues. The rule of the
   Christian life is, "If any man will not work, neither shall he eat." If
   you will not serve God as Christians, you shall not feed upon the sweet
   things of the kingdom to your own soul's comfort. A little more service
   and your soul would become like the chariots of Amminadib.

   Beloved, there is no need that I should enlarge. I merely say this to
   bring up your grateful memories that you may thank God for what He has
   done. Remember whatever He has done in the past He will do again in the
   future. When the Lord has come once to His people, He says, "I will see
   you again, I will come to you again, and your hearts shall rejoice." Of
   everything He has ever given you, He has got as much in store--and He
   is quite as able to give it to you now as He was before. You have never
   gone so high in joy but you may go higher yet! You have never drunk
   such draughts from the well of Bethlehem as left the well empty--you
   shall drink of it again.

   Do not say, "I had those sweet times when I was young, I shall never
   have them again." You shall have precious times again! Get back to your
   first love, dear Brother, dear Sister--go forward to a higher love than
   ever you had, for God will help you say, "I look back and think--

   "What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!

   How sweet their memory still!

   But they have left an aching void

   The world can never fill."

   Thank God for that ache! Bless God for the aching void. If your soul
   aches for God, He will be to your relief before long. Whenever a soul
   puts up a flag of distress at the masthead, he may be sure that Christ
   is on the lookout for just such a soul. He has thrown up the windows of
   Heaven and wherever He sees a soul that does what is right and longs to
   find joy and reconciliation with God, He will come to it--and before
   long it shall be better for you than even the chariots of
   Amminadab--and more desirable.

   IV. Our last observation is this--SOMETIMES THE SWEET SEASONS COME TO
   US WHEN WE DO NOT EXPECT THEM. "Before I was even aware, my soul made
   me like the chariots of Amminadib." Some poor hearts do not reckon ever
   to have these joys again. They say, "No, no. They are all gone. The
   last leaf has blown from the tree. The last flower has faded in the
   garden. My summer is past. It is all over with me!" That is the bitter
   complaint and the hollow murmuring of unbelief. But the Lord for whom
   you wait can suddenly appear--and while you are saying hard things of
   yourself He can refute them with the beams of His Countenance.

   Even at this very moment you may stand like Hannah, a woman of
   sorrowful spirit, feeling as if you would be sent away empty. Yes, and
   God's servant, himself, may address you with rough words as Eli did
   her--and may even tell you that you are drunk when it is deep grief
   that enfeebles your steps and chokes your voice--and all the while the
   Lord may have in store for you such a blessing as you have never
   dreamed of! And He may say to you, "Go your way, My daughter. I have
   heard your petition, your soul shall have its desire." Before I was
   even aware, while my unbelief led me to think such a thing impossible,
   You have made me like the chariots of Amminadab! "Before I was even
   aware," as if it came upon me almost without my own consent. Glad
   enough I was when it did come, but it took me by surprise. It led me
   captive.

   Now, is not that the way that the Lord dealt with you when you were not
   aware of it, when you had no reason to expect Him, when you found and
   felt yourself to be utterly lost, ruined, and undone? Did He not
   surprise you with His mercy and prevent you with His lovingkindness?
   Again, you are diminished and brought low through oppression,
   affliction and sorrow. There is nothing that leads you to expect a
   season of joy--you are just as empty and unworthy as you can well be.
   You feel as if your heart were of stone and you cannot stir it, and you
   are saying, "I only wish I could enjoy the freedom that my companions
   have, and keep the solemn feasts with their holy gladness. But, alas,
   for me! I am

   afraid I have got to be a mere mechanical Christian without the lively
   instincts and lofty inspirations of spiritual worship."

   Thus you are writing bitter things against yourself. Oh, Beloved, the
   Lord is looking down upon you now as His son or daughter, as His own
   dear child! And He is about to surprise you with His infinite love! Let
   me give you one text to put into your mouth and take home with you. The
   Lord has said, concerning every one of His people, "You are all fair,
   My Love; there is no spot in you." "Why, now, I am all covered over
   with spots and blemishes," you say, "and no beauty!" But the Lord Jesus
   Christ has washed you with His blood and covered you with His
   righteousness! Do you think He can see any imperfection in that? You
   are members of His body, united to Him!

   In Christ you are without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. You are
   all spots in yourself, but He sees you as He intends to make you before
   He has done with you--and He can discern unspeakable beauties in you.
   "Oh," you say, "does He think that? Surely, then, I see unspeakable
   beauties in Him! His love to me opens my eyes to see how dear an one He
   must be. Is He enamored of me? Has He given His whole heart to me? Did
   He prove His love to me by bleeding on the Cross? Oh, then, I must love
   Him, if He will but let me! Shall such a poor worm as I am love
   Infinite Perfection? Oh, yes, I must, since Infinite Perfection deigns
   to love me! And since the Sun of Righteousness, in all His Glory deigns
   to shine on my soul!"

   You are beginning to warm already, I see you are! Before you are aware,
   your soul is making you like the chariots of Amminadab! And if you keep
   on with these holy contemplations, you will leave off all misgivings
   about your love to Him, so deeply absorbed will you be in musing on His
   love to you! You will forget all the while about your sin, while you
   remember the blood that has put that sin away--the perfect
   righteousness that has made you accepted in the Beloved-- and the
   Everlasting Covenant which, through Grace, has put your feet upon a
   rock and saved your eyes from tears and your feet from falling!

   Engaged in such sweet soliloquies, before you are aware, your soul will
   make you like the chariots of Amminadab! The Lord make it so! God grant
   that surprising Grace may come likewise even to sinners, and lead them
   to Jesus, and constrain them to look to Jesus. Then, while looking,
   faith will breathe in their spirit so that they will sing--

   "Your mercy is more than a match for my heart,

   Which wonders to feel its own hardness depart.

   Dissolved by Your goodness, I fall to the ground

   And weep to the praise of the Glory I've found."
     __________________________________________________________________

Rubbish

   (No. 1156)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "There is much rubbish; so that we are not able to build the wall"
   Nehemiah 4:10.

   REMEMBER that Jerusalem had been totally destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar
   and what is meant by the destruction by the Babylonians may be inferred
   from the vast heaps of the dust of powdered bricks and charred wood
   which have been discovered upon the sites of cities which were utterly
   razed to the ground by the fierce soldiers of that terrible king. The
   ruins are frequently so complete that even tradition has forgotten the
   name of the mound or heap which is the sole memorial to mark the
   sepulcher of a queenly city. The Babylonians made sure work when they
   did it, their plowers made deep furrows and their destroyers cried one,
   to another, "Overturn, overturn, overturn, till not a stone shall abide
   in its place."

   They reaped a nation with their swords as corn is cut down by the
   sickle and they beat their cities till the ruins were small as the dust
   of the summer threshing floor. Do you wonder that on the site of
   Jerusalem there remained much rubbish? Many modern destroyers have done
   their desolating work most wonderfully and I may venture to quote what
   I have seen of their doings as an example of the much rubbish with
   which the foundations of a ruined city are sure to be covered. I have
   stood upon the Palatine Mount in Rome, where formerly the pale of the
   Caesars raised themselves in more than imperial grandeur. But what an
   Alp of fragments! What a mountain of broken walls and columns, and
   stones peering upward like the natural rock of mother earth!

   Houses, convents, palaces have been built upon the mass and for many
   seasons trees have bloomed and fruited, and gardens have brought forth
   their harvests above the spot where once the imperial tyrant was known
   to awe the nations with a nod. To restore the palaces of the Palatine,
   the first labor would be the unearthing of the foundations--and this
   would probably be as huge an undertaking as the rebuilding of the
   palaces, themselves. A mountain must be carried away before a stone can
   be laid. If you were able to visit the Forum at Rome, you would see, if
   you were there today, numbers of laborers with horses and carts
   continually at work taking away hundreds of thousands of tons of
   rubbish which have covered up all that still remains of the ancient
   center and heart of Rome.

   Jerusalem, I do not doubt, was one vast heap made up of the debris of
   its houses, of the tower and armory of David, of the palace of the
   king, and of the Temple itself. And though now, at the period we are
   about to speak of, the temple had been rebuilt and modern houses
   covered the site of the older Jerusalem, yet, when they came to the
   wall of the city, with the view of thoroughly restoring it, they found
   it a complete ruin--and such a ruin that the mass which covered it up
   was difficult to dig through. They could not build the wall because
   there was so much rubbish.

   Now, this, it seems to me, is intended, or at least may justifiably be
   used, for a type of the work which God's people have to carry on in the
   name of Jesus and in the power of His Holy Spirit, in the world. We
   have to build the walls of the Church for God, but we cannot build it
   for there is so much rubbish in our way. This is true, first, of the
   building of the Church, which is the Jerusalem of God. And this is
   equally true of the temple of God, which is to be built in each one of
   our hearts. Full often we feel discouraged. Though we hear the voice
   that says, "But you, Beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy
   faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God,"
   still we are apt to feel that we cannot build this wall because there
   is so much rubbish.

   I. I shall speak first, then, of the great work comprised in THE
   BUILDING UP OF THE CHURCH. Now, this enterprise is the work of God. He
   alone can build the Church. "When the Lord shall build up Zion, He
   shall appear in His Glory." And we may build as we may, but "except the
   Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it." Still, our
   full and firm conviction that it is God's working does not at all
   interfere with the grand Truth of God that He employs agents for the
   building up of His Church in the world! That, in fact, He has
   commissioned us, His chosen servants, and sent us into the world, each
   one according to our ability and opportunity, to labor for Him.

   We work because God works by us. We are hindered, however, in this
   service by the fact that there is much rubbish in the way. It was
   always so. When Paul began to build for God, and the Apostles went
   forth as wise master builders, there lay before them, in towering
   heaps, the old Jewish rubbish--hard to remove, heavy to bear away--and
   in quantity equal to a huge hill. The foundation was there. Thank God
   we have not to lay that! That is laid in Christ Jesus, and firmly laid,
   and "other foundation can no man lay." But the Jews, with their
   traditions, had overlaid the foundations-- they had added to the Word
   of God. They had put glosses upon it. They had taken away its real
   meaning and put to it a meaning of their own.

   They had invented innumerable rites and ceremonies--and dark and
   mysterious traditions of the fathers, so that though a man should seek
   to find out the Truth of God--he could not by reason of the abundance
   of the confused material and traditional superstition with which they
   had covered it up. The Apostles had to begin their Gospel labor among
   their fellow countrymen in the midst of this much rubbish. No sooner
   did they begin to remove the worthless deposits than the lovers of
   tradition assailed them, raised a great dust, and became their violent
   persecutors. They followed them from city to city, scandalizing them
   and committing all manner of violence against them. You cannot remove
   ruins without awakening the owls and bats.

   The most rotten rubbish upon earth is sure to find some defender. By
   this rubbish many have gained their wealth and they are full of wrath
   if any threaten to disturb it. The Apostles soon found that they had
   fallen upon troublous times, yet by God's help, they cleared away that
   rubbish and were enabled to build their wall till the New Jerusalem
   became famous in the earth. They encountered, in the wider world of the
   Roman empire, the rubbish of old paganism and oh, what rubbish that
   was! He who is acquainted with the classic writers knows how polluted
   were the people of their times. Their satirists ascribe vices to them
   mirthfully which even with tears we would not dare to mention! The
   superstitions of the age were groveling to a hideous degree--their very
   gods were monsters of crime--and their sacred rites orgies of lust and
   drunkenness.

   The priests had successfully endeavored to make vice into a religion
   and under the pretence of mysterious worship had devised means for
   pandering to the most base passions of the most corrupt human nature.
   It is no small mass of rubbish which the student of today sifts over as
   he researches the Greek and Roman mythology. Men could not discover
   God, for many gods and many lords stood in the way. Neither could they
   believe in the simplicity of Jesus Christ because their foolish heart
   was darkened. "God made man upright, but he has found out many
   inventions." And all these inventions helped to turn him from his
   uprightness and to pervert his judgment. Yet those who went before us
   labored on amidst that foul and noisome rubbish--and were so successful
   in their earnest excavations--that at this day no one thinks of
   worshipping Jupiter, or Saturn, or Venus, or Mercury!

   These demon-deities have gone to the limbo from where they came. They
   have been smitten--smitten by the Gos-pel--and they have withered like
   grass so that no man bows himself before them anymore. The God of Truth
   has come-- and these bats and owls of the night have thrown themselves
   into obscurity and oblivion! This rubbish was cleared away and the
   foundations were built upon by earnest men that went before us, though
   they had to lay each stone in martyr blood and cement it with agonies
   and tears.

   Moreover, remember that in those early days the Church, in her
   building, had to encounter mountains of "much rubbish" of the various
   philosophies of mankind. There was a kind of "feeling after God" in the
   heathen mind, but this feeling after God was misdirected and proudly
   self-confident--and therefore it missed its way--and in the process of
   thought the more spiritual-minded among men (if I may venture to call
   men spiritual at all who were not renewed by Divine Grace) invented
   theories and superstitions which they thought to be exceedingly wise,
   but which, in fact, were folly, itself, dressed out in the robes of
   vainglory!

   These philosophies had a great following and exercised so powerful an
   influence that they were felt even in the Church itself. In the
   writings of the Apostles Paul and John you continually meet with
   allusions to the great Gnostic philosophy which perverted so many
   Christians. Ever since that day human wisdom has been a greater curse
   to the Church than anything else! The ignorance of Christians has never
   been so evil a thing, bad as it is, as the vain knowledge, the false
   wisdom with which men have been puffed up in their fleshly minds. It is
   an ill day when men know too much to know Christ! It is a great
   misfortune when men are too manly to be converted and to become as
   little children, and sit at the

   feet of the great Teacher! Yet there are many professors of religion
   who talk as if this was their condition and as if they were proud of
   it.

   Even at this present time the outside philosophies of unchristian men
   infect the Church, spoil her, injure her, dilute the wine of the
   kingdom, overturn the children's milk and, to a great extent, poison
   the Bread of Life. Sad that it should be so, but the rubbish of
   philosophy has always been in the way of the building up of the wall of
   the Church of God. The story of the Apostolic age may serve as a great
   comfort to us in these evil times. As they were hindered, so are we,
   but as they persevered and overcame even so will we, by our great
   Master's aid. After that lot of rubbish had been cleared away, the task
   was only begun, for soon after Apostolic times and the first zeal of
   Christians had gone, there came the old Roman rubbish, which in the end
   proved a worse hindrance than all which had preceded it.

   This Popish rubbish was found in layers--first one doctrinal error and
   then another and then another, and then another, and then another--till
   at this time the errors of the Church of Rome are as countless as the
   stars, as black as midnight and as foul as Hell! Her abominations reek
   in the nostrils of all good men. Her idolatries are the scorn of reason
   and the abhorrence of faith! The iniquities of her practice and the
   enormities of her doctrine almost surpass belief! Popery is as much the
   masterpiece of Satan as the Gospel is the masterpiece of God! There can
   scarcely be imagined anything of devilish craftiness or Satanic
   wickedness which could be compared with her--she is unparalleled as the
   queen of iniquity. Behold upon her forehead the name, MYSTERY, BABYLON
   THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

   The Church of Rome and her teachings are a vast mountain of rubbish
   covering the Truth of God! For weary years good men could not get at
   the Foundation because of this very much rubbish. Here and there a
   Wycliffe spied out the precious Cornerstone and leaped for joy because
   he could get his foot upon it, and say, "Jesus Christ Himself, elect
   and precious, is the Stone on which I build my hope." Here and there a
   John Huss, or a Jerome of Prague, or a Savonarola in the thick
   midnight, yet, nevertheless, found the Foundation and wept their very
   hearts out because of the much rubbish which threatened to bury even
   them while they were seeking Him!

   A master excavator was Martin Luther--how grandly he laid bare the
   glorious foundation of Justification by faith alone! An equally grand
   worker at this great enterprise was Master John Calvin who laid open
   long stretches of the ancient foundations of the Covenant of Grace.
   Well was he supported by his brother of Zurich, Zwingle, and John Knox
   in Scotland, and others in this land. They cleared away, for a while,
   some of the rubbish. But there was such a mass of it that they had to
   throw it up in heaps on either side--and it is beginning to come
   crumbling down again onto the foundation and to cover it up once more.

   A perfect reformation they could not work, and the remnant of the
   rubbish is now our plague and hindrance. Everywhere the much rubbish is
   being diligently cast upon the pile by the emissaries of the Evil One,
   and we can scarcely get to the foundations to build again the gold and
   silver and precious stones which God commits to us with which to build
   up His own house. Alas, there is very, very much rubbish! I saw in Rome
   that the waggoner which took away the earth from the Forum were marked,
   "Regia Scava." They belonged to the royal excavations and I long to see
   royal excavators, employed by the King of Kings, get to work to
   excavate, again, the foundations of the wall of Jerusalem and cart away
   some of the tremendous heaps of rubbish that still lie upon the walls.
   God grant we may see good and great work done in this direction before
   long.

   But, beloved Friends, if this rabbinical, pagan, philosophical and
   Romish rubbish were all gone, still the work would scarcely have begun,
   for there is yet very much rubbish of other kinds lying hereabout.
   There is so much rubbish arising from the world, the flesh and the
   devil, that we are not able to build the wall. Look at human sin. How
   that impedes us! Oh, if there were no false systems of religion. If
   priest and scribe were silent. If false prophets and Antichrist were
   both out of the way, yet the sins of men are a vast and hideous mass of
   rotten rubbish--and our labors of love are hindered by them. How hard
   it is to get at human ears--for the world has the first word--and often
   the last word, with the most of men. Eargate is choked with rubbish!

   How harder, still, it is to get at human hearts--for there Satan reigns
   as in his own palace--and takes care to erect huge barricades and
   earthworks of the rubbish of carnal lust and pride and unbelief! Men
   are wrapped up in indifference to eternal things, like mummies in their
   bands and gums. They give all their energy to the answering of the
   question, "What shall we eat and what shall we drink, and with what
   shall we be clothed?" Immortal as they are, they live only for

   mortality! Though their grandest destiny lies in eternity, yet all
   their efforts are bounded by the narrow space of time. Charm, O you
   charmer, ever so wisely, but this adder has no ear for you! This
   people, bent on its lusts, will still follow its own devices.

   Though Christ beckons with His pierced hand, yet they turn their back
   on Him--and even He from Calvary cries--

   "Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by, Is it nothing to you that
   Jesus should die?" He is despised and rejected of men! They see no form
   nor comeliness in Him whose countenance contains within itself all
   celestial beauty. They cannot be got at by love or law, by tears or
   terrors, by prayers or preaching! They are absorbed in earthly things.
   We cannot build the wall for their much rubbish. They are wedded to
   their sins. They cling to their idols. They will not even think about
   their soul, or their God, or their Savior. They choose their own
   delusions and reject their own mercies. It seems as if everything in
   the world helped them to be this way--for the business of life, the
   care and the ease, the quiet and the noise, the tumult and the turmoil,
   alike, ensnare them--all these things are transformed by their
   alienated hearts into a mass of rubbish!

   With one man it is the pursuit, the arduous pursuit of learning. With
   another an intense greed for gold. With a third, ambition. With a
   fourth the lust of pleasure. But in each man the heap of rubbish
   prevents our getting at the heart. We cannot build the wall. Who among
   us has not often gone back to his God and said, "Who has believed our
   report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" And this age of
   competition seems to make things worse than ever. Some are so poor that
   they tell us they cannot listen, for they have to work and toil like
   slaves for their bread merely to keep body and soul together. And as
   for those who are rich--O God, help the rich! Still it is true and
   perhaps more true now, than ever, that, "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." The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of
   riches are a mass of rubbish so that we cannot build the wall.

   Oh, how sad is the retrospect of the pastor as he remembers the many in
   whom he could never reach the conscience because of the intervening
   rubbish! And how mournful is the prospect that lies before him! Our
   only consolation is that if we cannot build, there is One who can--and
   if the rubbish is so much that the strength of the bearers of burdens
   is decaying, yet there is a Strength which is not decayed! There is an
   arm which is not weary and can perform all that is needed! I am afraid,
   dear Brothers and Sisters, that in the work of building up the Church
   the rubbish does not lie all with the sinners, but there is much of it
   also with the saints. There is very much rubbish among professors, so
   that we cannot build the wall.

   I would be very patient with all men for I need much patience toward
   myself, but there are far too many, dear Brethren in Christ, who seem
   to me to spend all their time in diligently doing nothing. I have heard
   of a man who had, by dint of great patience and much skill, after many
   days of work, very splendidly carved the image of Caesar on a cherry
   stone. What a splendid result to have achieved! The exploit was duly
   reported and chronicled. But what of it? Truly, I have read books which
   seemed to me to be elaborately learned about nothing of any practical
   value and to amount to about as much as a carving on a cherry stone,
   and no more. What good was to come of it? I am sure I could not tell!

   Brothers come out, every now and then, in the religious world, with
   some new fad and fancy of theirs--some grand discovery that they have
   made, some wonderful point of doctrine, some marvelous, soul-stirring
   discovery, as it seems to be to them--and they expect all the world to
   stand still. They expect all the Churches to be broken up, and I don't
   know what, until they have exhibited this precious thing--which, when
   you have carefully looked at it, turns out to be very much like the
   mouse which was the famous product of the labor of the mountain! It
   comes to nothing more. There is very much rubbish about, Brothers and
   Sisters!

   And, therefore, for the present distress, if every minister were to
   keep to preaching Christ and Him Crucified, and nothing else, I think
   he would do well. And if every Christian man were to just keep to the
   plain Truths of Scripture and have them worked into his soul by the
   Holy Spirit--and then speak them out with power and fire for
   soul-winning, and care for nothing else, he would do well. But there is
   very much rubbish. A whole evening will be spent by Brethren in
   discussing a question about as valuable as the famous inquiry of the
   schoolmen--as to how many angels would be able to stand on the point of
   a single needle! After discussing it with some little temper, perhaps,
   and having prayed over it a good deal, too--though I wonder how they
   dared do so--the whole of it ends in a bag of wind or a bottle of smoke
   and nothing else.

   Had that same time been spent in the visitation of the sick and
   reclaiming the Arabs of our streets, the lifting up of the ruffianism
   and the blackguardism of London into something like decency, morality
   and Christianity, it might have been much better. But there is very
   much rubbish and I am very much afraid we, all of us, contribute to
   that rubbish heap a little. We have all some favorite notion, some
   conceit, some invention of our own, some addition to the Word, some
   subtraction from it, some impossible theory, some dogma or doctrine of
   our own inventing than of Bible teaching, and so there is very much
   rubbish so that we cannot build the wall. Does not one feel inclined,
   full often, to say, "Oh, how I wish I could get at it--really get at
   it--get to doing something for God, and Christ, and the souls of men"?
   Just let the dust cart come and clear the way. These very excellent
   works upon futurity and profound books upon nothing--yet, let them go,
   beautifully written as they are--and let us plunge into the middle of
   affairs and say, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of
   our Lord Jesus Christ."

   Now, two or three things about this matter by way of comfort. And the
   first comfort to us is, well, well, the Foundation is laid! The
   Foundation is laid--and in addition to the Foundation there are goodly
   rows of precious stones built up. The Lord has not yet laid all the 12
   jeweled courses, but the instructed eye may see some of the lower bands
   of precious stones. Looking back in history I can see a foundation of
   martyrs built upon Christ, who with the Apostles and confessors make up
   the lower foundations of jasper and sapphire and chalcedony. I can
   already see the glitter of those rows of gems upon the wall. Read in
   the book of Revelation and see how they are described. For the last
   1800 years, stone upon stone, without sound of hammer, they have been
   built and the walls are still rising!

   Glory be to God, the Gospel is a success! Notwithstanding the sneer of
   Sanballat and the cruel speech of Tobiah, the Ammonite, the wall is
   being built and the Divine eye is upon it! It is God's great piece of
   architecture and He regards it with delight. Concerning it, it may be
   said, "I the Lord do keep it. I will keep it every moment, lest any
   hurt it. I will keep it night and day." There is, for this building,
   the Divine decree, "Thus says the Lord, Behold the man whose name is
   THE BRANCH, He shall build the temple of the Lord, even He shall build
   the temple of the Lord, and He shall bear the glory." That decree is
   Omnipotent! It is being fulfilled and shall be fulfilled unto the end!

   I see at this moment the master Mason upon the wall and I read
   concerning Him, "He shall not fail or be discouraged," and I read yet
   again of Him, "The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand." I
   see with Him, moreover, a band of men whose hearts the Lord has
   touched, and these labor day and night, and cease not--neither will
   they cease till the walls of Jerusalem are finished. He is the great
   master Builder, and we, each one of us, bearing both sword and trowel,
   as we are taught by Him, must be wise builders under His direction. The
   work is going on, for it is in hands that never weary and it is
   directed by a mind that never faints!

   By firm decrees, also, is it banded and built and cemented, so that it
   cannot fail, or so much as a stone be cast down. And we have this to
   encourage us--that God has never yet left a work unfinished! He began
   the creation. 'Tis true it was not so difficult a task as this building
   up of His Church, for in the creation, though there was nothing, there
   was nothing in the way--and He spoke and all things came into
   existence. Here in the building of the Church there are two works--
   destruction and creation--the removal of the old and the erection of
   the new. But, nevertheless, He who said, "Behold, I make all things
   new," is quite equal to the task to which He has set Himself. And as He
   did not leave the world half finished, did not make it a garden without
   a man to live in it--no, did not leave the man unfinished, but made the
   woman to be his helpmeet--so He will not leave the work of salvation to
   which He has once put His hand, unfinished, but course upon course
   shall the jewels be laid.

   Emerald shall follow chalcedony. The sardius shall be piled upon the
   sardonyx. The beryl upon the chrysolyte and the chrysoprasus upon the
   topaz, till, at length, in the appointed age, the last garnishing of
   jacinth and amethyst shall crown the wall! And then they shall bring
   forth the top stone with shouts of, "Grace, Grace unto it." He did not
   pause when He made the world because He needed fresh strength. He did
   not wait and say that the undertaking was too much. But its story ran
   on gloriously through all those wonderful six evenings and mornings
   until the seventh day came and the Lord rested from all His work. The
   six days are passing over us, now, with their evening gloom and morning
   brightness! The Lord is making the new world and He is building up His
   Church, slowly, as we think--but surely and in fit time and due order.

   Wait in patience and possess your souls, for there shall yet come that
   Millennial Sabbath in which, again, the sons of God shall shout for joy
   and the angels shall sing because the Word of God is accomplished and
   His work is done! Have

   courage, my Brothers and Sisters! Bear your burden in removing the
   rubbish! Use your sword and your trowel, for the work is the Lord's and
   it shall be accomplished! If it were ours, woe were the day in which it
   was laid upon such feeble shoulders! But since it is His we need not
   indulge a solitary trembling thought, but arise and be of good cheer!

   II. Now I change the subject to OURSELVES, awhile, and may God grant we
   may speak to profit for a few minutes upon that branch of our topic.
   There is a building going on in us. It is the Spirit's work to edify
   us. That is to say, to build us up in Divine Grace, and that building
   up is carried on by the Grace of love. "Knowledge puffs up, but love
   builds up." We are, each one of us, called to be builders--builders in
   God's strength, as I have said before--and let that not be forgotten.

   But, Beloved, I am afraid most of us have to say, "There is much
   rubbish, so that we are not able to build the wall." Do you not often
   feel that you cannot be built up in heavenly Graces because of the
   rubbish of your own corrupt nature? Oh, What a fall the Fall was! What
   a total ruin did it make of our moral nature! Brothers and Sisters, do
   you not dis-cover--I do, almost every day--some fresh heap of rubbish
   which you hardly knew was there? Points in which we thought ourselves
   strong turn out to be our weaknesses! There was an infirmity from which
   we half indulged the thought that we were clear and therefore we were
   rather severe upon others for having such an infirmity and sin. But at
   last it broke out in ourselves! It always had been in us, but it had
   not had the occasion and opportunity. At length the provocation came
   and the hidden evil was revealed.

   Ah, Brethren, much more of such rubbish remains in us! Oh, the rubbish
   of pride, of unbelief, of evil lusting, of anger, of despondency, of
   self-exaltation! Brothers and Sisters, it is not worth while to stir
   it, it is such a foul heap! I have no desire to turn a cinder sifter to
   it, for there is never a jewel in it that will pay for the sifting! But
   there it is and the building of Divine Grace does not advance as we
   would wish because of the corruption which still abides in us,
   notwithstanding all that some may say.

   Then there is oftentimes in Christian people the old rubbish of legal
   thought, of legal actions, and legal fear. In our old estate we were
   going to be saved by our own merits. That was our notion. Since our
   conversion, we doctrinally abhor the idea of any thought of human
   merit, but experimentally we indulge in it. The legal spirit will come
   in--like an ill weed it springs up spontaneously in the garden from
   which Grace uprooted it. Though we are not children of the bondwoman,
   but of the free, yet the flesh often tries to put the old yoke of
   bondage upon us, so that if Paul were here he would say to us, "Having
   begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh?"

   Ishmael tries to domineer over Isaac, Though driven out of the house,
   he shows his tyrant face at the window. We get the bond slave's dread,
   yes, and sometimes entertain the bond slave's hope and think that we
   are to work for wages instead of understanding that the gift of God is
   Eternal Life, while the only wages we could earn would be the wages of
   sin, which is death. Oh, the old legal tendency! How deep-seated! How
   prone to revive! It will scarcely be conceived that sinners should, at
   the same time, be self-righteous and guilty--but yet it is so, that,
   abounding as we do in the tendency to sin--we equally abound in the
   tendency to fancy that in us, that is, in our flesh, there dwells some
   good thing. Therefore arises another heap of rubbish!

   And then old habits--what rubbish they are! You who have been, before
   your conversion, guilty of gross sin, do you not often find the
   remembrance of those old times coming over you like a hideous dream? I
   know some, who, when a hymn is given out, cannot help remembering an
   old song which they used to sing, which is suggested to them by,
   perhaps, the holiest word in the Psalm. Yes, and a text of Scripture
   has sometimes conjured up before their memory a sin which they wished
   with all their hearts had never occurred, and which they would give
   their eyes to forget! Yes, the old habits win struggle for mastery and
   if we do not fall into them, as I pray God we never may, yet will they
   vex and trouble us! And here, also, the much rubbish prevents the
   building up of the wall of the Divine life.

   So is it with worldly associations. Do you not find that even the
   common associations of business into which you are obliged to enter do
   very much heap rubbish upon the wall of your spirit? You have to meet
   with ungodly men. You cannot commend their tongues--you may rebuke
   their language when it becomes profane, but there is very much of talk
   which is not profane and which we could not very well rebuke--but
   which, nevertheless, is not sweet with godliness, or savory with Grace,
   and it damages us. We wish, sometimes, that we were altogether away
   from worldly men. We cry, "Woe is me that I dwell in Hesech, and
   tabernacle in the tents of Hedar!" And so, again, as the result of our
   being in the world, there is very much rubbish.

   And I will tell you another kind of rubbish that I think some Brothers
   and Sisters have quite enough of, if not too much. That is the idea
   that they have come to be somebody, after all. Many acquire that notion
   if they are getting on in the world. If God prospers them, they say,
   "Ah, now I really am a great one and worthy of much honor. I am not now
   like my poorer Brethren." It is sad to see what fine airs certain
   prosperous professors give themselves. They forget the rock from which
   they were hewn. They lift up their horn on high, as if they were more
   than mortal! That is rubbish, indeed.

   And there are some others who have had choice seasons of fellowship
   with Christ and they have been, for a while, free from temptation.
   There has been some great breaking up of the great deep of corruption
   within them and, therefore, they say, "Ah, now I am getting on! I
   think, somehow, I am getting up to the higher life. I should not wonder
   that I should be perfect one of these days." Rubbish, Brothers and
   Sisters! It is all rubbish! Every bit of it--it is not worthy harboring
   for an instant! It may be very glittering rubbish--it looks amazingly
   like gold--but, "all is not gold that glitters." Any notion of our own
   attainments which could lead us, for a moment, to speak of what we are
   with any degree of complacency is only rubbish! For my own part, I
   desire constantly to stand at the foot of the Cross, with no other
   testimony concerning myself than this--

   "I the chief of sinners am, But Jesus died for me."

   Personal holiness is to be sought for with all our hearts, and it can
   only be obtained by faith in Jesus Christ--by simple faith in Him.

   He gives us power to overcome sin through His precious blood, but,
   depend upon it, the moment we conclude that we have overcome and can
   say what Paul could not say--that he had attained and was already
   perfect--we are in an evil case! Our pride has overpowered our judgment
   and we are fools! If anyone here is in a condition in which he is able
   to open his mouth wide in his own praise, I would advise him to fetch a
   big dust cart, or rather all the dust carts in the parish and take that
   boasting, every shovel full of it, away! It is of no use to him and it
   will very soon make such dust as to fly in the eyes and ears of his
   Christian Brothers and Sisters. We cannot build the wall while there is
   so much of this proud rubbish!

   "In me, that is in my flesh, there dwells no good thing." Low down at
   the foot of the Cross, in the dust, is still our place--for we are, in
   ourselves, less than nothing--emptiness, vanity, death! That is our
   place. Christ is made of God unto you, "wisdom, righteousness,
   sanctification and redemption." In Him is all your glorying--and in
   Him, alone-- for if not so, the rubbish will cover up the foundation.
   Now, I will suppose that some of you are mourning tonight-- some of
   God's people--because of all this rubbish. I want to say this to you.
   First, dear Brothers and Sisters, thank God that you have the
   Foundation surely laid. Are you sure of that? I pray you rest not till
   you are certain of it--

   "I know that safe with Him remains,

   Protected by His power,

   What I've committed to His hands

   Till the decisive hour."

   "I know whom I have believed." None but Jesus, none but Jesus! There
   rests our souls' only hope--upon His precious blood and
   righteousness--every other hope we heartily abhor. Well, the Foundation
   is laid. Blessed be God for that! When a man is brought to rest alone
   in Jesus, then there is laid for him in Zion a sure foundation stone,
   and to that he is cemented by Sovereign Grace.

   Now, let us thank God, again, that the building up of His temple in us
   is His own work. He began it. He dug out and made clear to us our own
   emptiness. He cast out our self-righteousness and He laid Christ where
   our self had once been. The Lord did that and He has done everything
   else which has been done in us that has been worth the doing. I cannot,
   I am sure no Brother or Sister here can, look upon any step he has ever
   taken as a real advance in Divine life which was taken in any strength
   but in the strength of God. Whatever we have done of ourselves had been
   much better undone, for all that Nature spins will have to be unraveled
   sooner or later. "Salvation is of the Lord." Jonah learned that in the
   whale's belly. It was worthwhile getting into the whale's belly to
   learn. We need to know it through and through. Salvation is of the
   Lord, alone, and unto Him must be all the praise.

   And there is our comfort! It is His work to save us--we are not our own
   saviors--Christ is the Savior. It is the Spirit's work to make us meet
   to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. It is the
   Bridegroom, not the bride,

   that is to make the bride fit for her Husband. So says the Scripture.
   "Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it, that He might
   sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that He
   might present it to Himself, a glorious Church, not having spot, or
   wrinkle, or any such thing." It is He that presents the bride to
   Himself and He that makes her fit to be presented. Blessed be God, the
   work is in sure and competent hands!

   And therefore, finally, let us, by Divine Grace, work on in faith, with
   diligence. In faith, I say, believing our work of faith and labor of
   love are not in vain in the Lord--believing that prayer is not a vain
   exercise, that drawing near to God in communion is not a vain thing,
   that trusting in the Lord is no idle dream--but that surely He will
   complete what He has begun. But let us add to faith the most earnest
   endeavors--let us diligently strive to throw away this rubbish!
   Whatever bad habit obstructs our edification, God help us to conquer
   it! Whatever sin there is about us, may the blood of Jesus enable us to
   subdue it!

   Let us press forward, dear Brothers and Sisters, never content, never
   satisfied till we wake up in His likeness! And, as we have not all His
   likeness--not satisfied with ourselves, let us press forward, looking
   to that which is before us--and forgetting that which is behind. Faith
   and diligence, by God's good Grace, shall allow us to be built up on
   our most holy faith--not with wood and hay and stubble--but with gold
   and silver and precious stones which will abide the fire! Make sure you
   are built on the Foundation! That is the last and yet the first
   question--Are you on the Foundation? Some build very rapidly, but they
   are not on the Foundation. Yes, you have a fine character and you make
   a noble profession, but is the palatial structure based on the Rock, or
   on the sand?

   Our little children at the seaside will build very fine castles with
   their wooden spades. But the next tide sweeps all away because it is
   sand built on sand. I am afraid the religion of multitudes is just like
   that--sand built on sand. Is that your religion, dear Hearer? Does it
   consist of Church attendance, or going to Chapel and Prayer Meetings,
   and receiving sacraments, and all that? Well, then, it is sand built on
   sand! But if you are a poor and needy sinner and you have rested your
   soul on Jesus, and then, renewed in heart by His Spirit, have been
   zealous for good works--then is it no longer sand built on sand--but
   the work of the Spirit of God upon the one Foundation which God laid
   from all eternity, in the Person and the work of His only-begotten Son!

   The Lord bless you, every one of you, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Nehemiah 4. HYMNS FROM "OUR
   OWN HYMN BOOK"--623, 641, 665.

   MESSAGE:

   This sermon I have revised at Mentone after an attack of severe pain
   from which I am recovering, by God's good hand. I beg, in my great
   feebleness, to ask the prayers of my friends that I may return to my
   beloved sphere of labor free from the disease which is my constant
   cross, and that every personal trial may work in me for the good of
   others by rendering my ministry more deeply experimental. From this
   delicious retreat I desire Christian love to all the people of God, of
   whom I am both the servant and friend."

   C. H. SPURGEON.
     __________________________________________________________________

Shiloh

   (No. 1157)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Until Shiloh comes; and unto Him shall the gathering of the people
   be." Genesis 49:10.

   THE dying Patriarch was speaking of his own son, Judah, but while
   speaking of Judah, he had a special eye to our Lord, who sprang from
   the tribe of Judah. Everything, therefore, which he says of Judah, the
   type, he means with regard to our greater Judah, the Antitype, our Lord
   Jesus Christ. You will remember how Jacob gathered his 12 sons around
   his bed and, addressing them individually as representatives of the 12
   tribes that bear their names, uttered different predictions, and gave
   to each a special blessing. After first addressing Reuben, Simeon and
   Levi, he proceeds to salute Judah in words full of majesty--"Judah, you
   are he whom your brethren shall praise." A happy expression, for the
   word, "Judah," signifies "praise." The name was given to him by his
   mother as expressing her gratitude to God at his birth.

   It is now confirmed to him by his father, who discerns in it a presage
   of his character and his destiny. And verily this is true of Jesus. If
   the virgin mother hailed His advent, how much more do His grateful
   Brethren laud His career! Do not His Brethren recognize in Him a Leader
   and Commander, a Savior and a Friend? Is it not here, on earth, our
   sweetest employment, and will it not be in Heaven our highest delight
   to praise His name? The praise we bestow on men is mere flattery--the
   praise we receive from men is insincere. But Jesus has a peerless name
   and His Brethren derive from Him priceless benefits.

   In Jesus are fulfilled the dreams of Joseph. The sun and the moon and
   the 11 stars all bow before Him! All the sheaves make obeisance unto
   His sheaf. Let Him be crowned with majesty who bowed His head to death
   is the common verdict of all the Brotherhood of the House of God. "Your
   hands shall be at the neck of Your enemies." As one that gets his hands
   upon the neck of his prey, stops its breath and destroys it--or as one
   who seizes his enemy by the throat and flings him down to death. How
   true has this been of Jesus! He has laid His hands upon the neck of His
   enemies. When He came to the Cross, fought foot to foot with the old
   Serpent, and there vanquished sin and death and Hell for us, it was a
   terrible battle, but it ended in a splendid victory, of which we shall
   never cease to sing!

   Nor do we doubt but the hands of Jesus Christ are at this moment on the
   neck of His enemies. They may be very rebellious, and, for a time, they
   may seem to get the ascendancy--but He has got the upper and as surely
   as Truth and righteousness must flourish and prevail--as surely as
   Jehovah is the living God, the kingdom of Christ will yet break in
   pieces all the powers that resist it. "He shall break them as with a
   rod of iron: He shall dash them in pieces like potters' vessels." "Your
   father's children shall bow down before you."

   To the descendants of Judah in the persons of David and Solomon the
   whole nation gave allegiance. But worship of a higher order, homage of
   deeper significance and adoration from a wider circle pertain to Him,
   for whom our Father in Heaven demands of all His faithful children
   love, honor, and obedience. "Judah is a lion's whelp: from the prey, my
   son, you are gone up." And how does this describe the Savior--that
   "Lion of the tribe of Judah"--that strong and mighty Lion who entered
   into conflict with the lion of the Pit and overcame him! From the prey
   He has gone up again, up into His Glory--gone up beyond the stars, up
   to the right hand of the Infinite Majesty--there to sit in perpetual
   peaceful triumph.

   "He stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion." The lion
   may have been an emblem that befitted the son of Jesse. The lion
   couching might have been fitly chosen for his heraldic device, when the
   Lord had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies and of Saul.
   Yet with how much more propriety may this emblem be emblazoned on the
   arms of Prince Emmanuel! Did He not stoop down? Was ever such a stoop
   as His? Let Him be crowned with majesty who bowed His head to death! It
   is for this that He deserves to conquer, because He was willing to
   submit to shame and death, itself, for the sake of His people. How
   glorious is it to think that He has gone up, seeing that He once came
   down! Who should deserve such honors but He who laid such honors aside
   for a while?

   "Who shall rouse Him up?" A grand question! Who shall rouse up the Lion
   of the tribe of Judah? Who dare do it? Who can stand against Him? He is
   a Lamb, gentle and tender. "A bruised reed He will not break, and the
   smoking flax He will not quench." But let Him be provoked--then fiercer
   than a lion that roars from the forest will He be upon His foes! So
   shall it come to pass on that tremendous day when He will ease Himself
   of His adversaries and shake Himself clear of all His enemies. Do you
   not remember these terrible words of His--"Beware, you that forget God,
   lest I tear you in pieces, and there are none to deliver"? "The scepter
   shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet,
   until Shiloh come."

   The sovereignty remained with Judah. It continued to be the royal tribe
   till the prophetic epoch. When other tribes lost their peculiar
   position and their positive distinctiveness, Judah still remained--and
   it survives in the common appellation of the Hebrew people to this day.
   The Israelites are more commonly called Jews than by any other name.
   Jesus, the tribe of Judah, is the King of the Jews, even though they
   reject Him. Over His head upon the Cross was written the indelible
   Truth in letters of Hebrew, Greek and Latin, "This is Jesus, the King
   of the Jews." Yes, He is King of all faithful Jews and of all believing
   Gentiles at this hour--with a sovereignty wider than that of
   emperors--yes, as wide as the dwelling places of all mankind! He is
   "King of kings, and Lord of lords."

   Of Shiloh it is the Patriarch speaks when, with the vision of a Seer,
   he describes the grand climax. Before the dim organs of his sight he
   saw all his 12 sons gathered to take leave of their dying sire. Before
   the beaming eyes of his faith he beheld the gathering of all their
   distant posterity, or perhaps of all the kindreds of the earth to greet
   with glad acclaim the everlasting King, of whose kingdom there shall be
   no end! "Unto Him shall the gathering of the people be." This simply
   and pointedly does Jacob refer to the Lord Jesus Christ by the name of
   Shiloh. Of that name and of that prophecy I shall try to speak.

   First, let the title, "SHILOH," and secondly the TESTIMONY, "To Him
   shall the gathering of the people be," engage our attention. The title,
   "SHILOH." What an old word it is! What an old world word! I should not
   wonder if it was one of Jacob's own coining. A pet name is often the
   product of peculiar love. Tender affection takes this kindly turn.
   Those whom we fondly regard, we familiarly call by some other name than
   chance has bequeathed or choice bestowed. Not content with the names
   that others understand or use, there is often a new mode of recognition
   between two who love each other, as much as to say, "You are to me what
   you are to none upon earth beside me."

   Even God gives to His people new names--and I do not wonder if they
   give to Him new names. Well may Believers have each a favorite name for
   Jesus. Which name of your Lord do you love the best? If the question
   were passed round, perhaps some would say--and the majority
   might--"Jesus, the name divinely sweet." Another would say--

   "Sweeter sounds than music knows Charm me in Emmanuel's name." That is
   the choice name. Others, it may be, might put in a claim for
   pre-eminence to the title of, "The Well-Beloved," which always seems to
   me to have a great charm about it. And if George Herbert were here, you
   know he would say, "How sweetly does 'My Master' sound!" "My Master!"
   That was the name he loved to call his Lord. Well, Jacob's name for
   Jesus was, "Shiloh," and it is so long ago since he called Him Shiloh
   that I do not wonder that we have almost forgotten the meaning of it.

   He knew it had a wealth of meaning as it came from his lips and the
   meaning is still there. But the well is deep and those that have
   studied the learned languages have found this to be a word of such rare
   and singular occurrence that it is difficult, with any positive
   certainty, to define it. Not that they cannot find a meaning, but that
   it is possible to find so many meanings of it! Not that it is not rich
   enough, but that there is an embarrassment of riches! It may be
   interpreted in so many different ways. I will give you, one by one,
   some of the meanings that have been proposed. There is something to be
   said for each one. Though I shall not trouble you with the names of the
   learned authors who stand up for each particular translation, as that
   would be useless, I will take care to put last the one which I conceive
   to be the best, has the most authority, and will probably commend
   itself to you as the most acceptable.

   Some maintain that the word," Shiloh," signifies "sent." Like that word
   you have in the New Testament, "He said to him, go to the pool of
   Siloam, which is, by interpretation, Sent.''" You observe the likeness
   between the words Siloam and Shiloh. They think that the words have the
   same meaning, in which case Shiloh, here, would mean the same as Me-

   ssiah--the Sent One--and would indicate that Jesus Christ was the
   Messenger, the Sent One of God, and came to us, not at His own
   instance, and at His own will, but commissioned by the Most
   High--authorized and anointed to that end.

   Here let us stop a minute. We rejoice to know that whatever this title
   means, it is quite certain that Jesus Christ was sent. It is a very
   precious thing to know that we have a Savior, but often it has cheered
   my heart to think that this dear Savior who came to save me did not
   come as an amateur, unauthorized from the courts of Heaven, but He came
   with the credentials of the Eternal Father, so that, whatever He has
   done, we may be sure He has done it in the name of God.

   Jehovah will never repudiate that which Jesus has accomplished! God has
   set Him forth to be a Propitiation. He is a Mediator of God's own
   sending. He is our Substitute, but He is a Substitute of God's own
   finding. "I have laid help upon One that is mighty." So says the Oracle
   and who shall dispute it? "The Lord has laid upon Him the iniquity of
   us all." It is the Lord that has done it! An ambassador who had no
   credentials from the court he represented would be but a dubious
   blessing to the people. But when as a plenipotentiary, with full
   authority from his sovereign, he comes with terms of peace, he might
   well be received without hesitation or opposition.

   Sinner, have you received the Savior, Jesus? You profess to acknowledge
   the God who sent Him, but know that in turning from the Emissary you
   are spurning the Sovereign! If you deny Jesus, you defy God
   Himself--yes, you make God a liar because you have not believed His
   testimony concerning His Son. Beloved, do you welcome Jesus Christ as
   being sent to you personally? When you have labored under a sense of
   sin, burdened to the very ground with trouble of conscience, was Jesus
   ever sent to you to say, "Look unto Me and be you saved, all you ends
   of the earth"? Was He ever sent to lead you to look? Did you look unto
   Him and were you lightened?

   Oh, then, you will forever bless His name, the name of the Most High,
   who sent such an One that He might lift you up out of your miseries,
   bring the bandaged ones out of the dungeon and set the captives free!
   Dwell, sweetly dwell, upon this meaning of the word Shiloh. If it means
   "sent," there is great sweetness in it. Others have referred it to a
   word, the root of which signifies the Son. Upon such a hypothesis the
   name would be strictly appropriate to our Lord. He is the "Son of God."
   He is the "Son of Man." He was the "Son of Judah." He was the "Son of
   David." "Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given." Let us
   linger for a while upon this--"Until Shiloh"--"Until the Son comes."

   Be the annotation right or wrong, Jesus is the Son of God! He that has
   come to save us is Divine. No angel could bear the stupendous burden of
   redemption. Sooner might angels create than redeem, but they can do
   neither the one nor the other! They can only sing the high praises of
   Him who is able to do both! Who but God Himself could snatch a sinner
   from Hell? God has done it! He that died upon the Cross was none other
   than He that made the world! Trust the Divine Savior, O sinner! If you
   have had any doubts about the sufficiency of Jesus Christ to save, cast
   them all aside, for, if He is the Son of the Highest, and, "God over
   all, blessed forever," they that rest in Him shall never be confounded.

   The Son of God is He, but He is also the Son of Man, and this is an
   equal joy to us. Jesus Christ is "bone of our bone, and flesh of our
   flesh," a man like ourselves. Though He is now in Heaven, think not
   that He is transformed into a spirit there, or that He has discarded
   our Nature, or disowned our flesh and blood. Oh, no! After He was risen
   from the dead He appeared to His disciples and ate with them--He
   partook of a fish and of honeycomb to show that He was not spirit, but
   flesh. He said, "Handle Me, and see, a spirit has not flesh and bone:
   as you see I have." In that very body of His He has gone up into His
   Glory! And today, at the right hand of God--there He sits--a man
   clothed in a body like our own!

   Oh, Beloved! Let not terror frighten us, or misgivings keep us back
   from a High Priest that can be touched with a feeling of our
   infirmities, a dear Savior who is not ashamed to call us Brethren!
   "This man receives sinners." Oh, Sinners! may you be willing to be
   received by Him! Let us bless Him as the Son--the Son of God, the Son
   of Man. A third meaning has been given to the word, "Shiloh," which
   rather paraphrases, than translates it. The passage, according to
   certain critics, would run something like this--"Until He comes to whom
   it belongs, to whom it is, for whom it is reserved." Or, as Ezekiel
   puts it, "Overturn, until He shall come whose right it is, and you will
   give it Him."

   It may mean, then, "The scepter shall not depart from Judah until He
   shall come whose that scepter is." This meaning is supported by many
   learned authorities and has its intrinsic value. The scepter belongs to
   Christ. All scepters belong to Him. He will come, by-and-by, and verify
   His title to them. Have you not seen the picture that represents Nelson
   on board a French man-of-war receiving the swords of the various
   captains he has conquered--while there stands an old sailor, at his
   side, putting all these swords underneath his arm as they are brought
   up? I have often pictured to myself our great Commander, the only King
   by Divine right, coming back to this, our earth, and gathering up the

   scepters of the kings in sheaves and putting them on one side, and
   collecting their crowns--for He alone shall reign King of kings and
   Lord of lords!

   When the last and greatest of all monarchs shall come a second time,
   "without a sin-offering unto salvation"--oh, the glory of His triumph!
   He has a right to reign! If ever there was a king by nature, and by
   birth, it is the Son of David! If ever there was one who would be
   elected to the monarchy by the suffrages of all His subjects, it is
   Jesus. How often do we sing--

   "Bring forth the royal diadem, And crown Him Lord of all"?

   And we cannot repeat it too often! Our hearts and lips ought to be
   always saying, "Crown Him, crown Him; crowns become the victory brow."
   His is the right to reign! Dear Souls, acknowledge that right. If you
   have never acknowledged it, acknowledge it now. "Kiss the Son, lest He
   is angry and you perish from the way, while His wrath is kindled but a

   little."

   You that love Him and have made Him your King, oh, kiss His feet again!
   Let Him have your highest homage, your purest love, your perpetual
   service! Was never such a King as You are, O Jesus! "The chief among
   ten thousand, and the altogether lovely." Let Him be crowned with
   majesty forever and ever! To Him the royalty belongs, for Him it is
   reserved. The interpretation, however, which has the most support, and
   which I think has the fairest claim to be accorded correct, is that
   which derives the word, "Shiloh," from the same root as the word,
   "Salem." This makes it signify peace. "Until the Peace, or the
   Peace-Bearer, or the Peace-Giver," or, if you like it better, "the
   Rest, or the Rest-Maker--shall come." Select the word you prefer--it
   will sufficiently represent the sense.

   "Until the Peace-Bringer comes, until the Rest-Maker comes." His advent
   bounds the Patriarch's expectation and his desire. Oh, Beloved, what a
   vein of soul-charming reflection this opens! Do you know what rest
   means? Such "peace, peace," such perfect peace as he has whose soul is
   stayed because he trusts, as the Prophet Isaiah has it. Have you ever
   said to yourself, "There is nothing I desire--nothing that I wish for.
   I am satisfied--perfectly content. I am without a fear, without a
   dread"? "No," you say, "I never reached that status!" You may be worth
   millions of money without ever coming to that pass. All the gold in the
   world will never fill a man's heart and you may have broad acres across
   which a swift horse could hardly rush in a day, but you will not have
   enough.

   All the land in the world cannot fill a heart. You may have all the
   beauty, rank, honor and fame that ever can come to a human being, and
   yet say, "Ah, me! I am still wretched." But full many who have found
   Jesus have been able to say, "It is enough--I need no more." Believing
   in Jesus and learning to yield up everything to His will. Living to His
   Glory and loving Him supremely, we enjoy peace with God--a "peace that
   passes all understanding," which--"keeps our heart and mind" by Jesus
   Christ. Are we adopted into the family of God?--we are sure that He
   never cast a child out of the family that was once received into it!
   Are we made members of the body of Christ? There is no fear of
   dismemberment--that which is perfected and compacted together cannot be
   mangled or torn asunder. Our good hope through Grace is not precarious.
   Well may we sing with the seraphic Toplady--

   "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."

   Here is rest!

   Man may well take his rest when he has to, when it is all done for him.
   And that is their gospel. The world's way of salvation is "Do," God's
   way of salvation is, "It is all done for you; accept and believe." The
   world, that says, "Do," never does anything! While the Gospel which
   tells us, "It is all done," imparts such joy and peace within that we
   spring to our feet ready and willing to do and dare anything for Him
   who gave Himself up for us! While active and passive obedience spring
   out of the Doctrines of Grace, nothing but pride and self-righteousness
   can come out of the religion which prates of merit and prescribes
   duties to be done in order that you may be saved!

   All that ever will be saved were saved on Calvary's bloody tree. Jesus
   said, "It is finished." Here His humiliation reached its climax. He
   humbled Himself even unto death. It was finished. Those for whom He
   died were, then and there, redeemed. The ransom price paid for them
   exempted them from the penalty of their transgressions, exonerated them
   from legal responsibilities and extinguished for them the fiery threat
   of Hell. He had suffered in their place and they could not

   be called upon to suffer for themselves. He had offered a righteousness
   to God on their behalf and they were accepted because of that
   righteousness.

   Do you say, "I wish I were one of those people"? Do you believe in
   Jesus? Then you are one of them! Do you trust Jesus? Then you are
   saved! The moment a sinner believes and trusts in His crucified Lord,
   he is pardoned at once--he receives salvation in full through Christ's
   blood. Do but rest your soul on Jesus and it is done, and peace will
   enter your soul--oh, such a deep and blessed peace--the like of which
   is not to be found out of Heaven! Jesus is the great Peace-Giver and
   Peacemaker--He is our Peace! God grant us to know Him and to understand
   this aspect of His mediatorial Character. Believe me, my Hearers, I
   feel in my soul, as I look round upon you, the utmost longing for you
   all. Oh, that you did know my Lord and the peace He gives!

   It is years ago--23 years or more--since I went to Him. I could not
   believe it possible that He would receive me. I felt myself too great a
   sinner. How should there be mercy for me? But I heard a sermon from the
   text, "Look unto Me and be you saved all you ends of the earth!" I
   never understood it before, but when I came to understand that all I
   had to do was to look, oh, what a revelation it was to me! No feelings,
   no works, no doings, no purchase money demanded as a qualification!
   Christ on the Cross was evidently set forth crucified before my eyes! I
   did but look, and I was saved! Saved the moment I looked. When I turned
   to the Scriptures I found that was just what the Scriptures said, "He
   that believes in Him is not condemned." I did believe it. I did trust.
   I did simply rest there.

   Neither shall I ever forget the rush ofjoyous feeling that went through
   my spirit! This was the cessation of long years of melancholy bordering
   on despair. This was the coming out into a clear light, which I thank
   God I have never lost, for, with all the troubles of this material
   life, I would not change places with any man that breathes! No, nor
   with the angels before God's Throne! The station and the privilege of
   angels will not bear comparison with the eternal dignities reserved for
   the saints. For an angel no redeemer ever died, and no angel will be
   able to sing, "Worthy is He that has washed me in His blood!" Oh, to be
   superlatively indebted to the infinite love of Jesus! To be a cleansed
   sinner and to be put among the children is so enchanting that it is
   enough to make one say, "Ah, not even an angel would I envy, nor with
   one of those celestial ministers would I change my happy lot."

   I wish you could all sympathize in this. Would that you all had
   fellowship with us in this Grace wherein we stand! Many of you have,
   thank God. Some of you have not. What do you poor people do without a
   Savior? I cannot understand why you, who have so little in this life,
   do not look out for the promise of a better inheritance! And what do
   you poor rich people do without a Savior? I pity you most of all, for
   your lives are generally passed in a very senseless and insipid
   fashion. With nothing but a round of visits to pay and a few elegant
   trifles to attend to, like butterflies, you flit from flower to flower!
   A poor man's time is taken up with hard labor--but you often ask
   yourselves, and consult one another how best you can spend the hours
   and kill the time that hangs heavily on your hands.

   If you cannot think upon Christ. If you cannot fall back upon the
   Covenant of Grace. If you cannot look up to the eternal God and say,
   "My Father, You are mine, and with You shall I dwell forever," I pity
   you, whether you are rich or poor! God grant you to have and to enjoy
   the fullness of the treasure that is in Jesus Christ! Then you can
   say--

   "I would not change my blest estate With all that earth calls good or
   great. And while my faith can keep her hold, I envy not the sinner's
   gold."

   Trusting, then, dear Friends, that your faith has identified the Shiloh
   of Jacob's vision, let us occupy the few minutes that remain us in
   considering the TESTIMONY which the Patriarch here bears. "Unto Him
   shall the gathering of the people be."

   "UNTO HIM," as the Hebrew runs, "shall the gathering of the peoples
   be." So wide the circumference that converges in this glorious center!
   It comprehends all the peoples of the Gentiles as well as Jews. Of
   course it includes the favored nation, but it also takes in the isles
   afar off--yes, all of us, my Brothers and Sisters! "Unto Him shall the
   gathering of the peoples be." What joy this announcement should give
   us! Do you realize that around Jesus Christ, around His Cross, which is
   the great uplifted standard, the people shall gather? Just open your
   eyes and look! If you can see and your eyes have been touched with eye
   salve, you may perceive the power of attraction by which this
   magnificent issue is already in progress!

   Over yonder in America a poor sinner is seeking eternal life! If he is
   seeking aright, he is being gathered to Christ. Or, look at home in
   your own country. Perhaps, tonight, in many thousands of places that
   are open for Divine worship, the like magnetic influence is at work! I
   only wish I could hope that there was someone in every assembly that
   was looking for eternal life! If it is so, they are all looking to
   Jesus Christ! Cast your eyes, now, to India, or France, or Prussia, or
   over to Australia--in whatever direction you will--every soul that is
   in earnest in seeking life is seeking it through Jesus Christ! I see
   them coming! He is the Center and they are all drawing near to Him.
   Every soul that is saved is drawn to Jesus--none are saved without Him.

   The people gather to Him as their only hope, and all else has failed.
   They do not fly to Him until they have tried every other hope. Nobody
   ever comes to Christ until He cannot go anywhere else. The sinner comes
   to Him by stress of weather--driven in, sometimes, as ships are into
   harbors of refuge--because they cannot keep pace with it outside the
   bar. It is when the sinner is in difficulties that he is driven to
   Jesus Christ--and every soul that is really looking for eternal life in
   the right place is looking to Jesus and gathering to Jesus! And I see
   little silver threads going out from Christ, the Center, from all over
   the world, drawing men to Himself. I hope there is one of these threads
   drawing you! Oh, yield to the gentle pressure! Follow it--for it is
   your only hope!

   Look again and you will see that all over the world those that are
   saved are gathering to Jesus, rallying round Him and accepting Him as
   their Leader, Instructor and King! The Jews said, "We have no king but
   Caesar." The Christians say, "We have no king but Jesus." I mean no
   spiritual Lord--no Teacher, no Leader except Jesus Christ, Himself.
   "Unto Him shall the gathering of the people be." His people out of all
   nations shall come and take His easy yoke and wear it-- and find rest
   unto their souls! And now, at this moment, my eyes can see myriads all
   over the world who are coming nearer and nearer to Jesus, with instant
   eager cry, saying, "Draw us, Lord, draw us nearer to Yourself! Make us
   more like Yourself! Help us to live more to Your Glory."

   Is there one of those golden threads drawing you? Then run, if you are
   drawn, and seek to love your Lord and serve Him better than ever you
   have done, for "unto Him shall the gathering of the people be." Be
   assured of this--Christ is the only Center of true unity to His people.
   There is a society, I believe, for the promotion of the unity of
   Christendom. I am afraid it does not do much good, or cement much
   fellowship. The unity of Christendom! That will all depend upon what is
   the keystone of the arch you are going to build. If you expect there
   will be a unity of the Greek Church, the Latin Church and the Anglican
   Church, I can only say that were all three united, the union of
   Christians would be as far off as ever!

   In the midst of that professed Christendom, but distinct from it, there
   is an inner Christendom, a secret, sacred brotherhood of real
   Christians that knows little about these great secular churches. The
   true Christendom consists of all that worship God in spirit, not having
   confidence in the flesh. The true Church consists of all that believe
   in the Lord Jesus Christ and are quickened by the Holy Spirit! The only
   unity that society could ever get would be a confederation
   ecclesiastical, to be dominated over by some lordly priest or other.
   That would certainly be no desirable thing! Christ is the Center of the
   Church and true unity will be found only in Him. "Unto Him shall the
   gathering of the people be."

   Were I to give you a book to read about Jesus Christ, full of love to
   Him, and when you had read it, if I were to ask you who wrote it, I
   imagine you would not guess rightly what denomination the man belonged
   to. Perhaps you will say, "Well, there is a hint in it of Roman
   Catholicism now and then. But really, it is so good a book I cannot
   think a Roman Catholic could have written it." "Or," you will say, "it
   has a little of the Plymouth Brother here and there, and that is not a
   sweet flavor. But still, I hardly think they could have written it."
   By-and-by you will say, "I do not know at all. I am at a loss." Often,
   after reading books which have a savor of Christ in them, I have felt a
   love to the author, though I may have found out, perhaps, that he was
   an ecclesiastical opponent of mine.

   I do not care! I love him if he loves my Master! Be he who he may or
   from where he comes--if he loves Jesus Christ, I love him! When we are
   down on our knees praying for the kingdom of Christ, or standing up to
   sing Messiah's praise, it is wonderful how like we are to each other!
   Mr. Wesley did not like Toplady, and Mr. Toplady did not like
   Wesley--he called him, "an old fox," and said that he would pluck him,
   and have him "tarred and feathered." But take up any hymn book you like
   and you will find, side by side, Charles Wesley's, "Jesus, Lover of My
   Soul," and Top lady's, "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me"! And which is the
   better hymn of the two? I am sure I do not know, they are so much
   alike! So were these men, after all, two blessed souls, for all their
   mistakes and all their misunderstandings of one another.

   When you get to the Cross you get together. "Unto Him shall the
   gathering of the people be." When you come to talk of Him and what He
   did--His life and death, His atoning Sacrifice, His glorious conquest
   of all our foes--then are you agreed! Oh, Brethren, we must, therefore,
   strive vigorously, and try incessantly to lift Christ up! We want to
   see, during this year, a great gathering of souls. We shall see it if
   we lift Christ up! Here is a lot of steel filings among a heap of
   ashes. How can I separate them? There are a great many ways of trying
   to do it. Bring a magnet in--put a magnet into the heap--see how it
   draws the steel filings away.

   In this congregation there is a great number of individuals, and who
   among them are God's elect I do not, nor can I know. But let me preach
   Jesus Christ--and Jesus Christ will draw His own! "My sheep hear My
   voice; I know them and they follow Me; and I give unto them eternal
   life." Preach Christ! That is the magnet! He will draw His own to
   Himself. And, dear Friends, if we want to see more conversions this
   year than all past years there must be more preaching, more constant
   preaching of Christ! Christ must be in every sermon and He must be top
   and bottom, too, of all the theology that is preached--"Jesus Christ
   and Him crucified"--and nothing else! I am bound to preach Jesus Christ
   and Him crucified, for I do not know anything else to preach!

   My simplicity is my safeguard. I have often felt to be of Paul's
   mind--"I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him
   crucified." Some are wise to interpret prophecies. I am not. It is
   enough for me to know about the Cross! Some are able to split a
   hair--they can divide a hair between the north and the north-west side.
   I am no logician. If, knowing the terrors of the Lord, I can persuade
   men to fly to Christ and escape from the wrath to come, I shall fulfill
   my mission to my heart's delight!

   Consider this, all of you Brothers in Christ called to preach the
   Gospel! Let each of us go back to the first principles of the Gospel
   and bring out, again and again, the old, old story of sinners lost and
   a Savior come to redeem--of guilt sinking man to Hell like a
   millstone--and the Savior taking all that guilt away! If you preach the
   blood, the precious blood of Jesus, you set forth the great soul-saving
   Gospel and you do honor to Him unto whom "shall the gathering of the
   people be." And, Brothers, by the climax of destiny that is opened up,
   let the conduct of our daily life be disciplined. Let us aim to gather
   more and more to Jesus ourselves. We cannot get too near to Him. Be it
   ours to strive to get closer than ever we have been! Even if a cross
   should be necessary to raise us, let us not be afraid of the cross, so
   long as it brings us nearer to Jesus!

   You are happiest, healthiest, and holiest when you are nearest to
   Christ. To Him shall the continual "gathering of the people be." And
   oh, let us pray, also, that this gathering may go on both among saints
   and sinners--that saints may gather nearer to Jesus--and that sinners
   may gather savingly to Him. The text says, "To Him shall the gathering
   of the people be." It is a faithful saying and we believe it. Not death
   nor Hell can keep back the Lord's elect from coming to Christ. Come
   they must and shall, for the Divine decree shall be accomplished, and
   each one for whom Jesus specially shed His blood shall be saved
   infallibly, saved beyond all risk--but it is ours to pray for it. Oh,
   Lord Jesus, it is said, "Unto You shall the gathering of the people
   be." Make it so! The gathering shall be worked by Yourself!

   "He shall gather the lambs in His arms." It is His to gather the
   strayed sheep. He gathers together the outcasts. Surely He is the great
   Gatherer! Well may they be gathered to Him when He, Himself, gathers
   them! Ask Him to gather your children. Ask Him to gather your dear
   beloved ones under your roof, your servants, your neighbors. Ask Him to
   gather them. Ask Him to gather this great city! Oh, what a city it has
   grown to be! Would God that Jesus had it! It would be a glorious
   diamond in the state jewels of Christ if He could call London His own!
   The biggest of cities--would God it were the holiest! Oh, that it were
   wholly Christ's from one end to the other!

   They used to say, in Cromwell's day, that if you walked down Cheapside
   at a certain hour, you would have heard the voices of family prayer and
   praise at every house on the whole street, both morning and evening. I
   know it is not so in any street in London now. We have gone back since
   the grand old Puritan times. But we will repair to the Throne, again,
   by God's good Grace, and yet shall there be salt in this city, for the
   city shall be seasoned through and through with the power of the Gospel
   of Jesus! Only to your knees! To your knees! To your knees if you would
   have it so. You would get this fulfilled among your fellow citizens if
   you would get it first vouchsafed to you as a blessing of your God.
   Tell Him He has said, "Unto Him shall the gathering of the people be."
   Hold Him to His word! Plead with Him that He cannot break it and we
   shall live to see the day, yet. "To Him shall the gathering of the
   people be."

   Oh, my dear Hearers! as I draw these reflections to a close, one
   thought passes over my mind to which I must give expression. You will,
   all of you, either be gathered to Christ to be saved, or else you will
   have to be gathered, by-and-by, for another purpose. There shall ring
   out upon the midnight air a trumpet call that shall be loud enough to
   be heard east and west--south and north! It shall startle all the
   sleepers, and more than that, it shall arouse the dead! At its sound
   the sepulcher shall vomit forth its prey and they that are rocked in
   slumber beneath the waves of the ocean shall hear that trumpet call and
   rise--the whole mass of Adam's family--the myriads of all our race! Oh,
   what an assembly that will be!

   The motley throng within these walls is but as a grain of sand compared
   with the seashore, to the multitudes that will then be congregated!
   Gather! Gather! You that have been dead these 6,000 years. Gather!
   Gather! You that were drowned in Noah's flood--gather! Gather! All you
   hosts of Egypt and you myriads of Chaldea, and of Babylon, of Persia
   and of Greece. Gather! You legions of Rome! You myriads of the Middle
   Ages! You countless millions of China and of swarthy India! And you of
   the world across the sea! Gather! Gather! Men of every skin and every
   tongue!

   All must gather--and there in the midst of you all shall be the cloud
   sailing through the air--and on it the Great White Throne of Him whose
   spotless justice is mirrored in it! There you will stand--and if you
   have not looked at Christ on the Cross--you will have to look at the
   Christ upon the Throne! And if you have never trusted Him--you will
   then have to tremble at Him. Listen how the trumpet sounds! How that
   clarion rings out again and again and again! And lo, all are there!

   And now He comes, whose pomp is beyond conception, and the books are
   opened. As they are opened, page after page, He reads the story of each
   man's life. And now He has come to yours. And He reads the page that
   chronicles this fleeting hour. On such a night, gathered with this
   great congregation, you were bid to believe in Jesus and bow down
   before the great Peace Giver. You refused and sealed your doom forever!

   Shall it be so? Oh! shall it be so? God grant it may not be so! May
   there be another book opened, which is the Book of Life, and in that
   book may your name stand recorded as one who humbly trusted in the
   finished work of Jesus and therefore were accepted in the Beloved and
   found mercy on that day! The Lord grant it to every one of you. I may
   not ever again speak to some of you as long as I live. This, then, I
   say to you while your ears are open and attentive to my voice--Lay hold
   on eternal life! Put your trust in Jesus!

   And if, Beloved, any of you to whom I am so familiar, to whom I speak
   so often--if you should depart from the world while I am absent, or if
   I should never return but find a grave in some distant land--I charge
   you, meet me on the other side of Jordan! I charge you, meet me at my
   Master's right hand! I charge you, cling to the atoning Sacrifice by
   faith and we will meet together where He sits and reigns--our best
   Beloved--the Judah, the Jesus, whom all His Brethren shall praise--the
   Shiloh, the Prince of Peace--for whose glorious Second Advent all His
   saints look, and to whom they shall be gathered in fullness of joy
   forever and forever. Amen and Amen!
     __________________________________________________________________

The Sieve

   (No. 1158)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Not everyone that says unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the
   kingdom of Heaven; but he that does the will of My Father which is in
   Heaven." Matthew 7:21.

   IN reading this chapter one is led to feel that it is not, after all,
   an easy thing to be a sincere Christian. The way is hard, the road is
   narrow. Who will, may represent the way to Heaven as being easy, but
   our Savior does not speak so of it. "Strait is the gate and narrow is
   the way, and few there are that find it." "Many are called and few
   chosen." The difficulty of being right is increased by the fact that
   there are men in the world whose trade it is to make counterfeits.
   There were, and there are, many false prophets. Our Savior has spoken
   about them in this chapter and given us a way of testing them--but they
   are still carrying on their trade as successfully as ever.

   Now, since there are traitors abroad whose business it is to deceive,
   we ought to be doubly vigilant and constantly upon our watchtower lest
   we be misled by them. I charge you, examine every statement you hear
   from Christian pulpits and platforms! I charge you, sift and try every
   religious book by the great standard of the Word of God. Believe none
   of us if we speak contrary to this Word--yes, believe not an angel from
   Heaven if he preaches any other Gospel than that which is contained in
   Inspired Scripture.

   "To the Law and to the Testimony," if they speak not according to this
   Word it is because there is no truth in them. God grant us Grace to
   escape from false prophets! We shall not do so if we are careless and
   off our guard, for the sheepskin garment so effectually covers the
   wolf--the broad phylactery so decorates the hypocrite--that thousands
   are deceived by the outward appearance and do not discover the cheat!
   Crafty are the wiles of the enemy and many foolish ones are still
   ignorant of his devices. Tutored by the experience of ages, seducers
   and evil men not only wax worse and worse, but they grow more and more
   cunning. If it were possible, they would deceive even the very elect!
   Happy shall they be who, being elect, are kept by the mighty power of
   God unto salvation so that they are not carried away with any error.

   In addition to the fact that there are false teachers, it is certain
   that there are false professors. There never was a time in the Church
   of God in which all were Christians who professed to be so. Surely the
   golden age of the Church must have been when the Master Himself was in
   it and had selected 12 choice spirits to be nearest to His Person and
   to act, as it were, as the prime ministers of His kingdom. Yet there
   was a devil among the 12--a devil in the Church of which Jesus was
   Pastor! Judas, the treasurer of the Apostles, was also a son of
   Perdition. When Paul and the Apostles kept watch over the elect Church,
   surely that must have been a happy time--and when persecution raged all
   around and acted like a great winnowing fan to drive away the
   chaff--one would have expected to find that the threshing floor
   contained only clean grain!

   But it was not so. The heap upon the threshing floor of the Church was,
   even then, a mingled mass of corn and chaff. Some turned aside from
   love of the world and others were deluded into grievous error. And
   there were others who remained in the Church to discredit it by their
   impurity and to bring chastisements upon it by their sin. We shall
   never see a perfect Church till we see the Lord face to face in Heaven.
   Above yon clouds is the place for perfection! But here, alas, nothing
   is undefiled. Even in the purest Churches we find deceivers and
   deceived. Among you over whom it is my calling to preside, I know that
   there are false professors--lovers of the world rather than lovers of
   God--and though I cannot remove you any more than the servants of the
   householder could uproot the tares from the wheat, yet I sigh over you
   and you are my daily cross and burden. Oh, that God would convert you
   and make you true to your professions, or else remove you from the
   Church which you so greatly grieve and weaken!

   But now, if in the Church of God there are those who are deceivers and
   deceived, the question comes to each one of us, "May we not, also, be
   mistaken? Is it not possible that we, though making a profession of
   religion, may, after all, be insincere or deluded in that profession
   and fail to be what we think we are?" Therefore let us put ourselves,
   at this time,

   into the attitude of self-examination--and whatever is spoken, let it
   come home to us personally. May we try ourselves whether we are right
   or not, not flinching from any pointed Truth of God but anxiously
   desiring to be tried and tested before the Lord Himself.

   I would bring the text before you by noticing, first, that it contains
   a very commendable expression, "Lord, Lord." But, secondly, it was used
   by gross hypocrites. And then, thirdly, we shall show wherein these
   hypocrites failed--what it was that they lacked which rendered it
   impossible that they should enter into the kingdom.

   I. First, then, the text contains A VERY COMMENDABLE SPEECH. We may be
   sure the speech was a good one, or the hypocrites would not have used
   it as a cloak for their hypocrisy. Men do not use dubious expressions
   when they want to appear exceedingly devout. They take care, however
   bad their deeds may be, to make their words, at any rate, sound well.
   Therefore the persons spoken of in the text said to Jesus, "Lord,
   Lord." It is a fitting mode of speech for each one of us to use.

   And first, dear Friends, we ought to say to Jesus, "Lord, Lord," in
   reference to His Divinity. How can we be saved if we do not? Jesus
   Christ of Nazareth is to us Lord and God! We do not hesitate to use the
   language of Thomas when he put his finger into the print of the nails
   and said to Him, "My Lord and my God." Let others say of Him what they
   will. Let them make Him to be a mere man, or a Prophet, or a delegated
   God--such talk is nothing to the point with us! We believe Him to be
   very God of very God and we worship Him this day as He is enthroned in
   the highest heavens, believing Him to be worthy of the adoration which
   is due to God, alone!

   I do not wonder that those who believe our Lord Jesus Christ to be a
   mere man say severe things of us. Nor must they wonder if we deliver
   very strong utterances with regard to them! If we are wrong, we are
   idolaters, for we worship a person who is only a man. If we are right,
   much of their teaching is blasphemous, for they deny the Deity of the
   Christ of God! There is a great gulf between us and it is only common
   honesty to admit it. To conceal the fact in order to be thought liberal
   would be a mean artifice--unworthy of an honest man. The question in
   debate is a vital one and there can be no halting place between one
   view or the other.

   Compromise must always be impossible where the Truth of God is
   essential and fundamental. There are some points in which we may agree
   to differ, but these are points in which there can be no mutual
   concessions or toning down of statement. Christ Jesus is either God or
   He is not! And if He is God, as we believe He is, then those who reject
   His Deity cannot be true believers in Him. And therefore they must miss
   the benefits which He promises to those who receive Him. I cannot
   conceive any man to be right in religion if he is not right in
   reference to the Person of the Redeemer. "You cannot be right in the
   rest unless you think rightly of Him." If you will not have Him to be
   your God, neither will He save you. Let His abundant miracles, His
   Divine teaching, His unique Character and His Resurrection convince you
   that "the Word was God," and is in all respects equally Divine with the
   Father and the Spirit.

   The expression before us is commendable under another aspect--one in
   which, very likely, it was used by these hypocrites. We use it towards
   Christ to denote that we acknowledge Him to be our Master--He is,
   "Lord, Lord," to us. In the true Church of Christ there are no lords
   but this one Lord. "One is your Master, even Christ, and all you are
   brethren." "Lord Bishop" is an expression suitable for Babylon or
   Rome--but not for the new Jerusalem. I challenge the whole world to
   find any Apostolic title of the kind, or anything approaching to it in
   the days of the Apostles! It is as contrary to Christianity as Hell is
   contrary to Heaven!

   As servants of one common Master, we stand upon equality. Did He not
   say, "The rulers of the Gentiles exercise lordship over then, but it
   shall not be so among you"? Christ is Lord to us and no one else in the
   Church of God. And the Church takes care, when she is in a right state,
   that there shall never be any legislator for her except Christ. He is
   her lawmaker--not Parliaments or kings. Jesus walks in the midst of the
   Churches, among His golden candlesticks, to observe and prescribe her
   order. He tolerates no other lawgiver or ruler in spiritual things. We
   know no Rabbi but Christ! Doctrine comes from His lips and from His
   Word, but from no councils and no teachers or divines.

   As to the rules of the Church, if they are not the rules of Jesus,
   given by the authority of His Spirit, they are not rules for us. As for
   human traditions, prescriptions and ordinances in reference to
   religion, tear them to pieces and toss them to the winds! Christ is
   Lord and every Christian's heart echoes to the words when I say, in the
   name of His people, "Jesus, son of Mary, Son of God, You are to us
   Lord, Lord. Your mother's sons bow down before You and do You homage.
   The sun and moon and 11 stars of Israel's household bow before You--You
   who were separate from your brethren for your

   brethren's sake." Onto Jesus, who was once nailed to the tree, be honor
   throughout all ages. He is Lord, Lord, in that sense.

   And, beloved, as he is thus beyond all controversy Lord divinely and
   Lord as legislator, it is right that this should be spoken. It was a
   brave thing for the Covenanters of Scotland to be ready to die for the
   headship of Christ in His Church, and I trust there are thousands still
   alive who would as gladly relinquish life, itself, to preserve the
   crown right of our exalted Lord. It would be well worth any man's while
   to lay down his life to defend the Deity of Christ, which doctrine
   cannot be taken away without removing the very foundations of the
   faith! And if the foundations are moved, what can the righteous do?
   Bear your testimony, then, you followers of the Lamb, and be not afraid
   to acknowledge His name! Though hypocrites have said it, you need not
   blush to say it--for it is most true that Jesus is both Lord and God.
   Say "Lord, Lord" with unfaltering tongue!

   Say it daily by your actions. Have respect unto your Master and let
   others see that you respect Him. Do this good action because Christ
   bids you. Refuse to do that evil thing because Christ forbids you. Move
   in that line because He leads the way. Refuse that other line because
   you do not see His footprints there. Let all men see that you
   practically say, "Lord, Lord," whenever you think of Jesus. This is the
   very spirit of Christianity--to do what Christ bids us--and to honor
   Him in heart and lip and life forevermore! I wish that some Christians
   were a little more outspoken in their acknowledgment of their great
   Lord and Master--and I commend these hypocrites, if I can commend them
   at all--that they wisely choose a fit and godly speech, though, alas,
   they dishonored the good speech by using it so foully when they said,
   "Lord, Lord."

   II. And now, secondly, THERE WERE HYPOCRITES WHO USED THIS EXCELLENT
   MODE OF SPEECH. What sort of people were they who said, "Lord, Lord,"
   and yet the Master says of them, that not everyone of them shall enter
   into the kingdom of Heaven? Well, I think He refers to a considerable
   number of people, and I will search for them. I wonder whether I shall
   find any in this congregation? Help me, my Brothers and Sisters, by
   your own self-examination to discover these people. There can be no
   doubt our Lord referred, in the first place, to a certain class of
   superficial externalists, who said, "Lord, Lord," and there their
   religion ended.

   Such persons still exist all around--they are superficial in nature and
   in general character. They say good things, but they never feel what
   they say. Their pious expressions come from as low as the throat, but
   never from the abysses of the heart. They are of the stony ground order
   and have no depth of earth. The hard, barren rock is barely concealed
   by a sprinkling of soil. They may accurately be styled externalists,
   for they have the notion that when they have attended to the outside of
   godliness, the whole matter is fully discharged. For instance, if they
   sing with their voices, they conclude that they have praised God--and
   that when the hymn is uttered to melodious notes--worship has been
   presented to God, even though the heart has never praised Him at all.

   When they bow the head and close their eyes in public prayer, they
   consider they are doing something very right and proper--though they
   are very likely thinking of their farm, their garden, their children,
   or their home--casting up their accounts and wondering how they will
   find trade and the money-market on Monday when they get to their shops.
   The externalists are satisfied with the shell of religion whether life
   remains or not. They have a form of godliness, but they are strangers
   to its power. If they read a chapter every day, they feel very
   self-complacent and think they are searchers of the Word, though they
   have never entered into the inner sense, but merely allowed the eye to
   run over the verses and lines.

   If they never get an answer to prayer, they feel quite satisfied
   because they have duly said their prayers. Like boys who give runaway
   knocks, they have no expectation of an answer. They merely give God the
   husks and they think He never looks to see if there is a kernel there.
   They give Him the outward sign and imagine that He is satisfied, though
   the thing meant is absent. Oh, how large a proportion of our fellow
   creatures seem to be content when they have rendered an outward
   obedience to religious requirements! They are content to have made
   clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but the washing of the
   inside--the new heart, the Truth in the inward parts, the giving of the
   heart's love to Jesus--does not seem to be worthy of their attention.
   And if we talk of it, they are weary of it, and think we are
   Puritanical and imagine that we mean to judge them after a too lofty
   standard.

   We are too severe with them, they say, but oh, Beloved, it is not so!
   Does not every thoughtful man see that without the heart, religion must
   be vain? What can there be in mere external forms? Put it to
   yourselves--what can there be?

   What do you, yourselves, think of your children if you see them doing
   what you bid them, but doing so because they must--not from an obedient
   spirit, or because they love you? What would you think of them if they
   had no trust in you, no confidence in their father's love and in their
   mother's care, but just went about the house mechanically doing what
   you bade them and no more? You would feel you needed your children's
   love--you must have their hearts.

   And God, our Father, thinks the same of us! If we do not love Him,
   whatever we may do cannot be acceptable with Him. Perhaps you have
   attended regularly at Church or Meeting House almost since you were
   born. And it is possible that you have gone through all the rites and
   ceremonies of the community to which you belong. I am not about to
   condemn you for doing so if you are a Churchman, or if you are a
   Methodist, or if you are a Presbyterian, any more than I will if you
   are a Baptist--only I will put the whole together and say--"God abhors
   the sacrifice where the heart is not found, and if you have brought Him
   nothing but these externals, the verdict of truth concerning your
   religion is just this--'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'"

   If you say "Lord, Lord," you must yield a hearty obedience to Jesus and
   make your inner nature to be the temple of His Holy Spirit, or else
   your hypocrisy will condemn you at the Last Great Day as one who dared
   to insult the God of Truth with a false profession! Another class of
   persons who say, "Lord, Lord," and yet are not saved, are those who
   regard religion as a very excellent thing for quieting their
   conscience, but who do not look upon it as a practical influence which
   is to affect their lives and to influence their conduct. I have known
   persons who certainly would not be easy if they had not gone through
   their morning and evening prayers--and yet they were bad husbands and
   quarrelsome neighbors. They could falsify an account and put down an
   article twice to a customer without a very great disturbance of their
   self-satisfaction--and they would not like to have been away from the
   house of God on the Sabbath--or to have heard an unsound discourse.

   Either of these things would have touched their conscience, though it
   was callous on the point of unfair dealing! They could lie, could lie
   handsomely, but they would not swear, or sing a song. They draw the
   line somewhere and compounded for a thousand sins of dishonesty by
   avoiding certain other vices--thus being left to cheat themselves as a
   righteous punishment for cheating others. Oh, the deceits and cheats
   which men play upon themselves! They are their own most easy dupes. A
   mere matter of religious form will outweigh the most important matters
   of virtue when the judgment is perverted by folly. We have heard of the
   Catholic in Spain who had a very serious sin to confess to his priest.
   He had been a brigand and had murdered hundreds, but the sin that lay
   upon his conscience was not murder.

   He had perpetrated a thousand robberies but the sin that troubled him
   was not theft. Once upon a time, upon a Friday, a drop of blood spurted
   from a man he had killed and it had fallen on his lips, so that he had
   tasted flesh on a Fri-day--that had troubled him! His conscience,
   which, like Achilles, was invulnerable everywhere else, could yet be
   rounded at the heel. Though we might smile, the same eccentric fact
   might be declared concerning many beside the brigand. Their eyes see
   motes and overlooks beams. Their judgment strains out gnats and
   flies--and yet it swallows camels and elephants. They leap one hour and
   limp another. They are very nice on points of ritual and equally lax as
   to common honesty.

   The thing really worth having--love to God and love to man--they fling
   behind their backs and fancy they shall be saved because they have
   complimented God by a hypocritical presence of worship and have
   deceived men by sanctimonious pretensions. As though if I cheated a man
   every day I could make up for it by taking my hat off in the streets to
   him! They bow to the Almighty and rebel against Him. Do they fancy He
   is to be fooled by them? Do they dream that He is gratified by their
   sound words and empty declarations? Whatever they may imagine, it is
   not so! Many say, "Lord, Lord," to quiet their conscience, but they can
   never enter the kingdom of Heaven!

   Now, of this class of hypocrites there are many. There is one I have
   met with--an old acquaintance of mine--he may be here now. He is a
   gentleman who is exceedingly orthodox. I would have you know that he
   assesses the imperial and infallible standard of orthodoxy. I believe
   there is a legal pound and a legal yard, kept somewhere in London, to
   which all measures must conform. This gentleman has got the legal
   standard of theology in his own possession. He knows exactly what a
   preacher ought to say upon a text. And it is one of his great delights
   to sit down and listen to a sermon and say, "A part of that was right,
   but it was not all so. It was yes and no. The preacher gave a pail of
   good milk and then tipped it over at the close. He was not bound on
   such a point, and such a point."

   This gentleman can divide a hair between the west and north-west side
   with extreme accuracy--and he can never be wrong under any
   circumstances. He has infallibility. The truth was born when he was
   born and will expire when he expires. He is a paragon of accuracy as to
   his beliefs--but unfortunately he is not quite so accurate in the daily
   conduct of his business. He may be sound in his creed, but he is
   cracked in his manners. His wife never told me so, but I think if she
   did speak out her mind, she would complain that she has the most
   crabbed, ill-tempered husband that ever a woman was plagued with! His
   children don't go to the place of worship where their father goes
   because he does not know whether they are elect. He does not trouble
   himself whether they are so or not, for if they are to be saved they
   will be saved in God's own time and it does not matter whether they go
   to a place of worship or not.

   Neither would they like to accompany their father, for they have come
   to the very natural conclusion that whatever religion their father
   believes in, they would like to believe the very opposite--for they
   would like to follow a religion which would make them different from
   what he is! He is known in the place where he lives as being a man who
   will walk 10 miles to hear some favorite preacher, but would not stir a
   finger to reclaim the sinner or instruct the ignorant. And he is known
   for another thing, that, with the exception of his divinity, you cannot
   believe a word he says! Oh, may God deliver us from these men! There
   are such to be found in most of our villages. They set themselves up
   for judges in God's heritage and yet they know not what it is to have
   their nature renewed--in fact, if you were to preach a sermon to them
   upon, "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord," they would try to
   pump the meaning out of it and put another sense upon it, instead!

   They would say that practical godliness is legality and that the
   children of God are not to be talked to in that fashion. They imagine
   that they may live as they like and yet be the dear people of God.
   Beloved, may God save us from this spirit of Antinomianism! For of all
   the devils that have ever come up from Hell, I believe this is one of
   the most brazenfaced and deceitful, and has done more damage among
   professors than almost any other. They say, "Lord, Lord," but they
   shall not enter into the kingdom! We have also met with others who say,
   "Lord, Lord," but not in sincerity. They are very busy
   professors--always ready to do anything--and they are not happy unless
   they have something to do. I blame them not for being busy--I would to
   God that the sincere people were half as busy!

   But I detect in them this vice--they are fondest of doing that which
   will be most seen. They prefer to serve God in those places where the
   most honor will be gained. To speak in public is infinitely preferable
   to them to the visitation of a poor sick woman. To work or to give
   where the deed will be blazoned abroad is after their minds. To take
   the chair at a public meeting and receive a vote of thanks is
   delightful to them. But to go into a back street and look after the
   poor, or plod on in the Sunday school in some inferior class is not
   according to their taste. It may seem harsh, but it is nevertheless
   true that many are serving themselves under the pretence of serving
   Christ! They labor to advance the cause in order that they may be,
   themselves, advanced--and they push themselves forward in the Church
   this way and that way for the glory of place and position--that
   everybody may say, "What a good man that is, and how much influence he
   has, and how well he serves his Master!"

   Beloved, if you and I do anything nominally for God, and at the bottom
   we are doing it for the sake of praise, it is not for God. We are doing
   it for ourselves! I do not say there is anybody here of that sort, but
   I would like your conscience to ask you, as my conscience is asking me,
   "Do I really serve the Lord, or do I work in the Church in order that I
   may be considered to be an industrious, praiseworthy minister, seeking
   the good of my fellow men?" I charge you before God, shun the desire of
   human praise and never let it pollute your motives! May the Holy Spirit
   purify you from so base a motive! The praise of God--to have it said by
   Him, "Well done, good and faithful servant"--that you should seek. But
   honor from men avoid as you would a viper! Shake it off into the fire
   if ever you find the desire of it clinging to your soul, else it may be
   your unhappy lot to find at last, that saying, "Lord, Lord," will not
   secure you an entrance into the kingdom.

   In all Churches, I fear, there are some of another class of hypocrites,
   who say "Lord, Lord," for the sake of what they can get by it. John
   Bunyan speaks of Mr. Byends who had many motives for going on
   pilgrimage besides going to the Celestial City. He came from the town
   of Fairspeech and there he had a large circle of interesting relatives.
   Mr. Smooth Tongue, Mr. Doublemind, and Mr. Facing-Bothways who made all
   his money as a waterman, by looking one way and pulling the other. Many
   of his race still survive in all circles--gentlemen who hold with the
   hare and run with the

   hounds--especially run with the hounds if the hare is likely to be
   caught. They believe that if gain is not godliness, godliness may be
   made helpful to gain.

   These gentlemen flourish in all quarters of town and country. One of
   them set up in a village and the first question he asked before he
   opened his shop was, "Which is the most respectable congregation in the
   neighborhood?" His object being to go there that he might not only get
   good, but dispose of his goods as well! We meet with persons in another
   rank in life whose object in attending a place is that they may get
   into a respectable circle and have wealthy friends, and have their hand
   upon the door handle of society. Swimming with the stream is their
   delight and they prefer that stream in which there are the most gold
   fish. Others who are poorer have a keen eye to the loaves and fishes
   and those Churches are best where the loaves are not made with barley,
   as they used to be, but with white flour--and are not mere penny
   loaves--but good substantial quarterns.

   They are pleased, also, if the fishes are larger than those we read of
   in the New testament. One of these loathsome hypocrites came to Rowland
   Hill and was soon detected by that shrewd Divine. "Well," he said, "and
   so you profess to have been converted?" "Yes," said the old lady, "I
   was converted under your blessed ministry." "And where have you
   attended since that time?" "Sir, I have always attended your blessed
   ministry." "And I hope you have been comforted and built up?" "Yes, I
   have, very much, under your blessed ministry." "I suppose you know some
   of the rich people who attend with us." "Yes, I have been kindly
   noticed by many who sit under your blessed ministry." Mr. Hill then
   said, "I suppose you have heard that we have some blessed almshouses?"
   "Yes," she said, she had, "and she hoped she might have the blessed
   privilege of dwelling in one of them."

   Alas, alas, the blessed almshouses and the other blessed charities,
   which, indeed, are blessed if given from pure motives, have often been
   perverted to most accursed ends, and, "Lord, Lord," has been said with
   importunity by some whose sole object for saying it was that they might
   gain pence thereby. In whatever station of life you may be, I beseech
   you, scorn this meanness! Many a member of Parliament is as mean as any
   man in this respect. He pretends to be zealous for religion in order to
   gain a seat in the House. Everywhere there is too much of making
   religion a stalking horse by which lower ends may be reached. If you
   wish to be rich and opulent, go and get a ladder from anywhere except
   from Calvary! Put not the Cross to so mean a use! If you take the
   wounds and blood of Jesus and the Savior's precious name, and only to
   get worldly gain by them, what can come upon you but an angry blast
   from Almighty God? How can He bear such hypocrisy? And yet many will
   say, "Lord, Lord," for this reason and will never enter into the
   kingdom.

   Well, the list is sorrowfully long, but I must mention one or two
   others. One is the Sunday Christian. I dare say he is here now. He is
   an excellent Christian on Sunday. As soon as the sun shines upon the
   earth on the first day of the week, all his religion is awake! But,
   alas, he is a very strange Christian on Monday and a remarkably bad
   Christian on Saturday nights. Many people keep their piety folded up
   and put away with their best clothes--they only give it an airing on
   the Sabbath. Their Bible is to be seen under their arm on Sunday--but
   on Monday, where is that Bible? Well, not at the man's right hand as a
   perpetual companion! Where are the precepts of Scripture? Are they in
   the shop? Are they in the house? Alas, the golden rule has been left in
   Church to lie dusty in the pews until next Sunday!

   Religion is not needed by some people on a weekday--it might be
   inconvenient. Many there are who sing Psalms of praise to God but
   confine their praises to the congregation. As to praising Him in their
   heart at home, it never occurs to them. Their whole religion lies
   inside the Meeting House walls, or comes up at certain times and
   seasons during the day, when the family is called in to prayer. May God
   bare us from intermittent religion! May He grant us Grace to be always
   what we should wish to be if we were about to die! May religion never
   be to us a coat or a cloak to be taken off, but may it be intermingled
   with the warp and woof of our nature so that we do not so much talk
   religion as breathe and live it!

   I desire to eat and drink and sleep eternal life, as an old Divine used
   to say. May that be ours. Good John Newton used to say of his Calvinism
   that he did not preach it in masses of dry doctrine like pieces of lump
   sugar, but that it was stirred up in all his preaching, like sugar
   dissolved in our tea. Oh, that some of those people who keep lumps of
   religion for Sundays would sweeten their lives and tempers with it till
   men could see that their ordinary everyday actions were full of the
   Grace of God and that they were actuated at all times by the love of
   the Most High!

   God save us from being Sunday Christians! I will not continue the list,
   as our time is almost fled. There are many more varieties of vain
   professors, even as of unclean beasts there are many kinds. May we not
   be among them!

   III. WHERE DID THESE PEOPLE FAIL? That is the last point. The Savior
   said that they did not do what He said. "He that does the will of My
   Father which is in Heaven," says He, "shall enter the kingdom." What is
   the will, then, of His Father in Heaven? We are expressly told that
   this is the will of Him that sent Christ--that whoever sees the Son and
   believes on Him should not perish. It is a part, then, of the will of
   God, which we must do if we would be saved, that we believe on Jesus
   Christ.

   Dear Hearer, have you believed in Jesus? It not, your sacraments, your
   Church attendance, your Chapel attendance, your prayers and hymns all
   are for nothing! If you do not trust in Jesus, you have not even the
   foundation stone of salvation! You are lost, and may God have mercy
   upon you! It is a part of God's will, moreover, that where there is
   faith there should be obedience to God, conformity to the Divine
   precepts. In fact, true faith in Jesus always brings this. There never
   was a man that believed in Jesus but what he sought to do the will of
   Jesus! Now it is a part of the will of Jesus that all those who are His
   should love one another. Hypocrites do not love one another--though
   they are always talking about the need of love there is in the Church.

   Listen to them! They are always denouncing other people--and this is no
   mark of love to the Brethren. They have a keen eye for the
   imperfections of others, but they have no love to those they censure.
   We must love the Brethren or we lack the most plain and most necessary
   evidence of salvation, "for we know that we have passed from death unto
   life, because we love the Brethren." The true child of God, also, adds
   to his faith, love, and faith begets in him all the Graces and virtues
   which adorn renewed manhood and bring glory to God. Alas, I have known
   some high professors, not commonly truthful, who would talk about
   communion with Christ and sweet enjoyments of Divine love, and yet they
   seemed to miscalculate the multiplication table and did not know how
   many pounds went to a hundredweight! How dwells the love of God in a
   man who is a thief?

   How can it be that he is a servant of a just and holy God, when he is
   unjust in his dealings toward his fellow men? It will not do, Sir! You
   prate as long as you will, but you are no Christian unless the rule of
   integrity is the rule of your life! Yes, and there are some who are
   unchaste, and yet dare to talk about being Christians. My eyes might at
   this moment glance upon some who make this Tabernacle their place of
   pretended worship and profess to hear the words we speak with pleasure,
   who are a disgrace to Christianity all the time! Let them get home to
   their knees and pray God to give them manliness enough, at least, to be
   damned honestly and not to go down to Perdition wearing the name of
   Christian when Christians they are not! If I served Satan and loved the
   pleasures of sin, I would do so out-and-out like a man! But to sneak
   into the Church of God and to live unchastely--I have no words
   sufficiently strong with which to denounce such detestable meanness!

   Alas, I must add that here are some professed Christians who are not
   sober. If a man is not temperate in meats and drinks, how dare he talk
   about the power of prayer? How dare he come to the Prayer Meeting and
   open his month? Do you suppose that Christ has any communion with
   Bacchus, that He will strike hands across the ale house bar, and call
   him a friend who staggers out of the door of the gin palace to go and
   listen to a sermon? "Is that ever done?" asks one. Done? Yes, let some
   here confess that they have done it this very day! How dare they say,
   "Lord, Lord," and yet drain the drunkards' bowl in secret? O Sirs, I
   don't want to put any of these cases in such a way that you should be
   vexed and angry, and say, "He is too personal." But if you did say so I
   should not apologize! I would tell you that so long as you are personal
   in your offense to Christ, I shall be personal in my rebukes! If you
   are personally insulting the Savior, you must expect the Savior's
   servant to be personal in upbraiding you!

   Once more, I fear there are, in these days, a large number of
   professors who never exercise real private prayer. The Savior says He
   will say to them, "I never knew you." Now He would have known them if
   they had been accustomed to conversing with Him in private prayer. Had
   they communed with Him in earnest supplications, the Lord Jesus could
   not, then, have said, "I never knew you," for they would each one have
   replied, "Not know me, Lord? I have wept before You in secret when no
   other eyes saw me but Yours. I brought You habitually my daily cares
   and cast my burden upon You. Do You not know me? I have spoken to You
   face to face, as a man speaks with his friend! I know You, O my Lord,
   by joyous experience of Your goodness, and therefore I am sure You know
   me. Your answers to my prayers and your gifts of Divine Grace have been
   so constant that I am sure You know me! Who is there on earth You know
   if You do not know

   me?"

   Happy is the man who can speak thus! But alas, many are quite unable to
   make such a reply. I fear there are some professors now before me who
   do not pray. You were baptized and yet you do not pray! You have joined
   the Church and yet you restrain prayer! You dare come to the Communion
   Table, although for a long time you have lived without prayer, for I
   cannot call that prayer which you slobber over in the way you do with
   your morning prayer when you are in a hurry, and your evening prayer,
   when you are almost asleep. God bless you, Beloved, and save you from
   sham praying! May He, by His Grace, make you to have truth in your
   inward parts and cause you to be sincere before the living God.

   Now, I know what will happen. Some dear trembling heart will say, "I
   always thought I was a hypocrite. Now I know I am. I have always been
   fretting and troubling about that." It generally falls out contrary to
   our desire--those who are not hypocrites think they are--while real
   hypocrites throw off our warnings as an ironclad man-of-war casts off
   the shots of an ordinary gun! I try to make caps fit heads which
   deserve to be covered, but the people whose heads they will fit never
   put them on! And others for whom they were never intended at all--dear,
   loving, tender-hearted Believers, always watchful and careful--are the
   very ones who will put them on their own heads and cry, "Yes, I fear I
   am the hypocrite."

   Ah, dear Soul, do not write bitter things against yourself, because if
   you will consider the matter, you will soon see that you are no
   hypocrite. Would you do anything to grieve Christ? Do you not, above
   all things, desire to trust Him? Do you know anybody to trust in but
   Jesus? Are you not depending upon Him? And though you could not say you
   would die for Him, yet I believe, if it came to that, that your
   trembling faith would still stay alive--but some of the boastful ones,
   who, in their own esteem, are almost perfect--would give way and end in
   apostasy. To each one I would say, if you believe in the Lord Jesus
   Christ with all your heart--you are no hypocrite!

   But if any one of you has been a hypocrite and has to plead guilty to
   many things I have mentioned, come to the foot of the Cross and say,
   "Jesus, Master, I am the chief of sinners--have mercy upon me! Look on
   me and let my sins pass away. Look on me and let all cunning and
   hypocrisy be driven far from me. Give me a new heart and a right
   spirit, and from this day make me Your child and I will glorify You,
   both on earth and in Heaven, forever and ever."

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Matthew 7. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--643, 640, 637.

   MESSAGE:

   Beloved Friends--This is the last sermon to be issued in my absence. I
   hope to present you next week with a discourse preached on my return. I
   have been very ill during my absence in foreign lands, but I hope the
   result will be that on recommencing my work I shall be both physically
   and mentally all the more fitted for it. And I pray that to these
   blessings spiritual energy may be added by the abiding power of the
   Holy Spirit. It is a period of revival--may the Lord revive His work in
   each of us! I entreat the prayers of my readers and of my beloved
   flock. Grace, mercy, and peace be with you all. Amen.

   Mentone, Feb. 12,1874 C. H. SPURGEON.
     __________________________________________________________________

Counting the Cost

   (No. 1159)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 22, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For which of you, intending to build a tower, sits not down first, and
   counts the cost, whether he has sufficient to finish it? Lest haply,
   after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all
   that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and
   was not able to finish." Luke 14:28-30.

   THIS passage is peculiar to Luke. He tells us that at the time when our
   Lord uttered it, great multitudes followed Him. It is observable that
   when our Lord was forsaken by the crowd, He was not depressed, and when
   His ministry became popular He was not elated. He was calm and wise in
   the midst of the excitement of the thronging multitudes. This passage
   is sufficient evidence of that fact. On this occasion our Lord spoke
   with a view to the winnowing of the great heap of nominal discipleship
   which lay before Him, that the chaff might be driven away and only the
   precious corn might remain.

   The discourse before us reminds us of Gideon's process of diminishing
   that vast but motley host of which the Lord said, "The people are too
   many for Me." After having bid the faint-hearted go, He next brought
   down the remaining thousands to the river and bade them drink. And then
   He only kept for Himself those who lapped in a certain peculiar manner,
   which indicated their zeal, their speed, their energy and their
   experience. Our Lord tested His followers that He might have only those
   remaining who would be fit for the conquest of the world. To carry His
   precious treasure He would select vessels whom Divine Grace had made
   fit for His use--the rest He could dispense with.

   Our Lord Jesus was far too wise to pride Himself upon the number of His
   converts. He cared, rather, for quality than quantity. He rejoiced over
   one sinner that repented, but 10,000 sinners who merely professed to
   have repented would have given Him no joy whatever. His heart longed
   after the real. He loathed the counterfeit. He panted after the
   sub-stance--the shadow could not content Him. His fan was in His hand
   with which to thoroughly purge His floor and His axe was laid to the
   root of the trees to hew down the fruitless. He was anxious to leave a
   living Church like good seed-corn in the land--as free as possible from
   all admixture.

   Therefore in this particular instance one might even think that He was
   repelling men rather than attracting them to His leadership. But,
   indeed, He was doing nothing of the kind! He understood right well that
   men, to be truly won, must be won by truth--that the truest love is
   always honest, and that the best disciple is not he who joins the class
   of the great Master in a hurry, and then afterwards discovers that the
   learning is not such as he expected--but one who comes sighing after
   just such knowledge as the teacher is prepared to give. Moreover, our
   Lord knew what sometimes we may forget--that there is no heartbreak in
   the world to the godly worker like that which comes of disappointed
   hopes.

   When those who have said, "Lord, I will follow You where ever You go,"
   turn back unto their evil ways. And when the hot breath which shouted,
   "Hosanna!" turns into the cruel, cold-blooded cry, "Crucify Him!
   Crucify Him," nothing is more injurious to a Church than a large
   dilution with half-hearted members--and nothing more dangerous to the
   persons themselves than to allow them to put on an untrue profession.
   Therefore did the Master take most care at the time when that care was
   most needed, that none should follow Him under misapprehension, but
   should be made fully aware of what was meant by being His disciples, so
   that they should not say afterwards, "We have been misled. We have been
   beguiled into a service which disappoints us."

   Unlike the enlisting sergeant, who sets forth all the glories of
   military service in glowing colors in order to gain a recruit, the
   great Captain of our salvation would have His followers take all things
   into consideration before they cast in their lot with Him. This morning
   our text may be equally suitable and its warning may be as necessary
   and as salutary as when first the Master pronounced it, for great
   multitudes are just now following Christ--a revival has come and
   stirred

   the mass of you. Among the would-be disciples (blessed be God!) are
   many whom the Lord Himself has called, for every one of whom we give
   most hearty thanks!

   But with them, necessarily, (for when was it ever different?), there
   are others who are not called of God at all. They are moved by the
   natural impulse of imitating others and stirred by feelings which are,
   none the less, fleeting because just now they are intense. And
   therefore, in Christ's name, it is ours to address you even as He did,
   and warn you in His own words--"If any man comes to Me, and hates not
   his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brother, and
   sisters, yes, and his own life, also, he cannot be My disciple. And
   whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me, cannot be My
   disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, sits not down
   first, and counts the cost, whether he has sufficient to finish it?
   Lest haply, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish
   it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to
   build, and was not able to finish."

   To assist our memories, we will divide our meditation into three parts.
   The first will be headed in this manner--true religion is a costly
   thing. The second shall bear this motto--Wisdom suggests that before we
   enter upon it we should estimate the cost. And the third shall bear
   this inscription--Cost what it may, it is worth what it costs.

   I. First, then, it is clear from our text that TRUE RELIGION IS COSTLY.
   Far be it from us to create any confusion of thought here! The gifts of
   God's Grace cost us nothing, neither could His salvation be purchased
   with money, nor with merit, nor by vows and penances. "If a man should
   give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be
   condemned." The Gospel motto is, "without money and without price." We
   are "justified freely by His Grace, through the redemption which is in
   Christ Jesus."

   Yet, for all that, if a man will be a Christian it will cost him
   something. Consider a moment. Here is a blind man sitting by the
   wayside begging. He asks to have his eyes opened. Will it cost him
   anything? No, the Savior would not accept all the gold in the world for
   the cure! He will freely open his eyes. But when they are opened it
   will cost that blind man something! Obtaining his sight, he will be
   called upon to discharge the duties of one who has eyes. He will not be
   allowed, any longer, to sit there and beg, or, if he tries to do so, he
   will lose the sympathy which is bestowed upon blindness. Now that his
   eyes are opened he must use them, and earn his own bread. It will cost
   him something, for he will now be conscious of the darkness of the
   night which he knew nothing of before!

   And there are sad sights which now he must look upon which never
   grieved him before, for often what the eyes do not see, the heart does
   not know. A man cannot gain a faculty except at some expense. He that
   increases knowledge or the means of gaining it, increases both sorrow
   and duty. Take another case. A poor man is suddenly made a prince--it
   will cost him the giving up of his former manners--and will involve him
   in new duties and cares. A man is set on the road to Heaven as a
   pilgrim--does he pay anything to enter by the wicket gate? He does not.
   Free Grace admits him to the sacred way.

   But when that man is put on the road to Heaven it will cost him
   something. It will cost him earnestness to knock at the wicket gate and
   sweat to climb the Hill Difficulty. It will cost him tears to find his
   roll again when he has lost it in the Arbor of Ease. It will cost him
   great care in going down the Valley of Humiliation. It will cost him
   resistance unto blood when he stands foot to foot with Apollyon in
   conflict. It will cost him many fears when he has to traverse the
   Valley of the Shadow of Death. It may cost him his life when he comes
   to Vanity Fair, if, like Faithful, he is called to bear testimony at
   the stake!

   True religion is the gift of God and there is nothing we can do to
   purchase it. But at the same time, if we receive it, certain
   consequences will flow from it--and we ought to consider whether we
   shall be able to put up with them. You may be sure that the cost must
   be great, since our Lord compares it to the building of a tower. The
   word here used for, "tower," has often been employed to signify a
   turreted house, a villa, or country mansion. "Which of you," says He to
   the people, "intending to build for himself a mansion in which to
   reside at your ease, would not first of all count the cost?" The
   building is to be a costly one!

   Doddridge is wrong in the supposition that a temporary tower is here
   intended. That it would cost a considerable sum is clear from the
   Savior's saying that the wise man sits down and counts the cost. He
   does not merely stand up and pass his hand over his brow and say, "This
   tower will cost me so many hundred pounds." Since it is to be an
   elaborate construction, an almost palatial edifice, he sits down, like
   a merchant at his desk, and thoughtfully considers the under-

   taking. He consults the architect and the mason, and calculates what
   will be the expense of the outer walls, of the roof, of the interior
   fittings and the like. And he does not make a rough estimate, but
   counts the cost as men count their gold.

   It is evidently a matter of consequence with him, and so is true
   religion--it is no trifle, but an all-important business. He who thinks
   that a careless, hit-or-miss, headlong venture will suffice for his
   eternal interests is the reverse of wise! True godliness is the
   building up of a character which will endure the Day of Judgment. It
   begins in laying deep the foundations in faith, love and a renewed
   heart. It is carried on by the putting patiently and carefully, and
   often painfully, stone upon stone, the materials of the fair edifice,
   diligently adding, "to your faith courage, and to courage knowledge,
   and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to
   patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to
   brotherly kindness charity."

   Our lifework consists in "building up ourselves in our most holy
   faith." Don't you see that it is a glorious palace to which the
   Christian character is likened? But, lest we should still think the
   expense small, our Lord compares it to a war! He speaks of the number
   of troops engaged in that war, showing that it is no petty skirmish of
   two insignificant tribes. He likens it to a war in which, upon one side
   there is an array of 10,000, and on the other a host of twenty
   thousand. Now, warfare is always expensive work--besides the cost for
   accoutrements and ammunition, there is the cost of human life and
   blood.

   There is the removal of strong arms from work at home and the direr
   risks of defeat, captivity and devastation. The Lord compares religion,
   then, in its externals, to a battle between the gracious man and the
   evils rampant in the outside world. The disciple of Jesus has to defend
   himself against a gigantic foe and he has within himself a power which,
   so far as he is concerned, is not sufficient for the contest. The odds
   are fearful--10,000 against twenty thousand! Well does the Savior say
   in the latter case that it is well to sit down to consult. The king
   with the smaller army consults, asks his sage senators, takes counsel
   from experience, calls in good advisers and debates whether the thing
   can be done or not.

   So should we consider the matter of our souls, for religion is a costly
   thing and not to be entered on, as the Frenchman said, "with a light
   heart." That light heart cost his nation dearly and so it will,
   ourselves, if we indulge it. We might have inferred this, I think, from
   some other considerations--namely from the fact that true religion is a
   lasting thing. It lasts for life. False religion comes and goes. True
   regeneration is never repeated and it is the commencement of a life
   which will loom no end, either in time or in eternity.

   Now anything which is to last must be expensive! You shall get your
   glass colored, if you will, cheaply, but the sun will soon remove all
   its beauty. If you would obtain a glass which shall retain its color
   for centuries, every single step in the process of its manufacture will
   be costly, involving much labor and great care. So is it with true
   religion. You may get it cheap if you will--it will look quite as well
   as the real thing and for a little while it will bring you almost all
   the comfort and respect which the genuine article would have brought
   you--but it will not last. Soon will its color fly and the beauty, the
   excellence which were there but in pretence, will soon have gone. You
   need, dear Friend, (I am sure you do), you need a godliness which will
   last you till you die! Well, then, it must cost you something, you can
   be sure of that.

   Remember, also, that true religion will have to bear a strain, for it
   is certain to be opposed. This tower will not be built without
   opposition! It is like the wall of Jerusalem. Sanballat and Tobias will
   be sure to hinder the building. True religion must be able to endure
   hardness--if it cannot do that it is good for nothing. The old Toledo
   blade cost the warrior much at first hand, but when he has once
   procured it, he knows that it will cut through joint and marrow in the
   day of battle. Therefore he is not afraid to dash into the thick of the
   fray, trusting to its unrivalled temper and keen edge.

   Could he not find a cheaper sword? I think he could have found it
   easily enough, and with small expense of gold. But then, in the moment
   when his sword smote upon his enemy's helmet, instead of cleaving
   through the skull, it would snap in the warrior's hand and cost him his
   life! Such is the cheap religion with which so many take up. There is
   no self-denial in it, no forsaking of the world, no giving up of carnal
   amusements--they are just the same as the world--their religion costs
   them nothing and at last, when they need it, it will fail them--it will
   snap like the ill-made sword in the day of battle and leave them
   defenseless!

   Oh, if you want that which will endure the conflict, you must pay a
   cost for it! Jesus Christ knew that the persons to whom He spoke would
   not be able to bear the tests which awaited His disciples. They did not
   know that He would be crucified, for just then He was popular, and they
   hoped that He was to be the King of Israel. But the Savior knew that
   there would come dark days in which the King of the Jews would be
   hanged upon a tree and His disciples, even His true

   ones, would forsake Him for the moment and would flee. And therefore
   He, in effect, said to them, "You must be prepared for cross-bearing.
   You must be prepared to follow Me amid derision and shame and reproach.
   And if you are not ready for this, your discipleship is a mistake!

   In their case it did not stand the test. These people were nowhere to
   be found when the time of trial came. And remember, dear Friends--and I
   dwell with great emphasis upon this point--we need a religion which
   will abide the inspection of the Great Judge at the Last Day. Now,
   there are things in the world which will endure for a while, but if
   they are closely looked at, and especially if they are placed under a
   microscope, they will be seen to have many flaws. No microscopic
   examination can, for a moment, be compared with the glance of Jehovah!
   He will read us through and through. Oh, what a withering will there be
   for fair professions in the day when His fiery eyes shall gaze upon
   them! Never does the grass dry up under the hot dry wind one-half as
   swiftly as the fair plains of pretended Christianity will wither
   beneath the Divine glance in the Last Tremendous Day!

   He will look upon what men call Christendom and it will almost, if not
   altogether, vanish for, "when the Son of Man comes, shall He find faith
   upon the earth?" Will it not, then, be evidently true that "many are
   called, and but few are chosen"? "Strive to enter in at the strait
   gate," is still the voice of Christ to all of us, "for many shall seek
   to enter in, but shall not be able." If our religion is to be weighed
   in the balances, and may, perhaps, be found wanting, it is well for us
   to see to it and to know that it must be sincere, genuine and costly if
   it is to pass that ordeal. What, then, is the expense? What is the cost
   of building this tower or fighting this war?

   The answer is given by our Savior, not by me! I should not have dared
   to invent such tests as He has ordained! It is for me to be the echo of
   His voice and no more. What does He say? Why, first, that if you would
   be His and have His salvation, you must love Him beyond every other
   person in this world. Is not that the meaning of this expression, "If
   any man come to Me and hate not his father and mother"? Dear names!
   Dear names! "Father and mother!" Lives there a man with soul so dead
   that he can pronounce either of these words without emotion--and
   especially the last--"mother"? Brothers and Sisters, this is a dear and
   tender name to us--it touches a chord which thrills our being! Yet far
   more powerful is the name of Savior, the name of Jesus!

   Father and mother must be less loved than Jesus Christ! The Lord
   demands precedence, also, of the best beloved "wife." Here he touches
   another set of heart-strings. Dear is that word," wife," partner of our
   being, comfort of our sorrow, delight of our eyes--"wife!" Yet, Wife,
   you must not take the chief place. You must sit at Jesus' feet, or else
   you are an idol, and Jesus will not allow your rivalry. And "children,"
   the dear babes that nestle in your bosom and clamber to your knee and
   pronounce your name in accents of music--they must not be our chief
   love--they must not come in between us and the Savior. Nor, for their
   sakes, to give them pleasure or to promote their worldly advantage,
   must we grieve our Lord.

   Many a son is master of his father. Many a daughter has been mistress
   to the mother. But if it is for evil, this must be ended at once! If
   they tempt us to evil they must be treated as if we hated them--yes,
   the evil in them must be hated for Christ's sake! If you are Christ's
   disciples your Lord must be first, then mother, father, wife, children,
   brothers, and sisters will follow in due rank and order. I am afraid
   that many professors are not prepared for this. They would be
   Christians if their family would approve, but they must consult their
   brother, father, or wife. They would make a stand against worldly
   pleasures if others would, but they cannot bear to appear singular, or
   to oppose the views of relatives.

   They say, "My father wishes it and I dare not tell him that it is
   wrong" "My mother says that we must not be too strait-laced and
   therefore, though my conscience tells me it is wrong, yet will I do
   it." Or else they say, "My girls are growing up and must have
   amusement. My boys must be allowed their pleasures and therefore I must
   wink at sin." Ah, my Brothers and Sisters, this must not be if you are,
   indeed, Christ's disciples! You must put them all aside--the dearest
   must go sooner than Jesus be forsaken! Does He not say in the Psalms,
   "Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear; forget also
   your own people, and your father's house; so shall the King greatly
   desire your beauty: for he is your Lord; and worship you Him"?

   Mark you, you will best prove your love to your relatives by being
   decided for the right, since you will be the more likely to win their
   souls. Love them too much to indulge the wrong in them! Love them so
   truly that you hate that in them which would injure you and ruin them!
   You must be prepared to suffer from those who are bound to you by the

   dearest ties. Sin must not be tolerated whatever may happen. We cannot
   yield in the point of sin--our determination is invincible--come hate
   or come love, we must follow Christ!

   The next item of cost is this--self must be hated. I am afraid there
   are some who would sooner hate father or wife than hate their own life.
   Yet such is the command. It means this--that when my own pleasure, or
   my own gain, or my own reputation, or even my own life shall come in
   the way of Christ's Glory, I am too little to make any account of
   my-self--that I must even hate myself if self shall stand in the way of
   Christ! I am to look upon father, mother, brother, sister and myself,
   also, as foes, so far as they are opposed to the Lord Jesus and His
   holy will! I am to love them and desire their good as I also desire
   good for myself, but I am not to desire any good for them or for myself
   at the cost of sinning and robbing the Lord Jesus of His Glory. As for
   myself, if I see anything in myself opposed to Jesus I must do away
   with it. I must mortify the flesh with its affections and lusts,
   denying myself anything and everything which would grieve the Savior,
   or would prevent my realizing perfect conformity to Him.

   Next, the Savior goes on to say that if we would follow Him we must
   bear our cross--"Whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me
   cannot be My disciple." Sometimes that cross comes in the shape of
   confessing our faith before gainsayers. "Ah," says the timid heart, "if
   I do so I shall have all my friends against me." Take up your cross! It
   is a part of the cost of true discipleship. "I shall scarcely be able
   to bear myself in the house if I avow my religion." Take up your cross!
   My Brother, unless you do, you cannot be Christ's disciple. "Well, but
   it will involve a change even in my daily life." Make the change, my
   Brother, or you cannot be the Lord's disciple.

   "But I know there is one very dear whom I have looked upon as likely to
   be my future companion--and he will leave me if I forsake the ways of
   the world." Then, heavy as the loss may be, let him go, my Sister, if
   it is so that you cannot follow Christ and unite with Him. You must
   follow Jesus, or be lost forever! What trying words these are! What
   detectors of the hypocrisy of many professing Christians! Did they ever
   separate from the world? No, not they--they fell in with its fashions
   as the dead fish floats with the current! Have they any cross to bear?
   Does anybody reproach them with being too rigid, and too puritanical?
   Oh, no! For theirs is the religion which the world praises and
   consequently the religion which God abhors! If any man loves the world,
   the love of the Father is not in him--and he who has the smile of the
   ungodly must look for the frown of God!

   But, more than this, the Savior, as another item of cost, requires that
   His disciple should take up his cross and come after Him, that is to
   say, he must act as Christ acted. If we are not prepared to make Christ
   our example, yes, if it is not our highest ambition to live as He
   lived, to give ourselves up to act as He did, we cannot be His
   disciples. Last of all, we must make an unreserved surrender of all to
   Jesus. Listen to these words: "Whoever he is of you that forsakes not
   all that he has, he cannot be My disciple." It may yet come to this,
   that persecution may arise and you may actually have to give up all!
   You must be prepared for the event. You may not have to give up
   anything, but the surrender must be just as real in your heart as if it
   had to be carried out in act and deed. No man has truly given himself
   to Christ unless he has also said, "My Lord, I give to You this day my
   body, my soul, my powers, my talents, my goods, my house, my children
   and all that I have. Henceforth I will hold them at Your will, as a
   steward under You. Yours they are--as for me, I have nothing--I have
   surrendered all to You."

   You cannot be Christ's disciples at any less expense than this--if you
   possess a farthing that is your own and not your Master's, Christ is
   not your Master! It must be all His, every single jot and tittle--and
   your life, also--or you cannot be His. These are very searching words,
   but I would remind you, once again, that they are not mine. If, in
   expounding them I have erred, I am grieved that it should be so. But I
   am persuaded I have not erred on the side of too much severity. I
   confess I may have spoken too leniently. The words of the text lay the
   axe to the root and are sweeping to the last degree.

   Oh, count, then, the cost! And if any of you have taken up a religion
   which costs you nothing, put it down and flee from it, for it will be
   your curse and your ruin! Is there any getting to Heaven without this
   cost? No! But may we not be Christians without these sacrifices? You
   may be counterfeits, you may be hypocrites, you may be brothers and
   sisters of Judas, but you cannot be real Christians! This cost is
   unavoidable, it cannot be bated one solitary mite. God grant that you
   may be enabled to submit to it.

   II. The second head is this, WISDOM SUGGESTS THAT WE SHOULD COUNT THE
   COST. You feel you would

   like to be a Christian. Dear Friend, give me your hand. I am glad you
   have such a desire. But as I grasp your hand and

   would gladly draw you towards Christ, I look you in the face and say,
   "Do you know what you desire?" Are you sure you desire it? There are
   men lying on beds of sickness who cry for help, but when they recover
   and have to go out and battle with the world, the time may come when
   they will say, "I would just as soon be on the bed of sickness again."
   I should not like a time to come when any one of you shall say, "I
   joined the Church, but it was a mistake. I did not weigh the matter
   rightly. I am now in for it, and I am sorry I am, for I ought not to be
   where I am."

   If honest, you ought to give up your profession, if such is the case.
   If you have no Divine Grace, I hope you will have enough of common
   honesty not to stick to a practical falsehood. I should grieve, indeed,
   if that should happen, and therefore this morning, I pray you, count
   the coat! For mark, if you do not count the cost, you will not be able
   to carry out your resolves. It is a great building. It is a great war!
   No mistake can be greater than the notion that in order to be a
   Christian there is only needed a measure of emotion during a few
   days--and the belief of some one decisive hour! If I preached such
   doctrines I should be deceiving your souls!

   Faith and repentance are not the work of a week or two, they are a
   lifework! As long as the Christian is on earth he must repent. And as
   for faith, it is not saying, "I believe in Jesus, and therefore I am
   saved," but it is a daily Grace, the trust of a lifetime. The Christian
   continues, still, to believe and repent until he commences to triumph
   in eternal Glory. Moreover, faith is continually productive of
   sanctifying results upon the life of the Believer, or otherwise he is
   not possessed of the right faith. He who believes in Jesus Christ is
   saved--but if there were such a thing as a temporary faith there would
   be such a thing as a temporary salvation. He who truly repents of sin
   is a renewed man, but if repentance of sin were only a transient thing
   and were soon over, the life which it indicated would be over, too. You
   must not be content with false and fleeting religion! You are beginning
   to build a tower of which the top stone will never be laid till you are
   taken up to Heaven--and you are commencing a war which will never end
   till you exchange the sword for the palm branch.

   Remember, also, that to fail in this great enterprise will involve
   terrible defeat, for what does our Lord say? He says that not to be
   able to finish will expose you to ridicule. I beg you to notice the
   form of that ridicule. "All that pass by will begin to mock him, saying
   one to the other (for that is the force of the expression) this man
   began to build but was not able to finish." Our Lord does not represent
   them as saying to the foolish builder, "You began to build and were not
   able to finish," but as speaking about him as a third person--"This
   man." Now, half-hearted Christians, half-hearted religious men may not
   be scoffed at in the public streets to their faces, but they are common
   butts of ridicule behind their backs. You false professors are
   universally despised! Worldlings laughingly say, "Ah, these are pretty
   specimens of Church members!"

   The world looks upon a worldly church with utter disdain, and for my
   part, little do I regret that such derision is poured upon an object
   which so well deserves it! To be a mere pretender to Christian
   discipleship is to become an object of scorn in time and in eternity.
   And such will be the false professor's fate. Sir, if you mean to be a
   Christian, resolve that it shall be the right thing, thorough and
   decided--for then, though men will not go about and praise you to your
   face, they will honor you--and even those who hate you will know your
   value. But if you are only half a Christian and not thorough, they may
   not come to your face and show their contempt, but as they pass by they
   will sneer and will have more respect for a downright worldling than
   for you--because he is what he says he is, and makes no pretence of
   being anything else! But as for you, you began to build and could not
   finish.

   What a wretched object is a sham Christian! We have sometimes seen
   great buildings which have been commenced and deserted by
   over-speculative persons. The neighbors have called them "Smithy's
   Folly," or "Brown's Folly," or "Robinson's Folly," or the like. These
   are but fleeting causes of derision. But the pretender, the man who, in
   appearance, commenced to be a Christian and then broke down at it, will
   be pointed at even by the lost in Hell! The drunkard will cry, "And
   you? Have you, also, come here? You who were so eloquent about
   sobriety, and so ready to rebuke the tippler." "Aha!" cries another,
   "you are the man who lived down our street and made so much show of
   your religion! You told me I was very wicked, but are you better off
   than I am?"

   Behold, I see the openly profane raise themselves up from their racks
   of remorse to exclaim, "Have you become like one of us? You
   Church-member, are you, too, in Hell? Is the taste of the sacramental
   wine still upon your lips? Why, then, do you demand a drop of water to
   cool your tongue? That sacramental bread which you did swallow so
   readily, does it not even now stick in your hypocritical throat? You
   liar before God and man! It is meet and right that you are

   cast out even as we." Oh, if you must be lost, be lost as anything but
   hypocrites! If you must perish, perish rather outside the Church than
   in it! Do not mock the Lord of Glory! I know of no worse act than to
   mimic the excellences of the Savior with bold imitation of His Graces!
   What worse offense can you render to the Majesty of His sacred virtue
   than to travesty His holiness and mock His perfection?

   III. The last word shall be this, that COST WHATEVER IT MAY, TRUE
   RELIGION IS WORTH THE COST. We

   are like a man with the black pest upon him who knows that he is dying
   and yet yonder is a drug which will heal him. "Physician," says he,
   "you ask so great a price that each drop costs me a diamond! You are
   demanding more than its weight in choicest pearls, but it does not
   matter, I must have it! If I do not, I am a dead man--and then what
   will it profit me that I have kept my gold?" It is the case of every
   one of us here present--we must have Christ or perish for-ever--and it
   will be better for us to cut off our right arm and pluck out our right
   eye than that we should be cast into

   Hell fire!

   Mark you, Brothers and Sisters, the present blessings of true religion
   are worth all the cost. What if I have to rend some fond connection?
   Jesus, You are better to me than husband, wife, or child. If it must be
   so that she who lies in my bosom shall count me for her enemy, You
   shall be in my heart, my Savior, better than a Rachel, or a Rebekah.
   Yes, if it must be so that my father shall say, "You shall never darken
   my doors again if you follow Christ," he must say it, for when father
   and mother forsake me the Lord will take me up. The immediate joy will
   recompense for the immediate loss. Yes, doubtless you may count all
   things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus
   your Lord and yet remain a gainer.

   And again, what recompense comes for all cost in the consolation
   afforded by true godliness in the article of death? To lie a-dying--why
   it will give no pain to be able to say, then, "I was cast out of any
   family for Jesus." It will be no sorrow to remember, "I was ridiculed
   for Christ." It will cause us no pangs to say, "I was counted too
   precise and too much of a Puritan." No, my Brothers and Sisters, those
   are not the things which put thorns into death pillows. Oh, no! There
   we shall see how sweet it was to have borne any part of Jesus' Cross--a
   sliver of His Cross will be worth a king's ransom on a dying day!
   Moreover, at the Judgment, when the trumpet rings out and the dead are
   rising, we shall not say, "I suffered too much for Christ."

   When to the right His chosen go, and we among them, we shall not look
   back with regret to the fact that we lost caste in society and position
   among the refined for Jesus' sake! We shall not lament that we attended
   a despised conventicle and worshipped among the poor of this world out
   of love to Jesus, and fidelity to His Gospel. Oh, no! I guarantee you
   in that day he shall shine brightest who was most beclouded for his
   Lord's sake! Midst the bright ones, doubly bright shall be the martyr
   band of whom the world was not worthy--who were accounted as the
   offscouring of all things! And while each one of the disciples shall
   receive a hundredfold for all he may have given up for his Lord's
   cause, these shall have the fairest portion.

   Moreover, let me remind you, Beloved, that Christ asks you to give up
   nothing that will injure you. If you must hate father and mother it is
   only in this sense--that you will not yield to their wrong requests,
   nor will you leave Christ for them. If you must give up any pleasure it
   is because it is not a fitting pleasure for you--it is poisonous sugar
   of lead-- and not true sweetness. Christ will give you greater
   enjoyments by far. I remember that our Redeemer does not ask any one of
   us to do what He has not done Himself. That thought pierces me to the
   quick--I wish it might affect you, also. Master, do You say, give up my
   father? Did You not leave Your Father? Do You bid me even leave my
   father's house if it must be for Your sake?

   Did You not leave the glorious mansions of Heaven? What if I am called
   to bear reproach? They called the Master of the house Beelzebub! What
   if I am cast out? They also cast You out. When we think of the
   scourging, the shame and the spitting which the Lord endured, what are
   our griefs? And if, for His sake, we should even be condemned to death
   we know how He hung on the Cross, stripped of His all, that He might
   save us from the wrath to come! O Believer, can you follow your Lord
   where ever He goes? Soldiers of the Cross, can you follow Him? Is the
   path smooth enough for those dear feet and too rough for you? There He
   is in the center of the battle where the blows fall fastest--will you
   follow Him? Dare you follow Him, or do you pine for the tents of ease
   and the soft couches of the cowards, yonder, who are shrinking back and
   deserting to the enemy?

   Oh, by everything that is good, if you are, indeed, His followers, I
   charge you, cry, "Where He is, there let His servant be! As He fares,
   so let His servant fare--in this world let His humiliation be ours so
   that in the world to come we may be partakers of His Glory." This is
   strong preaching, you tell me, but the Savior meant all that I have
   said. His was a testing discourse, but there are Truths of God to be
   remembered which may console us while hearing them. It is true that you
   cannot build the tower--Joshua said to the people in his time--"You
   cannot serve the Lord." If you have counted the cost, you know, by this
   time, that you cannot wage the war. Ten thousand cannot stand against
   twenty thousand. But yet it must be done, inevitable necessity drives
   on behind--whatever may be in front--we dare not turn back.

   Remember Lot's wife. What, then, must we do? Hear the Lord's words,
   "With men it is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Are
   you willing? Then the Spirit of God will help you! You shall give up
   the world and the flesh without a sigh! You shall fight against your
   lusts and you shall overcome them through the blood of the Lamb! The
   tower shall be built and the Lord shall inhabit it! Cast yourselves on
   Jesus by a simple faith--rest in His power--and from day to day believe
   in His strength, and He will bear you safely through!

   Do you notice the verse which follows this passage? I wonder whether
   anything like it will follow my sermon. It is astonishing that though
   Jesus thundered out as from the top of Sinai and His words seemed
   harsh, yet it is written, "Then drew near unto Him all the publicans
   and sinners for to hear Him," as if they said to themselves, "This man
   tells us the Truth of God, therefore we will hear Him." And then He
   began to tell them the precious Truths of His Free Grace, acting just
   as the farmer does who puts in the plow and turns up the soil--when he
   sees the clods breaking in the furrow, then he scatters the golden
   seed--but not till then.

   Listen, every one of you who would have Christ! Come, and have Him! You
   who would have salvation, accept it as the gift of His Sovereign Grace!
   But do not receive it under misapprehension--understand what is meant
   by it. Salvation is not deliverance from Hell, alone--it is deliverance
   from sin! It is not the rescue of men, merely from eternal pain--it is
   their redemption from this world's vain and wicked ways! It cannot be
   divided! It is a garment without seam, woven from the top throughout.
   If you would have justification, you must have sanctification! If you
   would have pardon, you must have holiness! It you would be one with
   Christ, you must be separate from sinners. If you would walk the
   streets of gold above, you must walk the road of holiness below! God
   grant you His Holy Spirit to enable you to do so and His shall be the
   praise forever! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Psalm 103; Luke 14:25-35.
   HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--906, 671, 596
     __________________________________________________________________

The Entreaty of the Holy Spirit

   (No. 1160)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MARCH 1, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, Today if you will hear His voice,
   harden not your hearts." Hebrews 3:7.

   THE peculiar circumstances in which we are now placed as a congregation
   demand of me that my discourses should be principally directed to the
   unconverted, that the awakened may be decided, that those may be
   awakened who as yet remain unmoved, and that a desire to seek the Lord
   may spread all around us. We may leave the 99 in the wilderness for a
   little while, just now, and go after that which has gone astray. It is
   our duty, usually, to feed the children, but for a while we may leave
   that to other agencies, and hand out food to those who are perishing of
   hunger. These seasons of revival do not last forever--they come and
   they go and, therefore--they must be taken advantage of while they are
   with us.

   The farmer tells us that he must make hay while the sun shines and we,
   also, must attend, in the season, to the labor which it suggests--and
   that duty seems to me to look in the direction of the undecided. While
   God is speaking so mightily, we should plead with men to hear His
   voice! Clearly, it is our wisdom to say, "Amen," to what the Lord is
   saying, for as His Word cannot return unto Him void, ours will be sure
   to be fruitful when it tallies with the Lord's. Therefore the subject
   of my sermon this morning shall be that of our hymn writer--

   "'Hear God while He speaks,' then hear Him today. And pray while you
   hear, unceasingly pray! Believe in Hispromise, rely on His Word, And
   while He commands you, obey your great Lord." I have taken this text
   with the earnest hope that God may bless it and I look to the Lord's
   people to baptize the text in floods of anxious tears for the unsaved.

   I. The first point which it presents for serious consideration is
   this--THE SPECIAL VOICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. "As the Holy Spirit says,
   Today if you will hear His voice." The Apostle is continually quoting
   from the Old Testament, but he does not often present his quotations in
   this peculiar fashion. In the very next chapter, when he is speaking of
   the same passage, he uses the expression, "Saying in David"--mentioning
   the human author of the Psalm. But in this case, to give full emphasis
   to the Truth of God, he quotes the Divine Author alone--"As the Holy
   Spirit says."

   These words, it is true, are applicable to every passage of sacred
   Scripture, for we may say of all the Inspired Books--"As the Holy
   Spirit says." But it is designedly used here that the passage may have
   the greater weight with us. The Holy Spirit, in fact, not only speaks
   thus in the 95th Psalm, but it is His unvarying utterance. The Holy
   Spirit says, or continues, still, to say, "Hear you His voice today."
   He has a certain doctrine upon one occasion and a still deeper Truth of
   God at another period, according as there was need, or as His people
   were prepared for it. But this particular utterance is for all time and
   for every day of Divine Grace. The Holy Spirit, by Paul, as before by
   David, says, "Today."

   Yes, that is still the burden which He lays upon His ministering
   servants--in every place they entreat and persuade men, saying, "Today
   if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts." How does the Holy
   Spirit thus speak? He says this first, in the Scriptures. Every command
   of Scripture calls for immediate obedience. The Law of God is not given
   to us to be laid by upon the shelf to be obeyed at some future period
   of life! And the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is not so
   intended for the 11th hour as to be lightly trifled with during the
   first ten. Wherever the Holy Spirit exhorts, He speaks in the present
   tense, and bids us now repent, or now believe, or now seek the Lord!

   I pray you always remember, whenever you read the Bible, that it is the
   Spirit of the living God who there admonishes you to immediate
   obedience! The calls of the Inspired Word are not those of Moses, or
   David, or Paul, or Peter, but the solemn utterances of the Holy Spirit
   speaking through them. With what a dignity does this Truth invest Holy
   Scrip-

   ture and with what solemnity does it surround our reading of it!
   Quibbling with Scripture, trifling with it, disputing its doctrines, or
   neglecting its admonitions we grieve the Spirit of God! And this is
   very dangerous ground to trespass on, for although He is long-suffering
   and pitiful, yet remember it is of the sin against the Holy Spirit that
   it is said, "It shall never be forgiven."

   Not every sin against the Holy Spirit is unpardonable--God be thanked
   for that! But there is a sin against the Holy Spirit which shall never
   be forgiven. Therefore do we tread, I say, on very delicate ground when
   we vex Him, as we do if at any time in reading His Word we count His
   teachings to be light matters. Beware, I say, you men of England, who
   have your Bibles in your houses among whom the Word of the Lord is
   common as wheat bread! Beware how you treat it, for in rejecting it you
   reject not only the voice of Apostles and Prophets, but the voice of
   the Holy Spirit Himself! The Holy Spirit says, "Today." He bids His
   people make haste and delay not to keep the commands of God! And He
   bids sinners seek the Lord while He may be found--and call upon Him
   while He is near. Oh, may you hear His warning voice and live!

   Further, while the Holy Spirit speaks in Scripture in this way, He
   speaks in the same manner in the hearts of His people, for He is a
   living and active Agent. His work is not ended--He still speaks and
   writes--the pen is still in His hand! Not to write with ink upon paper,
   but upon the fleshy tablets of prepared hearts! Now the Spirit of God
   has been in this Church communicating with His people, and the tenor of
   the communication has been this--"Seek to win souls." And I will
   guarantee this assertion, that in no case has the Spirit said, "Seek
   the conversion of sinners at the end of the year-- awake to earnestness
   about their souls when you have become more mature in years and
   judgment." But every man and woman here saved by Grace, who has felt
   the Holy Spirit within him, has felt an impulse to seek the conversion
   of sinners at once! He has felt a longing that they should no longer
   abide in sin, that they should now be awakened, should immediately lay
   hold of eternal life and find instantaneous peace in Christ.

   I appeal to my Brothers and Sisters if it is not so. Have you not felt,
   "it is high time to awake out of sleep"? Have you not felt the force of
   the admonition, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your
   might"? At other times we have been satisfied to feel that there was a
   good work going on secretly, that the soil was being prepared for
   future harvests, that somehow or other God's Word would not return unto
   Him void. But now we are not so readily contented! We feel as if we
   must, during each service, see the Lord at work and we plead for
   immediate conversions! We are as eager for souls as misers are for
   money! I say not that all of you feel this, but I say that all who have
   been fully influenced by the Holy Spirit during this period of gracious
   visitation have been filled with agony for the immediate salvation of
   souls.

   Like unto a woman in travail they have longed eagerly to hear the cry
   of new-born souls. Their prayer has been, "Today, good Lord, answer our
   entreaties and lead our fellow men to hear Your voice that they may be
   saved." I appeal to the people of God whether the Holy Spirit, when He
   stirs them up to soul-winning, does not say, "Today--today seek the
   salvation of men." The same is also true when the Holy Spirit speaks in
   the awakened. They are not yet numbered with the people of God, but
   they are under concern of soul--and I shall make my appeal to them,
   also.

   You are now conscious that you have offended your God--you are alarmed
   to find yourselves in a condition of alienation from Him--you want to
   be reconciled and you pine for the assurance that you are really
   forgiven. Do you wish to wait for that assurance till six or seven
   years have passed away? Do you feel, this morning, that you could be
   perfectly satisfied to go out of this house in the state you are now
   in--and continue in it month by month? If such delay would satisfy you,
   the Spirit of God has not spoken with you in an effectual manner. You
   have been but partially influenced, like unhappy Felix, and having
   said, "When I have a more convenient season I will send for you," we
   shall hear no more of you.

   If the Spirit of God is upon you, you are crying "Help, Lord, help me
   now! Save me now or I perish! Make haste to deliver me, make no
   tarrying, O my God. Hasten on wings of love to pluck me from the pit of
   destruction which yawns beneath my feet."--

   "Come, Lord, Your fainting servant cheer,

   Nor let Your chariot wheels delay.

   Appear, in my poor heart appear,

   My God, my Savior, come away!" A truly awakened sinner pleads in the
   present tense and cries mightily for a present salvation! And it is
   certain that whenever the Holy Spirit strives with men, He urgently
   cries, "Today! Today!"

   Once more, the Holy Spirit speaks, thus, by His deeds as well as by His
   words. We have a common proverb that actions speak more loudly than
   words. Now the acts of the Holy Spirit, in the leading of many in this
   place to the Savior, are so many practical invitations, encouragements
   and commands to others. The gate of Mercy stands open everyday of the
   year--and its very openness is an invitation and a command to
   enter--but when I see my fellow men go streaming through, when I see
   hundreds finding Christ as we have seen them, do not all these, as they
   enter the portal of Grace, call to others to come? Do they not say,
   "This way may be trod by such as you are, for we are treading it! This
   way assuredly leads to peace for we have found rest in it!"

   It is surely so! This way of speaking from the Holy Spirit has come
   very closely home to some of you, for you have seen your children enter
   the kingdom, and yet you are not saved yourselves! Some of you have
   seen your sisters saved, but you still remain unconverted! There is a
   husband, yonder, whose wife has told him with sparkling eyes of the
   rest she has found in the Savior, but he himself refuses to seek the
   Lord! There are parents here who have found Jesus, but their children
   are a heavy burden to them, for their hearts are unrenewed! Did I see
   my brother pass the gate of salvation? May I not take that as an
   intimation from God's Spirit that He is waiting to be gracious to me,
   also? When I see others saved by faith, may I not be sure that faith
   will also save me?

   Since I perceive that there is Grace in Christ for the sins of others
   exactly like myself, may I not hope that there is mercy, also, for me?
   I will venture to hope and dare to believe! Should not that be the
   resolve of each? And is not that the point to which the Holy Spirit
   would lead us? Is not the bringing of one sinner to Himself intended to
   allure others? "The Holy Spirit says, Today." But why so urgent,
   blessed Spirit, why so urgent? It is because the Holy Spirit is in
   sympathy with God--in sympathy with the Father who longs to press the
   prodigal to His bosom--in sympathy with the Son who is watching to see
   of the travail of His soul!

   The Holy Spirit is urgent because He is grieved with sin and would not
   see it continued for an hour! And every moment that a sinner refuses to
   come to Christ is a moment spent in sin. Yes, that refusal to come is,
   in itself, the most wanton and cruel of offenses! The hardness of man's
   heart against the Gospel is the most grievous of all provocations!
   Therefore does the Holy Spirit long to see man rid of it, that he may
   yield himself to the Omnipotent power of love. The Holy Spirit desires
   to see men attentive to the voice of God because He delights in that
   which is right and good. It is to Him a personal pleasure. He is glad
   to behold His own work in the sinner carried on till salvation is
   secure. Besides, He waits to execute His favorite office of Comforter,
   and He cannot comfort an ungodly soul! He cannot comfort those who
   harden their hearts.

   Comfort for unbelievers would be their destruction. As He delights to
   be the Comforter and has been sent forth from the Father to act
   specially in that capacity, that He may comfort the people of God, He
   watches with longing eyes for broken hearts and contrite spirits, that
   He may apply the balm of Gilead and heal their wounds. Therefore "the
   Holy Spirit says, Today." I leave this fact with you. The special voice
   of the text is not of man, but of the Holy Spirit Himself. He that has
   ears to hear let him hear--

   "Then while 'tis called today,

   Oh, hear the Gospel sound!

   Come, Sinner, hurry, oh, hurry today,

   While pardon may be found."

   II. The text inculcates A SPECIAL DUTY. The duty is that we should hear
   the voice of God. If you so read it, the text bids us hear the voice of
   the Father saying, "Return unto Me, you backsliding children. Come now,
   and let us reason together: though your sins are as scarlet they shall
   be as wool." Or it may be the voice of Jesus Christ, for it is of Him
   that the Apostle is here speaking. It is Jesus who calls, "Come unto
   Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
   In fact, the voice to be heard is that of the Sacred Trinity, for with
   the Father, the Son and the Spirit also say, "Come." We are bid to hear
   and that, surely, is no hard duty. The grand evangelical precept is,
   "Incline your ear and come unto Me, hear and your soul shall live,"
   for, "faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God." Hear,
   then, the Lord's voice!

   "Well," says one, "we do hear it. We read the Bible and whatever is
   preached on Sunday we are willing enough to hear." Ah, my dear Hearers,
   but there is hearing and hearing. Many have ears to hear, but they do
   not hear in reality. The kind of hearing which is demanded of us is the
   hearing with reverence. The Gospel is God's Word, not man's--the voice
   of your Maker, your Lord--the voice of Infallible Truth, of Infinite
   Love, of Sovereign Authority and therefore no com-

   mon attention should be bestowed upon it. Listen to it devoutly,
   summoning all your powers to adoring attention. Angels veil their faces
   in Jehovah's Presence--and shall man trifle before Him? When God speaks
   do not regard it as the voice of merely a king, to whose message it
   might be treason to turn a deaf ear, but as the voice of your God,
   towards whom it is blasphemy to be inattentive!

   Hear Him earnestly, with anxiety, to know the meaning of what He says,
   drinking in His doctrine, receiving with meekness the engrafted Word
   which is able to save your soul, bowing your understanding to it,
   longing to comprehend it, desirous to be influenced by it. "Hear His
   voice"--that is, hear it obediently, eager to do what He bids you, as
   He enables you. Do not hear and forget, as one that looks in a glass
   and sees his face, and afterwards forgets what manner of man he is?
   Retain the Word in your memories and, better still, practice it in your
   lives? To hear in this case is, in fact, to yield yourselves to the
   will of God, to let yourselves be as the elastic clay and His Word as
   the hand which molds you, or your tears as the molten metal and the
   Word as the mold into which you are delivered.

   Hear the Lord when He instructs you. Be willing to know the Truth of
   God. How often are men's ears stopped up with the wax of prejudice, so
   that they are dull of hearing? They have made up their minds as to what
   the Gospel ought to be and will not hear what it is. They think
   themselves the judges of God's Word, instead of God's Word being their
   judge. Some men do not want to know too much--they might be
   uncomfortable in their sins if they did. And, therefore, they are not
   anxious to be instructed. When men are afraid of the Truth of God there
   is abundant reason to fear that the Truth of God is against them. It is
   one of the worst signs of a fallen condition when a son of Adam hides
   away from the voice of His Creator.

   But, O dear Hearers, today hear His voice! Learn of Jesus! Sit as
   scholars at His feet, for, "Except you are converted and become as
   little children, you cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Hear Him as
   scholars hear their teacher, for all the children of Zion are taught of
   the Lord. But the Lord does more than instruct you--He commands. Let
   men say what they will, the Gospel to be preached to the ungodly is not
   merely warnings and teachings, it has its solemn, positive commands.
   Listen to this--"The times of this ignorance God winked at, but now
   commands all men everywhere to repent." As to faith, the Lord's Word
   does not come as a mere recommendation of its virtues, or as a promise
   to those who exercise it, but it speaks on this wise--"Believe on the
   Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. He that believes and is
   baptized shall be saved; he that believes not shall be damned." The
   Lord puts the solemn sanction of a threat of condemnation upon the
   command to show that it is not to be trifled with!

   "All power," says Christ, "is given unto Me in Heaven and in earth,"
   and therefore clothed with that authority and that power, He sends out
   His disciples, saying to them, "Go you, therefore, and teach all
   nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
   of the Holy Spirit." The Word goes forth with Divine authority, saying,
   "Repent you and believe the Gospel." This is as much God's command as
   that which says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your
   heart," and there is this much the more of solemn obligation, that
   whereas the Law was given by Moses, the Gospel command was given by the
   Son of God Himself!

   "He that despised Moses' Law died without mercy: of how much sorer
   punishment, suppose you, shall he be thought worthy, who has trod under
   foot the Son of God! Hear, then the commands of Jesus, for be sure of
   this--His Gospel comes to you with the imperial authority of the Lord
   of All! But the Lord does more than command, He graciously invites.
   With tenderness He bids sinners come to His banquet of mercy, for all
   things are ready. As though He pleaded with men and would gladly
   persuade where He might command, He cries, "Ho, everyone that thirsts,
   come you to the waters; and you that have no money, come buy wine and
   milk without money and without price."

   Many of the Lord's invitations are remarkable for their extreme
   sympathy, as though it were rather He that would suffer than the
   sinner, if the sinner remained obstinate! He cries, "Turn you, turn
   you, why will you die, O house of Israel?" Like a father pleading with
   a beloved but disobedient son who is ruining himself, God, Himself,
   pleads as if the tears stood in His eyes--yes, the Incarnate God in
   very deed wept over sinners, and cried--"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how
   often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her
   chickens under her wings, and you would not." Will you not listen,
   then, when God instructs? Shall He give light and your eyes be closed?
   Will you not obey when God commands? Do you intend to be rebels against
   Him? Will you turn your backs when God invites? Shall His love be
   slighted and His bounty treated with scorn? God grant it may not be so!
   The good Spirit asks no more than is just and right when He cries,
   "Hear you the voice of the Lord."

   But the Lord does more than invite, He adds His promises. He says,
   "Hear and your soul shall live; and I will make an Everlasting Covenant
   with you, even the sure mercies of David." He has told us that, "if we
   confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and
   to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Glorious promises are there in
   His Word--exceedingly great and precious! Oh, do not, I beseech you,
   count yourselves unworthy of them, for if so, your blood will be on
   your own heads! The Lord also threatens as well as entreats. He warns
   you, "If you turn not, He will whet His sword: He has bent His bow and
   made it ready." He declares that the despisers shall wonder and perish.
   He asks, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?"

   He says, "The wicked shall be cast into Hell with all the nations that
   forget God." Though He has no pleasure in the death of him that dies,
   but had rather that he should turn unto Him and live, yet He will by no
   means clear the guilty, but every transgression and iniquity shall have
   its just recompense of reward. If Christ is rejected, eternal wrath is
   certain! By that door you enter Heaven, but if you pass it by, even He
   who at this hour stands with pierced hands to woo you, will, at the
   Last Great Day come with iron rod to break you. "Today, if you will
   hear His voice, harden not your hearts." I leave these thoughts with
   you. May God grant they may make impressions where His will designs
   they should.

   III. There is, in our text, A SPECIAL TIME EMPHASIZE. "The Holy Spirit
   says, Today." Today is the set time for hearing God's voice. Today,
   that is, while God speaks. Oh, if we were as we should be, the moment
   God said, "Seek you My face," we should reply, "Your face, Lord, will I
   seek." As soon as the invitations of mercy were heard there would be an
   echo in our souls to them and we should say, "Behold, we come unto You
   that we may be saved."

   Observe how in creation God's voice was heard in an instant. The Lord
   said, "Let there be light, and there was light." He said, "Let the
   waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature," and straightway it
   was so. There were no delays. God's fiat was immediately executed. Oh,
   you whom God has made men and endowed with reason, shall the insensible
   earth be more obedient than you? Shall the waves of the sea swarm with
   fish and the earth teem with grass as soon as Jehovah speaks--and will
   you sleep on when the heavenly voice cries, "Awake, you that sleep, and
   arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you life"? Hear God today,
   for today He speaks.

   The Apostle says in the next chapter, "Today--after so long a time,"
   and I will dwell upon that phrase--"after so long a time." I see that
   some of you have bald heads, or gray hairs lie thick upon them. If you
   are unconverted, well may the Holy Spirit say, "Today, after so long a
   time, hear His voice." Is it not long enough to have provoked your God
   these 60 years? Man, are not 70 years of sin enough? Perhaps you have
   almost fulfilled your fourscore years and still you hold out against
   the overtures of Divine mercy! Is not a graceless old age a standing
   provocation of the Lord? How long do you intend to provoke Him? How
   long will it be before you believe Him? You have had time enough to
   have found out that sin is folly and that their pleasures are vanity.
   Surely you have had time enough to see that if there is peace it is not
   to be found in the ways of sin! How long do you intend to linger on
   forbidden and dangerous ground? You may not have another day, O aged
   man, in which to consider your ways! O aged woman--you may not have
   another year granted you in which to provoke your God. "After so long a
   time," with sacred pressure would I urge you--"Today, if you will hear
   His voice."

   I hope it is not only I pleading with you but, I trust, the Holy
   Spirit, also, says in your conscience, "Today attend the voice of God."
   "Today," that is, especially while the Holy Spirit is leading others to
   hear and to find mercy. Today, while the showers are falling. Today,
   receive the drops of Grace! Today, while there are prayers offered up
   for you. Today, while the hearts of the godly are earnest about you.
   Today, while the footstool of Heaven's Throne is wet with the tears of
   those who love you. Today, lest lethargy should seize the Church again.
   Today, lest the preaching of the Word of God should come to be a matter
   of routine and the preacher, himself, discouraged, should lose all zeal
   for your soul! Today, while everything is peculiarly propitious, hear
   the voice of God! While the wind blows, hoist the sail! While God is
   abroad on errands of love, go forth to meet Him!

   Today, while yet you are not utterly hardened--while there is still a
   conscience left within you--today, while yet you are conscious of your
   danger in some degree, while yet there is a lingering look towards your
   Father's house--hear and live! Today, lest, slighting your present
   tenderness, it should never come again--and you should be abandoned to
   the shocking indifference which is the prelude of eternal death! Today,
   young people, while yet you are undefiled with the grosser vices.
   Today, you young men who are new to this polluting city, before you
   have steeped yourselves in its streams

   of lust. Today, while everything is helpful to you, hear the loving,
   tender, wooing voice of Jesus and harden not your hearts!

   To me the text seems wonderfully Gospel-like when it says "Today," for
   what is it but another way of putting the doctrine of that blessed
   hymn--

   "Just as I am, without one plea."

   "Today"--that is, in the circumstances, sins and miseries in which you
   now are--hear the Gospel, and obey it! Today, since it finds you in
   yonder pew, hear God's voice of mercy in that pew! Today, you who have
   never been concerned before, while God speaks, let it concern you!
   "Ah," you say, "if I were living in another house." You are culled
   today, even if you are living with the worst of sinners! "I will
   hearken when I have enjoyed that sinful pleasure which I promised to
   myself next Wednesday" you say. Ah, if it is a sinful one, flee from
   it, or it may make a turning point in your history and seal your soul's
   ruin. "Today, if you will hear His voice."

   "Ah, if I had attended a few more revival meetings, and felt in a
   better state, I would obey." It is not so written, Sinner! It is not
   so! I am not told to preach the Gospel to those of you who are ready to
   receive it and say, "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved,
   if he is already, in a measure, prepared to believe." No, but to every
   creature here I have the same message to deliver! In the name of Jesus
   of Nazareth, who is also God Almighty at the right hand of the Father,
   believe in Him and you shall live, for His message to you is for
   TODAY--it admits of no delay. "But I must reform, I must amend and then
   will I think about believing." That is to put the effect before the
   cause! If you will hear His voice, the reforming and the amending shall
   come to you. But you must not begin with them as the first matter.

   The voice of God does not say that, but it says, "Believe in the Lord
   Jesus Christ." Oh, hear that voice! I must occupy a moment in showing
   you why the Lord in mercy says, "Today." Do you not know that other
   people die? Why may you not die, yourself? During these present
   services several have been taken from among us. I was surprised when I
   came home to find how many have died of late concerning whom I should
   have predicted a much longer life. Why may you not die speedily? "I am
   robust and healthy," says one. If you ever hear of a sudden death, does
   it not generally happen to the robust? It seems as if the storm swept
   over the sickly and they bowed before it like reeds--and so escaped its
   fury--while the vigorous in health, like powerful forest trees, resist
   the storm and are torn up by it. How often does sudden death come just
   where we least expected it! "Today, if you will hear His voice."

   I will put a question to you which that holy man, Mr. Payson, puts to
   the awakened. He says, How would you like to arrange that you would
   find Christ at the end of the year and that your existence should
   depend upon the life of another person? Select the strongest man you
   know, and suppose that everything in reference to your eternal welfare
   is to depend upon whether he lives to see the next year. With what
   anxiety would you hear of his illness! How concerned you would be about
   his health! Well, Sinner, your salvation is risked by you upon your own
   life--is that any more secure? If you are procrastinating and putting
   off repentance, why should you be any more secure about your own life
   than you would be if all depended upon the life of another? Be not such
   fools as to trifle yourselves into your graves and trifle your souls
   into

   Hell.

   "You would not stake your fortune on the cast of the dice, as the mad
   gambler does, and yet you are staking your soul's eternity upon what is
   quite as uncertain, for you do not know, when you fall asleep tonight,
   whether you shall awake tomorrow in your bed or in Hell! You do not
   know that the next breath you are expecting will ever come--and if it
   does not come you will be driven forever from God's presence." Oh,
   Sirs, if you want to play at hazards, hazard your gold, or hazard your
   reputations, but do not jeopardize your souls! The stakes are too heavy
   for any but those who are made mad by sin. Risk not your souls, I beg
   you, upon the hazard of your living another day, but listen to the
   voice of God today!

   IV. I have little time for my last point, but I still must have space
   for it even if I detain you beyond the accustomed time of departure.
   The last point is this--The SPECIAL DANGER which is indicated in the
   text. "Today, if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts'" That
   is the special danger. And how is it incurred? When persons are under
   concern of soul their heart is, in a measure, softened--but they can
   readily harden it--first, by willingly relapsing into their former
   indifference-- by shaking off all fear and saying in willful rebellion,
   "No, I will have none of it."

   I once preached in a certain city and I was the guest of a gentleman
   who treated me with great kindness. But I noticed on the third occasion
   of my preaching that he suddenly left the room. One of my friends
   followed him out of the place and

   said to him, "Why have you left the service?" "Well," he said, "I
   believe I should have been converted altogether if I had stayed any
   longer, for I felt such an influence coming over me. But it would not
   pay--you know what I am--it would not pay." Many persons are of that
   kind. They are shaped, for a while, according to the earnest word they
   hear, but it is all in vain--the dog returns to his vomit and the sow
   that was washed to her wallowing in the mire. This is to harden your
   heart and provoke the Lord.

   A common way of provoking God and hardening the heart is that indicated
   by the context. "Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, in the
   day of temptation in the wilderness"--that is to say, by unbelief--by
   saying, "God cannot save me, He is not able to forgive me. The blood of
   Christ cannot cleanse me. I am too black a sinner for God's mercy to
   deal with." That is a copy of what the Israelites said--"God cannot
   take us into Canaan; He cannot conquer the sons of Anak." Though you
   may look upon unbelief as a slight sin, it is the sin of sins! May the
   Holy Spirit convict you of it, for "when the Spirit of Truth is come He
   shall convince the world of sin," and especially of sin, "because they
   believe not on Jesus." "He that believes not is condemned already,"
   says Christ, "because he has not believed on the Son of God," as if all
   other sins were inconsiderable in power to condemn in comparison with
   this sin of unbelief!

   Oh, do not, therefore, doubt my Lord! Come, you blackest, filthiest
   sinner out of Hell! Jesus can cleanse you! Come, you granite-hearted
   sinner, you whose affections are frozen like an iceberg so that not one
   melting tear of penitence distils from your eyes! Jesus' love can
   soften your heart! Believe Him, believe Him, or else you harden your
   heart against Him! Some harden their hearts by asking for more signs.
   This, also, is after the manner of the Israelites. "God has given us
   manna. Can He give us water? He has given us water out of the Rock, can
   He give us meat, also? Can He furnish a table in the wilderness?" After
   all that God had done, they wanted Him to work miracles or they would
   not believe!

   Let none of us harden our hearts in that way. God has already worked
   for men a miracle which transcends all others and is, indeed, the
   compendium of all wonders! He has given His own Son out of His bosom to
   be a Man and to die for sinners! The sinner who is not content with
   that display of the mercy of God will never be satisfied with any proof
   of it! Christ on the tree is the sum of all miracles under the Gospel
   dispensation. If you will not believe God, who "so loved the world,
   that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should
   not perish, but have everlasting life," then you will never believe!

   "Oh, but I want to feel! I want the influence that is abroad to come
   upon me in a strange manner! I want to dream at night, or to see
   visions by day." Do you? You are hardening your heart! You are
   rejecting what God gives and demanding Him to play the lackey to
   you--and to give you what your petulant pride demands. If you had these
   things you would still not believe! He who has Moses and the Prophets
   and rejects them, would not believe, even though one came to him from
   the dead! Christ on the Cross is before you--do not reject Him! For if
   you do, nothing else can convince you and there must you
   remain--hardening your heart in unbelief.

   Those also harden their hearts who presume upon the mercy of God and
   say, "Well, we can turn when we please." Ah, how different will you
   find it. "We have only to believe and be saved." Yes, but you will
   find, "only believing," to be a very different thing from what you
   imagine! Salvation is no child's play, believe me. I have heard of one
   who woke up one morning and found himself famous--but you will not find
   salvation in that way. "He that seeks finds, and to him that knocks it
   shall be opened." You harden your hearts if you plunge into worldly
   pleasures--if you allow loose companions to talk with you--if on this
   holy day you indulge in idle talk, or listen to unhallowed mirth. Many
   a tender conscience is hardened by the company which surrounds it. A
   young woman hears a powerful sermon and God is blessing it to her, but
   she goes off tomorrow to spend the evening in a scene of gaiety--how
   can she expect that the Word of God will be blessed to her? It is a
   deliberate quenching of the Spirit and I wonder not that God should
   swear in His wrath that those who do so shall not enter into His rest.
   Oh, don't do these things, lest you harden your hearts against God!

   Now, I must conclude, but I must put the matter fully before you. I
   want every sinner here to know his position this morning. God commands
   all men everywhere to repent! Christ commands men to believe in Him
   today. One of two things you have to do, you have no other
   choice--either you must say that you do not intend to obey God's
   command, or else you must yield to it. Like Pharaoh, you must say, "Who
   is the Lord that I should obey His voice?" Or else, like the prodigal
   son, you must resolve, "I will arise and go unto my Father." There is
   no other choice! Do not attempt to make excuses. God makes short work
   with sinners' excuses. Those who were invited to the great supper said,
   "We are going to

   our farm and our merchandise. We are about to try our yokes of oxen, or
   we have married a wife," but all the Lord said about it was, "None of
   the men which were bidden shall taste of My supper." That was the end
   of it.

   There was a man, once, who had a talent, and he buried it in a napkin
   and said, "I knew that You were an austere man," and so on. What notice
   did his Master take of that speech? He merely said, "Out of your own
   mouth will I condemn you. You knew that I was an austere man, and
   therefore, for that very reason you ought to have been the more
   diligent in My service." The Lord sees through your excuses, therefore
   do not insult Him with them! I have you here, this morning, before me,
   and you shall say one thing or the other before the living God--and
   before Christ--who shall judge the quick and the dead. He bids you turn
   from your sin and seek His face now, and believe in His dear Son. Will
   you do it or not? Yes or no? And mark you, that, "Yes," or, "No," may
   be final.

   This morning the last appeal may have been made to you! God commands
   and I charge you, if your heart intends rebellion, say, if you dare, "I
   will not obey." Then you will know where you are and you will
   understand your own position. If God is not God, fight it out with Him.
   If you do not believe in Him, if He really is not the Lord who made you
   and who can destroy you, or if you mean to be His enemy--take up your
   position and be as honest, even, if you are as proud as Pharaoh, and
   say--"I will not obey Him." But, oh, I pray you, do not thus rebel! God
   is gracious! Will you be rebellious? God is love! Will you, therefore,
   be hard-hearted? Jesus, by His wounds, invites you to come to Himself!
   And the Holy Spirit, Himself, is here and is saying in the text, "Today
   harden not your hearts." Yield yourselves now to His love--

   "Who round you now

   The bands of a man would cast,

   The cords of His love who was given to you

   To His altar binding you fast."

   At His altar may you be found safe in the day of His appearing! God
   bless you. I beg those of you who know how to pray to implore a
   blessing on this word, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

   PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON: Numbers13:26-33,14:1-23;
   Psalm 95. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--98 (VERSION II), 497, 546.

   A MESSAGE FROM BROTHER SPURGEON, IN 1874, TO HIS READERS [IN THE 21st
   CENTURY?]:

   Those readers who think this sermon likely to be useful are earnestly
   requested to give it away, that it may be useful to others. The
   preacher is most anxious that his message should be scattered broadcast
   over the land.
     __________________________________________________________________

Without Money and Without Price

   (No. 1161)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MARCH 8, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Without money and without price." Isaiah 55:1.

   THE spiritual blessings promised and provided in the Gospel comprise
   all that man can need. They are described in the chapter before us as
   "water" refreshing and cleansing--the "Water of Life," of which if a
   man drinks he shall never thirst again. They are next described as
   "wine," the wine of joy--exhilarating, comforting, "making good the
   heart of man"--a wine in which is no woe, but fullness of holy delight.
   These blessings are thirdly represented as "milk," for milk is almost
   the only article of diet which contains everything that is necessary
   for the support of man, and therefore it is a type of the satisfying
   qualities of the Gospel. He who receives the Gospel of Jesus Christ has
   all that his soul can possibly need for time and for eternity, so that
   water, wine and milk set forth a full supply of life, joy and
   satisfaction for our spirits.

   According to the text, this provision for our souls in presented to us
   free. We are to buy it, that is to say, we are to have it with as good
   as a right, and as full an assurance, as if we had purchased it--but
   the purchase is to be made "without money," and lest we should make
   mistakes and suppose that although money literally might not be
   brought, some other recompense must be offered to God, it is added,
   "without price." The double expression is most sweeping, clearing away,
   once and for all, from the mercies of God, all idea of their being
   purchasable by any method whatever. The Gospel is not to be bought with
   gold. Vain are your treasures if you should lavish them at the feet of
   Christ! What cares He for gold and silver?

   Neither are they to be procured by knowledge and wisdom, which are the
   mind's wealth, the money of the soul. A man may know much, but his
   knowledge may only puff him up, or increase his condemnation. Neither
   are the gifts of God's Divine Grace to be obtained by human merit.
   Merit, connected with man is out of the question--call it demerit and
   you are correct. If we had done all that we ought to have done, still
   we ought to have done it, and even in that case we should still be
   unprofitable servants. Away with the notion of merit as possible to
   fallen man! The day which saw Adam driven out of Paradise blotted the
   words "human merit" out of the dictionary of the Truth of God. Every
   sort of gift to God with the view of procuring His favor is excluded by
   the term, "without price."

   Some have dreamed that they might barter if they may not purchase.
   They, therefore, bring to God, instead of inward holiness the beauty of
   outward ceremonies. And instead of a perfect righteousness they offer a
   baptismal regeneration and a sacramental sanctity. If they have not
   kept the Law, yet, at any rate, they have observed the rubric. If they
   have not loved their God with all their heart, they have at least bowed
   the knee during the performance of a priest. Thus would they barter
   with the Lord and give Him rites and ceremonies in payment for His
   Grace!

   They conceive that a kind of witchcraft rests in the use of certain
   words and postures--and that God is thereby moved to blot out their
   sins! Others, who are not quite so insane, have fallen into the same
   error under another form-- they fancy that a certain amount offeeling
   will procure for them the gifts of Divine Grace--they must be
   distressed up to a certain point and made to tremble in a certain
   measure. They must become despairing or they can never hope for mercy.
   Thus they make unbelief, which is a sin, into a preparation for
   Grace--and despair--which is an insult to a merciful God, and magnify
   them into a fitness for the reception of His bounty!

   Others have dreamed that partial reformation, the saying of prayers,
   the leaving of legacies, attendance upon orthodox teaching, or the
   performance of benevolent actions will surely procure for them the
   gifts of Grace! To one and all of them comes this Gospel
   declaration--the gifts of God's love are "without money and without
   price." I wish I knew how to put this Truth of God into such words that
   everybody could understand me, and that nobody could misunderstand me.
   Whenever a man is saved, he is saved because God freely saves him, not
   because there was anything in him to deserve salva-

   tion, or any particular fitness in him why God should deliver him and
   not another. The gifts of God's Grace are absolutely free in the most
   unrestricted sense of that term.

   Nothing good, whatever, is brought by man, or is expected from man, by
   way of recommendation to mercy. Everything is given gratis and is
   received by us "without money and without price." Upon that one thought
   I shall dwell, hoping that the Spirit of God will make it plain to your
   minds.

   I. And, first, I shall notice THE SURPRISING NATURE OF THIS FACT, for
   it is very surprising to mankind to hear that salvation is "without
   money and without price." It is so surprising to them that the most
   plain terms cannot make them understand it. And, though you tell them a
   thousand times a day, yet they persist in thinking that you mean it
   costs something. They cannot be brought to accept it as literally true
   that they are to have everything for nothing-- salvation gratis--and
   eternal life is the pure gift of Heaven's charity.

   Why, there are those sitting in this house, this morning, who know the
   way of salvation and are saved--and they will tell you that for many
   years they heard the Gospel very plainly put--but that until God the
   Holy Spirit enlightened them, they did not really understand what was
   meant by simple faith in Jesus. They will admit that they could not
   bring themselves to the idea that, then and there, just as they were,
   they had but to accept the salvation of God and it would be their own!
   They were unable to believe that so simple a matter could be the
   Gospel! They looked for mystery, difficulty and a complex preparation.
   They understood the words, but missed the central sense--the Grace and
   the freeness of the Gospel surpassed their thoughts!

   It is not an unusual thing to find children of godly parents who have
   heard the Gospel from their earliest youth still ignorant of the way of
   salvation, having failed to learn this simple Truth of God--that
   salvation is the free gift of God and can only be received as such!
   Now, why is it that man does not see this? Why is it that when he does
   see it he is surprised at it? I think it is, first, because of man's
   relation to God and his wrong judgment of Him. Man thinks that God is a
   hard master. That expression of the man who hid his talent in a napkin,
   "I knew that you was an austere man, gathering where you have not
   strewned," is precisely the idea which the mass of mankind have of the
   Lord. They Judge Him to be exacting, hard, severe--and that His Law
   claims more of man than it should.

   They judge that He might have dealt more leniently with a poor, erring,
   fallible mortal like man. When the Holy Spirit convinces men of sin
   they still retain hard thoughts of God and fear that He cannot be so
   gracious as to blot out their sins. Judging the Lord by their own
   standard, they cannot think that He will freely forgive. And though
   they are reminded of the great Atonement which enables God to be just
   and yet the Justifier of the ungodly, they still think that because
   they could not readily forgive offenses against themselves, God must be
   as slow to pardon as they are. They believe He must be urgently pleaded
   with, recompensed with penances, conciliated with promises, or moved by
   tears, before He will be brought into a loving state of mind so as to
   be willing to bestow His Grace!

   Little do they know that mighty heart of love which throbs in Jehovah's
   bosom! Little do they understand that His heart yearns to clasp His
   Ephraims to His breast and that He has declared, "As I live, says the
   Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the
   wicked turn from his way and live." Learn, then, you sons of men, that,
   "as high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are His ways above
   your ways, and His thoughts above your thoughts." He waits to be
   gracious and is abundantly willing to pardon the ungodly if they do but
   turn to Him. No doubt, also, the condition of man under the Fall makes
   it more difficult for him to comprehend that the gifts of God are
   "without money and without price," for he finds that he is doomed to
   toil for almost everything he needs. "In the sweat of your face shall
   you eat bread" is the sentence upon our race.

   If man wants bread, the earth demands that he dig for it, or use some
   other form of labor. Under the artificial conditions of civilization
   scarcely anything comes to us of itself, but must be bought with money.
   Man finds that he is in a place where, if he buys, it certainly is not
   "without money and without price." Money and price must be in his hands
   in every market and store or else he must go away empty-handed and,
   therefore, he is apt to reckon that as it is so in this sin-blighted
   world, it must be the same in the kingdom of Christ. And when he finds
   that he is not by works to purchase Divine favor, he counts it strange
   and is long in believing that it can be true. He reads the words,
   "without money and without price," and thinks that there must be
   something written between the lines to modify the sense, for surely
   there must be something to do or to feel before a sinner can receive
   the gifts of Grace!

   Again, man remembers the general rule of men towards each other, for in
   this world what is to be had for nothing except that which is worth
   nothing? Nothing for nothing is the general system! Nobody in trade
   thinks of trading except for profit. And if a man were urged to sell
   without a price he would open his eyes wide and declare that he would
   soon find himself a bankrupt! Dealing with our fellow men we must
   naturally expect, even according to the golden rule, that we should
   give them an equivalent for what we receive. Of course the Christian
   religion lifts true Believers into a condition in which they are
   willing to give, hoping for nothing, again--but the general rule all
   round is--you must pay for what you have. Can you clothe yourself? Can
   you warm your hands in the winter? Can you find a shelter for your
   children? Can you obtain a bed upon which to lay your weary bones
   without money? And so "without money and without price" is quite a
   novelty--and man is astonished at it and cannot believe it to be true!

   Another matter puts man into this difficulty, namely, his natural
   pride. He does not like to be a pauper before God. The mass of mankind
   have generally some excellency or other which, in their own esteem,
   exalts them above others. You shall find a large proportion of the
   upper classes perfectly convinced that they are far superior to the
   poor--that the working classes are, indeed, an inferior order of beings
   compared with themselves. You shall find an equal pride among the
   working classes which leads them to think themselves the real backbone
   of the country--a sturdy independence, it is sometimes called--but when
   it intrudes into religion it is nothing better than evil boasting!
   Pride is woven into man's nature.

   The prodigal became a prodigal through his love of independence. He
   desired his own portion of goods to do with as he liked. After he
   became a prodigal his time was occupied with spending--he spent his
   money riotously--he loved to play the fine gentleman and spend. Even
   when the prodigal came to himself, the old idea of paying was still
   with him and he desired to be a hired servant, so that if he could not
   pay in money he would pay in labor. We do not like to be saved by
   charity--and to have no corner in which to sit and boast. We long to
   make provision for a little self-congratulation! You insult a moral man
   if you tell him that he must be saved in the same way as a thief or a
   murderer--yet this is no more than the Truth of God! For a woman of
   purity to be told that the same Divine Grace which saved a Magdalene is
   necessary for her salvation is so humbling that her indignation is
   roused, and yet it is the fact--for in every case salvation is "without
   money and without price."

   Once more, all religions that have ever been in the world of manly
   making teach that the gifts of God are to be purchased or merited. Draw
   a line and you shall find the Gospel on the one side teaches Free
   Grace, but the whole ruck of false relig-ions--from heathenism down
   through Muslim to Popery--all demand a price for the promise of
   salvation! The Pharisee reckons that none can have it unless he shall
   wear a broad phylactery and fast twice in the week. The heathen will
   swing with a hook in his back, or roll over and over for hundreds of
   miles, or torture his body, or make great sacrifices at the altar of
   his idol. The Muslim has his pilgrimages and a host of meritorious
   prayers. As for the Papist, his religion is merit and payment from
   beginning to end--not only for the soul while it is yet in the body,
   but when it is departed--for by means of "masses" for the dead a tax is
   still exacted!

   Man would gladly bargain with God and make God's temple of mercy into
   an auction where each man bids as high as he can and procures salvation
   if he can reach a certain figure. But here stands the open-handed
   Gospel with all the treasures of infinite Grace unlocked, and all the
   granaries of Heaven with the doors taken off their hinges--and it
   cries--"Whoever will, let him come and take the water of life freely."
   It asks neither money nor price, nor anything of man! It magnifies the
   infinite Grace of the all-bounteous Father, in that He has mercy on
   whom He will have mercy, and reveals His Grace to the undeserving.

   Thus I have spoken upon the surprising nature of this fact. But I need
   to add that though I have thus shown grounds for our surprise, yet if
   men would think a little they might not be quite so unbelievingly
   amazed as they are. For, after all, the best blessings we have come to
   us freely. What price have you paid for your lives? And yet they are
   very precious. Skin for skin, yes, all that you have would you give for
   them! What price do you pay for the air you breathe? What price does a
   man pay for the blessed sunlight? I wonder they have not a game law to
   preserve the sunbeams so that the lords of the land, alone, might enjoy
   the genial rays--while the poor should be liable to punishment for
   poaching in pursuit of sunshine! No, they cannot pen in the sun's
   light! God has given it freely--and to the pauper it is as free as to
   the prince!

   Life and air and light come to us "without money and without price."
   And our faculties, too--who pays for eyesight? The eye which glances
   across the landscape and drinks in beauty, what toll does it pay? The
   ear which hears the

   song of the birds at dawn, what price is given for it? The senses are
   freely bestowed to us by God--and so is the sleep which rests them.
   Tonight when we lay our heads down upon our pillows the poor man's
   sleep shall be as sweet as the sleep of him who reclines on down. Sleep
   is the unbought blessing of Heaven, you cannot purchase it! All the
   mines of Potosi could not buy a wink--yet God gives it to the sea boy
   on the giddy mast.

   It is clear, then, that some of the best blessings we possess come to
   us by the way of free gift. Yes, and come to the undeserving, too, for
   the dew shall sparkle tomorrow upon the grass in the miser's field and
   the rain shall fall in due season upon the rising corn of the wretch
   who blasphemes his God. The influences which nurture wheat, barley and
   other fruits of the earth are given to the farm of the atheist as well
   as to the fields of the godly--they fall, alike, for the evil and for
   the good--for, "the Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are
   over all His works." We ought not, therefore, to be so surprised, after
   all, that the gifts of His Divine Grace are free!

   II. In the second place, dear Friends, I want to show you THE NECESSITY
   OF THE FACT mentioned in our text. There was a necessity that the gifts
   of the Gospel should be "without money and without price." A threefold
   necessity. First, from the Character of the Donor. It is God that
   gives. Oh, Sirs, would you have Him sell His pardons? The King of
   Kings--would you have Him vend forgiveness to the sons of men at so
   much per head? Would you have Him sell His Holy Spirit? And would you
   come like Simon Magus and offer money to Him for it?

   Would you have Him give to you as the reward of merit, adoption into
   His family, that you might become His sons, and brag, even in the halls
   of Heaven, that you climbed to this dignity by your own good works?
   Talk not so blasphemously proud! The great King has made a great
   supper--would you have Him demand a price for entrance and sit as a
   receiver at the gates of mercy--and stop each one who comes to see if
   he has brought a price to pay for entrance? No, no, it is not like our
   God! He deals not thus. When the prodigal came back, imagine the father
   keeping his son in quarantine to see if he had a clean bill of health!
   Imagine him saying, "My son, have you brought a gift to reconcile me?"

   The parable would be spoiled by the hint of such a thing! Its glory
   lies in the freeness of the Father's love which asked no questions, but
   pressed the repenting child to His bosom just as he was. God, the great
   Father, must not be so dishonored in your thoughts as to be conceived
   of as requiring a price of you! You displease Him when you think that
   you are to do something or feel something or bring something in your
   hands as a recommendation to Him. Can you picture Jesus going about
   Palestine selling His cures? Can you imagine Him saying to the blind
   beggar, "How much have you left of the alms of the charitable to give
   to Me for your eyesight?" Or saying to Martha and Mary, "Bring Me all
   you have and I will raise your brother, Lazarus."

   Oh, I loathe to speak of it! It makes me sick to imagine such a thing!
   How weary must the Lord be with your self-righteousness--with your
   attempts to traffic and to bargain with Him! Oh, Sirs, you are not
   dealing with your fellow men--you are dealing with the King of Kings,
   whose large heart scorns your bribes! Salvation must be given without
   price since it is God that gives! Again, it must be for nothing,
   because of the value of the blessing. As one has well said, "it is
   without price because it is priceless." You could not conceive of a fit
   price for the blessing, therefore it must be left without price. I will
   suppose, this morning, that I am sent here by high authority to sell a
   diamond worth ten thousand times as much as the Queen's crown jewels.

   It is a jewel worth a thousand millions of pounds! I am bound to sell
   it to you now, but I am sure you cannot purchase it at any price worthy
   of it. All you could offer would be so small a portion of its value
   that I would sooner give it away than lower the reputation of the jewel
   by taking such a trifle for it. The Gospel is so precious a thing that
   if it is to be bought, the whole world could not pay for it--and
   therefore if bought at all it must be without money and without price.
   It cost the Lord Jesus His blood--what have you to offer? What? Do you
   imagine that you can buy it with a few paltry works? God Himself must
   become a man and bleed, and die to bring pardon and eternal life to
   sinners! And do you think that your tears, bending your knees, gifts of
   money and emotions of your heart are to purchase this unpurchasable
   blessing? Oh, believe, because it is so rich, it must be given away if
   it is to belong to us!

   And there is another reason arising from the extremity of human
   destitution. The blessings of Divine Grace must be given "without money
   and without price," for we have no money or price to bring. I was, the
   other night, speaking to inquirers, and I put this matter in a very
   homely way, as I will again. I said, "I will suppose there is a
   terrible famine among you, as there is in India, and that all your
   money is gone--and that all of you together have not so much as a
   farthing between you. Now, I am sent with bread, and I want to sell it
   to you. I begin by saying, 'Well, of course, now that

   there is a famine we must make a little profit out of you. You must
   expect the price to be raised, but we will be very mod-erate--we will
   let you have it for a shilling a quarter loaf.'

   "You say, 'We do not find fault with the price, but we have not a
   farthing to pay you with. Oh, Sir, we cannot buy from you.' Well, well,
   we will reduce the price. You can have it at the ordinary price of
   household bread! Come, you cannot ask for anything more reasonable than
   this! Will you have it? 'It is not unreasonable,' you say, 'the price
   is a very proper one, but still it is useless to us. We would gladly
   purchase, but we have not a penny between us. What can we do?' Come,
   then, we will reduce the price a great deal more. We will let you have
   the best bread at two pence a quartern. Did you ever hear of bread at
   that rate? Surely you may fill your children's mouths every day at this
   price. 'Alas,' you cry, 'it is of no use! We cannot find even two
   pence.'

   "Well, now, we will bring the price down to one farthing a loaf--and
   who has ever heard of bread at that rate before? Still, with tears in
   your eyes, you cry to me, 'Oh, we can no more get it at a farthing than
   we could buy it at a shilling, for we have not a single farthing left.'
   Come, then, I must come down to you altogether--you shall have it for
   nothing. Take it, I say, for nothing and I will give you a piece into
   the bargain--I will give you something over and above weight. I see you
   wonder what I mean by that. Listen to these words--'Believe in the Lord
   Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved, and your house.' That is the
   piece over and above what you asked or even thought. Is not that good
   reasoning that God must give eternal life for nothing, because you have
   nothing which you could offer as a price?"

   If you are to have eternal life, no terms but those of Divine Grace
   will meet your case. Think, dear Friends, when the dying thief was
   hanging at the side of Christ--suppose the Lord Jesus Christ had made a
   rule that a man should live a holy life for a week and then should have
   the blessing. Why, the thief must have died unblest! Suppose that He
   had said to all men, it is absolutely essential that you join a Church
   and be baptized, or else I cannot save you? Then poor bedridden sinners
   must perish hopelessly! A Gospel for nothing suited the dying thief. "I
   admit it," says somebody. Ah, my Friend, then surely you cannot be in a
   worse condition!

   Some years ago I had a very high compliment paid me by a gentleman who
   intended an insult. He ridiculed my preaching and remarked that it
   would be eminently suited to the lowest class of the American slave.
   This I accepted as an honorable admission, for he who could reach and
   bless the black man will not preach in vain to white people. I have
   heard of a preacher of whom his detractors said that he might do very
   well to preach to old women. Ah, then, he will do for anybody! I
   suppose he would suit old women because they are on the borders of the
   grave and that it is where we all are--for we are all much nearer to
   the grave than we imagine. Free salvation suits the vilest of the vile
   and it is equally suitable for the most moral. If it is all for
   nothing, none can be so poor as to be excluded from hope! If it is to
   be had "without money and without price" no soul need be without it!

   Surely the price is brought low enough. The difficulty is that the
   price is too low for human pride--sinners will not come down to it.
   Whereas every other salesman finds that he cannot get his customers up
   to his price, my difficulty is that I cannot get my customers down to
   mine! They will still higgle and haggle to do something, be something,
   or promise something. Whereas here are the terms, and the only terms
   upon which Gospel grace is to be had--"without money and without
   price." You shall have it freely but God will have none of your
   bargaining! Take mercy--take it just as you are--you are welcome to it.
   But if you tarry till you are better, your very betterness will make
   you worse! If you wait until you are fit, your fancied fitness will be
   your unfitness!

   Your hunger is your fitness for food. Your nakedness is your fitness
   for clothing. Your poverty is your fitness for the riches of mercy.
   Your sin, your loathsomeness, your hardness of heart and obduracy do
   but make you fit objects for wondrous Divine Grace, and for the amazing
   transformation which Divine power can work in men! It is absolutely
   necessary that the blessings of Grace should be "without money and
   without price," and, glory be to God, they are!

   III. My third point is this--THE SALUTARY INFLUENCE OF THIS FACT. If it
   is "without money and without price," what then? Well, first, that
   enables us to preach the Gospel to every creature. Jesus Christ said,
   "Go you into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He
   that believes and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believes not
   shall be damned." If we had to look for some price in the hands of the
   creature, or some fitness in the mind of the creature, or some
   excellence in the life of the creature, we could not preach mercy to
   every creature--we should have to preach it to prepared creatures--and
   then that preparation would be the money and the price.

   I am sorry that some of my Brothers entertain the idea that the Gospel
   is to be preached only to certain characters. They dare not preach the
   Gospel to everybody--they try to preach it only to the elect. Surely,
   if the Lord meant them to make the selection He would have set a mark
   upon His chosen. As I do not know the elect and have no command to
   confine my preaching to them, but am bid to preach the Gospel to every
   creature, I am thankful that the Gospel is put in such a way--that no
   creature can be too poor, too wicked, or too vile to receive it--for it
   is "without money and without price." That is going to the very bottom!

   Surely, that takes in the most degraded, debased and despised of our
   race--whoever they may be! If before I preach the Gospel I have to look
   for a measure of fitness in a man, then I cannot preach the Gospel to
   any but those whom I believe to have the fitness. But if the Gospel is
   to be preached freely, with no conditions or demands for preparations
   or prerequisites--if this is the Gospel, that "whoever believes in
   Jesus is not condemned"--then may I go to the most degraded Bushmen, or
   savage Ashantees, or untameable Modocs and tell them the Good News! We
   may speak of mercy to harlots and thieves--and we may carry the
   gladsome message into the Guilt Garden and Hangman's Alley! We may
   penetrate the jungles of crime and cry with the same entreaty from
   Heaven--"Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his
   thoughts, and let him turn unto the Lord, for He will have mercy upon
   him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon." The fact that the
   mercy of God is "without money and without price" enables us, by His
   Grace, to preach it to every man, woman and child of woman born!

   Now, note secondly, that this fact has the salutary effect of excluding
   all pride. If it is "without money and without price," you rich people
   have not a half-penny worth of advantage above the poorest of the poor
   in this matter! Your station may be very respectable, but God is no
   respecter of persons! You may be numbered among the rank and fashion of
   society, but in God's esteem, one rank is as evil as another--and the
   fashion of all men passes away. Divine Grace comes to the Queen upon
   her throne and to the beggar in the street with this same
   message--"without money and without price." The pride of wealth is
   utterly abolished by the Gospel and so is the pride of merit! You have
   been so good and so charitable, and you are so excellent and so
   religious--and so everything that you ought to be--and you fancy that
   there must be some private entrance, some reserved door, for persons of
   your quality.

   But, Sirs, the gate is so strait that you must rub shoulders with
   thieves, drunkards and murderers if you are to enter eternal life!
   There is but one way and that is the way of Grace. "Where is boasting,
   then? It is excluded. By the law of works? No, but by the law of
   Grace." Those who are saved never sing, "well done," to themselves, but
   when they get to Heaven they glorify Grace alone--

   "Grace all the work shall crown Through everlasting days, It lays in
   Hea ven the topmost stone And well deserves the praise."

   What a slap in the face this is for human glorying and how much it
   needs it, for it is impudent to the last degree! "Surely, surely you
   make some distinction, Sir, between the excellent and the moral, and
   those who are openly criminal." Yes, I do make a great distinction when
   treating of our relations to one another, but we are now speaking of
   GRACE--and from the nature of things these distinctions are not
   available where mercy, not merit is the rule! To all men there is but
   one rule--"He that believes on Him is not condemned, but he that
   believes not is condemned already, because he has not believed on the
   Son of God."

   Again, another influence of the fact mentioned in our text is that it
   forbids despair. Despair, where are you? I have a ten-thonged whip with
   which to flog you away! "Without money and without price." Then who can
   despair? You are feeling in your pocket and you find nothing there--you
   do not need anything--salvation is "without money." You have been
   feeling in your heart and you find nothing there! You do not need
   anything before coming to Jesus, for His Grace is "without price." You
   have been looking back on your past history. It is all blank and black.
   That is true, but Jesus Christ came into the world to seek and to save
   that which was lost. But you cannot find a redeeming trait in your
   character! Ah, but God has found a Redeemer, mighty to save--and if you
   rest in Him, He will save you from your sins!

   Whoever you may be, if eternal life is to be had for nothing, you are
   not too poor to have it! It is impossible that you can have fallen too
   low for the Gospel, for "Jesus Christ is able to save to the uttermost
   them that come unto God by Him." I was, for a long while, pestered with
   this idea that I must have some extraordinary vision, or remarkable
   revelation, or singular experience and have something to tell, such as
   I had heard good people tell of. But when the glad tidings

   were made plain to me by the Holy Spirit, I was as if I had received a
   new revelation. "Look unto Me and be you saved, all the ends of the
   earth," sounded like a new song in my ears! My heart leaped for joy at
   the news.

   Christ was nailed to the Cross and I was to look at Him and be saved!
   Just as the serpent of brass was lifted on the pole and whoever looked
   was healed of the serpent bites, so was there, for me, eternal life and
   blessedness in looking to Jesus on the tree! Why did I not understand
   that before? Ah, why!? Why do not some of you understand it? I pray God
   the Holy Spirit make you see it this morning, for that is the great
   Truth of God which will save your soul! Everything for nothing! Christ
   Himself to be had for the asking. Surely this Truth should comfort the
   most desponding.

   Next it inspires with gratitude and that gratitude becomes the basis of
   holiness. Look here. This man is saved for nothing! His sin pardoned
   according to the free mercies of God! What do you think he says? "Oh,
   my God, my God, how have I belied You! How have I slandered You! As for
   You, You have always been merciful to me. You have blotted out my sins.
   You have made me Your child. You have given Your Son to be my Redeemer.
   My God, I love You! What can I do to show that my heart is wholly
   Yours?"--

   "Make me to run in Your commands, 'Tis a delightful road! Nor let my
   head, nor heart, nor hands Offend against my God."

   They say that a free Gospel will make men think lightly of sin. It is
   the death of sin! It is the life of virtue! It is the motive power of
   holiness and whenever it comes into the soul it begets zeal for the
   Lord--

   "Speak of morality! You bleeding Lamb, The best morality is love to
   You." The best morality springs out of gratitude for pardon, Divine
   Grace and lively hope received as the gifts of Heaven.

   Then note, again, that the receipt of salvation without money and
   without price engenders in the soul the generous virtues. What do I
   mean by that? Why, the man who is saved for nothing feels, first, with
   regard to his fellow men that he must deal lovingly with them. Has God
   forgiven me? Then I can freely forgive those who have trespassed
   against me. It is the first impulse of a soul which receives pardon
   from God to put away all enmity against his fellow men. I freely
   forgive the few pence that my fellow sinner owes me when I remember the
   thousand talents which were forgiven me by the infinite mercy of my
   God! The man who does not forgive has never been forgiven--but the man
   who has been freely forgiven at once forgives others.

   No, he goes beyond it--he says, "Now, my God has been so good to me, I
   will be good to others. And as God is good to the unthankful and the
   evil, even so will I be." When he finds that he has given his alms to
   an undeserving person, he does not, therefore, shrivel up within
   himself and say, "I will give no more." "Why," he asks, "does not God
   give life and light to men who are always cursing Him? Then I will
   bless the sons of men even if they curse me in return." This breeds in
   him a spirit of benevolence. He longs to see others saved and therefore
   he lays himself out to bring them to Jesus Christ. If he had bought his
   salvation, I dare say he might be proud of it and wish to keep it to
   himself--like a little aristocrat, he would not want every one of the
   democracy to intrude into his privileges. But since the Gospel came to
   him freely, he hears the Master say--"Freely you have received, freely
   give," and he goes forth to distribute the Bread of Life which Jesus
   Christ has so liberally put into his hands!

   So then, as to our God, the free gifts of Grace, working by the power
   and energy of the Holy Spirit, create in us the generous virtues
   towards God. Now we can say--

   "Loved of my God, for Him again With love intense I burn."

   When we know that Jesus has saved us, we feel we could lay down our
   lives for Him. Self-denial springs of this. Yes, the death of self
   comes out of a rich experience of free and Sovereign Grace Did the Lord
   love me when there was nothing to love in me? Did He love me with
   spontaneous love before the world began? Did He give His son to die for
   me, a guilty sinner, lost and ruined in the Fall? Then I will give all
   that I have to God, and feel that--

   "If I might make some reserve,

   And duty did not call

   I love my God with zeal so great

   That I would give Him all."

   This is the natural outgrowth of the grand doctrine of "without money
   and without price."

   And, lastly, Beloved, I cannot think of anything that will make more
   devout worshippers in Heaven than this. The purpose of God in seeking
   His Glory by the way of Redemption was evidently this. There were
   spirits in Heaven who could worship Him. There were angels who could
   adore Him and remain faithful to Him, but He wished to create beings
   who should be nearer to Him than angels, though also in a certain sense
   still further off. An angel is pure spirit, man is partly materialism.
   God resolved that a creature that should be both spirit and matter
   should be lifted up above angels, should come nearer to Himself than
   pure spirits have ever come--should, in fact, be related to Himself
   through His Son!

   Thus His Son became a Man, that God, being All in All, next to God
   should stand man, made to have dominion over all the works of His
   hands, with all things put under his feet. Now, observe, that unless
   there had been some exercise of Omnipotence which would have taken away
   the high attribute of free agency from man, we do not know of any other
   way in which God could secure the eternal obedience, the reverent love
   and the perpetual humility of such creatures as we have spoken of,
   except by a remarkable experience of redemption--so that they should
   forever know that everything they had was the undeserved gift of
   Sovereign Grace.

   When they look upon the crown and wave the palm, they remember that
   they were once snatched from the horrible pit and the miry clay. When
   they gaze upon their robes of splendor and stand before the Throne of
   God, peers of the universe, princes of the blood royal of Heaven, no
   pride will ever flit across their perfect souls because the memory of
   Redeeming Grace, dying love and blessings given without money and
   without price will keep them humble before the Lord. Oh, if they had
   given something, if they had done something, if they had merited
   something, this would have marred the whole, and left a gap whereby
   might enter the temptation to self-glory!

   Every child of God will know eternally that he is saved by Grace,
   Grace, Grace--from first to last--from beginning to end. And so,
   without constraint, except that which is found within their own bosoms,
   all the redeemed will forever magnify the Lord in such notes as these,
   "Worthy are You, O Lamb of God! For You were slain and have redeemed us
   unto God by Your blood, and have made us kings and priests unto God."
   May the Lord lead you all to receive His Divine salvation "without
   money and without price."

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Isaiah 55. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--199, 492, 552.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                  Saving Faith

   A Sermon

   (No. 1162-3)

   Delivered on Lord's Day Morning, March 15, 1874, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   Thy faith hath saved thee.'Luke 7:50; and Luke 18:42.

   I do not remember that this expression is found anywhere else in the
   Word of God. It is found in these two places in the Gospel by Luke, but
   not in any other Gospel. Luke also gives us in two other places a
   kindred, and almost identical expression, Thy faith hath made thee
   whole.' This you will find used in reference to the woman whose issue
   of blood had been staunched (Luke 8:48), and in connection with that
   one of the ten lepers who returned to praise the Saviour for the cure
   he had received (Luke 17:19). You will find the expression, Thy faith
   hath made thee whole' once in Matthew and twice in Mark, but you find
   it twice in Luke, and together therewith the twice repeated words of
   our text, Thy faith hath saved thee.' Are we wrong in supposing that
   the long intercourse of Luke with the apostle Paul led him not only to
   receive the great doctrine of justification by faith which Paul so
   plainly taught, and to attach to faith that high importance which Paul
   always did, but also to have a peculiar memory for those expressions
   which were used by the Saviour, in which faith was manifestly honoured
   to a very high degree. Albeit Luke would not have written anything
   which was not true for the sake of maintaining the grand doctrine so
   clearly taught by the apostle, yet I think his full conviction of it
   would help to recall to his memory more vividly those words of the Lord
   Jesus from which it could be more clearly learned or illustrated. Be
   that as it may, we know that Luke was inspired, and that he has written
   neither more nor less than what the Saviour actually said, and hence we
   may be quite sure that the expression, Thy faith hath saved thee,' fell
   from the Redeemer's lips, and we are bound to accept it as pure
   unquestionable truth, and we may repeat it ourselves without fear of
   misleading others, or trenching upon any other truth. I mention this
   because the other day I heard an earnest friend say that faith did not
   save us, at which announcement I was rather surprised. The brother, it
   is true, qualified the expression, and showed that he meant to make it
   clear that Jesus saved us, and not our own act of faith. I agreed with
   what he meant, but not with what he said, for he had no right to use an
   expression which was in flat contradiction to the distinct declaration
   of the Saviour, Thy faith hath saved thee.' We are not to strain any
   expression to make it mean more than the speaker intended, and it is
   well to guard words from being misunderstood; but on the other hand, we
   may not quite go so far as absolutely to negative a declaration of the
   Lord himself, however we may mean to qualify it. It is to be qualified
   if you like, but it is not to be contradicted, for there it stands, Thy
   faith hath saved thee.' Now we shall this morning, by God's help,
   inquire what was it that saved the two persons whose history will come
   before us? It was their faith. Our second inquiry will be what kind of
   faith was it which saved them? and then thirdly, what does this teach
   us in reference to faith?

   I. WHAT WAS IT THAT SAVED the two persons whose history we are about to
   consider?

   In the penitent woman's case, her great sins were forgiven her and she
   became a woman of extraordinary love: she loved much, for she had much
   forgiven. I feel, in thinking of her, something like an eminent father
   of the church who said, This narrative is not one which I can well
   preach upon; I had far rather weep over it in secret.' That woman's
   tears, that woman's unbraided tresses wiping the Saviour's feet, her
   coming so near to her Lord in such company, facing such proud
   cavillers, with such fond and resolute intent of doing honour to Jesus;
   verily, among those that have loved the Saviour, there hath not lived a
   greater than this woman who was a sinner. Yet for all that Jesus did
   not say to her, Thy love hath saved thee.' Love is a golden apple of
   the tree of which faith is the root, and the Saviour took care not to
   ascribe to the fruit that which belongs only to the root. This loving
   woman was also right notable for her repentance. Mark ye well those
   tears. Those were no tears of sentimental emotion, but a rain of holy
   heart-sorrow for sin. She had been a sinner and she knew it; she
   remembered well her multitude of iniquities, and she felt each sin
   deserved a tear, and there she stood weeping herself away, because she
   had offended her dear Lord. Yet it is not said, Thy repentance hath
   saved thee.' Her being saved caused her repentance, but repentance did
   not save her. Sorrow for sin is an early token of grace within the
   heart, yet it is nowhere said, Thy sorrow for sin hath saved thee.' She
   was a woman of great humility. She came behind the Lord and washed his
   feet, as though she felt herself only able to be a menial servant to
   perform works of drudgery, and to find a pleasure in so serving her
   Lord. Her reverence for him had reached a very high point; she regarded
   him as a king, and she did what has sometimes been done for monarchs by
   zealous subjects'she kissed the feet of her heart's Lord, who well
   deserved the homage. Her loyal reverence led her to kiss the feet of
   her Lord, the Sovereign of her soul, but I do not find that Jesus said,
   Thy humility hath saved thee;' or that he said, Thy reverence hath
   saved thee;' but he put the crown upon the head of her faith, and said
   expressly, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.'

   In the case of the blind man to whom my second text refers'this man was
   notable for his earnestness; he cried, and cried aloud, Son of David,
   have mercy on me.' He was notable for his importunity, for they who
   would have silenced him rebuked him in vain; he cried so much the more,
   Son of David, have mercy on me.' But I do not discover that Christ
   attributed his salvation to his prayers, earnest and importunate though
   they were. It is not written, Thy prayers have saved thee'; it is
   written, Thy faith hath saved thee.' He was a man of considerable and
   clear knowledge, and he had a distinct apprehension of the true
   character of Christ: he scorned to call him Jesus of Nazareth, as the
   crowd did, but he proclaimed him Son of David,' and in the presence of
   that throng he dared avow his full conviction that the humble man,
   dressed in a peasant's garb, who was threading his way through the
   throng, was none other than the royal heir of the royal line of Judah,
   and was indeed the fulfiller of the type of David, the expected
   Messiah, the King of the Jews, the Son of David. Yet I do not find that
   Jesus attributed his salvation to his knowledge, to his clear
   apprehension, or to his distinct avowal of his Messiahship; but he said
   to him, Thy faith hath saved thee,' laying the entire stress of his
   salvation upon his faith.

   This being so in both cases, we are led to ask, what is the reason for
   it? What is the reason why in every case, in every man that is saved,
   faith is the great instrument of salvation? Is it not first because God
   has a right to choose what way of salvation he pleases, and he has
   chosen that men should be saved, not by their works, but by their faith
   in his dear Son? God has a right to give his mercy to whom he pleases;
   he has a right to give it when he pleases; he has a right to give it in
   what mode he pleases; and know ye this, O sons of men, that the decree
   of heaven is immutable, and standeth fast forever''He that believeth
   and is baptised shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned.'
   To this there shall be no exception; Jehovah has made the rule and it
   shall stand. If thou wouldst have salvation, believe in the Lord Jesus
   Christ, and thou shalt be saved'; but if not, salvation is utterly
   impossible to thee. This is the appointed way; follow it, and it leads
   to heaven; refuse it, and thou must perish. This is God's sovereign
   determination, He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that
   believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed on the
   Son of God.' Jehovah's will be done. If this be his method of grace,
   let us not kick against it. If he determines that faith shall save, so
   let it be; only, Good Master, create and increase our faith.

   But while I attribute this to the sovereign choice of God, I do see,
   for Scripture plainly indicates it, a reason in the nature of things
   why faith should thus have been selected. The apostle tells us it is of
   faith that it might be of grace. If the condition of salvation had been
   either feeling or working, then, such is the depravity of our nature,
   that we should inevitably have attributed the merit of salvation to the
   working or the feeling. We should have claimed something whereof to
   glory. It matters not how low the condition may have been, man would
   have still considered that there was something required of him, that
   something came from him, and that, therefore, he might take some credit
   to himself. But no man, unless he be demented, ever claims credit for
   believing the truth. If he hears that which convinces him, he is
   convinced; and if he be persuaded, he is persuaded; but he feels that
   it could not well be otherwise. He attributes the effect to the truth
   and the influence used. He does not go about and boast because he
   believes what is so clear to him that he cannot doubt it. If he did so
   boast of spiritual faith, all thinking men would say at once, Wherefore
   dost thou boast in the fact of having believed, and especially when
   this believing would never have been thine if it had not been for the
   force of the truth which convinced thee, and the working of the Spirit
   of God which constrained thee to believe?' Faith is chosen by Christ to
   wear the crown of salvation because'let me contradict myself'it refuses
   to wear the crown. It was Christ that saved the penitent woman, it was
   Christ that saved that blind beggar, but he takes the crown from off
   his own head, so dear is faith to him, and he puts the diadem upon the
   head of faith and says, Thy faith hath saved thee,' because he is
   absolutely certain that faith will never take the glory to herself, but
   will again lay the crown at the pierced feet, and say, Not unto myself
   be glory, for thou hast done it; thou art the Saviour, and thou alone.'
   In order, then, to illustrate and to protect the interests of sovereign
   grace, and to shut out all vain glorying, God has been pleased to make
   the way of salvation to be by faith, and by no other means.

   Nor is this all. It is clear to every one who chooses to think that in
   order to the renewal of the heart, which is the chief part of
   salvation, it is well to begin with the faith; because faith once
   rightly exercised becomes the mainspring of the entire nature. The man
   believes that he is forgiven. What then? He feels gratitude to him who
   has pardoned him. Feeling gratitude, it is but natural that he should
   hate that which displeases his Saviour, and should love intensely that
   which is pleasing to him who saved him, so that faith operates upon the
   entire nature, and becomes the instrument in the hand of the
   regenerating Spirit by which all the faculties of the soul are put into
   the right condition. As a man thinketh in his heart so is he, but his
   thinkings come out of his believings; if he be put right in his
   believings, then his understanding will operate upon his affections,
   and all the other powers of his manhood, and old things will pass away,
   all things will become new through the wonderful effect of the faith,
   which is of the operation of God. Faith works by love, and through love
   it purifies the soul, and the man becomes a new creature. See ye then
   the wisdom of God? He may choose what way he will, but he chooses a way
   which at once guards his grace from our felonious boastings, and on the
   other hand produces in us a holiness which other wise never would have
   been there.

   Faith in salvation, however, is not the meritorious cause; nor is it in
   any sense the salvation itself. Faith saves us just as the mouth saves
   from hunger. If we be hungry, bread is the real cure for hunger, but
   still it would be right to say that eating removes hunger, seeing that
   the bread itself could not benefit us, unless the mouth should eat it.
   Faith is the soul's mouth, whereby the hunger of the heart is removed.
   Christ also is the brazen serpent lifted up; all the healing virtue is
   in him; yet no healing virtue comes out of the brazen serpent to any
   who will not look; so that the looking is rightly considered to be the
   act which saves. True, in the deepest sense it is Christ uplifted who
   saves, to him be all the glory; but without looking to him ye cannot be
   saved, so that

   There is life in a look,'

   as well as life in the Saviour to whom you look. Nothing is yours until
   you appropriate it. If you be enriched, the thing appropriated enriches
   you; yet it is not incorrect but strictly right to say it is the
   appropriation of the blessing which makes you rich. Faith is the hand
   of the soul. Stretched out, it lays hold of the salvation of Christ,
   and so by faith we are saved. Thy faith hath saved thee.' I need not
   dwell longer on that point. It is self-evident from the text that faith
   is the great means of salvation.

   II. WHAT KIND OF FAITH WAS IT that saved these people? I will mention,
   first, the essential agreements; and then, secondly, the differentia,
   or the points in which this faith differed in its external
   manifestations in the two cases.

   In the instances of the penitent woman and the blind beggar, their
   faith was fixed alone in Jesus. You cannot discover anything floating
   in their faith in Jesus which adulterated it; it was unmixed faith in
   him. the woman pressed forward to him, her tears fell on him; her
   ointment was for him; her unloosed tresses were a towel for his; feet
   she cared for no one else, not even for the disciples whom she
   respected for his sake; her whole spirit and soul were absorbed in him.
   He could save her; he could blot out her sins. She believed him; she
   did it unto him. The same was the case with that blind man. He had no
   thought of any ceremonies to be performed by priests; he had no idea of
   any medicine which might be given him by physicians. His cry was, Son
   of David, Son of David.' The only notice he took of others was to
   disregard them, and still to cry, Son of David, Son of David.' What
   wilt thou that I shall do unto thee?' was the Lord's question, and it
   answered to the desire of his soul, for he knew that if anything were
   done it must be done by the Son of David. It is essential that our
   faith must rest alone on Jesus. Mix anything with Christ, and you are
   undone. If your faith shall stand with one foot upon the rock of his
   merits, and the other foot upon the sand of your own duties, it will
   fall, and great will be the fall thereof. Build wholly on the rock, for
   if so much as a corner of the edifice shall rest on anything beside, it
   will ensure the ruin of the whole:'

   <>'None but Jesus, none but Jesus

   Can do helpless sinners good.'

   All true faith is alike in this respect.

   The faith of these two was alike in its confession of unworthiness.
   What meant her standing behind? What meant her tears, her everflowing
   tears, but that she felt unworthy to draw near to Jesus? And what meant
   the beggar's cry, Have mercy on me?' Note the stress he lays upon it.
   Have mercy on me.' He does not claim the cure by merit, nor ask it as a
   reward. To mercy he appealed. Now I care not whose faith it is, whether
   it be that of David in his bitter cries of the fifty-first Psalm, or
   whether it be that of Paul in his highest exaltation upon being without
   condemnation through Christ, there is always in connection with true
   faith a thorough and deep sense that it is mercy, mercy alone, which
   saves us from the wrath to come. Dear hearer, do not deceive yourself.
   Faith and boasting are as opposite to one another as the two poles. If
   you come before Christ with your righteousness in your hand, you come
   without faith; but if you come with faith you must also come with
   confession of sin, for true faith always walks hand in hand with a deep
   sense of guiltiness before the Most High. This is so in every case.

   Their faith was alike, moreover, in defying and conquering opposition.
   Little do we know the inward struggles of the penitent as she crossed
   the threshold of Simon's house. He will repel thee,' the stern, cold
   Pharisee will say, Get thee gone, thou strumpet; how darest thou defile
   the doors of honest men.' But whatever may happen she passes through
   the door, she comes to where the feet of the Saviour are stretched out
   towards the entrance as he is reclining at the table, and there she
   stands. Simon glanced at her: he thought the glance would wither her,
   but her love to Christ was too well rooted to be withered by him. No
   doubt he made many signs of his displeasure, and showed that he was
   horrified at such a creature being anywhere near him, but she took no
   notice of him. Her Lord was there, and she felt safe. Timid as a dove,
   she trembled not while he was near; but she returned no defiant glances
   for Simon's haughty looks; her eyes were occupied with weeping. She did
   not turn aside to demand an explanation of his unkind motions, for her
   lips were all engrossed with kissing those dear feet. Her Lord, her
   Lord, was all to her. She overcame through faith in him, and held her
   ground, and did not leave the house till he dismissed her with Go in
   peace.'

   It was the same with the blind man. He said, Son of David, have mercy
   on me.' They cried, Hush! Why these clamours, blind beggar? His
   eloquence is music; do not interrupt him. Never man spake as he is
   speaking. Every tone rings like the harps of the angels. Hush! How
   darest thou spoil his discourse?' But over and above them all went up
   the importunate prayer, Son of David, have mercy upon me,' and he
   prevailed. All true faith is opposed. If thy faith be never tried it is
   not born of the race of the church militant. This is the victory that
   overcometh the world, even our faith,' but it is indicated in that very
   declaration that there must be something to overcome, and that faith
   must wage war for its existence.

   Once more, the faith of these two persons was alike in being openly
   avowed. I will not say that the avowal took the same form in both, for
   it did not; but still it was equally open. There is the Saviour, and
   there comes the weeping penitent. She loves him. Is she ashamed to say
   so? It may bring her reproach; it will certainly rake up the old
   reproaches against her, for she has been a sinner. Never mind what she
   has been, nor who may be present to see her. She loves her Lord, and
   she will show it. She will bring the ointment and she will anoint his
   feet, even in the presence of Pharisees, Pharisees who would say, Is
   this one of the disciples of Christ? A pretty convert to boast of! A
   fine conquest this, for his kingdom! A harlot becomes a disciple! What
   next and what next?' She must have known and felt all that, but still
   there was no concealment. She loved her Lord, and she would avow it,
   and so in the very house of the Pharisee, there being no other
   opportunity so convenient, she comes forward, and without words, but
   with actions far more eloquent than words, she says, I love him. These
   tears shall show it; this ointment shall diffuse the knowledge of it,
   as its sweet perfume fills the room; and every lock of my hair shall be
   a witness that I am my Lord's and he is mine.' She avowed her faith.

   And so did the blind man. He did not sit there and say, I know he is
   the Son of David, but I must not say it.' They said, some of them
   contemptuously, and others indifferently, It is Jesus of Nazareth.' But
   he will not have it so. Thou Son of David,' saith he; and loud above
   their noise I hear him cry, like a herald proclaiming the King, Son of
   David.' Why, sirs, it seems to me he was exalted to a high office: he
   became the herald of the King, and proclaimed him, and this belongs to
   a high officer of State in our country. The blind beggar showed great
   decision and courage. He cried in effect, Son of David thou art; Son of
   David I proclaim thee; Son of David thou shalt be proclaimed, whoever
   may gainsay it; only turn thine eyes and have mercy upon me.' Are there
   any of you here who have a faith in Christ which you are ashamed of? I
   also am ashamed of you, and so also will Christ be ashamed of you when
   he cometh in the glory of his Father and all his holy angels with him.
   Ashamed to claim that you are honest? Then methinks you must live in
   bad company, where to be a rogue is to be famous; and if you are
   ashamed to say, I love my Lord,' methinks you are courting the
   friendship of Christ's enemies, and what can you be but an enemy
   yourself: If you love him, say it. Put on your Master's regimentals,
   enlist in his army, and come forward and declare, As for me and my
   house, we will serve the Lord.' Their faith was alike then in these
   four particulars, it was fixed alone on him, it was accompanied with a
   sense of unworthiness, it struggled and conquered opposition, and it
   openly declared itself before all comers.

   By your patience I shall now try to show the differences between the
   same faith as to its manifestations. First, the woman's faith acted
   like a woman's faith. She showed tender love, and the affections are
   the glory and the strength of women. They were certainly such in her.
   Her love was intense, womanly love, and she poured it out upon the
   Saviour. The man's faith acted like a man's in its determination and
   strength. He persisted in crying, Thou Son of David.' There was as much
   that was masculine about his faith as there was of the feminine in the
   penitent's faith, and everything should be in its order and after its
   season. It would not have been meet for the woman's voice to be heard
   so boldly above the crowd; it would have seemed out of place for a
   man's tears to have been falling upon the Saviour's feet. Either one or
   the other might have been justifiable, but they would not have been
   equally suitable. But now they are as suitable as they are excellent.
   The woman acts as a godly woman should. The man like a godly man. Never
   let us measure ourselves by other people. Do not, my brother, say, I
   could not shed tears.' Who asked thee to do so? A man's tears are
   mostly within, and so let them be: it is ours to use other modes of
   showing our love. And, my sister, do not say, I could not act as a
   herald and publicly proclaim the King.' I doubt not thou couldest do so
   if there were need, but thy tears in secret, and those wordless tokens
   of love to Jesus which thou are rendering, are not less acceptable
   because they are not the same as a man would give. Nay, they are the
   better because they are more suitable to thee. Do not think that all
   the flowers of God's garden must bloom in the same colour or shed the
   same perfume.

   Notice next that the woman acted like a woman who had been a sinner.
   What more meet than tears? What more fitting place for her than at the
   Saviour's feet? She had been a sinner, she acts like a sinner; but the
   man who had been a beggar acted like a beggar. What does a beggar do
   but clamour for alms? Did he not beg gloriously? Never one plied the
   trade more earnestly than he. Son of David,' said he, have mercy on
   me.' I should not have liked to have seen the beggar sitting there
   weeping; nor to have heard the penitent woman shouting. Neither would
   have been natural or seemly. Faith works according to the condition,
   circumstances, sex, or ability of the person in whom it lives, and it
   best shows itself in its own form, not in an artificial manner, but in
   the natural outflow of the heart.

   Observe, also, that the woman did not speak. There is something very
   beautiful in the golden silence of the woman, which was richer than her
   silver speech would have been. But the man was not silent; he spoke; he
   spoke out, and his words were excellent. I venture to say that the
   woman's silence spoke as powerfully as the man's voice. Of the two I
   think I find more eloquence in the tears bedewing, and unbraided hair
   wiping the Saviour's feet, than in the cry, Son of David, have mercy on
   me.' Yet both forms of expression were equally good, the silence best
   in the woman with her tears, and the speech best in the man with his
   confident trust in Christ. Do not think it necessary, dear friend, in
   order to serve, to do other people's work. What thine own hand findeth
   to do, do it with thy might. If you think you can never honour Christ
   till you enter a pulpit, it may be just possible that you will
   afterwards honour him best by getting out of it as quickly as you can.
   There have been persons well qualified to adorn the religion of Christ
   with a lapstone on their lap who have thought it necessary to mount a
   pulpit, and in that position have been a hindrance to Christ and his
   gospel. Sister, there is a sphere for you; keep to it, let none push
   you out of it; but do not think there is nothing else to do except the
   work which some other woman does. God has called her, let her follow
   God's voice; he calls you in another direction, follow his voice
   thither. You will be most like that other excellent woman when you are
   most different from her: I mean, you will be most truly obedient to
   Christ, as she is, if you pursue quite another path.

   There was a difference, again, in this. The woman gave'she brought her
   ointment. The man did the opposite'he begged. There are various ways of
   showing love to Christ, which are equally excellent tokens of faith. To
   give him of her ointment, and give him of her tears, and give him the
   accommodation of her hair, was well; it showed her faith, which worked
   by love: to give nothing, for the beggar had nothing to give, but
   simply to honour Christ by appealing to his bounty and his royal power,
   was best in the beggar. I can commend neither above the other, for I
   doubt not that both the penitent and the beggar gave Christ their whole
   heart, and what more does Jesus ask for from any one?

   The thoughts of the woman and the thoughts of the beggar were different
   too. Her thoughts were mainly about the past, and her sins'hence her
   tears. To be forgiven, that was her point. His thoughts were mainly
   about the present, and did not so much concern his sin as his
   deficiency, infirmity, and inability, and so he came with different
   thoughts. I do not doubt that he thought of sin, as I dare say she also
   thought of infirmity; but in her case the thought of sin was uppermost,
   and hence the tears; in his the infirmity was uppermost, and hence the
   prayer, Lord, that I might receive my sight.' Do not, then, compare
   your experience with that of another. God is a God of wonderful
   variety. The painter who repeats himself in many pictures has a paucity
   of conception, but the master artist scarcely ever sketches the same
   thing a second time. There is a boundless variety in genius, and God
   who transcends all the genius of men, creates an infinite variety in
   the works of his grace. Look not, therefore, for likeness everywhere.
   The woman, it is said, loved much, and she proved her love by her acts;
   but the man loved much too, and showed his love by actions which were
   most admirable, for he followed Jesus in the way, glorifying God. Yet
   they were different actions. I do not find that he brought any box of
   ointment, or anointed Christ's feet, neither do I find that she
   literally followed Christ in the way, though no doubt she followed him
   in the spirit; neither did she with a loud voice glorify God as the
   restored blind beggar did. There are differences of operation, but the
   same Lord; there are differences of capacity and differences of
   calling, and by this reflection I hope you will be enabled to deliver
   yourselves from the fault of judging one by another, and that you will
   look for the same faith, but not for the same development of it.

   So interesting is this subject that I want you to follow me while I
   very rapidly sketch the woman's case, and then the man's, not
   mentioning the differences one by one, but allowing the two pictures to
   impress themselves separately upon your minds.

   Observe this woman. What a strange compound she was. She was
   consciously unworthy, and therefore she wept, yet she drew very near to
   Jesus. Her acts were those of nearness and communion; she washed his
   feet with her tears, she wiped them with the hairs of her head, and
   meanwhile she kissed them again and again. She hath not ceased,' said
   Christ, to kiss my feet.' A sense of unworthiness, and the enjoyment of
   communion, were mixed together. Oh, divine faith which blends the two!
   She was shamefaced, yet was she very bold. She dared not look the
   Master in the face as yet; she approached him from behind; yet she
   dared face Simon, and remain in his room, whether he frowned or no. I
   have known some who have blushed in the face of Christ who would not
   have blushed before a judge, nor at the stake, if they had been dragged
   there for Christ's sake. Such a woman was Anne Askew, humble before her
   Master, but like a lioness before the foes of God.

   The penitent woman wept, she was a mourner, yet she had a deep joy; I
   know she had, for every kiss meant joy. Every time she lifted that
   blessed foot, and kissed it, her heart leaped with the transport of
   love. Her heart knew bitterness for sin, but it knew also the sweetness
   of pardon. What a mixture! Faith made the compound. She was humble,
   never one more so; yet see how she takes upon herself to deal with the
   King himself. Brethren, you and I are satisfied, and well we may be, if
   we may wash the saints' feet, but she was not. Oh, the courage of this
   woman! She will pass through the outer court, and get right to the
   King's own throne, and there pay her homage, in her own person, to his
   person, and wash the feet of the wonderful, the Counsellor, the mighty
   God. I know not that an angel ever performed such suit and service, and
   therefore this woman takes preeminence as having done for Jesus what no
   other being ever did. I have said that she was silent, and yet she
   spake; I will add, she was despised, but Christ set her high in honour,
   and made Simon, who despised her, to feel little in her presence. I
   will also add she was a great sinner, but she was a great saint. Her
   great sinnership, when pardoned, became the raw stuff out of which
   great saints are made by the mighty power of God. Finally she was saved
   by faith, so says the text, but if ever there was a case in which James
   could not have said, Shall faith save thee?' and in which he must have
   said, Here is one that shows her faith by her works,' it was the case
   of this woman. There she is before you. Imitate her faith itself,
   though you cannot actually copy her deeds.

   Now look at the man. He was blind, but he could see a great deal more
   than the Pharisees, who said they could see. Blind, but his inward
   optics saw the king in his beauty, saw the splendour of his throne, and
   he confessed it. He was a beggar, but he had a royal soul, and a strong
   sovereign determination which was not to be put down. He had the kind
   of mind which dwells in men who are princes among their fellows. He is
   not to be stopped by disciples, nay, nor by apostles. He has begun to
   pray, and pray he will till he obtains the boon he seeks. Note well
   that what he knew he avowed, what he desired he pleaded for, and what
   he needed he understood. Lord, that I might receive my sight;' he was
   clear about his needs, and clear about the only person who could supply
   them. What he asked for he expected, for when he was bidden to come he
   evidently expected that his sight would be restored, for we are told by
   another Evangelist that he cast away his beggar's cloak. He felt he
   should never want to beg again. He was sure his eyes were about to be
   opened. Lastly, what he received he was grateful for, for as soon as he
   could walk without a guide he took Christ to be his guide, and followed
   him in the way, glorifying him. Look on both pictures. May you have the
   shadows and the lights of both, as far as they would tend to make you
   also another and distinct picture by the selfsame artist, whose hand
   alone can produce such wonders.

   III. WHAT DOES THIS TEACH US IN REFERENCE TO FAITH? It teaches us first
   that faith is all important. Do, I pray you, my hearers, see whether
   you have the precious faith, the faith of God's elect. Remember there
   are not many things in Scripture called precious, but there is the
   precious blood, and there goes with it the precious faith. If you have
   not that you are lost; if you have not that you are neither fit to live
   nor fit to die; if you have not that, your eternal destiny will be
   infinite despair; but if you have faith, though it be as a grain of
   mustard seed, you are saved. Thy faith hath saved thee.'

   Learn next that the main matter in faith is the person whom you
   believe. I do not say in whom you believe. That would be true, but not
   quite so scriptural an expression. Paul does not say, as I hear most
   people quote it, I know in whom I have believed.' Faith believes
   Christ. Your faith must recognise him as a person, and come to him as a
   person, and rest not in his teaching merely, or his work only, but in
   him. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will
   give you rest.' A personal Saviour for sinners! Are you resting on him
   alone? Do you believe him? You know the safety of the building depends
   mainly upon the foundation, and if the foundation be not right, you may
   build as you will, it will not last. Do you build, then, on Christ
   alone? Inquire about that as a special point.

   Observe next, that we must not expect exactly the same manifestation in
   each convert. Let not the elders of the church expect it, let not
   parents require it from their children; let not anxious friends look
   for it; do not expect it in yourself. Biographies are very useful, but
   they may become a snare. I must not judge that I am not a child of God
   because I am not precisely like that good man whose life I have just
   been reading. Am I resting in Christ? Do I believe him? Then it may be
   the Lord's grace is striking out quite a different path for me from
   that which has been trodden by my brother, that it may illustrate other
   phases of its power, and show to principalities and powers the
   exceeding riches of divine love.

   And, lastly, the matter which sums up all is this, if we have faith in
   Jesus we are saved, and ought not to talk or act as if there were any
   question about it. THY FAITH HATH SAVED THEE.' Jesus says it. Granted,
   you have faith in Christ, and it is certain that faith hath saved you.
   Do not, therefore, go on talking and acting and feeling as if you were
   not saved. I know a company of saved people who say every Sabbath,
   Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners'; but they are not
   miserable sinners if they are saved, and for them to use such words is
   to throw a slight upon the salvation which Christ has given them. If
   they are saved sinners they ought to be rejoicing saints. What some say
   others do not say, but they act as if it were so. They go about asking
   God to give them the mercy they have already obtained, hoping one day
   to receive what Christ assures them is already in their possession,
   talking to others as if it were a matter of question whether they were
   saved or not, when it cannot be a matter of question. Thy faith hath
   saved thee.' Fancy the poor penitent woman turning round and saying to
   the Saviour, Lord, I humbly hope that it is true.' There would have
   been neither humility nor faith in such an expression. Imagine that
   blind man, when Christ said, Thy faith hath saved thee,' saying I trust
   that in future years it will be found to be so.' It would be a belying
   at once of his own earnest character and of Christ's honesty of speech.
   If thou hast believed, thou art saved. Do not talk as if thou wert not,
   but now down from the willows take thy harp, and sing unto the Lord a
   new song. I have noticed in many prayers a tendency to avoid speaking
   as if facts were facts. I have heard this kind of expression, The Lord
   hath done great things for us, whereof we desire to be glad.' The text
   is, The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad;' and
   if the Lord has done these great things for us our right is to be glad
   about them, not to go with an infamous if' upon our lips before the
   Lord who cannot lie. If ye are dealing with your fellow creatures,
   suspect them, for they mostly deserve it; if ye are listening to their
   promises, doubt them, for their promises go to be broken; but if ye are
   dealing with your Lord and Master, never suspect him, for he is beyond
   suspicion; never doubt his promises, for heaven and earth and hell
   shall pass away, but not one jot or tittle of his word shall fail. I
   claim for Christ that ye cast away forever all the talk which is made
   up of buts,' and ifs,' and peradventures,' and I hope,' and I trust.'
   You are in the presence of One who said, Verily, verily,' and meant
   what he said, who is the Amen, the faithful and true witness.'

   You would not spit in his face if he were here, yet your ifs' and buts'
   are so much insult cast upon his truth. You would not scourge him, but
   what do your doubts do but vex him and put him to shame? If he lies,
   never believe him; if he speaks the truth, never doubt him. Then shall
   ye know when ye have cast aside your wicked unbelief, that your faith
   has saved you, and ye will go in peace.

   PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'Luke 7:36-50; 18:35-43.

   HYMNS FROM OUR OWN HYMN BOOK''18 (Ver. 1.), 536, 586.
     __________________________________________________________________

Redemption and Its Claims

   (No. 1163)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING, MARCH 8, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "You are bought with a price." 1 Corinthians 6:20. "You are bought with
   a price." 1 Corinthians 7:23.

   THE same words are found in each place, though a different inference is
   drawn from them. "You are bought with a price." This morning's text
   was, "Without money and without price," [#1161] and to the best of my
   ability I tried to show how freely the blessings of the Gospel are
   bestowed upon the sons of men. But though they cost us nothing, they
   cost the Savior dearly. They are without price to us, but what a price
   He paid! Well did our poet put it in the remarkable verse which we
   sang--

   "There's never a gift His hand bestows But cost His heart a groan."

   Out of that fact grow certain most weighty practical Truths of God and
   I have chosen it as the subject of this evening's discourse that I may
   urge them upon your minds. May the Holy Spirit work graciously through
   the Word which you will hear and cause you to live as those who are
   redeemed with the precious blood of Christ.

   First, I shall have to say to you that redemption is our chief
   blessing--nothing better can be said of you than this, "You are bought
   with a price." Then I shall have to remind you that redemption on God's
   part becomes His paramount claim upon us. And thirdly, I shall have to
   show that this claim is remarkably extensive, and I shall urge you to
   admit it.

   I. First, then, "YOU ARE BOUGHT WITH A PRICE." To every man of whom
   this may be said, it is the best news he ever heard! An angel sent from
   Heaven could not bring to any man or woman a more delightful message
   than this, "You are bought with a price, even with the precious blood
   of Christ." "You are Christ's," says the Apostle in the chapter we read
   to you (1 Corinthians 3), and he seemed as if his heart glowed as he
   said it. He even made it the climax of a remarkable burst of eloquence.
   "Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours, whether
   Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things
   present, or things to come; all are yours; and you are Christ's; and
   Christ is God's."

   To be bought with a price is the grandest distinction of our manhood
   and lifts us above angels themselves! It puts great honor upon the
   saints, even as the Lord has said, "Since you are precious in My sight,
   you have been honorable and I have loved you." Redemption is a greater
   mercy than creation. It is no mean blessing to have been made and to
   have been made a man rather than a dog or a toad, or a worm--to have
   been blest with intellect, with a mind that can soar into the unseen, a
   judgment which can weigh, a memory which can retain, an imagination
   which can create and color thoughts of every kind. It is no little
   matter to be capable of a mental capacity which widens the sphere of
   existence, beliefs which open up the past and make us see the far-gone
   ages and hopes which relieve the darkness of the present with lamps
   borrowed from the future.

   It is a great thing to be a man and not a bird--a man with a soul which
   will never fall by the fowler's gun. It is a great thing to be an
   immortal man, to be a creature that shall live on forever, into whom
   God has dropped a spark of undying flame. It is a grand thing to have a
   spirit within us and not to be dumb driven cattle. But for all that,
   although man is highly elevated in the scale of being, and stands even
   at the very top of being as respects this world, having dominion over
   all the fowls of the air and the fish of the sea, and whatever passes
   through the paths of the sea--yet if you, O created man, are not
   redeemed, everything about you will only be turned into dust, so that
   it were better for you that a millstone had been tied about your neck,
   that you had been thrown into the depths of the sea, or even better for
   you that you had never been born, if you are not redeemed! "Bought with
   a price" makes existence life! To be unredeemed would make existence an
   endless death.

   Providence, also, is a short word, calling before our minds a great
   mass of mercies. But Providence is second in its blessedness to
   redemption. I would remind you of the inestimable blessings which the
   Providence of God has brought to many here present. It is no small
   thing to be in good health, no little thing to have your reason
   preserved. It is no minor blessing to have bread to eat and raiment to
   put on--and not to be distressed as many of the poorest of our Brethren
   are as to where they shall lay their heads--and where they shall find
   tomorrow's food. Some of us are surrounded with many comforts, and
   ought, every time we look at the bed on which we sleep at night, and
   the room in which we spend our days, sing unto God who has favored us
   so much--

   "Not more than others we deserve, But God has given us more."

   Look around you! Some of you have not only the necessities, but the
   luxuries of life. You are exceedingly favored in these things. But, oh,
   if you are not redeemed, what will it matter though you were clothed in
   scarlet and fine linen, and fared sumptuously each day, like Dives, and
   then should lift up your eyes in the flames of Hell? What would it
   matter, though you had the comeliness and majestic appearance of an
   Absalom, and yet over you a pious father would have to say, "Would God
   I had died for you! O Absalom, my son, my son!" What would it be to you
   to have been possessor of the world and to have called the seas your
   own, if you had no part or lot in the redemption of the Lord Jesus
   Christ and were never saved from wrath through Him? Redemption demands
   a louder note of gratitude than creation! Sweet as Providence must ever
   be to the Believer, yet redemption, redemption is the best wine kept
   unto the last--the last and best work of Heaven--the mirror in which
   the brightest attributes of Jehovah are most clearly reflected.

   This is the headstone of the corner, crowning the great temple of
   Divine Grace. "God so loved the world"--not as to make it fair and
   beautiful--that is not enough! "God so loved the world"--not so as to
   sustain it and give it day and night, and summer and winter--that is
   not enough! But the line that will fathom the depths of Divine Love is
   this--He "so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
   whoever believes in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life."
   Remember, dear Friends, that redemption is that which gives effect to
   all the other great blessings of

   God!

   I say, "great blessings," for I refer to spiritual blessings--all these
   need redemption to complete their design. For instance, election, the
   wellhead of Divine Grace, needs the conduit pipe of redemption to bring
   its streams down to sinners. We are chosen of God, but unto obedience,
   and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. The saints are chosen in Him--
   without Him of what good would election be? Where, also, would be our
   calling? Vain would it be to be called if there were no feast of dying
   love for us to be called to and no fountain filled with blood to which
   we might come at the call! Redemption is the fullness of all the
   blessings of God! They are like Gideon's fleece and redemption bedews
   them! It is the key of Heaven, the channel of Grace, the door of Hope.
   It constitutes our song in the house of our pilgrimage and will be the
   theme of our eternal music above.

   I would not fail to remind you, also, that redemption, at this moment,
   is the foundation of all the real peace that any man possesses. If you
   have any peace of mind worth having, you have found it at the foot of
   the Cross. If the tempest of your fears concerning the wrath of God has
   been quieted--there is only one voice which could have stilled its
   boisterous noise--it is the voice of Jesus. There is no peace apart
   from the blood of Jesus, unless it is that delusive peace which, like
   the solemn stillness which precedes the hurricane, is only the
   forerunner of destruction! All the peace you have is through redemption
   and all the security you have comes by the same way. You hope to be
   saved at the last. Your trust is that you shall die triumphantly and
   rise rejoicingly--but it is all through the blood of Jesus! Where were
   all the saints if it were not for redeeming Grace and dying love?
   Notwithstanding their professions, they are, without Christ, as a
   sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Piety has no root where
   redemption is unknown. Past experience and present enjoyment would melt
   away like the coating of morning's frost before the rising sun were it
   not that we are sealed by the precious blood of Christ! The Lord knows
   them that are His and will keep them securely to the end.

   But, oh, Beloved, there is one more Truth of God never to be forgotten!
   It is through Redeeming Grace that we expect to enter Heaven! In a few
   short weeks, or months, or, perhaps, years, you and I, who believe in
   Jesus, will be in Glory! We shall have done with these workdays here
   and shall have entered into the endless Sabbath! We shall be--

   "Where congregations never break up, And worship has no end."

   Our head shall soon wear the immortal crown and our hands shall bear
   the harp from which we will draw the richest music of praise! But our
   only hope to enter there is through the blood--and our only song shall
   be, "We have washed our robes and made them white in the blood of the
   Lamb." O you morning stars that sang together when a new-made world
   first revolved around the sun! O you wondering spirits who have often
   admired the Wisdom and the Justice of God in dealing with the sinful
   race of men, lift high your notes and sing yet sweeter songs concerning
   redemption! And let your wonder never cease that God should become Man
   and, as Man, should suffer, bleed, and die that He might redeem His
   people--that of them it might be said they were "bought with a price"!

   II. I have thus assured you all that redemption is our best blessing. I
   trust you will not rest without it. Now, I want

   to dwell upon the next point, namely, that therefore REDEMPTION IS THE
   LORD'S PARAMOUNT CLAIM UPON

   US. Paul does not say, "You are not your own, for God made you." That
   is true of all things that are--cattle, the trees, the dust of the
   earth as well as regenerated man. He does not say, "You are not your
   own for God created you." That would be true of the devil and his
   angels, and of the whole race of rebellious men.

   Neither does he say, "You are not your own for God preserves you." That
   would be most true, for God, who keeps the breath in our nostrils,
   ought to have our praise. But that also would be true of all creatures,
   even of the most wicked. But there is a special point here, "You are
   not your own--you are bought," not merely made and preserved, but
   bought and, "bought with a price." You who are children of God, you
   were bought as the devils never were, for Jesus never died to save
   them! "He took not up angels, but He took up the seed of Abraham." You
   are bought as the ungodly were not, for they remain the slaves of Satan
   and are not redeemed from their vain conversation received by tradition
   from their fathers. They have rejected the purchase price--they remain
   unredeemed from their slavery to sin.

   But you have been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, as of a
   lamb without blemish and without spot! And therefore Christ lays His
   pierced hand upon you and says, "You are Mine." Your King sets the
   broad arrow on you and marks you tonight as royal property. There was
   one possession which Jacob had which he greatly valued and which he
   gave to his darling son, Joseph, "because," he said, "I took it out of
   the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow." You, also, are
   the possession which Christ values beyond everything, because He has
   delivered you out of the hand of sin and Satan by His own sufferings
   and death--and because of this He has the highest conceivable right of
   property in you. He is not merely your Creator and Preserver, but He is
   your Redeemer and, therefore, if all the world should refuse Him
   homage, and all men should revolt from Him, and even if the angels
   should desert His standard, yet you must not, for you are bought with a
   price. Other claims are forcible, but this claim is overwhelming. Other
   bands are strong, but these cords of love are invincible. The love of
   Christ constrains us.

   Now let us look at this claim. Think, Beloved, what you were bought
   from. You were a slave and you have been redeemed! You were a slave to
   sin. Remember that. Perhaps there was a time when you could rap out an
   oath as well as anybody and when the pleasures of this world and the
   lusts thereof were sweet morsels under your tongue. How did you come to
   be saved from bad habits and filthy passions? You are bought with a
   price! You are the Lord's freeman! You have broken those chains, but
   not by your power. You have been bought with a price, for "you were not
   redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain
   conversation, received by tradition from your fathers; but with the
   precious blood of Christ." There is a redemption from sin!

   Then you have been redeemed from the punishment of sin. You had begun
   to feel that. You were full of doubts and fears and dreadful
   apprehensions of God's wrath. You felt as if Hell had begun in you. It
   is not so now, the blood of redemption has spoken peace and you are no
   more afraid. Well do I remember when the flames of Hell burned in my
   soul, as far as they could in this human life, yes, they dried up my
   spirit and parched up my heart, so that my soul chose strangling rather
   than life! It was such a wretched thing to live.

   But it is not so now, blessed be God! We are redeemed from remorse and
   despair, and set free from the horrible sense of guilt! In a little
   time we should have been in Hell--but since we have believed we never
   shall come into the place of torment--for sin is forgiven and the sense
   of sin is removed. We can say in the words of our text of last Sunday
   night, "Who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died, yes, rather,
   that has risen again, who sits at the right hand of God, who also makes
   intercession for us." We are redeemed from sin, from remorse, and from
   Hell itself! And now, at this moment, we are redeemed from the avenging
   justice of God. Jesus Christ has borne our sins in His own body on the
   tree, and by the merit of His death has forever rendered compensation
   to the injured honor of Divine Justice. He has magnified the

   Law and made it honorable so that the Law, itself, can ask no more of a
   sinner for whom Christ has died, for Christ has paid to the Law all
   that Justice could demand.

   Oh, think of that! Rejoice, Beloved, that you are redeemed from sin,
   and death, and Hell and the claims of unbending Justice--and surely you
   will feel that there is a claim upon you that you should be the Lord's.
   Reflect most lovingly upon that dear Friend who bought you out of iron
   bondage, who it was that redeemed you! You have not been redeemed by an
   angel. Dear would the angelic name have been had it been so! But angels
   were powerless in this grand affair. Who stooped to pick you up, O
   insect of a day? Who stooped to save you? Who but He who bears earth's
   huge pillars up and spreads the heavens abroad? The Son of God,
   Omnipotent, Eternal and Infinite, has fallen in love with the fallen
   sons of man--and for them has donned the garment of human flesh and in
   that flesh has suffered to the death--and died a most shameful death
   upon the gallows of Calvary!

   Oh, tell it everywhere that Jesus Christ, who is God over all, blessed
   forever, has redeemed us! And after that, who will say that we do not
   belong to Him? Then think of the price He paid. The text does not tell
   us about it, and surely the reason for its silence is to be found in
   the fact that words cannot express the mighty sum. "You are bought. You
   are bought with a price." Sometimes it is best, when you cannot say
   what you would, to say nothing at all. The famous painter, when he drew
   the picture of Agamemnon at the sacrifice of his daughter, felt that he
   could not depict the sorrow of the father's countenance and therefore
   he wisely put a veil over it, and represented him as hiding his face
   from the fearful sight.

   So the Apostle seems to have felt, "I cannot tell you all that Jesus
   suffered so I will leave it. You are bought with a price." Now, turn
   that over lovingly. Muse on it devoutly till your hearts burn like
   coals ofjuniper! "A price!" The price was God born at Bethlehem as a
   man and then living 30 years and more in poverty and contumely,
   suffering in Gethsemane till sweat of blood fell on the ground--falsely
   accused, ridiculed, spit upon, buffeted, mocked, scourged, nailed to
   the Cross, left there to die--while, in His soul, the great millstone
   of Jehovah's Wrath crushed His spirit as in an olive-press till His
   heart was broken and His spirit melted within Him like wax.

   Only God knows the sufferings of the Son of God--well does the Greek
   liturgy pour forth that mysterious plea, "By Your unknown sufferings,
   good Lord, deliver us," for unknown they were. O you saints were,
   indeed, bought with a price, and I charge you, by the agony and bloody
   sweat, by the Cross and passion, acknowledge the fact that you belong
   to Jesus! Confess that He bought you with an incalculable price! You
   are His and would not wish to question that Divine purchase which is
   the groundwork of your hope. You must not, cannot dispute the sacred
   claims which Jesus has upon you--rather should you cry, "O Son of
   David, we are Yours and all that we have."

   There is yet this further consideration, that the purchase price of
   every child of God has been fully paid. I have seen lands which have
   belonged to men who were reputed to be rich, but there was a heavy
   mortgage upon them so that, though they called them theirs, they were
   scarcely so. But there is no mortgage on the saints! There is no debt
   to be demanded in future ages either of us or of our Redeemer. "It is
   finished," said the Savior, and finished it is. He has bought you and
   He has paid for you. Are you not His? There is not one single good work
   of yours needed to complete the merit, or a single pang of suffering
   required from you to perfect the Atonement. You are perfect in Christ
   Jesus.

   Well, then, if the price is paid so fully, are we not completely and
   fully the Lord's? I will say this one thing very solemnly to you, and
   then leave the point. Beloved, if you are ready to confess that you
   were bought with a price, you must be equally ready to acknowledge that
   you cannot be your own, but belong to Him who bought you. Mark you, if
   the first is not true, then the second does not press. But if the first
   is true, namely, that Christ redeemed you, then the second is just as
   true, namely, that you are His and must live as His, or otherwise you
   are defrauding Him. If you are prepared to give up your redemption, you
   may also throw away your allegiance to Christ. But if you are not
   willing to give up redemption by the blood--and I trust you are not,
   for that is to give up everything--then you must also agree to this,
   that you are not your own, or any other man's, but belong wholly to
   Christ.

   And for that cause you are bound to render Him your whole self, spirit,
   soul and body. It is only your reasonable service, for every reasonable
   man expects to have what he has paid for. If Jesus has paid dearly for
   your soul and if it is confessed that it is His, then let Him have it
   and be not so base as to rob Christ of the reward of His heart's blood!
   "Will a man rob God?" Will you rob your Redeemer? Will you steal from
   Him the purchase of His agonies and deprive Him of

   that which it cost Him His life to buy? The claim is strong, but only
   gracious hearts will feel it. O blessed Spirit, cause us to feel it
   deeply, now, and evermore to act under its constraining power!

   III. This brings me to the third point, which is, as I have proved the
   Redeemer's claim--to show THE EXTENT OF IT--the claim of redemption is
   comprehensive. If you will kindly read the context of my first text you
   will see that it includes the body and the soul, "Glorify God in your
   body and your spirit, which are God's." There the Apostle speaks,
   first, of the body. Young man, read that passage when you get home,
   will you? I cannot read it now, but if you profess to be a Christian,
   remember that this body of yours is holy and it will rise again from
   the dead. I charge you, by the blood of Christ, never defile this body
   either by drunkenness or by lust.

   If it were the body of a common man, I would say to you, for your own
   sake, avoid these evils. But if you are a Christian I have a stronger
   argument, for your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Mark how
   strongly the Apostle puts it and try to feel the force of his words.
   You young men who come to London amidst its vices, read this passage
   and shun everything that is akin to lewdness, or leads to
   unchastity--for your bodies were bought with your Lord's lifeblood--
   and they are not yours to trifle with. Shun the strange woman, her
   company, her wine, her glances, her house, her songs and her resorts.
   Your bodies are not yours to injure by self-indulgence of any sort.
   Keep them pure and chaste for that heavenly Bridegroom who has bought
   them with His blood.

   And then your soul is bought, too. I was obliged to mention the body
   because it is mentioned here and it is so necessary it should be kept
   pure. But keep the soul pure, too. Christ has not bought these eyes
   that they should read novels, such as are published nowadays,
   calculated to lead me into vanity and vice. Christ has not bought this
   brain of mine that I may revel in the perusal of works of blasphemy and
   filthiness. He has not given me a mind that I may drag it through the
   mire with the hope of washing it clean, again, as some seem to do who
   imagine it to be the right thing to be always defiling themselves with
   skepticism and heresy that they may afterwards come to some minister to
   help them out of the dirt, or some wise friend to scrub the filth off.
   There will be enough of dust in going along the best roads--there is no
   need to go and roll in every dirt heap which foolish atheists and proud
   skeptics choose to put in the way. Do not defile your mind--it belongs
   to God--it is bought with the blood of Jesus.

   Your whole manhood belongs to God if you are a Christian. Every
   faculty, every natural power, every talent, every possibility of your
   being, every capacity of your spirit--all were bought. It would be an
   awful thing for you if there were any part of you left out of the
   inventory. That would be a cursed part of the fabric of your being! But
   it is all bought with blood, if you are, indeed, a redeemed man or
   woman. Therefore keep the whole for Jesus, for it belongs to Him. The
   Apostle draws from the fact that we are bought with a price in my first
   text, the inference, "You are not your own." It is clear as the sun at
   noon that if you are bought you are not your own.

   Now, if I am not my own, what does that negative declaration imply? It
   means, first, that I may not claim the right to do as I like. I am not
   my own. If I were my own I might do what I pleased. But I am not my
   own. I am not to do what I please, but what Christ pleases. I am to
   please my Lord and Master in everything. My question in life is not how
   shall I get the most happiness to myself, but how can I bring the most
   honor to Him? I am not my own--then I am not to follow my own passions.
   If I were my own I might fling the bridle on my neck and go where I
   want and no longer restrain my passions. But since I am not my own, I
   must not. I cannot live after the flesh. Unless I am false to Him that
   bought me, I dare not obey the bidding of my corruptions.

   Neither, if I am not my own, may I follow my own tastes if in any way I
   should so bring grief to the people of God or dishonor to the name of
   Christ. I think, dear Brothers and Sisters, that one of the best tests
   of a Christian is that he will not only do no wrong, but he will not do
   that which might lead others to do wrong. Many things are lawful to us
   which are not expedient. And often the Christian will say to himself,
   "Such a thing I think I might do if I were Alexander Selkirk on a
   desert island and nobody saw me. But insomuch as there are others who
   will take occasion to go beyond this act of mine--and weak ones who
   will be scandalized by what I do--God forbid I should make my Brother
   or Sister to offend, for I am not my own. If I were my own master and
   had not my Lord and His cause to consider, I might do a thousand
   things. But I will deny myself many lawful things for His sake and the
   sake of His Church, for I am not my own. I will deny myself even
   allowable things that I may manifest that I do not belong to myself,
   but to Him."

   I am not my own. Then I must not trust my own reasonings. If I were my
   own teacher, then, of course, I should learn my lessons from my own
   book. But I have a Rabbi, even Jesus, and I am resolved with meekness
   to learn of Him. I

   thought I was wise, once, but now I have become a little child, and I
   love to sit at Jesus' feet to learn of Him, for I have surrendered my
   reason to Him. I believe what He teaches me because He says so. His
   ipse dixit stands to me instead of argument, for what He says must be
   true. I am not my own and so I must not seek my own ends. I must not
   live in this world that I may get rich, or that I may be famous. I may
   trade and get riches, but it must be that I may use them for Him. I
   have a family to be kept. Yes, I must give my family to Christ, and
   then work to keep Christ's family--and so shall I be working for
   Christ.

   It is not my business to support myself, for the Lord is my Shepherd,
   but the Lord supports me through my own exertions and therefore do I,
   even in common labor, serve Him. "Having food and raiment," I shall be
   content. And I shall live to do good to the poor, and to the Church of
   God, and to my fellow men. When He sends me riches I shall take my
   alabaster box and break it, and pour it on His head, and never count my
   treasures so well used as when I give them up to Him. If, like Joseph
   of Arimathea, the Believer possessed a new tomb, where man never lay,
   prepared for himself--he would count it best used if his Lord deigned
   to use it for His burial. Gladly would he lend his chamber for Jesus to
   keep the Passover, or his animal that his Lord might ride into
   Jerusalem--for the saint holds all things ready at his Master's beck
   and call. His life is consecration. He has vowed unto the Lord, "I will
   work for Him. I will suffer for Him. I will write for Him, I will live
   for Him--I will even die for Him--by some means or other I will show
   that I am not my own, or anything that I have."

   Oh, Brothers and Sisters, I would not like to have an unconsecrated
   hair on my head, or an unconsecrated hour of the day, or an
   unconsecrated faculty! Every mental power which God has given to a man
   ought to be used for God's cause. No faculty which is essentially
   natural to us may be excused from bowing its neck to the yoke of the
   Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes when I have said a humorous thing in
   preaching I have not asked you to excuse me, for if God has given me
   humor I mean to use it in His cause. Many a man has been caught, his
   ear arrested and his attention won by a quaint remark. If anyone can
   prove it is a wickedness, and not a natural faculty, I will abandon it.
   But it is a faculty of nature and it ought to be consecrated and used
   for the cause of Christ! Whatever you can do, if it is a right thing to
   do, and God has made it a characteristic of your being, do it for
   Jesus! If you cannot speak like Mr. Moody, sing like Mr. Sankey--but
   somehow or other help to promote the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ,
   for you are not your own, "You are bought with a price."

   In my second text the Apostle brings forth another inference. Read the
   seventh chapter at the 23rd verse--"You are bought with a price; be not
   you the servants of men." By which he means this--As you are not to
   live for yourself, so you are not to make yourself the slave of other
   men and give your powers up to any but to the Lord Jesus Christ. Do not
   even follow good men slavishly. Do not say, "I am of Paul. I am of
   Apollos. I am of Calvin. I am of Wesley." Did Calvin redeem you? Did
   Wesley die for you? Who is Calvin and who is Wesley but ministers by
   whom you believed as the Lord gave unto you? Do not so surrender
   yourself to any leadership that you rather follow the man than his
   Master. I will follow anybody if he goes Christ's way, but I will
   follow nobody, by the Grace of God, if he does not go in that
   direction.

   Do not pin your faith to anybody's sleeve. Keep close to the Lord Jesus
   Christ. You are bought with a price--do not be the servants of men. Do
   not give yourselves up to party spirit. It is a pity when a man cares
   only for politics--when the one grand thing he lives for is to return a
   Liberal to Parliament, or to get in a Radical, or to lift a Tory to the
   top of the poll. To live for a political party is unworthy of a man who
   professes to be a Christian! The most advanced politics beneath the sun
   are nothing compared with living for the bleeding Savior and spending
   one's self for the promotion of the immortal principles of the Cross.
   We are not to give ourselves up to any scientific speculation,
   educational effort, or to any philanthropic enterprise so as to divert
   our minds from the grand old cause of Jesus and our God!

   A story is told of one of the early saints--I think it was Jerome--that
   he dreamed that he died and went to the gates of Heaven, and they said
   to him, "Who are you?" And he said, "I am Jerome, a student of
   Scripture." And they said to him, "No, you are not. You are one Jerome,
   a student of Cicero," for he had been much more accustomed to the study
   of Cicero and the great Latin writers than to the reading of the
   Scriptures. He dreamed, therefore, he was not permitted to enter
   Heaven. And upon waking from his dream he put aside his classic books
   to make the Word of God the main study of his life. Alas, there are a
   great many people in the world who do not live for Christ! They are
   living for something else. The main thing with them is often a trifle
   light as air--a pursuit of the most infinite value.

   I heard once a great Divine saying to another great Divine that he had
   spent a most important day on Snowdon--he considered it one of the most
   successful days of his life. Being in their line, myself, I wondered
   what great revival services had been held on Snowdon, among the
   Welshmen. The eminent ecclesiastic said he had been many years on the
   watch, but had never, till that day, been able to satisfy himself! I
   wondered if he had been in prayer, watching for the conversion of the
   Welsh people. He said he found three different kinds of them and was
   now sure they were quite distinct. Did he mean three kinds of religious
   inquirers whose cases he had, at last, been able to understand?

   Not he! He had been speaking of three species of beetles which he had
   met with after a day's searching. The minister of Christ had much joy
   over three beetles, but probably cared little for repenting sinners.
   And I am afraid there are many who spend their time in trifles as small
   as that and, perhaps, far less innocent. Everything is a trifle to a
   man who is a Christian except the glorifying of Christ. "Felix has
   driveled into an ambassador," said good old William Carey, when they
   told him that his son Felix had been made ambassador from the British
   court to the court of Burmah. He had been a poor missionary, before,
   and now they had made him a great ambassador. But his father said, "He
   has driveled into an ambassador."

   If a man who lives for Jesus and preaches the Gospel could suddenly be
   transformed into the Emperor of Germany, it would be a frightful
   come-down for him! To live for Jesus is the highest style of man! God
   grant we may realize that--for we are bought with a price. If we do not
   belong to man, it follows that we ought not to follow the fashions of
   the world. Some people must be in fashion, cost what it may--out of the
   fashion they feel they might as well be out of the world. It is almost
   death to them if they cannot dress and act after the manner of society.
   Therefore they run into extravagance, pride, show and folly. The pride
   of life eats them up. When fashions go wrong it should be the
   Christian's fashion to go against the fashion. Let no man be your
   master! If you have masters according to the flesh, serve them with all
   faithfulness, as becomes you, giving unto them diligent service--but as
   to any master over your spirit, allow no one to be so--consciences were
   made for God alone! Bow not down your heart and conscience before man,
   but be free, for, "you are bought with a price."

   To close. We are, then, it seems, wholly Christ's. Christ, then, my
   Brothers and Sisters, if we are as we should be, is Lord of our time.
   We may not say, "I have an hour of my own to waste." It is Christ's
   time. He is Lord of our household. We do not claim to be paramount
   there, but we say, "Lord, these are Your children. Help us to bring
   them up for You. Our household is Yours, Lord, grant that by family
   prayer and by holy example we may make our family to be 'Holiness to
   the Lord.'" You will go out to business and say, "This business is not
   mine. It is my Master's." You will not trade in any dishonest way if
   you do that. It will be holy trading. The farmer goes to the field and
   says, "This is the Redeemer's field, and what profit I shall make from
   it is His profit." If he feels in that way his actions will be kind,
   generous, right and God-fearing.

   I would that every young man felt, "If I have talents they are God's
   talents, to be used for Him." Young men will join clubs and societies,
   and become most energetic members. But when they join Churches, very
   often we get the distinguished honor of having their names on the book
   to encumber the Church roll, and not much more. That is not right if
   they belong to Jesus. Christian people ought, in all they do, to be
   looking out for opportunities of serving Christ. I have heard of a Jew,
   who, going forth to trade and having a choice between two towns, asked,
   "Where is the synagogue?" and when he had found there was a synagogue
   in one town and not in the other, he gave the preference to that in
   which he could worship with his brethren. It ought to be so with the
   Christian! But often Christian men forget even to inquire about such
   matters.

   They make money and go and live out of London, and where do they select
   their residence? They say, "Here is a beautiful view, and a respectable
   neighborhood." But there is no place of worship where they can take
   their children and where they can go, themselves--does that always
   influence them? I fear not. They look to other matters first. I have
   known them go to places where they could not possibly get any good--and
   they have not even tried to do any. I like to hear a Christian man say,
   "There is a destitute village. Now, if I live there I may build a
   little place of worship and so I may do good." This is an object worth
   aiming at--and if the wealthy Christians of England, when they remove
   from large centers of population--would always set to work to try and
   spread the Gospel round about where they live, they would be like seed
   sown in the ground or like salt scattered among society to preserve the
   land.

   Our first aim in life should be to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. I am
   afraid I am rapping some of you a little hard, or perhaps you will call
   it treading on your corns. You should not have corns, you know, and
   then I could not tread upon them. If you are not doing right and
   anything I say comes close to stepping on your corns, it should! Dear
   Brother, try to mend. Find not fault with the preacher because he finds
   out your faults. Go and amend. There came into this house some years
   ago a dear Brother, an earnest Christian young man. I was preaching
   some such sermon as this and he felt that he had not been living for
   Christ. He went back to the city where he lived and he began to preach
   in the streets. He continued to preach and God blessed him, and he
   developed into an earnest and talented servant of our Lord Jesus
   Christ, whose name is very dear to you all. One of the best days' work
   I ever did was to be the means of calling him out to such a service! Is
   there not some young man of that kind here, tonight?

   May there not be here present a Christian woman, with ability, and
   talent, and education who ought to be teaching young women, and doing
   good, and bringing them to the Savior? My dear Sister, you are not your
   own--you are not your own. If you were, I think you would be quite
   right in taking your ease on Sunday and making yourself comfortable in
   the week. But you are not your own. You are not your own. The blood of
   Jesus has bought every particle of you. Will you not devote yourself to
   Him? Will you not pray to make your consecration more practical than it
   has been up to now, from this time forth? The sacred blood mark is on
   every part of your spirit and your body--do not try to hide it. Give up
   all to Jesus that while you live, and when you die, you may fight a
   good fight and finish your course, and have it said to you, "Well done,
   good and faithful servant."

   O you who know nothing about being bought with a price, you will be
   lost unless you do know it! If Christ has not bought you, Hell will
   receive you, and despair will be your portion! May God grant you to
   know the power of redemption through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord!
   Amen. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--1 Corinthians 3. HYMNS FROM
   "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--658, 663, 660.
     __________________________________________________________________

Now, A Sermon for Young Men and Young Women

   (No. 1164)

   DELIVERED ON THURSDAY EVENING, MARCH 19, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Son of man, behold, they of the house of Israel say, The vision that
   he sees is for many days to come, and he prophesies of the times that
   are far off" Ezekiel 12:27.

   ONE would have thought that if the glorious Lord condescended to send
   His servants to speak to men of the way of salvation, all mankind would
   delight to hear the message. We should naturally conclude that the
   people would immediately run together in eager crowds to catch every
   word--and would at once be obedient to the heavenly command. But, alas,
   it has not been so! Man's opposition to God is too deep, too stubborn
   for that. The Prophets of old were compelled to cry, "Who has believed
   our report?" and the servants of God in later times found themselves
   face to face with a stiff-necked generation who resisted the Holy
   Spirit as their fathers did.

   Men display great ingenuity in making excuses for rejecting the message
   of God's love. They display marvelous skill, not in seeking salvation,
   but in fashioning reasons for refusing it. They are dexterous in
   avoiding Divine Grace and in securing their own ruin. They hold up,
   first, this shield and then the other to ward off the gracious arrows
   of the Gospel of Jesus Christ which are only meant to slay the deadly
   sins which lurk in their bosoms. The evil argument which is mentioned
   in the text has been used from Ezekiel's day right down to the present
   moment, and it has served Satan's turn in tens of thousands of cases.
   By its means men have delayed themselves into Hell.

   The sons of men, when they hear of the great Atonement made upon the
   Cross by the Lord Jesus, and are bid to lay hold upon eternal life in
   Him, still say concerning the Gospel, "The vision that he sees is for
   many days to come, and he prophesies of times that are far off." That
   is to say, they pretend that the matters of which we speak are not of
   immediate importance, and may safely be postponed. They imagine that
   religion is for the weakness of the dying and the infirmity of the
   aged, but not for healthy men and women.

   They meet our pressing invitation, "All things are now ready, come to
   the supper," with the reply, "Religion is meant to prepare us for
   eternity, but we are far off from it as yet, and are still in the
   heyday of our being. There is plenty of time for those dreary
   preparations for death. Your religion smells of the vault and the worm.
   Let us be merry while we may. There will be room for more serious
   considerations when we have enjoyed life a little, or have become
   established in business, or can retire to live upon our savings.
   Religion is for the sere and yellow leaf of the year's fall, when life
   is fading, but not for the opening hours of spring, when the birds are
   pairing and the primroses smiling upon the returning sun. You prophesy
   of things that are for many days to come, and of times that are far
   off."

   Very few young people may have said as much as this, but that is the
   secret thought of many. And with this they resist the admonition of the
   Holy Spirit, who says, "Today, if you will hear His voice, harden not
   your hearts." They put off the day of conversion as if it were a day of
   tempest and terror, and not, as it really is, a day most calm, most
   bright-- the marriage of the soul with Heaven. Let every unconverted
   person remember that God knows what his excuse is for turning a deaf
   ear to the voice of a dying Savior's love! You may not have spoken it
   to yourself so as to put it into words. You might not even dare to do
   so, lest your conscience should be too much startled--but God knows it
   all.

   He sees the hollowness, the folly and the wickedness of your excuses.
   He is not deceived by your vain words, but makes short work with your
   apologies for delay. Remember the parables of our Lord and note that
   when the man of one talent professed to think his Master a hard man, He
   took him at his word and out of his own mouth condemned him! And in the
   case of the invited guests who pleaded their farms and their
   merchandise as excuses, no weight was attached to what they said, but
   the sentence went forth, "None of these men that are bidden shall taste
   of My supper." God knows

   the frivolity of your plea for delay. He knows that you, yourself, are
   doubtful about it, and dare not stand to it so as to give it anything
   like a solemn consideration.

   Very hard do you try to deceive yourself into an easy state of
   conscience concerning it, but in your inmost soul you are ashamed of
   your own falsehoods. My business at this time is, by the aid of the
   Holy Spirit, to deal with your consciences and to convince you even
   more thoroughly that delay is unjustifiable, for the Gospel has present
   demands upon you, and you must not say, "The vision that he sees is for
   many days to come, and he prophesies of the times that are far off."

   I. For, first, granted for a moment that the message we bring to you
   has most to do with the future state, yet, even then, the day is not
   far of--neither is there so great a distance between now and then that
   you can afford to wait. Suppose that you are spared for threescore
   years and ten! Young man, suppose that God spares you in your sins till
   the snows of many winters shall whiten your head? Young woman, suppose
   that your now youthful countenance shall still escape the grave until
   wrinkles are upon your brow? Still, how short will your life be! You,
   perhaps, think 70 years a long period, but those who are 70, in looking
   back, will tell you that their age is as an hand's breadth!

   I, who am but 40, feel at this time that every year flies more swiftly
   than the last! And months and weeks are contracted into twinkling of
   the eyes. The older one grows, the shorter one's life appears. I do not
   wonder that Jacob said, "Few and evil have the days of the years of my
   life been," for he spoke as an extremely old man. Man is short-lived
   compared with his surroundings--he comes into the world and goes out of
   it--as a meteor flashes through yonder skies which have remained the
   same for ages. Listen to the brook which murmurs as it flows and the
   meditative ear will hear it warble--

   "Men may come and men may go, But I go on forever."

   Look at yonder venerable oak, which has, for 500 years, battled with
   the winds--what an infant one seems when reclining beneath its shade!
   Stand by some giant rock which has confronted the tempests of the ages
   and you feel like the insect of an hour! There are persons here tonight
   of 70 years of age who look back to the days of their boyhood as if
   they were but yesterday! Ask them, and they will tell you that their
   life seems to have been little more than a wink of the eye-- it has
   gone like a dream, or a lightning's flash--

   "What is life? 'tis but a vapor, Soon it vanishes away."

   Therefore do not say, "These things are for a far-off time." for even
   if we could guarantee to you the whole length of human existence, it is
   but a span.

   And there comes upon the heels of this a reflection never to be
   forgotten--that not one man among us can promise himself, with anything
   like certainty, that he shall ever see threescore years and ten! We may
   survive and by reason of strength we may creep up to fourscore
   years--yet not one of us can be sure that he shall do so--the most of
   us will assuredly be gone long before that age. No, we cannot promise
   that we shall see half that length of time! You young men and women
   cannot be certain that you shall reach middle life. Let me check
   myself! What am I talking of? You cannot be certain that you will see
   this year out and hear the bells ring in a new year! Yes, close upon
   you as tomorrow is, boast not yourselves of it, for it may never come.
   Or, should it come, you know not what it may bring forth to
   you--perhaps a coffin or a shroud.

   Yes, and this very night, when you close your eyes and rest your head
   upon your pillow, reckon not too surely that you shall ever again look
   on that familiar chamber, or go forth from it to the pursuits of life.
   It is clear, then, that the things which make for your peace are not
   matters for a far-off time. The frailty of life makes them necessities
   of this very hour. You are not far from your grave--you are nearer to
   it than when this discourse began. Some of you are far nearer than you
   think. To some, this rejection comes with remarkable emphasis, for your
   occupation has enough of danger about it, every day, to furnish Death
   with a hundred roads to convey you to his prison in the sepulcher! Can
   you look through a newspaper without meeting with the words, "total,"
   or, "sudden death"?

   Traveling has many dangers and even to cross the street is perilous.
   Men die at home and many, when engaged about their lawful callings, are
   met by death. How true is this of those who go down to the sea in
   ships, or descend into the heart of the earth in mines! But, indeed, no
   occupations are secure from death--a needle can kill as well as a
   sword--a scald, a burn, a fall may end our lives quite as readily as a
   pestilence or a battle. Does your business lead you to climb a

   ladder? It is not a very perilous matter, but have you never heard of
   one who missed his footing and fell, never to rise again? You work
   amidst the materials of a rising building--have you never heard of
   stones that have fallen and have crushed the workers?--

   "Dangers stand thick through all the ground

   To push us to the tomb,

   And fierce diseases wait around

   To hurry mortals home."

   Notwithstanding all that can be done by sanitary laws, fevers are not
   unknown and deadly strokes which fell men to the ground in an instant,
   as a butcher slays an ox, are not uncommon. Death has already removed
   many of your former companions. You have ridden into the battle of life
   like the soldiers in the charge at Balaclava. And, young as you are in
   this warfare, you have seen saddles emptied right and left around you.
   You survive, but death has grazed you. The arrow of destruction has
   gone whizzing by your ear to find another mark! Have you never wondered
   why it spared you? Among this congregation there are persons of
   delicate constitution. It grieves me to see so many fair daughters of
   our land with the mark of consumption upon their cheeks.

   Full well I know that lurid flame upon the countenance and that strange
   luster of the eyes--signs of exhausting fires feeding upon life and
   consuming it too soon! Young men and women, many of you, from the
   condition of your bodily frames, can only struggle on till middle
   life--and scarcely that--for beyond 30 or 40 you cannot survive. I fear
   that some of you have, even in walking to this place, felt a suspicious
   weariness which argues exhaustion and decline. How can you say, when we
   talk to you about preparing to die, that we are talking about things
   that are far off? Dear Souls, do not be so foolish! I implore you, let
   these warnings lead you to decision! Far be it from me to cause you
   needless alarm, but is it needless? I am sure I love you too well to
   distress you without cause--and is there not cause enough?

   Come now, I press you most affectionately, answer me and say, does not
   your own reason tell you that my anxiety for you is not misplaced?
   Ought you not, at once, lay to heart your Redeemer's call and obey your
   Savior's appeal? The time is short! Catch the moments as they fly and
   hasten to be blessed. Remember also, once again, that even if you knew
   that you should escape from accident and fever and sudden death, yet
   there is one grand event that we too often forget, which may put an end
   to your day of mercy all of a sudden. Have you never heard of that
   Jesus Christ of Nazareth who was crucified on Calvary, died on the
   Cross, and was laid in the tomb? Do you not know that He rose again the
   third day? And that after He had spent a little while with His
   disciples, He took them to the top of the Mount of Olives and there,
   before their eyes, ascended into Heaven, a cloud hiding Him from their
   view?

   Have you forgotten the words of the angels, who said, "This same Jesus
   who is taken up from you into Heaven shall so come in like manner as
   you have seen Him go into Heaven"? Jesus will certainly come a second
   time to judge the world! Of that day and of that hour knows no man--no,
   not the angels of God! He will come as a thief in the night to an
   ungodly world! They shall be eating and drinking, and marrying and
   giving in marriage just as they were when Noah entered into the
   ark--and they knew not until the Flood came and swept them all away! In
   a moment--we cannot tell when! Perhaps it may be before the next words
   escape my lips--a sound far louder than any mortal voice will be heard
   above the clamors of worldly traffic--yes, and above the roaring of the
   sea.

   That sound as of a trumpet will proclaim the day of the Son of Man.
   "Behold, the Bridegroom comes: go you out to meet Him," will sound
   throughout the Church. And to the world there will ring out this
   clarion note, "Behold, He comes with clouds, and every eye shall see
   Him, and they, also, which crucified Him." Jesus may come tonight! If
   He were to do so, would you, then, tell me that I am talking of far-off
   things? Did not Jesus say, "Behold, I come quickly!" and has not His
   Church been saying, "Even so, come Lord Jesus"? His tarrying may be
   long to us, but to God it will be brief. We are to stand hourly
   watching and daily waiting for the coming of the Lord from Heaven! Oh,
   I pray you do not say that the Lord delays His coming, for that was the
   language of the wicked servant who was cut in pieces, and it is the
   mark of the mockers of the last days, that they say, "Where is the
   promise of His coming?"

   Be you not mockers, lest your bands be made strong, but listen to the
   undoubted voice of prophecy and of the Word of God, "Behold, I come
   quickly." "Be you, also, ready, for in such an hour as you think not
   the Son of Man comes." Now, then, it is clear enough that even if the
   Gospel message did concern only our life in another world, yet still it
   is unwise for men to say, "The vision is for many days to come, and he
   prophesies of the times that are far off."

   II. But, secondly, I have to remind you that our message really deals
   with the present. The blessings of the Gospel have as much to do with
   this present life as with existence beyond the tomb. For observe,
   first, we are sent to plead with you, young men and women, and tenderly
   to remind you that you are, at this hour, acting unjustly and unkindly
   towards your God. He made you and you do not serve Him. He has kept you
   alive and you are not obedient to Him. He has sent the Word of His
   Gospel to you and you have not received it. He has sent His only
   begotten Son and you have despised Him. This injustice is a thing of
   the present--and the appeal we make to you about it is that in all
   reason such conduct should come to an end. Oh, may God's Holy Spirit
   help you to end it!

   If I feel that I have done any man an injustice, I am eager to set it
   right. I would not wait till tomorrow. I wish to make amends with him
   at once. Yes, and even when I have forgotten to render assistance to
   some needy widow, I chide myself and feel uneasy till I have attended
   to the matter. Do you not feel the same? Would you willfully wrong or
   neglect another? I feel sure you would not! How is it, then, that you
   can be content to be unjust to God? Cruel to the dear Lover of the
   souls of men? And antagonistic to the loving pleadings of the Holy
   Spirit? That first chapter of Isaiah--you remember it, how striking it
   is! Why, if men had hearts that were at all tender it would break them!
   Read it--"Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth. I have nourished and
   brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me. The ox knows
   his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but Israel does not know; My
   people do not consider."

   It is the wail of God Himself over man's unkindness to his Maker! Young
   man of honor, young man of integrity, does nothing speak to your
   conscience in this? "Will a man rob God?" You would not rob your
   employer! You would not like to be thought unfaithful or dishonest
   towards man! And yet your God, your God, your God--is He to be treated
   so basely, notwithstanding all His goodness? As Jesus said, "For which
   of these works do you stone Me?" So does Jehovah say, "I have made you.
   I have kept the breath in your nostrils. I have fed you all your life
   and for which of all these good things do you live without Me, and
   neglect Me, and perhaps even curse My name? For which of these do you
   sin with a high hand against My sacred Law?"

   Now, can you think it right to remain in so wantonly unjust a course of
   life as this? Can it be right to continue to wrong your God and grieve
   His matchless love? Provoke Him no more, I pray you! Let conscience
   lead you to feel that you have dealt ill with the Lord. Come to Him for
   forgiveness and change of heart! O Spirit of God, make this appeal to
   be felt by these beloved young men and women! Again, our message has to
   do with the present, for we would affectionately remind you that you
   are now at enmity with your best Friend--the Friend to whose love you
   owe everything! You have grieved Him and are, without cause, His enemy!
   Can you bear this thought? I know a little child who had done something
   wrong and her kind father talked to her, and at last, as a punishment,
   he said to her in a very sad voice, "I cannot kiss you tonight, for you
   have grieved me very much."

   That broke her little heart. Though not a stroke had been laid upon
   her, she saw sorrow in her dear father's face and she could not endure
   it. She pleaded and wept and pleaded again to be forgiven. It was
   thought wise to withhold the kiss, and she was sent to bed, for she had
   been very wrong. But there was no sleep for those weeping eyes and when
   mother went up to that little one's chamber she heard frequent sobs and
   sighs, and a sorrowful little voice said, "I was very, very naughty,
   but pray forgive me, and ask dear Father to give me a kiss." She loved
   her father and she could not bear that he should be grieved.

   Child of mercy. Erring child of the great Father of spirits, can you
   bear to live forever at enmity with the loving Father? "Would He
   forgive me?" you ask. What makes you ask the question? Is it that you
   do not know how good He is? Has He not portrayed Himself as meeting His
   prodigal son and falling upon his neck and kissing him? Before the
   child had reached the Father, the Father had reached the child! The
   Father was eager to forgive, and therefore, when the son was yet a
   great way off his Father saw him and ran, and had compassion. Say no
   longer that we are talking of things of a far-off time! It is not so. I
   am speaking of that which, I pray, may be true to you tonight, that you
   may not remain enemies to God even another hour, but now may become His
   dear repenting children and fly into your tender Father's arms!

   I have to remind you, however, of much more than this, namely, that you
   are this night in danger. On account of your treatment of God and your
   remaining an enemy to Him, He will surely visit you in justice and
   punish you for your transgressions. He is a just God and every sin
   committed is noted in His book--there it stands recorded for His
   Judgment Day. The danger you are in is that you may, this moment, go
   down into the Pit--and while sitting in that pew may bow your head in
   death and appear before your Maker in an instant--to receive the just
   reward of your sins. We

   come to tell you that there is immediate pardon for all the sins of
   those who will believe in the Lord Jesus Christ--and that if you will
   believe in Jesus, your sins, which are many--are all forgiven you!

   Don't you know the story (you have heard it many times) that the Lord
   Jesus took upon Himself the sins of all who trust Him, and suffered, in
   their place, the penalty due to their sins? He was our Substitute, and
   as such He died, the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God. He laid
   down His life for us, that "whoever believes in Him should not perish,
   but have everlasting life." Will you refuse the salvation so dearly
   purchased but so freely presented? Will you not accept it here and now?
   Can you bear the burden of your sins? Are you content to abide for a
   single hour in peril of eternal punishment? Can you bear to be slipping
   down into the open jaws of Hell as you now are? Remember, God's
   patience will not last forever! You have provoked Him long enough!

   All things are weary of you. The very earth on which you stand groans
   beneath the indignity of bearing a sinner upon its surface! So long as
   you are an enemy to God, the stones of the field are against you and
   all creation threatens you. It is a wonder that you do not sink at once
   to destruction! For this cause we would have you pardoned now and made
   free from Divine wrath now. The peril is immediate! May the Lord grant
   that the rescue may be so. Do I hear you ask, "But may pardon be had at
   once? Is Jesus Christ a present Savior? We thought that we might,
   perhaps, find Him when we came to die, or might obtain a hope of mercy
   after living a long life of seeking."

   It is not so. Free Grace proclaims immediate salvation from sin and
   misery! Whoever looks to Jesus at this very moment shall have his sins
   forgiven! At the instant he believes in the Lord Jesus, the sinner
   shall cease to be in danger of the fires of Hell. The moment a man
   turns his eyes of faith to Jesus Christ he is saved from the wrath to
   come. It is present salvation that we preach to you--and the present
   comfort of that present salvation, too! Many other reasons tend to make
   this weighty matter exceedingly pressing. And among them is this--there
   is a disease in your heart, the disease of sin--and it needs immediate
   cure.

   I do not hear persons say, if they discover an incipient disease in
   their systems, that they will wait a while till the evil is more fully
   developed, and will then resort to a physician. The most of us have
   sense enough to try to check disease at once. Young man, you have a
   leprosy upon you! Young woman, you have a dreadful malady within your
   heart! Do you not desire to be healed now? Jesus can give you immediate
   healing if you believe in Him. Will you hesitate to be made whole? Do
   you love your mortal malady? Is hideous sin so dear to you? O that you
   would cry to be saved immediately, then Jesus will hear you! His Spirit
   will descend upon you and cleanse you. He will give you a new heart and
   a right spirit, yes, and make you whole from this time forward and
   forever! Can you wish to have so great a blessing postponed? Surely a
   sick man can never be cured too soon.

   The Gospel which we preach to you will also bring you present
   blessings. In addition to present pardon and present justification, it
   will give you present regeneration, present adoption, present
   sanctification, present access to God, present peace through believing
   and present help in time of trouble! And it will make you, even for
   this life, doubly happy. It will be wisdom for your way, strength for
   your conviction and comfort for your sorrow. If I had to die like a dog
   I would still wish to be a Christian. If there were no
   hereafter--though the supposition is not to be tolerated--yet let me
   live for and with Jesus, my beloved Lord! Balaam chose the righteous
   man's death. I choose it, too. But quite as much do I choose the
   righteous man's life, for to have the love of God in the heart, to have
   peace with God, to be able to look up to Heaven with confidence and
   talk to my heavenly Father in childlike trustfulness is a present joy
   and comfort worth more than worlds!

   Young men and women, in preaching the Gospel to you, we are preaching
   that which is good for this life as well as for the life to come. If
   you believe in Jesus you will be saved now, on the spot, and you will
   now enjoy the unchanging favor of God, so that you will go your way,
   from now on, not to live as others do, but as the chosen of God,
   beloved with special love, enriched with special blessings, to rejoice
   every day till you are taken up to dwell where Jesus is. Present
   salvation is the burden of the Lord's message to you and therefore it
   is not true, but infamously false, that the vision is for many days to
   come, and the prophecy for times that are far off.

   Is there not reason in my pleadings? If so, yield to them! Can you
   answer these arguments? If not, I pray you cease delaying. Again would
   I implore the Holy Spirit to lead you to an immediate decision.

   III. My third point is that I shall not deny, but I shall glory,
   rather, in admitting that the Gospel has to do with the future. Albeit,
   that it is not exclusively a Revelation for far-off times, yet it is
   filled with glorious hopes and bright

   prospects concerning things to come. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has to
   do with the whole of a young person life. If you receive Jesus Christ
   you will not merely have Him tonight, but that faith by which you
   receive Him will operate upon your whole existence throughout time and
   eternity.

   Dear young Friends, if you are saved while yet you are young, you will
   find religion to be a great preventive of sin. What a blessing it is
   not to have been daubed with the slime of Sodom--never to have had our
   bones broken by actual vice! Many who have been saved from a life of
   crime will, nevertheless, be spiritual cripples for life! To be
   snatched out of the vortex of vice is cause for great gratitude, but to
   have been kept out of it is better! It is doubly well, if the Grace of
   God comes upon us while we are still untainted by the pollution of the
   world, and have not gone into excess of riot. Before dissolute habits
   have undermined the constitution and self-indulgence has degraded the
   mind--it is, above all things, well to have the heart renewed!
   Prevention is better than cure, and Grace gives both.

   Thank God that you are still young--pray earnestly that you may now
   receive Divine Grace to cleanse your way by taking heed, according to
   His Word. Grace will also act as a preservative as well as a
   preventive. The good thing which God will put in you will keep you. I
   bless God I have not to preach a temporary salvation to you at this
   time. That which charmed me about the Gospel when I was a lad was its
   power to preserve from sinning. I saw some of my school companions who
   had been highly commended for their character. They were a little older
   than myself and became sad offenders when they left home. I used to
   hear sad stories of their evil actions when they had gone to London to
   be apprenticed, or to take positions in large establishments.

   And I reasoned, thus, with myself--"When I leave my father's house I
   shall be tempted, too, and I have the same heart that they have.
   Indeed, I have not been even as good as they have been. The
   probabilities are, therefore, that I shall plunge into sin as they have
   done." I felt horrified with that. I could not bear that I should cause
   my mother to shed tears over a dissolute son, or break my father's
   heart with debauchery. The thought could not be endured and when I
   heard that whoever believed in the Lord Jesus Christ should be saved, I
   understood that he would be saved from sinning, and I laid hold upon
   Jesus to preserve me from sin--and He has done it! I committed my
   character to Christ and He has preserved me to this day. And I believe
   He will not let me go. I recommend to you, young men and women, a
   character-insurance in the form of believing in Jesus Christ!

   Dear young woman, may that modest cheek of yours never need to blush
   for shameful deeds. May your delicate purity of feeling never be lost
   through gross defiling sin--but remember, it may be so unless the Lord
   keeps you. I commend to you the blessed preserving power of faith in
   Christ Jesus which will secure for you the Holy Spirit to dwell in you
   and abide in you, and sanctify you all your days. I know I speak to
   some who shudder at the thought of vice. Trained as you have been by
   Christian parents and under the holiest influences, you would rather
   die than act as some who disgrace their father's name. I know you
   would. But you must not trust your own hearts. You may yet become as
   bad as others or worse than they unless your natures are renewed--and
   only Jesus Christ can do that--by the power of the Holy Spirit. Whoever
   believes in Him has passed from death unto life. He shall not live in
   sin, but he shall be preserved in holiness even to the end.

   My dear young Friends, if God shall be pleased to change your hearts
   tonight, as I pray He may, you will be prepared for the future. You
   have not fully entered into the battle of life. You have your way to
   make, your professions and trades to choose. You, young women, are
   still under the parental wing. You have domestic relationships to form.
   Now, consider how well prepared you will be for life's work and service
   if you give your hearts to Jesus. Young man, you will be the right man
   to enter a large establishment--with the Grace of God in your heart you
   will be a blessing there. Though surrounded by her snares in this
   wicked city, the strange woman will hunt in vain for your precious
   life. And other vices will be unable to pollute you.

   Young woman, you will have wisdom to choose for your life's companion
   no mere fop and fool, but one who loves the Lord as you will do--with
   whom you may hope to spend happy and holy days! You will have placed
   within yourself resources of joy and pleasure which will never fail.
   There will be a well of Living Water within you which will supply you
   with joy and comfort and consolation--even amid trial and distress. You
   will be prepared for whatever is to come. A young Christian is fit to
   be made an emperor or a servant, if God shall call him to either post.
   If you want the best materials for a model prince, or a model peasant,
   you shall find it in the child of God! Only, mark you, the man who is a

   child of God is less likely to sink into utter destitution because he
   will be saved from the vices of extravagance and idleness which are the
   frequent causes of poverty.

   And, probably, on the other hand, he is less likely to become a prince,
   for seldom has God lifted His own children to places so perilous. You
   will be ready, young man, for any future, if your heart is right with
   God. And know when I think of you, and of what the Lord may make of
   you, I feel an intense respect, as well as love, for you. I hope none
   of us will be lacking in respect to old age--it is honorable and it is
   to be esteemed and reverenced--but I feel frequently inclined to do
   homage to our youth. When a celebrated tutor entered his schoolroom, he
   always took off his hat to his boys, because, he said, he did not know
   which of them might yet turn out to be a poet, a bishop, a lord
   chancellor, or a prime minister!

   When I look at young men and women, I feel much the same, for I do not
   know what they are to be. I may be addressing, tonight, a Livingstone,
   or a Moffat! I may be speaking, tonight, to a John Howard, or a
   Wilberforce! I may be addressing a Mrs. Judson, or an Elizabeth Fry! I
   may be speaking to some whom God will kindle into great lights to bless
   the sons of men for many a day, and afterwards to shine as the stars
   forever and ever. But you cannot shine if you are not lighted. You
   cannot bless God and bless the sons of men unless God first blesses
   you. Unregenerate, you are useless! Born again, you will be born for
   usefulness. But while you are unconverted your usefulness is being
   lost. I will not insinuate that I expect everyone here to become
   famous. It is not even desirable. But I do know this--that everyone
   whose heart shall be given to Jesus will be so useful and so necessary
   to the Church and to the world, that this world without them would lack
   a benefactor--and Heaven's company would be incomplete unless they
   joined its ranks.

   Oh, the value of a redeemed soul! The importance of a young life! I
   wish I could multiply myself into a thousand bodies that I might come
   round and take the hand of every young person here, as he or she shall
   leave the Tabernacle, and say, "By the preciousness of your life, by
   the hallowed uses to which you may be put, by the good that you may do
   and by the glory you may bring to God, do not think of pardon and Grace
   as things of the future, but now, even NOW, lay hold of them, and they
   will become to you the great power by which you shall benefit your
   generation and go down to the grave with honor."

   When I grow gray, if God shall spare me--may I see around me some of
   you with whom I speak today--who shall be some 20 years younger than
   myself, of whom I shall say, "My former deacons and elders are either
   very old or have gone home to Heaven. The dear men of God who were with
   me when I was 40 years of age have passed away. But those whom I
   preached to on that night in March, 1874, have come to fill their
   places! Those dear Sisters who used to conduct the classes, teach the
   school and manage the various societies for the poor, have gone and we
   have followed them to their graves and wept over them. But here come
   their daughters to fill their places."

   I pray that names honored in our Churches may never die out from our
   midst. May the fathers live, again, in their children! It may not be my
   honor to be succeeded in this pulpit by one of my own sons, greatly as
   I would rejoice if it might be so, but at least I hope they will be
   here in this Church to serve their father's God and to be regarded with
   affection by you for the sake of him who spent his life in your midst.
   I pray that all my honored Brothers may have sons and daughters in the
   Church--yes, from generation to generation may there be those in our
   assemblies of whom it shall be said--"These are of the old stock--they
   keep up the old name."

   Brothers and Sisters of my own age, we shall soon die. God grant us to
   die at our posts! The standard-bearer will fall and in his last embrace
   he will press the standard to his heart, for it is dearer than life to
   him. But courage, my Brethren, our sons will urge on the sacred war and
   carry on the good old cause to victory. What do you say, dear Ones? Do
   not your hearts say, "Amen"? Young men, will you not take up the
   bloodstained banner when we shall go our ways? Sons and daughters of
   the faithful, will you desert your fathers' God? Oh, will it be that He
   whom we love shall be despised by you? Will you turn your back on the
   Christ who was All in All to us? No. It cannot be! Be of good cheer,
   Abraham-- Isaac shall succeed you! Jacob shall rise up to serve your
   God! Jacob shall live to see his son Joseph, and even to bless Ephraim
   and Manasseh--and so from generation to generation shall the Lord be
   praised!

   Thus far concerning this life. But now let me remind you, dear young
   Friends, that if your hearts are given to Christ you need not tremble
   about the end of life. You may look forward to it with hope. It will
   come. Thank God, it will come! Have you never wished that you could
   ride to Heaven in a chariot of fire, like Elijah? I did, once, till I
   reflected that if a chariot of fire should come for me I should be more
   afraid to get into it than to lie down and die upon my bed! And of the
   two, one might prefer to die, for to die in the Lord is to be made like
   our glorious Head! I see no joy in the hope of

   escaping death. Jesus died, and so let me die! On His dear face the
   seal of death was set, so let it be on mine, that I may talk of
   resurrection as they cannot who shall be changed at His coming.

   You need not be afraid to depart and be with Christ, which is far
   better. Young people, whether you die in youth or old age, if you are
   resting in Jesus you shall sit upon the banks of Jordan singing. As our
   friends sang last night--

   "Never mind the river."

   The parting song will be sweet, but oh, the Glory! Oh, the Glory! I
   will not try to paint it. Who can? The judgment will come, but you will
   not tremble at it! On the right hand shall you stand, for who can
   condemn those for whom Christ has died? The conflagration of the globe
   will come. The elements shall melt with fervent heat, but you will not
   tremble, for you shall be caught up together with the Lord in the
   air--and so shall you be forever with the Lord! Hell shall swallow up
   the unjust--they shall go down alive into the pit--but you shall not
   tremble for that, for you are redeemed by the precious blood!

   The millennial Glory, whatever that may be, and the reign with Christ,
   and the triumph over death and Hell. And the giving up of the kingdom
   to God, even the Father, when God shall be All in All, and eternity
   with all its infinite Glory--these shall be all yours! If you had to go
   through Hell to reach this Glory, it would be worth the cost! But you
   have not to do any such thing! You have only to believe in Jesus and
   even faith is the Lord's own gracious gift. "Look unto Me and be you
   saved, all you ends of the earth." This is the Gospel. Look! Look!
   Look! 'Tis but a look. Look, bleary-eyed Soul, you who can scarcely see
   for ignorance! Look! You whose eyes are swimming in tears! Look! You
   who see Hell before you! Look! You who are sinking into the jaws of
   Perdition!

   Look you ends of the earth, that are farthest gone in sin, if such are
   here! You who are plunged deep in iniquity-- look! 'Tis Jesus on the
   Cross you are bid to look at--yes, Jesus at the right hand of God--the
   crucified Son of Man exalted at the right hand of the Father! Look unto
   Him, and be you saved, for He is God, and besides Him there is none
   else. God grant you to look to Jesus, even now, for His name's sake.
   Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Luke 18:1-23. HYMNS FROM "OUR
   OWN HYMN BOOK"--95 (VER. II), 497, 492.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Christian's Motto

   (No. 1165)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MARCH 22, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "I always do those things that please Him." John 8:29.

   OUR Lord Jesus stood alone as the Advocate of right and truth in the
   days when He dwelt among men. It is true He had a few followers, but
   they were so slow to learn and so weak in action that they rather
   increased His difficulties than rendered Him assistance. He was a
   solitary Champion in the midst of armies of foes. Those foes were
   powerful, cunning, cruel and exceedingly active, yet He was calm,
   unmoved and faced them without fear. He was never put to the blush by
   them and never turned His back in retreat. Our Lord was victorious all
   through the campaign of His ministry. I may say of Him that He went
   forth conquering and to conquer--and on the Cross He gained His
   crowning victory!

   Since you, also, will meet with enemies, would you learn to be as calm
   as He? Since difficulties must beset your pathway, would you possess
   the same strength as He? Would you, in fact, live as He lived, and,
   finishing your course, would you enter into His joy? Then study well
   the records of His sublime career and you will see that the secret of
   His power was the Presence of His God--"He that sent Me is with Me."
   And the secret of His comfort was fellowship with Jehovah--"He has not
   left Me alone." If you would know how you can enjoy the Presence and
   fellowship of the Lord-- and all the power and comfort which come
   thereby, the Savior tells you the secret in the following words--"For I
   always do those things that please Him."

   If we would have God with us, we must be agreed with Him. "Shall two
   walk together unless they are agreed?" Remember the words of the Lord
   Jesus, how He said, "He that has My commandments and keeps them, he it
   is that loves Me, and he that loves Me shall be loved of My Father, and
   I will love him and will manifest Myself to him" (John 14:21). To do
   the things which please God is the way to secure His Presence and
   consequent power and happiness. I shall, at this time, endeavor to set
   forth the Savior before you all under two aspects--as the Mediator, in
   which office we delight to trust Him, and as the Model, in which
   Character we endeavor to imitate Him. May the Holy Spirit so illuminate
   our minds that under both aspects our souls may be greatly blessed as
   we gaze upon our Lord.

   I. First, then, as THE MEDIATOR. He says of Himself, as God-Man, the
   appointed Redeemer, the sent Son of God, "I always do those things that
   please Him." This was and is true of our Lord every way. Of His
   Incarnation we read those memorable words--"Lo, I come: in the volume
   of the Book it is written of Me, I delight to do Your will, O My God:
   yes, Your Law is within My heart." In the same Psalm He describes
   Himself as a servant whose ears had been opened or bored that He might
   be a servant forever. And in another place He says, "He wakens morning
   by morning; He wakens My ear to hear as the learned." The Son of God
   was willing to come to earth to do His Father's will and His birth at
   Bethlehem was one of the points in which He pleased the Father.

   He was also doing the things which pleased the Father during His
   obscure life as the carpenter's Son. We know but little of it, and it
   is vain, by pencil or tongue, to attempt to paint what Scripture has
   left beneath the veil of silence. But we know this much of it, that He
   was about "His Father's business" and that "He grew in favor with God
   and man." He was the "holy Child Jesus," and therefore must have done
   the things which pleased God. At the end of His retirement, when He
   came forth at 30 years of age, the Father set the seal upon the past as
   well as bore witness to the present when He spoke with an audible voice
   from the excellent Glory, and said, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I
   am well pleased."

   His subjection to His earthly parents and His reverent silence till the
   hour was come to speak were things which pleased the Father. When He
   entered upon His public and active service He began well, for He
   commenced, by an act of which He said, "Thus it becomes us to fulfill
   all righteousness." It was at His Baptism that the Father expressed His
   pleasure in Him and the Spirit descended upon Him. His Baptism was an
   emblem and a type of the perfect obedience which He intended to
   render--it set forth His immersion into depths of suffering, His
   sinking in death and burial, His

   rising again from the tomb--and His ascension into Heaven for us.
   Doubtless, all these are to be seen by the spiritual eye in the
   symbolic rite practiced in Jordan's waves. Blessed are they who follow
   the Lamb where ever He goes!

   Immediately after this our Lord was led by the Spirit into the
   wilderness where He was tempted of the devil. His going there and His
   threefold victory over the Tempter were well-pleasing to God. Did not
   Jehovah send His angels to minister to Him? And what was this but a
   token that He had pleased God by defeating the arch-enemy? Throughout
   His life our Lord was always acceptable to God and fulfilled in very
   deed that ancient Word of the Prophet Isaiah, in his 42nd chapter, at
   the 21st verse, in which he spoke and said, "The Lord is well-pleased
   for His righteousness' sake; He will magnify the Law and make it
   honorable."

   He magnified the ceremonial Law by coming under it and observing it
   until the time when it passed away. He magnified the moral Law, for He
   obeyed every precept--both of the first and of the second table--and
   could say to all His accusers, "Which of you convicts Me of sin?" He
   was perfect in all His ways! There is not one action upon which a
   question can be raised by any candid observer as to the exactness of
   its justice and its full conformity to the perfect law of right and
   love. He always did the things which pleased God and He had God's
   attestation of this--for though the splendor of His Godhead was veiled
   when He dwelt here, yet gleams of it burst forth here and there--as if
   the Father would let men know that the lowly Mediator was still great
   with God.

   See Him on Tabor where He was transfigured and you see how the Father
   loved Him! It was the Man Christ Jesus who there talked with Moses and
   Elijah, while Peter, James and John were eyewitnesses of His
   majesty--of which Peter has written--"For He received from God the
   Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to Him from the
   excellent glory, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And
   this voice which came from Heaven we heard, when we were with Him in
   the holy mount." It is clear, then, that the Glory of our Lord was
   looked upon by the Apostles as a token of the Father's love to Him.
   Listen, also, to that Voice which answered Him out of Heaven when He
   prayed, "Father, glorify Your name. Then came there a Voice from
   Heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again."

   The miracles, also, proved His acceptableness with God, for they were
   not only evidences of His own power, but tokens of His Father's good
   pleasure. And therefore, Peter, in his famous sermon spoke in this
   fashion, "Jesus of Nazareth, a Man approved of God among you by
   miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by Him in the midst of
   you, as you yourselves also know." Everywhere the Father gave forth
   signs that He had not left Him alone, but was with Him, because He did
   His will. As a servant, for our sakes, He pleased not Himself, but
   suffered the zeal of His Father's house to eat Him up. From the first
   day in which He spoke to John at the Jordan, to the day in which He was
   taken up into His Glory, He always did the things that pleased God.

   His death, which was His own voluntary act, was the most pleasing of
   all, if there could be degrees where all was perfect. He was, indeed,
   all-pleasing to the Father when rising up from supper He said, "Let us
   go hence," and He went without a murmur to be "obedient to death, even
   the death of the Cross." That bloody sweat in Gethsemane, when He
   conquered Nature's fears and took the cup of trembling, saying, "Not as
   I will, but as You will"--was not that the doing of the things which
   pleased God? Do you not remember that notable saying of the Prophet,
   "It pleased the Father to bruise Him"? There was a Divine satisfaction
   given to the Father in the willing, the submissive, the believing, the
   triumphant pangs of Jesus!

   On Calvary He was pressed with grief beyond measure, yet He did not
   fail to bear all the pleasure of the Lord in silent submission--a
   submission which must have greatly pleased the Lord. On the Cross He
   was tried as gold in the furnace, but no dross was found in Him. On the
   accursed tree the stress of the world's sin lay on Him and yet He did
   not wish to depart from the enterprise which He had undertaken till He
   had been obedient to the Father and accomplished all His will, even to
   the endurance of death itself! He always did the things which pleased
   God.

   Having already made the text encompass parts of our Lord's work which
   were subsequent to the time when He uttered it, I shall push on yet
   further, for I have facts beneath my feet and I would remind you that
   our Lord still always does those things that please God. It pleased God
   that He should ascend and sit at His right hand. It pleased God that
   there He should be our forerunner, preparing our heavenly mansions for
   us. He is accepted, we know, for we, also, are "accepted in the
   Beloved." It is the Father's good pleasure to give us the kingdom and
   therefore it is His pleasure that

   our Divine Representative should take the kingdom on our behalf. The
   intercession of Jesus, also, is always sweet with God. The Father
   always hears Him--and hears us, also, when we plead His name.

   And when He shall, "so come in like manner as He went up to Heaven."
   When He shall, "take to Himself His great power and reign," and when on
   the clouds of Heaven He shall appear to judge the quick and dead, He
   will still always do the things which please God. Yes, let me say it
   joyfully, the saving works of Jesus are lovely in the Father's eyes!
   Whenever our Lord Jesus says to a sinner, "I absolve you," it pleases
   God. Whenever the Savior calls a wanderer to Himself and draws Him to
   holiness by the attractions of His love, it pleases God. What else is
   meant by the passage, "The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His
   hand. He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied"?

   It is the pleasure of God that sinners should find a complete Savior in
   Jesus. The Father has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but had
   rather that he should turn unto Him and live, but there is joy in the
   heart of God Himself over sinners that repent. Sheep brought back to
   the fold are rejoiced over by Him of whom we sing, "We are the people
   of His pasture and the sheep of His hand." Prodigals leaving their
   riotous living are pressed to the Father's bosom and cause pleasure to
   the soul of the benign Deity. Oh, returning Sinners, you have not to
   ask Christ to appease the Father, for the Father, Himself, loves you
   and your salvation gives Him joy!

   As for the benefit which Christ bestows upon saints, the matchless
   blessings which He has received as "gifts for men," and scatters among
   His people--these all please the Father. It pleased the Father that in
   Him should all fullness dwell, and it pleases Him when of His fullness
   we receive Grace for Grace. Oh, Brothers and Sisters, if you are rich
   in Divine Grace, you are not rich with gifts which the Father grudges!
   And if you shall ask for more, it is your Father's good pleasure that
   you should have them! Receive them freely, for He freely gives! Delight
   yourself in them, for the Father delights to see you partaking of His
   Son's abundance! Be of good courage, Sinners, when you come with empty
   hands. And be of good courage, you impoverished Saints, when you come
   with hungry mouths, for Jesus Christ, in giving freely, will only do
   what pleases the Father!

   I feel greatly comforted by this text when I think that whatever Christ
   has done and is doing pleases God. The Gospel, which is the sum and
   substance of the doings of Jesus, is always acceptable with God. It is
   a sweet savor unto God in every place. It delights the Father that
   Jesus Christ should be preached. I have often thought, when I have been
   extolling my Lord and Master, "Well, if not a soul in the place yields
   itself to Jesus, nevertheless, thanks be unto God who always causes us
   triumph in every place, for we are unto God a sweet savor, as well in
   them that perish as in them that are saved!" If Christ is preached, a
   sweet oblation is presented--sweeter than the incense of Araby--and it
   delights the Most High more than costly frankincense. As of old He
   smelled a "sweet savor of rest" when Noah brought the victim and laid
   it on the altar, so when Christ is lifted up, God takes pleasure in
   Him, and delights when men glorify His Son.

   Thus I have spoken very feebly about our Lord Jesus as the Mediator. No
   man nor angel can fitly set Him forth--He is too fair, too perfect for
   description. Earth cannot show His rival nor Heaven His equal! He is
   good and only good! All glory to His name! He has glorified the Father
   and He can say to the fullest, "I always do those things that please
   Him."

   II. Now, Brothers and Sisters, we have stern work to do. We have not
   merely to look, but we have to be transformed as we look. We are now to
   behold our Lord as THE MODEL and to copy His example. Truly we shall
   need the Spirit of God to hold our hand or we shall never write
   according to such a Copy as He has set us. It is the business of every
   Christian to be able to say, "I always do those things which please
   Him." Come, Believers, and lovingly muse upon our Lord Jesus as our
   Model!

   Here at the outset let me remind you that this will imply that we,
   ourselves, are rendered pleasing to God. Remember that as long as a
   man, himself, is obnoxious to God, everything he does is also
   obnoxious. From a sinner comes nothing but sin--an evil tree brings
   forth evil fruit--a foul fountain pours forth polluted waters. It is
   vain, therefore, to think, any one of you, that you can do anything
   that is pleasing to God till, first of all, you, yourselves, are
   reconciled unto Him. The way of reconciliation is only by Jesus Christ.
   When your persons are pleasing, your works will be pleasing. But until
   you are personally acceptable to God through Jesus Christ everything
   that you do is displeasing--and even those things which you think to be
   virtues are only, as Augustine called them--"splendid sins," mere
   glittering dross, lacking the essential purity and preciousness of the
   pure gold of love.

   Paul says, "They that are in the flesh cannot please God." And again He
   says, "Without faith it is impossible to please
   Him"--impossible--whatever is thought, attempted, or done by you! Even
   acts of religion are only pretentious

   forms of sin until the nature is renewed, the heart changed, and the
   man, himself, washed in the blood of Christ and covered with His
   righteousness. Therefore, I shall have to speak entirely and only to
   those who have been, by the redemption and righteousness of Christ,
   made pleasing to God. And I hope that they, having obtained the major
   blessing of personal acceptance, will press forward for the further
   blessing of sanctification, that they may always do the things which
   please their gracious God.

   In pleasing God there is implied an avoiding of all things which would
   displease Him. We cannot say we, "always do the things which please
   Him" unless we earnestly renounce the follies which vex His Holy
   Spirit. Now, you know what the works of the flesh are, and those, as
   defiled garments, are to be put off that we may go in unto the wedding
   in the new garment. Like leaven they are to be swept out of the house
   that we may keep the paschal feast. We must put off and lay aside all
   pride, whether it is the pride of talent, the pride of
   self-righteousness, the pride of wealth, the pride of dress, the pride
   of rank, or the pride of spiritual attainments--for even a haughty word
   is detestable with God. Among the things which the Lord hates we find
   prominently mentioned a proud look. If a proud look is His abomination,
   what must pride,

   itself, be?

   It is written, "The Lord resists the proud." This implies that their
   views and designs are contrary to His own and He sets Himself to oppose
   them. He carries on continual war with Pharaohs and Senacherib. The
   moment He sees a man great in his own esteem He resolves to bring him
   down, as He did the boastful monarch of Babylon. He lifts up those that
   are bowed down, but He casts down the mighty from their seats. If we
   are proud, we cannot do that which pleases God. In fact, we cannot
   please Him at all. Sloth is another vice which the Lord abhors. He
   calls the idle servant in the parable, "You wicked and slothful
   servant." "He that knows his master's will and does it not, the same
   shall be beaten with many stripes." "He that knows to do good and does
   it not, to him it is sin."

   God is not pleased with those who are idle, wasters of their talents
   and their time, even though they may plead that they are gentle folks
   and have no need to labor. An idle nobleman is as much to be blamed as
   an idle farmer. Christians, if you always do the things that please
   God, you must be diligent servants--He takes no delight in sluggards
   and those who are lovers of ease. God is not pleased with
   unwatchfulness, careless walking, indifference to His commands, or
   neglect of cleansing the heart. Those virgins who were not thoughtful,
   forgot to take oil in their vessels with their lamps, and, in
   consequence, their lamps went out and they could not enter the marriage
   feast with the bride. Beloved, you must walk carefully, earnestly,
   zealously with God, or you cannot please Him. He is a Jealous God and
   we must jealously watch even our thoughts, or we shall soon offend Him.

   Neither is He pleased with anger, which is not only, as far as we are
   concerned, a temporary insanity, but as God judges it, it is murder! He
   that is of a quick and hasty spirit. He that bears ill will against
   another. He that seeks revenge is not acceptable with God. To a God of
   Love, malice is abominable! He would have us do good as He does and
   spread happiness all around as He does. Cross, crabbed, morose natures
   do not please the Lord! Unkind husbands, fractious wives, rebellious
   children and domineering parents are far from pleasing Him. God cannot
   smile upon oppression, craftiness, greed, or the grinding of the poor.
   Neither is "covetousness, which is idolatry," pleasing with God. He
   that is covetous, angers the great Giver of all good, whose liberal
   soul cannot endure churls and misers.

   The same is true of all worldliness. The lust of the eyes. The lust of
   the flesh. The pride of life--these are things which God condemns. In
   them He has no pleasure whatever. O you Believers, I pray you purge
   yourselves of all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit! And as for
   the deeds of darkness, have no fellowship with them, but rather reprove
   them! Come out from among them, be you separate, touch not the unclean
   thing and then you will please your heavenly Father. God is equally
   displeased with unbelief. Doubts of His power, His love, His
   faithfulness. Trembling lest He should not keep His promise, lest,
   after all, His Word should fail--this is not pleasing in His sight!

   Neither is it pleasing to Him that good men should be cambered with
   much serving and should complain of the labor of His service--He would
   not have His servants think Him a hard Master. Brothers and Sisters, He
   would have us serve Him with joyfulness! Free from care because we cast
   our care upon Him! Free from fear because we wholly confide in Him.
   Above all, He would have us free from murmuring--"Neither murmur you as
   they also murmured, who were destroyed of the Destroyer." His dear Son
   was free from everything of this kind. And as He was, so are you, also,
   in this world--therefore closely copy Him and lay aside all these evil
   things by the help of His Holy Spirit.

   Here is the place to say that it should be our intent and earnest
   design to please the Lord. We shall not do this by accident--we must
   give our whole souls to the work and labor mightily. No arrow reaches
   this target if the bow is drawn at a venture--the heart must aim with
   earnest intent and vehement desire. May the Holy Spirit work in us to
   will after this fashion--and then in due time we shall be sure that He
   will work in us, also, to do of His good pleasure. We will continue the
   same strain but touch another key. Remark attentively that the text
   does not deal with negatives, though it implies them. Christ did not
   say, "I do not the things which displease Him," but He said, "I always
   do those things that please Him."

   The sentence is positive and practical, relating to actual deeds and
   not to negatives. We must copy our Master in all the practical
   virtues--and what a Model He is! What a pattern He has set before us!
   Brethren, what was the most conspicuous thing in the life of Christ? I
   cannot tell you--everything is so conspicuously admirable! There is a
   harmony, a blending of every virtue in the life of Christ so that you
   can scarcely put your finger upon one thing and say, "This was superior
   to the rest." But if there is some excellent things more marked than
   others, one of them is prayerfulness! How continually do we read, "as
   He was praying," or, "as He was praying in a certain place," or, "every
   man went to his own home, and Jesus went to the Mount of Olives."

   We are told that He spent whole nights in prayer upon the mountain
   side--He was always in communion with God. For God to speak out of
   Heaven to Him was not a strange thing, for Christ was always speaking
   up into Heaven to His God. Be you such! It cannot please the great
   Father for His child not to speak to Him by the hour together, and to
   be indifferent to Him--to give Him no word, either of request or of
   thanksgiving. Alas, I fear some professors seldom speak with their
   heavenly Father in spirit and in truth! If we fail here, we certainly
   fail in one of the things which please Him. Next in Christ's life, one
   of the more prominent qualities was His love--His love to God. We ought
   to love God with all our hearts and spend and be spent for His Glory.
   It must be our meat and drink to do the will of Him that sent us, and
   to finish His work if we are to do the things which please Him.

   But our great Exemplar also showed the warmest love to men. How He
   pitied the fallen! With what tenderness He spoke to sinners! How gently
   did He warn! How sweetly did He woo! Brethren, we must be gentle, too.
   That which is hard and domineering savors more of the princes of the
   Gentiles than of the lowly Lamb--we must put it away. Like our Master
   and Lord, we must wash the disciples' feet and bear one another's
   burdens. Gently, kindly, tenderly, we must labor for the good of all
   and not consider ourselves. This is to do the things which please God.
   If we would follow Christ, we must practice self-denial, for He
   "pleased not Himself." It should be said of us as of Him, "He saved
   others, Himself He cannot save."

   Did you ever, in anything, find Christ making provision for Himself?
   Can you discern a speck of selfishness in His Nature? There is a crown
   before Him, but He will not have it--yet He longs to see us crowned!
   What does He care about being made a king? His joy is that the Lord
   reigns! He felt it better to obey His Father than to sit on a Throne.
   Oh that we might catch His spirit! The life of Christ is peculiar, too,
   from its separateness from sinners. He was with sinners--He ate and
   drank with them. He went to their marriage feasts and sat at their
   banquets--but He was as distinct from them as the sun from the ash-heap
   upon which it shines. He was outside the camp in Spirit, even when He
   was in it in Person. He bore reproach all His life and last of all bore
   it up to Calvary. We, too, must be different from other men--not
   conformed to this world--but transformed by the renewing of our minds.

   It is folly to be singular except when to be singular is to be
   right--and then we must be bravely singular for Christ's sake. And in
   the lonely path of holy nonconformity we shall find Jesus more near
   than ever we knew Him to be in the whole course of our lives! I cannot
   enlarge here. The picture is so beautiful that merely to dwell upon a
   touch or two of the pencil is to give you no idea of the matchless
   perfection of the work. Be as He was! Copy Him as disciples should copy
   their Master! Furthermore, my dear Brothers and Sisters, if you want to
   know what things please God, let me refer you to one or two passages of
   Scripture. David says in the 69th Psalm, the 30th verse, "I will praise
   the name of God with a song, and will magnify Him with thanksgiving.
   This, also, shall please the Lord better than an ox or bullock that has
   horns and hoofs."

   The Apostle says in Hebrews 13:16, "But to do good and to communicate
   forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." Let us,
   then, constantly praise God! Let us have hymns in store for moments
   when we can sing and thoughts in store for moments when the tongue must
   be silent--but when the heart may yet sing aloud unto the Most

   High. Bless the Lord, for whoever offers praise glorifies Him. A
   thankful spirit is always pleasing to God. Therefore cultivate it and
   shake off, as you would shake off a viper from your hand, the spirit of
   murmuring against the Most High! Yonder thankful, humble, poor woman
   may please God better than the most talented minister who is evermore
   complaining of the dispensations of God.

   John tells us in his first Epistle, third chapter and 22nd verse, that
   we are to "do those things that are pleasing in His sight," and he
   adds, "This is His commandment, that we should believe on the name of
   His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another." Faith, therefore, is one
   of the pleasing Graces. We read of Enoch that, "before his translation
   he had this testimony, that he pleased God. But without faith it is
   impossible to please Him." Love to the Brethren is another of the
   Graces which please God. He would have us love His people, care for the
   poor, relieve those that are sick and cheer those who are cast down.
   Brethren, if you would please the Lord, put aside all petty jealousies
   and labor to prevent disunion, for brotherly love is one of the most
   pleasing sights which the Father of mercies sees. It is as the dew of
   Hermon, as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion, for there
   the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.

   Read, furthermore, in Colossians the first chapter, from the 10th
   verse, a long list of excellences. "That you might walk worthy of the
   Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and
   increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might,
   according to His glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering
   with joyfulness; giving thanks unto the Father, which has made us meet
   to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light." So you see,
   you sufferers, your resignation to the Divine will, your patience under
   a smarting rod--these are all well-pleasing to God! And these and all
   the other Graces of the Spirit are the things, which, through Jesus
   Christ, are pleasing in His sight.

   Now, note particularly this, that these things must be actually done.
   "I DO," says Christ, "those things which are pleasing." It will not
   suffice to talk about them, nor to even pray about them--they must be
   done. Do not merely feel charmed with a virtue, and fascinated with a
   duty--but go and actually carry it out. Let not the purpose be
   strangled in its birth, but let it be born into actual being. There is
   a word in the text which is a hard one to put in practice--
   "always,"--"I always do those things that please Him." It will not
   suffice to say, "I do the things that please God when I go out to
   worship." I hope you do, but the Christian must aim to say, "I always
   do."

   At home, Husband, there must be such a discharge of your relationship,
   that as a husband and as a father you please God. My good Sister, it
   must be as a wife and a mother that you please God. In all those
   relationships, at all times, you must act as in His sight. True
   religion is perhaps better tested at the fireside than anywhere else.
   What a man is at home, that he is, and though he is a saint abroad, if
   he is a devil at home--you may depend upon it that the last is his real
   character! At the same time, we must not think that our religion ends
   at home. I do not suppose we shall, but if we do we are mistaken--we
   must always do the things that please the Lord.

   There must not be, at any moment about our Christian career, anything
   we should not like God to see, for He does see. Neither must we be
   where we would not like Christ to find us. Neither must we even think
   as we would not have Jesus know that we think. This is a high standard,
   but our Lord Jesus Christ sets it before us, and it is not for us to
   alter the pattern which He has given--"I always do," He says--"the
   things that please Him." Are there not many things, dear Friends, which
   you have done in former times which you will not do again now you have
   been reminded of your failings? There are many things which certain
   Christian people leave undone, which they will attend to at once if
   they realize the full meaning of this text--"I always do the things
   that please Him." Always!

   I have known some persons take a holiday from Christ's service
   sometimes. They say, "Once a year, surely, one may indulge." What would
   you do if you might be indulged? Because whatever you would do if you
   had your own way is the best test of your heart. If holiness is
   slavery, then depend upon it, you are the slave of sin! When I have
   heard of Christian men attending doubtful amusements as an occasional
   treat, I have seen at once which way their hearts went--they evidently
   loved the pleasures of sense better than spiritual joys. Where either a
   man's pleasure or treasure is, there his heart is--and whatever gives
   you the most pleasure is really your god. To be flattered is the
   greatest delight of many-- their god is themselves. "To make money is
   my greatest delight," says one. Then the golden calf is your god.
   Whatever is your greatest joy and treasure, that is your heaven and
   your God--and if you do not find the greatest pleasure in the things of
   God, then you do not know what the new life means--and neither will you
   ever know the pleasures which are at God's right hand!

   Dear Brothers and Sisters, I beseech all of you to notice that by
   always doing the things which please God, the Holy Spirit enabling us
   to do so, we shall enjoy and retain the Presence of the Father. "He
   that sent Me is with Me, He has not left Me alone, for I always do
   those things which please Him." Do you complain that you do not enjoy
   fellowship with God? Do you tell me that the joys of religion have not
   been yours for many a day? Do you come with long faces and complain
   that you find the way to Heaven very rough? God has a controversy with
   your souls--there is some hidden evil within--or some evil habit which
   does not please Him.

   Is not that hint of mine enough for you without my pressing it? Does
   not your tender conscience say, "I will examine myself. I will ask God
   to search me, and I will solemnly promise to Him--

   'The dearest idol I have known, Whate'er that idol be Shall now be
   dashed from off its throne That I may come to Thee.

   Let no pleasurable sin become an image of jealousy to provoke the Lord
   our God! As you love the Lord, and I know you do--as you would not
   grieve your crucified Master, ask Him to search you and see if there is
   any evil way in you and deliver you from it--that you may always do the
   things which are pleasing in His sight. Furthermore, by so doing, we
   shall not only have communion with God, but we shall be girded with His
   strength. "He that sent Me is with Me."

   What is the reason why some workers for God do not succeed? They cannot
   succeed--it is not possible--for they are in an evil case. Here is a
   man trying to build a wall with a broken arm. He makes slow progress,
   for he can hardly lift a brick into its place. Here is another man
   trying to run a race while he is lame in his feet--he will be far
   behind when the winner passes the goal. Here is a man trying to leap
   whose every muscle is weak--he would be more at home in an infirmary.
   Personal spiritual health is essential to vigorous, successful,
   Christian effort! And that health depends upon our living near to God.
   If we do that which is pleasing in God's sight the Lord will be with us
   in our work--but only if we strive to always do what pleases Him.

   Suppose a minister to have been living through the week a careless,
   prayerless life--he may preach his best, but as he is not a vessel fit
   for the Master's use--he may not reckon upon being used by the Lord. If
   the Sunday school teacher goes to her class after indulging in light
   conversation or in an angry temper--is there any wonder that souls are
   not converted by her teaching? If the city missionary does not find
   souls blessed in his district, need he wonder, when upon looking within
   he sees a cold heart--and upon looking without he sees a negligent
   life? A mother wonders that her children are not saved and yet it would
   be a far greater wonder if they were, when her general conduct and
   spirit are taken into consideration!

   A father has been astonished that his boys have not turned out
   Christians, while everyone except himself can see that it would have
   been a thousand miracles if they had become religious, for their
   father's religion is of that sour, melancholy, rigid, frigid, unlovely
   type that you could not suppose anybody could like unless they had a
   partiality for sour grapes and bitter aloes. We must get rid of the
   things that displease God if we are to be useful! And when that is
   done, then shall we be able to say, "He that sent Me is with Me; the
   Father has not left Me alone."

   Now I close, and closing I ask you--is this too high a Model for you?
   Would you prefer an example which would let you abide content in a
   measure of sin? I hear many say, "I love Christ," but their love does
   not make them imitate the Lord! I fear that they do not know Him and if
   they did, they would not love Him, but would think Him a deal too
   precise and self-denying. There is such a thing as loving a Christ of
   our imagination--not the Christ of the New Testament whose Character is
   absolute perfection. Do you love the holy Jesus? If you do, then I am
   sure you do not think His Character too elevated, or His example too
   pure. No, you say, "Lord, I love this holy living, I only wish I could,
   in all things, copy it. Oh, for more holiness! Grant it to me!"

   Do you think it is impossible to act as Jesus did? Then I must ask you
   another question--Do you think the Holy Spirit has not yet come, or do
   you conceive that the Holy Spirit is deficient in power--so that He can
   only lead men up to a certain point and must, there, necessarily cease
   working? Do you not believe that all things are possible with Him? Do
   you not believe that all things are possible to Him that believe? I
   grant you that men do not live as my text requires and that the most of
   professors do not even try to do so--but the fault is in
   themselves--not in the Holy Spirit! He is able to do exceeding
   abundantly above what we ask or even think!

   Somebody asked me the other day whether I thought Christians could be
   quite perfect, and, I have no doubt, expected a long pompous speech
   from me! But I cut him short, for my secret thought was, "Well, you are
   a fine fellow to be asking such a question, for there is no danger of
   your coming anywhere near that condition." That question from most men
   is about as consistent as if a beggar should come to my door for bread
   and then request to see me. I go to the door, and he says, "Sir, I have
   a very difficult question to put to you--do you think every man in
   England might make his fortune and be worth a million of money?" What a
   question for a man in rags to agitate! Surely he might put off that
   inquiry till he is worth two pence, himself, and can pay for his
   night's lodging. I say to him, "My good fellow, you are not at all in
   danger of becoming too rich, and have no need to raise questions about
   millions. Get out of your rags and make yourself commonly decent before
   you puzzle your head over that."

   It is too early for most professors to be discussing the higher life
   and entire sanctification. They are like babies taking the measure of
   giants. I am sick of seeing a set of beggarly professors whose poverty
   of Divine Grace is manifest to everybody but themselves, shaking their
   heads at those good Brothers who preach up a high standard of Grace.
   They need be under no alarm about growing too devout, too prayerful, or
   too holy! They may go a long way before they will be mistaken for
   perfect! I do not believe in a great deal which our modern
   perfectionists say about themselves--and I should think a deal more of
   them if they thought less of themselves--but at the same time I labor
   under no dread as to any of them becoming too good. Nor dare I set up a
   lower object of sanctified aspiration than that which Jesus has set
   before us in the command, "Be you perfect, even as your Father in
   Heaven is perfect."

   Have you failed to do as the text says? Then grieve over it! Do you
   wish to do as Jesus did? Then He will help you, for He works mightily
   with us. Commit yourself unto His teaching. Give yourself up to the
   purifying power of His Spirit, and He will bear you up to heights of
   Divine Grace and glories of character which you have never thought you
   could reach--but which, when you reach them, will not puff you up--for
   you will feel constrained to cry, "Not unto us, not unto us, but unto
   Your name give praise!"

   If we have done all, we are unprofitable servants--we have only done
   that which it was our duty to have done--and therefore unto Grace shall
   be the praise through the precious blood of Christ, forever and ever.
   Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Luke 14. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--460, 259, 815.
     __________________________________________________________________

Marrow and Fatness

   (No. 1166)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MARCH 29, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Then went King David in, and sat before the lord, and he said, Who am
   I, O Lord God? and what is my house, that You have brought me up to
   now? And this was yet a small thingin Your sight, O Lord God, but You
   have spoken also of Your servant's house for a great while to come. And
   is this the manner of man, O Lord God? And what can David say more unto
   You? for You, Lord God, know Your servant. For Your word's sake, and
   according to Your own heart, have You done all these great things, to
   make Your servant know them. Therefore You are great, O Lord God: for
   there is none like You, neither is there any God beside You, according
   to all that we have heard with our ears." 2 Samuel 7:18-22.

   DAVID was overwhelmed with the mercy of God! Nathan's message was too
   much for him. He felt emotions in his bosom which he could not express.
   Like a wise man, he went at once, while under the impulse of gratitude,
   into the place of nearness to God. It was not everyone who might go in
   and sit before the Lord as he did, but he felt he had a special call to
   draw near unto the Most High--and there he sat down in the posture of
   waiting to receive the fulfillment of what was promised, in the posture
   of rest--as one who had, now, all that he could desire and was pressed
   down under the weight of blessing. Yet the Psalmist's sitting was also
   a posture of worship and surely of all passages of Scripture none can
   be said to contain more true adoration than that which is now before
   us.

   The king sat, however, before the Lord. The mercy had all come from God
   and therefore to God all his praise was offered. His soul waited only
   upon the Lord, because his expectation was alone from Him. He was
   conscious of being in the sacred Presence and he sat there, feeling
   that by the Covenant Blessing he had been brought very near, and his
   spirit exulted in that nearness! Brothers and Sisters in Christ, the
   mercies which God has shown to us are as great as those which He
   manifested to His servant David! And if the Spirit of God has opened
   our eyes to see and understand them, we may, this morning, ardently
   wish to do precisely what David did.

   Let us have boldness to enter into the nearest possible fellowship with
   God--yes, let us go where David could not go--within the veil, and
   there, where Christ has opened up the way through His torn body, let us
   sit down in a restful, waiting, happy spirit, and give full play to all
   those Divine emotions which ought to be awakened by reflecting upon the
   lovingkindness of the Lord!

   I have selected this subject because there are many among us who have
   lately found the Savior and it is well to let them see the happiness
   which belongs to them--the pleasures and the treasures which are theirs
   in Christ Jesus--that they may render unto the God of Grace the glory
   which is due unto His name. David did not understand the words of
   Nathan to relate merely to his dynasty and to his dominion over the
   house of Israel. He looked far beyond temporal things--and therefore,
   in the words before us, there is a spiritual depth which will not
   strike the eye of the casual reader. The New Testament must be the
   expositor of the Old, and Peter, in his famous sermon gives us the key
   to this passage!

   Turn to Acts 2:29 and you will find that Peter accounts for a memorable
   utterance of David in the Psalms by declaring that he was a Prophet,
   and knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of
   his loins, according to the flesh, He would raise up Christ to sit on
   his throne. The joy which filled David's bosom was a spiritual one
   because he knew that Jesus would come of his race--and that an
   everlasting kingdom would be set up in His Person--and in Him should
   the Gentiles trust.

   Now, then, we also, being blest with all spiritual blessings in
   heavenly places in Christ Jesus, are bound to feel as David felt, and
   therefore we shall pass in review, David's expressions, with the desire
   that we may drop into the same mood. May God the Holy Spirit, who alone
   can enable us to do so, bless our meditation at this time.

   I. First I shall need you to notice THE HUMILITY apparent in David's
   words. "Then went King David in, and sat before the Lord, and he said,
   Who am I, O Lord God? and what is my house, that You have brought me up
   to now?''" First, he acknowledged the lowliness of his origin--"What is
   my house?" He came not of royal blood. Nathan spoke the Truth of God
   when he said in the Lord's name, "I took you from the sheepcote, from
   following the sheep." David was but a humble shepherd lad when he was
   first anointed--and after that anointing he continued in that humble
   office. From this he rose to become the leader of a motley band of
   free-lances exiled from their country. Yet the Lord was pleased to call
   him from his low estate to make him king over the chosen people!

   Beloved, what is our origin? What is there about our descent that could
   claim for us the high privilege of being sons of God? Trace our origin
   to its most ancient source and behold, SIN is there, staining the
   escutcheon of our house! All down the line there is a taint of high
   treason against the Divine Majesty. We come of a race of rebels and our
   own personal birth was marred with sin. Heraldry lends no pomp to
   us--and the genealogy for the most of us reveals no hereditary
   glories--and even if it did, it would be mere fancies and fictions not
   worthy to be mentioned before the Presence of the Lord. "Who am I, O
   Lord God? and what is my house?"

   David laid the most stress upon his own personal unworthiness. He said,
   "Who am I? What was there in me that You should make me a king and a
   progenitor of the Christ?" And will not each Believer here say the
   same? Who am I? What is there in me? God might have chosen the great
   and the mighty of the world, but He has passed them by. He might have
   chosen the learned and famous, but not many of them are called. He has
   chosen the poor of this world and things that are despised. Yes, the
   base things has God chosen, and the things that are not, to bring to
   nothing the things that are, that no flesh might glory in His Presence.
   Look at yourself from head to foot--examine every crevice of your
   heart, and every single feature of your character--can you see anything
   there that might command Jehovah's esteem? Do you see any
   qualifications for being bought with redeeming blood? Are there any
   reasons, that you can find, why you should be made sons of God, and
   heirs of Glory?

   The Lord had reasons for choosing you, for He acts according to the
   counsel of His will, but those reasons are not in you--they lie in His
   own bosom and you must exclaim--"Who am I that You have brought me up
   to now?" I have no doubt that David looked upon his own
   deservings--what if I correct myself and say his own undeservings?--and
   marveled that the Lord had chosen him and rejected Saul! He was a man
   after God's own heart, but his conduct was that of a bold, rough
   soldier--and he could not look upon it without observing its
   imperfections. He prayed, in the 25th Psalm, "Remember not the sins of
   my youth, nor my transgressions: according to Your mercy remember You
   me for Your goodness' sake, O Lord." These sins are not recorded in the
   chronicles of his life, but they were written in his own penitent
   memory. And being humbled concerning them he cried, "Who am I?"

   There must have been many an action in his exile and wanderings which
   he did not rejoice to remember. For instance, his mimicry of madness
   before the king of Gath. His great anger against Nabal. His affinity
   with the Philistines. And besides such prominent errors as these, he
   could see many failings and transgressions all along--and these both
   made the Grace of God the more illustrious and led him to cry from his
   very heart--"Who am I, O Lord God?" Now, Brothers and Sisters, look
   back upon your own lives before conversion. What were they? Let them be
   blotted out with tears! Consider your lives since conversion and
   confess that whenever you have been left to yourselves and the Grace of
   God has withdrawn for a while, you have always stumbled into some form
   or other of deplorable folly. Who am I? What have I done? What have I
   been? How is it that I am made Your child, purchased with the blood of
   Jesus, and made an heir of Heaven? We may sum it all up in that
   exclamation, "Why me, Lord?"--

   "Why was I made to hear Your voice, And enter where there's room, While
   thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come?"

   There is something very interesting in the expression, "Who am I, O
   Lord God?" David's sense of his own nothingness is strikingly set forth
   by putting the, "I," side by side with, "O Lord God." "I David, Jesse's
   son, the shepherd's boy, who am I, O You infinite, all-commanding
   Jehovah, Creator, Preserver, Lord over all? How can I stand

   in Your Presence? I shrink to nothing there! Did I not come of You? Do
   I not owe all to You? Are You not the very breath of my nostrils? I am
   a nothing, a very dream, a thing of nothing and yet You look upon me!
   And You shower down Your mercies upon me! With a flood of blessedness
   do You carry me away. Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house?" Thus
   you see David's humility under a sense of mercy.

   And let us remark, here, that nothing humbles a man like the mercy of
   God! Unkind, ungenerous remarks do not humble the soul--they rather
   gender pride. Under the criticisms of unkindness a man who is a man
   finds all that is strong within him coming to the front, and, as in
   Job's case, self-assertion straightway leads the van. Reproach and
   rebuke tend, rather, to make men proud than humble. Love is the melting
   power. Nothing weighs a man down like a load of blessing. When you see
   God blotting out your sin, accounting you righteous in His sight, for
   Jesus' sake, and saying to you, "I have loved you with an everlasting
   love, therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn you," where is
   boasting, then? It is excluded! Love shows boasting to the door and
   bars its return.

   Peter was ready enough to speak of what he had done, but in the
   Presence of his loving Lord, when he saw his ship sinking through the
   plenteous catch of fishes, he knelt down and cried in deep humiliation,
   "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord."--

   "The more Your glories strike my eyes The humbler I shall lie."

   A sight of the Glory and mercy of God is sure to produce in us a sense
   of shame for our ill-desert--combined with wonder that God should have
   so much as a single kind look for us! Sit down, then, children of God,
   and review His mercy and be humbled! Do not deny yourselves the joyful
   review because of a jealous fear of being exalted by it. Never endorse
   the great lie of the self-righteous, that full assurance of faith leads
   men to presumption! It does no such thing! By God's Grace it humbles a
   man, makes him feel his own unworthiness, and so leads him to walk more
   carefully and prayerfully before his God. It is in this point that
   faith makes us strong, for while it exalts our joys, it slays our pride
   and makes us shrink to nothing before the great ALL IN ALL.

   II. Now observe, secondly, David's WONDERING GRATITUDE. He wondered,
   first, at what God had done for him--"What is my house, that You have
   brought me up to now?--to a house of cedar, and to be able to talk
   about building a house for You. To be Your chosen king and to have my
   seed established on my throne, and to become the ancestor of the
   Christ! Come, Brothers and Sisters, you do not need me to preach to you
   here! I should like to sit down and leave you to muse upon what the
   Lord has done in bringing you up to now--up from the pit of
   destruction, up from the miry clay of your depravity, out of the
   horrible prison of your dread of Divine wrath--away from the Egypt of
   darkness and bondage into light and liberty!

   What an almighty work it was that brought you from darkness into light,
   from death into life! Bless the Lord for this. Praise Him for your
   calling when effectually He drew you and you ran unto Him weeping and
   singing! Praise Him for your pardon when He washed you in the blood and
   you were clean--and you knew you were! Wonder of wonders is this!
   Praise Him for your justification, when He took the robe the Savior
   wore and dressed you with it--never was a bride arrayed by the most
   loving bridegroom! Praise Him for your regeneration, when you were born
   into a new world! Praise Him for your being set apart for holy uses,
   admitted to new company, filled with holy joys, instructed in heavenly
   truths and dedicated to sacred duties!

   Praise Him for sanctification which has made you worthy to be partakers
   of the inheritance of the saints in light! Praise Him for the
   preservation from sin which you have, up to now, received--and the
   education for eternity which has so happily commenced! Praise Him for
   the provision so bounteous with which He has furnished a table in the
   wilderness, both temporally and spiritually! And praise Him for the
   protection with which He has warded off the arrow that flies by day,
   and the pestilence that walks in darkness. O Lord, I bless You that You
   have brought me up to now! Sometimes, when I take a view of what God
   has done for me, I feel like Christian when he went through the Valley
   of the Shadow of Death by night.

   Remember how Bunyan pictures the scene? A narrow pathway with a pit on
   this side and a deep morass on that--on all sides hobgoblins, dragons,
   and spirits of the deep seeking to destroy him. His sword is useless
   and therefore put away in its sheath. No weapon in his hand but that of
   All-Prayer, which he found to be equal to the emergency. And when he
   had gone through it, and the sun rose on him, and he looked back, he
   could not believe his eyes that he passed through it!

   And truly, at this moment, looking back on life with its innumerable
   temptations, and remembering the tendency to yield that is within every
   one of us, we can each one sing as Christian did--

   "Oh, world of wonders (I can say no less),

   That I should be preserved in that distress

   That I have met with here!

   Oh, blessed be

   That hand which from it has delivered me!

   Dangers in darkness, devils, Hell, and sin,

   Did compass me, while I this vale was in:

   Yes, snares, and pits, and traps, and nets did lie

   My path about, that worthless, silly I

   Might have been caught, entangled, and cast down,

   But, since I live, let Jesus wear the crown." David did not end his
   wonder there, but went on to another and greater theme--the blessings
   which the Lord had promised him. He praised the Lord for what He had
   laid up as well as for what He had laid out. He said, and mark the
   words, "And this was yet a small thing in Your sight, O Lord God, but
   You have spoken also of Your servant's house for a great while to
   come." What a wonderful expression! "And this was yet a small thing in
   Your sight." It sometimes appears as if every mercy the Lord brings us
   is meant to eclipse those which have gone before! For instance, He
   gives a sinner pardon, and the soul is, for a time, perfectly content
   with cleansing and expects nothing more. But soon it learns that there
   is such a thing as justification--when it comes to be just with God,
   complete in Christ and accepted in the Beloved--then it rejoices anew
   as if pardon were but a small thing compared with justification!

   And lo, before our eyes have fully drunk in the beauty of
   justification, we hear the Word which says, "A new heart also will I
   give you, and a right spirit will I put within you: I will write My Law
   in your hearts, and you shall not depart from Me," and our hearts are
   carried away with the splendors of sanctification! Scarcely, however,
   have we been fully made aware of the extent of this blessing before
   another portion of the royal regalia is uncovered, and we hear it said,
   "They shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord God Almighty," and
   now we understand that we are adopted--we are children of God!

   But before we fully understand this great privilege we begin to hear
   the song whose swell is like that of many waters, "He has made us kings
   and priests unto God, and we shall reign forever and ever." And then we
   see the royal prerogative, the priestly dignity which God has put upon
   us--yes, and long before even these mercies are perfectly understood we
   are called away to see the heavenly joys, compared with which all else
   will seem to be yet a small thing! I beg you, my Brothers and Sisters,
   to remember, today, that your God has spoken of you for a great while
   to come! He has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." Is not
   that for a great while to come? He has bid you say, "Surely goodness
   and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in
   the house of the Lord forever." Is not that for a great while to come?
   He has promised to give you all you ever shall require. "No good thing
   will I withhold from them that walk uprightly." Note well that text
   ever to be remembered, "Because I live you shall live also," and that
   petition of our Lord, "Father, I will that they, also, whom You have
   given Me be with Me where I am, that they may behold My Glory." These,
   and a hundred more gracious Words all concern a great while to come!

   Oh, my Brothers and Sisters, you have not obtained transient
   blessings--blessings which will be gone tomorrow-- gifts which will
   decay as the year grows old and the autumn leaves flutter to the
   ground! You have not obtained a mercy which will leave you when you
   tremble in decrepitude! No, rather, when your are old and gray-headed
   your God will not forsake you! You shall still bring forth fruit in old
   age to show that the Lord is upright. "When you pass through the rivers
   I will be with you; the floods shall not overflow you." Therefore may
   you boldly say, "Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
   death I will fear no evil, for You are with me."

   When you die you shall rise again! In your flesh you shall see God and
   shall rejoice before Him. Yes, forever shall you be satisfied when you
   wake up in His likeness. You shall go into everlasting joy and so shall
   be forever with the Lord. He has spoken to you for a great while to
   come. Sit down and wonder--wonder and adore for evermore!--

   "Firm as the lasting hills, This co venant shall endure,

   Whose potent shalls and wills Make every blessing sure: When ruin
   shakes all Nature's frame, Its jots and tittles stand the same." David
   had yet another theme for wonder, which was this--the manner of the
   giving of all this. There is often as much in the manner of a gift as
   in a gift itself. I have known some who could refuse a favor and give
   greater pleasure by their kindly-worded denial than others by their
   rude consent. Now here is a mercy of which the way of giving it is, if
   possible, more astounding than the mercy itself, though that is amazing
   beyond measure, for David says, "And is this the manner of man, O Lord
   God?" The word in the Hebrew is, "law." It is never translated, except
   in this case, by the word, "manner," and we may keep to the word,
   "law," if we like--"Is this the law of man, O Lord God?" We will render
   the passage first according to the authorized version--"Is this the
   manner of man?" Does man act like this? Does man pitch his love upon
   the unworthy? Does man exalt the lowest to the highest place?

   Does man forgive transgressions and continue to do so? Does man bear
   provocation and return love for offenses? Is man so faithful? Is man so
   bounteous? Oh, man can never be Divine, and therefore man can never
   come up to the infinity of Your Grace, O Lord God. This is not after
   the manner of man, neither is it after the law of man, for the law of
   Adam is, "In the day you eat thereof you shall surely die." Punishment
   follows quick on the heels of sin. Free Grace is not the law of the
   first man--it is the law of another man, the Second Adam--and so some
   render the passage, "This is the law of the Man," the Man Christ Jesus,
   the true Adam. We will not contend for that rendering, but it contains
   a Truth of God which we will now utter in our own words.

   It is not the law of man, it is the law of Grace, the law of infinite
   mercy, the law of infallible faithfulness, the law of immutable love.
   Beloved, if it had not been revealed to you, you could never have
   imagined or dreamed of such a fullness of Grace as the Lord has
   actually made to pass before you. It is more marvelous than romance! It
   may well make your heart exult, for it is astonishing beyond all
   measure. Jonathan Edwards, when defending the great Calvinistic theory,
   made use of language somewhat to this effect--"You tell one that the
   Doctrines of Grace are a dream. Then, if it is so, you ought to join
   with me in perpetual regret that it is so." I venture to say, let the
   earth be hung in sackcloth if there is no Covenant of Grace, no way of
   salvation by redemption--for it is the most charming of
   conceptions--and brings to mankind the most extraordinary of blessings.

   If this is dreaming, let me dream on, my God, forever! Eternal love
   welling up in infinite blessing to the chosen race--pouring forth,
   forever, inexhaustible rivers of mercy--is far above all that man could
   of himself have imagined! Poetry has never soared within a myriad
   leagues of such an imagination! I am more than content with the
   Covenant Love of my God. I ask for nothing else. This fills my soul and
   satisfies my spirit, and I would sit down before You, my Father, and
   say, "Is this the manner of man, O Lord God?" Infinite love granting
   infinite blessings! The Gospel must be true! It bears its own witness
   upon its very brow, for who could have made it up? Where is the
   imagination that could have conceived such majestic mercy as God
   reveals unto His people?

   III. Now, changing the note and yet continuing in the same strain, we
   have to speak of David's emotion of love. I almost regret that I have
   to speak to you. I wish I could sit still and yet make you feel what I
   feel. If there could be some electric action by which thought could be
   communicated without words, it would suit my mood exactly at this
   moment. David found but a scant outlet for his love. What precious
   words are these--"What can David say more?" It is Love struck dumb by
   receiving an unspeakable gift. The king was exactly in the same case as
   Paul when he said, "What shall we then say to these things?" To that
   question no answer was ever given by Love. Love sat silent after she
   had asked it, speechless in adoration--but Faith pushed himself forward
   and cried, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" But Love was
   silent, dumfounded with the mass of mercy.

   So David says, "What can David say more?" Certainly no eloquence can
   match the silence of human love abashed by Divine Love. Sit down, O you
   saints, and cry, "What can Your servants say?" Notice the childlikeness
   of this love. "What can David say more?" Your little child, if she is
   ill, will not say, "Mother, nurse me," but, "Mother, nurse poor little
   Mary." And when she feels very sick she will say, "Mary's head aches."
   Your little John, when he wants you to play with him will say, "Please,
   Father, take little John on your knee," or, "Please, Father, take John
   for a walk." It is the way children talk, and this is David's
   child-talk to God. "What shall David say more?" He might have said,
   "What shall I say more?" But Love taught him a simple and sweet speech
   which he delighted to use.

   Observe, it is a love which longs for communion and enjoys it. He says,
   "What can David say more unto You?" He can talk to other people, but he
   does not quite know how to speak to God. And then he adds, "For You,
   Lord God, know Your servant," which is a parallel passage to that of
   Peter, "Lord, You know all things, You know that I love you," as if he
   could not speak his heart, but his Master could read it--and he
   besought the Lord to act as his interpreter. Such thoughts as those
   which were in David's mind break the backs of words and stagger speech!
   Tongues are an afterthought, hearts come first--and oftentimes hearts
   wish they could fly away from tongues. Language is but a feeble wing,
   we want to ride the lightning--

   "Teach me some melodious sonnet Sung by flaming tongues above,"

   has often been our cry. We are right enough in thinking that we can
   never express ourselves till we get to Heaven. How does John Berridge
   put it in that singular hymn? I do not know if I can recall it on the
   spur of the moment. Yes, here it is--

   "Then my tongue would fain express

   All His love and loveliness.

   But I lisp and falter forth

   Broken words not half His worth.

   Vex'd I try and try again,

   Still my efforts all are vain:

   Living tongues are dumb at best,

   We must die to speak of Christ." Death must unloose these stammering
   tongues or they will never be able to speak all that we feel when
   Divine Love casts us into joyous raptures! Strip us of this camber and
   we will be seraphs in their burning hymns, and even the heavenly harps
   shall learn from us how to magnify the Lord! Till then we must be
   content to cry with David, "What can we say more? You, Lord, know Your
   servants." But do you see it is obedient love as well? It is not mere
   sentiment, there is a practicalness about it, for he says, "Lord, you
   know your servant"--he subscribes himself as henceforth bound to God's
   service. With delight he puts on his Master's livery and sits like a
   servitor in the hall of the King of kings, waiting to hear what shall
   be spoken to him. As the eyes of the handmaidens are to their mistress,
   so his eyes are up to his God.

   Therefore it is that David was known in later times to sing, "O Lord I
   am Your servant; I am Your servant, and the son of Your handmaid: You
   have loosed my bonds." He had caught the spirit of the Christian
   proverb, "To serve God is to reign." He loved to do homage at the feet
   of his Sovereign Lord and yield himself and all that he had as a
   reasonable service to him who had crowned him with lovingkindness and
   tender mercies. Warm love always urges the soul to service. None are so
   ready to wear the yoke of Christ as those who have leaned on His bosom.
   The nearer we come to our Father's heart the more submissive we are to
   His commands. Free Grace is the best atmosphere in which to grow strong
   in obedience. The more often we consider what we owe to Eternal Love
   the more ready we shall be to pay our vows unto the Lord.

   How he dwells upon those words, "You, Lord God." What pleasure he finds
   in the very name of his Benefactor and Master. All through Scripture we
   ought to notice the titles by which God is called in each distinct
   place. We are so poverty-stricken in thought that we generally use but
   one name for God--not so the rich soul of David! Throughout the Psalms
   you will find him appropriately ringing the changes upon Adonai, El,
   Elohim, Jehovah, and all the varied combinations of names which loving
   hearts were known to give to the glorious Lord of Hosts! And here he
   says, "You, Lord God." He delights in God and finds music in His name!
   He is affluent in ascriptions and titles because his soul is rich in
   affection. His love was reverent love, adoring love, meditative love,
   intelligent love, whole-hearted love. It expresses itself by reverence
   when it fails to compass infinite mercy by descriptions.

   I want every Believer here to be sweetly stirred with this love this
   morning! I would have you go home and spend an hour this afternoon in
   contemplating the ever-blessed God who has done so much for you that
   you may well say, "What can David say more unto You?" My time is
   flying, but I must have space for another point. David's language is so
   rich that truly, as I take up these words one by one, I feel as if I
   could say with the Psalmist, "My soul shall be satisfied with marrow
   and fatness." Have we not marrow and fatness here?

   IV. David's heart was full of PRAISE, and the praise was first for the
   freeness of the Grace which brought him such blessedness. "For Your
   word's sake, and according to Your own heart have You done all these
   great things." Whenever the Believer asks why God gave him Grace in
   Christ Jesus he can only resort to one answer--the Lord's own heart has
   devised and ordained our salvation. Why did the Lord love you, my
   Brothers and Sisters? Because He would love you is the only possible
   reply. In the book of Deuteronomy, seventh chapter and seventh and
   eighth verses, we have this self-contained love set forth. The Lord did
   not love the people because they were numerous, but because He loved
   them. His love was its own reason. He loved us because He would love
   us, "according to His own heart."

   Now, this is one of the things which always must astound us and make us
   love God, that everything comes from Him spontaneously, without
   anything in us that could produce it or call it forth. "I will have
   mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I
   will have compassion," rolls like thunder over the rebel's head--but to
   a child of God it is full of music--so that voice of the Lord is full
   of majesty to him! Oh, wonder of wonders, that He who passed the fallen
   angels by, nevertheless stooped to save unworthy men, for so it seemed
   good in His sight! David praised also the faithfulness of God. He says,
   "For Your word's sake." Is not that the ground upon which all mercy is
   received by the child of God? God has promised it and will keep His
   word. He never did run back from His Covenant yet--

   "As well might He His being quit As break His promise or forget."
   Jehovah must be true. Oh, what a faithful God has He been to many of
   us! We can recount the scores and hundreds of times when, if the
   promise had failed, the disaster would have been irretrievable--but it
   never has failed. Not one good thing has failed of all that the Lord
   God has promised.

   You men of 70, you can say that! We who are but lads in the army are,
   nevertheless, bold to avow the same! He has helped in every need and
   never yet has He been backward in coming to our rescue or supplying our
   necessities. Glory be to His name! Let us sit down and adore His
   faithfulness. Here we may, also, see David discerning the connection
   between Divine mercy and the Lord Jesus Christ. What if I read it
   so--"For YOUR WORD'S sake"--for the sake of the Eternal Logos, the Word
   that was God, and was with God--for HIS sake all these mercies have
   come to us! It is very sweet to see the mark of the pierced hands on
   every Covenant Blessing, to receive every blessing from the hand that
   was nailed to the tree for us, and to feel--

   "There's ne'er a gift His hand bestows, But cost His heart a groan."

   This will lead us to praise God for the freeness of the mercy, for the
   faithfulness of the mercy and for the mediatorial Grace by which every
   mercy comes to us.

   Then the king's heart was taken up with the greatness of the Covenant
   Blessings. "According to Your own heart, have You done all these great
   things." They were all great. There was not a little mercy among them.
   All the mercies which we great sinners receive from our great God are
   inconceivably great and therefore demand from us the greatest
   thankfulness. Dwell on the great deliverances, the great promises, the
   great comforts, the great expectations of the children of God till your
   souls are enlarged with gratitude! Once more, David praised God for His
   condescending familiarity. "According to Your own heart, have You done
   all these great things, to make Your servant know them." They were
   revealed to David by a Prophet, just as Jesus communed with His
   disciples, and said, "I have told you before it came to pass, that when
   it is come to pass you may believe."

   And yet again, "If it were not so I would have told you." God's mercies
   are instructions to us. We never know them till God brings them to us
   and makes us know them--they are their own interpreters. Like letters
   written in cipher they have the clue within themselves. As the
   prophecies are never understood till they are fulfilled, so the mercies
   of God are never understood till they are received. Experience teaches.
   Experience is the master doctor in the University of Christ. When you
   know Him by testing and handling Him, then is Jesus sweet! When you
   know His power by testing it in weakness, then you understand its
   exceeding greatness! When you know His faithfulness in deep affliction
   and great need, then you see it! And when you taste His mercy under a
   sense of great sin, then you weep with joy as you perceive it!

   God alone can make His servants know His gifts. Blessed be God, who
   alone teaches us to profit, and makes His own dear children to sit at
   His feet. Has He not said it, "They shall all be taught of the Lord."
   No school like this! May I forever be a scholar in it--on the lowest
   form in that school I would be content to sit and learn eternally! Now
   give your souls to the sacred lesson. Praise and magnify your God, O
   you that love His name!

   V. To conclude, not for lack of matter, however, but for lack of
   time--David's soul was wound up to HIGH THOUGHTS OF GOD, for our text
   concludes with these words--"Therefore you are great, O Lord God: for
   there is none like You, neither is there any God beside You, according
   to all that we have heard with our ears." God is great! He is the
   greatest because He is the best! The old Romans used to say, optimus
   maximus--the best, the greatest. You, God, are good, and therefore You
   are great. As we drink in the sense of His goodness we cannot help
   saying, "Therefore You are great, O Lord God"--great positively! Then
   great comparatively--"there is none like You." Yes, greatest of all,
   superlatively--"neither is there any God beside You."

   I have heard of a preacher upon whom a good man's criticism was that he
   made God great whenever he preached. God forbid we should ever preach
   otherwise! And may you, dear Hearers, always feel how great God is! I
   pray you go away with this on your minds--He is too great for me to
   dare offend Him! He is too greatly good for me to grieve Him! He is too
   greatly good for me to doubt Him! He is so great that nothing can be
   great that I can do for Him! He is so great that nothing is too great
   for me to give to Him! He is so great that when I give myself away, it
   is a poor offering compared with His blessings! He is so great that
   when all earth and Heaven ring with His praises, they still fall short
   of

   His Glory!

   He is so goodly great and greatly good that I would be all His, and
   yield myself entirely up to His will, to be like an atom in a current,
   borne along by His unresisted will. I would be what He would have me
   be, do what He would have me do, give what He would have me give,
   suffer what He would have me suffer! I would be absorbed into Him! I
   would find a Heaven in a blessed union with Himself which should
   prevent forever any self-assertion, or the setting up of so much as a
   wish or a thought which would be contrary to His mind! God is great,
   therefore would I wish others to know Him and love Him, too. All hearts
   are cold in every place--would God they were melted in this fire! Would
   God they flowed down at His touch in constant worship!

   Therefore, since He is so great, I will speak great things of Him! I
   will tell it out among the heathen that the Lord reigns! I would ask
   for talent, if I may be trusted with it, with which to proclaim Him.
   And if I have small ability, yet with such as I have, Grace being given
   me, I would, to the utmost of my ability, proclaim the greatness which
   has already overpowered my spirit! Let Him be crowned with majesty! Let
   Him be King of kings and Lord of lords, because of all that He has
   done! Go forth, you daughters of Jerusalem, and crown your King!
   Throughout the whole of your lives weave chaplets for the Redeemer's
   brow! Let your lives be Psalms, let your garments be vestments, let
   every meal be a sacrament, let your whole being be transformed into an
   immortal Hallelujah unto the Lord Most High, for He is greatly to be
   extolled!!

   O come, let us worship and bow down! Let us kneel before the Lord our
   Maker, and ascribe unto the Lord the Glory due unto His name! Blessed
   God, blessed God, what more can Your servant say? He has not the voice
   of David, nor David's harp, nor David's poetic fire, nor David's
   inspiration--and where even David failed, what more can he say? Lord,
   You know all things, you know that I love you, and thousands of your
   servants here can join in the same declaration! Accept what we speak
   and what we feel, but cannot utter! Bless Your saints forever! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--2 Samuel 7. HYMNS FROM "OUR
   OWN HYMN BOOK"--230, 231, 775.
     __________________________________________________________________

Additions to the Church

   (No. 1167)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 5, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved."
   Acts2:47.

   WE are just coming to the most beautiful season of the
   year--Spring--when everything around us is shaking off the chill grave
   clothes of winter and putting on the beautiful array of a new life. The
   Church of God was in that condition at Pentecost--her winter was past
   and the flowers appeared on the earth. She enjoyed the spring breezes,
   for the breath of the Holy Spirit refreshed her garden. There was
   spring music--the time of the singing of birds was come, for her
   preachers testified faithfully of Jesus. And so many and varied were
   the sweet notes which welcomed the new season, that many nations of men
   heard in their own tongue the wonderful works of God!

   There were, also, the spring blossoms--the fig tree put forth her green
   figs and the vines with the tender grapes gave a good smell--and all
   around multitudes inquired, "Men and brethren, what must we do?" And
   many also avowed their faith in Jesus. There were the spring showers of
   repentance, the spring sunbeams of joy in the Holy Spirit and the
   spring flowers of newly-given hope and faith! May we behold just such
   another springtime in all the Churches of Jesus Christ throughout the
   world! And meanwhile, let us arouse ourselves suitable to so gladsome a
   season. Let us rise up and meet the Well-Beloved, and in concert with
   Him let us sow in hope and look for a speedy springing up. The Sun of
   Righteousness is coming forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and
   the weary night is melting into welcome day--let us hear the Beloved's
   voice as He cries to us, "Arise, My love, My fair one, and come away."

   It seems from the text that the additions to the Church which were made
   in the Pentecostal springtime did not occur always in one form.
   Sometimes they came in crowds and at other times by gradual increase.
   Upon one day there were 3,000 added--that is an instance of conversion
   in the mass, when a nation is born at once! In such a work we are bound
   to believe. I mean not merely in the possibility of it, but in the
   probability of it, for it stands to reason that what should convince
   one man in a particular condition of heart would as readily convince
   3,000 or 30,000 if they were in the same state. Granted the same soil,
   the same seed, the same season and the same wonder-working God--and I
   cannot imagine any reason why a limit should be set to results!

   The Holy Spirit is Divine and consequently He knows how to influence
   all kinds of men, and He can, by the instrumentalities now in use,
   reach just as many as He pleases. I remember well, when I first
   preached in London, a remark made by a friend which very greatly
   encouraged me at the time, and has proved true in my experience. When
   he heard that my little country Chapel had been filled by the
   inhabitants of the village in which I had preached, he gave me hope of
   filling a far larger place in London. "For," he said, "what will draw
   200 will draw 2,000, and what was useful to a few may be made just as
   useful to a multitude."

   I saw at once that it was so. When we are dealing with spiritual forces
   we have not to calculate by pounds and ounces, or by so many horse
   power. We have not to think of quantity. As an illustration--give me
   fire, I will not bargain for a furnace--give me but a single candle and
   a city or a forest may soon be in a blaze. A spark is quite sufficient
   to begin with, for fire multiplies itself. So give us the Truth of God,
   a single voice and the Holy Spirit with it--and none can say where the
   sacred conflagration will end! One Jonah sufficed to subdue all Nineveh
   by one monotonous sentence often repeated! And in spite of the weakness
   of our present instrumentality, if God does but bless the Gospel, there
   is no reason why it should not speedily be felt by the whole of London!

   The sermon preached by Peter at Pentecost was the arrow of the Lord's
   deliverance to 3,000--there is no reason why the Lord should not cause
   one of ours to be the same! Three thousand cannot be converted if only
   a hundred are present to hear--but with this vast assembly, and
   thousands of smaller ones within gunshot--why should not the slain of
   the Lord be many? Assuredly the Divine Comforter can as readily bless
   three millions as three individuals! But it

   would appear from our text that the additions to the Pentecostal Church
   were not made in a mass at all times. The Spirit of God was still with
   them, but their increase was more gradual. "The Lord added to the
   Church daily of such as should be saved."

   You have seen a heavy shower of rain in the Spring--in a moment a big
   drop has fallen upon the pavement and before you were ready to escape
   from it, a deluge followed, so plenteous that you half suspected a
   cloud had been torn in two right over your head! Such a sudden and
   impetuous shower may serve for a figure of the conversion of 3,000
   souls at once. But at other times rain has fallen gently and has
   continued to descend hour by hour--a soft, warm, Spring watering--which
   in its own way and fashion has done its work of blessing quite as
   surely as the heavier downpour. We must be very thankful if we do not
   see 3,000 converted in one day. If we see 300 every day for 10 days, or
   if we see 30 every day for a hundred days, we ought, indeed, to be
   grateful for all success so long as sinners really come to Jesus.

   Whether they come in troops, or one by one, we will welcome them! The
   woman who lost her money was glad to find one piece, although she would
   have been even more glad to have found a purse full if they had been
   lost. I want you to think about additions to the Church as they used to
   occur among the early Christians. Certain people are always talking
   about the "early Church," and very strange notions they seem to have of
   the aforesaid early Church. Their early Church was very different from
   anything we meet with in the Acts of the Apostles, for it was very
   particular in its architecture, millinery, and music. Their "early
   Church" could not worship at all unless it had a visible altar, with
   reredos and frontal, at which gentlemen in gorgeous attire of blue and
   scarlet and fine linen made many postures and not a few low bows.

   The "early Church" of which they speak, it seems, believed in baptismal
   regeneration, transubstantiation, priestcraft and sacramental efficacy.
   Well, that may or may not be, but there was an earlier Church which had
   no such notions! And it is for us to get right away from any such early
   churches to the earlier Church or the earliest Church, and there, I
   guarantee you, you shall find no priestcraft nor nonsense of
   sacramental efficacy! There was but simplicity, Truth of God and the
   power of the Holy Spirit! The early Church, so much admired by
   Anglicans, was a degenerate vine, a field of wheat and tares, a mass
   leavened with antichristian error--in a word--baptized heathenism!

   After its own fashion, it set up, again, the many deities of the
   heathen, only calling them saints instead of gods-- putting the Virgin
   into the place of Venus and setting up Peter or Paul in the niches
   formerly occupied by Saturn or Mars. Our present "revived early Church"
   is only paganism with a border of crosses! We are resolved to return to
   the primitive Church of which we read, "then they that gladly received
   the Word were baptized, and they continued steadfastly in the Apostles'
   doctrine." In connection with this Church we shall handle our subject,
   trusting to the Holy Spirit to be with us as He was with them.

   I. First, then, ADDITIONS TO THE CHURCH, WHAT ABOUT THEM? "The Lord
   added to the Church daily of such as should be saved." It seems to have
   been the custom in the earliest times for persons who had been
   converted to Christ to join themselves with the Church of Jesus Christ.
   From that fact, I feel persuaded that they did not conceal their
   convictions. It is a strong temptation with many to say, "I have
   believed in Jesus, but that is a matter between God and my own soul.
   There can be no need that I should tell this to others. Can I not
   quietly go to Heaven and be a Nicodemus, or a Joseph of Arimathea?"

   To which I reply, Yes, you can quietly go to Heaven, and we hope you
   will do so, but that is a different thing from being cowardly and
   ashamed of Christ! We shall not object to your being a Nicodemus if you
   will go with him when he carries spices to the grave of Jesus. And you
   may be a Joseph of Arimathea if you will attend him when he goes boldly
   in unto Pilate and begs for the body of Jesus! Neither of these two
   Brothers were cowardly after the Cross had been set up before their
   eyes. Neither were they ashamed to identify themselves with Christ
   crucified. Follow them, not in the infancy of their love, but in its
   mature days! Remember, dear Friends, the promise of the Gospel runs
   thus--"He that with his heart believes, and with his mouth makes
   confession of Him, shall be saved."

   Do not, I charge you, neglect one half of the command! The Gospel
   commission which we have received is this--"Go you into all the world
   and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believes and is
   baptized shall be saved." That is the message as we find it. We did not
   insert the clause concerning Baptism, neither dare we leave it out, or
   advise you to neglect it. I give you the very words of the Savior. Do
   not, therefore, divide the Gospel command in order to throw half of it
   behind your back, but both believe and acknowledge your belief, and be
   added to the Church. It is quite clear, too,

   that Believers in those days did not try to go to Heaven alone. There
   has been a great deal said in these latter days about being simply a
   Christian and not joining any particular Church--a piece of cant
   mostly--and in all cases a mistake.

   In the name of unity this system is preached up, and yet it is clear to
   all that it is the reverse of unity and is calculated to put an end to
   all visible Church fellowship. The good people mentioned in our text
   joined themselves with the Church of God in Jerusalem at once. I dare
   say that even in those days, had they criticized the Church, they would
   have found faults in her--certainly within a few weeks great faults had
   to be remedied--but these converts felt that the society at Jerusalem
   was the Church of Christ and, therefore, they joined themselves to it.
   All of you can meet with Churches of Jesus Christ if you choose to look
   for them. If you wait for a perfect Church, you must wait until you get
   to Heaven! And even if you could find a perfect assembly on earth, I am
   sure they would not admit you to their fellowship, for you are not
   perfect yourself.

   Find out those people who are nearest to the Scriptures--who hold the
   Truths of God in doctrine and in ordinance, and are most like the
   Apostolic Church--and then cast in your lot with them and you will be
   blessed in the deed. Consider the matter, and reflect that if it would
   be right for you to remain out of Church fellowship, it must be right
   for every other Believer to remain in the same condition. And then
   there would be no visible Church on earth at all and no body of people
   banded together to maintain the Christian ordinances. Christian
   fellowship, especially in the breaking of bread and the maintenance of
   an evangelistic ministry, would become an impossibility if no one
   openly avowed the Savior's cause. Act, then, according to your duty.
   And if you are a Christian, join with Christians. If you love the
   Master, love the servants. If you love the Captain, unite with the army
   and join that regiment of it which you think cleaves closest to the
   Master's Word.

   Observe next, that the persons who were reached at Pentecost were added
   to the Church by the Lord. Does anybody else ever add to the Church?
   Oh, yes, the devil too often thrusts in his servants! Who was it that
   added Judas, Ananias and Sapphire, and Simon Magus and Demas to the
   Church? Who was it that stole forth by night and cast tares among the
   wheat? That evil spirit is not dead! He is still busy enough in this
   department and continually adds to the Church those who are not saved.
   His are the mixed multitude which infest the camp of Israel and are the
   first to fall a lusting. His the Achan who brings a curse upon the
   tribes. His are those of whom Jude says, "certain men crept in unawares
   who were before of old ordained to this condemnation." These adulterate
   the Church and by so doing, they weaken and defile it, and bring it
   much grief and dishonor. When the Lord adds to the Church, that is
   quite another matter!

   Moreover, the Church, itself, cannot avoid adding some who should not
   be received. With the greatest possible care and prudence we shall
   still make mistakes, And some are thus added whom the Lord never added
   to the Church. You have heard Mr. Hill's story of meeting a man in the
   street one night, who hiccupped up to him and said, "How do you do, Mr.
   Hill? I am one of your converts." "Yes," said Rowland, "I should say
   you are, but you are none of God's, or else you would not be drunk."
   Converts of that sort are far too numerous. Converts of the preacher,
   converts of friends, or converts of a certain fashion of making
   profession--but not true-born children of the Lord.

   Dear Friends, I invite all of you who are thinking about joining the
   Church to search and see whether you are such as the Lord would add to
   a Church. If you are, you have been converted by the Lord. You have
   been wounded by the Lord and you have been healed by the Lord. And in
   the Lord is your righteousness and trust. It has not been man's doing,
   whoever may have been the instrument. The Holy Spirit has worked all
   your works in you. You must have been the subject of a Divine agency.
   Something more than you could do for yourself, or any man could do for
   you, must have been worked in you by the Lord. He who made you has made
   you new. Oh, dear Friends who love the Lord, join in earnest prayer
   that the Lord would add to the Church daily the saved ones, for we long
   for such.

   Then, additions to the Church of a right kind are described in the text
   by the words, "such as should be saved." Only those words are not quite
   a correct translation of the original. I suppose they were borrowed
   from the vulgar Latin-- they are not in the Greek. The translation
   should be either, "The Lord added to the Church daily the saved," or,
   "The Lord added to the Church daily those who were being saved." Saved
   persons were added to the Church--and only such are fit to be added. We
   are not authorized to receive into our number those who desire to be
   saved, as certain Brethren do--I commend their design in so doing, but
   I am sure they have not Scripture for it. Those who are being saved, in
   whom the work of salvation is really begun, are the only proper
   candidates--and these are spoken of in the 44th verse as

   "Believers."

   The proper persons to be added to the visible Church of Christ are
   those who believe to the salvation of their souls. They are they who
   are, from day to day, experiencing the saving power of the name of
   Jesus by being delivered from sin. They are being saved from the
   customs of the world and are being saved in the sense of sanctified
   from the various corruptions and lusts which rule among the sons of
   men. These are the sort of persons who should be added to the Church.
   So let the question go round--Am I saved? Have I believed in Jesus? If
   I have, the process of salvation within me is going on. I am being
   delivered from the reigning, ruling power of sin each day. I am being
   kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation and I shall be
   kept and presented, at last, spotless before the Presence of God with
   exceeding joy! We set the door wide open to all who are saved, however
   little their faith may be.

   The Church has no right to exclude any of the saved because their
   knowledge or experience is not that of advanced Believers. If they
   believe in Jesus and are saved, the babes are of the family and ought
   to be received. The lambs belong to the flock and ought not to be kept
   outside the fold. Church membership is not a certificate of advanced
   Christianity--it is simply the recognition of the profession of saving
   faith in Jesus Christ. May the Lord add to this Church many of the
   saved! And may we sit at the Lord's Table together and sing of
   redeeming Grace and dying love, as those who love the Savior. Come
   here, you who are the Lord's little ones, but stay far from here you
   unbelievers and unregenerate!

   Again the text says, "The Lord added to the Church daily such as should
   be saved." They were really "added" to the Church. I am afraid certain
   persons' names are added to the Church, but they themselves are not!
   They increase our numbers. They are added like figures on a slate, but
   they do not augment our strength. The Church is a vital body and to add
   to a vitalized body requires a Divine operation. The Church is like a
   tree--if you want to add to a tree you cannot take a dead bough and tie
   it on--that is not adding to it, but encumbering it. To add to a tree
   there must be grafting done, which requires skill--and the branch,
   itself alive--must be knit to the living trunk by a living junction so
   that the vital sap of the tree flows into the grafted bough. A true
   Church is a living thing and only living men and women made alive by
   the Spirit of God are fit to be grafted into it--and the grafting must
   be made by the Lord Himself--otherwise it is no true addition to the
   Church of God.

   Some members are only tied on to the Church--they are neither useful
   nor ornamental--as a dead bough fastened to a tree would add no beauty
   to it and would certainly bring forth no fruit. There must be a living
   union, so that the life which is in the Church shall join with the life
   that is in the man--and the one life of the one quickening Spirit shall
   flow through the whole of the body. When I hear professors railing at
   the Churches to which they belong. When I see disunion and disaffection
   among Church members, I can well understand that the Lord never added
   them! And it would be a great mercy to the Church if the Lord would
   take them away. When the Lord adds them, added they are for time and
   for eternity, and they can say to the Church, "Where you dwell I will
   dwell; your people shall be my people, for your God is my God."

   One more point in the text is this, that "the Lord added to the Church
   daily such as should be saved." There were additions to the Church
   every day! Some churches, if they have an addition once in 12 months
   make as much noise over that one as a hen does when she has laid an
   egg! Now, in the early Church they would not have been content with so
   small an increase. They would have gone weeping and mourning all over
   Jerusalem if there had been additions but once in the year. But, cries
   one, "If we have an addition every month, is not that enough?" Well, it
   is enough for some people, but when hearts are warm and full of love to
   Christ, we want Him to be praised from the rising of the sun unto the
   going down of the same--and we long to have added to the Church daily
   of such as are saved--and why not? "But," you reply, "we are not daily
   preaching." That may be, but we ought to be! If not daily in the
   pulpit, there should be the daily preaching of the life, and if all the
   members of the Church were daily teaching of Jesus Christ from house to
   house, a daily sowing would bring a daily reaping!

   If we were daily praying with earnestness, and daily using every effort
   we could by the power of the Holy Spirit-- and if daily the Church
   abode in fellowship with her Master--we should soon see added to it
   daily of those who are saved. "Why do we not see it," asks one, "in
   many Churches?" Why? Because many Churches do not believe in it! If
   there were many converts added to them, they would say, "Yes, we hear
   of a great many additions, but what are they? We hope they will hold
   on," or some such ungenerous remark. If to some Churches there should
   come a large increase, there are Brethren who would not believe it to
   be genuine and would despise the little ones!

   God will not cause His children to be born where there are none to
   nurse them--He will be sure not to send converts to Churches which do
   not want them. He will not have His lambs snarled over as if they were
   so many young wolves, and kept out in the cold by months together to
   see whether they will howl or bleat. He loves to see His people
   watchful for new converts, and watchful over them. The Good Shepherd
   would have us feed His lambs, gather them in from the cold field of the
   world and carry them to some warm sheltered place--and nurture them for
   Him. When He sees a Church ready to do that, then will He send them His
   lambs, but not till then.

   II. That brings me to the second point, which is this--ADDITIONS TO THE
   CHURCH--UNDER WHAT

   CONDITIONS MAY WE EXPECT THEM ON A LARGE SCALE? Turn to the chapter,
   again, and we shall have our answer. We may expect additions to every
   Church of God on a large scale when she has, first of all, a Holy
   Spirit ministry. Peter was, no doubt, a man of considerable natural
   abilities. He was also a warm-hearted, fervent man, just such an one as
   would have power over his fellow men because of the enthusiasm which
   dwelt in himself. But for all this, Peter had never seen 3,000 persons
   converted until he had been baptized with the Holy Spirit! After the
   tongue of fire had sat upon Peter's head, he was another man from what
   he had ever been before!

   If, dear Brothers and Sisters, we are to see large multitudes
   converted, the power of the preacher must lie in his being filled with
   the Holy Spirit. I fear that many Churches would not be content with a
   ministry whose power would lie solely in the Holy Spirit. I mean
   this--that they judge a minister by his elaboration of style, or beauty
   of imagery, or degree of culture. And if he is a man of such refined
   speech that only a select few can understand him--he is a favorite with
   what is considered to be "a respectable Church." Many despise a
   preacher whom the common people hear gladly--who uses great plainness
   of speech and discards the words which man's wisdom teaches. They
   complain that he is only fit to address the ragtag of the people, and
   for this they turn their backs on him. They want not the fire of the
   Spirit, but the flash of oratory! Not the rushing wind of the Holy
   Spirit, but the perfumed zephyrs of "high culture!"

   The jingle of rhetoric has more attraction for them than the certain
   sound of the trumpets of the sanctuary. May God have mercy upon the
   Church that has got into such a miserable state and is so lacking in
   true education--for where a Church is educated by the Lord she
   understands that salvation is not by might nor by power--but by the
   Spirit of God! Plainness of speech is the perfection of Gospel
   utterance, for the Master Himself so spoke. Men of studied elocution,
   who can pile up a climax and cap it with a dainty piece of poetry, are
   not the men whom God the Holy Spirit honors to be soul-winners! Have
   you not heard fine orations which have perfectly charmed you by their
   beauty, and yet after you have heard them you have felt that if the
   Lord did bless such sermons to the conversion of anybody it would be a
   novelty upon the face of the earth, for there was little of Christ in
   them and none of the unction of the Holy One?

   Great sermons are often great sins--and "intellectual treats" are
   frequently a mess of savory pottage made of unclean meats. A Holy
   Spirit ministry, if Peter is the model, is one which is bold, clear,
   telling, persuasive--one which tells men that Jesus is the Christ and
   that they have crucified Him--and calls upon them to repent and turn
   unto the Lord! The truly sent preacher speaks out straight, plain and
   home to the conscience, whether men will hear or whether they will
   forbear. The Holy Spirit minister chooses Jesus for His main theme, as
   Peter did. He did not speak to them about modern science and the ways
   of twisting Scripture into agreement with it. He cared nothing for the
   maundering of the Rabbis or the philosophies of the Greeks. He went
   right on setting forth Christ crucified and Christ risen from the dead!

   When he had preached Christ, he made a pointed personal appeal to his
   hearers, and said, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you." He was
   not afraid to give such an exhortation! He was not like some who say,
   "We must warn sinners and then leave them. We may preach Christ to them
   but may not bid them repent." Peter came boldly forth with the Gospel
   exhortation and left it to his Master to send it home by the power of
   the Holy Spirit! That was the sort of sermon which God blesses. The man
   was full of God and God shone through the man and worked with him!
   Remission of sins was sought for and was found through repentance and
   faith in the Lord Jesus Christ by a vast number of souls. May God send
   to all His Churches a Holy Spirit ministry!

   But if there are to be many additions to the Church it must, next, be a
   Holy Spirit Church. Note that! What is a Holy Spirit Church? Well, it
   is a Church baptized into His power and this will be known, first, by
   its being steadfast. Read the 42nd verse--"And they continued
   steadfast." He will not bless a Church which is excited and then
   relapses, is carried away by every novelty and does not know what it
   believes. A Church which abides in Jesus and in His Truth will be

   blessed of God. They were steadfast in four points. In the Apostle's
   doctrine. They were a doctrinal Church. They believed in being
   steadfast in fixed truth--they did not belong to the shifty generation
   of men who plead that their views are progressive and that they cannot
   hold themselves bound by a plain creed.

   Dear Brothers and Sisters, never give up the grand old truths of the
   Gospel! Let no excitement, even though it is the whirlwind of a
   revival, ever sweep you off your feet concerning the great Doctrines of
   the Cross. If God does not save men by truth, He certainly will not
   save them by lies! And if the old Gospel is not competent to work a
   revival, then we will do without the revival. We will keep to the old
   Truths of God, anyhow, come what may! Our flag is nailed to the mast!
   Next they were steadfast in fellowship. They loved each other, and they
   continued doing so. They conversed with one another about the things of
   God and they did not give up the converse. They helped each other when
   they were in need and they continued in such liberality. They were true
   Brethren and their fellowship was not broken.

   Next they continued in the breaking of bread, which is a delightful
   ordinance and never to be despised or underestimated. As often as they
   could, they showed Christ's death till He should come. They delighted
   to enjoy the dear memorials of His sacred passion, both in the assembly
   and from house to house. They remained also steadfast in prayer. Mark
   that! God cannot bless a Church which does not pray--and Churches must
   increase in supplication if they would increase in strength. Sacred
   importunity must besiege the Throne of God and then the blessing will
   be yielded. Oh, children of the heavenly King! You hamper the Spirit
   and hinder the blessing if you restrain prayer! Here were four points,
   then, in which the Church was steadfast--and God blessed it.

   Note next that it was a united Church. We read of them that they were
   so united that they had all things in common and they continued daily
   with one accord in the temple. There were no parties among them, no
   petty strifes and divisions. They loved the Lord too well for that. The
   Sacred Dove takes His flight when strife comes in. If you divide the
   Church within itself, you also divide it from the mighty operations of
   the Spirit of God. Be full of love to one another and then you may
   expect that God the Holy Spirit will fill you with blessing. They were
   a generous Church as well as a united Church. They were so generous
   that they threw their property into a common stock lest any should be
   in need. They were not communists, they were Christians--and the
   difference between a communist and a Christian is this--a communist
   says, "All yours is mine," while a Christian says, "All mine is yours."
   And that is a very different thing.

   The one is for getting and the other for giving. These Believers acted
   in such a generous spirit, one to the other, that it seemed as if
   nobody accounted that what he had belonged to himself, but generously
   gave of it to the necessities of others. I do not believe the Lord will
   ever bless a stingy Church. There are Churches whose minister has to
   anxiously inquire how he shall provide food and raiment for his
   household, and yet these churches are not very poor. There are Churches
   where more is paid per annum for cleaning the shoes of the worshippers
   than they spend upon the cause of Christ! And where this is the case,
   no great good will be done. The Lord will never bless a synagogue of
   misers--if they are churls they may keep their worship to themselves,
   for God is a generous God, and He loves to have a generous people.

   Again, these people were in such a condition that their meals and homes
   were holy places. I want you to notice this, that they were breaking
   bread from house to house and did eat their meat with gladness and
   singleness of heart. They did not think that religion was meant only
   for Sundays and for what men, nowadays, call the House of God. Their
   own houses were houses of God, and their own meals were so mixed and
   mingled with the Lord's Supper that to this day the most cautious
   student of the Bible cannot tell when they left off eating their common
   meals and when they began eating the Supper of the Lord. They elevated
   their meals into diets for worship--they so consecrated everything with
   prayer and praise that all around them was holiness unto the Lord! I
   wish our houses were thus dedicated to the Lord, so that we worshipped
   God all the day long, and made our dwellings temples for the living
   God.

   A great dignitary, not long ago, informed us that there is great
   efficacy in daily prayer in the parish Church. He even asserted that
   however few might attend, it was more acceptable than any other
   worship. I suppose that prayer in the parish Church with nobody to join
   in it except the vicar and the beadle is far more effectual than the
   largest family gathering in the house at home! This was evidently his
   lordship's idea and I suppose the literature which his lordship was
   best acquainted with was of such an order as to have led him to draw
   that inference! Had he been acquainted with the Bible and such
   old-fashioned books, he would have learned rather differently. And if
   someone should make him a present of a New Testament, it might,
   perhaps, suggest a few new thoughts to him.

   Does God need a house? He who made the heavens and the earth--does He
   dwell in temples made with hands? What crass ignorance is this! No
   house beneath the sky is more holy than the place where a Christian
   lives, eats, drinks, sleeps and praises the Lord in all that he does!
   And there is no worship more heavenly than that which is presented by
   holy families devoted to His fear. To sacrifice home worship for public
   worship is a most evil course of action! Morning and evening devotion
   in a cottage is infinitely more pleasing in the sight of God than all
   the cathedral pomp which delights the carnal eye and ear! Every truly
   Christian household is a Church--and as such it is competent for the
   discharge of any function of Divine worship, whatever it may be! Are we
   not all priests? Why do we need to call in others to make devotion a
   performance? Let every man be a priest in his own house! Are you not
   all kings if you love the Lord? Then make your houses palaces of joy
   and temples of holiness! One reason why the early Church had such a
   blessing was because her members had such homes. When we are like them
   we shall have "added to the Church daily of the saved."

   I have already mentioned that they were a praying Church and that
   accounted greatly for the increase. They were a devout Church, a Church
   which did not forget any part of the Lord's will. They were a baptized
   Church and they were a bread-breaking Church, so that they were
   obedient to Christ in both ordinances. They were also a joyful Church.
   We find that they ate their meat with gladness. Their religion was not
   of the somber hue which comes of doubting and fearing. They were
   Believers in a risen Redeemer and though they knew that they would soon
   be persecuted, they so rejoiced that everybody could read Heaven
   shining on their faces, and might have known that they believed in the
   blessed Gospel, for they were a blessed people. They were also a
   praising Church, for it is said they "praised God, and they had favor
   with all the people." Oh, may the Lord make this Church and all the
   Churches around us to be as holy and joyful as that Apostolic
   community.

   III. I must conclude with a word upon that which I wanted most of all
   to say--WHAT RESPONSIBILITIES DO

   THESE ADDITIONS TO THE CHURCH BRING TO US? To you who are to be added
   to the Church tonight, and I

   thank God you are so many, it involves this responsibility--Do not come
   in among us unless you are saved. Judge yourselves with honesty.
   Examine yourselves with care. And although you have gone as far as you
   have, yet tonight, before I give you the right hand of fellowship, if
   you are conscious that you are not what you profess to be, I do beseech
   you stand back! If you are the weakest of the weak, and the most feeble
   of the feeble, yet, if you are sincere, come and welcome! But if you
   are not sincere, do not add to your sin by taking upon you a profession
   which you cannot keep up, and by declaring a falsehood before the
   Lord--for if you do so, remember you will not have lied unto man, but
   unto God, Himself--in daring to declare yourselves Christians while you
   are unbelievers.

   Come and welcome if you are Believers! And when you come, remember that
   the responsibility which you undertake in God's strength is that you
   live to prove that you have really given yourself up to the
   Church--that you mean to serve Christ with all your heart--that you
   will seek to promote the holiness and unity of the Church which you
   join and will strive to do nothing to dishonor her good name or to
   grieve the Spirit of God. In joining the Church, pray to be continued
   steadfast in doctrine and fellowship. Pray for more Divine Grace, that
   you may be filled with the Spirit of God. Do not come in to weaken
   us--we are weak enough, already. Do not come in to adulterate our
   purity--we have enough impurity even now. Pray that God may make you a
   real increase to our prayerfulness, to our holiness, to our
   earnestness, to our higher life--and then come and welcome, and the
   Lord be with you!

   As for us who shall receive the converts, what is our responsibility?
   First, to welcome them heartily. Let us open wide the door of our
   hearts and say, "Come and welcome," for Jesus Christ's sake. After
   welcoming them we must watch over them. And when so many are added,
   double care is needed. Of course, no two pastors can possibly watch
   over this vast assembly of 4,500 professed Believers. Let the watching
   be done by all the members--by the officers of the Church, first--and
   then by every individual. I am very thankful that out of the cheering
   number to be brought in tonight the larger proportion belong to the
   families of the Church. My Brothers and Sisters already in Christ, it
   is fortunate for these young people that they have you to watch over
   them! Never let it be said that any parent discourages his child, that
   any guardian discourages the young after they have come forward and
   acknowledged their faith!

   If you notice faults, remember you have faults, yourselves. Do not
   tauntingly throw their failing in their teeth as some have unkindly
   done. Guide them and cheer them on. Help their weakness. Bear with
   their ignorance, impetuosity and correct their mistakes. I charge you,
   my beloved Sisters, be nursing mothers in the Church! And you, my
   Brothers, be fathers to these young people that they may be enabled by
   your help, through God's Spirit, to hold on their way. It is an

   evil thing to receive members and never care for them afterwards. Among
   so many some must escape our supervision, but if all the members of the
   Church were watchful this would not be. Each would have someone to care
   for him. Each one would have a friend to whom to tell his troubles and
   his cares. Watch over the Church, then, I pray you.

   And you elder ones, myself chiefly among you, let our example be such
   as they can safely follow. Let them not come into the Church to find us
   cold. Let us try, as we see these young ones coming among us, to grow
   young again in heart and sympathy. In receiving these new members we
   ought to have, dear Brothers, an access of new strength and a more
   vigorous life. The Church ought to be giving out more light, for here
   are fresh lamps! She should be doing more for Christ--here are new
   workers! She should be herself stronger, more daring, more useful--for
   here are bold soldiers newly enlisted! I think, as I see new converts
   brought in, I see the Lord lighting up new stars to gladden this
   world's night! I see Him swearing in new soldiers to fight Christ's
   battles! I see Him sending out new sowers to sow the plains of the
   world for the ever-glorious harvest--and I bless and praise and magnify
   His name with gladness of soul!

   Heavenly Father, keep them, yes, keep us all, lest any of us, though
   added to the Church on earth, should not be added to the Church in
   Heaven! Keep us so that when the muster-roll is read for the last time,
   we who have had our names inscribed among the saints on earth may find
   them written among the blessed in Heaven! May God grant it, and He
   shall have all the glory. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Acts 2. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--96, 451, 972.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Crown of Thorns

   (No. 1168)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 12, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon His
   head." Matthew 27:29.

   BEFORE we enter the common hall of the soldiers and gaze upon "the
   sacred head once wounded," it will be well to consider who and what He
   was who was thus cruelly put to shame. Forget not the intrinsic
   excellence of His Person, for He is the brightness of the Father's
   Glory and the express image of His Person. He is in Himself God over
   all, blessed forever, the eternal Word by whom all things were made and
   by whom all things consist. Though Heir of all things, the Prince of
   the kings of the earth, He was despised and rejected of men, "a Man of
   sorrows and acquainted with grief." His head was scornfully surrounded
   with thorns for a crown. His body was bedecked with a faded purple
   robe. A poor reed was put into His hand for a scepter, and then the
   ribald soldiers dared to spit upon His face, and worry Him with their
   filthy jests--

   "The soldiers also spit upon that face Which angels did desire to have
   the grace, And Prophets once to see, but found no place. Was ever grief
   like Mine?"

   Forget not the glory to which He had been accustomed, for before He
   came to earth He had been in the bosom of the Father, adored of
   cherubim and seraphim, obeyed by every angel, worshipped by every
   principality and power in the heavenly places! Yet here He sits,
   treated worse than a felon, made the center of a comedy before He
   became the victim of a tragedy. They sat Him down in some broken chair,
   covered Him with an old soldier's cloak, and then insulted Him as a
   mimic monarch--

   "They bow their knees to Me, and cry, Hail king. Whatever scoffs and
   scornfulness can bring, I am the floor, the sink, where they'd fling.
   Was ever grief like Mine?"

   What a descent His love to us compelled Him to make! See how He fell to
   lift us from our Fall! Do not, also, fail to remember that at the very
   time when they were thus mocking Him, He was still the Lord of All and
   could have summoned 12 legions of angels to His rescue. There was
   majesty in His misery! He had laid aside, it is true, the glorious
   imperial pomp of His Father's courts, and He was now the lowly Man of
   Nazareth, but for all that, had He willed it, one glance of those eyes
   would have withered up the Roman cohorts. One word from those silent
   lips would have shaken Pilate's palace from roof to foundation--and had
   He willed it--the vacillating governor and the malicious crowd would,
   together, have gone down alive into the pit, even as Korah, Dathan, and
   Abiram of old!

   Lo, God's own Son, Heaven's Darling and earth's Prince, sits there and
   wears the cruel chaplet which wounds both mind and body at once--the
   mind with insult, and the body with piercing pain! His royal face was
   marred with "wounds which could not cease to bleed, trickling faint and
   slow." Yet that "noblest brow and dearest head" had once been fairer
   than the children of men and was even, then, the countenance of
   Immanuel, God with us! Remember these things and you will gaze upon Him
   with enlightened eyes and tender hearts--and you will be able, the more
   fully, to enter into fellowship with Him in His griefs. Remember from
   where He came and it will the more astound you that He should have
   stooped so low! Remember what He was and it will be the more marvelous
   that He should become our Substitute.

   And now let us press into the guard room and look at our Savior wearing
   His crown of thorns. I will not detain you long with any guesses as to
   what kind of thorns He wore. According to the Rabbis and the botanists,
   there would seem to have been from 20 to 25 different species of thorny
   plants growing in Palestine. And different writers have, according to
   their own judgments or fancies, selected one and another of these
   plants as the peculiar thorns which were used upon this

   occasion. But why select one thorn out of many? He bore not one grief,
   but all--any and every thorn will suffice. The very dubiousness as to
   the peculiar species yields us instruction.

   It may well be that more than one kind of thorn was platted in that
   crown--at any rate sin has so thickly strewn the earth with thorns and
   thistles that there was no difficulty in finding the materials, even as
   there was no scarcity of griefs with which to chasten Him every morning
   and make Him a mourner all His days. The soldiers may have used pliant
   boughs of the acacia, or shittim tree--that unrotting wood of which
   many of the sacred tables and vessels of the sanctuary were made--and,
   therefore, significantly used if such were the case. It may have been
   true, as the old writers generally consider, that the plant was the
   spina Christi, for it has many small and sharp spines. And its green
   leaves would have made a wreath such as those with which generals and
   emperors were crowned after a battle.

   But we will leave the matter. It was a crown of thorns which pierced
   His head and caused Him suffering as well as shame--and that suffices
   us. Our inquiry, now, is--what do we see when our eyes behold Jesus
   Christ crowned with thorns? There are six things which strike me most.
   And as I lift the curtain I pray you watch with me and may the Holy
   Spirit pour forth His Divine illumination and light up the scene before
   our wondering souls.

   I. The first thing which is seen by the most casual observer, before he
   looks beneath the surface, is A SORROWFUL SPECTACLE. Here is the
   Christ, the generous, loving, tender Christ, treated with indignity and
   scorn! Here is the Prince of Life and Glory made an object of derision
   by ribald soldiers! Behold, today, the lily among thorns, Purity,
   itself, in the midst of opposing sin! See here the Sacrifice caught in
   the thicket, and held fast there, as a victim in our place to fulfill
   the ancient type of the ram held by the bushes which Abraham slew
   instead of Isaac!

   Three things are to be carefully noted in this spectacle of sorrow.
   Here is Christ's lowliness and weakness triumphed over by the lusty
   soldiers. When they brought Jesus into the guard room they felt that He
   was entirely in their power and that His claims to be a king were so
   absurd as to be only a theme for contemptuous jest. He was but meanly
   dressed, for He wore only the smock frock of a peasant--was He a
   claimant of the purple? He held His peace--was He the man to stir a
   nation to sedition? He was all wounds and bruises, fresh from the
   scourger's lash--was He the hero to inspire an army's enthusiasm and
   overturn old Rome?

   It seemed rare mirth for them and as wild beasts sport with their
   victims, so did they. Many, I warrant you, were the jibes and jeers of
   the Roman soldiers at His expense, and loud was the laughter amid their
   ranks. Look at His face, how meek He appears! How different from the
   haughty countenances of tyrants! To mock His royal claims seemed but
   natural to rough soldiers. He was gentle as a child, tender as a woman!
   His dignity was that of calm quiet endurance--and this was not a
   dignity whose force these semi-barbarous men could feel and, therefore
   they did pour contempt upon Him. Let us remember that our Lord's
   weakness was undertaken for our sakes--for us He became a lamb--for us
   He laid aside His Glory. And therefore it is the more painful for us to
   see that this voluntary humiliation of Himself must be made the object
   of so much derision and scorn, though worthy of the utmost praise.

   He stoops to save us and we laugh at Him as He stoops! He leaves the
   Truth of God that He may lift us up to it, but while He is graciously
   descending, the hoarse laughter of an ungodly world is His only reward!
   Ah, me, was ever love treated after so unlovely a sort? Surely the
   cruelty it received was proportioned to the honor it deserved, so
   perverse are the sons of men--

   "O head so full of bruises! Brow that its lifeblood loses! Oh great
   humility. Upon His face are falling Indignities most galling! He bears
   them all for me."

   It was not merely that they mocked His humility, but they mocked His
   claims to be a king. "Aha," they seemed to say, "is this a king? It
   must be after some uncouth Jewish fashion, surely, that this poor
   Peasant claims to wear a crown. Is this the Son of David? When will He
   drive Caesar and his armies into the sea and set up a new state, and
   reign at Rome? This Jew, this Peasant--is He to fulfill His nation's
   dream and rule over all mankind?

   Wonderfully did they ridicule this idea and we do not wonder that they
   did, for they could not perceive His true Glory. But, Beloved, my point
   lies here, He was a King in the truest and most emphatic sense. If He
   had not been a king, then He would, as an impostor, have deserved the
   scorn, but would not have keenly felt it. But being truly and really a

   King, every word must have stung His royal soul and every syllable must
   have cut His kingly spirit to the quick. When the impostor's claims are
   exposed and held up to scorn, he himself must well know that he
   deserves all the contempt he receives--and what can he say? But if the
   real Heir to all the estates of Heaven and earth has His claims denied
   and His Person mocked--then is His heart wounded and rebuke and
   reproach fill Him with many sorrows.

   Is it not sad that the Son of God, the blessed and only Potentate,
   should have been thus disgraced? Nor was it merely mockery, but cruelty
   added pain to insult. If they had only intended to mock Him, they might
   have platted a crown of straw. But they meant to hurt Him and,
   therefore, they fashioned a crown of thorns. Look, I pray you, at His
   Person as He suffers under their hands! They had scourged Him till
   probably there was no part of His body which was not bleeding beneath
   their blows--except His head--and now that head must be made to suffer,
   too.

   Alas, our whole head was sick and our whole heart faint--and so He must
   be made, in His chastisement, like unto us in our transgression. There
   was no part of our humanity without sin--and there must be no part of
   His humanity without suffering. If we had escaped, in some measure,
   from iniquity, so might He have escaped from pain. But as we had worn
   the foul garment of transgression and it covered us from head to foot,
   even so must He wear the garments of shame and derision from the crown
   of His head, even to the sole of His feet--

   "OLove, too boundless to be shown

   By any but the Lord alone!

   O Love offended, which sustains

   The bold offender's curse andpains!

   O Love, which could no motive have,

   But mere benignity to save."

   Beloved, I always feel as if my tongue were tied when I come to talk of
   the sufferings of my Master. I can think of them. I can picture them to
   myself. I can sit down and weep over them, but I know not how to paint
   them to others! Did you ever know pen or pencil that could? A
   Michelangelo or a Raphael might well shrink back from attempting to
   paint this picture! And the tongue of an archangel might be consumed in
   the effort to sing the griefs of Him who was loaded with shame because
   of our shameful transgressions.

   I ask you rather to meditate than to listen--and to sit down and view
   your Lord with your own loving eyes rather than to have regard words of
   mine. I can only sketch the picture, roughly outlining it as with
   charcoal. I must leave you to put in the colors and then to sit and
   study it--but you will fail as I do. Dive as we may, we cannot reach
   the depths of this abyss of woe and shame! Climb as we may, these
   storm-swept hills of agony are still above us.

   II. Removing the curtain, again, from this sorrowful spectacle, I see
   here a SOLEMN WARNING which speaks softly and meltingly to us out of
   the spectacle of sorrow. Do you ask me what is that warning? It is a
   warning against our ever committing the same crime as the soldiers did.
   "The same?" you ask, "why, we should never plat a crown of thorns for
   that dear head." I pray you never may. But there are many who have done
   so and are doing it! Those are guilty of this crime who, as these
   soldiers did, deny His claims. Busy are the wise men of this world at
   this very time all over the world--busy in gathering thorns and
   twisting them--that they may afflict the Lord's Anointed. Some of them
   cry, "Yes, He was a good Man, but not the Son of God!"

   Others even deny His superlative excellence in life and teaching. They
   quibble at His perfection and imagine flaws where none exist. Never are
   they happier than when impugning His Character. I may be addressing
   some avowed infidel here, some skeptic as to the Redeemer's Person and
   Doctrine--and I charge him with crowning the Christ of God with thorns
   every time he invents bitter charges against the Lord Jesus and utters
   railing words against His cause and His people! Your denial of His
   claims, and especially your ridicule of them, is a repetition of the
   unhappy scene before us. There are some who ply all their wit and tax
   their utmost skill for nothing else but to discover discrepancies in
   the Gospel narratives, or to conjure up differences between their
   supposed scientific discoveries and the declarations of the Word of
   God. Full often have they torn their own hands in weaving crowns of
   thorns for Him and I fear, as the result of their displays of
   scientific research after briers with which to afflict the Lover of
   mankind, some of them will have to lie upon a bed of thorns when they
   come to die.

   It will be well if they have not to lie on worse than thorns forever
   when Christ shall come to judge them and condemn them and cast them
   into the Lake of Fire for all their impieties concerning Him. Oh, that
   they would cease this useless and malicious trade of weaving crowns of
   thorns for Him who is the world's only hope, whose religion is the lone
   star

   that gilds the midnight of human sorrow and guides mortal man to the
   port of peace! Even for the temporal benefits of Christianity the good
   Jesus should be treated with respect. He has emancipated the slave and
   uplifted the downtrodden! His Gospel is the charter of liberty, the
   scourge of tyrants and the death of priests! Spread it and you spread
   peace, freedom, order, love and joy! He is the greatest of
   philanthropists, the truest Friend of man--why, then, array yourselves
   against Him--you who talk of progress and enlightenment? If men did but
   know Him, they would crown Him with diadems of reverent love more
   precious than the pearls of India, for His reign will usher in the
   golden age. Even now it softens the rigor of the present, as it has
   removed the miseries of the past. It is an ill business, this carping
   and quibbling, and I beseech those engaged in it to cease their
   ungenerous labors, unworthy of rational beings and destructive to their
   immortal souls!

   This crowning with thorns is worked in another fashion by hypocritical
   professions of allegiance to Him. These soldiers put a crown on
   Christ's head, but they did not mean that He should be king. They put a
   scepter in His hand, but it was not the substantial ivory rod which
   signifies real power--it was only a weak and slender reed. Therein they
   remind us that Christ is mocked by insincere professors. O you who love
   Him not in your inmost souls, you are those who mock Him! But you say,
   "Wherein have I failed to crown Him? Did I not join the Church? Have I
   not said that I am a Believer?" On, but if your hearts are not right
   within you, you have only crowned Him with thorns! If you have not
   given Him your very soul, you have, in awful mockery, thrust a scepter
   of reed into His hand! Your very religion mocks Him! Your lying
   professions mock Him!

   Who has required this at your hands, to tread His courts? You insult
   Him at His table! You insult Him on your knees! How can you say you
   love Him, when your hearts are not with Him? If you have never believed
   in Him and repented of sin. If you have never yielded obedience to His
   commands. If you do not acknowledge Him in your daily life to be both
   Lord and King, I charge you, lay down the profession which is so
   dishonoring to Him! If He is God, serve Him! If He is King, obey Him!
   If He is neither, then do not profess to be Christians! Be honest and
   bring no crown if you do not accept Him as King! What need, again, to
   insult Him with nominal dominion, mimic homage and pretended service? O
   you hypocrites! Consider your ways, lest soon the Lord whom you provoke
   should ease Him of His adversaries!

   In a measure the same thing may be done by those who are sincere, but
   through lack of watchfulness walk so as to dishonor their profession.
   Here, if I speak rightly, I shall compel every one of you to confess it
   in your spirits that you stand condemned--for every time that we act
   according to our sinful flesh we crown the Savior's head with thorns.
   Which of us has not done this? Dear Head, every hair of which is more
   precious than fine gold, when we gave our hearts to You we thought we
   should always adore You! We thought that our whole lives would be one
   long Psalm, praising and blessing and crowning You!

   Alas, how far have we fallen short of our own ideals? We have hedged
   You about with the briers of our sin. We have been betrayed into angry
   tempers so that we have spoken unadvisedly with our lips. Or we have
   been worldly and loved that which You abhor, or we have yielded to our
   passions and indulged our evil desires. Our vanities, follies,
   forgetfulness, omissions and offenses have set upon Your head a coronet
   of dishonor--and we tremble to think of it! Oh, cruel hearts and hands
   to have so maltreated the Well-Beloved, whom it should have been our
   daily care to glorify!

   Do I speak to any backslider whose open sin has dishonored the Cross of
   Christ? I fear I must be addressing some who once had a name to live,
   but now are numbered with the dead in sin! Surely if there is a spark
   of Divine Grace in you, what I am now saying must cut you to the quick
   and act like salt upon a raw wound to make your very soul to smart! Do
   not your ears tingle as I accuse you of deliberate acts of
   inconsistency which have twisted a thorny crown for our dear Master's
   head? It is assuredly so, for you have opened the mouths of
   blasphemers, taught gainsayers to revile Him, grieved the generation of
   His people and made many to stumble1 Ungodly men have laid your faults
   at the door of the innocent Savior--they have said--"This is Your
   religion."

   You have grown the thorns, but He has had to wear them! We call your
   offenses inconsistencies, but worldly men regard them as the fruit of
   Christianity and condemn the Vine because of our sour clusters! They
   charge the holy Jesus with the faults of His erring followers. Dear
   Friends, is there not room to look at home in the case of each one of
   us? As we do so, let us come with the sorrowful and loving penitent and
   wash His dear feet with tears of repentance because we have crowned His
   head with thorns. Thus our thorn-crowned Lord and Master stands before
   us as a sorrowful spectacle, conveying to us a solemn warning.

   III. Lifting the veil again, in the Person of our tortured and insulted
   Lord we see TRIUMPHANT ENDURANCE. He could not be conquered! He was
   victorious even in the hour of deepest shame--

   "He with unflinching heart Bore all disgrace and shame, And mid the
   keenest smart Loved on, yes loved the same."

   He was bearing at that moment, first, the substitutionary griefs which
   were due to Him because He stood in our place and from bearing them He
   did not turn aside. We were sinners and the reward of sin is pain and
   death--therefore He bore the chastisement of our peace.

   He was enduring, at that time, what we ought to have endured--and He
   was draining the cup which Justice had mingled for us. Did He start
   back from it? Oh, no! When He first came to drink of that wormwood and
   gall in the Garden, He put it to His lips and the draught seemed, for
   an instant, to stagger even His strong spirit. His soul was exceedingly
   sorrowful, even unto death. He was like one demented, tossed to and fro
   with inward agony. "My Father," He said, "if it is possible, let this
   cup pass from Me." Three times did He utter that prayer, while every
   portion of His Manhood was the battlefield of legions of griefs! His
   soul rushed out at every pore to find a vent for its swelling woes! His
   whole body became covered with gory sweat.

   After that tremendous struggle, the strength of Love mastered the
   weakness of Manhood--He put that cup to His lips and never shrank--He
   drank right on till not a drop was left! And now the cup of wrath is
   empty--no trace of the terrible wine of the wrath of God can be found
   within it! At one tremendous draught of love the Lord drank destruction
   dry, forever, for all His people. "Who is he that condemns? It is
   Christ that died, yes, rather, that has risen again." And "there is
   therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who
   walk not after the flesh but after the

   Spirit."

   Now, surely, endurance had reached a very high point when our Master
   was made to endure the painful mockery which our text describes, yet He
   quailed not, nor removed from His settled purpose. He had undertaken
   and He would go through with it. Look at Him and see, there, a miracle
   of patient endurance of griefs which would have sent a world to Hell
   had He not borne them on our behalf! Besides the shame and suffering
   due for sin, with which it pleased the Father to bruise Him, He was
   enduring a superfluity of malice from the hate of men. Why did men need
   to concentrate all their scorn and cruelty into His execution? Was it
   not enough that He must die? Did it give pleasure to their iron hearts
   to rack His tender sensibilities? Why these inventions for deepening
   his woe?

   Had any of us been thus derided we should have resented it. There is
   not a man or woman here who could have been silent under such
   indignities! But Jesus sat in Omnipotence of patience possessing His
   soul right royally. Glorious Pattern of patience, we adore You as we
   see how malice could not conquer Your almighty love! The pain which He
   had endured from the scourges caused Him to throb with exquisite
   anguish--but we read neither of tears nor groans--much less of angry
   complaints or revengeful threats. He does not seek pity, or make one
   appeal for leniency. He does not ask why they torture or why they mock.
   Brave Witness! Courageous Martyr! Suffering exquisitely, You also
   suffered calmly! Such a perfect frame as His--His body being conceived
   without sin--He must have been capable of tortures which our bodies,
   corrupted by sin, cannot feel.

   His delicate purity felt a horror of ribald jests which our more
   hardened spirits cannot estimate! Yet Jesus bore all as only the Son of
   God could bear it. They might heap on the load as they would--He would
   only put forth more endurance and bear it all-- He would not shrink or
   complain. I venture to suggest that such was the picture of patience
   which our blessed Lord exhibited that it may have moved even some of
   the soldiers, themselves. Has it ever occurred to you to ask how
   Matthew came to know all about that mockery? Matthew was not there!
   Mark, also, gives an account of it, but he would not have been
   tolerated in the guard room. The Praetorians were far too proud and
   rough to tolerate Jews, much less disciples of Jesus, in their common
   hall.

   Since there could have been nobody there except the soldiers
   themselves, it is well to inquire--Who told this tale? It must have
   been an eyewitness. May it not have been that centurion who in the same
   chapter is reported to have said, "Certainly this was the Son of God"?
   May not that scene, as well as the Lord's death, have led him to that
   conclusion? We do not know, but this much is very evident--the story
   must have been told by an eyewitness, and also by one who sympathized
   with the Sufferer--for to my ears it does not read like the description
   of an unconcerned spectator. I should

   not wonder--I would almost venture to assert--that our Lord's marred,
   but patient visage, preached such a sermon that one, at least, who
   gazed upon it felt its mysterious power!

   Certainly at least one felt that such patience was more than human--and
   accepted the thorn-crowned Savior as his Lord and his King! This I do
   know, that if you and I want to conquer human hearts for Jesus, we,
   too, must be patient. And if, when they ridicule and persecute us, we
   can but endure without repining or retaliation, we shall exercise an
   influence which even the most brutal will feel--and to which chosen
   minds will submit themselves.

   IV. Drawing up the veil again, I think we have before us, in the fourth
   place, in the Person of the triumphant Sufferer, a SACRED MEDICINE. I
   can only hint at the diseases which it will cure. These blood-sprinkled
   thorns are plants of renown, precious in heavenly surgery if they are
   rightly used. Take but a thorn out of this crown and use it as a
   lancet, and it will let out the hot blood of passion and abate the
   fever of pride! It is a wonderful remedy for swelling flesh and
   grievous boils of sin. He who sees Jesus crowned with thorns will
   loathe to look on self, except it be through tears of contrition. This
   thorn at the breast will make men sing, but not with notes of
   self-congratulation--the notes will be those of a dove moaning for her
   mate.

   Gideon taught the men of Buccoth with thorns, but the lessons were not
   so salutary as those which we learn from the thorns of Jesus. The
   sacred medicine which the good Physician brings to us in His thorny
   crown acts as a tonic and strengthens us to endure, without depression,
   whatever shame or loss His service may bring upon us--

   "Who defeats my fiercest foes? Who consoles my saddest woes? Who
   revives my fainting heart, Healing all its hidden smart? Jesus crowned
   with thorns."

   When you begin to serve God and for His sake endeavor to benefit your
   fellow mortals, do not expect any reward from men, except to be
   misunderstood, suspected and abused. The best men in the world are
   usually the worst spoken of. An evil world cannot speak well of holy
   lives. The sweetest fruit is most pecked at by the birds. The mountain
   nearest Heaven is most beaten by the storms--and the loveliest
   character is the most assailed. Those whom you would save will not
   thank you for your anxiety, but blame you for your interference.

   If you rebuke their sins they will frequently resent your warnings. If
   you invite them to Jesus, they will make light of your entreaties. Are
   you prepared for this? If not, consider Him who endured such
   contradiction of sinners against Himself lest you become weary and
   faint in your minds. If you succeed in bringing many to Christ, you
   must not reckon upon universal honor--you will be charged with
   self-seeking, popularity-hunting, or some such crime--you will be
   misrepresented, belied, caricatured and counted as a fool or a knave by
   the ungodly world. The probabilities are that the crown you will win in
   this world, if you serve God, will contain more spikes than sapphires,
   more briers than beryls! When it is put upon your head, pray for Divine
   Grace to wear it right gladly, counting it all joy to be like your
   Lord.

   Say in your heart, "I feel no dishonor in this dishonor. Men may impute
   shameful things to me, but I am not ashamed. They may degrade me, but I
   am not degraded. They may cast contempt upon me, but I am not
   contemptible." The Master of the house was called Beelzebub and spit
   upon--they cannot do worse to His household--therefore we scorn their
   scorn! Thus are we nerved to patience by the patience of the despised
   Nazarene. The thorn crown is also a remedy for discontent and
   affliction. When enduring bodily pain we are apt to wince and fret, but
   if we remember Jesus crowned with thorns, we say--

   "His way was much rougher and darker than mine. Did Christ my Lord
   suffer, and shall I repine?" And so our complaints grow dumb--for very
   shame we dare not compare our maladies with His woes! Resignation is
   learned at Jesus' feet when we see our great Exemplar made perfect
   through suffering. The thorn crown is a cure for care. We would
   cheerfully wear any array which our Lord may prepare for us, but it is
   a great folly to plat needless thorn crowns for ourselves. Yet I have
   seen some who are, I hope, true Believers, take much trouble to trouble
   themselves and labor to increase their own labors.

   They hasten to be rich--they fret, they toil, they worry and torment
   themselves to load themselves with the burden of wealth--they wound
   themselves to wear the thorny crown of worldly greatness! Many are the
   ways of making rods for our own backs. I have known mothers make thorn
   crowns out of their children whom they could not trust with God--

   they have been worn with family anxieties when they might have rejoiced
   in God. I have known others make thorn crowns out of silly fears for
   which there were no grounds, whatever--but they seemed ambitious to be
   fretful, eager to prick themselves with briers. O Believer, say to
   yourself, "My Lord wore my crown of thorns for me! Why should I wear

   it, too?"

   He took our griefs and carried our sorrows that we might be a happy
   people and be able to obey the command, "Take no thought for tomorrow,
   for tomorrow shall take thought for the things of itself." Ours is the
   crown of lovingkindness and tender mercies--and we wear it when we cast
   all our cares on Him who cares for us. That thorn crown cures us of
   desire for the vainglories of the world! It dims all human pomp and
   glory till it turns to smoke! Could we fetch, here, the Pope's triple
   crown, or the imperial diadem of Germany, or the regalia of the Czar of
   All the Russias--none of them can compare with Jesus' crown of thorns!
   Let us set some great one on his throne and see how little he looks
   when Jesus sits beside him! What is there kingly in being able to tax
   men and live upon their labors, giving little in return? The most royal
   thing is to lay them all under obligations to our disinterested love
   and be the fountain of blessing to them.

   Oh, it takes the glitter from your gold, the luster from your gems and
   the beauty from all your dainty gewgaws to see that no imperial purple
   can equal the glory of His blood--no gems can rival His thorns! Show
   and parade cease to attract the soul when once the superlative
   excellencies of the dying Savior have been discerned by the enlightened
   eyes! Who seeks for ease when he has seen the Lord Christ? If Christ
   wears a crown of thorns, shall we covet a crown of laurel? Even the
   fierce Crusader, when he entered into Jerusalem and was elected king,
   had sense enough to say, "I will not wear a crown of gold in the same
   city where my Savior wore a crown of thorns."

   Why should we desire, like feather-bed soldiers, to have everything
   arranged for our ease and pleasure? Why this reclining upon couches
   when Jesus hangs on the Cross? Why this soft raiment when He is naked?
   Why these luxuries when He is treated barbarously? Thus the crown of
   thorns cures us, at once, of the vainglory of the world and of our own
   selfish love of ease. The world's minstrel may cry, "Ho, boy, come here
   and crown me with rose buds!" But the pleasure seeker's request is not
   for us. For us neither delights of the flesh nor the pride of life can
   have charms while the Man of Sorrows is in view. For us it remains to
   suffer and to labor till the King shall bid us share His rest.

   V. I must notice, in the fifth place, that there is before us a MYSTIC
   CORONATION. Bear with my many divisions. The coronation of Christ with
   thorns was symbolical and had great meaning in it, for, first, it was
   to Him a triumphal crown. Christ had fought with sin from the day when
   He first stood foot to foot with it in the wilderness, up to the time
   when He entered Pilate's Hall--and He had conquered it. As a witness
   that He had gained the victory, behold sin's crown seized as a trophy!
   What was the crown of sin? Thorns. These sprang from the curse.
   "Thorns, also, and thistles shall it bring forth to you," was the
   coronation of sin--and now Christ has taken away its crown and put it
   on His own head.

   He has spoiled sin of its richest regalia and He wears it Himself.
   Glorious Champion, all hail! What if I say that the thorns constituted
   a mural crown? Paradise was set round with a hedge of thorns so sharp
   that none could enter it, but our Champion leaped, first, upon the
   bristling rampart and bore the blood-red banner of His Cross into the
   heart of that better new Eden which He won for us--never to be lost
   again. Jesus wears the mural chaplet which denotes that He has opened
   Paradise. It was a wrestler's crown He wore, for He wrestled not with
   flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers and He overthrew
   His foe. It was a racer's crown He wore, for He had run with the mighty
   and outstripped them in the race. He had well-near finished His course
   and had but a step or two more to take to reach the goal. Here is a
   marvelous field for enlargement--and we must stop at once lest we go
   too far! It was a crown rich with glory despite the shame which was
   intended by it.

   We see in Jesus the Monarch of the realms of misery, the Chief among
   ten thousand sufferers. Never say, "I am a great sufferer." What are
   our griefs compared with His? As the poet stood upon the Palatine Mount
   and thought of Rome's dire ruin, he exclaimed, "What are our woes and
   sufferings?" Even so I ask, What are our shallow griefs compared with
   the infinite sorrows of Immanuel? Well may we "control in our close
   breasts our petty misery." Jesus is, moreover, the Prince of Martyrs.
   He leads the van among the noble army of suffering witnesses and
   confessors of the Truth of God. Though they died at the stake, or pined
   in dungeons, or were cast to wild beasts--none of them claim the first
   rank-- He, the faithful and the true Witness with the thorn crown and
   the Cross, stands at the head of them all!

   It may never be our lot to join the august band, but if there is an
   honor for which we might legitimately envy saints of former times, it
   is this--that they were born in those brave days when the ruby crown
   was within human grasp--and when the supreme sacrifice might have been
   made! We are cowards, indeed, if in these softer days we are ashamed to
   confess our Master and are afraid of a little scorn, or tremble at the
   criticisms of the would-be wise. Rather let us follow the Lamb where
   ever He goes, content to wear His crown of thorns that we may, in His
   kingdom, behold His Glory!

   VI. The last word is this. In the thorn crown I see a MIGHTY STIMULUS.
   A mighty stimulus to what? Why, first, to fervent love of Him. Can you
   see Him crowned with thorns and not be drawn to Him? I think if He
   could come among us this morning and we could see Him, there would be a
   loving press around Him to touch the hem of His garment or to kiss His
   feet. Savior, You are very precious to us! Dearest of all the names
   above, my Savior and my God, You are always glorious, but in these eyes
   You are never more lovely than when arrayed in shameful mockery. The
   Lily of the Valley and the Rose of Sharon--both in one is He, fair in
   the perfection of His Character--and blood-red in the greatness of His
   sufferings. Worship Him! Adore Him! Bless Him! And let your voices
   sing, "Worthy the Lamb."

   This sight is a stimulus, next, to repentance. Did our sins put thorns
   around His head? Oh, my poor fallen Nature, I will scourge you for
   scourging Him and make you feel the thorns for causing Him to endure
   them! What? Can you see your Master put to such shame and yet hold
   truce or parley with the sins which pierced Him? It cannot be! Let us
   declare before God our soul's keen grief that we should make the Savior
   suffer so! Then let us pray for Grace to hedge our lives around with
   thorns that from this very day sin may not approach us.

   I thought, this day, of how often I have seen the blackthorn growing in
   the hedge all bristling with a thousand prickles, but right in the
   center of the bush have I seen the pretty nest of a little bird. Why
   did the creature place its habitation there? Because the thorns become
   a protection to it and shelter it from harm. As I meditated, last
   night, upon this blessed subject, I thought I would bid you build your
   nests within the thorns of Christ. It is a safe place for sinners!
   Neither Satan, sin, nor Death can reach you there. Gaze on your
   Savior's sufferings and you will see sin atoned for. Fly into His
   wounds! Fly, you timid, trembling Doves! There is no resting place so
   safe for you! Build your nests, I say again, among these thorns, and
   when you have done so, and trusted Jesus, and counted Him to be All in
   All to you, then come and crown His sacred head with other crowns!

   What glory does He deserve? What is good enough for Him? If we could
   take all the precious things from all the treasuries of monarchs, they
   would not be worthy to be pebbles beneath His feet! If we could bring
   Him all the scepters, miters, tiaras, diadems and all other pomp on
   earth, they would be altogether unworthy to be thrown in the dust
   before Him! With what shall we crown Him? Come, let us weave our
   praises together and set our tears for pearls--our love for gold--they
   will sparkle like so many diamonds in His esteem, for He loves
   repentance and He loves faith. Let us make a wreath, this morning, with
   our praises, and crown Him as the Laureate of Grace! This day on which
   He rose from the dead, let us extol Him! Oh, for Grace to do it in the
   heart! And then in the life! And then with the tongue, that we may
   praise Him forever who bowed His head in shame for us!

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORESERMON--Matthew27:11-54. HYMNS FROM
   "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--336, 282, 275, 417 (vs. 1 & 4).
     __________________________________________________________________

The Fullness of Christ the Treasury of the Saints

   (No. 1169)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 19, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell."
   Colossians 1:19.

   "And of His fullness we ha ve all received, and Grace for Grace." John
   116.

   THESE two texts make up a very beautiful sketch of the plan of
   salvation. Put before your mind's eye the sinner, empty of all
   holiness, of all hope, despairing and ready to die. Put, also, before
   your mind, God, full of mercy, willing to come and fill the sinner's
   emptiness, to bring all His communicable attributes, dwell in that
   sinner and give him, first, the mercy which can blot out his sin, and
   then the holiness which can lift him up from his ruined condition. Next
   note the difficulty in the way--God cannot come as half a God--all His
   attributes must come together. And should the just God come into this
   guilty sinner to fill his emptiness, the flame of Justice would destroy
   him. It is not possible for God, even our God, who is "a consuming
   fire," to come into contact with that which is sinful without
   destroying it. What then? Shall the sinner remain empty and shall God's
   fullness remain uncommunicated?

   Behold the plan which infinite Wisdom has devised! The Eternal Son of
   God becomes Man! The Divine Nature comes in all its fullness and dwells
   in the Mediator Christ Jesus! Coming into Him, He was made to feel the
   mighty burning of Justice, which caused Him agony but could not consume
   Him, for in Him there was no sin. Justice burned and blazed within Him
   and cast Him into a bloody sweat--yes, brought Him to the Cross and to
   death because He stood in the sinner's place. But this golden Vessel,
   though heated, was not melted! It could contain the Divine fire and yet
   not be destroyed--and now in Christ Jesus dwells all the fullness of
   the Godhead bodily and, moreover, the Divine Nature is in Him in such a
   way as to be capable of communication to the sons of men. Of course the
   essence of Deity is not communicated, for that would be to make men
   into Gods--but we are "made partakers of the Divine Nature" in the
   sense of receiving the same character--and becoming the children of
   God. That which God could not bring to us directly by reason of our
   inability to receive it, He has now brought to us through a Mediator,
   by placing it in the Man, Christ Jesus, that we, coming to Him, might
   freely receive of it.

   The next step in the plan of salvation is this--that after the fullness
   of God has come to man in the Person of His Son, everyone that comes to
   Him by faith receives His Divine Grace. Salvation is not by what you
   bring to Christ, but by what you take from Him. You are to be receivers
   first, and then, by-and-by, through the power of Grace, you shall give
   forth from yourselves rivers of living water to others. In your first
   coming you come empty, having nothing but your sin and misery--as
   empty, undeserving sinners you receive of His fullness--and all your
   life continue to do the same. The Grace already given is not the climax
   or the conclusion--you go on receiving more and more! Grace increases
   your capacity for Grace and that enlarged capacity becomes filled! And
   so the fullness of God comes into you till you are filled with it and
   you rise from Grace to Glory, being made like unto God and fitted to
   dwell where He is forever and ever.

   Now, unconverted ones, take note that this is the plan of salvation,
   and the only plan. You must obtain God's love and mercy and holiness by
   receiving it through the Mediator, Jesus Christ! You have not yet
   received it--I ask you, How long will you tarry without it? You are, in
   some degree, aware of your need, for you are not ignorant of the
   Gospel. Oftentimes you have heard the voice of its invitation and have
   been almost persuaded to receive the fullness revealed in Christ Jesus.
   How long will you waver between two opinions? How long will you
   hesitate? This is the way, the safe way, the suitable way, the only way
   which is open to you--and it is open to you at this very moment--will
   your feet never

   tread it? Will your disobedient steps forever wander, till, at last,
   you sink in despair and die eternally? God have mercy upon you and
   bring you to receive of the fullness which the Father has stored up in
   His Son, Jesus Christ!

   Needy Sinners, I warn you, do not insult the fullness of Christ by
   thinking that you are full enough yourselves! Never think of putting
   your own righteousness side by side with the Divine, nor think of
   mixing your tears with Jesus' blood, nor of bringing your prayers or
   your faith to increase the all-sufficiency of Christ's atoning
   Sacrifice! He needs nothing from you! Come and take everything from
   Him, for all fullness dwells in Him. As you may not insult His
   fullness, so I pray you, do not neglect it. Do not stand by this
   Fountain and refuse to drink. Do not pass by the riches of His Grace as
   though they were nothing to you, lest haply, when you come to die, your
   heart should be wrung with terrible remorse because you have despised
   the Savior's love. "How shall we escape if we neglect so great a
   salvation?" Put not off these matters from month to month, but, "today,
   if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts." Hasten now unto
   the place where God Himself has come to meet you--namely, in the Person
   of His Son.

   Moreover, as I charge you not to neglect the Grace of our Lord Jesus,
   so would I encourage you not to distrust it. All fullness dwells in
   Jesus--a fullness which is meant to be given out to all who receive it
   as the gift of Divine Grace! Believe in this fullness and, empty as you
   are, do not despair any longer when you remember that Jesus has a
   supply for every possible need. Come, though your head is bowed with
   grief, for Jesus never did reject a sinner and he never can. It is His
   office and calling to cleanse the guilty and to receive the lost. Come
   to Him, now, and may we, before this service is done, be able, all of
   us, to sing, "It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness
   dwell," and, "of His fullness have all we received, and Grace for
   Grace."

   Let not these words be forgotten by those for whom they are meant. But
   still, I have not taken my text, this morning, with the view of so
   preaching from it. I have another aim altogether. Moreover, it will be
   right for me to say that I do not intend to go into an exposition of
   these texts, having explained them several times before. I have only
   taken them with one object, namely, to address myself vehemently to the
   servants of God--that they may be exhorted to lay hold of the fullness
   of the power and holiness which dwell in their Covenant Head.

   During this last week I have given to my Brothers in the Conference, a
   motto which lay on my own heart. It is, "Forward! Upward!" These are
   the watchwords of this morning--Forward! Upward! I want you, dear
   Brothers and Sisters, to see that every preparation is made for greater
   growth and greater success. I want you to be encouraged to seize upon
   that which lies before you, but which is too often treated as if it did
   not exist, and to rise, by the power of the Eternal Spirit, to
   something higher than you have, up to now, accomplished or even
   attempted.

   I. My first point this morning is this--THERE IS A GLORIOUS FULLNESS IN
   JESUS. Brothers and Sisters, if it is so, why are we so weak,
   unfurnished and unhappy? There is an infinite fullness in Jesus! A
   fullness of all that any saint can ever need to enable him to rise to
   the highest degree of Divine Grace. If there is anything lacking for
   the attainment of the Divine image in us, it is not a deficiency
   Christward--it is occasioned by shortcomings in ourselves. If sin is to
   be overcome, the conquering power dwells in Him in its fullness. If
   virtue is to be attained, sanctifying energy resides in Christ to
   perfection. If I see before me an eminent child of God, whose
   conversation is in Heaven, I may not dare to say that I am not capable
   of being as sanctified as he is--for the same Lord is mine as well as
   his.

   I have in my flesh no power whatever, for I am emptiness itself. In me
   the Truth of God is realized, "Without Me you can do nothing." But, on
   the other hand, the power to do all things lies in Christ and the power
   to become fully consecrated streams forth from Him. "With God all
   things are possible." "In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead
   bodily," and they who dwell in Him shall find things impossible with
   man become simple everyday facts with themselves if they will but have
   faith in the mediatorial fullness.

   Beloved, I am going to say nothing but what you all know. And I do not
   mean to garnish it with finery of words. The truth is that there are
   many who are barely Christians and have scarcely enough Grace to float
   them into Heaven. The keel of their vessel is grating on the gravel all
   the way. My prayer is that we may reach deep waters and have so much
   Grace that we may sail like a gallant ship on the broad ocean with a
   glorious cargo on board and all colors flying--and so there may be
   administered unto us an abundant entrance into the kingdom of our Lord
   and Savior Jesus Christ! Everything is provided for this. Christ has
   not merely placed enough bread on the table to keep us from starving,
   His oxen and fatlings are killed--He has spread a royal feast.

   He has not provided a scanty garment which may barely hide your
   nakedness, but He has brought forth the best robe and has procured
   earrings for your ears, jewels for your necks and a royal crown for
   your heads--for it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness
   dwell for all His saints. If you have not these riches, the fault lies
   with yourself. It is there--you might have it if you had but faith to
   take it. Too often we sit down like beggars on the dunghill and groan
   and cry because of the poverty of our nature when we ought to be
   rejoicing in the Lord. I thank God that we can groan, for that is
   something! But there is a more excellent way--a better gift to be
   earnestly coveted. In Christ you are rich to the fullness of riches!
   Get up, I pray you, to the high places and realize for yourselves the
   fullness of God in Christ Jesus!

   The fullness which dwells in our Lord we may rest assured is sufficient
   for the conquest of the world. It is not enough for you or me that we
   should be wholly consecrated to Christ--our desire is that the whole
   world should be filled with the knowledge of the Lord! We can never be
   satisfied while there remains one sinner unsaved, one idol upon its
   pedestal, or one single error to darken the minds of men. For Christ we
   do not desire England, only, and the civilized nations, but we claim
   for Him the darkest dens of cannibalism and the vilest haunts of
   piracy. The banner of the Cross shall wave where now black flags poison
   the breeze! It shall be lifted high where today Kalee and Juggernaut
   set up their ensigns, for the Lord God Omnipotent shall reign from
   shore to shore!

   We have in Christ Jesus all the might which is needed for subduing the
   nations, for all power is given unto Him in Heaven and in earth. We
   have, dear Brothers and Sisters, I fear, too often been considering the
   amount of money and the number of men which would be needed. Indeed, I
   remember a remarkable paper being read explaining to us how much money
   it would require to evangelize the world--a calculation which I
   regarded as vanity of vanities and nothing more--for if mountains of
   money were put before us it might just as well be shoveled into the
   infernal deep for all the good it could do--if regarded as at all
   essential! Our checkbook needs more golden treasure and, thank God, we
   have it!

   Depend upon it, when the Church is fit to be trusted with money, she
   will have it. Pecuniary straitness is only an index of lack of Divine
   Grace and is so far a good thing, because it brings before us in
   palpable form our real poverty before the Most High. But Brothers and
   Sisters, for the conquest of the world, the strength lies in the man
   Christ Jesus, since in Him all fullness dwells! And in Him we have all
   the necessary power at our disposal. We are never to say, "Those
   thieves and criminals are too depraved to be converted," for in our
   Lord there is fullness of power to convert the most abandoned! We are
   not to say, "That alley in the darkest part of the city will never be
   cleansed from its abominations." Jesus could cleanse Sodom, itself! We
   are never to leave a tribe of savages unevangelized because they are
   too degraded, nor are we to quail before an uneducated and subtle
   nation because it is too skeptical--all power for all cases is in
   Jesus--He is the armory of the house of David! In Him we shall find a
   thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men! Let us go to the armory
   and we shall receive the invincible weapons of our Holy War, yes, and
   the strength with which to wield them--the might which ensures victory!

   Beloved, the text puts away from us, as far as the east is from the
   west, every conceivable objection that may be raised as to what a saint
   can do, for surely the very thought of difficulty is rendered absurd by
   the fact of all fullness residing in our Lord on our behalf! It is not
   a fullness for merely teaching, but a fullness for convincing! It is
   not a fullness for simply convincing of sin, but for converting and
   bringing to full salvation! It is not a fullness for justifying the
   Believer, alone, but a fullness for sanctifying him--and not a fullness
   for sanctifying him merely for a little while--but a fullness to keep
   him to the end! It is a fullness which can fill him with all the
   fullness of God! Come to whatever place you may, you shall not say,
   "Here I am at a nonplus," but there will you find a new illustration of
   the might of the eternal God which dwells in Christ Jesus!

   The fact is, Beloved, we have a superabundant force in Christ and if we
   did but know it, instead of talking about the struggles of the Church
   and the strain that is put upon us to hold our own, the joy of the Lord
   would give such strength to us that we should not remember our own
   efforts, but like the flood which rushes down the mountain after the
   rain, the flush of life from Jesus would speed on with a tremendous
   force, leaping over every obstacle and filling our souls to the brim!
   God grant us to feel that we do not serve a little Christ nor a stingy
   Lord. Our God is the God of the hills as well as the valleys! And in
   the strength of the Lord Omnipotent we triumph in every place! Only let
   us serve God in real faith and we know not what we may live to see!

   God grant us to know this first Truth of God that there is a fullness
   in Christ--and in the strength of that fullness we may cry--"Forward
   and upward!"

   II. The next encouraging fact is that THE FULLNESS IS IN JESUS NOW. "It
   pleased the Father that in Him

   should all fullness dwell." The glory of the past exercises a
   depressing influence upon many Christians. "We have heard with our ears
   and our fathers have told us the wondrous things which You did in their
   day and in the old time before them." But we dolefully complain that
   the golden age of Christianity is over--its heroic times are matter of
   history. Indeed, this feeling is transformed to fact, for scarcely any
   Church now existing realizes that it can do what its first promoters
   did! All appear to be quite sure that these are bad times and but
   little is to be done in them. We do not expect, nowadays, to find a
   Methodist so full of fire as the first field preachers. The Quakers are
   never as fanatical and even the Primitives are not Ranters now! The old
   reproach has ceased because the old ardor which provoked it has cooled
   down. So far so bad.

   I see grave cause for sorrow in all this. A people are in an evil case
   when all their heroism is historical. We read the biographies of former
   worthies with great wonder and respect. But we do not attempt to follow
   in their steps with equal stride. Why not? It has pleased the Father
   that in Jesus all fullness should dwell, a fullness for Paul, a
   fullness for Luther, a fullness for Whitfield, and blessed be God, a
   fullness for me and a fullness for you! All that Jesus has given forth
   has not exhausted Him! Christianity has not lost its pristine
   strength--we have lost our faith--there's the calamity! Oh, ignoble
   sons of glorious sires, you have degenerated, but not your Master! And
   if, even in your degeneracy, you would cast yourselves upon your
   unchanging God, you would rise to more than the strength of your sires
   and do yet greater things than they!

   The fullness of Jesus is not changed. Then why are our works so feebly
   done? Pentecost, is that to be a tradition? The reforming days, are
   these to be only memories? I see no reason why we should not have a
   greater Pentecost than Peter saw and a Reformation deeper in its
   foundations, and truer in its building up than all the reforms which
   Luther or Calvin achieved! We have the same Christ, remember that! The
   times are altered, but Jesus is the Eternal and time touches Him not.
   "But we are not such men as they." What? Cannot God make us such? Are
   we weaker than they? The fitter to be instruments for the mighty God!
   Away with the cowardice which thinks the past is never to be outdone!
   Is not the Lord of Hosts with us? Is anything too hard for Him? We must
   labor to eclipse the past as the sunlight eclipses the brightness of
   the stars!

   The mass of professors have their eyes only on the future. The good
   times are coming, by-and-by, but they are not here yet. We look forward
   with much hope to the golden age that is to be, when we shall see the
   fullness of Jesus and nations will be born in a day! Brothers and
   Sisters, does my text say, "It pleased the Father that in Him all
   fullness shall one day dwell"? No, but, "in Him should all fullness
   dwell." Whatever has been done can be done now--and whatever shall yet
   be done, can be done today, by His Grace. Our laziness puts off the
   work of conquest. Our self-indulgence procrastinates. Our cowardice and
   lack of faith make us dote upon the millennium instead of hearing the
   Spirit's voice today! Happy days would begin from this hour if the
   Church would but awake and put on her Strength, for in her Lord all
   fatness dwells.

   When the Son of Man comes, shall He find faith on the earth? Some
   doubting ones say, "We do not wonder that there is success in such a
   place," but we cannot have it. We hear of earnest ministers and we
   conclude that where they labor God will send the blessing, but not to
   our ministry. We conclude that when yonder woman gathers the young
   people around her, it is no wonder that blessing comes. Does Christ
   depend on ministers or on holy women? Have you said, "Alas, I cannot
   have the blessing." Why not? How dare you limit the Holy One of Israel?
   You who dwell in towns where all is cold around you, do you despair? Is
   it in your minds that Christ is dependent upon the circumstances in
   which He has placed His servants? "It pleased the Father that in Him
   should all fullness dwell." What if the servants are empty--their
   Master is not! If the means of Grace lack power, Grace from above is
   still Omnipotent. Only fly to the Fountain and the dried up streams
   need not distress you.

   Furthermore, our Churches believe that there is a great fullness in
   Christ and that sometimes they ought to enjoy it. The progress of
   Christianity is to be by tides which ebb and flow. There are to be
   revivals like the spring and these must alternate with long lethargies
   like the winter. O accursed Unbelief, will you always pervert the Truth
   of God? Will you never understand this Word of God--"It pleased the
   Father that in Him should all fullness dwell"? It is not the Lord's
   purpose that a fullness should reside in Jesus during revivals and then
   withdraw. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever! The
   highest state of revival should be the normal condition of the Church.
   When her martyrs are

   most self-sacrificing, her missionaries most daring, her ministers most
   bold, her members most consecrated, she is, even then, below her
   standard--she has not fully reached her high calling--to come down from
   her position would be sin!

   God grant us Grace to feel that we have not to drink of an intermittent
   spring, nor to work for Christ with an occasional industry--but as all
   fullness dwells in Him--it is ours to believe that today we can have
   all the blessing of a true revival! That today we can go forward in the
   power of God! That at this very hour we lack for nothing which can lift
   the Church into her highest condition of spirituality and power! God
   grant us to receive Grace for Grace today!

   III. Thirdly, THE POSITION OF THIS FULLNESS IS RICHLY ENCOURAGING TO US
   IN THE MATTER OF

   OBTAINING IT. "It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness
   dwell." Brothers and Sisters, you have heard what we have said about
   the fullness--our words are very poor and poverty-stricken compared
   with the fact--but listen! The fullness is placed where you can receive
   it--where you can receive it now, for it is placed in Him who is your
   Brother--bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh! It dwells in Him
   who loves to give it, because, as our Head, He delights to communicate
   with His members!

   The plenitude of Divine Grace dwells in Him who is, Himself, yours!
   Since He is yours, all that is in Christ is yours! You need not pray as
   if you had no inheritance in the blessing which you seek. Christ is the
   Trustee of the fullness of God and the property of it is vested in His
   people--you have only to ask of Him and He will give you that which is
   yours, already! Why do you hesitate? How can you linger? The Father has
   placed His Grace in Christ because it gratifies His love to His Son. It
   pleases the heart of the great God to see Jesus adorned with the
   fullness of Deity and every time Jesus gives to Believers, the great
   heart of God is gladdened! How can you hesitate about receiving it if
   it pleases God for you to partake in it? You may go with great spirit
   and comfort, since Jesus Himself is honored by your going to Him. He
   obtains Glory by distributing of His fullness to empty sinners, who,
   when they receive Grace, are sure to love Him--how can you think Him
   reluctant to bestow the gift which will increase His Glory?

   Do you not know, too, that when you go to Christ, you gain even by the
   act of going? I am so thankful that Christ has not put my fullness in
   myself, for then I should not require to go to Him so often, or if I
   did go to Him I should not have an errand to go upon of such importance
   as to justify my seeking an audience. But now, every time I get to
   Christ's door I can plead necessity. We go to Him because we must go.
   When is there an hour when a Believer does not need to receive from
   Jesus? Go, then, Beloved, since it blesses the Church, it honors
   Christ, it pleases God and it is the way of soul enrichment for
   yourselves! What place of resort could be so attractive as the Person
   of the Well-Beloved? If God had put His fullness into an angel, we
   should not feel greatly drawn to him--but since He has caused it to
   dwell in Jesus, He has put it where we love to have it--where we feel
   at home, where we are glad to go often! Yes, where we would love to
   abide and never to go away, but to be forever receiving of Him.

   I delight to think that this fullness is placed in Christ because He is
   the Man who receives sinners and, therefore, you saints who have lost
   your evidences, you Believers who have acted inconsistently and have
   not lived up to your privileges, you may say, "we cannot go for this
   fullness to God, Himself, but we will joyfully go to the Savior of
   sinners." If you have been, till now, self-deceived, and your
   experience has all been a mistake, you can still come to the sinner's
   Savior, to whom the thief looked up in his expiring hour--and from whom
   your first mercy came! Come, Brothers and Sisters, why do you hesitate?
   Why do you linger? You who know what Christ is, come, I pray you, with
   swift feet to the place where all you need is stored--and take all your
   heart requires! Yes, come for the highest degrees of Grace and for the
   largest measures of success--and you shall have them, for Christ
   delights to give exceeding abundantly above what we ask or even think!

   IV. And now I have to pass on to another argument. I want to use each
   head as a hammer--and may God's own

   Spirit wield it. The next is this, that FROM THIS FULLNESS WE HAVE,
   MANY OF US, ALREADY RECEIVED. Is

   not that an argument for still further exercising faith in Jesus? I
   know of no argument equal to that of practical experience. They must
   come who have come before! The sweetness of this honey remains upon the
   tongue and we long for more and cannot be satisfied till we have taken
   up the dripping honeycomb once again.

   Now, see, Beloved, the text says, "Of His fullness we have all
   received." That is, all the saints in former days have received of this
   fullness. There was not in John any good thing but what he received
   from his Master. There was not in the noble martyr Stephen one grain of
   courage but what he received from Christ. Paul, Apollos, or
   Cephas--these had nothing but what they took from Him If they received
   everything, why should we hesitate to do the same? Of ourselves it

   is also true that all our Graces came from Jesus. This is true of the
   greatest saint and true of the least. Do you remember when you first
   received Divine Grace? It brings to my mind right joyful memories of
   the hour when first these eyes looked to Him and were lightened--when I
   received pardon from His dying love and knew myself forgiven!

   Since your conversion, dear Brothers and Sisters, everything good you
   have ever had, you have received from our Lord. What? Have you drunk
   out of your own cistern? What treasure have you found in your own
   fields? Nakedness, poverty, misery, death--these are the only
   possessions of Nature. But life, riches, fullness, joy--these are gifts
   of Divine Grace through Jesus Christ! Are you accepted before God? He
   justified you! Have you been kept? He has preserved you! Are you
   sanctified? He has cleansed you by His blood! Do you know, by full
   assurance, your interest in the Father's love? He gave you that
   assurance! All you have and all you ever will have--all that every
   saint that shall ever be born shall have that is worth having comes out
   of the fullness of Christ!

   The crowded ranks of the white-robed above, without exception, confess,
   "Of His fullness we have all received." I hear them sing, this morning,
   as they keep a glorious Sabbath Day above--and this is one sweet stanza
   of their song, "Of His fullness we have all received, and Grace for
   Grace." Come then, Brothers and Sisters, what prevents us from
   receiving? "Ah," you say, "I cannot imagine that I can be a Christian
   of the highest type." Why not? Have you not received life? Why should
   you not receive life more abundantly? Have you not already been
   pardoned? Why should you not have the full assurance of that pardon?
   Have you not already been taken up from the horrible pit and out of the
   miry clay? What hinders but that Christ should set you upon a rock and
   put a new song into your mouth and establish your goings?

   "But I cannot hope to be so useful as some are." Why not? According to
   your faith so shall it be to you! God has given you one convert, why
   cannot He give you a hundred? You have been blessed to a dear child in
   Sunday school and you have rejoiced over that one jewel as a precious
   God-send! Why should you not dive, again, and bring up other pearls for
   your Immanuel's crown? I would stir in you a sacred ambition! I would
   provoke you to the highest style of Christian manhood and the most
   heroic form of Christian service! What you have received is the pledge
   of what you may receive, but, indeed, you have already obtained a good
   deal more than yet remains to be received!

   Christ is yours and by that fact all things are yours! What you now
   need is included in what you already have! You only need to realize
   it--by faith call it your own--and practically to live upon it. May God
   enable you to do so! Of His fullness have we all received--why should
   we not receive more?

   IV. The last blow of the hammer shall be this--THE GIFTS WE HAVE
   ALREADY HAD ARE NOT TRIFLES, for John says we have received "Grace for
   Grace," which is a mode in the Greek language of expressing the
   superlative. We have received the highest Grace, superlative Grace. The
   gift of Jesus Christ is the highest Grace that even God, Himself, can
   bestow--nothing can go beyond that! Listen to this, then--"He that
   spared not His own Son, but freely delivered Him up for us all, how
   shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" I charge you,
   let that text enter into your hearts--and when you feel straitened in
   prayer and tempted to say, "No, not here, I cannot rise so high, I am
   not qualified for that attainment"--do, I pray you, remember the gifts
   already received by which Jesus opens your mouth and bids you ask great
   things.

   The Father has given you His Son! How can He deny you anything? The
   expression, "Grace for Grace," may mean Grace answering to Grace--Grace
   which was in accordance with Grace already given--Grace preparatory to
   what is yet to come. Has not the Father given you such Divine Grace as
   you had capacity to receive? If there had been more room you would have
   had more. If you had exercised more faith, He would have given you more
   joy. If you had possessed more hope, you would have had more
   realization. He has always come up to, and even gone beyond, the
   measure of our expectation. Is there, in your soul, this morning, an
   enlargement? I feel it in my own heart! I feel a dissatisfaction with
   my present attainments! I pant to know my Lord better! I am
   discontented with what I have done for Him up to now! I long to do 10
   times more for His Glory!

   Do you feel the same? Oh, then He will keep in touch with you! Yes, He
   will do exceeding abundantly above all you ask, or even think! That
   text does not say, "Above what you can ask or think," as people will
   persist in saying. That is not true because we can ask and can think as
   great things as God Himself will give, and He means us to ask before He
   gives. Our capacity for asking is, as a general rule, the measure of
   His giving, but the Scriptures say He will do exceeding

   abundantly above what you ask or think. Now, are you thinking great
   things and asking great things? Do not be afraid! The Lord will not let
   you outstrip Him! Be enlarged--and as large as your faith--so large
   shall the blessing be.

   Then, dear Friends, Grace for Grace may mean Grace upon Grace, like
   Pelion upon Ossa--one mountain piled upon another--each Grace eclipsing
   the light of that which went before. This we have already known. When
   we first believed in Christ, pardon for sin seemed everything. But when
   we came to know that we were justified in Christ Jesus, that appeared
   to be a much greater blessing. And when we understood that we were
   adopted and were the sons of God, that new delight surpassed the former
   joy! The Lord has led you into Divine Grace which has surprised you and
   lifted you up from one point to another. I speak to many Brothers and
   Sisters here who must confess that their present state is very
   different from their Christian infancy--they now know what they never
   thought they could know. Why, there are doctrines that some of you can
   enjoy this morning which you used to think frightfully high doctrines!
   You once could not appreciate them, yet they are simplicities to you
   now! And there are conquests over sin which you could not have achieved
   in your boyhood. But now in your Christian manhood you can take up
   dragons and destroy them.

   Now, dear Brethren, as you have been surprised with mercy, you are to
   be surprised with more mercy, and the Lord says to you, "Son of man, I
   will show you greater favors than these." Greater joys are yet to be
   known! You have entered the room of silver--that inner door will lead
   you to a chamber of gold! And beyond that there is a door in the wall
   which he that is taught of God shall open--a door which will admit you
   into a chamber of diamonds! And when you shall come there and have seen
   the Glory and the exceeding riches of the Grace of God, there is still
   an inner chamber where that which eye has not seen nor ear heard shall
   be revealed to you--a joy unspeakable, unthinkable, indeed! May we
   comprehend with all the saints what are the heights and depths--and
   know the love of Christ which passes knowledge.

   Now of the things which we have spoken, this is the sum. We have a
   fullness in Christ as Believers which we ought to use in the following
   manner --First, believe in great things! Do not sit down, as some do,
   in the little Meeting House where about 50 Brethren meet and expect the
   Lord to send a convert once every 12 months. And when He does send him,
   they worry him by the month together for fear he should not be one of
   the right sort! And when he finally comes in, they rejoice over him as
   one that finds great spoil in having picked up one solitary soul after
   12 months' ministry!

   Oh, Brothers and Sisters, we have a greater God than this would imply!
   The little narrow thoughts which Christians have had as to the success
   of the Gospel cannot have come from a great God, can they? The day was
   when the very idea of sending the Gospel to the heathen was regarded by
   our orthodox Brethren as a piece of Don Quixotism, not to be attempted,
   and even now, if you say, "All the world for Jesus," they open their
   eyes and say, "Ah, we are afraid you are tainted with universal
   redemption, or are going off to the Arminian camp." God grant these
   dear Brethren new hearts and right spirits--at present their hearts are
   too small to bring Him much glory! May they get larger hearts, hearts
   something like their Lord's--and may they have Grace given them to
   estimate the precious blood at a higher rate--for our Lord did not die
   to buy a few hundred souls, or to redeem to Himself a handful of
   people! He shed His blood for a number which no man can number--and His
   elect shall excel in multitude the sands which belt the sea!

   Let us have great faith in what God intends to do. Believing these
   great things, let us expect them. Be on the qui vive for spiritual
   miracles. Expect to see hundreds converted! Wonder, when you hear a
   Gospel sermon, that the Holy Spirit does not save 3,000 by it! "Ah,"
   says one, "I should be very much astonished if He did." I know you
   would, and that is why we do not see it! But we ought to wonder that
   there are not, and when we are as we should be, we shall see greater
   things than these! There is no weakness with God! That limping sinew is
   in Jacob's thigh, it is not in the Angel's. That palsied arm is man's,
   not God's--no sinew of His arm can decay.

   Sirs, do you think that He who smote the fields of Zoan with plagues is
   not Lord of idols and King of heathens? Do you think that He who
   divided the Red Sea cannot lead His people like a flock through the
   wilderness and bring them into the promised possession? Do you think
   that He cannot bring up His Church out of her bondage and set her feet
   in a large room? The Lord of Hosts is with us! Therefore let us expect
   things! Expecting great things, let us attempt great things! Let us
   each set about doing something for Christ, in the power of the Holy
   Spirit! Let us try what can be done! Let us not, if we are Sunday
   school teachers, be satisfied with going through the day's lesson and
   feeling, "There, that will do." Aim at the immediate conversion of
   every child in the class!

   Do not let us say, as we go round with the tracts this afternoon, "We
   will leave them and not say a word." Aim at getting a word about Jesus
   Christ with every person you meet with! As for myself, the preacher,
   let me come here to preach to you, not with the hope that perhaps, here
   and there, one will find a Savior, but with an earnest cry to Heaven
   that the Holy Spirit will comprehend, in the lines of His electing and
   redeeming love, the whole mass of you, and make this Tabernacle into a
   golden casket in which all of us shall be the jewels, and take it right
   up and keep it in His bosom forever!

   Last of all, let us not talk about this, but let us set about doing it!
   Shall we never have, in our midst, men who will go among the heathen to
   preach Jesus Christ? We had two lately, are there not two more? Young
   men and young women, will you not consecrate yourselves to the Lord and
   go into exile for His sake? Have we none such? We have here, this
   morning, good women and good men, too, who are at work among the
   heathens of the east end of London and the worst parts of our city. Are
   there no others to do the same? There is room for scores of you to be
   as devoted to God as our dear Brother, Dr. Barnardo, or our Sister,
   Miss MacPherson--and why not you? Why should not the same anointing
   come upon you and qualify you for useful work?

   Will you not, this very day, preach Christ in the streets? Will you not
   consecrate yourselves to be whole burnt offerings unto Christ, for Him
   to live, for Him to die? O soldiers of the Cross, will you loiter in
   the march? The enemy still holds citadels which belong to Christ and
   you, by a desperate push, may seize them! Swift as eagles and strong as
   lions, press onward and win the victory! Why do you hesitate? The
   powers of evil linger not! The hosts of Hell are raging--they call up
   all their strength against the Lord of Hosts--and will you stand back?
   Have you no courage? Is your blood turned to water? Has the Spirit of
   God departed from you?

   Oh, let it not be so, but may God launch us upon the enemy like
   thunderbolts from His own Omnipotent hand! And yet may it be seen
   throughout the world that there are men who have received of the
   fullness of the Crucified One and who, therefore, can give it forth to
   others and point them to Him in whom the Father is well-pleased that
   all fullness shall dwell. The Lord be with you all. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--John 1:1-34. HYMNS FROM "OUR
   OWN HYMN BOOK"--436, 415, 249.
     __________________________________________________________________

"By All Means, Save Some"

   (No. 1170)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 26, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "That I might, by all means, save some." 1 Corinthians 9:22.

   THE Apostle speaks very broadly and talks about saving men. Some of our
   extremely orthodox Brothers would say at once, "You save men? How can
   man do that? The expression is inaccurate in the extreme. Is not
   salvation of the Lord from first to last? How can you, Paul, dare to
   speak of saving some?" Yet Peter spoke very much like this when he
   said, "Save yourselves from this untoward generation." Indeed, the
   expression is a little more bold, if anything, and if Peter were alive
   now he would be called to account. When Paul wrote to Timothy, he said
   to him, "Take heed unto yourself, and unto the doctrine; continue in
   them: for in doing this you shall both save yourself and them that hear
   you." This is another instance of language used in a popular sense by a
   man who had not the fear of critics before his eyes.

   The Apostle did not intend to insinuate that he could save anybody by
   his own power and no one thought that he could. He used expressions
   without guarding them because he was writing to people who mixed candor
   with their knowledge of doctrine and would not willfully misunderstand
   him. He did not write for those who must have all the creed in every
   sermon and require all statements of the Truth of God to be cut into
   one shape. The doctrine that salvation is of God, alone, and is the
   work of the Holy Spirit was dear to him as life, itself, and having
   often proclaimed it, he was not afraid of being misunderstood.

   Our testimony, also, has, for many years, been clear upon this point,
   and therefore we shall venture to be as accurately inaccurate as was
   the Apostle--and to speak of saving souls and winning souls after the
   manner of ordinary speech. The expression used gives great prominence
   to instrumentality and this is the use and habit of Scripture. There is
   not much danger, just now, of exaggerating the power of instrumentality
   and looking to men instead of their Master. The danger seems to lie in
   the opposite direction--in the habit of depreciating both an organized
   Church and a recognized ministry. We have frequently heard it said of
   certain revivals that no particular person was engaged in them, neither
   evangelist nor minister had a hand in the work. This is thought to be a
   recommendation but, indeed, it is not.

   I fear that many hopeful beginnings have come to a sudden collapse
   because faithful and holy ministers have been despised and a slur has
   been cast upon ordinary instrumentalities. Men talk thus under the
   notion that they are honoring God, but they are off the track
   altogether--for God still owns and blesses His chosen ministers and is
   honored thereby. And as He still works by them He would not have us
   speak disparagingly of them. The topic of this morning is this--it has
   pleased God to save souls by His people and, therefore, He places in
   them a sacred longing to save some by all means. He might, if He had
   pleased, have called all His chosen to Himself by a Voice out of the
   excellent Glory, just as He called Saul, the Persecutor.

   Or He might have commissioned angels to fly throughout the length and
   breadth of the world and carry the message of mercy. But in His
   inscrutable wisdom He has been pleased to bring men to Himself by men.
   The Atonement is complete and the Spirit's power is fully given--all
   that is needed is that men be led to believe for the salvation of their
   souls--and this part of salvation is accomplished by the Holy Spirit
   through the ministries of men! Those who have, themselves, been
   quickened, are sent to prophesy upon the dry bones. In order that this
   Divine arrangement may be carried out, the Lord has implanted in the
   hearts of all genuine Believers a passion for the salvation of souls.
   In some this is more lively than in others, but it ought to be a
   leading feature in the character of every Christian.

   I shall speak upon this sacred instinct and deal with it thus--First,
   why is it implanted in us? Secondly, how does it exercise itself?
   Thirdly, why is it not more largely manifested? And fourthly, how can
   it be quickened and made more practically efficient?

   I. WHY IS THIS PASSION FOR SAVING OTHERS IMPLANTED IN THE BREASTS OF
   THE SAVED? For three reasons, I think, among many others. Namely, for
   God's Glory, for the good of the Church, and for the profiting of

   the individual. It is implanted there, first, for God's Glory. It is
   greatly to the Glory of God that He should use humble instruments for
   the accomplishment of His grand purposes. When Quintin Matsys had
   executed a certain wonderful well-cover in iron, it was the more
   notable as a work of art because he had been deprived of the proper
   tools while he was executing it, for I think he had little more than
   his hammer with which to perform that wonderful feat in metal.

   Now, when we look at God's work of Divine Grace in the world, it
   glorifies Him the more when we reflect that He has achieved it by
   instruments which, in themselves, would rather hinder than promote His
   work. No man among us can help God! It is true He uses us, but He could
   do better without us than with us! By the direct Word of power He could
   do, in a moment, that which, through the weakness of the instrument,
   now takes months and years--yet He knows best how to glorify His own
   name. He puts a longing to save others into our souls, that He may get
   Glory by using us, even us who have little fitness for such work except
   this passion which He has implanted in our breasts. He graciously uses
   even our weak points and makes our very infirmities to illustrate the
   Glory of His Grace--blessing our poorest sermons, prospering our most
   feeble efforts--and driving us to see results even from our stray
   words.

   The Lord glorifies Himself by making our feebleness to be the vehicle
   of His power--and to this end He makes us pant for a work far out of
   our reach--and sets our hearts a-longing to "save some." It brings
   Glory to God, also, that He should take sinful men such as we are and
   make us partakers of His Nature--He does this by giving us fellowship
   in His heart of compassion--communion in His overflowing love. He
   kindles in our breasts the same fire of love which glows in His own
   bosom. In our own little way we look down upon the prodigal sons and
   see them a great way off, and have compassion on them, and would gladly
   fall on their necks and kiss them. The Lord loves men, however, after a
   holy fashion. He desires their sanctification and their salvation by
   that means. And when we desire the good of our fellow men by means of
   their conversion, we are walking side by side with God. Every real
   philanthropist is a copy of the Lord Jesus, for though it is too low a
   term to apply to His infinite excellence, yet, truly, the Son of God is
   the grandest of all philanthropists!

   Now, that God should, by the power of His matchless Grace, produce in
   such cold hearts as ours a burning passion for the salvation of others
   is a singular proof of His Omnipotent power in the world of the mind.
   To change sinful men so that they pant after the increase of holiness!
   To render stubborn wills eager for the spread of obedience and to make
   wandering hearts earnest for the establishment of the abiding kingdom
   of the Redeemer--this is a mighty feat of the Divine Grace of God! That
   a perfect angel should cleave the air to perform His message is a
   simple enough matter--but that a Saul of Tarsus, who foamed at the
   mouth with enmity to Christ--should live and die for the winning of
   souls to Jesus is a memorable illustration of the Grace of God!

   In this way the Lord gets great Glory over the archenemy, the Prince of
   the power of the air, for He can say to Satan, "I have defeated you,
   not by the sword of Michael, but by the tongues of men. I have
   conquered you, O you enemy, not with thunderbolts, but with the earnest
   words and prayers and tears of these, My humble servants. O My
   adversary, I have pitted against you feeble men and women, into whom I
   have put the love of souls, and these have torn away from you province
   after province of your dominions! These have snapped the fetters of the
   bandaged ones. These have burst open the prison doors of those who were
   your captives." How illustriously is this Truth of God seen when the
   Lord seizes the ringleaders of Satan's army and transforms them into
   captains of His own host! Then is the enemy smitten in the house of his
   former friends!

   Satan desired to sift Peter as wheat, but Peter sifted him in return on
   the day of Pentecost! Satan made Peter deny his Master, but when
   restored, Peter loved his Lord all the more--and all the more earnestly
   did he proclaim his Master's name and Gospel! The fury of the foe
   recoils on himself! Love conquers and where sin abounded Grace does
   much more abound! As for Saul, who persecuted the saints, did not he
   become the Apostle of Christ to the Gentiles, laboring more than any
   other for the good cause? Beloved, the ultimate triumph of the Cross
   will be the more admirable because of the manner of its achievement!
   Good will conquer evil--not by the assistance of governments and the
   arms of potentates, not by the prestige of bishops and popes and all
   their pompous array--but by hearts that burn, souls that glow, eyes
   that weep and knees that bend in wrestling prayer! These are the
   artillery of God! By using such weapons as these He not only foils His
   foes, but triumphs over them--confounding the mighty by the weak, the
   wise by the simple--and the things which are by the things which are
   not!

   Next, the passion for saving souls is implanted for the Church's
   good--and that in a thousand ways, of which I can only mention a few.
   First there can be no doubt that the passion for winning souls expends
   the Church's energy in a healthy manner. I have observed that Churches
   which do not care for the outlying population speedily suffer from
   disunion and strife. There is a certain quantity of steam generated in
   the community--and if we do not let it off in the right way, it will
   work in the wrong way--or blow up altogether and do infinite mischief.
   Men's minds are sure to work and their tongues to move--and if they are
   not employed for good purposes they will assuredly do mischief! You
   cannot unite a Church so completely as by calling out all its forces
   for accomplishing the Redeemer's grand object. Talents unused are sure
   to rust and this kind of rust is a deadly poison to peace--a bitter
   irritant which eats into the heart of the Church. We will, therefore,
   by all means, save some, lest by some other means we become disunited
   in heart.

   This passion for saving souls not only employs, but also draws forth
   the strength of the Church. It awakens her latent energies and arouses
   her noblest faculties. With so Divine a prize before her, she girds up
   her robes for the race--and with her eyes upon her Lord, presses
   forward to the goal. Many a commonplace man has been rendered great by
   being thoroughly absorbed by a noble pursuit--and what can be nobler
   than turning men from the road which leads to Hell? Perhaps some of
   those ignoble souls who have lived and died like dumb, driven cattle,
   might have reached the majesty of great fires if a supreme intent had
   fired them with heroic zeal and developed their concealed endowments.
   Happy is the man whose task is honorable, if he does but honorably
   fulfill it. Lo, God has given to His Church the work of conquering the
   world, the plucking of brands from the burning, the feeding of His
   sheep and lambs! And this it is which trains the Church to deeds of
   daring and to nobility of soul.

   Dear Brothers and Sisters, this common passion for souls knits us
   together! How often do I feel a fresh bond of union with my beloved
   Brethren and fellow workers when I find that I was the means of the
   conviction of a sinner, whom one of them comforted and led to the
   Savior? And thus we have a joint possession in the convert! Sometimes I
   have been blest of God to the salvation of my hearer, but that hearer
   was first brought here by yonder friend--and so we become sharers in
   the joy! Communion in service and success welds the saints together and
   is one of the best securities for mutual love. And, moreover, when new
   converts are brought into the Church, the fact that they are brought in
   by instrumentality tends to make their fusion with the Church an easy
   matter.

   It is in this case much the same as with our families. If God had been
   pleased to create each of us as individual men and women and drop us
   down somewhere on the earth. And if were left to find our way to
   somebody's house and unite with his family, I daresay we should have
   had to wander long before we should have been welcomed! But now we come
   as little ones to those who rejoice to see us! And they sing, "Welcome,
   welcome, little stranger!" We become, at once, parts of the family
   because we have parents and brothers and sisters--and these make no
   debate about our introduction and consider it no trouble to receive
   us--though I fear we have never duly rewarded them for their pains.

   So is it in the Church--if God had converted all men one by one, by His
   Spirit, without instrumentality, they would have been separate grains
   of sand, hard to unite into a building and there would have been much
   difficulty in forming them into one body. But now we are born into the
   Church, and the pastor and others look upon those converted under their
   instrumentality as their own children whom they love in the Lord. And
   the Church, having shared in the common service by which they are
   converted, feels, "These belong to us, these are our reward." And so
   they are taken cordially into the Christian family. This is no small
   benefit, for it is at once the joy and the strength of the Church to be
   made one by vital forces, by holy sympathies and fellowships.

   We have spiritual fathers among us whom we love in the Lord and
   spiritual children whose welfare is our deepest concern. We have
   Brothers and Sisters to whom we have been helpful, or who have been
   helpful to us, whom we cannot but commune with in heart. As a common
   desire to defend their country welds all the regiments of an army into
   one, so the common desire to save souls makes all true Believers akin
   to each other! But this passion is most of all for the good of the
   individual possessing it. I will not try, this morning, to sum up, in
   the short time allotted to me, the immense benefits which come to a man
   through his laboring for the conversion of others, but I will venture
   this assertion--no man or woman in the Church of God is in a healthy
   state if he or she is not laboring to save some.

   Those who are laid aside by suffering are taking their part in the
   economy of the household of Christ. But with that exception, he that
   does not work, neither shall he eat. He that does not water others is
   not watered himself. And he who cares not for the souls of others may
   well stand in jeopardy about his own. To long for the conversion of
   others makes us

   Godlike! Do we desire man's welfare? God does! Would we gladly snatch
   them from the burning? God is daily performing this deed of Divine
   Grace! Can we say that we have no pleasure in the death of him that
   dies? Jehovah has declared the like with an oath! Do we weep over
   sinners? Did not Jehovah's Son weep over them? Do we lay out ourselves
   for their conversion? Did He not die that they might live?

   You are made Godlike when this passion glows within your spirit. This
   is a vent for your love to God as well as your love to men. Loving the
   Creator, we pity His fallen creatures and feel a benevolent love
   towards the work of His hands. If we love God, we feel as He does, that
   judgment is strange work and we cannot bear that those whom He has
   created should be cast away forever. Loving God makes us sorrow that
   all men do not love Him, too. It frets us that the world lies in the
   Wicked One, at enmity to its own Creator, at war with Him who, alone,
   can bless it. O Beloved, you do not love the Lord at all unless you
   love the souls of others!

   Trying to bring others to Christ does us good by renewing in us our old
   feelings and reviving our first love. When I see an inquirer penitent
   for sin, I remember the time when I felt as he is feeling. And when I
   hear the seeker for the first time say, "I do believe in Jesus," I
   remember the birthday of my own soul, when the bells of my heart rang
   out their merriest peals because Jesus Christ had come to dwell within
   me! Soul-winning keeps the heart lively and preserves our warm youth to
   us! It is a mighty refresher to decaying love. If you feel the chill of
   skepticism stealing over you and begin to doubt the Gospel's power, go
   to work among the poor and ignorant, or comfort souls in distress. And
   when you see the brightness of their countenances as they obtain joy
   and peace in believing, your skepticism will fly like chaff before the
   wind!

   You must believe in the cause when you see the result! You cannot help
   believing when the evidence is before your eyes! Work for Jesus keeps
   us strong in faith and intense in love to Him. Does not this holy
   instinct draw forth all the faculties of a man? One strong passion will
   frequently bring the whole man into play, like a skillful minstrel
   whose hand brings music from every chord. If we love others, we shall,
   like Paul, become wise to attract them, wise to persuade them, wise to
   convince them, wise to encourage them. We shall learn the use of means
   which had lain rusted and discover in ourselves talents which otherwise
   had been hidden in the ground if the strong desire to save men had not
   cleared away the soil!

   And I will add here that love to souls will, in the end, bring to
   everyone who follows it up, the highest joy beneath the stars. What is
   that? It is the joy of knowing that you have been made the spiritual
   parent of others! I have tasted of this stream full often, by God's
   Grace, and it is Heaven below! The joy of being saved one's self has a
   measure of selfishness about it, but to know that your fellow men are
   saved by your efforts brings a joy pure, disinterested and heavenly--of
   which we may drink the deepest draughts without injury to our spirits.
   Yield yourselves, Brothers and Sisters, to the Divine appetite for
   doing good! Be possessed with it and eaten up by it--and the best
   results must follow! Let this be, from now on, your aim, "That I may,
   by all means, save some."

   II. How DOES THIS PASSION EXERCISE ITSELF? Differently in different
   persons, and at different periods. At first it shows itself by tender
   anxiety. The moment a man is saved he begins to be anxious about his
   wife, his child, or his dearest relative. And that anxiety leads him,
   at once, to pray for them. As soon as the newly opened eye has enjoyed
   the sweet light of the Sun of Righteousness it looks lovingly round on
   those who were its companions in darkness--and then gazes up into
   Heaven with a tearful prayer that they, also, may receive their sight.
   Hungry ones, while they are eating the first mouthful at the banquet of
   Free Grace, groan and say, "Oh, that my poor starving children could be
   here to feed on the Savior's love with me."

   Compassion is natural to the new-born nature--as common humanity makes
   us pity the suffering--so renewed humanity makes us pity the sinful.
   This, I say, happens at the very dawn of the new life. Further on in
   the heavenly pilgrimage this passion manifests itself in the intense
   joy exhibited when news reaches us of the conversion of others. I have
   often seen, at Church meetings and missionary meetings, a hearty and
   holy joy spread throughout an audience when some new convert, or
   returned missionary, or successful minister, has given details of the
   wonders of Saving Grace. Many a poor girl who could do but little for
   the Savior has, nevertheless, shown what she would have done if she
   could, by the tears of joy which have streamed down her cheeks when she
   has heard that sinners have been led to Jesus. This is one of the ways
   in which those who can personally do little can share in the joy of the
   most useful, yes, can have fellowship with Jesus Himself!

   The hallowed instinct of soul-winning also shows itself in private
   efforts, sacrifices, prayers and agonies for the spread of the Gospel.
   Well do I remember when I first knew the Lord, how restless I felt till
   I could do something for others. I did not know that I could speak to
   an assembly and I was very timid as to conversing upon religious
   subjects. And therefore I wrote little notes to different persons
   setting forth the way of salvation. I dropped these written letters
   with printed tracts into the post, or slipped them under the doors of
   houses, or dropped them into areas--praying that those who read them
   might be aroused as to their sins and moved to flee from the wrath to
   come. My heart would have burst if it could not have found some vent!

   I wish that all professors kept up their first zeal and were diligent
   in doing little things as well as greater things for Jesus, for often
   the lesser agencies turn out to be as effectual as those which operate
   upon a larger area. I hope that all of you young people who have been
   lately added to the Church are trying some mode of doing good, suitable
   for your capacity and position, that, by all means, you may save some!
   A word may often bless those whom a sermon fails to reach. And a
   personal letter may do far more than a printed book. As we grow older
   and are more qualified, we shall take our share in the more public
   agencies of the Church. We shall speak for Jesus before the few who
   meet at the cottage Prayer Meeting. We shall pray with, as well as for
   our families, or we shall enlist in the Sunday school, or take a tract
   district. Ultimately the Lord may call us to plead His cause before
   hundreds or thousands--and so beginning with littles our latter end, by
   His Grace, shall greatly increase.

   There is one point in which zeal for the salvation of others will show
   itself in all who possess it, namely, in adapting ourselves to the
   condition and capacity of others for their good. Notice this in Paul.
   He became all things to all men, if by any means he might save some. He
   became a Jew to the Jews. When he met with them he did not rail at
   their ceremonies, but endeavored to bring out their spiritual meaning.
   He did not preach against Judaism, but showed them Jesus as the
   Fulfillment of its types. When he met with a heathen he did not revile
   his gods, but taught him the true God and salvation by His Son. He did
   not carry about with him one sermon for all places, but adapted his
   speech to his audience.

   What a very wonderful address that was which Paul delivered to the
   council of philosophers upon Mars' Hill. It is most courteous
   throughout and it is a pity that our translation somewhat destroys that
   quality, for it is eminently conspicuous in the original. The Apostle
   began by saying, "You men of Athens, I perceive that you are, on all
   points, very God-fearing." He did not say, "Too superstitious," as our
   version has it! That would have needlessly provoked them at the outset.
   He went on to say, "For as I passed through the city and observed your
   sacred things, I found an altar bearing the inscription, 'To an unknown
   God.' What, therefore, you worship without knowing it, that I announce
   unto you."

   He did not say, "Whom you ignorantly worship." He was far too prudent
   to use such an expression! They were a collection of thoughtful men, of
   cultured minds--and he aimed at winning them by courteously declaring
   to them the Gospel. It was most skillful on his part to refer to that
   inscription upon the altar and equally so to quote from one of their
   own poets. If he had been addressing Jews, he would neither have quoted
   from a Greek poet nor referred to a heathen altar--his intense love for
   his hearers taught him to merge his own peculiarities in order to
   secure their attention.

   In the same manner we also sink ourselves and instead of demanding that
   others submit to us, we cheerfully submit to them in all unessential
   matters, that we may gain their favorable consideration of the claims
   of Jesus. Mark you, there was never a man more stern for principle than
   Paul. In things where it was necessary to take his stand he was firm as
   a rock. But in merely personal and external matters he was the servant
   of all. Adaptation was his forte. Beloved, if you have to talk to
   children, be children--do not expect them to be men. Think their
   thoughts, feel their feelings and put truth into their words. You will
   never get at their hearts till your heart is in sympathy with their
   childhood. If you have to comfort the aged, enter, also, into their
   infirmities and do not speak to them as if they were still in the full
   vigor of life. Study persons of all ages and be as they are--that they
   may be led to be Believers--as you are.

   Are you called to labor among the educated? Then choose out excellent
   words and present them apples of gold in baskets of silver. Do you work
   among the illiterate? Let your words be as goads--speak their mother
   tongue, use great plainness of speech so that you may be
   understood--for what good is it to speak to them in an unknown tongue?
   Are you cast among people with strange prejudices? Do not unnecessarily
   spar with them, but take them as you find them. Are you seeking the
   conversion of a person of slender understanding? Do not inflict upon
   him the deeper mysteries, but show

   him the plain man's pathway to Heaven in words which he who runs may
   read! Are you talking with a friend who is of a sorrowful spirit? Tell
   him of your own depressions. Enter into his griefs and so raise him up
   as you were raised. Like the good Samaritan, go where the wounded man
   lies and do not expect him to come to you.

   A real passion for winning souls reveals the many sides of our manhood
   and uses each one as a reflector of the Divine light of Truth. There is
   a door to each man's heart and we have to find it and enter it with the
   right key, which is to be found somewhere or other in the Word of God.
   All men are not to be reached in the same way, or by the same
   arguments--and as we are, by all means, to save some, we must be wise
   to win souls--wise with wisdom from above. We desire to see them
   conquered for Christ, but no warrior always uses the same
   strategy--there is, for one, open assault, for another a siege--for a
   third an ambush, for a fourth a long campaign.

   On the sea there are great rams which run down the enemy, torpedoes
   under water, gunboats and steam frigates. One ship is broken up by a
   single blow. Another needs a broadside. A third must have a shot
   between wind and water. A fourth must be driven on shore. Even thus
   must we adapt ourselves and use the Sacred Force entrusted to us with
   grave consideration and solemn judgment, looking ever to the Lord for
   guidance and for power. All the real power is in the Lord's hands! We
   must put ourselves fully at the disposal of the Divine Worker, that He
   may work in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure--so shall
   we, by all means, save some.

   III. WHY IS NOT THIS PASSION MORE LARGELY DEVELOPED AMONG CHRISTIANS?
   The preacher needs

   not answer that question--each of his hearers may do that for himself.
   Why is it that we do not yearn more over the perishing souls of men? Is
   it not that we have but very little Grace? We are dwarfish Christians
   with little faith, little love, little care for the Glory of God--and
   therefore with little concern for perishing sinners. We are spiritually
   naked and poor. We are spiritually miserable when we might be rich and
   increased in goods if we had but more faith. That is the secret of the
   matter and is the fountain of all the mischief.

   But if we must come to particulars, do you not think that men are
   careless about the souls of others because they have fallen into
   one-sided views of Gospel doctrines and have turned the Doctrines of
   Grace into a couch for idleness to rest upon? "God will save His own,"
   they say. Yes, but His own do not talk in that fashion. They are not
   like Cain, who said, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Unquestionably the
   Lord will see that His own elect are called in due season, but He will
   do this by the preaching or teaching of the Word. Predestination is not
   a legitimate reason for inaction! Men do not consider it so in other
   matters, why, then, in religion? Except the Lord prospers us in
   business all our efforts are in vain--and yet we do not say--"I shall
   have as many pounds in my pocket as God intends I shall have, and
   therefore I need not work or trade."

   No, men save their fatalism to play the fool only with spiritual
   things! In all other things they are not such idiots as to suffer
   predestination to paralyze their minds! But here, since idleness needs
   an excuse for itself, they dare to abuse this sacred Truth of God to
   cripple their consciences! In some professors downright worldliness
   prevents their seeking the conversion of others. They are too fond of
   gain to care for saving souls, too busy about their farms to sow the
   seed of the Kingdom, too much occupied with their shops to hold up the
   Cross before the sinner's eyes, too full of worldly care to care for
   the salvation of the lost! Covetousness eats up the very soul of many.
   They have far more business than they can manage without injury to
   their spiritual health--and yet they are eager after more. Prayer
   Meetings are neglected, the class in the school is given up, efforts
   for the poor and ignorant are never made--and all because they are so
   taken up with the world and its cares. This age is peculiarly tempted
   in that direction and it needs strong piety to be able to love the
   souls of men practically.

   With some I fear that the cause of indifference is lack offaith. They
   do not believe that God will bless their efforts and, therefore, they
   make none. They have a vivid recollection of far-gone times when they
   tried to be useful and failed. So, instead of past failure being made a
   reason for double exertion in the present, to make up for lost time,
   they have given up labor for the Lord as a bad case and do not attempt
   anything more. It is to be feared that with many Church members the
   reason for the absence of this passion is that they love ease and are
   worm-eaten with indolence. They say, "Soul, take your ease! Eat, drink,
   and be merry. Why trouble yourself about others?" "Send the multitude
   away," said the disciples. They did not want to be worried with them.

   True, the people were very hungry and weary and it was a painful thing
   to see them fainting. But it was easier to forget their needs than to
   relieve them! London is perishing--millions are dying in their sins!
   The world still lies in the

   Wicked One and Sloth calls Forgetfulness to her aid to ignore the whole
   matter! Such people do not want to be made uncomfortable--neither do
   they wish to spend and be spent for the glory of Christ. The secret of
   it all is that the great majority of Christians are out of sympathy
   with God and out of communion with Christ. Is not this an evil? O eyes
   that never wept over dying men, do you expect to see the King in His
   beauty? O hearts that never throbbed with anxiety for those that are
   going down to the Pit--do you hope to leap for joy at the Master's
   coming? O lips that never speak for Jesus, how will you answer to the
   searching questions of the Last Great Day?

   I beseech you, Christian people, if you have grown indifferent to the
   conversion of those around you, search out the secret reason! Find what
   is the worm at the root of your piety--and in the name of Christ seek
   to be delivered from it!

   IV. How CAN THIS PASSION BE MORE FULLY AROUSED? First, it can be done
   by our obtaining a higher life. The better man shall do the better
   deed--the stronger in Divine Grace, the stronger to save some. I do not
   believe in a man's trying to pump himself up beyond his level. The man
   must be up and then all that comes out of the man will have risen. If
   love to God glows in your soul, it must show itself in your concern for
   others. Make the tree good and the fruit will be good. It will not do
   for you to begin a more earnest career by stimulating yourself to a
   hectic zeal which will come and go like the flush on the consumptive's
   cheek--the life within must be permanently strengthened--and then the
   pulsing of the heart and the motion of the whole man will be more
   vigorous.

   More Divine Grace is our greatest need. This being granted, it will
   greatly help us to care for the conversion of sinners if we are fully
   cognizant of their misery and degradation. How differently one feels
   after seeing with ones own eyes the poverty, filth and vice of this
   city. I wish some of you respectable people who have never seen any
   part of London except the broad thoroughfares, would take a stroll down
   the courts which open into the narrow side streets. I would like you to
   go down courts such as Queen Victoria never saw, and alleys far from
   green. Ladies, you may leave some of that finery at home. And
   Gentlemen, you may put away your pocket handkerchiefs and your purses,
   unless you would like to empty them out among the wretched beings you
   will meet.

   There are sights to be seen close to our own homes which might well
   make our hearts bleed and harrow up our spirits. When you have seen
   them, you will begin to feel aright towards the sinful. We sit at home
   comfortably at our fires in the winter time and think the weather is
   not so very cold. But if we go out and see the poor shivering in their
   rags, or find them cowering over their empty grates, we begin to think
   that cold is a greater evil than we dreamed! We come here, to this
   place of worship, and while we are listening to the Word we forget the
   destitution of those who hear it not. Why, at this very moment around
   the doors of the gin palaces and public houses of London there are
   thousands standing waiting till the blessed hour of one--when they can
   obtain the cheering draught which their souls thirst after! The
   assemblies now tarrying for the god Bacchus can be counted by the
   thousands!

   What have these men been doing with the Sabbath hours up till now?
   Reading the Sunday newspaper, lying in bed, or loafing about their
   little gardens in their shirt sleeves. That is the occupation of
   hundreds of thousands this day all around us and at our doors! Have we
   done our best to bring them to the House of Prayer? Hundreds of
   thousands near by have never heard the Gospel in their lives--and never
   think of entering places where it is preached! Of course, if they had
   lived in Calcutta we should have thought about them! Because they are
   living in London close to us shall we neglect them?

   One of the best things that could be done for us all would be to go
   round to houses in the worst parts of the city for one week with a city
   Missionary. Then we might see for ourselves what is to be seen! Then
   would sin and poverty become palpable and stand out in grim reality!
   Your fellow countrymen, men born of women who are of the same flesh and
   blood as yourselves--are living in daily neglect of your dear Savior,
   living in jeopardy of their immortal souls--if you did but realize this
   it would quicken you, by all means, to save some! Brethren, the
   strongest argument I have ever seen for the doctrine of the eternity of
   future punishment is an argument which is often used against it. They
   say, "If the eternity of future punishment is true, we wonder that
   believers in it can rest in their beds, or eat their meals--for the
   truth is so horrible that it ought to stir them to incessant efforts to
   deliver others from going into this boundless misery."

   It is true and spoken of by a Prophet, and that is one reason why I
   believe the doctrine, because it has a tendency, if anything has, to
   move us to compassion and rouse us to action. If the advocate of other
   views is prepared to teach me a doctrine which will make me think more
   lightly of sin and make me feel more easy about the damnation of my
   fellow men, I do not want his doctrine, for I am too careless now, and
   have a dread of being more so! If, with the most terrible

   argument for incessant sorrow for the ruin of the souls of my hearers,
   I cannot be as tender as I would, what should I be if I could lay the
   flattering unction to my soul that, after all, it was of smaller
   consequence than I had thought whether they were damned or saved? Ah,
   dear Friends, can you bear to think of it, that all around you there
   are men and women who will, in a few years, suffer the terrible wrath
   of God and be banished forever from His Presence? If you could but
   realize Hell and its horrors, you might be stirred, by all means, to
   save some.

   Many other things might move us, but certainly this last ought to do
   it. A sense of our own solemn obligations to the Grace of God should
   arouse all our energies. If we are what we profess to be--saved men
   redeemed by the heart's blood of the Son of God--do we not owe
   something to Christ for this? Shall we be easy till we have found many
   jewels for His crown? Can we be content while so many myriads are
   ignorant of Him, or opposed to Him? If you love Him, what will you do
   for Him? Show Him a proof of your love--and the best proof you can give
   is your own personal holiness and persevering effort to gather in His
   redeemed. Brother, Sister, do something for Jesus! Do not talk about
   it--do it!

   Words are leaves--actions are fruits. Do something for Jesus! Do
   something for Jesus, today! Before the sun goes down think of some one
   action which may tend to the conversion of some one person--and do it
   with all your might! Let the object of the effort be your child, your
   servant, your brother, your friend--but make the effort today! Having
   done it today, do it tomorrow and every day--and doing it in one way,
   do it another way! And doing it in one state of heart, do it in
   another! Let your joy enchant, let your sorrow arouse, let your hope
   attract! Let your changeful moods help you to attack sinners from
   different quarters, as your varying circumstances bring you into
   contact with differing persons.

   Be always awake! Turn yourself about like a gun on a swivel to reach
   persons who are found in any direction--so that some may fall wounded
   by the Gospel's power. By all means, save some! God grant it may be so!
   And, oh, that some might be saved this morning by simply believing in
   Christ Jesus, for that is the way of salvation! Jesus puts away sin
   wherever there is a simple trust in Him! May seekers exercise that
   trust now and live forever. Amen.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Lord Chiding His People

   (No. 1171)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MAY 3, 1874, BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "He will not always chide: neither will He keep His anger forever."
   Psalm 103:9.

   THIS verse has reference only to the children of God. The Psalm is for
   them--they alone can sing it and this statement concerns them only--for
   this reason, that the wrath of the great Judge of all the earth is
   removed from every true child of God. Our sins were laid upon Jesus
   Christ and He bore them for us. The penalty due to us on account of
   them, or its equivalent, has been endured by Jesus Christ, our
   Substitute. Therefore, as before the Throne of God there is no
   accusation against a Believer, the justice of God has no anger towards
   him. "Though You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away and You
   comfort me," is the proper language of every justified man.

   But let it never be forgotten that in pursuance of His gracious plan,
   God, who has blotted out our offenses as rebellious subjects, has now
   placed us in a new relationship, for, by adoption and the new birth, we
   have become His children and He is our Father. Though He neither can
   nor will ever summon us before the bar of His jurisdiction, either to
   charge us with sin or condemn us for it, inasmuch as Jesus Christ has
   put that sin away, yet, as our Father, He exercises discipline among
   His family, and we, as His children, are both chided and chastened for
   our faults. The sword of justice no longer threatens us, but the rod of
   parental correction is still in use. The judge no longer condemns, but
   the Father chides--"For what son is he whom his father chastens not."

   Remember, then, that we are not about to speak of Believers under the
   Law, or the anger arising out of the breach thereof--by His Grace we
   are quite clean from all the mire of that slough of legality. We are
   about to treat of Believers as the adopted, twice-born children of
   God--and of the rule of the Lord's household--and the chiding and
   chastisement which are necessary to it. The text seems to me to say two
   things. First, He will chide. Secondly, He will not always chide,
   neither will He keep His anger forever.

   I. The text very plainly says to us who choose to hear it, HE WILL
   CHIDE. It is implied that He will be angry, otherwise it were not
   necessary to say that, "He will not keep His anger forever." Why will
   He chide? There are many answers, but we can mention only a few. He
   will chide His own dearly beloved children, first, because if He did
   not do so it would seem like winking at sin. Eli did not restrain his
   sons or chasten them as he should have done and, therefore, judgments
   fell upon his house. God is not foolishly gentle like that aged
   priest--He will sorely smite His children if they follow iniquity.

   David had never displeased Adonijah at any time in saying, "Why have
   You done so?" And therefore on his deathbed the old man heard the news
   that his much-indulged son was seeking to snatch the crown from
   Solomon, his appointed heir. God is no indulgent David--He does not
   spare His children the chidings due to their sins. "The Lord your God
   is a jealous God." In His people, sin is sin, and even yet more heinous
   than in those who are outside of the family, seeing that they sin
   against greater light and greater love. Sin is in the elect of God
   exceedingly sinful. The Lord regards it as an intolerable evil which
   His soul hates. It must be cleansed as by burning, for He will bring
   His people through the fire and refine them as silver is refined. Has
   He not said of His chosen, "You only have I known of all the families
   of the earth, therefore I will punish you for your iniquities"? A man
   may suffer a stranger's child to do many wrong things without laying
   his hand upon him. But he makes his own child to smart if he dares to
   disobey.

   God chastens and chides His children, next, because if He did not,
   others of the family would follow their ill example. If I knew a man
   who lived in sin and yet enjoyed the light of God's Countenance, should
   I not naturally conclude that I, also, may live as he does and yet walk
   in the light as God is in the light? If we had heard of David's sin
   with Bathsheba and had never read of his horror of soul, his broken
   bones and bleeding heart--should we not have inferred that we, also,
   might fall into the same filthiness--and find it a very small matter to
   return into the way of righteousness again?

   Every father among you knows that he has often to chasten his child's
   bad behavior--not only for its own sake but for the sake of the younger
   children--for if the fault were overlooked they might come to do the
   same.

   Sometimes a frown which might have been spared the individual,
   considered by himself, must be put upon the parent's face for the sake
   of brothers and sisters, lest they should fall into like fault.
   Remember that the Lord has a large family--and like a wise father He
   considers the interests of all. Consequently He does not allow sin to
   go unchided, lest it breed folly in others. Moreover, the world outside
   the regenerated family looks on with unfriendly eyes. If the erring
   child of God were never chided or chastened, then would worldlings say,
   "What does it matter that God denounces sin in us, when He winks at it
   in His own family?"

   Should we not say of a minister who preached holiness, but who suffered
   his own sons to indulge in vice, "Why is it that he does not begin at
   home?" Is it not natural for us to think that those who are in real
   earnest for piety and holiness will be sure to show it by the way in
   which they restrain their own children and conduct the affairs of their
   own house? If we see that a Christian man's daughters are the wildest
   of the group and the most frivolous of the frivolous, do we not say at
   once, "What a pity it is that he speaks about evil in others and yet
   does not set his own house in order"? It is mentioned as an essential
   qualification for a pastor that "he rules well his own house; for if a
   man knows not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the
   Church of God?" Of the deacons, also, it is said that they must "rule
   their children and their own houses well," from which we gather that a
   man who cannot govern his children can never be anything but a
   rear-rank soldier of Christ, a poor, feeble Christian at best.

   Now, shall it ever be said that the great Father of Spirits does not
   enforce discipline in His own house? Will the greatest of all
   Householders suffer it to be whispered throughout the world that He
   allows His favorites to do as they please, and His darlings to indulge
   in sin without chiding them? God forbid! It must not be so imagined!
   What says the Apostle Paul in Hebrews? "Even our God is a consuming
   fire." He does not say that God, out of Christ, is a consuming fire,
   for God in Christ is our God--and in that Character He is a consuming
   fire, burning with infinite jealousy against sin! The terrified
   hypocrites in Zion, who are spoken of by Isaiah, asked a hard question,
   but it is one which we must answer--"Who among us shall dwell with that
   devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?"
   Only he can so dwell who "walks righteously and speaks uprightly," "but
   he shall dwell on high, his place of defense shall be the munitions of
   rocks, his bread shall be given him, his waters shall be sure" (Isa.
   33:14-16).

   It is not possible for the thrice holy Jehovah to act otherwise towards
   sin than as fire to feel, hence those who dwell with Him must be pure.
   God must, for the outside world's sake, judge among His own people,
   separating the precious from the vile, and passing even the precious
   gold through the fire to cleanse it from its dross--thus making His
   people to be a holy people--separated unto His fear. His fire is in
   Zion and His furnace in Jerusalem. Judgment begins at the house

   of God.

   But, Beloved, there is another reason which more nearly concerns
   ourselves--God must chide us when we do evil, for our own sakes, or
   else the evil would lie festering in us, breeding I know not what of
   deadly mischief. Often we do not know sin to be sin till the Lord
   chides us for it, or we do not perceive the high degree of its
   sinfulness till we hear His solemn tones rebuking us lovingly but
   sharply that we may be sound in His fear. This Divine chiding lays open
   the sore which else might have worked inwardly to mortal sickness.
   Besides, if sin were not chided, one fault would lead to another and we
   should go from bad to worse. That gradual decline which saps the bodily
   constitution of many would happen to our souls--and we should fall
   little by little. Gray hairs would be upon us here and there--and we
   should not know it.

   The Lord reins us up, when our steps are almost gone, and gives us a
   sharp blow such as a skillful driver deals to a stumbling horse. And
   then we run more carefully, pick up our feet in the dangerous pathway
   and so hold on and hold out to the end. It is necessary, Beloved, and
   for our good, that we should bear His chiding, else sin would, before
   long, pierce us through with many sorrows. I am never afraid for my
   Brethren who have many troubles, but I often tremble for those whose
   career is prosperous. To be emptied from vessel to vessel with trouble
   is often the best thing which can befall us. But to stand at ease till
   the lees subside, and yet be there, is the greatest danger of
   Christians in these days. The dregs of sin fall to the bottom out of
   sight because we are not agitated by--and then we get the notion that
   we are wholly refined and clear from sin--when it is only because we
   are not stirred that our impurities do not rise to the surface.

   Brothers and Sisters, it is good, sometimes, to be stirred up with a
   temptation that you may see what a Hell there is in the depravity of
   your nature--and what a fiend you are apart from the Grace of God! This
   humbles you, drives you to prayer and makes you cry out for real
   purity--and so it is a blessed thing. But to have ease and freedom from
   toil, never to have your temper tried, never to have your patience
   exercised--to have a long period of prosperity--is often to breed in
   you an estimate of yourself which is totally false. You are no better
   than other men, but you happen not to be so much tempted as other
   men--and so you become conceited, which is one of the most grievous of
   calamities.

   Now, the Lord can see the residue which we do not see. He knows what
   lees are at the bottom of the vessel and, therefore, He chides us,
   tells us of our secret faults and makes our faces to be suffused with
   blushes, though just before this we were full of self-exultation.
   Remember, also, that while sin would lie in us and fester, and we
   should also grow conceited, we may be sure that we should never attain
   any high position in Grace if it were not for the chidings of the Lord.
   His rebukes throw us on our faces before the Cross and we are then
   nearer Heaven than at any other time. Beloved, if we become satisfied
   with what we are, we shall cease to struggle after anything better--and
   become stunted professors.

   There is grave cause in every one of us for dissatisfaction with our
   condition, from one point of view or another and, therefore, it is a
   thousand mercies that the Divine reproofs for our weakness of faith,
   for the coldness of our love, for the distance of our walk with Him.
   The Lord's corrections are the thorns in our nest which make us soar
   towards Heaven! His chiding shows us our emptiness and leads us to
   apply to the fullness which is prepared for us.

   I cannot, however, stop to show you many more of the wise, tender,
   fatherly, gracious reasons why the Lord chides His people, but I will
   answer another question. How does He do it? I answer, sometimes, He
   rebukes His people by the sin itself. They sow it and He lets them reap
   it--there is no more fitting retribution than for the backslider in
   heart to be filled with his own ways. If you sow wild oats they will
   make bitter cakes when they are reaped and ground--and you are made to
   eat them. The Lord treats us as Aaron treated Israel--he took their
   golden calf and ground it to powder, strewed it on the water and made
   them drink.

   Very sharp and burning is the concoction made from our darling sins.
   More bitter than gall is the wine which flows from the grapes of
   transgression. Sin's result is its punishment. Abraham's unbelief
   chastened itself when he found his wife taken by the Philistine king. A
   worse case is that of Lot. He did not keep the separated path as he
   ought to have done, but chose to dwell with the men of Sodom. And when
   he saw all his property destroyed by the flames which fell from
   Heaven--when his sons-in-law perished and his wife was turned into a
   pillar of salt--he must have seen in his sorrows the very image of his
   sins. Who brought this upon you, Lot? Who made you what you are? What
   but your worldliness? And who but yourself, in your greedy choice of
   the well-watered plain of Sodom, and your forsaking of the pilgrim walk
   with God?

   Child of eternal love, your God will gather twigs for His rod out of
   your own garden! Like Gideon, He will chastise you with thorns and
   briers--and those sharp teachers He will gather from the neglected
   corner of the field which you should have cultivated for your Lord.
   Frequently He chastens His people by His Providence. Chastisements come
   to us through sickness of body and depression of spirit, losses in
   business or failures of enterprise. Trouble in the family or attacks
   from the outside world may be other ways, but here we must be careful
   to discriminate, for all trials are not chastisements--many are sent as
   tests of integrity, or illustrations of faith. Some are sent to afford
   us opportunities of winning crowns for Christ and honor for Him.

   In fact, trials may be regarded very often as great favors and special
   privileges. "Whom the Lord loves He chastens," and, "Every branch that
   bears fruit He purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit." You must
   not think, because you are afflicted, that you have been more sinful
   than others, for it may be you are more beloved! Tribulation is often a
   gracious reward for faithfulness, affording, as it does, an opportunity
   for the exercise of yet higher virtue! Yet many troubles are manifestly
   chastisements. When Rebekah saw her darling son driven away from his
   father's house, was not that a chastisement for her teaching him lies?
   When afterwards Jacob found himself deceived by Laban, what was that
   but a chastisement for the deceit which he had practiced against his
   brother Esau?

   God's Providence is disciplinary towards His own household--David's sin
   was followed by a pestilence. Hezekiah's proud display of his riches to
   the Babylonian ambassadors brought on captivity. Asa's transgression
   caused the rest of his life to be troubled with wars. A happy life can
   be changed into one of care and affliction by careless living, for God
   will order all events for the correction of His rebellious child. But
   the Lord as often chides His people by the withdrawal of

   privileges. Full assurance is one of the first blessings taken from
   those who wander--faith burns dimly and those who could once read their
   title clear, now spell it out with many questions by a smoking
   lamp--whose light is but a glimmer. They formerly could say, "I know."
   Now they can barely cry, "I hope." Their faith is weak because it does
   not lie, now, in the same atmosphere, since the manifested love of God
   has ceased to shine upon them.

   The Lord also denies His blessing to the means of Grace and they become
   wells without water and clouds without rain. The sermon is not sweet as
   it used to be. Even the Bible is not so comforting as before. The
   joyous assemblies are now sorrowful, the feasts are turned to fasts,
   the Bethels to Bochims, the hymns to howls. The wail of the mourner
   will be, "O that it were with me as in months past, when the candle of
   the Lord shone round about me." Private prayer soon becomes a weariness
   and all the exercises of secret devotion are carried on as matters of
   duty rather than as sources of enjoyment.

   The Father also chides His children by taking from them their
   fellowship with Himself. They dare no longer sing, "My beloved is mine,
   and I am His." Their cry is, "Where has my Beloved gone, that I may
   seek Him?" At the Lord's Table the emblems are no longer gates of pearl
   to admit to the secret chambers of the King. The Beloved is gone and
   the sun is eclipsed. Now they are in the dark, though once they basked
   in the sunlight. Some here know all about this--and they will tell you
   that there is no worse chastening than to be left of God and deprived
   of His present smile. Then there will happen to you a great withdrawal
   of power in prayer. You used to ask and have--but now you are made to
   wait and knock long and loud before the gate opens to you.

   Once you were such a favorite with the King that when you had His ear
   you spoke to Him for your child, and that child's soul was given to
   you! You sought favors and they came into your bosom at once. You told
   the Well-Beloved your daily troubles with sweet familiarity--and they
   were all relieved at once. Whatever you asked in prayer, you received,
   because you kept His Commandments. But now you have walked contrary to
   Him and He walks contrary to you. The heavens are as brass above you
   and your prayer comes back to you unanswered. Thus does the Lord chide
   you. It happens, also, that the erring Christian's influence over
   others fades away. "When a man's ways please the Lord He makes even his
   enemies to be at peace with him." But when he gets out of step with
   God, his enemies take license to rage.

   Look at David. Did not the Lord let loose upon him that cursing Shimei
   and open the mouth of Sheba, the son of Bichri, because he had sinned?
   As for Solomon, the great king, what cause had he to be afraid of
   Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, or Hadad the Edomite, or Rezon of
   Damascus--until the day when he had cause to be afraid of his offended
   God? The lions are chained for Daniel, "the man greatly beloved," but
   they break loose upon the man who follows afar off, and roar upon him
   till he denies his Master.

   At times the Lord will chasten His servants by taking away all their
   success in service. They preached and souls were saved. But now they
   preach and there are no conversions. They went to the Sunday school
   class and the children's hearts were melted while they taught. It is
   not so now. Barrenness has fallen upon all their fields. Their land is
   sown with salt. Their vine forgets her fruit, for the Lord has said,
   "Inasmuch as you have left Me and sinned against Me, I also will leave
   you to your devices till you mourn and repent and turn unto Me." May my
   Lord never thus chide me--I would choose any plague rather than that of
   barrenness.

   Moreover, our heavenly Father chides by His Holy Spirit. Many of us
   know it is for the Spirit of God to speak softly in our hearts and tell
   us we have done wrong the very moment we have transgressed. And happy
   is that man who bows before that Voice, for he will thus escape the
   rod, since the Lord never comes to blows when words will suffice. The
   Spirit of God often sends home the reproofs of Scripture to our
   hearts--while we are reading the Word we feel that it searches us and
   rebukes us! So, also, the Lord will employ His ministers to chide us.
   Little is that ministry worth which never chides you! If God never uses
   His minister as a rod, depend upon it, He will never use him as a pot
   of manna, for the rod of Aaron and the pot of manna always go
   together--and he who is God's true servant will be both to your soul.

   The Lord will also chide you through your own conscience, causing you
   to judge and condemn yourself. The Spirit of God will quicken your
   understanding and then it will be said of you as of David, "David's
   heart smote him." It is hard hitting when the heart smites, for it
   comes to such close quarters! But blessed is that man who can thus be
   corrected--it is a sad sign when conscience is too dead to be of any
   service in this direction. I believe our heavenly Father, at times,
   chides His people through Church discipline. I do not mean the
   discipline carried on by us through the minister, deacons and the
   Church itself. I refer to that solemn Church discipline which goes on
   in the Churches and is often unobserved.

   Paul said of the disorders in the Corinthian Church, "For this cause
   many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. But if we would
   judge ourselves, we should not be judged; but when we are judged, we
   are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the
   world." Now, there is no reason to believe that these visitations of
   the Lord upon the Churches have ceased. Indeed, I am persuaded they
   have not. I have seen those who have walked inconsistently in this
   place die, one after another. When their inconsistencies have not been
   such as I could touch, but such as have grieved the children of God,
   the Lord has, Himself, executed discipline.

   Many cases which I shall never relate are written down in the tablets
   of my memory with this verdict, "Removed by the discipline of God." I
   have seen others blighted in fortune, chastened in body and especially
   depressed in spirit as the result of grieving the Spirit of God in the
   Church. Church sins, such as injure peace and unity, dampen zeal and
   enterprise, or hinder prayer, or grieve holy men, are surely visited
   with stripes. There is no need for us to root up the tares, for the
   Spirit of God does it by His own processes. That same spirit that was
   in Peter and smote Ananias and Sapphira is still in the Church, not
   destroying souls, but taking away life or health as a solemn discipline
   upon grave offenses beyond the reach of human jurisdiction.

   I do not say that it is so in all Churches, for some Churches are
   barely Churches of Christ at all. But when a Church lives in the light
   and when the Lord blesses that Church, and the Spirit of God is there,
   discipline from God will be decisive, for the Lord is very jealous for
   His name in such places. Depend upon it, one of the most awful
   conditions a man can hold, while it is also one of the most blessed, is
   to be in membership with a Church that is much loved and smiled upon by
   God--for there is a searching wind of discipline sweeping through it
   continually of a more solemn kind than I shall care further to describe
   just now.

   Now let us ask, when does God chide? I will answer very briefly, that
   He does not chide for every sin. His Word chides for every sin, but I
   mean that the Lord does not, for every fault, actually chasten us in
   the sense here intended. He is angry when a sin has not been mourned
   over and repented of. When it is known to be sin and yet committed
   again--when it threatens to become chronic, so that the man will
   continue in it and it will become habitual--He is sure to chide. When a
   sin has special flagrancy about it--when it indulges the grosser lusts,
   or some utterly contemptible passion--or is associated with pride and
   presumption, He sis sure to chide. Surely, also, He will rebuke when
   the opulence follows upon high privileges. If you lie in God's bosom
   you must watch that you do not offend--a common subject may do without
   punishment--but he who is the king's favorite must not even think of
   it.

   We will take from strangers, remarks which would wound us terribly if
   they came from those we love or friends. If you are among the king's
   courtiers he will watch your walk with a jealous eye. Chiding is sure
   to come when the offender is not in circumstances which would suggest
   an excuse for his fault, such as a sudden temptation, or a fierce
   trial. Anything like a deliberate act of sin is certain to bring down
   the Father's anger. When the poor man in his extremity acts as he
   should not to gain bread for his babes, God will never view his offense
   in the same light as the greed of the man of wealth. Is not that an
   incidental lesson of Nathan's parable in which the rich man's many
   flocks aggravate his robbery of the poor man's ewe lamb?

   Brethren, the sin which in me may be very grievous, might be
   comparatively overlooked in you. And the sin which in you is pestilent
   before high Heaven, might be far less grievous in another Brother whose
   circumstances are less favorable than yours, whose temptations are
   stronger and whose natural temperament, perhaps, may have a weakness in
   that direction. Anyway, the Lord does chasten His people and displays
   both wisdom and love in so doing.

   II. We have been gazing at the black cloud, now let us look at the
   silver lining. Here is the text, itself, in its sweetness--"HE WILL NOT
   ALWAYS CHIDE." What does that mean? It means that He will not chide for
   every fault. Of course, as I have already said, His Word chides even a
   sinful thought in His people, but the Lord does not fall to blows about
   it--does not grow angry so that we feel His anger for every fault--but
   only for some, else He would be chiding every minute! It means, too,
   that He does not chide long. Oh, how often does He just chide for a
   moment and then He has done, like a mother who speaks an angry word to
   her child and kisses it the next minute--

   "He will not always chide,

   And when His strokes are felt,

   His strokes are fewer than our crimes,

   And lighter than our guilt."

   It means, again, that He does not hold any grudges. That is the real
   meaning of the second clause. The words, "His anger," are in
   italics--they are not in the Hebrew--they are supplied by our
   translators to complete the sense. It means just this, "neither will He
   keep a grudge against us." Many will say, "I forgive you," but you know
   very well what sort of forgiveness it is. They pardon you because they
   cannot help themselves and they forgive until the first opportunity
   comes of showing their spite. Not so with God! He has no grudge against
   His children. He smites them and has done with it. Whenever God uses a
   rod on His children, He always burns it as soon as ever He has done
   with it. He does not put it up by the mirror as I have seen it in some
   families, but He destroys it, for He hates the sight of it.

   Thus He used Sennacherib as a rod, and then He broke him in pieces. He
   used Babylon for the same purpose and then blotted it out of existence.
   He employed Assyria, also, but He destroyed her power. The rod reminds
   Him of His children's cries and He cannot endure it. The text
   especially means that there is no eternal wrath for a child of God. He
   may be angry with me, but my soul, in her deepest agony, clutches at
   this thought, "He will not always chide, neither will He keep His anger
   forever." Anger forever is for the ungodly. Oh, you unconverted ones,
   He will keep His anger forever against you! So long as God's Word is to
   be understood as it stands, we shall believe that as surely as His love
   is everlasting, so is His anger eternal against the impenitent! He will
   keep His anger forever against you, but not against Believers.

   Blessed be His name, when the rod makes the bluest welts we may still
   rejoice that He will not slay us, "neither will He keep His anger
   forever." I may lie tossing on the bed of pain, but I shall never make
   my bed in Hell! I may be brought to poverty, but not to Perdition! I
   may suffer loss, but I shall not, myself, be lost eternally! What a
   comfort is this! The positive meaning of the text is that the Lord will
   soon leave off chiding--but when will He leave off chiding? Beloved, He
   will refrain from chastening when we begin repenting--when we come to
   tears--then He will cease from rebukes. He wants to make us see the sin
   and mourn it. And then will He cease to see it and forgive it!

   He will chide till we come to Jesus Christ as we came at first. When He
   brings us to our knees with, "God be merciful to me, a sinner," He will
   no more send us away unheard than He sent the publican away unblest.
   Go, poor Prodigal, and weep your confession into your Father's
   bosom--and He will not make mention of chiding--for He forgives
   graciously and upbraids not. He will chide us till we forsake our sin.
   The rod and our backs will never part till our hearts and sin are
   separated. When we put an end to sin, there shall be an end to
   chastening. Often the Lord will not refrain from chiding till the
   results of the sin as well as the sin, itself, shall have been removed.
   He will chasten us till our bad example shall have been, in a measure,
   counteracted by our sorrows.

   For instance, David's foul sin would have done great mischief to the
   Church, but David's bitter repentance has become a cure for that evil.
   When Christian people are able to see that you have to suffer and
   sorrow because of your sin, then, as far as they are concerned, God's
   reason for chiding you will have ended--and He will turn to you in
   infinite mercy. Do you inquire of me, why is it that God will not
   always chide His people? Blessed be God, there are many reasons for it!
   One is because He does not mean to confuse chastisement with
   punishment! The Law is angry forever, but the Gospel is full ofpity.
   God would not have His children treated as if they were slaves--they
   have not come to Sinai, but to Zion.

   Moreover, if the Lord did always chide, our spirits would fall before
   Him, for we would be crushed. When He rebukes, our beauty fades away
   like the moth. And if He continued to do so we should die. It is always
   a sad thing, when a parent crushes a child's spirit, as is sometimes
   done, and the child is made obedient and stupid, too. God will not thus
   injure His children and, therefore, He will not always chide. To chide
   too much might lead to other sins, for if the sin is love of pleasure,
   we might be chided into despondency, unbelief, despair and I know not
   what! The great Father stays His hand, lest in driving out one devil He
   should drive 10 in, as some parents do.

   He will not always chide, lest His enemies should exult over His
   people, for they are always ready to say, "Aha, so we would have it."
   The wicked world is glad to exult over a chastened saint, but we can
   say, "Rejoice not over me, O my enemy, for the Lord will not always
   chide." He has said, "For a small moment have I forsaken you, but with
   great mercy will I gather you. In a little wrath I hid My face from you
   for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on you,
   says the Lord my Redeemer." After all, remember that when God chastens
   His children He loves them just as much as when He caresses them. There
   is no change in Jehovah's love, though there may be changes in His ways
   of showing it.

   It never pleases God to chasten His children. He does not afflict
   willingly. When He sees His beloved broken down and humble, He is
   pleased with their humility. But He grieves for their misery. Judgment
   is His strange work. He delights to see His people rejoice--He is a
   happy God--and He loves to have a happy people. Now, if he always
   chastened them, they would be always wretched and, therefore, He will
   not always chide lest the sweet fruits of the Spirit, which are joy and
   peace, should never be brought forth in their souls.

   Beloved, are you being chided this morning? Then let me give you this
   word of good cheer--when you were a sinner, dead in sin and had no
   thought of Him nor desire towards Him, yet He came to you in love. Do
   you think that now He will reject you? You whom He has bought with
   blood? You who have lain in His bosom? You who have known, in days gone
   by, sweet fellowship with Him on the hill Mizer and the Hermonites?
   Will He now forsake you? Oh no, He will turn again! He will have
   compassion upon you, for, "He will not always chide, neither will He
   keep His anger forever."

   And now, Brothers and Sisters, learn the lessons of the whole subject.
   The first inference is--here is consolation for the house of Israel!
   The Jews have been chided and God's anger has smoked against His
   chosen. But they will be gathered together one day--and the fullness of
   the Jews shall be brought to the feet of Jesus. Let Israel write this
   over her synagogues and let believing Jews inscribe this upon their
   doorposts--"He will not always chide, neither will He keep His anger
   forever." His dear people, Israel, He has not put away forever, for
   "where is the bill of your mother's divorcement? says the Lord." He
   will yet bring the seed of Abraham to Himself and comfort them in His
   bosom.

   Let this be a lesson, also, to ministers. We have to chide, sometime,
   by preaching the Law and the terrors of the wrath to come. But we must
   not let a sharp tone rule our ministry. Our preaching must be quick and
   powerful, but as God does not always chide, so neither must we! There
   is to be the thunder and the lightning, but there must be the soft
   shower after it--we must not always chide. This is equally a lesson to
   all of you. If God will not always chide, then you must not. Have you a
   child who has done wrong? Chide, by all means, but do not always chide!
   There is the difficulty involved in the example to the rest of the
   family, but still I pray you forgive, for your Lord says He will not
   always chide. God is wiser than we are--and if it would be right always
   to chide, God would have done it--but He acts otherwise.

   What the Lord does is a model for us, let us copy it. If He would
   always chide us where should we be? But He will not. Therefore I
   beseech you, forgive the wrong, forgive the wrong at once and take your
   child to your heart. Mark your disapprobation of the offense, kind
   Christian parent, but still forgive your child! Be angry and sin
   not--and you can only be so by not being angry too much or too long.
   Here, too, let us say, do not always find fault. Condemn the fault,
   mistresses, if there is a wrong in the servant--and speak of it very
   plainly--but do not be always complaining of your servants, or, as
   people call it, "nagging at them." For if you do, they will very soon
   hate you and all chance of doing them good will be gone. By perpetually
   finding fault you will make them eye-servers or unhappy employees.

   Do not always blame, but praise when it is due. Certain people never
   praise anybody. They think it will puff them up and spoil them. How
   many times in a year do I receive the following fatherly advice, "I
   hope your work will last and I pray that you may be kept humble," and
   so on. A good lady once told me that she prayed every day for me, that
   I might not be proud. I replied, "You put me in mind of my own neglect,
   for I have never prayed that prayer for you and must begin." "Oh, no,"
   she said, "there is no occasion for that, there is no danger of my
   being proud." "Then," I said, "I had better begin at once, for you are
   proud already."

   These people think a vast deal of themselves if they imagine that a
   little of their praise would exalt us above measure. I believe that a
   judicious word of encouragement and commendation is often more useful
   than censure--and certainly censure has all the more effect when it
   comes from one who has spoken justly of you on former occasions.
   Children and servants will not thrive on perpetual chiding any more
   than a horse on constant whipping. A very good gentleman had a faithful
   manservant who came to him one day after 10 years' service and said,
   "Sir, I must leave you." "How is that?" the gentleman asked, "have I
   not treated you well?" "I have no fault to find," was the answer. "Have
   not I paid you enough? Do you need more?" "Oh, no, Sir," he said, "but
   sometimes, do you know, when we have been traveling together and have
   roughed it both on sea and land, if you had spoken one kind word to me
   I would have stuck to you as long as you lived. But you have never
   spoken to me except when you gave your orders." Our honest faithful
   dependents look for encouragement and they ought to have it. The Holy
   Spirit and the Apostolic writers speak well of good men and so should
   we.

   The last word concerns God's dealings with us. That is the chief
   thought of the text. Let us carry it away with us. He is chiding you,
   dear Sister. He is chiding you, my Brother, but do not think that it
   will last forever. "He will not always chide." The sun went down last
   night and a little child who had never noticed it before might have
   cried and said, "Father, Father, the sun is gone away! I saw him go
   down behind the hills. It is dark! What shall we do?" "Oh," you say to
   him, "do not fear, my Baby, he will be up again tomorrow." Go, then,
   and tell every broken heart that "weeping may endure for a night, but
   joy comes in the morning." The Lord may chide today but He will kiss
   tomorrow! Now the smarting of His rod are terrible--tomorrow the
   sweetness of His love will be entrancing!

   Be of good courage, then! Go to your offended Father speedily and
   confess the wrong which brought you chastisement. Humble yourself in
   His sight and He will smile again! Forgive others, and then expect to
   be forgiven yourself, for verily, verily I say unto you, the time of
   the opening of the dungeons is come! The night of mourning is almost
   over! You soon shall rejoice in the Lord!--

   "Come, let us to the Lord our God

   With contrite heart return!

   Our God is gracious, nor will leave

   The desolate to mourn.

   His voice commands the tempest forth,

   And stills the stormy wave;

   And though His arm is strong to smite,

   'Tis also strong to save." Therefore, be of good courage, all you that
   hope in the Lord! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Psalm 103. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--103 (VERS. I), 136 (VERS. I), 211.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Savior You Need

   (No. 1172)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, MAY 10, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Andbeing made perfect, He became the Author of eternal salvation unto
   all them that obey Him." Hebrews 5:9.

   THE great folly of awakened sinners lies in looking to themselves when
   they are convinced that they are lost. When the Law condemns them--when
   they have the sentence of death ringing with its dolorous knell through
   their consciences--they nevertheless turn to themselves for help. As
   well might they search for life within the ribs of death, or dig for
   light in the dreary vaults of outer darkness! First, they try what
   outward reformation can do and they are amazed when they discover their
   own impotence. Then they turn their eyes towards their feelings and
   either they labor after tears and mental tortures till they grow
   conceitedly miserable, or else they yield to hopelessness, because they
   find their heart to be as an adamant stone. They frequently fly to
   ceremonies and go far in formalism but find no peace.

   And often they turn to the belief of orthodox doctrines and seek
   salvation in mere head knowledge of the Word of God, forgetting that
   Jesus once said, "You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you
   have eternal life; but you will not come unto Me that you might have
   eternal life." In some shape or other, all natural men seek refuge in
   self and fly there, again and again and again, though often driven from
   it. Their so doing is useless and foolish, dishonoring to God and
   defiling to themselves. If men would but believe the Truth of God they
   would know that they can no more save themselves than they can turn
   evil into good, or Hell into Heaven!

   It would be a grand thing if they could be made to understand that they
   have abundant power to destroy themselves, but that all their help for
   salvation lies wholly in Jesus Christ! When they are convinced of this,
   they will cast themselves upon the Redeemer, and peace and joy will
   fill their spirits. This is the stern labor which utterly baffles the
   preacher--it is a work which only the Holy Spirit can accomplish. To
   wean the sinner from the breasts of self, to rescue him from his proud
   delusions, to make him see that salvation must come from above as the
   pure gift of Divine Grace--this, though it appears simple enough,
   requires a miracle of Divine Grace! God the Holy Spirit generally uses
   as a cure for this foolish looking to self the exhibition of Christ
   Jesus. Christ supplants self. Looking unto Jesus puts an end to looking
   to self and feelings and works.

   I shall now endeavor to preach Jesus Christ in the fullness of His
   perfection as a Savior, that poor sinners may not look for perfection
   in themselves, nor search for any fitness or strength in themselves,
   but may flee to Jesus, in whom everything requisite for their salvation
   is so richly provided.

   I. Five thoughts grow out of the text and the first is this--beloved
   seeker after peace, believe in THE UNDOUBTED WILLINGNESS OF JESUS
   CHRIST TO SAVE. Where do I find this in the text? I find it just below
   its surface and here it is. As God, the Lord Jesus is and always was
   perfect in the most emphatic sense. As Man, Christ's Character is also
   perfect from the first, having in it neither deficiency nor excess. But
   as Mediator, High Priest and Savior, He had to undergo a process to
   make Him perfectly qualified, for the text says, "Being made perfect,
   He became the author of eternal salvation." Now, if we find that He was
   willing to undergo the process which made Him completely fit for the
   office of a Savior, we may certainly conclude that He is willing enough
   to exercise the qualifications which He has obtained!

   Suppose that we have before us a person who is anxious to wait upon the
   sick. She is a woman of most excellent character, in all respects,
   faultless, but not yet fitted for a nurse till she shall have walked
   the hospitals. To do this she must give up the comforts of home,
   undertake a world of drudgery and see much that will cause her pain,
   for she must, herself, see and understand what sickness means or she
   will be of no use. Now, if this person is willing, for the sake of
   becoming a nurse, to undergo personal discomfort and physical
   weariness--to put herself to much self-denial and to

   exercise much anxious thought. And if, indeed, all the preparatory
   process has been already undergone, who doubts her willingness,
   afterwards, to exercise the office of a nurse for which she has taken
   so much pains to fit herself? Does not the case speak for itself?

   Then transfer it to the Lord Jesus. He has undergone all that was
   necessary to make Him a complete Savior, in all points qualified for
   His work and none may dare insult Him by saying that He is unwilling to
   exercise His office and save the sons of men. Remember that what the
   Son of God underwent to fit Him for a Savior was extremely humiliating
   and painful. He left the Throne for the Cross, the adoration of angels
   for the mockery of menials. He came from yonder bright world, where
   they need not the light of the sun, to visit those who sit in darkness
   and in the valley of the shadow of death. He was so poor that He had
   not where to lay His head, so despised that even His own received Him
   not, but hid, as it were, their faces from Him. He endured death,
   itself, in the most cruel circumstances of ignominy and pain.

   All this was necessary before He could be made perfect as a Priest and
   a Savior--and all this He has undergone and has cried concerning it
   all, "It is finished." What are yon scars on His hands? What but the
   tokens of His fitness for His office? What is that gash in His side?
   What, but the warrant that the work is complete which renders Him a
   perfect Savior? And will you tell me, after all this, that He declines
   to save? That He turns a deaf ear to a sinner's cry? That you have
   pleaded with Him by the month together and yet have not been answered?
   That you are willing to come and fling yourself at His feet, but He is
   unwilling to receive you? Oh, utter not a falsehood at once so
   groundless, so dishonoring to Him and so defiling to yourself!

   Jesus must be willing to save, or else He never could have submitted to
   so painful a preparation in order that He might be installed in His
   office as Mediator! He would not have toiled so sternly to reach that
   high position in which He is able to save unto the uttermost them that
   come unto God by Him, if He had not a hearty goodwill towards sinners
   and a readiness to receive them. Trembling Sinner, if you conclude that
   Jesus Christ is not willing to save, you must suppose that He prepared
   Himself deliberately and with painful cost, to do nothing! For if He
   does not save men, then He came without an errand and died without a
   purpose! He certainly did not come to condemn them--"For God sent not
   His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through
   Him might be saved." "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that
   which was lost."

   If, then, He does not save that which is lost, He has prepared Himself
   for nothing, has lived in vain and shed His blood without purpose. If
   you can think this of Him and of His work, I marvel at your unbelief
   and tremble to think how fatally sin has blinded your eyes! Moreover,
   if you think Jesus is unwilling to save, you will have to suppose that,
   having spent a life in obedience and endured a death of agony, He has,
   after all, changed His mind and renounced the object once so dear to
   Him. You will have to believe that the heart which bled, and even after
   death poured out both blood and water, has suddenly become petrified!
   That the eyes which wept over Jerusalem retain no longer any pity for
   the sons of men and that He who prayed for His murderers, "Father,
   forgive them," has now become stern in spirit and will have nothing to
   do with sinners when they seek His mercy.

   Oh, do not dishonor my Lord so greatly as to think thus of Him! Lo, He
   is "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever"! Interrogate
   those scars and see if there is a change in Him. Look into His face and
   see if love has departed! He is in Heaven at this day, ever living to
   make intercession for sinners--and I ask you, would He continue to
   intercede if He had ceased to love? Would He not throw up the office in
   disgust if His Nature were so transformed that He no longer cared to
   save the lost? Away with your dishonoring fears! Do you dream that
   Jesus has saved all He designed to bless and that the full count of His
   redeemed is made up? Do you imagine that the merit of His blood has
   come to an end, that His power and willingness to forgive have gone
   clean from Him? It cannot be so, for is it not written, "Ask of Me and
   I will give You the heathen for Your inheritance, and the uttermost
   parts of the earth for Your possession"? And, remember, that has not
   been fulfilled yet.

   It is written, "By His knowledge shall My righteous Servant justify
   many," but as yet the many have not been justified, for the number of
   the saved is small compared with the multitude descended to Hell. Will
   not Jesus have the preeminence? Will He not redeem unto Himself a
   number that no man can number? When the whole poem of human history has
   been written, will it not be found to be in honor of Divine Grace
   abounding over sin, Christ victor over Satan, Mercy triumphant over
   Wrath? Will not Jesus and His seed outnumber the seed of the serpent?
   How else would it be true that

   His bruised heel shall break the serpent's head? Instead of believing
   that Jesus has ceased to save, I look for a fuller display of His power
   in glad days when nations shall be born at once!

   The Fountain flows on with undiminished stream--O Sinner, drink and
   live! You must not imagine, poor, trembling Sinner, that the dear
   Redeemer has undergone all His agonies to prepare Him to save men, and
   yet is unwilling to perform His sacred office! Such a wicked fancy will
   be ruinous to your soul and grievous to His Spirit. Oh, that you would
   go and try Him! You would find Him ready to save you!

   II. The second thought will bring us nearer to the text. Consider, I
   pray you, in the second place, THE PERFECT FITNESS OF THE SAVIOR FOR
   HIS WORK. We will view the fitness both Godward and manward. View it
   Godward. Sinner, if anyone is to deal with God for you so as to avail
   on your behalf, he must be one of God's choosing, for "no man takes
   this honor upon himself, but he that was called of God, as was Aaron.
   So, also, Christ glorified not Himself to be made an high priest, but
   He that said unto Him, You are my Son, today have I begotten You."
   Christ was ordained of God from all eternity to stand as the
   Representative of His people before the Throne of God.

   "It pleased the Father to bruise Him." "The Lord has laid on Him the
   iniquity of us all." He from old eternity was set apart to be the High
   Priest and the Redeemer of His people. Can you not, in this, see
   grounds for resting upon Him? What God appoints, it must be safe for us
   to accept. In order that Jesus Christ, being appointed, should be fit
   for His office, it was necessary that He should become man. Man had
   sinned, and man must make reparation to the broken Law. God would not
   accept an angel as a substitute, for the Law had to do with man. And as
   the race had revolted, it must be through one of the race that God's
   justice should be vindicated.

   But Jesus was God--how, then, could He become our Savior? Behold the
   mystery! God was manifest in the flesh. He descended to the manger of
   Bethlehem. He nestled in a woman's bosom, for as the children were
   partakers of flesh and blood, He, Himself, also took part in the same.
   Sinner, behold your Incarnate God! The Eternal One dwells among dying
   men, veiled in their mortal flesh, that He may save men! This is the
   greatest fact ever related in human ears. We hear it as a common thing,
   but the angels have never ceased to wonder since they first sang of it
   and charmed the listening shepherds. God has come down to man to lift
   man up to God! Surely it is the sin of sins if we reject a Savior who
   has made such a stoop in order to be perfectly qualified to save!

   "Being found in fashion as a Man," it was necessary towards God that
   Jesus should fulfill the Law and work out a perfect obedience. The
   obedience of an angel would not have met the case--it was from man that
   obedience was required--and a man must render it. Behold, then, this
   second Adam, this new Head of our race, rendering to God the complete
   obedience which the Law demanded, loving God with all His heart and His
   neighbor as Himself. From the time when He said to His mother, "Know
   you not that I must be about My Father's business?" till the time when
   He exultingly cried, "It is finished," He was in all things the
   obedient Servant of the great Father! And now His righteousness stands
   for us and we are "accepted in the Beloved." The High Priest who is to
   intercede for us must wear upon His forehead, "Holiness unto the Lord,"
   and truly such a High Priest we have, for Jesus is, "holy, harmless,
   undefiled and separate from sinners."

   Nor was this all towards God. The High Priest who should save us must
   be able to offer a sufficient sacrifice, efficacious to make atonement,
   so as to vindicate Eternal Justice and make an end of sin. Oh, hear
   this, you Sinners, and let it ring like music in your ears--Jesus
   Christ has not offered the blood of bullocks nor of goats, but He has
   presented His own blood upon the altar! "He, Himself, bore our sins in
   His own body on the tree." "This Man, after He had offered one
   sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from
   henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His footstool. For by one
   offering He has perfected forever them that are sanctified." The blood
   of bulls and of goats could never take away sin, but the blood of the
   Son of God has infinite efficacy--and for every one for whom the great
   Surety died--all sin was put away since He bore its penalty. The Law
   could ask no more.

   Pitiful, indeed, is the man's case who has no interest in the atoning
   sacrifice! His sin lies heavy upon him and wrath hangs over him.
   Wretched is the sinner who, being conscious of his guilt and being bid
   to believe in Jesus, yet continues to look to himself--and so does
   dishonor to this Sacrifice, so precious in the sight of the Lord. The
   blood of Jesus speaks better things than that of Abel, and woe to the
   man who despises its gracious cry--

   "How they deserve the deepest Hell, That slight the joys above!

   What chains of vengeance must they feel, Who break such cords of love."

   Godward, then, Christ became perfect as our Savior. And when He had
   finished His work, the Lord certified the completion and acceptance of
   it by raising Him from the dead and giving Him a place at His right
   hand. He who, as Judge, was offended by our sin, is now well-pleased in
   His Son, and has established a Covenant of Peace with us for His sake.

   Is God satisfied with Jesus and are you dissatisfied? Is Infinite
   Justice content and do your doubts and fears prevent your being
   reconciled? Do you stand by and say that Jesus cannot save you, when
   God's Word declares that He is able to save to the uttermost them that
   come unto God by Him? Do you set up your prejudices and unbelief under
   the pretence of humility, in opposition to the declaration of God, who
   cannot lie? The Lord declares His approbation of His dear Son-- why,
   then, do you quibble? God forbid that you should indulge in such a sin
   any longer! Rather end your opposition and where God finds rest, there
   find rest yourself! If the Lord is content to save those who obey
   Jesus, be obedient by the help of God's blessed Spirit.

   But, Beloved, I have said that Christ Jesus, as our High Priest, needed
   to be perfected manward. O Sinner, consider His perfections as they
   concern yourself! That He might save us He must have power to pardon
   and to renew our hearts. These He has to the full, for all power is
   given unto Him in Heaven and in earth. He gives both repentance and
   remission. But, alas, we are afraid of Him! We shrink from approaching
   Him and, therefore, to make Him a perfect Savior He must be tender of
   heart, willing to come to us when we will not come to Him,
   compassionate to our ignorance and ready to help our infirmities. It
   needs One who can stoop to bind up gaping wounds which cannot heal
   themselves. One who does not mind touching the leper, or bending over
   the fever-stricken, or going to the grave where corruption pollutes the
   air. One who does not ask the leper to first make himself clean, but
   comes into contact with him in all his foulness and abomination--and
   saves him!

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, Jesus bids us come to Him because He is meek
   and lowly in heart. It is said of Him, "This Man receives sinners and
   eats with them." He was called "A friend of publicans and sinners." His
   name is love and His heart is pity. To make tenderness practical, a man
   must not only have a gentle nature, but he must have undergone the
   sufferings which he pities, so as to sympathize with them. We may try,
   dear Friends, to sympathize with persons in certain afflictions, but
   the attempt does not succeed unless we have walked in the same paths.
   Now, Sinner, have you a broken heart? So had Christ, for He said,
   "Reproach has broken My heart." Are you trembling under Divine anger?
   He, also, cried, "Why have You forsaken Me?"

   What burden do you bear? His load was far heavier than yours! Are you
   wounded? He was nailed to the Cross! Do you feel exceedingly sorrowful,
   even unto death? So did He, until the bloody sweat stood on His brow!
   He is a brotherly Savior, well trained in Sorrow's school, deeply
   versed in the science of Consolation. Jesus knows the ins and outs of
   our nature. He knows what is in man. Now, this is a grand
   qualification. If you go to a physician, and yours is a very peculiar
   case, you are doubtful as to his skill. But when he shows that he knows
   all about you by describing the symptoms exactly as they occur, and
   adds, "I was once afflicted with this same sickness, myself," you say
   to yourself, "This man will suit me." Just so is it with Jesus--

   "He knows what fierce temptations mean, For He has felt the same."

   So far as it is possible for a sinless one to do so, He sympathizes
   with the whole of your condition. He knows the struggles within, the
   fears, the bitter tears, the groans which cannot be uttered. He knows
   every jot and tittle of your experience and is, therefore, eminently
   qualified to cope with your case.

   If you were on board a vessel and had lost your bearings, you would be
   glad enough to see a pilot in the offing. Here he is on board, and you
   say, "Pilot, do you know where we are?" "Yes," he says, "of course I
   do. I can tell you within a yard." "It is well, Mr. Pilot, but can you
   bring us to the port we want to make?" "Certainly," he says. "Do you
   know the coast?" "Coast, Sir! I know every bit of headland, rock and
   quicksand, as well as I know the cut of my face in a looking-glass. I
   have passed over every inch of it in all tides and all weathers. I am a
   child at home here." "But, pilot, do you know that treacherous shoal?"
   "Yes, and I remember almost running aground upon it once, but we
   escaped just in time. I know all those sands as well as if they were my
   own children."

   You feel perfectly safe in such hands. Such is the qualification of
   Christ to pilot sinners to Heaven. There is not a bay, or a creek, or a
   rock, or a sand between the maelstrom of Hell and the fair havens of
   Heaven but what Christ has sounded all the deeps and the shallows,
   measured the force of the current and seen the set of the stream. He
   knows how to steer so as to bring the ship right away by the best
   course into the heavenly harbor. There is one delightful thing in
   Christ's perfect qualification to save, namely, that He "ever lives to
   make intercession for us." If Jesus Christ were dead and had left us
   the blessing of salvation that we might freely help ourselves to it, we
   should have much to praise Him for. But He is not dead, He is alive! He
   left us a legacy, but many a legacy is left which never gets to the
   legates! Lo, the Great Maker of the will is alive to carry out His own
   intentions!

   He died and so made the legacy good. He rose again and lives to see
   that none shall rob any one of His beloved of the portion He has left!
   What do you think of Christ pleading in Heaven? Have you ever estimated
   the power of that plea? He is day and night pleading for all them that
   obey Him--pleading for sinners--pleading with God that pardon may be
   given to the greatest of offenders! And does He plead in vain? Is He
   unacceptable with the Father? It cannot be imagined! Why, then, O
   Sinner, do you continue to look to yourself? How much wiser would it be
   for you to turn your eyes to your Lord. You say, "I am not perfect."
   Why, do you want to be? The perfection is in Him. "But, alas, I am not
   this and I am not that." What has that to do with it? Jesus is all that
   is needed. If you were to be your own savior, you would be in a bad
   case, indeed, for you are all faults and failings!

   But if He is the Savior, why do you talk about what you are? He is
   fully equipped for the world. He never asked your help. It is an insult
   to suppose that He wants it. What if you are dead in sin, yes, and
   rotten in vice and corruption? He is able to raise you from the dead
   and to make you sit at His own right hand in the heavenly places, for
   He is a perfect Savior and is able to save to the uttermost!

   III. The third point is this. I want you to notice THE HIGH POSITION
   WHICH OUR LORD JESUS TAKES IN REFERENCE TO SALVATION. According to the
   text, "He became the Author of eternal salvation." He is the

   Designer, Creator, Worker and Cause of salvation. By Him salvation has
   been accomplished--"His right hand and His holy arm have gotten Him the
   victory." "He has trod the winepress alone, and of the people there was
   none with Him." He is the Author of salvation in this sense, that every
   blessing comes through Him. All the various departments of salvation,
   whether they are election, calling, justification, or
   sanctification--all bless us through Him, according as the Father has
   chosen us in Him from before the foundation of the world.

   In him we are called, in Him preserved, in Him accepted--all Grace
   flows from Him. Christ is All and in all. Salvation within us is all
   His work. He sought us as well as bought us! His Spirit gives us the
   first sense of sin and leads us to faith. He Himself draws us to
   Himself. His name is Jesus, for He saves His people from their sins!
   Let me compare salvation to a book, of which Jesus is the sole Author.
   No one has contributed a line or a thought to it. He has never asked
   any human mind to write a preface to His work--the first word is from
   His pen. Some of you are trying to preface Christ's work, but your toil
   is fruitless! He will never bind up your wretched introduction with His
   golden lines of love. Come to Him without a preface, just as you are,
   steeped up to the throat in the foulness of sin, begrimed with the
   slime of Sodom!

   Come to Him without previous preparation and lay your heart's tablets
   before Him that He may write on them. He is an Author so skillful that
   none have ever discovered the smallest error in His work, for there are
   no mistakes--and no amendments are ever needed. When He saves, He saves
   completely. He does not ask us to revise and perfect His writing, it is
   perfected by His own hand. He is an Author to whose writing there are
   no addendum--it is finished and he is accursed who shall add a line! We
   have to take the finished salvation and rejoice in it--but we may never
   add to it. Christ is an Author who needs no man's imprimatur--He,
   Himself, has dignity and authority enough to make His work illustrious
   without the patronage of man. Christ is the Author of salvation!

   What you have to do, Sinner, is to take it--not preface it, improve it,
   or add to it--but to take it just as it is. There it is for you! It is
   to be had for the taking--hold out your trembling hand and receive it!
   Bring your empty cup and hold it under the Divine Fountain and let it
   be filled. Faith to accept it is all that is required. Why is it that
   you delay? You need to make yourself better before you believe in
   Jesus? That is to say, you want to be the author of your salvation and
   so elbow Christ out of His place! "Oh, but," you will say, "I cannot
   pray as I want." If you could pray as you ought, would Christ then be
   able to save you? He needs your prayers to help Him, does He? "Oh, but
   I do not feel as I ought."

   Your feelings are to help Christ, are they? "Oh, but I want to be
   different." And if you were different, then Christ would be able to
   save you--but as you now are He cannot save you?

   Do you mean that? Do you dare to say that He cannot forgive you this
   very moment, while the word is coming out of my mouth? Do you mean that
   this very instant, just as you are--a sinful and all but damned
   sinner--that He cannot forgive you now if you trust Him? If that is
   what you mean, you are deceived, for He is able to save you now! Having
   been made perfect, He is the Author of eternal salvation to everyone
   that obeys Him, and He is able at this moment to speak peace to the
   conscience of anyone and everyone who now obeys Him. God grant you
   Grace to catch the thought which I try to make plain, but which only
   the Spirit of God can lead you to understand.

   IV. My next thought is this. Dwell for a few minutes in devout
   meditation upon THE REMARKABLE CHARACTER OF THE REVELATION WHICH CHRIST
   HAS WORKED OUT. He is the Author of eternal salvation. Oh, how I love
   that word, "eternal." "Eternal salvation!" When the Jewish high priest
   had offered a sacrifice, the worshipper went home satisfied, for the
   blood was sprinkled and the offering accepted. But in a short time he
   sinned again and he had to bring another sacrifice. Once a year, when
   the high priest entered within the veil and came out and pronounced a
   blessing on the people, all Israel went home glad. But next year there
   must be the same remembrance of sin and the same sprinkling with
   blood--for the blood of bulls and of goats could not really put away
   sin--it was only a

   type.

   How blessed is the Truth of God that our Lord Jesus will not need to
   bring another sacrifice at any time, for He has obtained eternal
   salvation through His one offering. It is an eternal salvation as
   opposed to every other kind of deliverance. There are salvations spoken
   of in the Bible which are transient, for they only deal with temporal
   trouble and passing distress. But he who is once taken out of the
   horrible pit of unforgiven sin by the hand of Christ will never lie in
   that horrible place again! Being raised from the dead, we die no more!
   We are effectually delivered from the dominion of sin when Jesus Christ
   comes forth to save us.

   It is eternal salvation in this sense, that it rescues us from eternal
   condemnation and everlasting punishment. Glory be to God, everlasting
   punishment shall never fall on the Believer, for everlasting salvation
   puts it far away! It is eternal salvation as opposed to the risk of
   falling away and perishing. Some of our Brethren seem very pleased with
   a salvation of a temporary character whose continuance depends upon
   their own behavior. I do not envy them and shall not try to rob them of
   their treasure, for I would not have their salvation if they were to
   press me ever so much. I am a great deal more satisfied to have eternal
   salvation--a salvation based upon a finished work, carried on by Divine
   power--and undertaken by an unchangeable Savior!

   "Oh, but," I hear some say, "you may have eternal life today, and lose
   it tomorrow." What do words mean? How can that life be eternal which
   you can lose? Why, then, the life could not have been eternal. Your
   doctrine is a mistake in language, a contradiction in terms. "He that
   believes in Him has everlasting life." "I give unto My sheep eternal
   life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of
   My hand." "Because I live you shall live also." Sinner, if you believe
   in Jesus, He will not save you today and let you perish tomorrow! He
   will give you eternal salvation, which neither death nor Hell, nor
   time, nor eternity shall ever destroy, for, "who shall separate us from
   the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord?" The man who
   believes in Jesus is not as happy, but he is as safe from final
   condemnation as if he were already in Heaven--

   "His honor is engaged to save

   The meanest of His sheep.

   All that His heavenly Father ga ve,

   His hands securely keep.

   Nor death nor Hell shall ever remo ve

   His favorites from His breast.

   In the dear bosom of His lo ve

   They must forever rest."

   If this doctrine is not taught in Scripture, nothing is taught there at
   all and words have no meaning! On the very forefront of Scripture is
   written, "He that believes shall be saved." God grant us Grace to
   realize that promise. When the text says, "eternal salvation," it means
   that it will ripen into eternal bliss! You are saved from eternal
   misery. You are preserved by eternal life from falling back upon your
   old life--and you shall be brought to eternal bliss. Whoever Christ

   saves shall see the face of God with joy forever, as surely as he is
   born! Christ was made perfect on purpose that He might be the Author of
   eternal salvation.

   V. The last thought is THE PERSONS CONCERNED IN THIS SALVATION. "To all
   them that obey Him." The

   word, "obey," here, according to Dr. Owen's admirable translation,
   signifies "obedience upon hearing." And he very rightly says that this
   indicates faith. To obey Christ is, in its very essence, to trust Him
   or believe in Him. And we might read our text as if it said, "The
   Author of eternal salvation to all them that believe in Him." If you
   would be saved your first act of obedience must be to trust Jesus
   wholly, simply, heartily and alone! Recline your soul wholly on Jesus
   and you are saved now.

   "Is that all?" Certainly, that is all! "But it says 'obey.'" Precisely
   so. And do you not know that every man who trusts Christ obeys Him? I
   gave just now the illustration of a pilot. The pilot comes on board and
   says, "If I am to steer you into harbor you must trust me with the
   command of the vessel." That is done and he gives orders, "Reef that
   sail!" Suppose the captain says to the sailor, "Leave that sail alone,
   I tell you!" Is it not clear that he does not trust the pilot? If he
   trusted him he would have his orders carried out. Suppose the pilot
   cries out to the engineer, "Ease her!" and the captain countermands the
   order? The pilot is evidently not trusted and if the vessel runs ashore
   it will be no fault of his.

   So is it with regard to our Lord. The moment you put yourself into His
   hands you must obey Him, or you have not trusted Him. To change the
   figure--the doctor feels your pulse. "I will send you some medicine,"
   he says, "that will be very useful, and besides that, you must take a
   warm bath." He comes the next day. You say to him, "Doctor, I thought
   you were going to heal me. I am not a bit better." "Why," says he, "you
   do not trust me." "I do, Sir. I am sure I have every faith in you."
   "No," he says, "you do not believe in me, for there is that bottle of
   medicine untouched. You have not taken a drop of it. Have you had the
   bath?" "No, sir." "Well, you are making a fool of me. The fact is, I
   shall not come again. You do not believe in me. I am no physician to
   you."

   Every man who believes Christ obeys Him--believing and obeying always
   run side by side. Do you not know that Christ does not come merely to
   blot out the past, He comes to save us from being what we are, to save
   us from a bad temper, from a proud eye, from a wanton look, from a
   corrupt heart, from covetous desires, from a rebellious will and an
   indolent spirit? Now this cannot be done unless we obey, for if we are
   to continue to live in sin, salvation is a mere word and to boast of it
   would be ridiculous! How can we be saved from sin if we are living in
   sin? A man says, "Christ saves me, and yet I get drunk." Sir, you lie!
   How can you be saved from drunkenness when you are living in
   drunkenness?

   "But Christ saves me," says another, "although I am worldly and wild
   and frivolous." How does He save you? Man alive! Do you tell me the
   doctor has healed you of the leprosy while yet it is white on your
   brow? How can you say he has healed you of chills while you are, even
   now, shivering with it? Surely you do not know what you are talking
   about! Christ comes to save us from living as we once did. He comes to
   make new men of us. To give us new hearts and right spirits. And when
   He does this He will not let us go back to our old sins again, but
   leads us onward in the path of holiness. Mark well that every man who
   obeys Christ shall be saved, whatever His past life may have been.
   Every one of you, whatever your present condition may be, shall be
   saved if you obey the Redeemer, for, "He is the Author of eternal
   salvation to all them that obey Him."

   But mark, not to one more--no soul that refuses to obey Christ shall
   have any part or lot in this matter. Men may make what professions they
   please, but they shall never gain eternal salvation unless they obey
   Jesus. Those gates which open to let in the obedient close fast to shut
   out the unbelieving and disobedient. "God so loved the world, that He
   gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him might not
   perish but have everlasting life." The extent of God's love to the
   world is this--He loves it so as to save all who believe in Jesus--but
   He will never save a soul which dies unbelieving and disobedient. If
   you reject Christ, you shut in your own face the only door of hope,
   "for he that believes not is condemned already."

   I am sometimes confronted with this statement--that faith is the gift
   of God and is worked in man by the power of the Spirit of
   God--therefore I have no business to command and entreat men to
   believe. I am not slow to answer my opposers, for in my inward soul I
   know that saving faith always is the gift of God and is in every case
   the work of the Holy Spirit! But I am not, yet, an idiot, and therefore
   I also know that faith is the act of man. The Holy Spirit does not
   believe for us. What has He to believe? The Holy Spirit does not repent
   for us. What has He to repent of? You must, yourself, believe, and it
   must be your own personal act or you will never be saved! I charge you
   before God, do not let the

   grand Truth of God that faith is the gift of God ever lead you to
   forget that you never will be saved unless you personally believe in
   Jesus!

   If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ you shall be saved, for here is
   the Gospel--"He that believes and is baptized shall be saved." And here
   is the solemn penalty appended to it, "He that believes not shall be
   damned." Sinner, there was never such a Savior as Christ is! He is the
   very Savior for you--He is both willing and able to save--and knows how
   to do it! He has promised to save all that trust Him. Go and try Him
   and, if, this morning, you shall trust Him and He repels you, come and
   tell me--and I will leave off preaching. When I find my Master casts
   out those that come to Him, I will put my shutters up and have done
   with the business of the Gospel! I can only speak as I find. I went to
   Him trembling and dismayed, and I thought He would never receive me.
   But I received as my welcome "Come in, you blessed of the Lord, why do
   you stand outside?" He washed me from my sins in the same hour and sent
   me on my way rejoicing!

   And here I have been, these 23 years, preaching Free Grace and dying
   love, and never have I yet lighted upon a sinner whom Jesus has cast
   out! And when I do meet with such a case, I must have done preaching
   for very shame. I am not afraid, however, for such a case shall never
   be heard of in this world. No, nor in the infernal deep does there lie
   a single soul condemned for sin who would dare to say, "I sought the
   Lord and He would not hear me. I trusted in Christ and He would not
   save me. I pleaded the promise but it was not fulfilled."

   No, it shall never be! While God is true no Believer shall perish! Here
   is the promise, "Him that comes unto Me I will in no wise cast out."
   Happy is the preacher who has such a Gospel to preach as I have
   preached to you! But I cannot make you receive it. I can bring the
   horse to the water, but I cannot make him drink. God must do this. Oh,
   that He may lead you to receive eternal salvation by Jesus Christ, to
   the glory of His name. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Hebrews 5, 7. HYMNS FROM "OUR
   OWN HYMN BOOK "--327, 468, 395.
     __________________________________________________________________

"I Thought"

   (No. 1173)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MAY 17, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "I thought." 2 Kings 5:11.

   OUR great object in preaching today will be the conversion of sinners.
   There is a great deal else to be done-- Believers need building up,
   comforting and quickening--but while myriads of men remain careless
   until they are swept away into Perdition, it becomes us to lend our
   strength to the most necessary work of winning souls for Jesus.
   Therefore, again this morning, I shall leave the 99 in the wilderness
   and go after that which has gone astray, pleading earnestly with God
   that He will bless my pleading with men so that while I discourse with
   them concerning their folly in rejecting the Savior, His Spirit may
   discourse with them, also, and lead them to flee to Jesus for eternal
   life!

   At the outset, however, we will have a few words for Believers.
   Preconceptions of what ought to be the Lord's mode of action are very
   injurious, even to those who have true faith in God--and yet they are
   very frequently indulged. We map out beforehand the path of Providence
   and the method of mercy, forgetting that the Lord's way is in the sea,
   His path in the great waters and His footsteps are not known. When the
   Lord does not choose to act according to our notions we start back and
   cry, half-indignantly, "I thought He would surely act otherwise." This
   folly is seen in Believers, sometimes, in reference to their way to
   Heaven.

   They are like the children of Israel when they came out of Egypt. There
   is a straight road to Canaan--why are they not allowed to take it?
   Instead of a direct march onward they are led round about with
   ever-varying experiences. Their course is by turns progressive,
   retrograde and standing still--to the right and to the left, forward
   and retreat. Does not Providence often perplex you and run counter, not
   only to your wishes, but to your deliberate judgment? That which for
   many reasons seems to be the best does not happen to you, while that
   which appears to be distressingly injurious overtakes you! Your
   forecasts do not come true, your daydreams are not realized, your
   schemes for life are not carried out. You cannot understand why!

   Why is it that you are kept in poverty when you could have made such
   good use of riches? How is it you are laid aside just when you could
   have been most useful? Why have talents been denied to you when you
   feel you would have used them with such diligence and fidelity? How is
   it that others, who waste away life, are endowed with 10 talents, while
   you who are industrious and zealous have scarcely one? You have
   ventured to propose such inquiries, but you have not been able to
   answer them. It is as well that you should not, for our business is not
   the solution of problems, but the performance of precepts. Let us cease
   from our own wisdom and leave all arrangements in the hand of our
   heavenly Father. Our thoughts are vanity, His thoughts are precious.

   The like fault will arise in connection with our prayers. We pray
   believingly and an answer comes, for believing prayer never fails, but
   the answer comes in an unexpected fashion and not at all as we thought!
   We prayed God to bless our family, and, lo, our wife is taken away, or
   our child sickens! We besought the Lord to make us more spiritual and
   He has sent a severe affliction to grieve us--

   "I asked the Lord that I might grow

   In faith, and love and every Grace,

   Might more of His salvation know,

   And seek more earnestly His face.

   I hoped that in some favored hour

   At once He'd answer my request,

   And by His love's constraining power

   Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

   Instead of this, He made me feel

   The hidden evils of my heart

   And let the angry powers of Hell

   Assault my soul in every part.

   Yes, more, with His own hand He seemed

   Intent to aggra vate my woe.

   Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,

   Blasted my gourds and laid me low.

   'Lord, why is this?'I trembling cried.

   'Will You pursue Your worm to death?'

   ''Tis in this way,' the Lord replied,

   'I answer prayer for Grace and faith.'" "I thought," you say, "but oh,
   how different from my thoughts!" Yes, but how much better than your
   thoughts! You shall find that the Lord is doing for you exceeding
   abundantly above all that you asked or even thought! God is enriching
   you by your poverty. He is healing you by your sickness and drawing you
   nearer to Himself by driving you further away from creature confidence.

   Often and often we fail to see God's gracious answers to prayer because
   we make up our minds as to the way in which they will come. We refuse
   letters from Heaven because they are sent in black-bordered envelopes.
   We thought our Lord would send us bread and meat by angels, but
   instead, He sent it by ravens. When we see the Lord's hand in
   unexpected ways, we are apt to say, half in disappointment, "I thought
   it would have been otherwise." Perhaps we have carried these
   preconceptions of ours still further--for we have actually thought
   beforehand that God would not bless us at all! He has been graciously
   designing our good by affliction and we have written bitter things both
   against Him and against ourselves, for we have thought that He had
   utterly forsaken us. We have cried with Jacob, "Joseph is not, Simeon
   is not, and you will take Benjamin away. All these things are against
   me!"

   When the good old Patriarch stood up in the chariot and felt Joseph's
   warm kiss upon his cheek, he might have said, "I thought that all
   things were against me, but now I see that I misjudged my God. He sent
   my Joseph here to provide for me and for my household in the days of
   famine. And He fetched my Simeon and my Benjamin away, that it might be
   all the more easy for me to come down to the place where my sons had
   been before me. The Lord has dealt well with His servant, but I thought
   not so." Dear Brothers and Sisters, leave off these forecasts, for
   blind unbelief is sure to err--the trade of a Prophet does not suit
   many of God's servants. We look into the telescope, for we are curious
   to peer into the future, and having breathed upon the glass with
   anxious breath, we cry out in dismay, "I see nothing but clouds and
   darkness before me!"

   Yet our pictures of the dreadful future dissolve into the realities of
   boundless goodness as we see goodness and mercy following us all the
   days of our lives! We blush for our unbelief, for we had said in our
   heart, "I shall one day perish by the enemy's hand." May God save us
   from that cruel, "I thought," which torments us and belies our God! On
   the other hand, we sometimes make flattering forecasts of the future
   which are equally untrue. "In my prosperity I said, I shall never be
   moved. Lord, by Your favor You have made my mountain to stand strong."
   That was David's thought. Everybody else might be tossed to and fro,
   but he would be calm and confident. No doubt others might be in trouble
   and in doubt, but his faith was so firm and his position so well
   established that he feared no change or commotion. He was too strong to
   tremble at the assaults from which others fled away discomfited.

   Now listen to the sequel--"You did hide Your face, and I was troubled."
   Like any other man, he feared and his firm mountain turned out to be
   only a rolling cloud which fled before the blast. The man who was so
   brave asked for the wings of a dove so he might take his flight.
   Beloved, we must give up this prophesying of our own greatness--it is a
   mere bag of wind! It is the very worst form of judging what is to be
   and what ought to be. Things are in better hands than ours! We have
   enough to do to obey the Lord's commands without setting up to be
   managers of Providence. Let Him plan and let us trust! Walk as in His
   sight, resigned to His will, and you shall rejoice all your days. But
   if you begin to map out a course for yourselves, to be your own guides
   and providers, your way will be both rough and dangerous--and your
   heart will be wounded with many sorrows.

   So far, then, I have spoken a lesson to Believers. I must now turn to
   the unconverted, and in so doing, I ask every Christian's prayer that a
   blessing may attend my words. Preconceived notions of the way of
   salvation are great

   hindrances to the very existence in the minds of the unconverted. It is
   our business from Lord's Day to Lord's Day, yes, everyday, to tell the
   sinner that, "he that believes and is baptized shall be saved." As
   clearly as words can put it, we repeat it ten thousand times--that to
   trust in Jesus is the only way of salvation, for Jesus has offered a
   great and acceptable Atonement before God for the sins of men--and
   whoever will come to Him and rest upon His Atonement has eternal life.
   We are met, at once, with opposition and men turn upon their heels and
   reject our message because it is not what they thought it would be.

   To wash in Jordan and be clean is not according to their notion. Or
   they expected some more difficult, mysterious, and showy way of
   salvation. "Behold, I thought," they say, and they go their way, either
   in a rage, or else in utter carelessness. Come, Friend, let me get you
   by the buttonhole and talk with you upon this matter--and may the Lord
   make both of us wise! First, how could you expect to find out the way
   of salvation by your own thoughts? There are a great many things which
   men can discover. The inventiveness of the human mind about earthly
   things appears to have scarcely any limit. But, with regard to heavenly
   things, the natural man has not the faculty of discerning and never did
   make a discovery yet, and never will. Whatever is known of God is made
   known by God.

   Upon the face of Nature the existence of God is written, but we look in
   vain for any indication of a plan of salvation. Jesus, alone, is the
   Savior--how can you imagine that His way of saving can be known to men
   except as He has revealed it? I will ask you a question. Suppose you
   were sick of a mysterious and fatal disorder, and a skillful physician
   was recommended to you--would you expect to foresee that physician's
   mode of action? Would you go to him and then hesitate to accept his
   advice because it was contrary to what you had supposed it would be? If
   so, I can only say that you must be very foolish to go to a physician
   at all! Why not heal yourself?

   Your case is complicated and here is a surgeon who, by long experience
   and wonderful skill, has acquired power to deal with your disorder. Do
   you insist upon it that he shall only operate as you approve? Is he to
   use knife, lances, bands and splints at your dictation? If so, you had
   better dispense with him and call in a nurse who has never studied the
   art, but is quite able to do your bidding, for you are surgeon to
   yourself! Unconverted Friend, your case is one in which you cannot help
   yourself--none but Jesus can save you! How can you expect to invent for
   yourself a plan of salvation? You are bid to become Christ's
   disciple--do you expect to know more than your Master? Are you to teach
   Him, or is He to teach you?

   If you could discover the way to Heaven for yourself, why has the Lord
   given you the Bible? That Inspired volume is a superfluity if your
   thoughts are to appoint the way of salvation. And what need is there of
   the Holy Spirit to reveal the Truth of God and lead us into it, if,
   after all, our thoughts are to be the rule? Oh, Sirs, your
   arrogance--for I dare not call it less--makes you claim to be equal to
   the Physician of souls, to be beyond the need of Revelation and
   superior to the assistance of the Holy Spirit! Retract, I pray you, and
   leave a position which involves such blasphemies! I will ask every
   awakened sinner here who has been settling in his thoughts what the
   plan of salvation ought to be, what peace his thoughts have brought to
   him? How far have your inventions brought you?

   They have led you to physicians of no value! They have caused you to
   spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that
   which satisfies not. You have leaned upon reeds and trusted in shadows!
   Kindling a fire with your own fuel, you have, for a moment, rejoiced in
   the sparks, but before long you have had to lie down in sorrow. I have
   passed through your state of mind. I tried full many an invention, but
   upon them all was written, "Vanity of vanities." Self was at the bottom
   of all--in some form or other I looked to self--and I looked in vain! I
   was like a man in a bog, who, the more he struggles, the more he sinks.
   Or like a prisoner upon the treadmill who rises no higher, but only
   wearies himself by his climbing.

   No good can result from efforts made apart from faith in Jesus. However
   earnest and sincere we may be, we must fail in our search if we do not
   seek God's way. Would it not be wise, after so many bitter
   disappointments, to leave your own inventions? If they have done you no
   good, depend upon it, they never will! You had better humble yourself
   as a little child and learn from God what the plan of salvation is, and
   then obediently accept it. Come, poor Soul, in humble obedience read
   the sacred roll of Inspiration and say, "O Lord, show me what You would
   have me to do." Then will light break in upon you and peace shall
   follow! Faith in Jesus is God's way--it will be the height of folly to
   set up a method of your own in competition with Him!

   Let me now ask you a second question, or a series of questions. Should
   the plan of salvation be arranged according to your will and judgment?
   You are a sinner and need pardon. Your nature is depraved and needs
   renewing. Should the plan of forgiving and regenerating you be shaped
   to please your tastes and whims? Should the great Lord of mercy wait
   upon you and consult you as to how He shall work out your salvation? As
   a reasonable man I beg you to tell me--has not the Lord an absolute
   right to dispense His favors as He pleases? Shall He not do as He wills
   with His own? You yourself, perhaps, are a man of generous spirit, and
   you relieve the poor. But suppose a poor man should dictate to you how
   he should be helped and in what shape you should bestow your
   charity--would you listen to him for a moment? "No," you would say, "I
   am not bound to give you anything. If I give, I give freely, but I am
   not going to be bound by rules which you may choose to make."

   Beggars must not be choosers. Now, you, O unsaved one, are a beggar
   needing alms from God. Do you intend to dictate to the Host on high how
   and in what manner He shall give His salvation to you? Act not so
   foolishly! As a reasonable man, renounce such an idea! I claim for God
   not only that He has a Sovereign right to make His own plan of
   salvation, but that He is infinitely wiser than you are! Had He left it
   to you to devise a scheme of mercy, it would have been most unfortunate
   for you. God knows more about man than man knows about himself. And the
   great designs of God are much more far-reaching than the expectations
   or desires of man, even when he is most desirous to be blessed. I do
   not hesitate to say that the most intelligent Christian would have been
   content with far less than God is accustomed to give, and that if the
   arrangements of Divine Grace had been left to us, they would have borne
   but very stunted proportions compared with the present dimensions of
   the plan of Divine Grace.

   Surely it is best to leave it with God who will surpass all that we
   could desire or devise. Why should you be thinking of ways to be saved,
   when the mind of God, which is infinite as well in love as in wisdom,
   has already arranged a scheme so much superior? Furthermore, do you not
   think that if the plan of mercy were left to your choosing, you would
   become very self-conceited? If you had the sketching of the system of
   salvation and it were well done and fully accomplished, you would say,
   "My methods were admirable! Am I not wise? Did I not arrange it well?"
   You would be proud as Lucifer and when you got to Heaven, saved on your
   own system, you would have ground for glorying and many a note upon
   those golden harps would be dedicated to the glory of your own
   skill--and very few enough be consecrated to your Redeemer.

   Now, an arrangement which would increase our self-conceit would be
   fatal to salvation, for self-conceit is a part of the sin from which we
   need to be saved! Salvation is the destruction of sin--a system which
   would foster self-conceit and self-confidence is evidently unadapted to
   the end in view. Therefore, since your own plan could not save you, bow
   your hearts to the method of Divine Grace and live! Moreover, consider,
   O man, you who desire to sketch for yourself the road to Heaven, do you
   not see how you derogate from the Glory of God? Did the Lord ask your
   judgment when He made the heavens? When He dug the channels of the
   deep? When He poured out the water floods? When He balanced the clouds?
   When He set the stars in their places? With whom did He take counsel?
   Who instructed Him?

   Who was with Him to stretch the line or hold the plummet? He, Himself,
   in the old creation, made all things by His infinite wisdom. Do you
   think that He needs your aid in the new? In the work of redemption did
   He ask your help or take your counsel when He made the Covenant of
   Grace and fixed it by firm decree? Did you stand in the winepress, side
   by side with the Redeemer, in the day when His garments were red with
   blood? Have you contributed to the ransom price which He redeemed His
   people from going down into the Pit? Creation and redemption have been,
   up to now, works of God, alone--and has the Lord, now, a need of you?
   Has He called you into His counsels, that you may guide Him as to the
   application of redemption? Dare you pluck Jehovah by the sleeve and
   tell Him what He ought to do in order to save a guilty worm like you?
   Must He need ask you how He shall deal with you?

   O man, it will not do! The supposition cannot be endured! You must
   leave the Lord to save you as He wills--and as His plan is that of
   simple faith--it is wickedness to set up another! Renounce your proud
   conceit! If you would be saved, renounce it and humbly come and say,
   "Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears." Here is His message of life to
   your souls-- "Incline your ear, and come unto Me: hear, and your soul
   shall live; and I will make an Everlasting Covenant with you, even the
   sure mercies of David." Now, if you have determined what the plan of
   salvation ought to be, I ask you, next, by what rule are you able to
   preconceive that plan? You refuse to be told what that plan really is
   because you think you know beforehand.

   Now by what rule have you judged? I will tell you in one word. The most
   of sinners conceive the plan of salvation to be what they wish it to
   be. They thought--but their wish is father to their thought. Naaman
   with his chariots and his horses wanted the obsequious homage of the
   Prophet and therefore he thought, "Surely he will come out to me." Men
   love to be flattered. They need a plan of salvation which will gratify
   their self-esteem and enable them to show what dignity there is in
   human nature! They think that man should be treated like an emperor in
   disguise--and mercy should be bestowed on him as if it were a reward
   for merit! As they wish it to be, so they believe it is. Gentlemen of
   the modern school of thought think out what God ought to be, like the
   German who evolved a camel out of his own consciousness and was very
   disgusted when he found that it had a hump.

   They make a god as they imagine he ought to be and deify the creature
   of their addled brains. And then they turn to the Bible for passages
   which may be twisted to support their ideas--instead of coming to the
   Book to learn what is in it--and accepting its every teaching as the
   Truth of God. They bring their notions to the Bible and try to mold it
   to their views. In this spirit men believe the road to Heaven to be
   what they wish it to be, but it is not so. But you assure me that you
   have conceived the way of salvation according to your understanding.
   Well, then, you have conceived it wrongly for certain--for what is your
   understanding compared with the understanding of God?

   A little child has asked a favor of his father. His father knows it to
   be difficult to grant it, but he has, at great expense and skill,
   arranged it. And, now, is the way in which it is to be accomplished to
   be according to the child's understanding? No, I say it must be
   according to the father's understanding, for that is more able to lead
   the way. And besides, the father is the benefactor. In your case, is
   your understanding to be the guide, or God's? I will suppose you to be
   a person of considerable education, far above the common level. But yet
   I would have you remember that, "as high as the heavens are above the
   earth, so high are God's thoughts above your thoughts, and His ways
   above your ways." Why, then, should you wish to measure the dealings of
   the Most High by so short a line as your own?

   Have done with this folly! "Well," you say, "but I have received my
   ideas from my parents." Well, then, who were your parents? That is a
   very great point in such a case. Who were they and were they saved?
   Suppose your parents were lost, is that a reason why you should be?
   Nobody here who has a blind father would consider it his duty to put
   his eyes out by way of honoring his parents! If a man were born of a
   crippled parent and God blessed him with all his limbs and faculties,
   he would not consider himself obliged to limp, or use a crutch, or
   twist his foot. We have an old proverb that if a man were born in a
   stable he need not be a horse--nor should a man be of a false religion
   because of his family connections. If our parents were mistaken, that
   is no reason why we should be. We regret it for their sakes, but with
   the Word of God in our hands we do not intend to follow them any
   further than they were led by God.

   A certain heathen warrior was about to profess to be a Christian.
   Standing with one leg in the waters of baptism, he turned to the
   missionary and inquired, "Where are my sires? Where are the chiefs of
   my line who worshipped Woden and Thor? Where have they gone? Are they
   in Heaven?" "No," said the missionary, "we fear not." "Ah, then," he
   said, "I will not leave the house of my fathers," and so he drew back
   his foot from the font. Many are of his mind, if I may call it mind at
   all! It is a certain animal instinct of the same nature as that which
   makes sheep follow each other when they go astray. God save us from
   this evil fashion! A man cannot inherit religion. It is not a thing to
   be bequeathed like old clothes or family china. Search the Scriptures
   for yourselves! Go to God the Holy Spirit for enlightenment and follow
   where that enlightenment leads--even to Jesus the Savior!

   Never dream of keeping to a false religion because it is that of your
   family or your nation--for by that rule we ought, at this moment, to be
   worshipping with the Druids in the oak groves. If we are bound to
   follow the religion of our forefathers, missionaries are great
   criminals and there must be dozens of true religions instead of only
   one. On this principle Naaman ought never to have gone to wash in
   Jordan--he ought to have stuck to Abana and to Pharpar, as his fathers
   had done before him--and have remained a leper all his days. "Well,"
   you say, "my idea of how I ought to be saved is gathered from what I
   have read and observed. I cannot submit to be saved by simple trust in
   Jesus, for I have been reading the biography of a good man and I want
   to feel just as he felt. Moreover, I noticed how my cousin was troubled
   in mind and I observed that she had a very remarkable dream. And,
   besides, she obtained very extraordinary joys--and unless I have some
   of these I shall never believe."

   But, my dear Friend, do you think that God is tied down to give to each
   penitent the same line of experience? Is a master artist bound to paint
   always the same picture? May there be no variations in form and tint?
   In man's work there is

   always a degree of monotony--even the most versatile genius has its own
   peculiar line of things. But God is never monotonous! There is a
   wonderful variety in all that He does and this is very conspicuous in
   conversions, for these are masterpieces of His Spirit. Do not,
   therefore, settle how you ought to be brought to Christ, as if that
   were a stereotyped affair, for the Lord does as He wills. "Yes," says
   one, "but I judge by the general current of society and the opinions
   that I meet in everyday life. I am a man of the world and I form my
   opinion from men of the world." Then, for certain, you form a wrong
   opinion, for the mind of the world never was the mind of God and never
   will be!

   "You are of God, little children," says John, "and the whole world lies
   in the Wicked One." To form your opinion of what light is by sojourning
   in darkness is ridiculous. To fashion a notion of liberty from the
   prison, or to describe life by observations made in a morgue would be
   absurd! Your every method of salvation by preconceived thought is
   wrong, therefore cease from such thoughts, I pray you. I have another
   question. How would it be, supposing your thoughts were the fact? Let
   us examine the matter. You have thought, perhaps, that you ought to be
   saved by undergoing a ceremony. You have believed that the sprinkling
   of water on your face, or the eating of a wafer and the drinking of a
   little wine would procure the forgiveness of your sins. Suppose it were
   so?

   It would be a calamity, for it would give pardon without penitence,
   forgiveness without a change of heart. Can any moral result be produced
   by an ecclesiastical performance? Has the world ever seen persons
   rendered more honest or more spiritually-minded by the contact of
   priestly hands? External operations do not affect the moral nature!
   That is a fact which we can prove by innumerable instances and there is
   not one instance of an opposite character. If they will bring a man who
   is really improved by priestly operations, whether aqueous, alimentary,
   unctuous, or saline, we will listen to them--but no such fact is
   forthcoming. It would be a very unfortunate thing for you, my dear
   Friends, if, by external operation, guilt could be removed--because it
   is clear that your evil heart would remain and, therefore, you would
   still have no communion with God and no fitness for Heaven.

   You must be born again! You must believe in Jesus! These are the
   necessities of your nature if you are to be happy. Heaven would not be
   Heaven to you if you were baptized, confirmed and took all the
   sacraments which Rome could give you, for they would not change your
   nature--and that change is a prime necessity which cannot be dispensed
   with. True faith in Jesus works by love and purifies the soul--that is
   the Lord's way--accept it and forsake your own thoughts! You wish,
   perhaps, to be saved by good works--self-righteousness is your thought.
   Alas, if this were the way it would be an impossible way for you, for
   you cannot perform good works! If you can, why have you sinned at all?
   What would be your motive if you attempted good works? Why, to save
   yourself, would it not? With selfishness as their motive, your works
   would be defiled at the fountainhead!

   Besides, all that you can do is already due to God and, therefore, it
   cannot make up for the past. You must be saved by the Grace of God and
   then good works will come from you, but never will you have any to
   spare. When you have done all, you will still be an unprofitable
   servant and a debtor to Sovereign Grace. Perhaps you think that God
   might as well pardon you at once and have done with it--that is your
   plan. Suppose He did so. Suppose that He, at once, blotted your sin
   from His book and that was the end of it? What peace would that give
   you? What security for the future? A God who could pardon without
   justice might, one of these days, condemn without reason! He who could
   set aside His Law so as not to execute His threats, might one day set
   aside His Gospel so as not to fulfill His promise. It is a grand ground
   of peace for us that God is never unjust in order to be gracious. He
   saves sinners, but not till He has laid their sin upon Christ and is
   both just, and yet the Justifier of Him that believes. Your plan of
   pardon without an expiation would not work. It would not give
   confidence to you and it would certainly dishonor the Character of the
   Most High.

   But you have thought that if you are to be saved, you must of necessity
   experience great horrors, as many have done. You have read of John
   Bunyan and others passing through the Slough of Despond and you have
   set it down as a fact that you ought to wallow there, also. But why,
   Beloved? How does this tend to salvation? Is doubting the mercy of God
   a good and useful thing? Truly, some who are brought to Jesus are long
   in coming, but if He pleases to lead you by a long way, why complain?
   Is not the Gospel way the best way? Believe and live--is not that
   enough? Why, if the terrors did come upon you, they could not help you,
   or if they did, you would trust in your despair and this would be a
   false way.

   "Then," you say, "I stipulate for raptures and excitements. If I have
   these, I will believe." Joy will come after believing--it is a gift of
   God with which He rewards faith. If the Lord required joy and rapture
   of you, you could no more render them than if the way of works were
   still in vogue. "Jesus only" is your hope, why demand more? Now I come

   to the point. I have looked at what you would like salvation to be--and
   I have told you what it is. I will ask you this question--What in it do
   you object? Do you object to being saved simply by faith? Because it
   appears to you to be too mysterious? Mysterious? It is the essence of
   simplicity! You make it mysterious by refusing to understand it and not
   believing it to be so plain. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you
   shall be saved." To believe is to trust--and whoever trusts in the
   atoning blood is saved. Where is the mystery?

   Then men turn round and say, "Then it seems like nothing at all." But
   Jesus says, "This is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom He
   has sent." It is the work which God works, the grandest of all works,
   to believe in Jesus Christ! Do you count it as nothing, when God has
   elected it to be the grand means of renewing the heart by the Holy
   Spirit? Faith is the spring which moves all our nature. He who believes
   learns to love and, learning to love, he is changed from sin to
   holiness. "Yes, but this believing makes a man into a mere child." Is
   that an objection? Then I give you no reply but the words of the Lord
   Himself--"Except you be converted and become as little children, you
   shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of Heaven."

   "Oh," says another, "it throws the whole thing so open, if whoever
   believes in Jesus is saved." And do you want it closed? Do you crave a
   monopoly for yourself and your little coterie? Oh, Sir, God thinks not
   as you do! And when your heart is enlarged you will be ashamed of
   having made such a remark! "Well, but I do not like salvation by Grace
   alone, for it implies so much against me. I feel as Naaman did when the
   Prophet said, 'Wash and be clean.' What do I need washing for? Am I
   dirty? Do you insinuate that this leprosy of mine comes because I have
   not bathed often enough? I am insulted by you." Men regard the Gospel
   as insulting their dignity and therefore they turn away from it. They
   talk in this fashion--"What? Believe and live! Is that all? That way of
   salvation would suit a harlot or a drunk, but I am just, upright,
   honorable. Simply look to Christ as the dying thief did on the tree?
   Such a religion suits a thief, but it does not suit me."

   So you would like to have one way to Heaven for yourself and people of
   quality, and a back gate to let in the guilty? There is no such
   arrangement, Sir, and I trust you will not be so foolish as to be lost
   because your pride cannot be gratified. "Ah," says another, "it does
   not give a man anything that he can be proud of. It does not make him
   do anything, or be anything that he can talk about to his neighbors.
   'Only believe, and you shall be saved.' Why, the most common boy in the
   street might understand that, and practice it, too. I have graduated at
   a university. I am a man of natural endowments and great
   attainments--am I to be put on the same level as a shoe-black?" Well,
   if that is your line of argument, my answer is--"not many great men,
   not many mighty are chosen," and when you reject the Gospel, you
   neither disappoint Christ nor His people--we knew you would do so.

   I sometimes feel inclined to answer people in the manner in which I
   replied to a caviler not long ago. He did not understand this, nor
   understand that, nor understand the other and at last I said to him,
   "Sir, I do not suppose you ever will understand it." "Why not?" he
   asked. "Because," I said, "God reveals these things to His own elect
   and not to the wise and prudent." This view of the case he did not
   like, but I believed it would do him more good than entering into
   further controversy with him. Men profess to be puzzled with this and
   that when the truth is that their hearts are alienated from God. When
   the heart is set right and they are sincere inquirers, they will feel
   that the plan of salvation by Divine Grace is most suitable, most wise
   and most acceptable.

   When God the Holy Spirit once makes a man feel himself to be a lost,
   undone, ill-deserving, Hell-deserving sinner, he seizes upon the Gospel
   of Free Grace as a hungry man grasps a loaf of bread! May God bring men
   to feel themselves sinners and they will quibble at the Gospel no more.
   In conclusion. You thought that the Gospel ought to be such-and-such
   and now you are annoyed because you are told that the whole plan lies
   in believing. Let me ask you, then, Do you mean to be damned for the
   sake of a whim? Come, I will not mince the matter. Do you mean to lose
   Heaven and be cast into Hell forever for the sake of your proud
   fancies? For, oh, Sir, I assure you, in God's name, His plan will not
   alter for you! If the Lord should alter His Gospel for you, then He
   must alter it for another, and another--and it would be as shifting as
   quicksand. There it is! Take it of leave it, but alter it, you cannot.
   "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved" is always true. And
   the other side of the question is true, too--"He that believes not
   shall be damned."

   Remember, also, that however much you may dislike it today, it will be
   quite as unpleasant tomorrow. If there is at present some sharp,
   stripping and humbling work about it, it always will strip and always
   humble you if ever you receive it. To be saved by Grace alone will be
   as hard to your pride in 10 years' time as it is now--perhaps harder,
   because your

   heart will have grown harder and your stomach even more haughty against
   the Lord God of Hosts. Surely, Sir, if you are lost because you will
   not have salvation in God's way, you will get small comfort from your
   meditations when you lie in Hell. When you are shut in the eternal
   prison, you will reflect that you are there because you thought God
   ought to save you in another way. Then you will say to yourself, "I
   would not take His mercy freely. I would not fall down at Jesus' feet
   and simply trust Him. I wanted to feel, or do, or be something. I would
   not give up self and its foolish confidences--and here I am."

   Surely you will gnaw your tongue in anguish that you have been cast
   away for such an unreasonable reason! If others ask you how you came
   there, it will be a strange answer that you will have to give them.
   "I," says one, "I am here because I loved drink." Another says, "I am
   here, for I was lustful and debauched." "Ah," you say, "I was neither
   the one nor the other. I was kept from such sins, but I am lost simply
   because when I heard the plan of salvation, I had made up my mind what
   it ought to be and I stuck to my prejudices. I would not go to the
   Bible to search. I thought I knew as well as the Book and as well as
   the Holy Spirit, and I am lost." My dear Hearers, I do not ask you to
   believe anything I say because I say it. Fling it to the winds if it
   has no better authority than mine! But if it is God's Word, I charge
   you, on your soul's peril, do not reject it!

   We shall face each other at the last tremendous day and if I have told
   you honestly the plan of salvation, I am clear of your blood. But if,
   having heard it, you reject it because it does not suit your
   preconceived ideas, then, Sirs, your doom will lie at your own door.
   Provoke it not! Yield to the Master's bidding! May His Holy Spirit
   sweetly incline you and He shall have praise. There it is. Jesus died
   instead of sinners. He suffered God's wrath in the place of the guilty
   and, "Whoever believes in Him has everlasting life." Other foundation
   can no man lay. There is not another name under Heaven among men
   whereby you can be saved! The worst of all is, you will say, "We do not
   reject it, but we mean to think of it tomorrow."

   That has been the cry of some of you for 50 years! The bell will toll
   for your funerals before your tomorrow comes! Do not run this frightful
   risk. If to believe and to be saved would incapacitate you from your
   daily calling, or rob you of a single honorable joy, I might see sense
   in your procrastination. But since to be saved will make you fit for
   this life and fill your cup to the brim with joy, in addition to
   preparing you for the life to come, I charge you, by the living God,
   "kiss the Son lest He is angry and you perish from the way, while His
   wrath is kindled but a little." The Lord bless you for Jesus' sake.
   Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--2 Kings 5. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--34 (VS. I), 560, 583.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Ear Bored With An Awl

   (No. 1174)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and
   my children; I will not go out free: Then his master shall bring him
   unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the
   doorpost; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he
   shall serve him forever." Exodus 21:5, 6.

   THE slavery which existed among the ancient Jews was a very different
   thing from that which has disgraced humanity in modern times. And it
   ought also to be remembered that Moses did not institute slavery in any
   shape or fashion. The laws concerning it were made on purpose to
   repress it, to confine it within very narrow bounds and, ultimately, to
   put an end to it. It was like the law of divorce--Moses authored that
   law but he knew that the people were so deeply rooted in it that it
   could not be forbidden. And therefore, as Jesus tells us, Moses,
   because of the hardness of their hearts, suffered them to put away
   their wives. And so, I may say, because of the hardness of their hearts
   he suffered them, still, to retain persons in servitude. But he made
   the laws very stringent, so as almost to prevent it.

   Among other repressive regulations, this was one, that when a slave ran
   away from his master it was contrary to law for anyone to assist in
   sending him back again. And with such a law as that, you can clearly
   see that nobody need remain a slave, since he could run away if he
   liked. It was nobody's business--no, it was a sin for anybody--to force
   him back again. Now, if a man can go when he likes, his slavery is a
   very different thing from that which still curses many parts of the
   earth. But the case stood thus and, sometimes persons who were
   insolvent, who could not pay, were compelled by the law to give their
   services to their creditors for a certain number of years, always
   limited, as you see in this case, to six.

   A man who had committed theft, instead of putting the country to the
   expense of a prison, was sometimes fined for his theft sevenfold. And
   if he had no money he was placed in servitude till he had bought
   himself free again--an institution not altogether indefensible, I
   think--and having a good deal of rough justice about it. Sometimes a
   person who was extremely poor would sell his services for the six
   years, which are here prescribed, to some wealthy person who was bound
   to house him, clothe him and feed him. This is very much like a system
   which still exists in some parts of our own country, where a person's
   services are hired for the year, with so much nourishment to be given,
   and so much of wage.

   Well, the law here says that if a man should have sold himself, or by
   insolvency should have come to be sold to his master, at the end of six
   years he might go free. He was quite free to leave his master's house
   and go where he pleased. But it seems that the servitude was so
   exceedingly light and, indeed, was so much for the benefit of the
   person in it, that frequently men would not go free. They preferred to
   continue as they were, servants to their masters. Now, as it was not
   desirable that this should often be the case and as, if it were
   permitted oppressive masters might sometimes frighten a servant into
   such an agreement, the law was made that in such a case the matter must
   be brought before the judges.

   And before them the man must say plainly--note that word--he must say
   it very distinctly and plainly, so that there was no doubt about it,
   that it really was his wish not to accept his liberty, but to remain as
   he was. And then, after he had stated his desire and given as his
   reason that he loved his master--and loved the children and the wife
   that he had obtained in his service--his ear was to be pierced against
   the door of the house. This ceremony was intended to put a little
   difficulty in the way, that he might hesitate and say, "No, I won't
   agree to that," and so might, as was most proper, go free.

   But if he agreed to that somewhat painful ceremony, and if he declared
   before the judges that it was his own act and deed, then he was to
   remain the servant of his chosen master as long as he lived. We are
   going to use this as a type--and get some moral out of it, by God's
   blessing. And the first use is this. Men are by nature the slaves of
   sin. Some are the slaves of drunkenness, some of lasciviousness, some
   of covetousness, some of sloth--but there are generally times in men's

   lives when they have an opportunity of breaking loose. There will
   happen Providential changes which take them away from old companions
   and so give them a little hope of liberty, or there will come times of
   sickness which take them away from temptation and give them
   opportunities for thought.

   Above all, seasons will occur when conscience is set to work by the
   faithful preaching of the Word and when the man pulls himself up and
   questions his spirit thus--"Which shall it be? I have been a servant of
   the devil, but here is an opportunity of getting free. Shall I give up
   this sin? Shall I pray God to give me Divine Grace to break right away
   and become a new man--or shall I not?" Such a time may happen to some
   sinner here. I pray you, dear Friend, do not slight it, because these
   times may not often come. And coming but being willfully refused, they
   may never return to you. If you are resolved to be the slave of your
   passions, then your passions will, indeed, enslave you. If you are
   content to be a slave of the cup, you shall find that the cup will hold
   you by its fascinations as fast as captive in fetters of brass.

   If you are willing to be the slave of unbelief and of the pleasures of
   the flesh, you will find that they will fasten you as with bands of
   steel and hold you down forever. There are times when men might get
   free. Their prison door is, for the moment, on the latch. "You almost
   persuade me to be a Christian," cries Agrippa. Felix trembles and
   resolves to hear more of this matter. Many others in the same condition
   have been all but free--but they have deliberately preferred to remain
   as they were--and the result has been that sin has bored their ear and
   from that day forward they have seldom been troubled by conscience.

   They have sinned with impunity. The descending scale to Hell has grown
   more and more rapid and they have glided down it with ever-increasing
   pace. Have I not seen some such, for whom I hoped better things? The
   evil spirit went out of them and left them for a while--and oh, if
   Divine Grace had come and occupied the house, that evil spirit would
   never have returned! But they beckoned back that evil spirit and he
   came with seven other devils more wicked than himself-- and the last
   end of these once hopeful persons has become worse than the first!
   Slave of sin, will you be free? Your six years are up tonight! Will you
   be free? The Spirit of God will help you to break every chain! The
   Redeemer will snap your fetters! Are you ready for liberty?

   Or does your heart deliberately choose to abide under the bondage of
   Satan? If so, take heed. That awl of habit may bore your ear and then
   you will be beyond all hope of reformation--the victim of yourself, the
   slave of your sins, the idolater of your own belly--the abject menial
   of your own passions. "He that would be free himself must break the
   chain," is the old saying. But I will improve it--he that would be free
   must cry to Christ to break the chain. But if he would not have it
   broken and hugs his bonds, then on his own head will be his blood!
   Christian man, the lesson to you is this--since the servants of Satan
   love their master so well, how well ought you to love yours? And since
   they will cling to his service, even when it brings misery into their
   homes, disease into their bodies, aches into their heads, redness into
   their eyes and poverty into their purses, oh, can you ever think of
   leaving your good and blessed Master, whose yoke is easy and whose
   burden is light? If they follow Satan into Hell, surely you may well
   say--

   "Through floods and flames, if Jesus leads, I'll follow where He goes."

   They are the willing servants of Satan. Be you, with more than equal
   ardor, the willing servants of Christ!

   Our text reads us a second lesson, namely, this. In the 40th Psalm, in
   the sixth verse, you will find the expression used by our Lord, or by
   David in prophecy personifying our Lord, "My ear have You opened," or,
   "My ear have You dug." Jesus Christ is here, in all probability,
   speaking of Himself as being forever, for our sakes, the willing
   Servant of God. Let us just dwell on that a moment. Ages ago, long
   before the things which are seen had begun to exist, Jesus had entered
   into Covenant with His Father that He would become the Servant of
   servants for our sakes. All through the long ages He never started back
   from that compact. Though the Savior knew the price of pardon was His
   blood, His pity never withdrew, for His ear had been pierced.

   He had become, for our sakes, the lifelong servant of God. He loved His
   spouse, the Church. He loved His dear sons, His children whom He
   foresaw when He looked through the future ages--and He would not go out
   free. Our insolvency had made us slaves and Christ became a Servant in
   our place. When He came to Bethlehem's manger, then it was that His ear
   was pierced, indeed, for Paul quotes as a parallel expression--"A body
   have You prepared Me." He was bound to God's service when He was found
   in fashion as a Man, for then He "became obedient unto death, even the
   death of the Cross." When he came to the waters of Baptism at Jordan
   and said, "Thus it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness," then

   did He, as it were, go before the judges and say plainly that He loved
   the Master, whom He was bound to serve, loved His spouse, the Church,
   and loved her little ones--and would, for their sakes, be a Servant
   forever.

   When He stood foot to foot with Satan in the wilderness, the arch-fiend
   offered to Him all the kingdoms of this world--and why did He not
   accept them? Because He preferred a Cross to a crown, for His ear was
   bored. Afterwards the people, in the height of His popularity, offered
   Him a crown, but He hid Himself away from them. And why? Because He
   came to suffer, not to reign. His ear was bored for redemption's work
   and He was straitened until He had accomplished it. In the Garden, when
   the bloody sweat fell from His face and He said, "If it is possible,
   let this cup pass from Me," why did He not put away that cup? If it had
   pleased Him, He might have applied for 12 legions of angels and they
   would have come to the rescue. Why did He not summon that celestial
   bodyguard?

   Was it not because He had wholly surrendered Himself to the service of
   our salvation? Before His judges He might have saved Himself. Why
   didn't He? One word when He was before Pilate would have broken the
   spell of prophecy, but why, like a sheep before her shearers, was He
   dumb? Why did He give His back to the smiters and His cheeks to those
   that plucked off His hair? Why did He condescend to die and actually,
   upon the Cross, pour out His heart's blood? It was all because He had
   undertaken for us, and He would go through with it. His ear was
   bored--He could not and He would not leave His dearly beloved Church--

   "Yes, said His love, for her I'll go Through all the depths of pain and
   woe. And on the Cross will even dare The bitter pangs of death to
   bear." He would not accept deliverance though He might have done so.
   "He saved others, Himself He could not save."

   Now, hear it, you Believers! If Jesus would not go free from His
   blessed undertaking, will you ever desire to go free from the service
   of His love? Since He pushed onwards till He said, "It is finished,"
   will not His love, by God's Holy Spirit, inspire you to push forward
   till you can say, "I have finished my course, I have kept the faith"?
   Can you go back when Jesus goes before you? Can you think of
   retreating? Can desertion or apostasy be regarded by you with any other
   feelings than those of abhorrence when you see your Master nailed to
   the gallows of Calvary, to bleed to death and then to lie in the cold
   grave for your sakes? Will you not say, "Let my ear be bored to His
   service, just as His ear was dug for

   me"?

   Let these observations stand as the preface for our sermon, for my
   discourse, though I will try to make it brief, deals with ourselves in
   an earnest fashion. Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I think I speak for
   all of you who love Jesus, when I say--we are willing to undertake,
   tonight, perpetual service for Christ. To lead you all to renew your
   dedication I shall speak upon our choice of perpetual service and our
   reasons for making that choice. And then I shall call you up and try to
   pierce your ears with some one of certain sharp awls, which I have here
   ready for the purpose.

   I. First, let us speak upon our CHOICE OF PERPETUAL SERVICE. The first
   thing is we have the power to go free if we will. This is a very
   memorable night to me. Pardon my speaking of myself, I cannot help it.
   It is exactly 24 years this night that I put on the Lord Jesus Christ
   publicly in Baptism, avowing myself to be His servant. And now, at this
   present time, I have served Him four times six years and I think He
   says to me, "You may go free if you will." In effect He says the same
   to every one of you, "You may go free if you will. I will not hold you
   in unwilling servitude."

   There are plenty of places you can go--there is the world, the flesh
   and the devil. For a master you may have either of these three if you
   choose. Jesus will not hold you against your will. Do you desire to go
   free, Brothers and Sisters, free from the yoke of Jesus? I can only
   speak for myself--and you may say, "amen," for yourselves if you wish,
   but nothing more. "Blessed be His name," I never wish to be free from
   His dear yoke! Rather would I say--

   "Oh, to Grace how great a debtor, Daily I'm constrained to be! Let that
   Grace, Lord, like a fetter, Bind my willing heart to Thee." I will
   speak of Him as I find--I wish to serve Him not another 24 years, but
   four and twenty million years! Yes, and forever and forever, for His
   yoke is easy and His burden is light. It is said of the Hebrews, "If
   they had been mindful of the country from which they came out, they had
   opportunity to return." And so have we. But will we return to the land
   of destruction? Will we go back unto Perdition? Will we renounce our
   Lord? No, by God's Grace it cannot be! We are

   bound for the land of Canaan and to Canaan we will go. Wandering hearts
   we have, but Divine Grace still holds them fast and our prayer is--

   "Prone to wander, Lord, we feel it, Prone to leave the God we love.
   Here's our heart, Lord, take and seal it, Seal it from Your courts
   above."

   Well, then, since we might go free if we would, but wish not to do so,
   we are willing to declare before the judges-- that is, before the
   public here assembled tonight, who shall be our judges--that though
   quite able to go free, (we say it plainly and without stammering), we
   have not the remotest wish to do so. If the service of Christ has been
   a fetter, Lord, put on double fetters! If Your service has been a bond,
   Lord, tie us up, hand and foot, for, to us, bondage to You is the only
   perfect liberty. Yes, if it must be so, we will say it here--

   "'Tis done! The great transaction's done.

   Iam my Lord's, and He is mine!

   He drew me, and I followed on,

   Charmed to obey the voice Divine."

   And we will add the words--

   "High Heaven that heard the solemn vow,

   That voice renewed shall daily hear

   Till in life's last hour we bow,

   And bless in death a bond so dear." We are willing to say it publicly
   and plainly, and we are willing to take the consequences too. Are we?
   That is the question! If we mean to be Christ's servants forever, we
   must expect to have special troubles such as the world knows nothing
   of. The boring of our ear is a special pain, but both ears are ready
   for the awl. The Lord's service involves peculiar trials, for He has
   told us, "Every branch that bears fruit He purges it."

   Are we willing to take the purging? What son is there whom his father
   chastens not? Are we willing to take the chastening? Yes, we would
   deliberately say, "Whatever it is, we will bear it, so long as the Lord
   will keep us and help us to remain faithful." We dare not run away from
   His service! Would not, could not--and nothing can drive us to abscond
   from His house or His work, for, exulting in persevering Grace, we
   venture to say, "Who shall separate us from the love of God which is in
   Christ Jesus our Lord?" We will bear the boring of the ear! Perhaps it
   will come in the shape of more reproach from men. Some of us have had a
   very fair share of that and have been tolerably well abused up till
   now, but none of these things move us.

   Will there be more cruel mocking between here and Heaven? No doubt
   there will! Then let them come and welcome! My solemn personal
   declaration at this hour is--

   "If on my face for Your dear name Shame and reproach shall be, I'll
   hail reproach and welcome shame For You'll remember me."

   Do you not say the same, Beloved? Will you not serve Christ without any
   conditions, at all hazards? Will you not follow Him through the mire
   and through the slough, and up the bleak side of the hill, and along
   the crest of the field where the battle rages most fiercely? Yes, that
   we will, if but Divine Grace is given--if the Holy Spirit will abide in
   us. Do you not desire to follow the Lamb where ever He goes? Do you
   shrink from the supreme sacrifice? Do you not long to abide faithful
   though all should forsake the Truth? Yes, we desire perpetual servitude
   to Christ and to bear whatever that involves. I speak the heart of
   every lover of Christ when I say we do not want to serve Christ a
   little--we wish to serve Him much--and the more He will give us to do,
   the better we shall love Him!

   Yes, and the more He will give us to bear for His dear sake, if He will
   give us corresponding Grace, the more will we rejoice! That is a great
   life which is greatly useful, or greatly suffering, or greatly
   laborious for Jesus Christ the Savior. Do you not feel in your inmost
   souls that instead of wishing to be set free, you wish to plunge deeper
   into this blessed bondage--to bear in your body the marks of the Lord
   Jesus--and to be His branded slaves forever? Is not this the perfect
   freedom you desire? So, then, there is the first point--our choice of
   perpetual service.

   II. Now, secondly, OUR REASONS FOR IT. A man ought to have a reason for
   so weighty a decision as this. We have served our Master, now, for 24
   years and do not want to change, but should like to live with Him and
   die with Him and live forever with Him. We speak boldly on a very
   weighty business. What reasons can we give for such decided language?
   Well, first, we can give some reasons connected with Himself. The
   servant in our text who would not accept his liberty, said, "I love my
   master." Can we say that? I cannot feel content with merely saying it.
   It is true, true, true!

   But if I were to begin to talk of how I love Him, or how I ought to
   love Him, I should break down altogether tonight. Even now I choke with
   emotion. I can feel love in my heart, but my heart is too full for
   expression. Oh, what a blessed Master He is! Not love Him? My whole
   nature heaves with affection for Him! Who can help but love Him? Look
   at His wounds and you must love Him if you have been redeemed. Look at
   the great gash which reached His heart, where flowed the water and the
   blood to be, for your sin, the double cure! Could you fail to love Him?
   I mean Him who died for you and bought you, not with silver and gold,
   but with His own pangs and griefs and bloody sweat and death! Leave

   Him?

   O Savior, let us not be such devils as to leave You, for worse than
   demons should we be if we could apostatize from such a sweet Master as
   You are. We love our Master, for He has bought us and saved us from the
   miseries of Hell. And we love Him because there never was such a
   Master, so good, so tender, so royal, so inconceivably lovely, so
   altogether glorious! Our Lord is Perfection, itself, and the whole
   universe cannot produce His equal. We cannot now praise the stars, for
   we have seen the sun. We could not take up with the mean things of
   earth, for the Lord of Heaven has looked upon us and one glance of His
   eyes has enamored us of Him forever and forever. Want to leave the
   service of Jesus? By no means! No such wish crosses our soul.

   Beloved, I am sure you have no desire to change Masters, have you? Are
   you not abundantly well-pleased with His treatment of you? When a
   servant comes up from the country to take a situation in town, if he
   goes back to the village, his old friends come round him and they say,
   "Well, John, how did you find the service? Did your master treat you
   well? Was the work very hard? Were you well-fed and well-clothed?" Now,
   Christian people, I am not going to talk for you, but you shall talk
   for yourselves to your friends and kinsfolk--answer for yourselves
   their various questions. If you can find any fault with Jesus, tell
   them of it. Say whether He has ever treated you badly and, if He has,
   report it to all the world. Do not allow any to be led into a bad
   service if you have found it to be such.

   As for me, there was never a worse servant, but never servant had a
   better Master than I have! He has borne with my ill manners and treated
   me like one of His own family. I have been, at times, a dead weight to
   His household, but He has never given me a rough word, "My cup runs
   over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
   life." Tonight I must, even though I may be thought egotistical, speak
   of His lovingkindness towards me. Twenty-four years ago I was a lad in
   jackets and I walked into the open river on a cold May day to be
   baptized into the name of Jesus as timid and timorous a youth as you
   well might see.

   But when I rose from that water the fear of man was gone from my mind!
   I hope never to return. For the first time that night I prayed at the
   Prayer Meeting and this tongue has never since ceased to talk of His
   dear love--

   "Before since by faith I saw the stream His flowing wounds supply,
   Redeeming lo ve has been my theme, And shall be tiil I die."

   Now see what my Lord has done for me! If anyone had said to me,
   "Twenty-four years from this time you will preach to a vast crowd and
   will have spiritual children whose number cannot be told," I never
   could have believed it! It would have seemed impossible that such a
   thing could be! Yet so it is. His right hand has done wonderful things
   for me and my heart reverently extols Him. Glory be unto His name
   forever and forevermore! Leave my Master? Grant, O glorious Lord, that
   no such base and loathsome thought may even alight upon my breast! No,
   dear Master, I am Yours forever! Let me kiss Your feet again and be
   forever bound to You by new cords of love. Well, my Brothers and
   Sisters, the Lord has treated you kindly, has He not? Come, speak for
   yourselves! You could rise and tell stories, in their own way, equally
   as remarkable as mine and you could wind up, each one, by saying, "I
   love my Master. I cannot help but love Him."

   The servant in our text, who would not go free, plainly declared that
   he loved his wife, so that there are reasons connected not only with
   his master, but with those in his master's house, which detain each
   servant of Jesus in happy bondage. Beloved, some of us could not leave
   Jesus, not only because of what He is, but because of some that are
   very dear

   to us who are in His service. How could I leave my mother's God? How
   could I leave my father's God, my grandfather's God, my
   great-grandfather's God? My Brothers and Sisters, how could I leave
   your God, to be separated from you, whom I have loved so long, so well?

   Husband, tender and affectionate, could you leave your wife's God?
   Wife, could you forsake the God of those dear babes in Heaven? They are
   resting there on the breast of Jesus and you hope to see them soon--do
   you not love Jesus for the sake of those who once nestled in your
   bosom? Yes, and it is not merely earthly relationship that binds us
   thus, but we love all the people of God because of our relationship in
   Christ! Truly we can say of His Church, "Here my best friends, my
   kindred dwell." Some of the dearest associations we have ever formed
   commenced at the foot of the Cross. Our best friends are those with
   whom we go up to the House of God in company. Why, most of the friends
   that some of us have on earth we won through our being one in Jesus
   Christ! And we mean to stand fast for the grand old cause and the old
   Gospel, for the sake not only of Christ but of His people--

   "Now, for my friends and brethren's sake, Peace be in you, I'll say And
   for the sake of God our Lord I'll seek your good always."

   "Because I love my wife and my children," says the man, "I cannot go
   out free." And so say we. Besides, let me add, there are some of us who
   must keep to Christ because we have children in His family whom we
   could not leave--dear ones who first learned of Christ from us. Many in
   this place were first led to the Lord by our teaching and by our
   prayers. We could not run away from them--their loving prayers hold us
   fast! In them the Lord has hold upon us by new ties. You do not find a
   woman leaves her husband, as a rule, when there are seven or eight
   little children at home. No, and no man can leave Christ who has been
   spiritually fruitful--the seals of his ministry seal anew the
   indentures which bind him to his Lord. The successful pastor will be
   kept faithful. He must stand fast by the Church, and by the Church's
   Head, when there are children begotten unto him by the power of the
   Holy Spirit through faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

   There are reasons, also, why we cannot forsake our Lord which arise out
   of ourselves. And the first is that reason which Peter felt to be so
   powerful. His Master said, "Will you, also, go away?" Peter answered by
   another question. He said, "Lord, to whom shall we go?" Ah, Christian,
   there is no way for you but to go straight on to Heaven, for where
   would you go? Where else could you go? Some of us are so thoroughly
   identified with Jesus and His Gospel that the world would have nothing
   to do with us if we were to ask its friendship. We are committed too
   much to our Master ever to reckon upon receiving love and friendship
   from His foes. We have given the world too many slaps in the face to be
   forgiven by it. We have crossed the Rubicon and there remains nothing
   for us but victory or death.

   Where could a poor wretch hide, who has been a well-known minister of
   the Gospel, should he apostatize? Where could he dwell? Should he
   journey to the ends of the earth some would remember his name and say,
   "When did you last apostatize?" In the remotest regions of the globe
   some would jeeringly say to him, "Have you fallen, have you gone
   aside?" Where could we go, then? We must cleave to Christ! It is of
   necessity we must. And why should we go? Come, Brothers, can you find
   any reason why we should leave Jesus Christ? Can you imagine one? As my
   imaginative faculty is not strong enough I will not attempt it.

   I can see a million reasons for cleaving to Him, but not a presence of
   a reason for leaving Him. And when should any who love Him leave Him,
   if we must leave Him? Leave Him while we are young? It is then that we
   need Him to be the guide of our youth! Leave Him when we are in middle
   life? Why, then it is we need Him to help us to bear our cross, lest we
   sink under our daily load! Leave Him in old age? Ah, no! It is then we
   require Him to cheer our declining hours! Leave Him in life? How could
   we live without Him? Leave Him in death? How could we die without Him?
   No, we must cling to Him--we must follow Him where ever He goes. These
   are a few of the reasons why we would be His servants forever.

   III. In the last place, I want to bore your ear. Do you mean to be
   bound for life? Christians, do you really mean it? Come, sit down and
   count the cost and, if you mean it, come and welcome! There is the
   standard! The blood-red Cross waves at the top of it--will you now, in
   cool blood, enlist for life? Every man who wishes to desert may go
   home. Christ wants no press men. Ho, you volunteers! Come here! We want
   you and none but you! The Lord desires no slaves to dishonor His camp.
   Cowards, you may go! Double-minded men, you may get to your tents! But
   what do you say, you

   true Believers? Will you cleave to Him and His cause? Do you leap
   forward and say, "Never can we separate from Jesus! We give ourselves
   to Him for life, for death, for time, and for eternity. We are His
   altogether and forever"?

   Come, then, and have your ears bored. And, first, let them be bored
   with the sharp awl of the Savior's sufferings. No story wrings a
   Christian's heart with such anguish as the griefs and woes of Christ.
   We preached, the other morning, upon the crown of thorns, [#1168, THE
   CROWN OF THORNS, April 12, 1874] and it was our task to bring before
   you the different items of our Savior's griefs. Now, whenever you are
   hearing about Him, you ought to say within yourself, "Ah, He is
   piercing my ear. He is fastening me to His Cross. He is marking me for
   Himself, I cannot forsake my bleeding Lord! His wounds attract me. I
   fly to Him afresh. When the world would draw me off from Jesus, I find
   a central force drawing me back to His dear heart. I must be Christ's.
   His suffering has won me. The bleeding Lamb enthralls me. I am His, by
   His Grace, and His forever!"

   That is one way of marking the ear. Next, let your ear be fastened by
   the Truth of God so that you are determined to hear only the Gospel.
   The Gospel ought to monopolize the Believer's ear. Some professors can
   hear any stuff in all the world if it is prettily put and so long as
   the man is a "clever" man (I think that is the word). When they hear a
   preacher of whom they can say, "He is very clever, very clever!" they
   appear perfectly satisfied--whether the man's doctrine is good or bad.
   Now isn't this foolishness? What does it matter about a man's being
   clever? Satan is clever! And every great thief is clever! There is
   nothing in cleverness to gain the approval of a spiritual mind.

   I pray God to give every one of you an ear that will not hear false
   doctrine! I do not think we ought to blame a man who gets up and goes
   out of a place of worship when he hears the Truth of God denied. I
   think we ought, rather, to commend him! There is a great deal of that
   soft, willow-pattern style of man about nowadays. Let a man talk loudly
   and prettily, and many hearers will believe anything he says. Dear
   Brothers and Sisters, we must have discernment, or we shall be found
   aiding and abetting error! "My sheep," says Christ, "hear My voice, and
   a stranger they will not follow, for they know not the voice of
   strangers."

   Now, if you mean to be Christ's forever, you must not allow that ear of
   yours to hear bad doctrine! You must take care that, knowing the Truth
   of God, you hold to it and renounce every false way. Do not make your
   ear a common sewer into which foul doctrine may be poured, in hope that
   afterwards Jesus Christ may make it clean again. "Take care what you
   hear" is one of the precepts of infinite wisdom--let it not fail to
   impress your souls. Furthermore, if you really give yourself to Christ,
   you must have your ear opened to hear and obey the whispers of the
   Spirit of God so that you yield to His teaching and to His teaching,
   only. I am afraid some Christians give their ears to an eminent
   preacher and follow him whichever way he goes, very much to their own
   injury.

   The right thing is to yield to the Spirit of God. Which way the
   Scripture goes--that is the way for you to go! And though we, or an
   angel from Heaven, preach to you any other Gospel than what this sacred
   Book contains--though I trust we may not be accursed if we do it in
   ignorance--yet, certainly, you will be accursed if, knowing it to be
   wrong, you follow us in preference to following the Lord! Let your ear
   be open to the faintest monitions of the Holy Spirit! There would be an
   end to all the sects and divisions in the Church if all Christians were
   willing to do what the Holy Spirit tells them. Alas, there are many
   people who do not want to know too much of the mind of God. What the
   Bible says is no great concern of theirs because, perhaps, that may not
   say quite the same thing as the Prayer Book--and they had rather not be
   disturbed in their minds.

   Perhaps the Bible may not confirm all the doctrines of their sect and,
   therefore, they leave it unread, for they had rather not be perplexed.
   Oh, Brothers and Sisters, let names, parties, Prayer Books, catechisms
   and everything else go to the dogs sooner than one word of Jesus be
   neglected! Let us give ourselves up to the Spirit of God and to the
   teaching of His own Word, for as Christ's servants our ears have been
   pierced. Your ear has thus been bored with three awls and none of them
   has pained you. Many young women have had their ears pierced--I do not
   know whether it hurt them or not. I do not suppose that the operation
   described in the text pained the man much, though there was a little
   blood lost, perhaps, when the awl went through the lobe of the ear.

   I will tell you what some would do with their ears if they were
   pierced. I would not do it with mine, but an oriental would be sure to
   do it. What would he do? Why, put a ring in it and hang it with
   ornaments. When a Christian man has his ears bored to belong to Christ
   forever and ever, God will be sure to put a jewel in it for him! And
   what jewels ought to hang in the Christian's ear? Why, the jewel of
   obedience. Practice the doctrine which your ear has heard! Then there

   would follow the diamond ofjoy--the ear which belongs wholly to Jesus
   will be sure to be adorned with the jewel of the Spirit, which is joy!
   If we give our heart up to Christ He will hang in our ear many costly
   gems of knowledge--we shall know the deep things of God when we are
   willing to learn them.

   The ear being pierced, we shall sit like children at Jesus' feet and
   learn of Him--and rubies and emeralds and pearls such as deep-sea
   fisheries never knew, shall belong to us! And our ear will be hung with
   the priceless gem of "quickness of understanding in the fear of the
   Lord." "He wakens me morning by morning. He opened my ear to hear as
   the learned." There, too, will hang that precious gem of separation
   from the world. The distinguishing mark of, "Holiness unto the Lord,"
   will be in the Christian's ear like a precious jewel of inestimable
   price. When they were selling the Duke of Brunswick's gems the other
   day, they found that ever so many of them were not what they were
   supposed to be--he had guarded them with great care and scarcely had
   enjoyed a happy hour in the great anxiety for his valuables--and yet
   some of them were not worth the keeping!

   If you will give yourself to Christ and if your ear is bored, these
   precious Graces which I have mentioned will be pearls of exceedingly
   great price--such as angels might envy your wearing. There, young
   women, put these jewels in your ears and nobody will blame you for
   wearing such goodly ornaments. There, good man, you, also, may go with
   rings in your ears if these are the rings and these are the gems--and
   you will not be thought foppish and singular. May the Lord give them to
   you! As you come to the Communion Table, come with this feeling--"I am
   going there to renew my covenant. I have been a Christian these many
   years. By His Grace I love my Lord better than ever I did and I will,
   therefore, dedicate myself to Him again."

   And now, you unconverted people, do you think I have spoken the truth?
   If my Master had behaved badly to me I would have run away from Him
   long ago! I would not stand here to tell you that He was a good Master
   if He were not. But, since He is so good, oh that you would say, "I
   would like to be in His service." Have you such a desire? Then, dear
   Heart, remember His own words, "Him that comes to Me, I will in no wise
   cast out." If you are willing to be His, He is willing to have you! He
   is so great a Prince that He can maintain an endless company of
   servants without embarrassing Himself. There was never a soul that
   needed Christ but what Christ needed that soul! Depend upon it, if you
   go to Him, He will enroll you among His household retainers and allot
   you an honorable portion day by day. Seeking Sinner, believe in Jesus
   and live! God grant you Grace for Christ's sake! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--John 637 HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--660, 658, 663.
     __________________________________________________________________

Stephen's Death

   (No. 1175)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MAY 24, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus,
   receive my spirit. And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice,
   Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he
   fell asleep." Acts 7:59, 60.

   IT is of the greatest service to us all to be reminded that our life is
   but a vapor which appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
   Through forgetfulness of this, worldlings live at ease and Christians
   walk carelessly. Unless we watch for the Lord's coming, worldliness
   soon eats into our spirit as does a canker. If you have this world's
   riches, Believer, remember that this is not your rest--set not too
   great a store by its comforts. If, on the other hand, you dwell in
   straitness and are burdened with poverty, be not too much depressed,
   for these light afflictions are but for a moment and are not worthy to
   be compared with the Glory which shall be revealed in us! Look upon the
   things that are as though they were not. Remember you are a part of a
   great procession which is always moving by--others come and go before
   your own eyes--you see them and they disappear. You, yourself, are
   moving onward to another and more real world.

   "'Tis greatly wise to talk of our last hours," to give a rehearsal of
   our departure and to be prepared to stand before the great tribunal of
   the judgment. Our duty is to trim our lamps against the time when the
   Bridegroom comes. We are called upon to stand always ready, waiting for
   the appearing of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, or else for the
   summons which shall tell us that the pitcher is broken at the fountain
   and the wheel broken at the cistern--that the body must return to the
   earth as it was and the spirit unto God who gave it.

   This death scene of Stephen's may aid our meditations while, by the
   help of the Holy Spirit, we cast our minds forward to the time when we,
   also, must fall asleep. This is the only martyrdom which is recorded in
   the New Testament in detail--the Holy Spirit foreseeing that there
   would be martyrdoms enough before the Church's history would end-- and
   that we should never lack memorials such as those with which Foxe's
   Martyrology and works of the like order supply us. It is equally
   remarkable that this is the only death scene in the New Testament which
   has been described at length, with the exception of our Lord's. Of
   course we are told of the deaths of other saints and facts relating to
   them are mentioned. But what they said when they died and how they felt
   in passing out of the world are left unrecorded, probably because the
   Holy Spirit knew that we should never lack for holy deathbeds and
   triumphant departures.

   He well knew these would be everyday facts to the people of God.
   Perhaps, moreover, the Holy Spirit would have us gather from His
   silence that He would not have us attach so much importance to the
   manner of men's deaths as to the character of their lives. To live like
   Jesus most nearly concerns us--a triumphant death may be the crown, but
   a holy life is the head that must wear it. To obey our Lord's commands
   during our life is our most pressing business. We may leave the
   testimony of death to be given us in the same hour. We shall have dying
   Grace in dying moments, but at the present time our chief business is
   to obtain the Grace which will enable us to adorn the doctrine of God
   our Savior in all things.

   However, as we have this one case of Stephen given us at full length,
   we should prize it the more highly and study it the more carefully
   because it is the only one. Let us do so this morning. There are three
   things upon which I shall speak--The general character of Stephen's
   death. Secondly, its most notable peculiarity. And thirdly, things
   desirable in reference to death suggested to us by Stephen's departure.

   Let us look at Stephen's death, and notice ITS GENERAL CHARACTER. It
   strikes us at once that it happened in the very midst of his service.
   He had been appointed an officer of the Church at Jerusalem, to see
   that the alms were distributed properly among the poor, especially
   among the Grecian widows. He discharged his duty to the satisfaction of
   the whole Church and thereby he did most useful service, for it gave
   the Apostles opportunity to give themselves wholly

   to their true work, namely, that of preaching and prayer. It is no
   small matter to be able to bear a burden for another if he is thereby
   set free for more eminent service than we could, ourselves, perform.

   If it is so that I cannot preach myself, yet if I can take away from
   one who does preach certain cares which burden him--if I thus enable
   him to preach the more and the better--I am virtually preaching myself.
   The care which Stephen exercised over the poor tended, also, to prevent
   division, and this was a result of no mean order. But, not content with
   being a deacon, Stephen began to minister in holy things as a speaker
   of the Word, and that with great power, for he was full of faith and of
   the Holy Spirit. He stands forth on the pages of Church history, for
   the time being, as quite a leading spirit. So much so, indeed, that the
   enemies of the Gospel recognized his prominent usefulness and made him
   the object of their most fierce opposition, for they generally rage
   most against those who are doing most good.

   Stephen stood in the front rank of the Lord's host and yet he was taken
   away! "A mystery," some say. "A great privilege," say I. My Brothers
   and Sisters, who desires to be removed at any other time? Is it not
   well to die in harness while yet you are useful? Who wants to linger
   till he becomes a burden rather than a help? If we are called to depart
   in the middle of service we must submit to it thankfully and may even
   wish to have it said of us, he did--

   "His body with his charge lay down, And ceased at once to work and
   live." He was removed in the very prime of his usefulness, just when
   many were being converted by his ministry. A time when, through his
   faith, miracles were being worked on all sides. A time when he seemed,
   indeed, to be necessary to the Church!

   And is not this well? Well, first, that God should teach His people how
   much He can do by a man whom He chooses. Well, next, that He should
   show them that He is not dependent upon any man, but can do His work
   even without the most choice laborer in His vineyard! If our life can
   teach one lesson--and when that is taught--if our death can teach
   another, it is well to live and well to die! And it is far more
   desirable than to tarry long and take one's flight in the dreary winter
   of declining influence. Let me be reaped, if I may venture on a choice,
   when my ministry shall be like the wheat in Pharaoh's dream--with seven
   ears rank and good--and not in a time when the east wind has shriveled
   me into barrenness. If God is glorified by our removal, is it not well?
   And may He not be more than ordinarily glorified when He lays us aside
   in order to show His Church that He can do without His servants, or can
   raise up others in their place? Happy is that messenger whose absence
   as well as his presence fulfils his Master's will!

   But Stephen's death was painful and attended with much that flesh and
   blood would dread. He died not surrounded by weeping friends, but by
   enemies who gnashed their teeth! No holy hymn made glad his death
   chamber--the shouts and outcries of a maddened throng rang in his ears!
   No downy pillow for him, but the hard and cruel rocks. Battered and
   bruised by a whirlwind of stones he laid down to sleep and woke up in
   the bosom of his Lord! Now, Brothers and Sisters, this is all the more
   for our comfort, because if he died in perfect peace, no, in joy and
   triumph, how much more may we hope to depart in peace? Since we shall
   not have these grim attendants upon our departing hours, may we not
   hope that we shall be sustained and buoyed up by the Presence of our
   Lord and Master, even as Stephen was, and Divine Grace will be made
   perfect in our weakness?

   Every circumstance tells on our side by way of comfort. If he slept
   amidst a storm of stones, how may we hope to fall asleep right
   peacefully, in the same faith in Jesus, when the saints are gathered
   around our bed to bid us farewell? More particularly, however, I want
   to call your attention to the fact that Stephen's departing moments
   were calm, peaceful, confident, joyous. He never flinched while he was
   addressing that infuriated audience! He told them the plain Truth of
   God, with as much quiet deliberation as if he had been gratifying them
   with a pleasing discourse. When they grew angry he was not afraid. His
   lips did not quiver. He did not retract or soften down a single
   expression, but cut them to the heart with even more fidelity! With the
   courage of a man of God, his face was set as a flint. Knowing that he
   was now preaching his last sermon, he used the sharp two-edged sword of
   the Word of God, piercing into their very bones.

   He cared little how they frowned. He was not abashed when they gnashed
   their teeth. He was as calm as the opened Heaven above him and
   continued though they hurried him out of the city. When they had
   dragged him outside the gate and stripped off their clothes to carry
   out his execution, he did not let fall a single timorous word or
   trembling cry. He stood up and committed his soul to God with calmness.
   And when the first murderous stones felled him to the earth he rose to
   his knees, still not to ask for pity, nor to utter a cowardly cry, but
   to plead with his Lord for mercy upon his

   assailants! Then, closing his eyes like a child tired out with the
   sport of a long summer's day, he drops asleep as on his mother's
   lap--"he fell asleep."

   Believe, then, O Christian, that if you abide in Christ, the same will
   be the case with you! You shall be undisturbed at the premonitions of
   decay. When the physician shakes his head, your heart shall not fail!
   When friends look sad, you will not share their sorrow! We wept when we
   were born though all around us smiled--so shall we smile when we die
   while all around us weep. The dying Christian is often the only calm
   and composed person in all the group which fills the chamber from which
   he ascends to Heaven. Talking of what he enjoys and expects, he glides
   gently into Glory! Why should we expect it to be otherwise? Stephen's
   God is our God! Stephen's faith we already possess in its germ and we
   may have it in the same degree! The Holy Spirit dwells in us even as He
   did in Stephen--and if He puts not forth the same energy--what hinders
   Him but our unbelief? Getting more faith we shall enjoy the same
   tranquil repose of spirit when our appointed hour shall come. Brethren,
   let us not fear death, but descend Jordan's shelving bank without the
   slightest dismay!

   Some other points about Stephen's departure I beg you to notice--points
   relating to the state of his mind. His mind was in a very elevated
   condition. Here, let us first notice his intense sympathy with God. All
   through that long speech of his you see that his soul is taken up with
   his God and the treatment which He had received from Israel. He does
   not speak against his countrymen from any ill will, but he seems to
   take them into very little consideration. His God absorbs all his
   thoughts. He tells how his God had sent Joseph, but his brothers
   persecuted him. His God had sent Moses, but they rebelled against him.
   His God had now sent Jesus and they had been His betrayers and
   murderers. He had pity upon them in his heart, that is clearly seen in
   his dying prayer for them, but still, his main feeling is sympathy with
   God in the rebellions which He had endured from the ungodly.

   Surely this is the mind which possesses the saints in Heaven. I see, as
   I read Stephen's speech, that he regarded impenitent sinners from the
   standpoint of the saints above, who will be so taken up in sympathy
   with God and the righteousness of His government, that the doom of the
   finally rebellious will cause them no pain. The triumph of right over
   willful wrong, of holiness over the foulest and most wanton sin, of
   justice over the ingratitude which made light of redeeming love, will
   clear the soul of all emotion but that which rejoices in every act of
   the Most High because it is and must be right. I know how easily this
   remark may be misrepresented, still it is true, and let it stand.

   Notice, too, how Stephen's mind clung only to that which is purely
   spiritual. All ritualism was clean gone from him. I dare say at one
   time Stephen felt a great reverence for the Temple. The first Jewish
   Christians still continued to feel a measure of that awe of the Temple
   which, as Jews, they had formerly indulged. But Stephen says, "How is
   it the Most High dwells not in temples made with hands? As says the
   Prophet, Heaven is My Throne and earth is My footstool: what house will
   you build Me? says the Lord; or what is the place of My rest?" It is
   noteworthy how the saints, when they are near to die, make very little
   of what others make a great deal of.

   What is ritual to a dying man?--a man with his eyes opened, looking
   into the future and about to meet his God? Sacraments are poor supports
   in the dying hour. Priestcraft, what is it? The reed has snapped
   beneath the weight of a burdened conscience and the tremendous
   realities of death and judgment. The peculiar form of worship which a
   man contended for in health--and the little specialties of doctrines
   which he made much of before--will seem little in comparison with the
   great spiritual essentials, when the soul is approaching the Presence
   Chamber of the Eternal! The saint in death is growingly spiritual, for
   he is nearing the land of spirits and that City of which John said, "I
   saw no temple there." Brethren, it is a grand thing to grow in
   spiritual religion till you break the eggshell of form and shake it
   off--for the outward fashion of ceremonies and even of simplicities is
   too often to men what the eggshell is to the living bird--but when the
   soul awakens into the highest forms of life, we chip and break that
   shell and leave our former bondage.

   Stephen came right away from those superstitious reverences which still
   cast their blight over many Christians and worshipped God, who is a
   Spirit, in spirit and in truth! It is most clear that he rose beyond
   all fear of men. They grin at him, they howl at him, but what matters
   that to him? He will be put to a blasphemer's death outside the city by
   the hands of cruel men--but that daunts him not. His face glows with
   unspeakable joy! He looks not like a man hurried to his execution, but
   as one on the way to a wedding! He looks like an immortal angel rather
   than a man condemned to die! Ah, Brothers and Sisters--so will it be
   with all the faithful!

   Today we fear man, who is but a worm. Today we are so weak as to he
   swayed by the estimation of our fellows and we listen to kindly voices
   which counsel us to speak with bated breath upon certain points, lest
   we grieve this one or that. But the fitter we are for Heaven the more
   we scorn all compromise and feel that for Truth, for God, for Christ,
   we must speak out even if we die--for who are we that we should be
   afraid of a man that shall die and the son of man that is but a worm?
   It is a blessed thing if this shall be growingly our condition! At the
   same time Stephen was free from all cares. He was a deacon, but he does
   not say, "What will those poor people do? How will the widows fare? Who
   will care for the orphans?" He does not even say, "What will the
   Apostles do, now that I can no longer take the labor from off their
   shoulders?" Not a word of it!

   He sees Heaven opened and thinks little of the Church below, love it
   though he does with all his heart! He trusts the Church Militant with
   her Captain--he is called to the Church Triumphant! He hears the
   trumpet sound, "Up and away," and lo, he answers to the summons! Happy
   men who can thus cast off their cares and enter into rest! Why should
   it not be thus with us? Why, like Martha, do we allow our much serving
   to encumber us? Our Lord managed His Church well enough before we were
   born! He will not be at a loss because He has called us Home and,
   therefore, we need not trouble ourselves as though we were
   all-important and the Church would pine for lack of us!

   At the same time, Stephen had no resentments. That was a sweet prayer
   of his, "Lay not this sin to their charge." Just as Daniel before
   Belshazzar saw the scale and saw Belshazzar weighed in it and found
   wanting, so Stephen saw the balances of justice, and this murder of
   his, like a great weight, about to be placed in the scale against the
   raging Jews. And he cried, "Lord, cast not this sin into the balance."
   He could not say, as the Savior did, "They know not what they do," for
   they did know and had been so angered by his speech that they stopped
   their ears to hear no more. But he pleads for them as far as truth
   would permit him while breathing out his soul. Every child of God ought
   to lay aside all resentments at once, or rather he should never have
   any! We are to carry in our hearts no remembrance of ills, but to live
   everyday freely forgiving, as we are everyday freely forgiven. And as
   we get nearer to Heaven there must be growing love to those who hate
   us, for so shall we prove that we have been made ready for the skies.

   To close up this description of his death, Stephen died like a
   conqueror. His name was Stephanos, or crown, and truly that day he not
   only received a crown, but he became the crown of the Church as her
   first martyr. He was the conqueror, not his enemies! They stoned his
   body, but his soul had vanquished them. It was not in their power to
   move him. His quiet look defied their fury. He went home to his God to
   hear it said, "Servant of God, well done," and in nothing had his foes
   despoiled him on the way there! He was more than a conqueror through
   Him that loved Him. These are some of the characteristics of Stephen's
   departure. I trust that in our measure they may be ours. God grant them
   to us and we will give Him all the Glory.

   II. I Now call your attention to a very interesting point--THE MOST
   NOTABLE PECULIARITY OF

   STEPHEN'S DEATH. It was notable for this one point--that it was full of
   Jesus--and full of Jesus in four ways. Jesus was seen, invoked, trusted
   and imitated. First, the Lord Jesus was seen. The martyr looked up
   steadfastly into Heaven and saw the Glory of God--and Jesus standing on
   the right hand of God! At first he was probably in the council hall of
   the Sanhedrim, but the vision seemed to divide the roof, to roll away
   the firmament--and set open the gates of Heaven so that into its
   innermost chambers the anointed eye was able to gaze.

   It is said he saw the Son of Man. Now this is the only place in
   Scripture where Jesus is called the Son of Man by any one but Himself.
   He frequently called Himself the Son of Man. That was, indeed, a common
   name for Himself, but His disciples did not call Him so. Perhaps the
   Glory of the rejected Messiah as Man was the peculiar thought which was
   to be conveyed to Stephen's mind, to assure him that as the despised
   Lord had, at length, triumphed, so, also, should His persecuted
   servant. At all times it is a gladsome sight to see the representative
   Man exalted to the Throne of God, but it was peculiarly suitable for
   this occasion, for the Lord Himself had warned His enemies, "Hereafter
   shall you see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power." He
   had spoken those words to the very men who now heard Stephen bear
   witness that it was even so!

   Stephen saw his Lord standing. Now our Lord is generally described as
   sitting, but it was as if the sympathizing Lord had risen up to draw
   near to His suffering servant, eager both to sustain him and to receive
   him when the conflict was over. Jesus rose from the Throne to gaze upon
   Himself suffering, again, in the person of one of His beloved members.
   The place occupied by the Lord was at the "right hand of God." Stephen
   distinctly saw the ineffable brightness of Eternal

   Glory which no human eye can see until strengthened by superior
   Grace--and amid that Glory he saw the Son of Man in the place of love,
   power and honor, worshipped and adored!

   Now, when we come to die, dear Friends, we may not, perhaps, expect
   with these eyes to see what Stephen saw--but faith has a grand
   realizing power. The fact that Jesus is enthroned is always the same
   and as long as we are sure that He is at the right hand of God, it
   little matters whether we see Him with our natural eyes, for faith is
   the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.
   Brothers and Sisters, if your faith shall be strong when you come to
   die, as doubtless it will be, you will have a sight and sense of Jesus
   in His Manhood at the right hand of God--and this will effectually take
   away from you all fear of death--for you will feel, "If the Man, Christ
   is there, I, being already represented by Him, shall also be there! I
   shall rise from the dead! I shall sit at the right hand of the Father!
   His eternal power and Godhead will raise me up to be where He is, for
   has He not said--"I will that they, also, whom You have given Me be
   with Me where I am"?

   I will, however, venture further. I am convinced, from my own
   observation, that not to a few, but to many dying saints, something
   more is given than the realizations of faith. Much more frequently than
   we suppose, supernatural glimpses of the Divine Splendor are vouchsafed
   to the saints in the hour of their departure. I have heard persons
   comparatively uninstructed, and certainly unimaginative, speak of what
   they have seen in their last hour in such a way that I am certain they
   never borrowed the expressions from books, but must have seen what they
   described. There has been a freshness about their descriptions which
   has convinced me they did see what they assured me they beheld. And,
   moreover, the joy which has resulted from it--the acquiescence in the
   Divine will, the patience with which they have borne suffering--have
   gone far to prove that they were not under the influence of an idle
   imagination, but were really enabled to look within the veil!

   The flesh in its weakness becomes, if I may so say, a rarefied medium!
   The mists are blown away, the obscuring veil grows thinner, disease
   makes tears in it and through the thin places and the tears the
   heavenly Glory shines! Oh, how little will a man fear death, or care
   about pain, if he expects to breathe out his soul on a better Pisgah
   than Moses ever climbed! Well did we sing just now--I am sure I sang it
   with all my heart--

   "Oh, if my Lord would come and meet, My soul would stretch her wings in
   haste, Fly fearless through Death's iron gate, Nor fear the terror as
   she passed." Now this model departure, which is given in Scripture as a
   type of Christian deaths, has this for its ensign, that Christ was
   visible. And such shall be the character of our departure, if through
   faith we are one with Jesus. Therefore, let us not fear.

   Next, notice that Jesus was invoked, for that is the meaning of the
   text. "They stoned Stephen, calling upon God," or invoking, "and
   saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Dying Christians are not
   troubled with questions as to the Deity of Christ. Dear Friends,
   Unitarianism may do to live with, but it will not do to die with, at
   least not for us. At such a time we need an almighty and Divine Savior!
   We need, "God over all, blessed forever" to come to our rescue in the
   solemn article. So Stephen called upon Jesus and worshipped Him. He
   makes no mention of any other intercessor. O martyr of Christ, why did
   you not cry, "Ave Maria! Blessed Virgin, succor me!"? Why did you not
   pray to St. Michael and all angels? Ah, no! The abomination of saint
   and angel worship had not been invented in his day--and if it had been
   he would have scorned it as one of the foul devices of Hell! There is
   one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus. He invoked
   Christ and no one else. Neither do we find him saying a word as to his
   good works, alms deeds, sermons and miracles. No, he invoked the Lord
   Jesus and leaned wholly on Him!

   Ah, Brothers and Sisters, it is well to live and to die resting wholly
   upon Jesus! If you lie down tonight and quietly think of your departure
   and inquire whether you are ready to die, you will not feel at your
   ease till your heart stands at the foot of the Cross, looking up and
   viewing the flowing of the Savior's precious blood, believing humbly
   that He made your peace with God. There is no right living, or joyful
   dying, except in invoking Christ. What did Stephen do next? He trusted
   Jesus and confided in Him only, for we find him saying, "Lord Jesus,
   receive my spirit." He felt that his spirit was about to leave the body
   to fly into the unknown world. Perhaps a shiver came over him of
   natural awe at the great mystery, even as it comes over us when we
   think of being disrobed of the familiar garment of our body. But he
   placed his unclothed spirit in the hands of Jesus and his fear and care
   were over.

   Look, he has quite done with it, now! He prays no more for himself, but
   intercedes for his enemies! And then he closes his eyes and falls
   asleep. This is the simple and sublime art of dying. Once more we take
   our guilty soul and place it in the dear pierced hands of Him who is
   able to keep it. And then we feel assured that all is safe. The day's
   work is done, the doors are fastened, the watchman guards the streets.
   Come, let us fall asleep. With Jesus seen, invoked and trusted, it is
   sweet to die. Notice, once again, that in Stephen we see Jesus
   imitated. The death of Stephen is a reproduction of the death of Jesus.
   Let us hope that ours will be the same.

   It was so, even in little circumstances. Jesus died outside the gate,
   so did Stephen. Jesus died praying, so did Stephen. Jesus died saying,
   "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit." Stephen cannot approach
   God absolutely, but he approaches Him through the Mediator, and he
   says, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Christ dies pleading for His
   murderers, so does Stephen--"Lord, lay not this sin to their charge."
   Now, if our death shall be a reproduction of the death of Jesus, why
   need we fear? It has, up to now, been sweet to be made like He and it
   will still be sweet. Even to suffer with Him has been
   delightful--surely it will be joyful to die with Him! We are willing to
   sleep in Jesus' bed and lie as He did in the bosom of the earth, to
   arise in His likeness at the Resurrection.

   Thus you see, dear Brethren, that Stephen's death was radiant with the
   glow of his Lord's brightness. Christ was glorified and reflected in
   him. None could question whose image and superscription he bore. If our
   lives shall be of that order, our deaths, also, shall be of the like
   character. Let your life be looking unto Jesus, pleading with Jesus,
   trusting in Jesus, copying Jesus--and then your departing moments will
   be attended by visions of Jesus and reproductions of His dying
   behavior! As you have been with Him in the trials of life, He will be
   with you in the closing scenes of death. Happy are they whose deathbed
   Jesus makes, and who sleep in Jesus, to be brought with Him when He
   returns to take the kingdom!

   III. From Stephen's departure we gather something as to THE KIND OF
   DEATH WHICH WE MAY WISELY

   DESIRE. First, it is very desirable that our death should be of the
   same sort of our life. Stephen was full of faith and of the Holy Spirit
   in life--and so was he full of the Holy Spirit in death. Stephen was
   bold, brave, calm and composed in life-- he is the same amid the
   falling stones. It is very sad when the reported account of a man's
   death does not fit in with his life. I am afraid that many funeral
   sermons have done great mischief by their flattery, for persons have
   very naturally said, "This is very strange. I never knew that the
   departed person was a saint until I heard this account of his end.
   Really, when I hear these wonderful things about him--well, I should
   not have thought it."

   No, it will not do to have no character for piety but that which is
   hurriedly run up in a few days of sickness and death. It is ill to die
   with a jerk, getting, as it were, upon another line of rails all on a
   sudden. It is better to glide from one degree of Divine Grace to
   another--and so to Glory. We ought to die daily--die every morning
   before we go down to breakfast--that is to say, we should rehearse it
   all so that when we come to die it will be no new thing to us. Death
   may be the fringe or border of life, but it should be made out of the
   same piece. A life of clay is not to be joined to a death of gold. We
   cannot hope to dine with the world and sup with God. We ought to dwell
   in the house of the Lord every day.

   Again, it is most desirable that death should be the perfecting of our
   whole career, the putting of the cornerstone upon the edifice, so that
   when nothing else is needed to complete the man's labors, he falls
   asleep. Dear Brothers and Sisters, is it so with you? Suppose you were
   to die this morning in the pew would your life be a complete life, or
   would it be like a broken column snapped off in the center? Why, there
   are some, who even in their business lives, have left many necessary
   things undone. For instance, they have not made their wills, yet, and
   will cause much sorrow to wife and children through their neglect. Some
   Christian people do not keep their worldly affairs in proper order, but
   are lax, disorderly and slovenly, so that if they were to die, there
   would be many things of which they would feel loathe to die.

   Mr. Whitfield used to say when he went to bed at night, "I have not
   left even a pair of gloves out of their place: if I die tonight, all my
   affairs, for time and eternity, are in order." That is the best way to
   live--so that, let death come when it may, at midnight, cockcrowing, or
   midday--it will be a desirable finis to a book of which we have written
   the last line. We will have finished our course and served our
   generation--our falling asleep is the fit conclusion of the matter. May
   our death not be one of a kind which needs flurry and hot haste to make
   the man ready. There are people in the world who, if they were going
   off by train and knew of it a month beforehand, would be all in a fever
   an hour before they started! Though they know the time the train
   leaves, they cannot arrive a few minutes before by any means, but rush
   in just as the bell rings and leap into a carriage just at the time the
   train leaves.

   Some die in that fashion, as if they had so much to do and were in such
   a hurry--and besides, had so little Grace that they could be only saved
   so as by fire. When worldly Christians die, there is a deal to be done
   to pack up and get ready for departing. But a true Christian stands
   with his loins girded. He knows he has to travel. He does not know
   exactly when, but he stands with his staff in his hand! He knows the
   Bridegroom is soon coming and he, therefore, keeps his lamp well
   trimmed. That is the way to live and the way to die! May the Holy
   Spirit put us in such a condition that the Angel of Death may not
   summon us unawares, or catch us by surprise! Then will going home be
   nothing out of the common way, but a simple matter.

   Bengel, the famous commentator, did not wish to die in a spiritual
   parade, with a sensational scene, but to pass away like a person called
   out to the street door from the midst of business. His prayer was
   granted. He was revising the proof sheets of his works almost to the
   moment when he felt the death stroke. Is not this well? Equally
   desirable was the end of the Venerable Bede, who died as he completed
   his translation of the Gospel of John. "Write quickly," he said, "for
   it is time for me to return to Him who made me." "Dear master," said
   the pupil, "one sentence is still lacking." "Write quickly," said the
   venerable man. The young man soon added, "It is finished," and Bede
   replied, "You have well said, all is now finished," and he fell asleep.

   So would I desire to depart! So might every Christian desire! We would
   make no stir from our daily holiness. We would change our place but not
   our service--having waited on our Lord at this end of the room--we are
   called up higher and we go! It must be a dreadful thing for a
   professing Christian to die full of regrets for work neglected and
   opportunities wasted. It is sad to have to say, "I must leave my Sunday
   school class before I have earnestly warned those dear children to flee
   from the wrath to come." It would be wretched for me to go home, today,
   and say, "I have preached my last sermon, but it was not earnest, nor
   calculated either to glorify God or benefit my fellow men." Can the end
   of a wasted life be other than unhappy? Will it not be sorrowful to be
   called away with work undone and purposes

   unfulfilled?

   O my Brothers and Sisters, do not live so as to make it hard to die! It
   must also be a sad thing to be taken away unwillingly, plucked like an
   unripe fruit from the tree. The unripe apple holds fast to its place
   and so do many hold hard to their riches and cleave so fondly to
   worldly things that it needs a sharp pull to separate them from the
   world. The ripe fruit adheres but lightly--and when a gentle hand comes
   to take it, it yields itself freely, as if willing to be gathered--
   like an apple of gold into a basket of silver. God make you unworldly
   and forbid that you should cleave so resolutely to things below as to
   make death a violence and departure a terror! Brethren, we would not
   wish to die so that it should be a matter of question, especially to
   ourselves, to which place we are going--and yet you will die in that
   way if you live in that way.

   If you have no assurance of salvation, do you expect it to come to you
   on your dying bed? Why, my dear Friend, when the pain increases and the
   brain becomes weary, you are very likely to suffer depression and,
   therefore, you need strong faith to begin with for your own comfort!
   Would you like friends to go out of your death chamber saying, "We hope
   he is saved, but we stand in doubt concerning him"? Your life should
   prevent that! Holy Mr. Whitfield, when someone observed, "I should like
   to hear your dying testimony," said, "No, I shall, in all probability
   bear no dying testimony." "Why not?" said the other. "Because I am
   bearing testimony everyday while I live and there will be the less need
   of it when I die." That seraphic saint preached up to the last
   afternoon and then went upstairs to bed, and died. There was no need
   for anyone to ask, "What did he say when he was dying?" Ah, no! They
   knew what he said when he was living--and that was a great deal better!
   Let your testimony in life be such that, whether you speak or not in
   your last moments, there shall be no question about whose you were nor
   whom you served.

   In conclusion, one would desire to die so that even our death should be
   useful. I feel persuaded that Stephen's death had a great deal to do
   with Saul's conversion. Have you ever observed the evident influence of
   Stephen upon Paul? Augustine says, "If Stephen had never prayed, Saul
   had never preached." I do not say that the death of Stephen converted
   Saul--far from it--that change was worked by a Divine interposition
   when Saul was on the road to Damascus. But what he saw in Stephen's
   martyrdom had made the soil ready to receive the good seed. Saul, in
   later life, seems to me to be always taking his text from Stephen's
   sermon.

   Read that sermon through at home and see if it is not so. Stephen spoke
   about the Covenant of Circumcision and that was a very favorite topic
   with Paul. When Paul stood at Athens on Mars' Hill and addressed the
   Areopagites he said

   to them, "God that made Heaven and earth dwells not in temples made
   with hands"--almost the identical words which Stephen had quoted--and
   surely the remembrance of Stephen before the Sanhedrim must have rushed
   over the Apostle's mind at the time. There is yet another passage--and
   indeed I might carry on the parallel a very long way--where Stephen
   used the expression, "They received the Law by the disposition of
   angels," an idea peculiar to Paul. Paul is the child of Stephen.
   Stephen dying is the seed out of which Paul springs up. What a
   privilege so to die that a phoenix may rise out of our ashes!

   If we have been useful, ourselves, up to the measure of a moderate
   ability, we may, as we die, call forth greater workers than ourselves.
   Our expiring spark may kindle the Divine light in some flaming beacon
   which, far across the seas, shall scatter the beams of Gospel light!
   And why not? God grant that we may, both in life and in death, serve
   Him well. I would that even in our ashes might live our former
   lives--that being dead we yet may speak! It was a happy thought of an
   earnest Divine who asked that when he was dead he might be placed in
   his coffin where all his congregation might come and see him--and that
   on his bosom should be placed a paper bearing this exhortation,
   "Remember the words which I have spoken to you, being yet present with
   you." Yes, we will go on telling of Jesus and winning souls in life and
   death, if God so helps us! Beloved Believers, love the souls of men and
   pray God to save them!

   As for you who are not saved yourselves, I implore you think of what
   your condition will be when you come to die. Or, if a seared conscience
   should cause you to die in peace, think what you will do at the
   Judgment, when that conscience will become tender. What will you do
   when the lips of the dear Redeemer shall say, "Depart, you cursed, into
   everlasting

   fire in Hell"?--

   "You Sinners, seek His Grace,

   Whose wrath you cannot bear! Look to the dying Savior's face, And find
   salvation there."

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Acts 5:9-15; 7. HYMNS FROM
   "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--855, 829, 853.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Eternal Day

   (No. 1176)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MAY 31, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Your sun shall no more go do wn, neither shall your moon withdraw
   itself: for the Lord shall be your everlasting light, and the days of
   your mourning shall be ended." Isaiah 60:20.

   ISRAEL of old had light while all the rest of the world sat in
   darkness. In consequence of receiving moral and spiritual light from
   God, the nation prospered, and under the smile of Heaven it was greatly
   enriched and multiplied. But, alas, the sun went down and the moon
   withdrew itself, for Israel turned aside and followed after idols, and
   the land was terribly smitten by the hostile sword. Upon her repentance
   her sun arose again and the daughters of Judah rejoiced, but again they
   went astray, for the zealous judge, or the godly king, or the pious
   priest died--and the nation, prone to backsliding, again provoked the
   Lord--and the light of His Countenance was withdrawn. This typical
   Church of God abode not in the light continually, its history was
   checkered with alternate brightness and gloom, repentance and relapse,
   prosperity and adversity.

   What a change from the glory of Solomon to the captivity of Zedekiah!
   From the Temple in its glory to the city in ruinous heaps! Truly, to
   those who knew Israel well, this prophecy of Isaiah must have sounded
   as rare music, and they must have devoutly cried, "Hasten it, O Lord,
   in our time." Another dispensation came. Jesus Christ was born at
   Bethlehem, "a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the Glory of Your
   people Israel." And the sun shone upon the earth as it had never done
   before. A visible Church was called out to walk in the light, which
   Church still exists upon the earth, and from the days of Pentecost
   until now its sun has never altogether gone down, neither has its moon
   withdrawn herself.

   To us, the promise of the text has been fulfilled in a gracious sense,
   for to the Church of God there has never been an utter suspension of
   the Divine light. The light has not always been equally clear, but it
   has still been day. Somewhere or other God has had a visible Church on
   the earth--if not at Rome, yet in the valleys of Piedmont--not in
   palaces of bishops, yet in dens and caves of the earth. Yet the visible
   Church has had her dark days--the text has been only true of her
   comparatively--her sun has gone down in some sense. The long medieval
   night, with its heavy dampness, hung over the souls of the myriads and
   chilled them into crouching superstition, until the day when God sent
   us the Reformation, like a new daybreak.

   Even now there are tokens of returning night, but may the Lord avert
   it. Shine out, you stars in the right hand of Jesus, and let your Lord,
   the Sun of Righteousness shine forth, also, and drive away those Romish
   bats and owls which are fluttering all around us in the hope that their
   beloved darkness will return! The history of the Church has not been a
   clear increasing light, like the growth of day from dawn to noon. Her
   glory has, for a while, departed. Her candlestick has been removed and
   it may be so, yet again. But, Beloved, there is a Church upon the earth
   which is within the visible Church and is its central life. I refer to
   the really elect, called and justified, which are a spiritual Church.
   There are to be found in the visible Church in all its sections--a
   people truly saved in the Lord, not a field of mingled wheat and
   tares-- but all plants of the Lord's right hand planting.

   This secret Church, this Church Mystical, this true body of our Lord
   Jesus Christ may claim to have had this text fulfilled in its
   experience in a far larger sense. "If we walk in the light as He is in
   the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus
   Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin." There are Believers who
   know the meaning of that text, for from the day when they first
   believed they have not ceased to walk in the light. Though now and then
   a cloud has crossed their sky, yet, as a rule, no night of backsliding
   or deadly doubt has come upon them. They have believed fully and,
   therefore, have seen the salvation of God. Their sun has not gone down,
   for the Lord Jesus Christ has never hidden His face, and they have
   rejoiced in an abiding sense of His love.

   I believe that this is the proper condition of all saints. And if
   saints were as they should be it would be fulfilled in them--"your sun
   shall no more go down, neither shall your moon withdraw itself; for
   Jehovah shall be your everlasting light, and the days of your mourning
   shall be ended." Oh, what a glad thing it would be if we could attain
   to this! "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God"--not, we
   "ought" to have it, but, "we have peace with God, through Jesus Christ
   our Lord." We have learned to glory in tribulations, also, crying, "Who
   shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our
   Lord?" If we have learned the meaning of the exhortation, "Abide in
   Me," and are so abiding, then is our fellowship continual and our
   course is as the shining light which shines more and more unto the full
   noontide--

   "Walk in the light! And you shall see Your darkness fade away, Because
   that light on you has shone, In which is perfect day."

   Yet even to the spiritual Church the text has not been fulfilled in its
   largest conceivable sense, for I fear that to the most spiritual some
   darkness comes. Their light is sown, but it has not yet sprung up to
   its full harvest--they still struggle with inward sin--they must still
   wrestle with outward temptations. At any rate, the days of their
   mourning are not, in the most unlimited sense, ended, for though faith
   lifts them above the cares of life and resignation takes out the sting
   of affliction, yet in common with the whole creation they groan, being
   burdened. It is true of the best of saints when they arrive in Heaven,
   that "they came out of great tribulation." God puts even His purest
   ones into the furnace and the branch that bears fruit He purges. Every
   son whom He receives He also chastens.

   For the present our chastisement is not joyous, but grievous. "In the
   world you shall have tribulation," is a part of the legacy of our
   ascended Lord, so that as yet, to the largest extent, we cannot say
   that the days of our mourning are ended. We must, therefore, refer the
   text to a fourth form of the Church. If we see it not at all in the
   typical, just a little in the visible, very much in the spiritual, we
   find it all in the Church Triumphant. The full triumph of the Church of
   Christ shall begin in the millennium. I am not about to enter into
   details, but it seems to me that there is to be on earth a new
   Jerusalem which shall come down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a
   bride for her husband, and there will be "a new Heaven and a new earth,
   in which dwells righteousness."

   Upon this earth where sin prevailed, righteousness will yet conquer!
   Where Christ bled, there shall He reign! Where His heel was bruised,
   shall the same heel crush the dragon's head. That, however, will be as
   it were a prelude, a commencement to the full heavenly triumph. I
   shall, without making any distinction, refer the promise of the text in
   its fullness to the Church in its triumphant condition, whether on
   earth in the millennial period, or in Heaven, world without end. To her
   this Word shall be fulfilled, "Your sun shall no more go down, neither
   shall your moon withdraw itself: the Lord shall be your everlasting
   light, and the days of your mourning shall be ended."

   I. Our first point is--THE LIGHT OF THE TRIUMPHANT CHURCH SHALL BE
   INCESSANT. "Your sun shall no more go down, neither shall your moon
   withdraw itself." There will be no intervening nights of darkness, but
   one long noonday of purity and felicity, "the days of your mourning
   shall be ended." And why will this be? Why does Heaven's joy never
   falter? Why is her purity never defiled? We answer, first, because the
   light of Heaven is independent of creatures. As long as there is a sun
   it will go down. And as long as there is a moon it will wane. But when
   the Lord becomes our light, our independence of the secondary agent
   will lift us up beyond the fear of change.

   In this present state everything must change. God does not bestow upon
   creatures the quality of Immutability, for that belongs to Him, alone.
   The hardest rocks crumble beneath the tooth of time. Even the heavens
   are waxing old and must, one day, be put away like a worn-out vesture
   and as all that comes out of earth partakes of the soil from which it
   springs, all created joys wither and decay. From a sun which has its
   tropics we cannot expect a changeless light. From a moon which waxes
   and wanes, the light can never long be the same. When we shall rise
   above the creature and drink in our supplies directly from the
   changeless all-sufficiency of the Creator, we shall come into perfect,
   unbroken light! Such is the condition of the perfect saints above.

   In Heaven the saints will need no teacher. When God sends a true
   preacher, he is a star in God's right hand, and the Church is bound to
   value his light, which is the gift of Heaven. But we shall need no
   teachers there--we shall see, not through a glass darkly--but face to
   face. God shines upon the Church through His servants one after
   another, and as they are removed in the order of Providence and close
   their useful careers, the Church suffers great loss. But up yonder

   there is only one Pastor and He never dies--"The Lamb in the midst of
   the Throne shall feed them and lead them unto living fountains of
   waters." No teachers will be laid with tears in the silent grave, for
   in the glorified Church no man needs to say to his fellow, "Know the
   Lord," for they all know Him from the least unto the greatest!

   Up there they need no comforters to succor them in the time of their
   distress, for God, Himself, has wiped away all tears from their eyes.
   He has taken up Lazarus from among the dogs and the dunghills and laid
   him in Abraham's bosom! He has lifted up the languishing from their
   beds of pain to sit among princes in Glory! Poor saints will not, then,
   be dependent upon the alms or the consolations of others, though once
   their generous friends were like sun and moon to them. They need not
   fear that their comforts shall depart, for the Lord God is their light!
   The saints are not dependent upon fleeting possessions, or decaying
   estates--here we must have sustenance from without and we are thankful
   to God that it comes in our time of need--but bread perishes, wealth
   takes to itself wings, business decays, prosperity wanes.

   In Glory saints are independent of all created things! They neither
   look to angel, cherub, or seraph for support. They have left the
   streams, for they have reached the Fountainhead! The vessels are no
   more needed, for they lie down and drink at the Well, itself, where the
   crystal water of life bubbles up eternally! They do not send down to
   Egypt for corn, but dwell in their own Goshen where harvests never
   fail! They have come unto their God and what can we say more? O beloved
   Brothers and Sisters, this makes the joy of Heaven--that God Himself
   shines upon the blessed ones and they need no other light--He, Himself,
   is their All in All! With Him is fullness of joy! At His right hand are
   pleasures forevermore! Therefore is it that their sun shall no more go
   down, for they have no sun! And their moon shall not withdraw itself,
   for they have no moon! "The Lord God and the Lamb are the light
   thereof."

   Their light is incessant, secondly, because it is cleared of all
   clouding elements. There is much of consolation in this thought. Here,
   below, in the Church of God, whatever by God's Grace may be our light,
   errors will arise to cloud it. Evil men come in unawares and distract
   God's saints with false doctrines, schisms and heresies. There are none
   such up yonder! Skeptics assail us with doubts and suspicions--there
   are none up there! Hypocrites now steal in and pollute our solemn
   feasts, but no deceiver shall sit down in the banquets of the
   perfected! Formalists mix with us and freeze our devotion. Hosannas are
   made to languish because they fall from tongues unconscious of the glow
   of generous love. But it shall not be so among the Church Triumphant!

   It will be no small blessing to the Church to be free from the
   contamination of the outside world and from the intrusion of false
   professors! Their absence will deliver us from that light discourse
   which now vexes our ear and that inconsistency which grieves our heart.
   Yes, Satan, himself, shall be shut out! The camp of the saints he may
   attempt to attack, but over her ramparts he shall never leap! Those
   sacred walls, whose 12 foundations are inestimably precious stones,
   shall exclude forever the accuser of the Brethren, the fomenter of
   discord and sin. There the wicked cease from troubling and therefore
   nothing shall make our sun go down, or cause our moon to withdraw
   itself, and the purity, the peace, the bliss of Heaven shall be without
   cessation.

   Remember, yet again, that in the Church Triumphant the saints
   themselves shall be so purified that nothing in them shall darken their
   light. Here today Christ changes not, but we change, and hence our joy
   departs. It is not that Divine Grace ceases to beam forth from the Sun
   of Righteousness--our eyes gather the scales of worldliness, so that we
   cannot see it. It shall not be so there. We shall be delivered from the
   last vestige of inbred sin! Corruption and every result of the Fall
   shall have been effectually removed. Among the saints whom God has
   privileged to see His face, no worldliness, no coldness of heart, no
   lethargy, no slothfulness ever intrudes. They are never burdened with
   heavy cares, nor depressed with the recollection of unforsaken sin.
   They neglect no duties, they commit no transgressions--they are without
   fault before the Throne of God--rendered as pure as God, Himself, by
   the blood of Christ and the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit.

   Truly, as I speak about this I long to be among them! We cannot, as
   yet, see afar off, and the plains of Heaven are boundless. Therefore we
   shall need far-reaching sight before we can enjoy their beauties, but
   our inner sight is being strengthened, the films of sin are being
   removed and we shall, before long, have our eyes strengthened to look
   upon the invisible with unclenching gaze. When we enter the Church
   Triumphant, being ourselves without tendency to sin, there will be
   nothing in us to mar our purity or to spoil our joy! Anticipate this,
   Beloved, with great joy. Notice that the text hints that both the major
   and the minor necessities of saints will be abundantly supplied. Have
   you not found, sometimes, that the Lord Jesus Christ has withdrawn
   Himself from you? Then your sun has gone down.

   You are prospering in business. God gives you all that heart can wish.
   The moon does not withdraw herself, but the sun has gone and woe
   beclouds your spirit. It will never be so in Heaven! You shall see your
   Lord face to face without a veil between--and that eternally! Here, on
   the other hand, at times Jesus has shone upon you and as to spiritual
   things you have been rich. But then earthly trouble has hovered over
   you--the moon has withdrawn herself. You have been suffering in body,
   though rejoicing in soul. The head has ached, though the heart has
   triumphed. You have feasted at the table of God, but poverty has swept
   your board till you knew not from where your next meal would come. Not
   often have both sun and moon been as flesh and blood would have them.
   True, you have been able to do without the moon in the presence of the
   sun, but you would have both spiritual and temporal prosperity.

   Now in Heaven all the needs of our nature will be completely supplied.
   The bodies of the saints will be as happy as their souls! Their bodies,
   I say, for I am referring to the risen ones who have attained to the
   full triumphs of which I speak. There shall be for spirit, soul and
   body, that trinity of our manhood, a triple and all-sufficient supply.
   Neither shall the sun go down nor the moon withdraw itself. Oh, what a
   happy thing to have a body which will not need to rise on the Sabbath
   weary with the week's toil needing to be dragged along the road to the
   place of worship and feeling inclined to sleep in the heavy atmosphere
   of the crowded assembly! What bliss to be "clothed upon" with a body
   unlike this load of clay, which far too forcibly reminds us that we
   dwell in a world of sin.

   Soon we shall possess a body light and ethereal, strong and glorious,
   suitable for the soul and quick to obey its motions--a body free from
   every infirmity, delivered from every possibility of pain or
   weariness--a body in which we shall serve God day and night in His
   Temple and shall never, never sin! So, you see, Beloved, another reason
   why the sun of the blessed never goes down is because they, themselves,
   are in all respects filled with an inward and perfect light which is
   the perpetual reflection of the eternal light of Jehovah!

   Once more, let it be remembered that the Church Triumphant will be
   delivered from the vicissitudes of those seasons which cause the going
   down of sun and moon. I do not refer to summer and winter, but to
   ecclesiastical and temporal arrangements, such as the Lord's Day and
   times of assembly and Church fellowship. This blessed Sabbath, how
   rejoiced we are when it comes round! But then towards eventide the
   Sunday hours grow few and many a time has the child of God gone up to
   his chamber and said, "Would God tomorrow were a second Sabbath." We
   have wished that instead of the weekdays, with their toil and care, we
   could step from Sunday to Sunday till we climbed into the Sabbath which
   will never end! It shall be so soon, in the land where--

   "Congregations never break up, And Sabbaths have no end."

   Here we come together and are warmed into a hallowed state of mind and
   would gladly continue in the mount, but we must go down, for other
   duties call us away. But in Glory we shall, all day, charm the
   celestial plains with joyous song and never need to scatter or betake
   ourselves to an inferior calling. Blessed shall the day be when our
   Sunday sun shall no more go down! Here, too, we have our seasons for
   communion. We come together at the Table and, for my part, I am never
   happier than when I see before me the emblems of the Beloved's broken
   body and His blood poured out in infinite love for us. But we cannot
   always be there--we have to eat with publicans and sinners as well as
   with the Lord. We glowed in fellowship like the Master Himself on
   Tabor, until our garments seemed whiter than any fuller could make
   them--but we must go down among the ungodly, yet again, to seek their
   good. We shall not do that, by-and-by. We shall eat bread at the table
   of the King and go no more out forever and forever!

   It was a glad day for Israel when the trumpets rang out the morning of
   the Jubilee, for every slave was free and every debtor found his
   liabilities discharged. Back came each man's lost inheritance and the
   whole nation was glad. With sound of trumpet and of cornet they saluted
   the rising of the sun on the first day of that Jubilee year! But the
   Jubilee year went by and lands were mortgaged and forfeited. And slaves
   fell, again, into slavery. And bankrupts were again seized by their
   creditors. Ah, Beloved, we are coming to a Jubilee of which the
   trumpets shall sound on forever! We shall regain our once forfeited
   inheritance never to have it encumbered again! We shall snap the
   fetters which have bound us, never to feel them again. "If the Son
   makes you free, you shall be free, indeed."

   Thus I have shown you that in Heaven they are free from that
   vicissitude of seasons which now afflicts the sons of men--and so their
   sun goes no down more, neither does their moon withdraw itself.

   II. Let us change the run of our discourse. The light of the triumphant
   Church has been shown to be unceasing. Now we shall show that IT IS
   EVERLASTING. "The Lord shall be your everlasting light." This requires
   no comment. You can see at once why it is so. Why will the perfection
   and the bliss of the saints triumphant never end? First, because the
   God from whom it comes is eternal. We have explained that this bliss
   does not arise from the creature. If it did, it might end. But arising
   wholly from the Creator, how can it end? As long as God lives, His
   people must be happy. When He has perfected them and taken them up to
   be where He is, the fountain from which they drink cannot dry, for it
   is infinitely full and fresh. The sun which gives them light cannot be
   dimmed, for it is immutable.

   Again, the Covenant by which the saints stand in Heaven is a sure one.
   There are in it solemn engagements entered into by the eternal God,
   never to turn away from His love. By two immutable things in which it
   is impossible for God to lie, He has given us strong consolation. Every
   sin has been put away from the triumphant saint. What, then, can
   destroy them? For them Christ has discharged all their debts! What,
   then, can be brought against them? For them an eternal inheritance has
   been bought by Divine blood! How, then, by any possible means, can they
   lose it? God is forever true, He cannot forsake. God is forever strong,
   He cannot fail. God is forever loving, He cannot frown upon His people.
   The Lord must be their everlasting light!

   Besides, the guarantee of that Covenant can never fail, seeing it is
   Christ Himself. "Because I live you shall live also" is the great seal
   set upon the indentures by which we hold our inheritance in the skies.
   And till we shall see a dying Christ, till He who has Immortality shall
   expire, till Christ, the Son of God, very God of very God, shall cease
   to be, it cannot, by any possibility, come to pass that one child of
   God shall lose his inheritance! The seal is Divine, the security is
   unquestionable. And, Brothers and Sisters, there is this to be added,
   that those who possess Heaven are also, themselves, immortal. When we
   once enter the Church Triumphant there shall be no more death, neither
   sorrow nor crying, for the former things are passed away!

   The body was sown in corruption, but it is raised in incorruption! It
   was liable to disease, death and corruption-- the worm could devour it
   and the winds scatter its particles. But it shall be raised in
   perennial youth, free from any tendency to corruption or any liability
   to suffer. Oh, happy spirits who, in themselves, possess a life
   enduring as the life of God! The Lord shall be their everlasting light!
   I leave that point because it needs no enlargement. It rather needs to
   be thought upon and enjoyed.

   III. I want your earnest attention and help, in the third place, while
   I mention that, according to the text, THE

   LIGHT OF THE CHURCH TRIUMPHANT SHALL BE BOUNDLESS. "The Lord shall be
   your everlasting light."

   Now, the Lord is Infinite. If He is our sun there can be no limit to
   the light in which we shall receive. But how am I to speak upon an
   infinite theme? I can only touch the surface of the brook as the
   swallow does, and then up and away! But I cannot dive into its depths.
   Only notice this, that if God is to be our light, then in every
   separate Believer there will be a perfect light of bliss and holiness.
   I mean in you, Beloved!

   You are aged. You feel, also, that you are full of infirmities and
   sins. Now, these will all vanish and that weakened form of yours shall
   be raised in power! Your ignorance will give place to the light of
   knowledge, your sin to the light of purity, your sorrow to the light of
   joy! It does not yet appear what you shall be, but you shall be like
   your Lord and you know how bright and lustrous your Lord was when He
   was on Tabor--and how glorious when He rose from the dead. Such shall
   you be! You are already a child of God, but soon your glory shall shine
   forth and your purity, peace and happiness shall be seen by all. Yes,
   this is true of you, you who were sometime darkness, but now are light
   in the Lord-- you shall be flooded with Glory! Like the bush in the
   desert you shall be aglow with Deity. Bush as you are, God Himself
   shall dwell within you and your brightness shall be as the sun.

   In Glory, in addition to your possessing personal light, you will enjoy
   the closest possible fellowship with God. How near a creature can get
   to the Creator is hard to say, but the sons of God shall be brought as
   near to God as by any conceivable means a finite being can be brought
   to the Infinite. What delights there will be in such close fellowship!
   When we have drawn near to God in prayer we have been so happy we could
   scarcely have been more so--but what must it be to dwell forever in the
   Divine Glory! Men of God have sometimes felt more of joy in His
   Presence than their bodies could bear, and have cried, "Stop, Lord,
   stop! I cannot bear any more! Remember, I am only an earthen vessel,
   and if I have more of this I shall die."

   Solomon sings of heavenly love-sickness in the song, "Stay me with
   flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love." The love of
   Jesus overpowers our souls and casts them into a swoon of delight. We
   shall be more capable of its enjoyment soon. You cannot bear more than
   a sip of Heaven now, but you will swim in it by-and-by! When you only
   get one flash of Heaven's sunlight, you cover your eyes because of the
   excessive Glory. But you will soon live in the blaze of it, like
   Milton's angel in the sun! Among the everlasting burnings of Jehovah's
   splendor you will walk with undimmed eyes. Can you conceive what it
   means? Your mind will be enlarged, expanded, made capable of loftier
   thoughts than now. You will be a grander being--a man, but such a man
   as the Man Jesus Christ is! Even this day your manhood in Him has
   dominion over all the works of God's hands, all sheep and oxen, yes,
   and the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea and whatever passes
   through the paths of the sea. But then you will more clearly realize
   the royalty of manhood--you shall be a king to the fullest degree, a
   king unto God!

   That glorious light will give us the clearest views of Gospel Truth.
   There will be no muddled theology in Heaven, nor any doctrine concealed
   from us, for we shall know even as we are known. With the Lord for our
   light we shall see far and deep. Mysteries which perplex us now shall
   be simplicities then! How I long to know more of the Covenant of Grace.
   How I long to drink into the grand doctrine of electing love. How would
   I peer into the mystery of the Trinity and know something more of the
   Three in One. Secrets will open up when Jesus applies the key. I
   suppose that he who has been in Heaven but a day knows more of God than
   he who has been a Doctor of Divinity for 50 years--the light is so
   clear in Heaven that we shall know even as we are known. Would God we
   were there!

   There, no doubt, we shall also understand more of Providence. Here our
   sun goes down, sometimes, as to the Divine dealings. We cannot make out
   what He means. The lines are dark and bending. We thought He would have
   led us by a straight course, but we wind to and fro in the wilderness.
   You shall see it all soon, Brothers and Sisters, for what you know not
   now, you shall know hereafter. All the happiness which knowledge and
   understanding can bring to intelligent beings shall be at our feet.
   There we shall receive the utmost endurable joy. Think of that bliss in
   the shape which you like best, for you shall have it! Some have thought
   the joy of Heaven would lie in knowledge--they shall have it! Others
   have rejoiced in the prospect of continued service--they shall have it!
   They shall serve Him day and night in His Temple.

   I know not if I am idle, but the sweetest thought of Heaven to me is
   rest, and I shall have it, for "there remains, therefore, a rest for
   the people of God." Peace! O quiet Soul, do you not long for it? You
   shall have it! Security and a sense of calm! O, tempest-tossed One, you
   shall have them! Some have wished for strength and power. You shall be
   raised in power! Fullness, the filling up of every vacuum! You shall
   have it--you shall be filled with all the fullness of God! I am a long
   way out of my depth, now, but I am not afraid of sinking! I shall never
   exaggerate--the joys of Heaven are ecstatic, so that if we knew
   anything of them at this moment we should be like Paul, who
   said--"Whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell, God
   knows."

   Ecstatic--that is standing right out of yourself! That will be your
   condition--you will get away from yourself altogether and be "plunged
   in the Godhead's deepest sea and lost in His immensity." It will be a
   rapture, as it were, a snatching away of yourself. Like the chariots of
   Amminadib, shall be the joys into which you shall be lifted up and
   borne away! We shall know all about it before long, some of us, so that
   there is not much need to attempt a premature description. When the
   Lord is the light, who knows how bright the light must be? When the
   Lamb is the light, who knows how soft that light will be? And when the
   Lord is the Lamb and the Lamb is the Lord, and the Lord and the Lamb
   are at once the light, who knows how sweet, how everything that is
   lovely, that eternal light must be? Break on us, break on us, O
   Infinite splendor, for our hearts would have this cloudland to be up
   and away, where sacred, high, eternal noon makes up the livelong day!

   But patience, my Brothers and Sisters, patience, for a little longer
   time! We must wait till our work is done and then shall we receive the
   full reward. Let us be encouraged by the prospect of the Glory to be
   revealed in us.

   IV. My last point is to be this--THE LIGHT OF THE CHURCH TRIUMPHANT IS
   UNMINGLED, for the text

   says, "The days of your mourning shall be ended." Sit down a few
   minutes and drink down this blessed sentence. "The days of your
   mourning shall be ended." What sort of mourning? The mourning from a
   persecuted world. No slander, no imprisonment, no racks, no breaking
   alive upon the wheel, no consuming amid the flames. What must Heaven be
   to those who ascended through a shower of stones, or were borne aloft
   by the fiery chariot, as the martyrs from Smithfield's burning stakes?
   No more of suffering there! The mourning days of the martyred Church
   shall be ended.

   There will be no more mourning from the common trials of life. No
   losses, no crosses, no bodily pains, no infirmities of old age, no
   bereavements, no child taken from the bosom, no husband from the side,
   no funeral knell, no cruel grave. Let the Lord be praised that not a
   wave of trouble disturbs yon glassy sea! Then shall we be delivered
   from all mourning caused by our inward sin. We shall look within and
   find no envy in our hearts, no pride, no rebellion, no lust, no
   tendency to evil. Then we shall be delivered from all temptation to sin
   from without. No devil, no insinuating doubts, no corroding cares, no
   wicked world, no pomp of the eyes, no pride of life, no woes of penury,
   nor perils of wealth--we shall be delivered from all these!

   We shall be delivered from every kind of mourning as to an absent God,
   for we shall never grieve Him again, nor vex His Spirit, nor cause Him
   to take down the chastening rod. "The days of your mourning shall be
   ended." I find that one version reads it, I know not whether correctly
   or not, "The days of your mourning shall be recompensed," and I say
   this to those who have to mourn more than others, you shall have a
   recompense. Every pang you suffer shall have its reward. "But how can
   that be?" you ask. Why, dear mourning Ones, when you get to Heaven you
   will see that you were fulfilling the Divine purposes as much upon the
   sick bed as you would have been in the activities of life! You do not
   understand it now, but you shall then know that the Lord did not grieve
   you for nothing--and when you see the great results arising from your
   suffering--you will bless Him and kiss the pierced feet of Christ and
   thank Him for the great privilege of being permitted to suffer.

   If you are called to suffer as a Christian, you will then see how you
   "made up that which was behind of the sufferings of Christ, for His
   body's sake, that is the Church," for the whole body of Christ must
   suffer, not the Head only, but all the members. And you, in taking a
   part, help to make up the measure which must be endured by the entire
   company of the faithful. You will also see how the Spirit of God
   sanctified your sufferings to you, how they prevented sin, how they led
   you into a deeper experience, how they prepared you for higher service.
   And oh, among the sweet notes of praise which you will render to the
   All-loving Father, this will be one of the sweetest! You will bless Him
   for every pain, for every groan, for every sickness--and the days of
   your mourning will be recompensed!

   Beloved, what a change this will be for some here present who have,
   perhaps, very seldom known a day free from depression of spirit or pain
   of body--to step right away from all this into everlasting, unalloyed
   delight! Some of us are easily cast down and we know what it is to grow
   brain-weary. There, day without night, we shall praise and bless God
   and tell the angels of the Infinite Wisdom of God in Christ Jesus! All
   this ought to inspire the saints with ardor--this glorious hope should
   quicken us! We are not far from Home. Pilgrims of God, you are getting
   weary, perhaps, you especially who are advanced in years. Now, at this
   time, the Spirit of God has brought you to the top of a hill from which
   you can see your expected end.

   There it lies! Can you see its hills, its valleys covered with milk and
   honey, and the vine and fig tree under which you shall sit down and
   none shall make you afraid? It is a little way further, only a little
   further. You will be helped all the rest of the road as you have been
   up till now. Those shoes of iron and brass are not worn out, though you
   have worn them these 50 years. They will last you the few odd miles
   which you have yet to travel and though you think it a long way, it is
   not so. Just out of sight, beyond that hill, there stand horses of
   fire, and chariots of fire which your heavenly Father has sent to bear
   you away! And before you know it you will be in Christ's arms, fainting
   away with Glory! Before you know it, I say, Death will be but a pin's
   prick--

   "One gentle sigh, your fetter breaks, We scarce can say you're gone,
   Before your ransomed spirit takes Its mansion near the Throne!" And the
   days of your mourning shall be ended!

   Great fear should fall upon some in this house that they may never
   behold this light. I fear, Sirs, that some of you will never attain
   that blissful Glory. I will ask you three questions and have done. Are
   you satisfied with earthly things? Are you content with a sun that must
   go down and with a moon that must withdraw itself? Are you saying, "Who
   will show us any good?" Ah, Sirs, your boasting is evil, for it will
   soon pass away--and what will you do in the day when money cannot help
   you, broad acres cannot bless you, friends cannot cheer you and you
   must take the last dread voyage all alone? Woe, woe unto you if you
   have not a better sun than yonder feeble orb, a better moon than yon
   waning satellite!

   I will ask you further, have you light from Heaven, yet? Is there any
   light from God within you? Remember, you cannot enjoy the light of God
   forever if you do not behold it now. Have you thought of that? Alas,
   God has not been in all your thoughts! How many live in this world with
   no more thought of God than dogs and horses have! He is no Friend of
   theirs! They never seek His face! They never do Him honor! If He is
   their Father, certainly they are strange children, for they never speak
   with their Father, nor care about Him! Ah, Sirs, you need on earth the
   light from above, or you will never have it in eternity.

   Lastly, are you willing to have light from above? Are you willing to
   receive it? Do you desire it? Will you give up the light of self and
   self-complacency and self-reliance? Will you trust in Jesus? Will you
   take the Lamb who is the light of Heaven, the bleeding Lamb, to be the
   light and comfort of your souls? Will you see your sin laid on the Lamb
   of God which takes away the sin of the world and trust Him as suffering
   in your place, to make expiation for your guilt? For, if so, the Lamb
   will give you pardon now and perfection hereafter! He will be to you
   the Star of Bethlehem today and the Sun of Righteousness forever!

   God bless you, Brothers and Sisters. May we all meet in that land of
   light. I am speaking to some who will be there before me, though I
   shall be there before some of you--if there is a possibility of finding
   one another out we will do so-- and we will remember the happy summer's
   morning in which we talked together of the light that can never fade!
   And we will say to one another, "The half was not told us. The poor
   preacher was but as an owl trying to describe the sun! It was too
   bright for him, but he did his best." God bless you. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Isaiah 60. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--174, 309, 871.
     __________________________________________________________________

Fearful Of Coming Short

   (No. 1177)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JUNE 7, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into
   His rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was
   the Gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did
   not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it."
   Hebrews 4:1,2.

   THE general strain of the Apostle Paul is confident and even jubilant.
   Where in the whole compass of Revelation do you meet with bolder
   writing than that which comes from his pen? "There is therefore now no
   condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." "For I am persuaded,
   that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
   powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
   nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of
   God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." "Who shall lay anything to the
   charge of God's elect?" "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded
   that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him." Paul is
   the great doctor of faith and teacher of full assurance. You meet with
   nothing in his writings which would encourage doubts and fears, or lead
   the saints into bondage to anxiety and suspicion.

   Yet, in the text before us, Paul does not speak of faith so much as
   offear, and does not so much exhort us to boldness as to a reverent
   trembling, lest by any means we should come short of the rest which God
   has promised. Before we have concluded this morning's discourse, we
   shall be able to show that such caution is quite consistent with the
   Apostle's usual teaching and is, indeed, an essential part of it. He
   would have us cautious, that we may thereby lay a solid foundation for
   confidence. He who has been careful to build his house well and to
   found it upon a rock, is the man who can fitly be at peace in the day
   of storm. The holy fear of today brings forth the full assurance of
   days to come.

   It was important that the Apostle's teaching should be of a complete
   and balanced nature. Only unwise persons allow any one quality of their
   character to destroy another--a moral balance must be aimed at and
   maintained. The teacher of full assurance must also inculcate
   watchfulness or he will be a one-sided instructor. Boldness and
   confidence are all the more likely to be preserved in their integrity
   if seasoned with the salt of holy fear, without which faith may become
   carelessness and full assurance degenerate into presumption. The
   Apostle, here, exhorts us to fear upon a subject of the utmost
   importance. He had such a value for the rest which God has laid up for
   His people, that he trembled lest any one of His brethren should miss
   it, or seem to miss it.

   I do not marvel that a man so strong in faith as he was, and so full of
   holy expectancy of the promised rest, should feel a jealous alarm lest
   any of those committed to him should fail to reach the desired end. Is
   not every loving father fearful that his child may not succeed in life?
   Love never thinks of a beloved one tossed upon the sea without a
   measure of anxiety, nor can we see our friends crossing the ocean of
   life without a tender fear for them. That fear makes us beg them to be
   cautious and watchful. My earnest love to your souls compels me to
   dwell upon such sacred warnings as that of my text. Heedless and
   Too-Bold are never wise--in watchfulness is our safety. To this subject
   I shall address myself with all my heart, trusting that the Spirit of
   God may also arouse your hearts to give it the consideration which it
   deserves.

   I. We shall first answer the inquiry, WITH WHAT DOES THE FEAR ENJOINED
   IN THE TEXT MAINLY CONCERN ITSELF? "Let us therefore fear, lest, a
   promise being left us of entering into His rest, any of you should seem
   to come short of it." Now, the Apostle cannot mean that we are to fear
   lest we should come short of Heaven for lack of merit! Why, my Brothers
   and Sisters, there is not a man living, nor has one ever lived, nor
   shall one ever live, who will not come short of Heaven if he tries that
   road! Human merit is not the way to Heaven! Since the hour in which our
   first parent broke the Law for us, the perfect keeping of the Law has
   been impossible!

   Neither is the keeping of the Law set before us in the Gospel of our
   Lord Jesus Christ as the way of acceptance with God. "By the works of
   the Law there shall no flesh living be justified; for by the Law is the
   knowledge of sin." The just shall live by faith and it is in the matter
   of faith that we are cautioned against coming short. The Apostle would,
   with indignation, have spurned the idea that the Gospel race is to be
   run at the foot of Sinai--and that its prize would be a reward for good
   works! Over and over again he has plainly declared, "it is not of
   works, lest any man should boast," but by Divine Grace, as the pure
   gift of the good pleasure and mercy of God. We must not, therefore,
   twist his words into a legal injunction, for they were never intended
   to bear such a meaning.

   The great point which we are to be concerned about is lest we come
   short of the heavenly rest by failing in the faith which will give us
   the rest. Notice the second verse of the text, for that makes it clear
   enough--"For unto us was the Gospel preached as well as unto them: but
   the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in
   them that heard it." To this, therefore, we must give earnest heed. We
   must see to it that faith is mixed with our hearing of the Word. The
   way to Heaven is by faith--we are to fear lest we have a false faith, a
   faltering faith, or a temporary faith-- and so come short of the
   heavenly rest.

   Note, then, that it becomes us to be peculiarly anxious that we do not
   come short of fully realizing the spirituality of faith. The Jews in
   the wilderness saw the sacrifices, but they did not look to the grand
   Sacrifice. They saw the blood poured out at the altar, but their eyes
   did not look to the blood which would, in the fullness of time, be shed
   for many for the remission of sins. They looked at the washings and the
   different cleansings, but they did not see that their spirit needed to
   be renewed and their nature changed. They were content with the outward
   rituals and missed the inner meaning--they did not recognize that faith
   in the living God is the grand essential.

   I fear that many religionists of all denominations fall short in this.
   They are satisfied because they have attended to their sacraments and
   their ceremonies, or they are quite content because they have taken
   their place at a simple, unadorned service. But the mysterious power of
   the Holy Spirit is not felt, nor is His absence lamented by them. The
   outward things being done, they conceive that everything is done. Some
   read a chapter of the Scriptures and repeat a prayer daily--with the
   full conviction that the practice will be sure to do them good--though
   they do not meditate on what they read, or pour out their hearts in
   their prayers.

   As the Papist rests in his crucifix and does not, in soul, come to
   Jesus, so may the Protestant rest in his Bible, or his form of prayer
   and come short of real communion with God. Many are content with the
   shells of religion, whereas it is the kernel, only, which can feed the
   soul. The bended knee is nothing! The prostrate heart is everything!
   The uplifted eyes are nothing--the glance of the soul towards God is
   acceptable. The hearing of good words and the repeating of them in
   prayer or in song will amount to very little--if the heart is absent
   the whole thing will be as dead as a stone. We must be born again!
   Baptism avails nothing apart from that. We must live spiritually upon
   the slain Redeemer--the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper avail
   nothing if we do not feed upon Jesus.

   "With the heart man believes unto righteousness." The inner nature, the
   soul, must be quickened, for "God is a Spirit and they that worship Him
   must worship Him in spirit and in truth." I exhort you, Brethren, to
   fear lest any of you come short of this, for if you do, you will come
   short of the rest which remains for the people of God. "Rend your
   hearts and not your garments." Draw near unto God with your hearts, for
   if not, your lips insult Him. It will not matter how orthodox you may
   be in creed, nor how attentive to the rites, even, of the Church of
   Christ, itself. Unless your spirit, your inner self, is reconciled to
   God, pardoned through Jesus Christ and you have access to the Father in
   the power of the Spirit through Jesus--your religion is in vain. This
   exhortation is to be repeated in every street of our city! The great
   majority of professing Christians need to be admonished concerning it,
   for everywhere the religion of show is set up and the religion of the
   heart is neglected. The outside of religion is garnished with fine
   churches, organs, altars and enriched with learning and eloquence--but
   the vitality of godliness and careful conscientious discipleship are
   utterly despised.

   The exhortation of our text leads us to say, next, that we must take
   heed lest we fail to discern the fact that the whole way of salvation
   is of faith. Many have not even learned this elementary Gospel Truth!
   They suppose religion to be a matter of attendances upon religious
   exercises, observances of moral precepts and the like. They think as
   long as their life is regular and their habits are respectable, they
   may remain peaceful in the conviction that things are pretty right--or
   at any rate will right themselves, one of these days--but they scarcely
   know how! Whoever reads this Bible attentively will discover that the
   way of salvation runs in quite another direction, lies, in fact,
   here--"He that believes in the Son has

   everlasting life, but he that believes not shall not see life, but the
   wrath of God abides on him." "It is of faith that it might be by
   Grace." "By Grace are you saved through faith."

   The commission which our Lord gave to the Apostles on the Mount of
   Olives ran thus, "Go you into all the world, and preach the Gospel to
   every creature. He that believes and is baptized shall be saved; he
   that believes not shall be damned." He did not say, "To him whose life
   is orderly, faith is unimportant," but He made faith an absolute
   essential! Let us not stop short of this or be at peace till we can
   claim the promise, "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved."
   Faith is essential, and we must have it. In a word, we must put our
   trust in the blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must
   give up all other confidences and cast ourselves entirely upon Him.
   Otherwise we shall certainly never enter into the rest which is
   reserved for Believers.

   Here let us examine ourselves with great anxiety, for on many points we
   may come short. As for instance, we may fail in reference to the Object
   of our faith. A man may say, "I have faith," but another question
   arises, "What have you faith in?" "Well, I have faith in what I have
   felt." Then get rid of it! What you have felt is not an object of
   faith, nor to be trusted in at all. "I have faith," says another, "in
   the doctrines which I have been taught." I am glad you believe them,
   but remember, doctrines are not the Savior. A man may believe all the
   doctrines of the Truth of God and yet he may be lost. A creed cannot
   save, neither can a dogma redeem. What is the object of faith, then? It
   is a Person. It is a living, Divine, appointed Person. And who is that
   Person? He is none other than Jesus, the Nazarene, who is the Son of
   God, God over all, blessed forever, and yet the son of Mary, born into
   this world for our sakes!

   No faith will save a man which does not rest upon Jesus Christ as God.
   We must depend upon a whole Christ or else our faith is not the faith
   of God's elect. We must believe in His proper humanity and rejoice in
   the sufferings which He endured. We must believe in His assured Deity
   and rejoice in the merit which that Deity imparted to His suffering. We
   must believe in Christ as a Substitute for us, suffering that we might
   not suffer, making Atonement on our behalf to the broken Law of God, so
   that God can be just and yet the Justifier of him that believes. If we
   do not fix our faith upon this basis our faith is not the work of the
   Holy Spirit, for His work always tends to glorify Christ.

   Brothers and Sisters, let us be very careful here, for if our faith is
   strong, but rests upon a weak foundation, it will be like a builder who
   should lay a course of granite upon a foundation of sand. It will be of
   no service, whatever, to have a firm faith unless that faith has a
   substantial basis. If mistake is made about the Person of Christ, it is
   fatal, for it destroys the foundation. If the very foundation is a
   false one, then all the building will only hasten the ultimate fall.
   Build safely, therefore, on the solid rock of God in human flesh,
   redeeming us by the Sacrifice of Himself. "Other foundation can no man
   lay than that which is laid." "There is none other name given under
   Heaven among men whereby we must be saved." Rest, therefore, on His
   blessed Person and His finished work, or you will surely come short of
   His rest.

   Here let us remark that the quality of our faith must be one object of
   our anxious care, and for its qualities I would mention, first, that it
   must be simple. To rely upon Christ in part is deadly--our faith must
   be altogether unmixed. If I depend in part upon the righteousness of
   Christ, in part upon the occult influences conveyed by a priest, in
   part upon sacraments, in part upon my own repentance, in part upon my
   overt faith, in part upon anything, I am lost forever! Jesus will be a
   whole Savior or no Savior. I must throw my whole weight upon His bosom
   and cling to Him, alone, for no other can bear me up from destruction.
   Look well to the simplicity of your confidence, my Brothers and
   Sisters, and beware of mixing self-confidence with your faith--all that
   is of Nature's spinning must be unraveled--every thread of it must be
   destroyed.

   You think you can help Christ? Would you yoke an ant with a seraph? If
   you did, they would be a far more equal pair than Christ and you!
   Loathe, abhor, detest everything like confidence in yourself, or in
   your fellow men, or in sacraments or in creeds, or in anything
   whatever, except Jesus Christ your Lord--

   "On Christ the solid Rock I stand; All other ground is sinking sand."
   This faith must be as real as it is simple. It will not avail you to
   merely say, "I believe in Jesus." You must really do so. So often have
   men told us, "Only believe in Jesus and you shall be saved"--that
   persons have conceived faith to be a trifle and have imagined that to
   think they believe will be quite enough. But to think you believe and
   actually to have faith are very different things. To rely alone upon
   Jesus is no small matter. "This is the work of God, that you believe in
   Him

   whom He has sent." May your faith be not only real, but intense and
   hearty, earnest and living! Let your trust be a whole-hearted one, for,
   "With the heart man believes unto righteousness."

   You know with what heart soldiers have trusted their commanders. They
   have gone into the fight and been outnumbered, but they have felt that
   their leader was so skillful in war--and so sure to win that they have
   remained undaunted under terrible attacks--and their battalions have
   stood firm as iron walls amid a sleet of deadly missiles. With
   unstaggering faith they have rested in the prowess of their leader and
   have earned the victory! Such must be our confidence in Christ.
   Whatever may discourage our hope, whatever may contradict the
   promise--ours it is to repose in Jesus with all our soul and
   strength--for such faith unites to the Lamb and brings salvation
   through His name. Beware of a notional faith, an historical faith, a
   faith which deals with statements, theories and opinions. Get an
   enthusiastic confidence which flings itself at the pierced feet and
   lies there, or only rises up to march forward at the bidding of Him who
   said, "It is finished," when He bowed His head and gave up the ghost.
   Oh, may we never even seem to come short of such a faith as this!

   But we must also take care that we do not come short as to the inner
   working of faith upon our nature. True faith walks hand in hand with
   repentance. A faith that never wept is a faith that never lived. Faith
   without repentance is dead. Hatred of sin always accompanies a sense of
   pardon. Faith is the inseparable attendant upon regeneration, even as
   light attends the sunrise. When faith comes into the soul, the heart is
   changed, the man becomes a new creature in Christ Jesus--he receives
   new life and with it new faculties, new hopes, new dreads, new loves,
   new hates, new pleasures and new pains. "Behold I make all things new,"
   is the voice of Christ when He comes into the heart by faith.

   Now, Beloved, are you really, radically and totally changed? If not, it
   is not for me to flinch from stating the Truth of God to you--however
   reformed and however devout you may seem to be, you come short of the
   Divine rest, for, "you must be born again." There must be the new birth
   in your spirit, or else you are not numbered among the chosen of God
   and among the saved ones you can never sit in Heaven. Search
   yourselves, lest you are deceived--

   "Vain are your fancies, airy flights,

   If faith is cold and dead.

   None but a living power unites

   To Christ the living Head.

   Grace, like an uncorrupted seed,

   Abides and reigns within.

   Immortal principles forbid

   The sons of God to sin."

   Faith must also be judged of by its power upon the character. The man
   who really believes in Jesus becomes a man of prayer. Never had a man
   faith and yet despised the Mercy Seat. "Behold, he prays," is a
   declaration akin to, "Behold, he believes." How about your private
   prayers, then, my dear Friends? Are they neglected? Are they performed
   in a slovenly manner? I will not inquire so much as to your formal
   prayers, as to the spirit of prayer--does your heart, all the day long,
   go up to God in silent cries and secret groans? Do you speak to God out
   of your inmost soul by snatches while at your work? Do you say, "My
   God, my Father, help me," when none could tell that your lips are
   moving? If you have not the spirit of prayer, you are destitute of one
   of the surest signs of spiritual life--and you may conclude that your
   faith is dead and that you come short of God's rest.

   True faith works upon us by leading us to obedience. When we believe in
   Jesus, we desire to do all that Jesus tells us. Many Christians fall
   short here. They want to do as little as they can and yet keep a quiet
   conscience. They do not read some parts of the Bible for fear they
   should discover duties which would be inconvenient to attend to.
   Shutting the eyes to heavenly light is dangerous work! Do not knowingly
   neglect the smallest command of our Lord Jesus Christ, for an act of
   willful disobedience upon a point which may seem to be non-essential
   may sufficiently prove that your profession is rotten at the core
   because you do not delight in the Law of the Lord--

   "Faith must obey her Father's will,

   As well as trust His Grace.

   A pardoning God is jealous, still,

   For His own holiness.

   When from the curse He sets us free,

   He makes our natures clean. Nor would He send His Son to be The
   minister of sin."

   Faith works in us separation from sinners. Those who believe in Jesus
   cannot enter into the pleasures of the ungodly. They have higher joys.
   Like the eagle, they disdain the carrion upon which the world's
   vultures feed. Shall an angel be seen rioting with the unclean and the
   profane, enjoying their fooleries and laughing at their excesses? Yet
   the heir of Heaven is akin to angels--and it were a shame for him to
   stoop to that which charms only the baser part of mankind. "Holy,
   harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners," is the great Apostle and
   High Priest of our profession--and His true disciples imitate Him.

   What do you say as to your faith, my Brothers and Sisters? Is it of
   that kind which separates you from the world? Does it inspire you to
   fight against temptation? Does it lead you to conquer sin? Does it
   impel you to walk with God? Does it put you into the light where God
   dwells? Remember that text, half of which is often quoted and the rest
   willfully forgotten, "If we walk in the light as God is in the light,
   we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His
   Son, cleanses us from all sin." Mark well that the cleansing by blood
   is joined to the walking in the light--why is this so seldom mentioned?
   Walk with God, Brothers and Sisters, then you are cleansed! But if
   there is no walking with God, you may well fear that your faith is not
   of that kind which brings the saints to their everlasting rest.

   I would gladly speak with many tears and sorrowful entreaties at this
   time, so as to press these solemn thoughts upon your minds. For, my
   Brethren, there is reason to fear lest a promise being left of entering
   into this rest, some of us will come short of it! Do not refuse to
   examine yourselves, for there is urgent need of it! I dare do no less
   than implore you to attend to the matter at once.

   II. Pursuing the same subject, our second point is this--WHAT
   CIRCUMSTANCES MAY SUGGEST THE

   NECESSITY FOR THIS FEAR? The first is this. It is certain that many
   professors apostatize. We sang truly just now--

   "When any turn from Zion's way, Alas, what numbers do!"

   Apostates throng the gates of Hell! True faith is, in every case,
   immortal, and cannot be destroyed! If men have really entered into
   God's rest by living faith, they will never depart from it for, "the
   gifts and calling of God are without repentance." He who has begun a
   good work in us will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. They who
   come short of entering into this rest may have thought they believed,
   but they never did. They may have had a sincere belief that they were
   children of God, but they were not. They deceived themselves and
   mistook the name of life for life itself.

   Now, if others apostatize, may we not also? If we have really believed
   we shall not apostatize, perhaps our faith is not real. Our candle may
   have been lit by our own flame and, if so, it will surely go out.
   Nothing but the work of the Holy Spirit will endure to the end. Note,
   again, that we ourselves know others who are, we fear, much deceived
   and fall short of true salvation. We are not to judge--God forbid we
   should--but we cannot help suspecting, from the actions of some of our
   fellow professors, that their profession covers a good deal that is
   unsound. They could not act as they do if they were truly converted.

   We would with the utmost charity hope the best, but we cannot conceal
   from ourselves with fear and trembling that a large mass of professors
   are so worldly, so fond of every trifling amusement, so given up to
   self and so negligent of anything like zealous service of God, that
   they cannot be Christians, though they profess to be such. Well, if we
   think so of others, may it not happen that somebody or other is
   thinking so of us? And what is much worse--for it is of very little
   importance what people think of us--it may be true that it is so!
   Though we have very much that is morally excellent, it may be that we
   are destitute of the real work of Divine Grace and so come short of the
   rest which is given to faith. I suggest it to you all--I suggest it to
   myself most of all--and am prepared to abide the necessary tests.

   Yet, more, remember there are some professors who know that they are
   not at rest. "We that have believed do enter into rest," but you know
   you do not rest. Am I not addressing some who claim to have faith and
   yet they have no peace? You dare not sit down and cast up your
   spiritual accounts. You dare not to put yourself through an examination
   because you more than half suspect that you are spiritually insolvent.
   You do not like too searching a sermon because you are conscious that
   there is something rotten in the state of Denmark, something amiss
   within your heart. You know it is so, for when you have a little
   sickness, or fear of death, you tremble dreadfully!

   Now, if you have run with the footmen and they have wearied you, what
   will you do when you contend with horses? And if in the land of peace,
   in which you have trusted, they have wearied you, what will you do in
   the swelling of the Jordan? If you cannot bear a little shaking by the
   Truth of God when I, your feeble fellow man, am preaching, how will you
   bear the dread shaking of the last skeleton orator, who shall say,
   "This night your soul is required of you"? How will you endure the
   thundering voice of the great Judge of All? I put to you another
   question--are there not professors here who are not, even now, content
   with Jesus?

   You take your Savior's yoke as a necessity, but not as a delight! And
   when you need to enjoy yourself you run off to the world--is not this a
   sure index of where your heart is? If you cannot find your richest joy
   in Christ--if He is not your chief delight--then it is clear you are
   already short of the rest, for to a true saint there is no music like
   His charming name, and there is no delight like fellowship with Jesus.
   Now, if you already fail to discover the sweetness of religion, may you
   not fear that you not a possessor of it at all? O Sirs, I beseech you
   to fear lest you come short of the living faith which will give you
   rest, for are not some of you listless and indifferent? Do not many
   professors go to their places of worship without heart?

   Are they not mere formalists, bowing their heads as if they were moved
   by machinery, but destitute of heart worship? They do not care whether
   Christ's Church prospers or not! It never costs them a sleepless night
   whether Jesus' kingdom comes or Antichrist triumphs! They show far more
   concern about the rise and fall of Console, or a change in the Cabinet,
   or the state of the crops, than they do about the kingdom of God and
   the things which make for the Glory of the Most High! Now, where there
   is this listlessness and carelessness, does it not seem as if you are
   coming short of the sacred rest? Some professors are quite destitute of
   energy or zeal--they serve God as if they were in a dream--they go
   about every godly work as if they had taken a tincture of opium or
   soothing syrup. Indeed, they look at religion as if it were a kind of
   cordial, given them on purpose to quiet them.

   Now, if the kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, do not such people seem
   to come short of it? We know others who are awake enough, but they are
   captious, critical, snarling. They seem to come short of the spirit of
   Christ, do they not? I am not going to judge them, but what can we say
   of them? They do not look very much like their Master. The attribute of
   love is not very apparent. We know some who do nothing for Jesus!
   Ragged schools? They have no interest in them. The preaching of the
   Gospel? Of course they never attempt that, though they can speak well
   enough at a political meeting. Could they visit the sick? Oh, no! They
   have not the time. Could they teach in the Sunday school? No, they
   cannot stand children! Could they open a cottage meeting? No, it is not
   a thing they at all approve of. Lions are in the way. There is nothing
   they can do--rather, nothing they will do.

   Many, also, of those who profess to belong to Christ give Him of their
   substance the bare odds and ends, the small crumbs from under their
   table and cheeseparings which they never miss. Now, I do not say that
   such misers are not Christians, but I do say let us not be like they
   are lest we should seem to come short! When I read the lives of martyrs
   giving themselves to burn for Christ--and see the worldliness of these
   Christians who cannot bear even a word of ridicule--I am sure they seem
   to come short of it. When we see men at the very first brush of battle
   ready to run, what judgment can we form of them? Are these the soldiers
   of the Cross? Will these be more than conquerors? They leave the pure
   worship of God because it is not respectable and they get away to the
   reputable religion of the world! Where is the blood of your sires, if
   sires you had worth mentioning, if you are ashamed to bear the reproach
   of Christ? Surely you seem to come short of what Jesus deserves. When I
   see the self-indulgence of many professors, the utter absence of any
   sacrifice for Christ, the lack of anything like ardor and zeal for the
   propagation of the Truth of God, or prayer for the spread of the
   Redeemer's kingdom--am I too severe if I say that many do seem to come
   short of it?

   Here, then, are arguments for holy anxiety. Brothers and Sisters, it
   may be that even now I am addressing some who are anxious to avoid the
   offense of the Cross, who cut and trim in order to please their
   neighbors, who reckon the reputation of the world to be greater riches
   than all the treasures of Jesus, who make provision for the flesh and
   think fashion, credit and respectability to be everything. These are
   the men whose god is the world and who mind earthly things. May God
   have mercy upon such and have mercy upon us by never allowing us to
   fall into such evil ways.

   III. Thirdly, WHAT SOLEMN TRUTHS DEMAND THE FEAR SUGGESTED IN THE TEXT?
   If we should really come short of Heaven we shall have lost all its
   bliss and glory forever--for us no vision of the Crucified! No sight of
   the King in His beauty! And we shall have lost Heaven with this
   aggravation, that we did begin to build, but were not able

   to finish. We shall be eternally covered with shame. The damned in Hell
   will laugh at us because we professed to be different from them and
   came short, after all. If I must be lost, let me not be lost as a
   pretender to religion, for the inner dungeon of the infernal prison is
   for those who played the Judas, who sold their Lord for pieces of
   silver, or came short by some other means.

   To have gone a little way towards Heaven and then to miss it will
   render the loss of it the more intolerable. What if you should drink of
   the sacramental cup and then forever drink of the cup of devils? It
   must be wretchedness, itself, to remember, when lost, "I used to hear
   the Gospel and I professed to believe it. I sat with the saints of God
   and sang their hymns. I bowed my head and joined ostensibly in their
   prayers--and now I am forever banished from the God of Love-- instead
   of Sabbath rest I feel infinite misery. And instead of the songs of the
   saints I hear the howling of lost spirits forever!" O my Brothers and
   Sisters, fear lest you come short of it! No, begin sooner, fear lest
   you seem to come short of it, for he that is afraid of the seeming will
   be delivered from the reality.

   IV. And now to close, HOW DOES OUR FEAR EXERCISE ITSELF? I must dwell
   on this a moment to prevent

   mistakes. Our fear of coming short of the rest must not lead us to
   unbelief, because in that case it would make us come short at once. As
   I have already shown you, the way is by faith. I am not, therefore, to
   fear believing, but rather to fear distrust and unbelief. I must not
   doubt the promise, or I shall at once come short of rest. The
   translators, by inserting the word, "us," into the text, have clouded
   the meaning.

   There is no promise to us which we can ever come short of--every
   promise is sure. The text speaks of a promise which is left, left to
   Believers, and so left that some must enter in. Do you belong to that
   some? That is the question. You do if you are a true, real, genuine
   believer in the Lord Jesus--if the Word of God which you hear is mixed
   with faith, according to the second verse of my text. But if the Word
   you hear is not mixed with faith, there is no promise made to you that
   you shall enter into God's rest--and you must come short of that which
   is promised to faith because you have no faith. The promise is made to
   the believer in Christ! I will, therefore, fear to doubt my Lord, fear
   to distrust Him, fear to suspect His veracity. I will believe that He
   came into the world to save sinners. I will believe that He is able to
   save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him. I will not
   hesitate to trust Him, for I fear to doubt the God who cannot lie, lest
   it be said of me, "He could not enter in because of unbelief."

   Next, the Apostle does not mean to have us always stand in doubt
   whether we are saved or not, for that would be to come short of the
   rest. A man cannot rest while he is in doubt about his own salvation
   and, indeed, many texts teach the doctrine of Assurance! We are told
   that, "The Spirit, Himself, bears witness with our spirit that we are
   the children of God." Now, Paul would not run contrary, nor have us run
   contrary, to the testimony of the Holy Spirit within us! If I have,
   indeed, believed in Jesus Christ, then I am saved and I must not doubt
   but what I am saved. I am bound to believe it and so to enter into
   rest. I am to fear lest I should not fully realize my own personal
   salvation when I profess to trust my whole soul with Christ.

   What the Apostle would have us do, I gather from the chapter in which
   my text stands. We are to hold fast our profession. If you have
   believed in Jesus, cleave to Him! If His Cross, indeed, is your
   support, hold on to it as for dear life, never let it go! And when you
   are tempted by new-fangled notions, or by pretended old religions, say
   to them all--

   "Should all the forms that men devise

   Assault my soul with treacherous art,

   I'd call them vanities and lies,

   And bind the Gospel to my heart." "Christ for me, Christ for me, and
   none but Christ." Hold to that and then you will not come short.

   Next, submit yourselves to the whole Word of God, for it is living and
   powerful. It will search your inmost soul even to the joints and
   marrow--habitually let it do so. Never be afraid of your Bibles. If
   there is a text of Scripture you dare not read, humble yourself till
   you can. If your creed and Scripture do not agree, cut your creed to
   pieces and make it agree with this Book. If there is anything in the
   Church to which you belong which is contrary to the Inspired Word of
   God, leave that Church! To the Law and to the Testimony--there is the
   Infallible chart of faith--follow it closely and if you do, you need
   have no fear of coming short, for this Book cannot lead you astray!
   Follow it to the letter and be precise about it, even though men shall
   laugh at you for being too particular. Keep to every jot and
   tittle--and to the living spirit of it--and you will not come short.

   Then, come boldly to the Throne of Grace. So the chapter concludes.
   There you will obtain mercy and find Grace to help in time of need.
   Cling to the Mercy Seat as Joab to the horns of the altar. Pray much,
   pray always. Cry to God for help. Your help comes from the eternal
   hills and as you become more and more prevalent in prayer, you will
   feel that you do not come short, for God hears you and He would not
   hear you and answer you from day to day if you were, after all, short
   of the faith which brings the soul into rest. In a word, believe fully!
   If we have been half-and-half Christians, let us now be whole
   Christians. If we have given up to God a little of our time, a little
   of our substance, a little of ourselves, let us be baptized into the
   Lord Jesus Christ! Let us be buried with Him, given up to Him
   totally--no longer sprinkled with a little Grace which may suffice to
   spatter us with enough godliness to make us decent--but forever dead
   unto the world and alive unto God in newness of life!

   Is it worth it? O you that are bought with blood, is Jesus worthy of
   your entire selves? You profess to be Christians! So I charge you by
   that profession to answer my question! Is the faith of God and the
   kingdom of God worth your whole selves? I know what your answer is if
   you are sincere. You will say--

   "Had I ten thousand thousand tongues,

   Not one should silent be.

   Had I ten thousand thousand hearts,

   I'd give them all to Thee!"

   O Brethren, we have not done enough for God because we have not loved
   God enough! We are not powerful because we are not intense. If we were
   on fire with love, we should be very different. But we are cold,
   carnal, worldly, half-hearted-- and we shall come short if we do not
   alter.

   May God in infinite mercy cause the faith which is in us to grow till
   it affects our entire nature and the zeal, thereof, consumes us! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORESERMON--Hebrews 3:12-19; 4. HYMNS FROM
   "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--906, 668, 666.
     __________________________________________________________________

Glorying in the Lord

   (No. 1178)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "He that glories, let him glory in the Lord." 1 Corinthians 1:31.

   THERE is an irresistible tendency in us to glory in something or other.
   All classes of men glory--the highest and the lowest, the richest and
   the poorest, the best educated and the most illiterate. Solomon glories
   and so does the fool. Goliath glories and so does David. Pharaoh
   glories and so does his slave. Even in the most modest, the tendency to
   boast is present--only its nakedness is daintily concealed. Good men
   glory, yes, and in hours of weakness they have gloried in objects very
   unworthy of their boasts. You remember how, when the ambassadors came
   out of Babylon, Hezekiah showed them all his riches and his stores--and
   no doubt he gloried while he took them from treasure house to treasure
   house-- and opened his caskets and showed all his precious things.

   But it was an evil thing, and the Lord was angry with him for that
   glorying, and bade the Prophet foretell that all his choice vessels
   should be carried away as plunder by the very people whose ambassadors
   he had so delighted with the sight. The very first person who was born
   into this world was the subject of glorying and his mother, as she
   gazed upon him with rapture, said, "I have gotten a man from the Lord."
   Perhaps she even said, as the original has been construed, "I have
   gotten a man--the Lord," thinking that surely he might be the promised
   seed of the woman who would bruise the serpent's head and would prove
   to be both a man and the Lord. Alas, it was Cain, who slew his brother,
   and was a child of the serpent rather than the bruiser of his head. The
   thing we glory in, though it is a dear child, may turn out to be a
   scourge for our backs--a Cain and not a consolation. Jacob glories in
   Joseph's princely coat, but he wept, indeed, when he saw its many
   colors all turned to a blood-red hue.

   I say good people have the tendency to glory and sometimes they glory
   in unworthy objects. Therefore it is that God has prepared a cure for
   it--not by repressing the instinct to glory--but by giving a worthy
   Subject for glorying--which finds in it a wider range and full liberty,
   but only in a licensed field. It may not wander there, nor there, nor
   there, for it is ill to glory in worldly things, but it may fly away up
   yonder to God Himself, and stretch its wings, and plume itself as much
   as it will in Heaven. The cure for vainglory is true glory! Somewhat
   upon the homeopathic principle, the cure for boasting is to boast in
   the Lord all the day long.

   The prevention of glorying in men, glorying in riches and glorying in
   self, is glorying in the Lord. "He that glories, let him glory in the
   Lord." On that text we shall now speak. And we shall have these four
   points. First, let us, dear Brothers and Sisters, as many of us as know
   the Lord, glory only in the Lord. Then, secondly, let us glory heartily
   in the Lord. Thirdly, let us glory growingly in the Lord. And, lastly,
   let us glory practically in the Lord.

   I. First, then, LET US GLORY ONLY IN THE LORD. And we should do this
   because the theme of glorying is too great to admit of another. It was
   a good argument of a simple-minded man that there could not be two
   gods, because the first God filled Heaven and earth and all places, and
   therefore there was not room for another. If God is everywhere and
   fills all in all, there can be no other God. And if the glory of God is
   infinite, then there can be no second glory. And if the theme is
   boundless, then there is not room for a second. As all other gods but
   Jehovah must be idols, so all other glory except that which is in the
   Lord must be foolish and sinful.

   Those men who really know the Lord feel that such is the greatness of
   His Glory, that it takes up all our faculties, absorbs all our powers,
   demands, indeed, our whole energy--and we cannot spare time, or love,
   or skill, or power, or thought for any other topic. Let the Lord be
   gloried in, and Him alone, because the Lord, alone, is worthy to be
   gloried in. He, only, is great! He is the blessed and only Potentate!
   From Him, only, comes our salvation! He is God alone! Therefore in one
   rolling flood let all our glorying cheerfully flow at His feet. All
   glory should be given unto God, because any other object of glory
   highly provokes the Most High. He has said, "My glory will I not give
   to another, nor My praise to graven images."

   It is written concerning Israel, "They moved Him to jealousy with their
   graven images. When God heard this, He was angry and greatly abhorred
   Israel" (Psa. 78:58, 59). The moment we begin trusting in a created
   arm, God is highly provoked with us. "Cursed is he that trusts in man,
   and makes flesh his arm." And if we begin glorying in anything else,
   either the Lord will send the worm at the root to make the gourd
   wither, or He will stamp our idol into pieces and make us drink of the
   bitter water with which it is mixed--or else He will inflict upon us
   some other severe chastisement, for He cannot bear a rival. Where the
   ark of the Lord is, Dagon must come down. God will be all, or nothing.
   He cannot accept divided homage. Let us not provoke Him, then,
   especially when He tells us, "The Lord your God is a jealous God."

   Since He is so tender of His own name, let us be tender of it, too. If
   He would bear it, even then it would be wrong of us to test and try
   Him. But since He will not bear it, but is jealous, and His fury goes
   forth like flames of fire, let us take heed what we do. Think of
   Nebuchadnezzar and how his proud speech led to his loss of his reason
   and herding with cattle. Remember Belshazzar and how he was found
   wanting, because it was said of him, "The God in whose hand your breath
   is, and whose are all your ways, you have not glorified, but you have
   praised the gods of silver and gold, and wood, and stone, and iron,
   which see not, nor hear, nor know." Remember how the Lord smote Herod
   so that he was eaten of worms, because he received divine honors and
   gave not God the glory--"Give glory to the Lord your God before He
   cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains."
   Glory in the Lord alone, for He will not endure to have it otherwise.

   There is, indeed, my dear Brothers and Sisters, no other fit ground for
   glorying in all the world except the Lord. For what would there be in
   this world if God were to withdraw His power? If there were some other
   object in which we thought we could glory, yet since it came from Him,
   it would be idle to glory in the streams--we had better boast in the
   Fountainhead from which the stream descends! All things that are, exist
   only by the will and sovereign good pleasure of the Lord of All! Let us
   not glory, then, in that which depends upon Him, but in God Himself,
   the Wellhead of all! Glory not in the sunbeams but in the sun which
   scatters them, not in the drops but in the Heaven from which they
   distil, not in the goods but in the Supreme Good who bestows them!

   Moreover, all things in this world are fleeting, so why should we glory
   in that which is today and tomorrow will pass away? "All flesh is
   grass, and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of grass." Who will
   dare to rejoice in it? The grass withers--though today it is in its
   prime, tomorrow it is cast into the oven--it is a poor thing upon which
   to boast. The drunks of Ephraim chose for their crown of pride and
   glorious beauty a fading flower--but we who are sober reject so
   fleeting a diadem. Only very benighted heathens could worship a god of
   snow, melting at every glance of the sun! Shall an immortal spirit
   delight in dying joys? Shall the heirs of eternal bliss glory in a
   momentary treasure? Glory not, therefore, in the things that so soon
   depart!

   Let your glory be in that which will last as long as your own being.
   Heir of Immortality, take care that you have something to glory in
   which will never wither or decay! Set your love upon that which rust
   cannot canker, nor moth devour. Besides, there is nothing in this world
   that has in it qualities worthy of our glorying in comparison with God.
   He is the sun! The stars must hide their heads when He appears. He is
   the ocean! All these ponds and pools are of small account. Let us bless
   the eternal ocean of all-sufficient Glory and Goodness and not turn
   aside to magnify our little Abanas and Pharpars. Sin is stamped upon
   almost everything--and even the unfallen angels, in comparison with
   God, are of little worth--the purity that excels eclipses all. "The
   heavens are not pure in His sight, and He charged His angels with
   folly." Foolish is he, therefore, who shall boast in these inferior
   things while the thrice Holy God presents Himself as the true and
   legitimate subject of our glorying--

   "Praise the God of all creation, Praise the Father's boundless love!
   Praise the Lamb, our expiation, Priest and King enthroned above! Praise
   the Fountain of salvation, Him by whom our spirits live! Undivided
   adoration To the One Jeho vah give!"

   Dear Friends, we ought to glory in the Lord because when we do so we
   shall be in accord with the true order of the universe. Look abroad and
   mark the works of God in Creation--what do they glory in? "The heavens
   are telling the

   glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork." The great pulses
   of the universe will keep time and tune to your heart if you glory in
   the Lord. "All Your works praise You, O God." Creation is a temple in
   which everyone speaks of the glory of Jehovah. Turn to Providence and
   faith's eye perceives that Providence is always displaying the glory of
   the Lord. All things work not only for the good of the elect, but for
   the glory of the Most High--"For of Him and through Him and to Him are
   all things, to whom be the glory forever." The ponderous wheels, as
   they revolve in all their solemn grandeur, are full of eyes--and those
   eyes look to the glory of God!

   You are in accord both with Providence and Creation when you glory only
   in the Lord. Lift up, now, your eyes and behold the angels, those
   bright spirits who watch over us and rejoice when we repent. What do
   you think is their song? "Glory to God in the highest." Truly they
   sing, "Peace, good will towards men," but first of all they cry to one
   another, "Glory to God." This is their ancient song and they have not
   ceased to sing it! You are in accord, therefore, with the blessed
   spirits who do His commandments, hearkening to the voice of His word,
   when you glory only in Him. Yes, and you are in accord with the Divine
   Trinity, for what does the Father do but glorify the Son? What does the
   Son aim at when He says, "Father, glorify Your Son"? It is, "that Your
   Son, also, may glorify You."

   What does the Holy Spirit do when He takes of the things of Christ and
   shows them to us? Has not Jesus said of Him, "He shall glorify Me"?
   There is a mutual delight in each Other in the Persons of the blessed
   Trinity, so that each Divine Person delights to glorify the rest. God
   thus glorifies Himself! All His works praise Him! All His decrees
   praise Him. All things which are, or shall be, show forth His sole
   Glory. Well, dear Brothers and Sisters, as we do not wish to be out of
   gear with the works of God, or opposed to His nearest attendants, or in
   rebellion against the sacred Trinity, let us stand to it that our souls
   shall glory only in the Lord as long as we live! So much upon that
   first head, let us glory only in the Lord.

   II. Now, secondly, may the Spirit of God help us to GLORY HEARTILY IN
   THE LORD with the whole force of our nature renewed by Divine
   Grace--not as a matter of form--but in deed and in truth! Let us make
   our boast in the Lord heartily, doing it so that the humble may hear of
   it and be glad, since there is good cause for heartily glorying in the
   Lord, first, because of His love. "God is love." O you that have tasted
   of that love, glory in it! Glory that it is eternal, that it never had
   a beginning, that He fixed His love upon the objects of His choice
   before the mountains lifted their hoary heads above the clouds! Glory
   in it! It is no passion of yesterday, but the deep-seated, fixed
   resolve of all eternity-- the purpose of the Ancient of Days when as
   yet days had not begun their little round. Speak they of antiquity? Lo,
   it is here! "I have loved you with an everlasting love!"

   Shall we not glory in this? I am resolved that none shall stop me of
   this glorying while my tongue can speak! Glory in the Divine Love in
   its wonderful benefactions, inasmuch as having loved His people He gave
   His only begotten Son that they might be redeemed from wrath through
   Him. God commends His love towards us in that while we were yet without
   strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. The Only Begotten is
   God's unspeakable gift, including and securing every good gift. What
   manner of love is this? We can never measure it, nor fully declare
   it--let us resolve forever to glory in it! There was never such love as
   this, love so ancient, love so disinterested, so boundless--love which
   brought the Darling of Heaven down to be despised and rejected of men.

   Oh, mighty Love that could hold the Son of God, Himself, in fetters of
   affection, lead Him into a lifelong captivity to its power and at last
   fasten Him to the deadly tree! That love of God to us was free,
   unpurchased, unsought. He loved us because He would love us--not
   because we were lovely, but because He is love. He must love, for love
   is His Nature. There was no other constraint upon Him. Oh, blessed,
   blessed be the love of God, to think it should come to us unsought,
   unbought, undeserved--spontaneously leaping up like a living fountain
   with none to dig the well, but springing up in the midst of the Sahara
   of our barren nature and then blessing us with unspeakable blessings as
   it overflowed! Glory in the love of God!

   Here is sea-room for you. Beloved, there is no love comparable to it!
   If all the loves that ever burned in the hearts of mothers, brothers,
   wives and husbands could all be heaped up, they would be but a mole
   hill compared with the love of God in Christ Jesus! And if all the
   loves that ever were among men or angels could be gathered together
   they would be as a spark--and God's love to us like a mighty furnace
   flame. Glory in it, therefore, all the day long, for well you may. "He
   loved me and gave Himself for me." You need not give up glorying when
   you have reached the center of your Subject, for you can glory, next,
   in the Lord's faithfulness. Glory in the fact that He never yet changed
   the objects of His love. Whom

   once He loves He never leaves, but loves them to the end. No fickle
   lover is He! He is no husband who sues out a divorce against his errant
   spouse. "Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement that I put
   away? To which of My creditors have I sold you?" No, we can challenge
   all mankind and say, "The Lord, the God of Israel, says that He hates
   putting away."

   You may glory in the faithfulness of God as to all His promises. He has
   newer broken His Covenant, nor neglected to fulfill His Word. To no
   child of His has He acted unkindly. In no hour of need has He deserted
   one that trusted in Him. Under no peril and under no provocation has He
   cast away His people whom He did foreknow, so that this day the whole
   Church is persuaded that, "Neither life, nor death, nor things present,
   nor things to come shall separate us from the love of God which is in
   Christ Jesus our Lord." Go and glory that His mercy endures forever!
   Tell it everywhere that man can lie, but God cannot. That man can
   forget his promise and can utterly forsake his dearest friend, but that
   the faithful God has never yet run back from His Covenant nor forfeited
   the oath of His Divine Grace.

   And if you should need a change of subject, I would recommend you glory
   in the Lord as to His holiness. This is an attribute which has charm to
   Christians, but to none besides. "Bless the Lord, O my Soul," says
   David, and he adds, "And all that is within me, bless"--His gracious
   name, is it? No! Bless His loving name? No! It runs thus, "Bless His
   holy name," because the whole includes all the parts and the holiness,
   or the wholeness of God is a grander thing than any one of the distinct
   attributes which make up the whole, or the holiness of His Character.
   Go and glory in the holiness of God, for there is none as holy as the
   Lord, neither is there any god like our God. It is this which angels
   glory in, for as they veil their faces, they say, "Holy, holy, holy,
   Lord God of Hosts." It is a grand attribute of God. "The Lord is great
   in Zion, and He is high above all the people. Let them praise Your
   great and terrible name, for it is holy."

   Bless His name that even to show His love He would not be unholy--and
   even to forgive sins He would not be unjust. He never blunted the edge
   of the sword of justice in order to stretch out His hand of mercy. He
   is as sternly and inflexibly just towards sin as if He never forgave
   iniquity. And yet He forgives sinners through Christ Jesus as freely
   and fully as if He never punished a transgression! All His attributes
   are full-orbed--no one encroaches upon the other so as to diminish its
   luster. "The Lord our God is holy," while at the same time, "God is
   love." Let us therefore glory in His Divine perfection and in the
   wondrous Atonement for sin which was required in consequence. An unholy
   God could have dispensed with an expiation, but then we should have had
   no ground for confidence, since He who can set aside justice in one
   direction might do it in the opposite. He who pardons without atonement
   might also punish without fault.

   For my part, I always glory in the old-fashioned doctrine of
   Substitution. I do not know anything about the Atonement which has been
   invented by the cultured gentlemen of modern times--though their theory
   is so often cried up--it contains so little worth the crying. They call
   ours a commercial atonement, and truly we cannot call theirs by the
   same name, for it is worth nothing and none would care to commerce with
   it! It is a hazy kind of atonement which did something or other, I do
   not know what it was, in so intangible and mysterious a manner that it
   is but remotely connected with our getting to Heaven! What it was
   nobody knows, but each Divine has a theory for his own private use.

   I believe Christ bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that, "the
   chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and that with His stripes we
   are healed." I believe that there was a literal and actual expiation
   made by Christ, and that--

   "He bore, that we might never bear, His Father's righteous ire."

   And this I glory in because it shows the Justice and the Mercy of God
   walking hand in hand--Righteousness and Peace kissing each other and
   entering into a solemn compact for the salvation of the sons of men.
   Surely in the Lord Jehovah we have righteousness and strength, and
   therefore will we glory in Him forever--

   "Holy, Holy, Holy!

   All Hea ven's triumphant choir shall sing

   When the ransomed nations fall At the footstool of their King!

   Then shall saints and seraphim, Harps and voices, swell one hymn Round
   the Throne with full accord, Holy, Holy, Holy Lord."

   And if you feel you would like to alter the subject, then glory in the
   all-sufficiency of your God, and in the liberality with which He
   distributes His mercies among His chosen. Notice the verse that
   precedes the text--"But of Him are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is
   made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and
   redemption." In Christ Jesus is not one good thing given to us, but
   every good thing!

   He does not give us part of salvation, but the whole of salvation. Do
   we need to be instructed? Christ is our wisdom. Do we need to be
   clothed in the sight of God with a righteousness that shall render us
   acceptable? Christ is our righteousness. Do we need to be purified and
   cleansed? Christ is our sanctification. And do we need to be set free
   and delivered from all bondage? Christ is our redemption. In God the
   Christian finds sufficiency--let us improve the word-- all-sufficiency!
   There are riches of Divine Grace in Christ Jesus, all that you can ever
   need, all that the myriads of God's chosen can need--so much that after
   all the saints have taken immense draughts, there is as much left as
   before!

   I felt, when I was coming up to preach tonight, as if I had been down,
   like a little child, to the sea, and I had stooped to the wave and
   filled my palms as well as I could with the sparkling water. But as I
   have been coming to bring it to you, it has nearly all trickled away,
   for I am not able to hold it by reason of my leaking hands. Yet, for
   all that, the little I can bring will make you, I hope, rejoice in the
   great eternal ocean from which it was taken, for you will never drain
   God's love, mercy and Truth dry, though you should draw from it
   forever! You need never think you will exhaust Infinity! When a child
   of God thinks he has exhausted the patience and mercy of God he is
   something like a little fish in the sea which said, "Oh, I am so
   thirsty, I am afraid I shall drink up the Atlantic." O little fish, you
   have no idea how mighty the ocean is! Countless myriads such as you are
   may swim in it and the ocean will be none the less.

   O beloved Believer, yours is no stinted store! Joseph said to his
   brothers, "The good of all the land of Egypt is yours," and it was a
   great promise. But the Lord Jesus says to you tonight, "All things are
   yours, whether things present, or things to come, life or death, all
   are yours." We have not gone to the full length when we have quoted
   that, for there is another word that tops it all, "I am your God." And
   to have God to be ours is more than to have Heaven and earth, and
   things present and things to come! No one living on earth, or even in
   Heaven, can tell how vast are the possessions of a Believer who can
   say, "The Lord is my portion." Go and glory in God's all-sufficiency
   and the freeness with which He gives it out!

   There is one point every child of God may glory in, but he will
   scarcely care to do so unless, when he is alone by himself, or with
   Brethren who can sympathize. We glory in the nearness and dearness of
   the relationship which God holds to us. The man who can bow his knee
   and say from his heart, "Our Father," has more to glory in than the
   Czar of all the Russias, or the Emperor of the grandest nations of
   antiquity! Is Christ my Brother? I am ennobled by that relationship! Is
   He married to my soul? Is it, indeed, true that your Maker is your
   Husband? Is God so very near that He cannot be nearer? And am I so very
   dear to Him that I cannot be dearer, because in the Person of His Son I
   am as dear as He? Then ought I not to glory in this? And while some
   will say, "We are rich, and our riches are the main thing," and others
   will say, "We have followed after wisdom, and we rejoice in what we
   have discovered." And a third party will say, "We are famous and great,
   and we glory in our honors," we will sit down in some quiet corner,
   where none shall hear us but the Lord, and we will say, "I am my
   Beloved's, and He is mine--this is my glory, and I will boast in it
   both in life and in

   death."

   So then, Beloved, I have shown that you have good cause to glory in the
   Lord heartily, but I cannot make you do it. I pray the Holy Spirit to
   stir the hearts of all God's people to make them glory in the Lord, and
   exult in the God of their salvation--

   "My God, I'll praise You while I live, And praise You when I die, And
   praise You when I rise again, And to eternity."

   Neither till death, nor in death, nor after death will we cease
   glorying in the Lord!

   III. Now we come to the third point, and that is, we ought to GLORY IN
   THE LORD GROWINGLY. That is to

   say, Beloved, we should glory in God in proportion as we learn more of
   Him and receive more from Him. Many Believers only know the
   elements--they are at a preparatory school and sit among the babes in
   Christ--therefore their songs are children's hymns and not the grand
   old Psalms of heroes and sages. It should be our desire to grow in the
   knowledge of

   our Lord. Beyond the rudiments of the faith there are deeper, higher
   and fuller Truths of God which invite our consideration and will
   abundantly repay it.

   Perhaps you learned justification by faith a long while ago, but you
   have not learned the doctrine of election, yet, nor the doctrine of the
   unchangeable love of God. Labor to know them, for ignorance of them is
   neither bliss nor strength. As a faithful disciple, go on to learn more
   and more, and when you have learned the more mysterious doctrines,
   glory in God more. As you know more, be sure you return more praise to
   Him, for, if anything which you believe concerning the Lord does not
   cause you to praise Him more, it cannot be the Truth of God or else
   your heart is in a wrong condition. Every genuine Revelation of God has
   this mark upon it--that it makes Him appear more glorious! The wisdom
   which derogates from the honor of God comes from beneath and is founded
   in a lie--true wisdom exalts the name of the Lord and bows the heart in
   adoration.

   Beloved, glory growingly in the Lord as you know more of Him by
   Revelation. Moses said, "I beseech You show me Your Glory," and surely,
   after he had been put in the cleft of the rock, and seen his God, he
   gloried more in Him than ever! Isaiah was a man of stammering lips and
   was afraid to speak in God's name, until one day which he never
   forgot-- for he tells us the year, "In the year that King Uzziah died,"
   he remembered it well enough--he saw the Lord sitting upon a Throne
   high and lifted up, and His train filled the Temple, while the Glory of
   His Presence made the posts of the doors to move. Then Isaiah became
   very bold for his Lord and said, "Here am I, send me." Paul was, also,
   all the more resolved to know nothing but Christ crucified after he had
   been caught up into the third Heaven, and there had seen and heard the
   Glory of the Lord!

   Now I pray the Lord to reveal Himself to you, dear Friends, more and
   more, that you, also, may behold His Glory and receive a sacred bias
   thereby. May you see Jesus in your meditations and see Him by communion
   and fellowship with Him. And as you see more of Him, go and tell abroad
   more of Him, and let others know what a glorious God you serve! His
   angels behold Him and then He makes them messengers--may yours be the
   vision and then the errand. What we have seen and heard--that must we
   testify unto men. You will, as you live, see more of the Glory of God
   in His gracious dealings with you, for that is one of the methods by
   which that Glory is revealed. Christ said to Mary and Martha, "Said I
   not unto you, if you would believe you should see the Glory of God?"
   And as we get our prayers answered--as we are delivered in times of
   trouble and as all things are made to work for our good--we see the
   Glory of God! Never let a special season of mercy pass without praising
   Him. Never let an answer to prayer be unrecognized, but magnify the
   Lord, who in His abundant mercy has had such compassion upon you.
   Glorify Him, then, growingly.

   As answers to prayer increase, glorify God more. As Grace is given to
   you in times of need, time after time, glorify Him more. As you find
   yourself helped, Providentially, in hours of trouble, and so see the
   wonderful work of the hand of the Lord on behalf of His people, glorify
   Him more! And I will tell you what will help you to glorify Him
   more--it will be the sight of conversion-work going on in other people.
   I do not think Christian people glorify God at any time so heartily and
   thoroughly as when they see others saved! The sight of a young convert
   warms up old blood--and whereas we had doubts, troubles and inward
   fighting while we were wrapped up in ourselves--when we get to hear
   little children in Christ cry to their Father and hear them rejoice as
   the Lord puts away their sins, our confidence comes back, all our
   sacred passions begin to glow, and we say--"This is the place for me,
   for here I see the Glory of God."

   "His Glory is great in your salvation." Where Christ works savingly,
   there the Glory of God is mightily revealed. And when the Lord builds
   up Zion, He appears in His Glory, and His servants rejoice to behold
   Him. How can they do otherwise? The stones would rebuke them if they
   were not to do so! They must glory in God more than they have ever done
   before. By-and-by, dear Brothers and Sisters, as time rolls on, we
   shall know more of the Lord, and get to be more like He and approach
   nearer to Glory itself. Beholding that Glory, as in a glass, we are
   changed from glory to glory, as by the image of the Lord. As we come
   nearer to the approaching hour of our full redemption, the pins of our
   tent are taken up and the curtains of our tabernacle begin to be
   removed--and we look forward to the "house not made with hands, eternal
   in the heavens," in which our one employment shall be to behold the
   Glory of our Lord forever! Let us even now wholly glory in the Lord.

   I have known some old Christians who were just one mass of glorying in
   the Lord. Their very faces shone with the brightness of His Presence!
   They did neither talk to you in private, nor join in the public prayer,
   nor give forth any utterance but what you had to say of it, "Surely
   they have seen the Glory and their hearts are burning with it! And

   therefore their tongues speak marvelous things and they talk as men
   whose lips have been touched with a live coal from off the altar." When
   these hairs grow gray, may we be such old men and old women--may we be
   continually praising and glorying in the Lord all the day long! We had
   better begin at once, for time is precious, and a good work cannot be
   commenced too promptly--

   "I would begin the music here, And so my soul should rise, O for some
   heavenly notes to bear My passions to the skies."

   IV. Now I come to the last point, which is, let us GLORY IN THE LORD
   PRACTICALLY. And how can we do

   that? Every Christian ought to glory in the Lord practically by
   admitting that he belongs to his redeeming Lord. Are you a Christian
   and are you ashamed of it? How can you be said to glory in the Lord? A
   man does not hide away that which he glories in! If he glories in it he
   does not object to its being seen. Why, if he glories in anything, if
   others accuse him that he has something to do with it, he admits the
   accusation and he says, "It is even so. And I am not ashamed of it. I
   glory in it."

   Charge a veteran with having been at Waterloo and he will glory in it!
   Accuse an artist of being a Royal Academician and he will not deny the
   charge. Accuse me of loving my wife and children, and I smile at you.
   Why, then, blush to be called a follower of Jesus? You that love the
   Lord, I beseech you, come forward and say that you glory in Him! The
   Lord deserves that His people should confess with their mouth that
   which they feel in their hearts. It is the least thing we can do, if He
   has saved us, to be willing to acknowledge that he is our Savior and
   that we rejoice in Him. Then, Brethren, after we have thus confessed
   His Glory, let us continue to glory in Him by talking about it on all
   fit occasions. Do you not think that we are a great deal too silent in
   our piety?

   We love the Lord, but we seem as if we do not want to tell anybody we
   do--and our common conversation does not betray us as it ought to do.
   It ought to be so full of Divine Grace and the Truths of God that men
   would find us out at once! Even as the rose betrays itself by its
   perfume, and even the glowworm by its shining, so should our glorying
   in the Lord reveal us to all observers! I have heard talk of a
   professed Christian of whom his servant said, "I am glad my master goes
   to the Lord's Table, for if he had not done so, I would not have known
   he was a Christian." I should think the chances were he was not a
   Christian at all--for we ought, in our common conversation, so glorify
   God that others would at once take knowledge of us--that we truly know
   and love His name!

   A foreigner may speak English well, but he is known by his accent--and
   the accent of Divine Grace is quite as marked as that of Nature. Speak
   to all around you about the Savior! I do not know a better way of
   getting rid of troublesome people than often to talk of Jesus. There
   are certain ones who vex you with their evil discourses--bring in the
   Lord Jesus Christ and they will soon go away--for they will not like
   such weighty discourse. And at the same time better friends will be
   attached to you who will love to join you in holy glorying. Glory in
   the Lord by standing up for Him when He is opposed. If you hear the
   proud ones ridicule His Gospel and despise His people, put in a word
   for Jesus! Stand out and say, "I am one of His disciples. Despise me! I
   hold those opinions! Ridicule me! That way which you call heresy is the
   same way I worship the Lord God of my fathers."

   This is a practical way of glorifying Him, but many who have grown rich
   and respectable are much too mean-spirited to practice it. I am ashamed
   of the cowardly spirit of many in these days who give up their
   Non-conformity because they cannot otherwise get into what they call,
   "good society." The Lord have mercy on them! Glorify Him, again, by
   being calm under your troubles. When others are fretting and worrying,
   possess your soul in patience, and say, "No, I do not serve a
   fair-weather God, and I am not to be cowed and put down, for the
   eternal God is my refuge and underneath me are the everlasting arms. It
   does not become a man to tremble who has the God of Jacob for his help.
   I will bear trouble joyfully, if He wills to send it."

   Glory in the Lord, Brothers and Sisters, practically, by having a
   contempt for those things which others value so much. Do not be greedy
   after the world. Love God too much to care for earthly treasures. If
   God gives you wealth, thank Him for it and use it. If He does not, do
   not worry about it. Feel that you are rich enough without the heaps of
   yellow metal. You have your God and that is the best wealth! You have a
   Heaven to go to, and a little Heaven below. Rejoice in that which you
   find in your God. Live above the world. Pray that God's Spirit will
   help you. "Let your conversation be in Heaven." Thus glorify God and
   when men look at you, compel them to feel that there is something in
   you and about

   you which they cannot understand, for you have been with Jesus and you
   have learned of Him. In all these ways, "he that glories let him glory
   in the Lord."

   I am sorry, in closing, to feel compelled to say that I am afraid many
   do not understand this. Perhaps you have gloried in your priests and
   thought they were great. Very possibly some of you glory in your
   minister--you think he is very eminent. And some of you, it may be,
   glory in your purses and your possessions. Some of you glory in your
   broad acres and large houses. Some of you glory in the skill you have
   in your trade, or your quickness in business. It may be many of you
   glory in the fact that you are not as other men are. All these
   gloryings are evil! God help you to put them down! Even to glory in
   your Church, and glory in your sect, and glory in your creed is wrong!

   To glory in the Lord is the work of His Spirit--and to live to make Him
   glorious in the esteem of men is the only thing worthy of an immortal
   mind. You will never glory in God till, first of all, God has killed
   your glorying in yourself. May He be pleased, in His infinite mercy, to
   show you unconverted sinners that there is nothing about you which you
   can justly glory in, but everything for which you ought to be ashamed
   and to loathe yourselves. May He make you fly to Jesus. I pray you
   trust Him and be saved! The Lord bless you in this matter, for Jesus'
   sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--1 Corinthians 1. HYMNS FROM
   "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--242, 174, 420.
     __________________________________________________________________

Forty Years

   (No. 1179)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JUNE 14, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the works of your hands:
   He knows your walking through this great wilderness: these forty years
   the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing."
   Deuteronomy 2:7.

   THE habit of numbering our days is a very admirable one. To do it
   rightly a man needs to be taught of God and if we have not been so
   taught, it is well to offer the prayer, "So teach us to number our days
   that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." Some men number their
   cattle, number their acres, number their pounds, but do not number
   their days, or, if they do, they fail to draw the inference from them
   which both reason and Divine Grace suggest--that we may apply our
   hearts unto wisdom. It is not wisdom to try to seem younger than you
   are, though I have known many attempt it. I have marked between census
   and census that the ages of certain persons have hardly increased 10
   years, as I thought they would have done by the lapse of time. The age
   of many whom we admire is an inscrutable mystery.

   What there can be to be ashamed of in advancing years I am at a loss to
   know, for old age commands reverence--not ridicule. Why sorrow because
   another year of trial is over, another year of labor ended, another
   milestone on the road to Heaven left behind? Instead of regretting that
   we are so far on the voyage to the fair haven, we may rather rejoice
   and make our years, at least, as many as we can. If we pretend to be
   more juvenile than we are, uncharitable persons may possibly attribute
   it to vanity--it is a pity to give them such an opportunity.

   At the same time, ripe years are not to be trifled with. We have known
   some who have treated the fact that they are advancing in life with
   unbecoming levity--their gray hairs show that they are nearing the
   bounds of life, but they are as thoughtless as if they were yet in
   their minority--and so they are an incongruous miniature of the
   weakness of age and the frivolity of youth. It is well to keep a
   cheerful heart to the last hour--and no man has so much reason for
   doing so as a believer in Jesus! But, at the same time, it is surely
   time to be solemnly earnest when one has passed the prime of life.
   Wisdom dictates, in old age, if never before, that a grave
   consideration of eternal earth should be more under foot and Heaven
   should be more in the heart.

   Every year should increase our sense of the certainty, value and
   nearness of eternal things. "'Tis time to live if I grow old." Works
   for God among our fellow men will soon be impossible to us--let us be
   diligent in them while as yet our sun is above the horizon. Now, if
   ever, we should redeem the time, because the days are evil. In the very
   middle of life, when strength is in our bones and we have the most
   grand possibilities of vigorous service, it is well for us to be fully
   alive to the highest interests and purposes. We should not be spending
   a dreamy existence, as if we were mere lotus eaters, born into a garden
   of poppies to sleep all day. We have something better to do than to
   flit among the flowers like butterflies, with nothing particular to
   care about, and no eternal future within the range of our thoughts or
   hopes.

   My purpose, this morning, is to speak as a man of 40 years to others of
   my own standing. But much which is spoken will be appropriate to my
   seniors and applicable, also, to the younger ones of my audience. Forty
   years of mercy suggest many thoughts concerning the past, teach much
   that will be of use to us for the present and, I think, should
   influence us aright as to the future.

   I. First, then, let us look back upon THE PAST in the light of the
   text. "The Lord your God has blessed you in all the works of your
   hands: He knows your walking through this great wilderness: these forty
   years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing."
   What strikes me in Moses' review is this, the prominence which he gives
   to God in it. Here let me note that our own retrospect of the past,
   will, if we are genuine Christians, have in it many bright lights of
   the conspicuous Presence of God, making the pathway here and there like
   holy ground! The ungodly man, of course,

   leads a godless life--as God is not in all his thoughts, so God does
   not appear to him in all his ways--but to the godly, God's hand is
   plain.

   Look back, Believer, and note that to you the existence of God has not
   been a theory, but a fact observed and verified by actual experience.
   Can you not recall many occasions in which the Lord has as certainly
   manifested Himself to you as ever He appeared to Moses in the burning
   bush, or to Joshua outside the walls of Jericho, or to Solomon by
   night, or to the three holy children in the fiery furnace? Do you not
   remember that marvelous revelation of Himself to you when you were
   converted? What hand was that which took the rein and curbed that
   stubborn will of yours? Could any power less than Omnipotent have so
   completely turned the course of your life? Do you remember the
   consecrated hour when Jesus met with you, absolved you from the past
   and accepted you as His disciple?

   Ah, they may tell us there are no miracles nowadays, but to each
   Christian his own conversion is a conspicuous miracle and will ever so
   remain! He will never be able to forget that then he came into actual
   contact with the holy God and felt His hand, yes, knew it beyond
   feeling, for it was not a matter of the senses--his spirit came
   directly into actual contact with the Eternal Spirit and our soul was
   bound up in the bundle of life with the Soul of the Lord our God! With
   some of us, many days have passed since then, but they have brought
   with them fuller displays of the Divine power. In examples of
   communion, have we not spoken with the Lord as a man speaks with his
   friend, if not absolutely face to face, yet marvelously like it? Have
   we not had answers to prayer which we dare not tell because they are
   too marvelous for others to believe, though they are treasured memories
   to ourselves?

   It would be casting pearls before swine to speak to the ungodly of the
   Lord's unveilings of His face to His beloved ones! These things are
   secrets of the Lord which are with them that fear Him, things unlawful
   for a man to utter, but never to be erased from our memories! Have we
   not passed through remarkable circumstances in which the right hand of
   the Lord has been as clearly seen as our troubles, themselves? "This
   poor man cried and the Lord heard him." Brought, perhaps, by our own
   fault into "rare difficulties," we have seen a plain path before us in
   answer to prayer. Plunged into the sea, like Jonah, by our own
   waywardness, yet we have been carried safely to the dry land to sing,
   "Salvation is of the

   Lord."

   These 40 years we look back upon with sacred delight, tracing the wells
   of Elim and the fruit-bearing palms, the pools in the valley of Baca
   and the places of encampment in the desert! And if to nobody else,
   certainly to us, there is an overruling Providence and a bountiful God!
   We have been like Hagar in the wilderness, ready to perish, but Jehovah
   has shown us a well of refreshment. And we have said, "Then God sees
   me." Blessed is the name of the Lord for this! Let us magnify Him, this
   morning, that our life has not been without dashes of Glory from His
   loving Presence! Our Shepherd has not left us to wander alone. Our
   heavenly Friend has been better to us than a brother and has manifested
   Himself unto us as He does not unto the world. In this we will glory.
   Even as Paul gloried in the Revelation which he had received, so also
   will we rejoice in the displays of the Divine favor which we have
   beheld.

   In reading over the retrospect of 40 years in the wilderness which the
   text contains, notice, next, that a very leading point is the blessing
   which God gave. I have read this verse over a great many times to
   discover any allusion to the sin of Israel, but I cannot perceive any,
   for it begins, "The Lord your God has blessed you in all the works of
   your hands." It deals not with man's sin, but with God's blessing. As
   with Israel, so with us! In our life the most remarkable fact has been
   the blessing of God. He has blessed as with all spiritual blessings in
   heavenly places. He has blessed us all ways and blessed us always. He
   has blessed us beyond conception, blessed us exceeding abundantly above
   what we asked or even thought and beyond what we can now remember! He
   has blessed us like a God.

   Our text says He has blessed all the works of our hand. I suppose that
   alludes to all that Israel had a right to do. The Lord multiplied their
   cattle. He increased their substance. He guided them in their marches.
   He protected them in their encampments. There were some things in which
   He did not bless them. They wanted to go up into the Promised Land
   against His commandment and the Amalekites smote them--He did not bless
   them there. I thank God, this morning, Brothers and Sisters, that He
   does not bless the sins of His people, for if He did, it would bring on
   them the tremendous curse of being happy in the ways of evil! We have
   made our mistakes, and for those mistakes the Lord has laid His hand on
   us, armed with a rod, which has chastened us and restored us to the
   path of righteousness.

   But in what was legitimate and right we have, some of us, to record
   that the Lord has uniformly blessed the work of our hands. The work of
   some of us has been to preach His Gospel, and if the Lord had given us
   a few score conversions we

   would have loved Him forever. But inasmuch as He has given us thousands
   upon thousands of conversions, how shall we find language with which to
   praise Him? He has blessed the work of our hands so that a vast Church
   has been gathered and many smaller ones have sprung from it. One
   enterprise has been taken up, and then another. One labor which seemed
   beyond our power has been achieved, and then another and yet another!
   And at His feet we lay the crown. I must confess very special favor of
   the Lord towards me--the very stones in the street would cry out
   against me if I did not--He has, indeed, blessed all the work of my
   hands.

   Brothers and Sisters, you have had a share in the blessing and have a
   share, also, in the praising. Sometimes the work of our hands has
   appeared to crumble to pieces, but then it has been rebuilt before long
   in a better style. Enemies have arisen and they have been exceedingly
   violent, only to fulfill some special purpose of God and increase our
   blessing against their wills. Sickness has come only to yield
   discipline--we have been made weak that we might be strong--and brought
   to death's door that we might know more of the Divine Life. Glory be to
   God, our life has been all blessing from beginning to end! There has
   been no exceptional event all along--ever since we knew Him, He has
   dealt out blessing and blessing and blessing--and never a syllable of
   curses. He has fulfilled to us the Word, "Surely blessing I will bless
   you, and multiplying I will multiply you."

   Again, Brothers and Sisters, in our retrospect of the past, we should
   notice the perfection of the Lord's sympathetic care. Observe the
   words--"He knows your walking through this great wilderness." He has
   known our rough paths and our smooth ways, the weary trudging and the
   joyous marches. He has known it all, and not merely known it in the
   sense of Omniscience, but known it in the sense of sympathy. As David
   puts it--"You have known my soul in adversity." You have tenderly
   entered into my griefs and woes. You have borne my burdens and my
   cares. What do you say, Brothers and Sisters, has it not been so? Is
   not that witness true--"in all their afflictions He was afflicted, and
   the angel of His Presence saved them"? Is not this also true--"I have
   made and I will bear, even I will carry"? "He bore them on eagle's
   wings and brought them to Himself." Has He not often done so? And have
   we not to sing, today, of a dear Father's love, so tender, so
   considerate that we can only wonder at it, and love in return?

   You have had great losses, some of you. The dearest ones on earth, for
   whom you sorrowed much and justly, have been removed. Heart-breaking
   bereavements have happened, yet your hearts are not broken--neither are
   you cast down with too much sorrow--because underneath you are the
   everlasting arms and, "as your days so has your strength been." Before
   some of you many doors have shut, but God has opened others. The brook
   Cherith has been dried, but there has been sustenance found for you in
   the barrel of meal and the cruse of oil somewhere else. Let us bless
   the generous sympathy which has known all our wandering through this
   great wilderness!

   But I must pass on. We have had, also, what is better than this during
   our 40 years--the special Presence of God. "These forty years the Lord
   your God has been with you." Adored be His name for that! He has not
   been ashamed to be with us though we have been despised and ridiculed.
   Whenever we have prayed we have had audience with Him. When we have
   worked, we have seen His mysterious hand working with us. When we have
   trembled, we have felt the tender arms sustaining us. When we have been
   in bodily pain, He has made our bed in our sickness. When we have felt
   the fiery furnace of trial, He has kept us alive amidst the glowing
   coals, delivering us from even the smell of fire by His own Presence.
   The best of all is God with us, and in this sign we conquer!

   Again, we have had much cause to bless the Lord for the abundance of
   His supplies. Note those four words, "You have lacked nothing." Some
   things which we could have wished for we have not received and we are
   glad they were denied us. Children would have too many sweets if they
   could and then they could become ill. We have not been pampered with
   dangerous dainties, but we have received necessities and have lacked
   nothing. Walking on in the path of Providence, trusting in the Lord,
   what have we lacked? We have known a few pinches, even as the children
   of Israel lacked water for the moment, but very soon were refreshed
   with water from the Rock. We may have needed bread for an hour, as they
   did when they were wicked enough to say, "Has the Lord brought us out
   of Egypt that we may die in the wilderness?" but the clouds, before
   long, dropped with a mysterious shower of food for them! And before
   long Providence has supplied us, also.

   Our times of straitness have been occasions for appeal to the faithful
   promise and we have never appealed in vain. "You have lacked nothing."
   "No good thing will God withhold from them that walk uprightly."
   Everything that would be, in the fullest sense, a "good thing," God has
   given us! If it would be a good thing that we should never again be

   tempted. If it were a good thing that the devil were buried. If it were
   a good thing for us to go to Heaven at once--we should have all these
   things! But then there are certain far-reaching purposes to be
   answered--and to reach them the Lord makes even evils work for the
   highest good in the ultimate issues of His grand designs. We ought to
   magnify the Lord that we have lacked nothing. Oh for a song of praise
   for 40 years of mercies--some of you can say 60 and 70 years of
   mercies! Praise Him, all you saints! "Bless the Lord, O my Soul, and
   all that is within me, bless His holy name!"

   II. But now, Brothers and Sisters, we must take the second head, which
   is--forty years in the wilderness should teach us much of service for
   the PRESENT. I do not say that it will do so, for we do not all grow
   wiser as we grow older, but it ought to be so. Some of us were born
   with fools' caps which we find hard to pull off. Folly is bound up in
   the heart of many a man and it takes much of the rod to whip it out of
   him. Experience is a noble teacher, but we are dull scholars. But, at
   any rate, we ought to have learned to continue trusting in God. After
   40 years of the goodness of your Covenant God, do you mean to look to
   an arm of flesh, my Brethren?

   You have been so kindly treated by your Master and Savior, would you
   now leave Him for earthly friendship? Do you need a better God? Do you
   desire a better confidence? Merchants generally continue in that
   business which pays them well, for they feel that they might go
   elsewhere and fare worse. "Return unto your rest, O my Soul, for the
   Lord has dealt bountifully with you." Plow this field, Brother, you
   will never reap such a harvest anywhere else. Dig in this mine-- there
   is no such gold elsewhere, for the gold of this land is good, and its
   wealth brings no sorrow with it. As Boas said to Ruth, so I say to you,
   "Glean not in any other field." When Noah was in the ark the Lord shut
   him in--may He shut you in so fast that you may never leave your
   confidence in Jesus. "Trust in the Lord forever."

   You have found yourselves so blessed and benefited by trusting in Him
   up to now, stand fast in it and be not moved away from the hope of your
   calling. Be not so foolish, having been in the Spirit, as to seek to be
   made perfect by the flesh! Having walked so far, and so safely, by
   faith, do not attempt to walk by sight, or by the deeds of the Law.
   Having found that to trust in the Lord is better than to put confidence
   in princes, do not fawn at the feet of the proud. You have lived well
   enough upon the bread of your Father's house, do not desire the
   delicate morsels of those who please the flesh. Stand fast in the
   liberty in which Christ has made you free and shun the yoke of bondage.
   You should at least have learned this from 40 years' experience of the
   blessedness of resting in the Lord.

   Experience should also give us greater ease in confiding in the Lord.
   Divine Grace has given you, in very deed, a real second nature, and
   this, by use, should have grown stronger and more prevalent. Faith is
   an untried path when we begin, but after so many years of testing God
   in all sorts of ways, in all kinds of circumstances, it ought now to be
   as easy to confide in the Lord as it is for a child to trust in a
   tender parent. Is it so? I fear not. Our long-tried confidence in God
   ought not now to be staggered by a little difficulty, as it was at the
   first. When fresh-water sailors first go to sea, every capful of wind
   frightens them. And if the vessel lurches a little, they cry, "She will
   certainly roll over." But the old sailor, who knows what a storm means,
   thanks God for the wind, for it will drive the ship more rapidly into
   port! He never minds a lurch or two--he has his sea legs by this time!

   And so men who have been blessed of God for 40 years ought to be
   equally at ease. We should be able to say, "I do trust Him and I will.
   I must believe Him--why should I doubt Him?" Nothing has ever occurred,
   as far as I am concerned, for 40 years, which could justify me in a
   mistrust of my God. And if, beloved Brethren, you and I never doubt our
   God till we have a reason to, we shall dwell in the unbroken rest of
   faith! Let the roots of faith take stronger hold, that like a cedar in
   Lebanon it my smile at the tempest. Forty years of Divine faithfulness
   should teach us, also, a surer, quicker, calmer and more joyous
   expectation of immediate aid in all times of strait and trial--we
   should learn not to be flurried and worried because the herds are cut
   off from the stall and the harvest is withered, for we know from
   abundant proofs that, "The Lord will provide."

   Have we come to a dead lift? Let us bless God for it, for now He will
   make bare His arm! He would have left you to lift your load if you
   could have lifted it, but now your extremity has come, His opportunity
   has come, also. I am often glad when I feel that none but my Lord can
   carry me through, for I am certain of His help. If we have, still, a
   batch of dough in the kneading trough which we brought out of Egypt,
   the windows of Heaven will not yet be opened. But when the last little
   cake has been baked, the manna will fall around the camp. As long as we
   can feel the bottom of the river we have not reached the best waters to
   swim in. When the barley loaves and the few small fishes are all
   broken, then the miracle of multiplying begins. My Brothers and
   Sisters, watch and wait for the Lord, and expect Him as confidently as

   you look for light at the hour of dawn. Far sooner may the sun forget
   his rising than the Lord forget His promise to succor His people in the
   hour of need. "My Soul, wait you only upon God, for my expectation is
   from Him."

   Forty years of blessing should teach each of us to believe in holy
   activity. "The Lord your God has blessed you in all the works of your
   hands." Some people believe in God's blessing the dreams and theories
   of their heads and their prayers are unattended by action. They believe
   in His blessing them when they are scheming and putting fine plans on
   paper, or when they meet at a conference to talk about how to do
   Christian work. I believe in God's blessing the actual works of our
   hands--He waters not the seed which we talk of sowing, but that which
   we actually scatter. If people believed in this and just did one tenth
   of what they propose, it would be much better than the endless leagues
   of tasking and religious dissipation which threaten to become the bane
   of the Church. The schemes for evangelizing districts, towns, cities
   and the whole world, are so very numerous that there is no need to make
   any more--and were half the time thus vainly spent given to diligent
   labor--there would be much more of a blessing bestowed upon the sons of
   men!

   Meet and confer by all means, but do not think that this is a very
   great matter for congratulation. The real winning of souls is far
   better. In business you will find, as a rule, that you will not get
   much more than you really work for. And you will find, in the things of
   God, that the blessing comes to diligence, zeal, earnestness and
   painstaking, for God blesses the works of our hands. Men of 40, it is
   time for us to be fully at work! Moses was 40 years old when he went
   down to visit his brethren in Egypt. Then he tried to turn, to
   practical use, the former 40 years of education in Pharaoh's court--and
   though he had to wait 40 more years--it was no fault of his.

   Joshua said, "Forty years was I when Moses sent me to spy out the
   land." You cannot hope to live as long as these men did and, therefore,
   it is time to begin earnest work, for you are in your prime and will
   never be more fit for usefulness. If you have not begun before, let
   your consecration be at its fullest today. The Lord has blessed what
   you have done with a right motive--will it not be well to do more? Men
   in trade, when they find they make gains, increase their business. And
   when we find God blesses us in what we do, let us do more for Him! We
   must not slacken our zeal--it is a dreadful thing when men begin to do
   less while their natural force is unabated--it looks as if their hearts
   were growing cold. How commonly do we hear people say, "We have served
   an apprenticeship at work and now we will leave the younger folks to go
   on."

   Just when you begin to be capable of doing the work well you leave
   it--and the Lord has to be served by another set of makeshifts. Man
   alive! Stick to your work as long as you are alive! Surely, work for
   Jesus deserves our most mature and best instructed years--and it ought
   not to be left to the mere boys and girls. The young people deserve
   great credit for taking to the work so heartily, but surely men and
   women in their prime are none too good to be enlisted, and the fullness
   of their strength is not too much to expect for Jesus! Brothers and
   Sisters, 40 years' experience ought to have taught us to avoid many of
   the faults into which we fell in our early days. It is a great pity
   when advancing age teaches men to avoid their virtues rather than their
   follies. It is not at all unusual for zeal to grow chill as men advance
   in life. "Ah," says the Brother, "I am not so hot-headed as I was." No,
   Brother, nor yet so hot-hearted.

   "Ah," says another, "I was very zealous in my time." Is not this, also,
   your time? Show us, now, what your boasted zeal was like, will you? We
   should be glad to see a specimen of it! Are you not ashamed to confess
   that you are backsliding in heart? Can you bear the prospect of taking
   your flight when your heart is in a wintry condition? As you come
   nearer Heaven ought you not to be more heavenly? A zeal which becomes
   weaker in proportion to our age looks very much like a merely animal
   excitement which decays with nature. The earnestness of Divine Grace
   defies the decline of years and it brings forth fruit in old age to
   show that the Lord is upright. No, we must learn not to avoid
   excellencies, but to avoid follies! And where we have burned our
   fingers once, we must not burn them again, but keep clear of what we
   now discover to have been excrescences, though perhaps at the time we
   thought them beauties.

   May God grant, dear Friends, in all of us, that, as the Israelites
   which came out of Egypt died in the wilderness, little by little at
   each stopping place, so in us may the old Egyptian nature daily die and
   be buried. Have you ever thought of it? The march of the children of
   Israel could have been tracked in the wilderness by their graves--there
   remained a cemetery wherever there had been an encampment. Blessed be
   God, our march to Heaven may be traced by graves, too, for we die daily
   if we are in a right state and the old man is crucified with Christ,
   and we obey the command, "mortify, therefore, your members which are
   upon the earth." Blessed shall the day be when the last "grave shall
   have been dug and

   the last evil passion shall have been buried forever, and the new
   race--the new Israel--shall enter into the promised

   land!

   Beloved, there is another thing which 40 years suggest to me. You will
   have observed that the text mentions twice "The Lord your God." All
   through the chapter it is always that--"Jehovah your God." Here we have
   mention of His Covenant relationship in which He is ever most dear to
   us. Shall we not, at this time, renew our own personal covenant and
   take our God to be ours afresh? We read that Isaac was 40 years old
   when he married Rebecca. Let us have a new wedding day, ourselves, and
   give ourselves over again to the Husband of our souls, even Jesus the
   Well-Beloved. Are you tired of your Lord, any of you? Do you wish to
   sue for a divorce? "No," you say, "No, no. But would God I were more
   enamored of Him, and that my whole self were more completely His." Let
   this be a day of re-consecration--

   "'Tis done--the great transaction's done! I am my Lord's and He is
   mine: He drew me and I followed on, Charmed to confess the voice
   Divine. High Heaven that heard the solemn vow, That vow renewed shall
   daily hear, Until in life's latest hour I bow, And bless in death a
   bond so dear." May that be the case with each one of us. May we offer
   ourselves anew to Jehovah this day and take Father, Son and Holy Spirit
   to be our God forever and ever!

   III. A great deal more might be said, but we have not time and,
   therefore, we must go on to the third head, which concerns THE FUTURE.
   Having come so far on our journey as to have reached 40 years, we are
   bound to feel a powerful influence upon us as to the future. How? I
   will borrow our remarks from the context. Read in the second chapter,
   second verse, "And the Lord spoke unto me, saying, You have compassed
   this mountain long enough: turn you northward." What way was northward,
   then? Why, toward Canaan! Forty years wandering up and down in the
   wilderness is enough, now turn your faces towards Canaan and march
   heavenward.

   Beloved Friends, it is time we all had our faces turned heavenward more
   completely. We have not always had our conversation in Heaven as we
   should have. Some of our faculties have been taken up with inferior
   things and we have looked towards Egypt. But we have compassed this
   mountain long enough--it is time, now, that we concentrate all our
   powers and turn them all straight away to the Zion which is above, and
   to the innumerable company of angels, and to the spirits of the just
   made perfect! Our window should now be opened towards Jerusalem! Forty
   years of the world, why it is 40 years of banishment! And, as we are
   soon to have done with it, let us up and away to the hills of
   frankincense!

   They tell me that when sailors, years ago, used to go to India, they
   would give as a toast when they left, "To our friends astern." But when
   they had reached half way on the voyage they changed it--it was, "To
   our friends ahead." When we get to 40 we may reckon we are probably
   more than mid-way on our voyage. We are bound, therefore, to remember
   our friends ahead. We have a large company waiting for us of dear ones
   that have gone before us. Indeed, the aged have a majority of their
   friends on the other side of the Jordan. Let us salute them--

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

   Let us pledge our friends ahead and, from now on let us forget the
   things that are behind and press forward to that which is
   before--leaving earth and earthly matters more and more--and yielding
   ourselves more fully to the cords which draw us towards the celestial
   country. Let us begin more fully that holy, happy, praiseful life which
   is akin to that of Heaven! Is not this a good suggestion? The time past
   may suffice us to have worked the will of the flesh, now let us cry,
   "heavenward, ho!" Pull up the anchor, spread the sails and let us go
   away to the fair country where Jesus has gone before us!

   The next thing we should learn is indifference to this world's
   heritage. The next verse says, "You are to pass through the coast of
   your brethren, the children of Esau, which dwell in Seir, and they
   shall be afraid of you; take you good heed unto yourselves, therefore:
   meddle not with them; for I will not give you of their land, no, not so
   much as a foot breadth;

   because I have given Mount Seir unto Esau for a possession." Esau sold
   his heritage and had his mess of pottage--let him have it-- you keep
   the birthright and never think of putting your spoon into his mess. The
   world is for worldlings. What do you want with it? God does not intend
   you to have your portion in this life--why do you lust after it? He has
   appointed a better rest for you--are you not content to have it so?
   Perhaps the Israelites would have liked to have taken Edom. "No," says
   God, "Edom is not yours. Canaan is yours. Go on--do not meddle with
   Esau's cities."

   When you see worldlings very happy in their mirth, do not envy them!
   Let them have their portion. I never envy a horse his oats and his
   beans--he likes them and I could not eat them--why should I wish to be
   a dog in the manger? There are pleasures in this world for men of the
   world. Poor things, let them have them. As for you, you do not need
   them and cannot enjoy them! Let them alone and do not meddle with them.
   If you can bless them, do so, but by no means allow them to imagine
   that you envy them, for your position is infinitely better than theirs.
   Better to be God's dog than the devil's darling. The bad estate of the
   ungodly is far below our lowest condition. When we consider their end,
   any little envy which might arise at the sight of their prosperity will
   turn to horror at their doom.

   Let us learn from the past to cultivate independence of spirit. "You
   shall buy meat of them for money, that you may eat. And you shall also
   buy water of them for money, that you may drink." They were not to
   plunder the country, or make imperious demands. Neither were they to
   act as paupers and beg anything from Edom. What they needed they were
   to pay for in good money. The Edomites, no doubt, thought them a mob of
   escaped slaves, as poor as poverty itself, half starved and miserable.
   They were to let them see that they were nothing of the kind. They were
   to pay in full for all they had. It is a grand thing when a man can
   exhibit the princely independence which Abraham showed towards the king
   of Sodom. That little potentate said, "Give me the persons and take the
   goods to yourself." "No," says Abraham, "not I, lest you should say, I
   have made Abraham rich, I will not take a thread or even a shoe lace
   from you."

   No, Brothers and Sisters, if a man has been helped of God to live for
   40 years, lacking nothing, and has walked uprightly, surely it would
   now be a scandalous thing if he were to do anything whatever which
   would be questionable as to integrity, or might savor of confidence in
   man. He is, indeed, a man of God who has learned to walk uprightly and
   no longer leans upon the creature, nor practices policy to win his way.
   "Ah," said a minister to me, "if I were to preach in your bold style I
   should lose some of my richest people and offend the rest." And if he
   did, would he not have an easy conscience? And is not that worth more
   than money? The minister who cares for any man's opinion when he is
   doing his duty is unworthy of his office!

   The servant of God must not be the servant of men. The only man whom
   God will bless is he who fears no man's face and resolves that whether
   he offends or pleases, he will clear his soul from the blood of all
   men--

   "Fearless myself a dying man, Of dying man's esteem, I preach as though
   I might never preach again-- A dying man to dying men."

   Have the Israelites lived for forty years on manna, and shall they bow
   before the Edomites, and like paupers cry, "Please give us bread"? No,
   the favored feasters at Heaven's table can afford to say, "We will pay
   you, we will owe you nothing." God give you independence of spirit, my
   Brethren! Many have forgotten what it means--they will do anything for
   the sake of custom, or credit, or to get into society--and if they grow
   rich they can no longer attend a Non-conformist place of worship! For
   the sake of being patted on the back by nobodies they give up their
   fathers' religion and renounce their principles, if, indeed, they ever
   had any!

   Once again, after 40 years in the wilderness God would have His people
   learn generosity of spirit. The Edomites were very much afraid of the
   Israelites, and would, no doubt, have bribed them to let them alone.
   But Moses, in effect, says, "Do not take anything from them. You have
   no need to do so, for you have never lacked anything and God has been
   with you. They are afraid of you, you might take what you pleased from
   them, but do not touch even the water from their wells without
   payment." Oh, that we had a generous spirit, that we were not for
   oppressing others in any degree whatever, feeling that we have too much
   already given us by God to be needing to tax any man for our own gain!
   The spirit offreedom from murmuring should be in us after 40 years of
   blessing!

   Jarchi tells us that this exhortation meant that they were not to
   pretend to be poor. You know how many do so when it is likely to save
   their pockets. When the tribes came to the Edomites they were not to
   say to them, "We are poor people

   and have no money. You must not charge too much for the water, for we
   cannot afford to pay you at full rates." No, no, no! It must not be!
   Supplied by the infinite God, the children of Heaven dare not pretend
   to be poor! Yet we find professors doing this all the time! If they
   have a very good business year, they say, "We have done very middling."
   And if trade is rather dull, they cry, "Things are at a dreadful pass!
   Trade is decreasing, we cannot make a living at all." Very seldom do I
   meet with a man who cheerfully confesses, "the Lord is blessing and
   prospering me and I am perfectly content. I want for nothing but more
   Divine Grace with which to bless the Lord all day long."

   This is the kind of talk for Christian men! They are princes, let them
   speak a princely language. To grumble and complain is like a rich man's
   putting on old and slovenly garments that he may deceive by the
   presence of need and escape from bearing his due share of the public
   burdens. The Holy Spirit enables the Believer to boast in the Lord and
   glory in His name. I am not going to give my Master a bad name. He has
   treated me infinitely better than I ever expected or deserved! He is a
   good God. I feel it to be a good thing to live, since He has accepted
   me in Christ--and a blessed thing to be on earth--because the Holy
   Spirit enables me to serve Jesus. I am not going to stand here and find
   fault with my Lord, or represent myself as a poor miserable wretch,
   oppressed by a hard taskmaster. My Lord has been good and only good, to
   me! And I will praise and magnify His name. Where we are poor let us
   confess it, but where God, in His infinite Grace has made us rich in
   Christ Jesus, let us glory in it!

   Lastly, we ought, for the future, to show more confidence in God if we
   have had 40 years of His love--we should have more confidence in
   working for Him that He will bless us, more confidence as to our
   personal weakness that He will strengthen us, more confidence as to the
   unknown future that through the great and terrible wilderness He will
   be with us--and that through the last cold stream He will still be our
   companion! We should have more confidence that we shall behold the
   light of His Countenance and more confidence as to the supply of all
   our needs, for as we have lacked nothing, so all things shall be freely
   supplied till we cross the river and eat the old corn of the land. To
   gather all up in one word, "Bless the Lord, O my Soul, and all that is
   within me, bless His holy name!"

   Would God you were all His people! Would God you all trusted Him for
   all things, for those who do so shall find good. The Lord bless you,
   for Christ's sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Deuteronomy 8. HYMNS FROM "OUR
   OWN HYMN BOOK"--PSALM 23 (VERSION III), 152, 214.
     __________________________________________________________________

Jesus Near but Unrecognized

   (No. 1180)

   A SERMON DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "But their eyes were restrained that they should not know Him." Luke
   24:16.

   THE Lord may be present with His people and yet they may not be
   conscious of it. They may be conscious of the effect produced thereby,
   but not of the fact itself. When the Lord visited Abraham in his tent
   on the plains of Mamre, at the first, at least, Abraham thought he was
   receiving a wayfaring man and so he entertained the Angel of the
   Covenant unawares. When the Lord appeared unto Jacob he rose up from
   the vision and said, "Surely God was in this place, and I knew it not."
   Afterwards at the brook Jabbok, when the Covenant Angel wrestled with
   him, Jacob was not aware of the exact Character of the mysterious
   personage, for he said, "Tell me Your name." He did not understand who
   it was with whom he wept, made supplication and prevailed.

   The same is true of Joshua. He saw a man standing with his sword drawn
   in his hand, and he challenged him, mistaking him for a warrior--he did
   not recognize the Person of his Lord until He said, "No, but as Captain
   of the Lord's host am I come." It is possible, then, for saints to be
   favored very remarkably with the Presence of their Master and yet for
   some cause or other they may not know that He is specially near them.
   So was it in the case before us, which let us consider.

   I. We shall note, first, REASONS WHY, IN THE VERY PRESENCE OF THEIR
   MASTER, SAINTS MAY NOT KNOW THAT HE IS NEAR. The reason in this case
   was twofold--first, because their eyes were restrained. And secondly,
   because, as Mark tells us, He appeared unto them in another form. We
   must not suppose either of these reasons to be untrue, but that they
   are both true, and that the two evangelists have thus given us the
   whole of the Truth of God, one taking note of one part of it and the
   other of the other. The first reason, then, why these good men did not
   perceive the Presence of their Master was that, "their eyes were
   restrained." There was a blinding cause in them. What was it? We cannot
   dare say--where Scripture does not strictly inform us, it is not for us
   to dogmatize.

   By some mysterious operation, their eyes, which were able to see other
   things, were not able to detect the Presence of their Master. They
   thought Him to be some common traveler. Still, we are permitted to say
   that in their case, and in the case of a great many disciples, their
   eyes may have been restrained through sorrow. They were very grieved
   for they had lost their Master. He was gone they knew not where. They
   would have been glad, even, if they could have found His body, but
   certain women had gone to the sepulcher, and though they told a
   wonderful story about a vision of angels, yet to these men it sounded
   like a knell in their ears, "for Him they found not."

   Ah, there is no sorrow to a Christian like the loss of his Master's
   Presence! May you and I never be able to bear it with composure. "The
   days shall come when the Bridegroom shall be taken from them, then
   shall they fast." Fast, indeed! There is no fast like that which sets
   in when those who have once seen the Bridegroom's beauty and tasted of
   the love that is better than wine, have to cry out, "O that I knew
   where I might find Him!" That careless spouse who had slept and would
   not open to her Beloved for a while--when her heart was touched and
   moved for Him--rose up and searched through the streets of the city for
   Him. She could not rest until she found Him and she made every watchman
   on the walls hear her question--"Have you seen Him whom my soul loves?"
   Sorrow will unsettle the judgment. Even holy sorrow for sin and grief
   for the absence of the Master may, sometimes, put a mote into the eye
   and destroy its clear vision. Even tears of repentance have prevented
   men from seeing Truths of God which might have made their hearts glad.

   Again, in their case, in addition to the mysterious operation which
   held their eyes, which we do not attempt to account for, we have no
   doubt their eyes were restrained with unbelief Had they been expecting
   to see Jesus, I think they would have recognized Him. If they had gone
   to Emmaus fully persuaded that He was alive somewhere upon the earth,
   as

   soon as they had seen Him approach, they would at least have said,
   "Perhaps this is the Master! Perhaps even now He is coming to us." They
   knew that His delights were with the sons of men, so that He would not
   long conceal Himself from His beloved while He was on earth. They knew,
   also, that He loved His own to the end and would love them still. They
   might, therefore, have felt sure that He would come to meet them--and
   had they been believing and expecting--they would, probably, have
   discovered Him at once.

   Whether it is so or not, I am sure, dear Brothers and Sisters, that our
   unbelief has often hid the Lord from our eyes. What might we have known
   of our Lord by this time--what might we have tasted and handled of Him
   by this time if it had not been for our unbelief? He might say to some
   of us, "Have I been so long a time with you and yet have you not known
   Me?" By reason of our unbelief we have not dived into the mysteries of
   His heart! We have not understood the fullness of His love! Oh, for
   more faith! Faith has the eagle's eyes--it can see where other eyes
   cannot penetrate. Oh, for the eyes of love--the dove's eyes of love, by
   the rivers of waters, washed with milk and fitly set--for faith and
   love together make up a blessed pair of optics which can see the Lord
   even when clouds and darkness are roundabout Him!

   Whatever may have been mysterious about the restraining of the
   disciples' eyes, they were also somewhat restrained by ignorance. They
   had failed to see what is plain enough in Scripture, that the Messiah
   must suffer, bleed and die. They had their sacred books and yet were so
   little acquainted with their real meaning that, albeit Christ is in
   every page of the Old Testament, yet they did not perceive Him there!
   And so, not knowing that all this must be as it had happened, and
   expecting something very different and more in accordance with the
   traditional views of their race--they did not recognize their Master.
   If it were not so with them, it is certainly so with many of God's
   people today Some professors-- I speak it with sorrow--do not know more
   than the most elementary doctrines of the Gospel. With the exception of
   knowing themselves sinners and Christ a Savior, they know nothing!

   Justification, in the full glory of it, is hidden from their eyes. They
   do not consider the work of the Holy Spirit. The fullness of the union
   of the child of God with Christ and the Glory that is to come, which
   already casts a halo about the saints, they have not perceived. They do
   not study the Word so as to enter into its depths. They are afraid of
   some doctrines because they are said to be, "High Calvinism," and of
   other doctrines because they are denounced as, "Arminianism." They are
   frightened into joining a party, instead of taking the Truth as God has
   revealed it and beholding Jesus sitting upon the Truth like a king upon
   a throne of ivory. Beloved, the scales of ignorance have often
   restrained the eyes of the saints--it is well when the Holy Spirit
   opens our understandings to receive the Scriptures and enables us to
   see Jesus Christ as He truly is in the field of the Word of God--like a
   precious treasure hidden therein! Thus Jesus may be with His people,
   but they may not see Him because of something in themselves.

   At other times they may not see Him because of something in the Master.
   Listen, as I have told you, Mark says He appeared unto them "in another
   form." I suppose he means in a form in which they had not seen Him
   before. The Lord Jesus Christ has appeared at times in the Old
   Testament to His servants, but on each occasion in a different form. To
   Abraham, who was a stranger and a wayfaring man in the land, He
   appeared as a pilgrim. To Jacob, who was a wrestler with his brother,
   He appeared as a wrestler. To Joshua, who was a soldier, fighting to
   conquer Canaan, He appeared as a soldier. To the holy children who were
   in the furnace He appeared as one walking amidst the burning coals. He
   puts Himself into fellowship with His people. So here the two travelers
   were overtaken by a third traveler--He appeared to them in that form in
   which they themselves were!

   As He is to make them like Himself, He begins by making Himself like
   they are. "As the children were partakers of flesh and blood, so He,
   also, Himself took part of the same." Jesus condescends to our
   condition and our circumstances. There is no position into which
   Providence may cast us but what Jesus can sympathize with us. We see
   Him best under certain characters when we, ourselves, are in that form
   of character. Beloved, it may be you are a beginner in Divine Grace
   and, up to now, the Lord Jesus has appeared to you with a smile upon
   His face--as a gentle Shepherd leading the lambs. But possibly for a
   while He has gone, or you think so, for you feel His rebuke in your
   soul as if He were saying to you, "O fool and slow of heart."

   You conclude within yourself, "This cannot be Christ. I thought He was
   always a feeder of lambs." Yes, so He is, but He sometimes comes with a
   scourge of small cords to chase out buyers and sellers from His Temple.
   He is the same Christ, only you have not seen Him in that Character.
   Perhaps you have only seen Jesus as your joy and consolation--under
   that aspect may you always see Him, but, remember--"He shall sit as a
   Refiner. He shall purify the sons of Levi." When you

   are in the furnace, suffering affliction, trial and depression of
   spirit, the Refiner is Christ, the same loving Christ in a new
   Character. Up to then you have seen Christ as breaking the Bread of
   Life to you and giving you to drink of the Water of Life, but you must
   learn that His fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge the
   floor of your heart. He is not another Christ, but He puts on another
   aspect and exercises another office.

   At first, poor sinners are content to see Jesus as their Priest who
   cleanses them from sin. They must go on to see Him as their King who
   conquers them by the sacred arms of love--and they must also know Him
   as their Prophet--leading them into the mysteries of the Kingdom of
   Heaven. They must not wonder if He appears unto them in another form
   while they are learning more of Him. This kind of sacred philosophy
   comes by experience, for how often do we find precious children of God
   distressed because they have not, today, the same sweets they used to
   have? At first we give little children such food as will be easily
   assimilated--they have nothing else but milk. By-and-by hard crusts are
   given them, for there are wisdom teeth to be cut. Suppose when we give
   them more solid food, they began crying out for the milk, again? Should
   we give it to them?

   The Lord does not wish you always to be babes! He would have you grow
   into men in Christ Jesus. And though Christ is always your food whether
   He comes to you as milk or as meat, yet still He will not always be
   milk to you lest you should remain a babe. He means to be meat to you
   that your senses may be exercised, that you may be able to understand
   the stronger and deeper Truths of the Kingdom of God. Do not,
   therefore, be astonished! Or, if you are, let this always comfort you,
   "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever," and though He
   may change the form under which He manifests Himself, yet He is the
   immutable Lord of Love.

   You have thus heard two reasons why saints may have Christ with them
   and yet may not discern Him. First, because of themselves--their eyes
   are restrained. And, next, because of Himself--He may appear in another
   form.

   II. Secondly, let us speak of the manners of the saints when they are
   in such a case. When their Master is with them and they do not know
   Him, how do they conduct themselves? First, they are sad because the
   Presence of Christ, if Christ is unknown, is not comfortable, though it
   may be edifying. It may be for rebuke, as it was to them, but it
   certainly is not for consolation. For joy, we must have a known Christ.
   Saints are always downcast when Jesus is not known to be present and,
   as I have said before, may we never be otherwise than unhappy if our
   Lord is hid from us. I can understand the child of God saying, "I am
   out of fellowship with Christ," but I cannot understand his saying that
   calmly and deliberately, without tears, without deep regret and intense
   repentance!

   I can comprehend that the heir of Heaven may walk in darkness and see
   no light, but I cannot understand how he can be at home in darkness.
   Set a bird of the day flying by night and see how it flutters, and how
   uneasy it is. Go with a candle, if you will, to any place where a
   number of birds have made their nests, and see how strangely bewildered
   they are. The only bird that will be at home in the dark is the owl,
   the bird of the night--and if any one of you can be happy without your
   Master you are of the night. If you can be content without the sunlight
   of Jesus' Presence, depend upon it, you are one of the bats of the
   cavern--you are not one of the eagles of the day. God grant us to be
   like these disciples-- sad, doubly sad, if we do not know our God to be
   with us.

   Next, these disciples, though they did not know that their Master was
   there, conversed together--a good example for all Christians. Whether
   you are in the full joy of your faith or not, speak often to one
   another. He who is strong will help the weak Brother. If two walk
   together, if one shall trip, perhaps the other will not, and so he will
   have a hand to spare to support his friend. Even if both saints are
   unhappy, yet some good result will come from mutual sympathy. The one
   is saying, "I have lost my Master," and the other replies, "I have lost
   my Master, too," and they will both know that they are not the only
   persons in such a case--and that is some help to a man in sorrow.
   Sometimes even a gleam of light, such as will arise from the fact that
   another is in the same plight, may be useful.

   Christian people, commune together, but let your communications always
   be like these which are recorded in this chapter. Speak of Him, talk of
   Him, what you know of Him, of your sorrows about Him, even of your
   neglects of Him, of your ill treatment of Him, your sins against Him.
   Talk of these things to one another, for so long as they are about Him,
   it will be good, even, to confess your faults to one another, for it
   will lead you to pray for one another and to join your prayers
   together, so that there will be greater strength in the petitions. For
   if two of you are agreed, you know what power that sweet agreement has
   with Heaven. "They that feared the Lord spoke often to one another."

   A blessed practice, an ancient practice, an edifying practice, a
   God-honoring practice--one which so pleased God that He turned
   eavesdropper--came under the window to listen to what they said and
   took His notebook and recorded it--"a book of remembrance was written."
   And He has published it and given His blessing to "those that fear the
   Lord and that think upon His name." Beloved, even if you are out of
   fellowship with Jesus, do not forsake the assembly of God's people.
   Though you may feel unworthy to speak with them, yet get among them and
   perhaps, there, you will find your Master.

   Note, next, that these disciples, in addition to communicating with one
   another, were ready to be communed with by good men. When this new
   Pilgrim on the road came up and asked them a question, they were not
   shy, they were ready to give an answer. They poured out their hearts to
   Him and He talked to them, and they were soon on the way to being
   instructed. It is well for Christians to be willing to receive the
   Truth of God, not merely through their own immediate companions, but
   from others who fear the Lord, who perhaps may have looked at things
   from a different point of view and who may have received clearer light.
   These two disciples were communicative. It is a pity that Christian
   people so often shut themselves up within themselves.

   This is a particular fault of English people. You may travel all over
   the world in the same railway carriage with an Englishman and he will
   not say a word to you! I am sure Christian people would get much good
   from one another if they would not be so distant. Many precious
   children of God have sat side by side by the hour together and out of
   undue reserve, which they have thought most proper, they have failed to
   communicate--and have missed the opportunity of a sacred commerce of
   thought and experience which would have enriched them both. Be ready to
   communicate (not, of course, being indiscreet, for there is such a
   thing as casting pearls before swine). Using a heavenly prudence, be
   free to speak to those who are willing to converse concerning Christ.

   John Bunyan in his, "Pilgrim's Progress," has a very witty and pithy
   piece about Mr. Talkative, who joined with the pilgrims. And, if you
   remember, he would soon have wearied them with his chat, had not
   Christian and Hopeful adopted a capital expedient for getting rid of
   him. They would talk of nothing else but their inward experience in the
   things of God. And after a while Mr. Talkative dropped behind--that was
   not the sort of talk he wanted! And you will not long be troubled with
   the company of a gentleman who does not love your Master if you keep to
   the grand theme. He will soon be sick of you and go where his trashy
   wares are saleable, which they do not appear to be in your market, for
   you have better goods on hand. These good people were communicative to
   those who could sympathize with them.

   Note, again, that though they did not know their Master was there, yet
   they avowed their hopes concerning Him. I cannot commend all that they
   said, there was not much faith in it, but they did confess that they
   were followers of Jesus of Nazareth. "We trusted that it had been He
   which should deliver Israel. And, besides all this, today is the third
   day." And they went on to let out the secret that they belonged to His
   disciples. "Certain women of our company made us astonished." They were
   under a cloud and sad, but they were not so cowardly as to disown their
   connection with the Crucified. They were not so far gone in depression
   of spirit as to talk about the whole thing as though it were to be
   disavowed or concealed, lest anybody should say, "You were the foolish
   dupes of an impostor."

   They still avowed their hope. And oh, Beloved, when your comforts are
   at the lowest ebb, still cling to your Master! If I never get a smile
   from His face as long as I live, I must speak well of Him. If never
   again I see Him, yet is He the Chief among ten thousand, and the
   altogether lovely. I like to see the strong retentiveness of many an
   almost despairing saint. I remember a minister who was talking to a
   poor bedridden woman who was under a grievous cloud, and she said,
   "Sir, I do not think I have any faith or any love for Christ whatever."
   He knew better, for he knew what her life had been, and so, walking up
   to the window, he wrote on a piece of paper, "I do not love the Lord
   Jesus Christ," and he brought it back with a pencil, and said, "Now,
   Sarah, sign that."

   When she had read it, she said, "Oh, Sir, I would be torn to pieces
   before I would sign that." "Oh, but you said it just now." "Ah, Sir,
   but I could not put my hand to it." "Then I suspect, Sarah, that you do
   love Him." "Well, Sir, whether I do or not, I will never give Him up."
   I remember visiting a woman, years ago, whom I never could comfort till
   she died, and then she died triumphantly. I said to her, "What do you
   come to the Chapel for? What is the good of it if there is nothing
   there for you?" "No," she said, "still I like to be there. If I perish,
   I will perish listening to the precious Word of God." "Well, but why is
   it you remain a member of the Church, as you say you are not a saved
   soul?" "Well,"

   she said, "I know I am not worthy, but unless you turn me out I will
   never go out, for I like to be with God's people. I desire to be
   numbered with them, too, though I know I am not worthy, for I have no
   hope."

   I said, "Well, now, come, I will give you five pounds if you will give
   up your hope altogether." And I drew out my purse. "Five pounds!" she
   said, and she looked at me with utter horror. "Five pounds!" She would
   not give Christ up for 5,000 worlds. "But you have not got Him, you
   said." "No, Sir, I am afraid I have not got Him, but I will never give
   Him up." Ah, there came out the real truth. So was it with these two
   disciples--they talked as if they could not give Him up! Though they
   were afraid that He had not risen from the dead, yet they remained His
   disciples, and spoke of, "Certain women of our company." They were
   half-unconsciously clinging to the forlorn cause in its very worst
   estate. And, Beloved, so will we. We will say with Job--"Though He slay
   me, yet will I trust in Him."--

   "When our eye of hope is dim, We'll trust in Jesus, sink or swim. Still
   at His footstool bow the knee, And Israel's God our help shall be."

   But, passing on--these poor people, though very sad, and without their
   Master as they thought, were very willing to bear rebukes. Although the
   word used by our Lord should not be rendered, "fools," yet it sounds
   somewhat hard, even, to call them inconsiderate and thoughtless--but we
   do not discover any resentment on their part because they were so
   severely chided. Souls that really love Jesus do not grow angry when
   faithfully rebuked. Beloved, do you approve the sermon which cuts you
   up root and branches? Are you thankful for the ministry which smites
   your faults? Do you say to the Lord, as you bare your bosom to the
   sword of His Word, "Search me and try me"? Ah, then, there is something
   more in you than in the man of the world, for his proud heart rebels
   when his conscience is too roughly assailed.

   I had, the other day, some such conversation as this reported to me--A
   man and his wife had come to the Tabernacle. The wife said she liked to
   go to Church--her husband said he preferred to come here. What do you
   think were the reasons for each choice? The woman said, "Spurgeon is
   too plain." "That is why I like him," said the husband. "He is too
   personal," said the wife, "I do not think people ought to be talked to
   in that way." "That is what we need," said the husband, "we need to
   have it brought home to us. What is the good of our going where there
   is nothing said that really belongs to us?" That is just so. We do not
   need a Gospel that belongs to the people on the moon, but to ourselves!
   Some admire a preacher who can send a stone so high that it never hits
   anything--but we need a preacher who can sling a stone to a hair's
   breadth and not miss the target of the conscience. Whatever deficiency
   there may be about them, those are right at bottom who can bear to be
   somewhat roughly rebuked by their Master.

   And then, they were willing to learn. Never better pupils, never a
   better Teacher, never a better school book, never a better explanation!
   They were disciples, with Christ to teach them, with the Bible for a
   school book and Himself to be the exposition--so they listened while He
   went on to open up from Genesis right through the Old Testament--the
   things concerning Himself! Poor child of God, are you in doubt and
   trouble? Still be anxious to learn of Jesus! Pray the Lord to enlighten
   you! Ask Him to teach you His statutes and to open your eyes to behold
   wondrous things out of His Law, for whatever God's children may not be,
   they are a teachable people. They shall all sit down at His feet and
   all receive of His Words.

   Again, dear Friends, notice that while the two were willing to learn,
   they also wished to retain the teacher and His instruction, and to
   treat Him kindly, too. They said, "Abide with us; the day is far
   spent." They had been benefited by Him and therefore they wished to
   show their gratitude to Him. Have you learned so much that you are
   willing to learn more? Are you of a teachable heart, ready to receive,
   with meekness, the engrafted Word of God? Now, I speak not of myself,
   for I have no cause to complain, but I have known true servants of
   Christ whom the people have driven forth from them because they were
   fickle and needed a change, for change's sake. They have not said,
   "Abide with us." Neither have they given them to eat, but though they
   have been worthy servants of God they have been thrust out not knowing
   where they should go--and their people not caring where.

   I believe that God resents these things and that the unkind treatment
   of His servants will bring judgment upon the Church. If He sends
   ministers with His message, He expects them to be treated with respect
   and kindness. Just as Moses said to Hobab, so wise Believers say to
   God-sent ministers, "Come with us and we will do you good, and you
   shall be to us instead of eyes, for you know where we should encamp in
   the wilderness; and as the Lord deals with us so we will deal with
   you." These two disciples entertained their instructor and would not
   let Him go.

   And, once more, though they did not know that their Master was with
   them, they were well prepared to join in worship. Some have thought
   that the breaking of bread that night was only Christ's ordinary way of
   offering a blessing before meat. It does not seem so to me, because
   they had already eaten and were in the middle of the meal when He took
   the bread and blessed it. I think He did, then and there, set before
   them those dear tokens of His passion, which He bids us feast upon on
   the first day of the week, that we may show His death until He shall
   come. Whichever it was, whether the devotion proper to their own table,
   or the devotion proper to the Lord's Table, they joined in it.

   Now, it is a strong temptation of Satan with children of God, when they
   are full of sorrow, to tempt them to stay away from the means of Grace.
   Because they are in the dark, the temptation is to keep them away from
   the light--but oh, children of God, do not "forsake the assembling of
   yourselves together, as the manner of some is." Do not be tempted to
   stay away from the place where God has met you and made the place of
   His feet glorious! Join, still, with the Lord's people--and if your
   faith trembles, yet, nevertheless, come humbly to the Table. Christ has
   not a Table for those without doubts, else you might not come--He has
   not made it a table for those without sin, else you might not come--but
   He bids all His disciples come, you among them!

   III. Lastly, let us try to set forth THE ACTIONS OF BELIEVERS WHEN THEY
   DISCOVER THEIR LORD.

   "Their eyes were opened, and they knew Him." What then? Well, first,
   they discovered that there had been, all along in their hearts,
   evidences of His Presence. "Did not our hearts burn within us while He
   spoke with us by the way?" This heavenly heartburn never comes to any
   but through the Presence of the Lord Jesus. They began to look at one
   another, and say, "Ought we not to have known that it was none other
   than our great Teacher by the very fact that when we did not see Him
   our hearts were burning for Him?"

   Now let me turn this text around a little. There is a poor sinner here
   who says, "Oh, how I wish that I could find the Savior, but I cannot
   find Him." Why? Your heart is burning after Him! Who is it that makes
   you long after Him? Those strong desires are kindled by His Sovereign
   Grace. He is near you. "But I feel so much of the evil of sin! Oh, that
   it were rolled away. My heart cries, 'Give me Christ, or else I die.'"
   Do you think that humanity unrenewed by Grace cries in that way? Surely
   the Master is near you! There is already, if not a summer in your soul,
   at least a springtide. The ice is breaking up, the buds are beginning
   to swell, the sun is coming and you are beginning to feel His glow! The
   Lord is not far from you and one of these days when you come to look
   back upon it you will say, "I did not know it, but He was close to me.
   I said, 'Where shall I find Him?' and all the while He was close upon
   me!"

   I now turn to the child of God. You, perhaps, have said, "I have lost
   communion with my Lord in that happy form I once enjoyed. But I can
   never be satisfied without Him. I could sit down and cry my eyes out to
   think--

   "What peaceful hours I once enjoyed--

   How sweet their memory still!

   But they have left an aching void

   The world can never fill."

   Where does this kind of heartburn come from? From the devil? Then he
   has undertaken a new business! Does it come from yourself? Is that a
   sheep calling the shepherd? To me it looks like the Shepherd seeking
   the sheep! But you say, "Oh, how I wish I could return to walking with
   God, in Christ, and sitting under His shadow with great delight." Do
   you desire it vehemently, passionately, as they that wait for the
   morning? Who made you desire it, do you think? Is He so far away where
   those strong desires are present? I know it is not so!

   "Ah," you say, "I feel in my soul that I love Him. Yet I am afraid I
   have no fellowship with Him. But when I hear His name extolled, I say
   in my heart, 'That is the sweetest music under Heaven.' When I hear my
   Master spoken well of, I wish I had the tongue of men and angels that I
   might speak of Him, too. He cannot be too greatly extolled for me. I
   find tears in my eyes when I hear of His true love for sinners.
   Sometimes I am afraid I deceive myself, and am not a partaker in it,
   but still He is a precious Christ, and glory be to His name." Do you
   think you would have your heart burning like that if He had quite gone?
   I think not!

   You feel your heart burning for the conversion of others! You say, "Oh
   that we had a revival of religion everywhere, that the kingdom would
   come unto Christ and the crown were set upon His head over ten thousand
   times ten thousand human hearts!" Your heart breaks for the longing
   that Christ may be glorified among men, and yet you say, "I am afraid
   He is not with me"? One of these days you will say, "Did not my heart
   burn within me? He must have been near." You

   are blindfolded and cannot see the fire, yet, if on a cold day you get
   very hot, I should think there must be a fire near you! If you cannot
   see Jesus to your soul's comfort, yet still, if there is such glowing
   and burning as these, He is very near you!

   Sometimes on the Sabbath do you not know what it is to say, "Oh, my
   Lord and Master, the days are weary in which I do not see You--when
   shall I behold You face to face?" You have heard of the glories of
   Christ in Heaven and you have longed to peep through the keyhole, if
   that were all, that you might see the King in His beauty! And you have
   cried, "Why is His chariot so long in coming?" You have often wished
   you could--

   "Sit and sing yourself away To everlasting bliss."

   Well, you may be sure the lodestone is not far off when the needle is
   so much moved. When your eyes are opened you will say, "Why, He was
   with me! He was with me! Did not my heart burn within me while He spoke
   with me by the way? My doubts and fears and trembling heart forbade my
   understanding how near the precious Christ was to me."

   The next thing they did was to compare joys. The one said to the other,
   "Did not our hearts burn within us?" It is always a good thing for
   Believers to communicate their returning enjoyment. Somehow we are
   rather shy as to speaking of our joys. Ought we to be so? One does not
   mind speaking of his faults to his Brother, for there does not seem to
   be any assumption in that. But if the Lord is very gracious I have
   known Believers feel as if they could not speak of it lest they should
   seem to exalt themselves. We must studiously avoid everything like
   self-exaltation, but we must not rob our Master of a particle of His
   Glory. If we have seen the Lord, let us tell our Brothers and Sisters
   so, and say to one another, "Did not our hearts burn within us?"

   If you had a very dull and dry discourse you would get together and
   say, "Oh dear, dear! Our Sundays are dreadfully wasted. We do not
   profit. The good man is so dull and dead," and so on. You would be sure
   to say that, would you not? Well, when the Lord refreshes you, say to
   one another, "It was good to be there this morning. We had a feast of
   fat things. The Lord was with us." Do not leave the table of spiritual
   bread till, like a good child, you have thanked your Father. Once
   again. These disciples, when they saw the Master, hastened to tell
   others about it. It was the dead of the night, I suppose, by the time
   they knew their Lord.

   Our Lord Jesus had none of the prejudices of the High Church fraternity
   against breaking bread in the evening. That has always seemed to me to
   be the oddest of their freaks--that they will persist in contending
   that the Lord's Supper ought to take place early in the morning! They
   ought not to call it a, "supper"--they should call it a breakfast. I
   never could understand a certain class of Christians, great sticklers,
   too, for Scripture, who always will have the Lord's Supper in the
   morning of the day, without any precedent, that I know of, for turning
   an evening meal into a morning one. I grant there is no importance
   whatever in the time--the only importance that I speak of is putting an
   importance on a wrong time--which those do who say it ought to be in
   the early part of the day. We say that whenever Believers meet together
   they may break bread in remembrance of their Lord! If, however, there
   is one time more like the first occasion, it certainly is the evening
   of the day.

   Though it was late, the two disciples set off on a seven-and-a-half
   mile journey, in the dead of night, to tell others that they had seen
   the Lord! If ever you find Christ to the joy of your heart, go and tell
   His people about it. Yes, and tell sinners, too, and put yourself to
   inconvenience to do it. Nowadays we are willing to testify if we can do
   it very comfortably--but I love to hear of those good Brethren who will
   walk many miles on Sunday to preach the Gospel-- who are willing to
   sacrifice ease and comfort so that they may do good to others, just as
   these did. Oh, for more enthusiasm in telling of the Savior's love and
   hearing of it! We need nice cushions and very comfortable pews, don't
   we, nowadays? When we were first converted we would stand anywhere in
   the crowd if we could but hear the Savior's name!

   I remember when I would have gone over hedge and ditch to hear about my
   Master, or to preach about Him, too. May our earnest love to Him never
   grow cold and our enthusiasm never depart. May a midnight's walk be
   nothing to us if we may but declare even to unbelieving brethren what
   we have seen of our blessed Lord! It is a good message, and it is a
   good errand to go upon, when we go to tell of Jesus--and it will bring
   good to our own souls.

   I notice that while they told of their Lord's appearing, they made
   mention of the ordinance which had been blest to them, for they
   especially said that He had been known to them in the breaking of
   bread. I like to see them mention that, for, though ordinances are
   nothing in themselves, and are not to be depended upon, they are blest
   to us. There is a tendency among us, because others make too much of
   ordinances, to make too little of them. Do not treat Baptism, or the

   Lord's Supper, or the reading of the Word of God, or the hearing of it,
   in a slighting manner. If these are blest to you, bless God for them!
   And if God speaks to you through them, do not forget to say that they
   have been valuable channels of communication.

   And now, dear child of God, I pray for you and for myself that we may
   always have our Master with us--and may know it! But, if we lose His
   recognized Presence, may we act as these two disciples did, or better.
   May the Lord lead us on from strength to strength and glorify Himself
   in us. If there is any poor sinner here who needs Jesus Christ, let him
   remember that his desire after Christ is an indication of the nearness
   of the Savior to Him. Christ is always within eyeshot. He cries, "Look
   unto Me and be you saved, all you ends of the earth." He is close at
   hand to every seeking soul. "If you seek Him He will be found of you."
   "Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near."
   Trust Him and He is yours. May Jesus abide with you. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Luke24:1-35. HYMNS FROM "OUR
   OWN HYMN BOOK"--766, 776, 785.
     __________________________________________________________________

Thinking and Turning

   (No. 1181)

   ASERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JULY 5, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto Your testimonies" Psalm
   119:59.

   ALMOST every phase of spiritual life is depicted in the Psalms, but we
   shall not always find in them the interpretation of those deep
   exercises of soul with which the Believer grows familiar. We must look
   to the New Testament for full discourses upon the indwelling of the
   Holy Spirit, upon the conflicting forces of Divine Grace, depraved
   nature and for the other causes which produce the mysterious experience
   of the Christian. In the Old Testament we get the facts--in the New
   Testament we find the explanation of the facts. The statement of David,
   which is now before us, doubtless sets forth the experience of many
   here present in this assembly--"I thought on my ways, and turned my
   feet unto Your testimonies."

   The Spirit's operation in the heart is apt to produce thoughtfulness,
   and through thoughtfulness to effect conversion in the sinner. In the
   case of the Believer, a restoration to the joy of salvation comes of
   like salutary reflections upon the negligence of one's life. Repentance
   originates in thinking upon our ways. It proceeds to compare them with
   God's precepts and faith prompts us to revert to the way of God's
   testimonies. I understand our text to be a brief but complete account
   of the conversion of the sinner and of the restoration of the
   backslidden child of God. I hope that many of us, looking back to the
   time of our conversion, can use the words as our own and oh, how many
   times since, if we have, in any measure or degree, departed from our
   right state with regard to our heavenly Father, have we had occasion to
   resort to the means suggested here--"I thought on my ways, and turned
   my feet unto your testimonies"?

   The case stands thus. We are going on in the profession of a Christian
   life with little or no soul trouble. Temporal things are easy with us.
   By degrees we become unwatchful and the world steals into our hearts
   till the love of it creeps over us. We still pursue the even tenor of
   our way, unconscious of the dangers that threaten us, or the condition
   to which we have gradually descended. By-and-by discoveries startle
   us--we find ourselves unfit for the fellowship we once enjoyed. We lose
   our power in prayer. The duty which once was pleasant becomes irksome.
   All the symptoms point to serious derangement. This pulls us straight
   up. We look about us. We ask in sad perplexity--"Where am I? How did I
   get here? Am I a child of God? How, then, can I have lost my former
   strength and happiness?"

   Thus we begin to deliberate. We survey our course during the last few
   months and we soon detect many sorrowful omissions of duty and,
   perhaps, even commissions of sin, till the Grace of God which is in us
   prompts us to seek the shortest way back to our right position. We have
   wandered into By-Path Meadow and at the sight of Giant Despair's castle
   we endeavor to retrace our steps. The mariner has been gaily sailing on
   a smooth sea and he has given no heed to his bearings. All of a sudden
   he sees a rock ahead--from this he ought to have been far away--at that
   sight he shortens sail, looks about him and in consequence of what he
   sees changes his course, sets a better watch, and is restless until
   once more he reaches the old familiar channel.

   Fellow voyager on the sea of life, may not this be your case or mine?
   It is very likely that at this moment some of us, if enabled by God's
   Spirit to think upon our ways, may be led to pause and ponder our
   bearings. Thus by God's infinite mercy our course in life may be
   changed and our character may be altered for the better, so we may once
   more return to our rest. I pray that if we have never known the Savior
   at all we may become His disciples today. Perhaps a single solemn
   thought lodged in your breast shall become the means of your
   conversion. God grant it may be so! This very day may some have to say,
   "At that time I thought upon my ways, and I turned my feet unto God's
   testimonies."

   Two things will engage our attention this morning--a consideration and
   a consequence. The first is right thinking and the next is right
   turning. "I thought" and, "I turned." The two things go together.

   I. Our first point is RIGHT THINKING--"I thought on my ways." That this
   thought upon his ways caused him dissatisfaction is evident, or
   otherwise he would not have turned. If in reviewing my ways I find that
   they are all as God would have them, let me "go on." It may be well, in
   such a case, to quicken one's pace. Certainly it would be unwise to
   turn. So, then, it is clear that the right thinking of the text is a
   thinking which suggests dissatisfaction. Let your own reflections flow
   just now, I pray you, in this channel. Think of the days of your youth,
   of the time before you were born unto God. Or, if you are not
   converted, consider your whole life.

   You are God's creature and yet you have rendered to Him no obedience!
   You would not keep a horse or a dog that did not do you some service,
   or follow at your whistle. But God has made you and kept you alive and
   yet, up to now, He has not been in all, or, perhaps, in any of your
   thoughts. You have been an unprofitable servant. You are like a
   fruitless tree planted in good soil. Is this as it should be? Do you
   feel any comfort in such a retrospect? I am sure, if you ponder it
   fairly, and judge righteous judgment, you will be very disappointed.
   Must you not say to yourself, "This will not do"? If you are converted,
   in looking back upon your unconverted days you will say, "Of all this I
   am now ashamed! What fruit did I have of those pursuits in which I
   served myself, sought my own pleasures, reveled in my lusts and made my
   belly my God--living for the world instead of loving my Creator and
   Benefactor?

   Consider your ways, O you who have never yet sought forgiveness. Would
   God that you might come to yourselves, and so track the course of your
   sins, that the tear of penitence might be distilled from your heart and
   begin to bedew your eyes. Were it so, I know that before long you would
   say, "I will arise and go to my Father, and I will say unto Him,
   Father, I have sinned." An unconverted state is an unhappy state. An
   unforgiven sinner is in constant peril. Even if the unsaved one should
   obtain the greatest success in business, the largest accumulation of
   wealth, the highest honors of fame and the loftiest degree of rank, he
   would remain a pitiable object because unblest of God. Such a soul in
   wretched unquietness walks through dry places seeking rest and finding
   none. Till it comes home to its God, peace and prosperity it cannot
   know. May God in His infinite mercy lead unconverted men to review
   their ways and forsake them.

   But, my Brothers and Sisters, if we think upon our ways since our new
   birth, we have little cause to be content with them. Think of the best
   things you have ever done. Does the flush of self-congratulation color
   your cheek? So far as I am concerned, far from me is every thought of
   glorying in anything which I have done for my Lord. Upon no sermon I
   have ever preached, though God knows I have preached my very soul out,
   am I able to look back without a measure of shame and confusion. I know
   I have preached the Gospel, but the manner of my preaching does not
   satisfy me. I would gladly wash every discourse in the tears of
   repentance, for in each one there are faults and failures that betray
   the weakness of a man, the infirmity of a creature, the
   unprofitableness of a servant.

   No deed of charity or act of devotion that I ever performed can I look
   back upon with unmixed feelings. I wish that my best had been a
   thousand times better and had not been so sadly spoiled, as it often
   has been, by unbelief at the outset, or pride at the end, or by
   flagging zeal in the middle. This confession is no insincere regret, or
   a spurious attempt to appear humble--I mean what I say--and I believe
   that in the like confession the most devout of men would most heartily
   concur. The sins of our holy things--how grievous they are! It is only
   because our consciences are so blind that we do not shudder at the
   sight of them. Do you ever think you have done well? In that very
   thinking you have done ill. When I hear any of my Brethren talk of
   being perfect, I wonder what they mean!

   Do they use the English language? Do they know themselves or their God?
   In perfect ignorance they surely must be held captive! As to their own
   nature and its workings, they can have no knowledge, or else such
   boastful expressions could not come from their lips. Brethren, the
   saints are still sinners! Our best tears need to be wept over, the
   strongest faith is mixed with unbelief! Our most flaming love is cold
   and chill compared with what Jesus deserves and our most intense zeal
   still lacks the full fervor which the bleeding wounds and pierced heart
   of the Crucified might claim at our hands. Our best things need a sin
   offering, or they would condemn us!

   As for our worst things--come, think of them! Remember your failures,
   your transgressions and your provocations. Blush as you recall the
   times when the curb has been taken from your temper and anger has
   flashed forth in flames of fire though you had hoped that all your
   passions had been subdued! Remember those times of levity, when, free
   from all restraints, your tongue has not spoken to edification or even
   within the bounds of propriety? Can we bear to think of hours when we
   have been tempted by avarice to withhold that which we ought to have
   given, or when we have given out of the pride which we fondly thought
   had died out of our blood-washed hearts? Have you not felt sluggish in
   the Lord's

   work? Have you not, like Jonah, in your peevishness and irritability
   been ready to flee from His face and forsake His calling?

   Have there not been seasons when you have gone into your chamber and
   shut the door and wept because of your folly--and half wished never to
   rise from your knees again? Have you not said, "Ah me, that ever I
   should be such a brute beast as this"? Truly had you not been proud and
   self-conceited you would not have been surprised to find yourself so
   like a beast, as indeed you are. Do you recoil at my language and
   account it far too harsh? I am using Scriptural language, David's own
   words are--"So foolish was I, and ignorant, I was as a beast before
   You; nevertheless I am continually with You; You hold me by my right
   hand." What a strange medley are we of the diabolical and the Divine,
   the sinful and the heavenly--so sadly wedded to the earth--and yet so
   gloriously born from Heaven.

   If you look at your worst side, I am sure, Beloved, you will abhor
   yourself and lie in the very dust before the Lord. You will not doubt
   the cleansing power of Jesus' blood, but you will be filled with holy
   wonder that it should have availed to cleanse such sins as yours! Come,
   my Brothers and Sisters, bow yourself in self-abasement, follow in this
   examination and take stock of your ways since you have known the Lord.
   How have you behaved yourself in your poverty? Did your heart repine?
   Were you envious of the foolish? Did it seem to you that God's
   Providence was harsh while your lot was hard? And how did you act in
   your wealth? Did you have a deep solicitude to render unto the Lord
   according to all that He had done for you? Or did you count your cash
   and grudge your tithes?

   Was your hand closed to your kinsman in his adversity because you would
   rival your neighbor in his extravagance? How went it with you in your
   sickness? Were you patient on the bed of languishing? Did you kiss the
   hand that smote you and minister to those that waited on you? How went
   it with you in your health? Did you consecrate your strength wholly
   unto your Lord? How was it with you in your honor? Could you lay your
   crown at His feet? How was it with you in your shame? Did you glory in
   being despised for Christ's sake? How has it been with you in private
   and how in public? How have you comported yourself on your knees and
   with the sacred Book open before you? What progress have you made in
   the knowledge of God's will?

   How have you behaved yourself in your house and how do your children
   speak of you? What opinion has your servant formed of your conduct? How
   have you acted towards sinners? Did you ever wet your pillow with tears
   for them? You sees them going down to Hell by the millions--did your
   heart never break while you were interceding for them? Come, the
   retrospection is painful, and I have marked out lines enough if you
   choose to follow them. Surely there is no room for boasting, but much
   need of turning. The very best man among us ought to be far better! The
   best man is but a man at his best. Lord, what is man? What is man that
   You are mindful of Him? It will be wise to think of our ways in the
   light of God's Law, that mirror perfect holiness. How far short do we
   come of the Divine requirements? Think of them, also, in the light of
   God's favor--what innumerable good things we have received from the
   Lord's hands!

   Have our returns been at all commensurate? Think of your life in the
   light of the Cross. You have sinned in the Presence of your crucified
   Lord. Have you been dead, indeed, unto sin? Think of your life in view
   of your risen Savior. Have you been alive to righteousness? Are you not
   ashamed? Think of your life in the light of the Day of Judgment and the
   coming of the Lord from Heaven. How will your actions appear in the
   light of the tremendous day? How will they weigh in the Infallible
   balances of unerring Justice? Truly, as we think of our ways, we sit
   humbled before the Lord and boasting is excluded!

   This right thinking upon our ways will suggest a practical change. When
   we have erred in the past, it is certain that we have been losers
   thereby. We have been greatly injured by sin and if we are now in a
   sinful condition, will not a worse thing happen to us? If I am an
   unconverted man, what will become of me before long? God is already
   angry with me, for He is angry with the wicked every day. What will
   that anger lead to? What must be the end of a life that is unprofitable
   to God? What must be the eternal future of one who has resisted the
   Gospel, disobeyed God and neglected Him in all ways? Am I a child of
   God? The tendency of sin must be fearfully injurious to me! It must
   pierce me through with many sorrows. And if I am now out of order with
   God in some degree, how much further may this disorder go?

   What if I should make shipwreck of my profession? What if I should
   grievously transgress and have to go the rest of my journey with broken
   bones? What if it should be declared in my ears by the Lord of Hosts,
   surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till you die? My
   Soul, sin, even now, has not profited you while it is in the bud--what
   will it be

   when it ripens and its scattered seeds fly over the whole of my
   being--and turn that which should be a fruitful field into a tangled
   mass of weeds? Surely it is time for a change!

   There may be some few saints among you who do not need much changing,
   who have gone on so well that you may pray to continue as you are. But
   I am not one of such, myself. I am afraid that there are few who are. I
   pine for something better, I pant to rise higher, to climb nearer my
   God, to love Him more, to serve Him better and to be more fully
   consecrated to Him. A retrospect of our ways suggests the need of a
   practical alteration, not merely of planning or resolving, but of
   practically amending our course. "I thought upon my ways," says David,
   "and I turned myself unto Your testimonies." That is to say, He really
   did leave the old trail and follow the better track. He rose from
   coldness into fervor, from neglect of prayer into intense pleadings! He
   left the faulty for the more excellent way.

   Dear Brothers and Sisters, the retrospect we take of our life should
   suggest that any turn we make should be God-ward--"I turned my steps
   unto Your testimonies." It is no use turning if you do not turn to
   something better! There are certain people about who are always
   shifting--they hear some new dogma and that is the thing--straightway
   they are all agog for that. Tomorrow they will meet with some other new
   theory and straightway they will be mad in pursuit of it. They remind
   me of Luther's expression, when he says, "There are certain people who,
   the moment they see a heresy, stare at it like a cow at a new gate."
   They look and look and look again at the new thing as if it must be
   wonderful because it is new! The cow, at length, sees enough of the new
   gate, and goes back to her grass, but these people still stand staring,
   and another new frivolity bewitches them as soon as the former nine
   days' wonder has grown stale. If I turn, God grant I may turn from good
   to better, or else it is ill to turn at all!

   The best turn in the world is when a man turns to God. Such an one
   turns with purpose of heart. "Now," he says, "I will follow the Word to
   the very letter. I will yield to the Spirit--His every monition shall
   be law to me. I will live with Jesus--and my spirit, soul and body
   shall be dedicated to Him." Such a holy resolve is greatly needed
   nowadays. The divisions of Churches would be healed, the errors of the
   times would die out, the lukewarmness of this present age would pass
   away if once sinners were turned to God's testimonies and saints were
   more fully turned to them, also. Thus right thinking about our ways
   suggests that we ought to be dissatisfied. It suggests a turning,
   suggests a turning to God, but it also suggests that such a turning is
   possible.

   Many a man, in thinking upon his ways, contents himself--"Well, they
   are bad and they always will be bad," and when a sinner once accepts
   that notion he will abide in his sin and go from worse to worse. I know
   of nothing which makes a man so grossly vicious as to be persuaded that
   virtue is impossible to him. "If I cannot repent, then I may as well be
   hung for a sheep as a lamb and damned for much as little." So the
   sinner feels and he advances in sin to its utmost degree. But, O
   Beloved, the right way of thinking of your ways is to remember that it
   is possible you still may turn unto God's testimonies. No man's case is
   hopeless! Every man's condition would be hopeless apart from God and
   the precious blood, and the power of the Holy Spirit--but in connection
   with these, no man's case, however habitually bad, is desperate--he may
   be changed--his feet may be turned to God's testimonies.

   You also, O Christian, may have fallen, today, into a very dull state.
   You may hardly know whether you have true godliness or not--religion
   may almost be a weariness to you. Ah, dear Soul, let not despair
   imprison you! You can yet turn your feet to God's testimonies. By the
   power of the eternal Spirit you can be lifted out of your backsliding
   condition. As a child of God, you must not sit down and say, "I am
   delivered unto these corruptions and given over to the power of Satan."
   The Son has made you free and free you are! Shake yourself from the
   dust, arise and sit down, O Jerusalem. Loose yourself from the bands of
   your neck, O captive daughter of Zion. You have been redeemed and you
   are no more a slave. Your chains are broken! Christ's mighty hammer has
   beaten them to pieces upon the anvil of His Cross. "Awake, you that
   sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light." While
   the Lord lives and the eternal Spirit goes forth to save, there is yet
   hope of restoration.

   This is very simple talk. I mean it to be simple. Yet I want it to be
   practical. Let me pause, here, and entreat every sinner to indulge the
   preacher with this favor--just now, for a few minutes, look upon your
   past life. Perhaps you have been so moral in your character and so
   amiable in your disposition that you can reflect on years past without
   blushing. But there is one thing that ought to fill you with shame. You
   have entirely failed to love, or trust, or serve God. Why should it be
   so? Is it right? Can you, in any way, make it consistent with honor
   that you should live as you do, wronging none but your God, saving all
   your injustice for Him? You are kind, yes, you are kind even to a
   dog--but not to your

   God! Tender towards the sick and the poor--to everyone but our dear
   Lord--who, on the bloody tree, revealed His love to men! Why this
   exception to the usual current of your life? Why is the good God
   singled out as the one Person to be treated with unkindness and
   injustice?

   But, possibly, your life has not been pure. Gross deeds of sin have
   stained it. Well, I shall not recall these things-- your memory will
   serve for that--and your own conscience will upbraid you. What I do
   suggest is that you should give enough thought to your ways at least to
   breathe some such prayer as this--"Lord, turn me and I shall be turned.
   May this be the hour in which I shall put away old things and enter
   upon a new life through Jesus Christ." If any of you who are children
   of God have become gross backsliders, I would urge you to the same
   self-examination and self-accusation. Think upon your ways with a stern
   censorship, a bitter penitence, a strong resolve. Take time and calmly
   deliberate. Sum up the evidence impartially in your own case. "For if
   we would judge ourselves we should not be judged. But when we are
   judged we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned
   with the world."

   Christian people, you who are walking, in a measure, in fellowship with
   God, I press upon you, nevertheless, the same considerateness--not that
   there may be a reason for entire dissatisfaction--yet it is always wise
   to observe your conduct with scrupulous fidelity. Tradesmen generally
   give up attention to their books when things are out of sorts with
   them. They do not like their books, for their books do not like them.
   The man who does not like self-examination may be pretty certain that
   things need examining. Let us look diligently to our ways and may good
   come of it to the profit of our souls.

   II. Secondly, our text treats of RIGHT TURNING, which grows out of
   right thinking. The turning of the text is thus described--"I turned my
   feet unto Your testimonies." Here observe how complete this turn was. A
   man may turn his head and turn but little. He may turn his hand--there
   is not much movement of the whole body in that. But when he turns his
   feet, he turns himself completely! The turn we sinners all need is a
   whole turn. The nature must be changed. The things we love must no
   longer be the supreme objects of our affection. The pursuits of the
   world which were our idols must no longer be such. The things we have
   despised we must now esteem. Eternity, which seemed distant, must be
   brought near. Earthly things which ruled us must be put beneath our
   feet. There must be an entire revolution in our nature to make us
   right. The child of God, when he gets wrong, must come right away from
   everything which has misled him and follow the Lord fully, with purpose
   of heart.

   The turning of the text is also a practical one. Whenever the foot or
   the hand is mentioned in Scripture, something practical is meant. "I
   turned my feet." I did not merely say, "I turned my eyes," but I showed
   the reality of the change of heart by change of life. It will not
   suffice for a sinner to say, "Oh, I am converted. I love Jesus Christ,"
   and then go to his business and cheat as he did before, or resort to
   his old habits and drink as freely as he did before, or keep company
   with his former associates and use profane language, as was his
   previous habit, or act as a worldling acts in following the lusts of
   the flesh and pursuing the vanities of the age. A change of life,
   alone, can prove a change of heart.

   When the child of God gets out of order with the Lord, his change must
   be a practical change, too. He must not waste himself in regrets, but
   arouse himself to action. Let him immediately, "arise and go to his
   Father." The Spirit of God must stir him to action! He must no longer
   sleep. He must procrastinate no more. There is vital energy and urgent
   haste in all positive reformation. It must be, moreover, a Scriptural
   turn, too. "I turned my feet unto Your testimonies." There is a
   spurious conversion which is not true conversion to God. A man may have
   another heart and yet he may not have a new heart.

   We read of King Saul that he had another heart, but he remained
   unsaved. A man may change his idols. He may change his sins, but may
   not be changed in heart. Drunks have become sober and renounced their
   intoxicating cups, which is, so far so good, but they have presently
   become intoxicated with a conceit of their own virtue and extolled
   themselves as models of purity. Ah, then, it is a poor gain to change
   drunkenness for self-righteousness! Both sins are deadly. A man may as
   easily go to Hell by trusting in himself as by resigning himself to a
   besetting vice. Hell has many gates, though Heaven has but one. We must
   experience the change, which is according to the Word of God, and so
   the text says, "I turned my feet unto Your testimonies," that is, to
   believe what God has revealed, to accept what God presents, to do what
   God commands and to be what God would have us to be. May God give us to
   experience within and to manifest without such a radical turn as that!

   The Truth of God I want to bring out most prominently is this--the
   turning was immediate. "I thought on my ways"--well, what then?--"I
   turned my feet," directly, immediately. And can this be so? Can the
   Ethiopian change his skin and the leopard his spots? Can the sinner
   immediately be made a saint? Can the saint who has backslidden be at
   once restored? Can I, who come into the House of God dull and dead,
   suddenly brighten up and become full of light and life and joy? Well,
   the text puts it so. "I thought upon my ways, and turned my feet unto
   Your testimonies." Indeed, it is so! But mark you, if it is so, it must
   be a Divine work. David does not tell us this in so many words, but the
   testimonies to which David refer are clear and conclusive on the point.

   To take a man and put him through a long process, as some do, of
   Law-work and repentance, and so set before him gradual enlightenment
   and assurance of faith as a distant result--well, I do not see so much
   to marvel at as a Divine operation in that sort of renovation! But to
   take a man right away from his former self and save him then and there
   is certainly the work of God! Zacchaeus is up in the tree. Jesus bids
   him, "Come down." Down he comes! His heart is changed immediately!
   Salvation has come to him and he at once makes and pays the vows that
   prove his sincerity--that is surely Divine!

   Yonder is a person, who, through a long course of experiences and
   performances has gradually attained to the belief that he is a
   Christian. I hope he is so, but I am not his judge. But here is a man,
   a jailer, who has been putting his prisoners' feet fast in the stocks.
   He is cruel, hard, wicked--an old soldier used to war--with no
   tenderness in him. In the middle of the night there comes an earthquake
   and he holds his sword to his breast to kill himself because he fears
   the prisoners have escaped. A voice cries to him, "Do yourself no
   harm," and he inquires, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" Within half
   an hour that man becomes a Christian, a Baptist and a saved man!

   The Lord did that, I am sure. But does He work in that manner now? Are
   not these the exceptions? No, they are the rule! How do I know that?
   There was a man once who hated the Church of Christ so bitterly that he
   meant to cut it up, root and branch. Riding on his horse to Damascus
   with warrants to put to death all the saints in Damascus, all of a
   sudden he saw a bright light. He was struck down off his horse and in a
   few minutes he was lying down prostrate at Jesus' feet, a penitent!
   That is God's work! It must be and this is still how He works. But does
   He work ordinarily as He did in the Apostle? Hear Paul's words. "In me,
   first, did God show forth all long-suffering for a pattern." If a thing
   is a pattern, the intention is to produce other articles like it. The
   original is--"For a typos, or a type." Paul's conversion was a typical
   or representative conversion.

   There may be conversions which are not of that type, but many will be
   according to that pattern. Indeed, to speak the full Truth of God,
   every conversion must, in a sense, be sudden. The actual point of the
   conversion is instantaneous! I am walking through the woods and I am
   going the wrong direction. Well, I pause and look about, but whenever I
   actually turn to go the correct way, there is a critical moment when I
   turn, is there not? It may be that I take some time to consider and
   look about me--but when I do actually go back, there is a particular
   moment when I turn and take the first step. I desire that this present
   moment may be the instant of conversion to each one of you who are dead
   in sin. You have been thinking of your ways--now may you turn your feet
   to His testimonies! This must be the work of Divine Grace. The
   Omnipotent power of God must turn you to Himself.

   This leads me to observe that it must be by faith because a man cannot
   be altogether changed in a moment by works. If works had a changing
   power--which they have not, since the fruit cannot change the root and
   no number of bushels of figs could turn a nettle into a fig tree--the
   man must have time to do the works, whereas time is not an element
   here. It is "I thought," and, "I turned," and, therefore, it must be by
   faith. Many a sinner has been, for years, desiring a change which he
   would find in one moment if he did but believe in Jesus. He has been
   praying, reading, repenting and I do not know what besides, trying to
   find salvation--whereas the Savior has found it for him! Let him but
   look to Jesus and simply trust in Him--he will be saved in a moment, he
   will be a renewed man and he will be able to say, in the language of
   the text--"I thought upon my ways and turned unto Your testimonies." I
   would drive home this point, but my time fails me. May God the Eternal
   Spirit bring many to God's testimonies at this very moment!

   I have these closing words to the child of God--are you, this morning,
   in a sad, sorrowful, unholy condition? Do you desire to get out of it?
   Then, my Brothers and Sisters, arise, for Jesus calls you. "But I
   cannot," you say. You cannot, I grant you that, for without Jesus you
   can do nothing! But I am not talking about what you can do. I would
   remind you that there is no reason why you should not ascend into a
   noble condition at once. Are you not still one with Jesus?

   Despite the state into which you have fallen, you are still a member of
   His body. Who can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ
   Jesus our Lord? In Him all fullness dwells--why should you pine in
   poverty? You are naked, poor and miserable in yourself, but all things
   are yours!

   Come, Brothers and Sisters, these things are to be had for the asking!
   God waits to give these things to you, why not enjoy them? "Oh, but I
   have strayed so far from God and have fallen into such a state." Has
   the Spirit of God weakened? Cannot He raise you out of your sad state?
   What condition were you in when you were converted? You were dead, yet
   He quickened you. You are not dead now, there is some life in you,
   though that life is sickly. Which is easier, to make the sick man
   whole, or to make the dead man live? He has done the greater--He can
   certainly do the lesser! "But can He do it at once?" Did He not
   regenerate you at once? Was there not but a moment in which you passed
   from death to life? Well, at this moment you can pass from a state of
   sickness into one of spiritual health!

   "But how?" Why, by the same way in which you passed into spiritual life
   at first, namely, by an act of faith! Come to the Cross again, my dear
   Brother, my dear Sister. Wipe those eyes of yours. Jesus died for
   sinners! Come away, just as you are, just as you came at first--and
   though your life is blotted with sins and your evidences blighted--your
   comforts shall come again. Why do you hesitate? Thus says the Lord, "I
   have blotted out like a cloud your transgressions, and like a thick
   cloud your sins." "Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as
   wool; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as snow." Why do
   you need so much persuasion to bring you to the heart which bled for
   you? Married to Christ, and yet ashamed to come to your Husband? A
   member of His body, and yet afraid to approach your Head?

   Come along, Brothers and Sisters, the Lord lives and His heart moves
   with compassion towards you! He loves you! He will love you! He must
   love you. Though you have sinned, He cannot change. Though you believe
   not, He abides faithful. "He hates putting away." Your transgressions
   have separated you, for a while, from your God, but listen to
   this--"The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My
   kindness shall not depart from you, neither shall the Covenant of My
   peace be removed, says the Lord who has mercy on you." "For a small
   moment have I forsaken you; but with great mercies will I gather you.
   In a little wrath I hid My face from you for a moment; but with
   everlasting kindness will I have mercy on you, says the Lord your
   Redeemer." Come back, then, child of God, and in an instant your soul
   shall be restored!

   And you, poor Sinner, the same is true for you. Do not fancy that you
   need remain any longer in your lost condition. Do not say, "I will go
   home to pray for a blessing," but believe in Jesus even now, for He is
   able, now, to change your heart! He is, now, able to give you peace,
   now to press you to His bosom! Young woman, you are like Lydia when she
   went, that morning, to the Prayer Meeting by the river. She did not
   think to find Jesus, but the Lord, who opened her heart, sent Paul to
   speak to her and Lydia went home a convert--and why shouldn't you? And
   you, young man of business, a money-taker like Matthew, who sat at the
   receipt of customs--remember Jesus said, "Follow Me," and Matthew did
   not stop a moment, but followed Jesus at His call.

   May the same happen to you today! You were not a disciple of Christ
   yesterday, but when you go to business tomorrow they will soon find out
   that you are a new man, and this will be the happy day for you, the day
   of your turning to God! If it is so, they will hear about it in Heaven,
   and there will be joy in the presence of the angels of God over one who
   thought upon his ways and turned his feet unto God's testimonies! The
   Lord bless you, every one of you, for His name's sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Psalm 119:49-72. HYMNS FROM
   "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--104, 424, 605.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Singular Title and a Special Favor

   (No. 1182)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JULY 12, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "The God of my mercy shall prevent me." Psalm 59:10.

   A LIFE without trouble would be very uninteresting. Our opportunities
   for greatness would be narrowed down if trials were gone. I watched a
   glorious sunset, marveling at the beauty of the evening skies all
   ablaze and adoring Him who gave them their matchless coloring. On the
   next evening I resorted to the same spot, hoping to be, again,
   enraptured with the gorgeous pomp of the ending day, but there were no
   clouds and, therefore, no glories. True, the canopy of sapphire was
   there, but no magnificent array of clouds to form golden masses with
   edges of burning crimson, or islands of loveliest hue set in a sea of
   emerald. There were no great conflagrations of splendor or flaming
   peaks of mountains of fire. The sun was as bright as before, but for
   lack of dark clouds on which to pour out his luster, his magnificence
   was unrevealed.

   A man who should live and die without trials would be like a setting
   sun without clouds--he would have scant opportunity for the display of
   those virtues with which the Divine Grace of God had endowed him. In
   the case of David we have much cause for thankfulness that he did not
   lead a life of unbroken tranquility. It is well for us that his was not
   a flowery path of continuous prosperity. Over him the waves and billows
   dashed full often--both within and without he was assailed daily, so
   that he became the epitome of all the temptations and the aspirations,
   the Graces and the weaknesses, the joys and the sorrows of our
   humanity--and therefore his life was so wondrously instructive. David
   owed much to the Philistines, to the tracks of the wild goats, to the
   cave of Dallam and to persecuting Saul!

   His tried life and a thousand trying circumstances trained him for a
   grand life and made him, for us, a mirror in which we see ourselves
   reflected in all our varying moods and passions. None of us can know
   what we are till we are tried, nor will the good within us increase to
   any degree of bitterness unless it is exercised. The arm unused loses
   muscular force--put it to stern labor and it gathers strength. Soldiers
   are made by war and mariners by storms. The scholar may think it
   difficult to be severely examined, but he becomes the wiser by the
   searching test. Our trials and troubles, while they test and develop
   us, also, by Divine Grace, strengthen and improve us--and we always
   have great cause to bless God for them when Grace sanctifies them to
   our highest good.

   Had not David been a man of many afflictions he would never have penned
   such a verse as our text, a confident utterance of unstaggering faith,
   full of meaning, rich with consolation--the very cream of assured hope
   in God. There are three things in the text--the first is David's
   looking to his God, for God is the theme of the verse. Secondly,
   David's appropriating Divine mercy--"the God of my mercy." And then,
   thirdly, David's confidence in merciful help from God-- "The God of my
   mercy will prevent me."

   I. First, then, let us think for awhile of David's LOOKING TO HIS GOD.
   "The God of my mercy," he says. Note that this Psalm was composed by
   him upon the occasion of his being shut up in the house of Michal,
   Saul's daughter, and surrounded by his adversaries. The messengers of
   the bloodthirsty king watched the house all night long, to kill him,
   and when they had not effected their purpose, Saul demanded that he
   should be brought, on his bed, into his presence, that he might slay
   him. It was not easy for a man, when his enemies were watching the
   house, to escape out of their hands. David, however, does not appear to
   have been at all disturbed, but with perfect confidence in God, he
   expected that a way of escape would be made for him.

   He could not hope that Saul would relent, nor could he expect his
   friends to come to the rescue. Neither did he rely upon his own cunning
   for the means of escape, but calmly prayed, "Deliver me from my
   enemies, O my God; defend me from those that rise up against me." He
   rested quietly, feeling sure that God had his enemies in derision, and
   could as readily break the line of watchers as a man can drive off a
   pack of prowling dogs, to whom, indeed, he compares his foes.

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, this looking above, this having our eyes
   upon the Lord, is a practice which should be habitual with all
   Believers, and needs to be learned by us all. David looked to God on
   this occasion because he had, before this, habitually waited upon Him.
   His faith had realized the existence of God and his soul had felt the
   power of that realized truth.

   This is a thing unknown to the unconverted--and unfelt to any high
   degree by large numbers of those who profess to know the Lord. That
   there is a God is a doctrine which we all receive, but that God really
   exists is not grasped by us as it should be. Other existences are more
   real to us, whereas God's being should be the most real of all. We look
   upon His existence as a mystery, a light and airy thing, proper to be
   believed, but not a matter of everyday fact which can influence our
   lives to any great extent. This unreal view of God arises from a secret
   deep-seated unbelief. We dare not say that God is a fiction, but we act
   as if He were. The faith which David had, and which I trust we have, in
   our measure, makes God a fact to the mind and heart--intensely and
   superlatively real! An eye anointed with faith looks upon men and women
   as if they were shadows, for they are soon to dissolve and cease to be.
   But it views the Lord as the only real substantial existence--and all
   that concerns Him as being alone, sure, and vitally important.

   God is unseen, but none the less present and energetic in our lives. He
   is unheard by the ear but none the less perceived by the heart. He is
   certainly at work accomplishing His purposes, although our coarse and
   earth-bound senses cannot discover Him. Faith has a far greater
   perceptive power than the senses, it is "the substance of things hoped
   for, the evidence of things not seen." While carnal men say, "seeing is
   believing," we assure them that to us, "believing is seeing." We turn
   their saying upside down--our faith is eye and ear--and taste and touch
   to us! It is so mighty in us that we do not only know that there is a
   God, but we regard Him as the great motive force of the universe and
   daily calculate upon His mighty aid.

   Therefore it is the Christian's habit to fall back upon God in all time
   of faintness, to cry to God in all time of danger--he does not pray
   because he thinks it a pious, though useless, exercise, but because he
   believes it to be an effectual transaction--the potent pleading of a
   child with its Parent, rewarded with loving grants of blessing. The
   Believer does not look up to Heaven because it is a natural instinct to
   hope for better days and to cheer one's self with a pious fiction about
   Providence! He looks up to Heaven because God is actually there, truly
   observant, tenderly sympathetic and ready with a mighty arm to come to
   the rescue of His people! So, then, because it is our desire to wait
   upon the Lord, we go to Him in troublous days as a matter of course.

   We do not make him an occasional resort to be used only when we cannot
   help it, but we dwell in Him and, morning by morning pour out our
   hearts before Him. And so, when adversity comes, we fly to God as
   naturally as the dove to its dovecote, or the coney to the rock, or the
   weary child to its mother's bosom. The nautilus, when disturbed, folds
   up its sails and sinks into the depths. And even so, in every hour of
   storm we descend into the depths of Divine Love. Blessed is that man
   whose spirit looks to God, alone, at all times! Let us, each one, ask
   his own heart--is this my case? And if we can answer aright, let us
   sing with Madame Guyon--

   "Ah then! To His embrace repair, My Soul, you are no stranger there!
   There Lo ve Divine shall be your guard, And peace and safety your
   reward."

   On this special occasion David was driven more closely to his God by
   the peculiar trouble with which surrounded him. To no other helper
   could he look, he was shut up to his God. Michel, Saul's daughter,
   proved faithful to him, but he could not have been sure that she would
   dare to incur her father's displeasure for his sake. Outside the house
   there might be friendly hearts, but they were far away--and the
   watchful followers of the tyrant shut up every avenue. But lo, there
   was a broad highway upwards to the Throne of the Most High! And the
   believing prayers of David traversed the shining road and brought him
   assurances of deliverance. To whom could he look but unto God? Every
   other door was closed, save that door which is opened in Heaven. See,
   then, how the bow of trouble shot him like an arrow towards God! It is
   a blessed thing when the waves of affliction wash us upon the rock of
   confidence in God, alone--when darkness below gives us an eye to the
   light above.

   The Psalmist says in the verse preceding the text, "Because of his
   strength"--that is, the strength of the foe--"will I wait upon You, for
   God is my defense." Because the enemy is too strong for me, therefore
   will I turn to my God and invoke His Omnipotence as my defense. Are any
   of you, this morning, in trouble so deep that you know you must sink in

   it, so far as material help is concerned? That is a glorious position
   to be in if your faith proves equal to the occasion and leads you to
   cast yourself upon God and swim to shore! It is nothing for a man to
   walk down here upon the ground, but to walk aloft upon yonder slender
   thread, which the eye can scarcely see, is a feat of skill at which men
   gaze with admiration--and to walk on what the eye cannot see at all, or
   the foot feel, needs a yet higher art--such is the walk of

   faith!

   To lean upon God's invisible arm, which the carnal mind knows not, and
   accounts as little worth, is grand work! If you can walk where there is
   no visible pathway, you belong to the race of the immortals, a
   God-given faith proves your lineage to be Divine! Perhaps you have a
   task set before you which is much too heavy for you. Well, Brother,
   Sister, you have the honor of being placed where you can, to the
   fullest, display your trust in God! What you can do you must do, but
   what you cannot do and yet must do, you may confidently expect the Lord
   to enable you to perform! He will elevate your weakness into a platform
   for His power. To come to the end of yourself is to get to the
   beginning of your God. Blessed is that extremity which is God's
   opportunity! Such was David's case.

   As soon as David had looked, alone, to his God, his trials grew small.
   In his own esteem they grew to be nothing, for he says, "You, O Lord,
   shall laugh at them, You shall have all the heathen in derision." And I
   think something of the laughter of God penetrated David's spirit--and
   in that house where he was enclosed as a prisoner--he smiled, in his
   heart, at the disappointment which awaited his foes. You may look at
   your troubles till your spirits sink within you. You may watch the
   adversaries of God till your soul within you is heavy, even, to
   despair. But if you then lift up your eye to Him who works all things
   according to the counsel of His will--across whose brow no cloud can
   ever pass, who speaks and it is done, who commands and it stands fast,
   who bears up the unpillared arch of Heaven and, unaided, wheels the
   ponderous orbs along their trackless courses--then difficulties vanish,
   impossibilities end and perils and dangers cease to

   be!

   To get away from man and nestle beneath the wings of God is to exchange
   doubt for certainty, and fear for confidence. Faith laughs at that
   which fear weeps over! It leaps over mountains at whose feet mere
   mortal strength lies down to die. Reliance upon God, dear Friends, is a
   virtue to which I would urge every Believer--may the Holy Spirit work
   it in you. We have fallen upon evil times--this is the age of little
   men and cowards--but where does our littleness lie? From where comes
   our cowardice? I believe that both are caused by our faith. If the Son
   of Man should come at this hour, would He find faith on the earth? If
   anyone could find it, He could, for He is the Author of it, and
   wherever there is any faith His eyes quickly discern it. But yet, if He
   were to come, would He find it?

   Alas, it is sadly rare! Yet, my Brethren, faith is the bread on which
   heroes feed--the air which gives breath to great souls. Believe in God
   and all things are possible for you. Whenever there has been a revival
   of faith in the saints of God, they have been potent against all
   adverse forces. Why, even a wrong faith is mighty when thoroughly
   received. Have you not been astonished to hear of late that
   Mohammedanism has made great headway in the world, that in India,
   especially, Mahometan proselytes have been vastly more numerous than
   Christian converts? What has been the reason? Why, because you never
   saw or heard of a Mahometan teacher who did not believe every word of
   the Koran! The teachers of the book believe in the book and believe in
   their prophet, hence their success, false, though their faith is!

   On the other hand, nowadays it is easy to find a Christian teacher who
   believes next to nothing of the very things that he is set to
   teach--and who, in his secret heart, does not reverence the doctrine
   which he officially declares! The worm of unbelief, the cursed dry rot
   of infidelity and skepticism among professional teachers is eating out
   the heart and force of Christianity! He can never be strong for God who
   does not believe, yes, and believe with all his heart, soul and
   strength--in the very marrow of his being. Christianity can never be
   strong till her disciples have strong convictions, till those who
   believe in the revealed Truth of God believe in it as assuredly as they
   believe in their own existence! As it is on the large scale, so it is
   with each one of us--we can bear any burden when we believe in God--but
   we are crushed like moths when unbelief betrays us.

   We can attempt any labor and make any sacrifice when we have confidence
   in the Lord. But if we doubt whether we are His children and whether
   His Gospel is, indeed, the victorious Gospel of the olden times, our
   strength evaporates and we are like Samson when his hair was lost. We
   must possess strong faith in God, or we shall be unstable as water. O
   Brothers and Sisters, we need in this Church men and women who
   habitually live as seeing Him who is invisible. We need

   those who will never rely upon mere opinion--either their own or that
   of others! We need Brothers and Sisters who ascribe to the Word of God
   sovereign authority and accept it as infallibly true, knowing it to be
   Divine!

   If we have among us men of principle because men of experience, men of
   forceful lives because those lives have struck their roots into eternal
   verities--if we have men and women who take trials, difficulties,
   everything, in fact, to the one only God and trust only upon Him--we
   shall have heroes among us again! They will be pillars in the Church
   which cannot be moved! They will be bulwarks for our Israel against
   which the assaults of the enemy shall never avail! God make each one of
   us such! I long, in my own soul, to get right away from everything but
   the Lord, and to do His will and preach His Truth as in His sight only.
   Policy? Let it be abhorred! The pleasing of men? Let it be scouted! The
   attempt to gratify the tendencies of the age? Let it be loathed! All
   aiming at our own personal interests, may God deliver us from it!

   But for the Truth as it is in Jesus may we live, and if need be, die!
   For God's honor may we feel that we could sacrifice everything! And in
   His strength may we be sure that the battle is not doubtful, but the
   triumph must come to God and to the right. "My soul, wait you upon
   God." That is our first point--would God we had learned its lesson!

   II. The second part of the text is to notice DAVID'S APPROPRIATION OF
   THE DIVINE MERCY. "The God of my mercy." This is quite a unique
   expression--it occurs only in this Psalm. God is the God of mercy and
   is frequently called so. He is also styled, "The God of all Grace," but
   you will find none but David calling Him, "The God of my mercy." Notice
   that the pith of the title lies in the appropriating word, "my." Luther
   used to say that the very soul of divinity lay in the possessive
   pronouns. Another Divine said that all the stir there ever has been in
   the world has been caused by meum and tuum, mine and yours. "It is
   mine," says one man. "It is mine," cries another man, and then comes a
   conflict. "It is mine," says one king. "No," says another, "it is not
   yours," and then fierce war begins. Nothing influences a man so much as
   that which he calls his own. "The God of my mercy."

   Now it is clear that David appropriated to himself a portion of Divine
   mercy as being peculiarly his and we shall never advance in the Divine
   life unless we do the same, for the mercy which is common to all men,
   of what use is it to any man? But the mercy which any one man by faith
   grasps for himself, this is the mercy which will bless him and which he
   will prize above all things. When Gideon's men went out to fight they
   had not a whole row of pitchers between them, but every man held a
   pitcher in his own hand, and a trumpet, too, and so the Midianites were
   routed. Solomon represents his armed men as having, each man, his sword
   upon his thigh, because of fear in the night. A thousand swords hung up
   in the armory of David had been of little value--they only availed when
   each man had his own sword ready to his hand.

   In heavenly things it is always so--we may pray in the plural--but we
   must believe in the singular. Notice how the Lord's prayer runs--"Our
   Father which are in Heaven," but if we would repeat the Apostles'
   Creed, we must not say "we believe in God the Father," but, "/
   believe." Believing must be in the first person singular! Praying
   should have a width and compass about it to embrace all the saints, but
   believing must be by each one for himself--"The God of my mercy." What
   do you know about this, my dear Hearers? Is a portion of the Divine
   mercy really yours, so that another cannot seize it? Is there a lot in
   which you must stand in the end of the days, even as by faith you stand
   in it now, and call it all your own?

   Happy David, to be able to make this appropriation! Happy Christian, if
   God's Grace has taught you to do the same! I think he meant, too, that
   there was a portion of mercy which he had already received, which was,
   therefore, altogether his own. The "God of my mercy"--he meant the God
   of the mercy he had already experienced. Look at this for a minute.
   Well may it bring the tears into your eyes to think of it. The mercy
   which nursed you in your infancy, when you were upon the knee of
   kindness. The mercy which watched over you in your youth and kept you
   when you were apt to stray. The mercy which restrained you from many a
   deadly sin. The mercy which guided you into that road where happy and
   holy teachings were waiting for you. The mercy which influenced you for
   the right. The mercy, above all, which decided you for Christ and
   cleansed you in His blood! The mercy which has followed you to this day
   and still follows you. Oh, bless the Lord that it has all come from
   Himself and think of Him as the God ofyour mercy!

   Too little do we prize our mercies till they are removed from us. I
   have heard of a person who at 50 years of age was murmuring that he had
   suffered two long years of sickness. But someone reminded him that he
   had enjoyed 48 years of perfect health in which he had never spent a
   single hour in bed through illness. Then he said to himself, "I will
   bless God, who might have given me 48 years of sickness and only two of
   health--that He has been pleased to reverse that allotment. My mercies
   have been very great--far larger is the number of His favors than the
   time of my sufferings."

   Bless, then, the Lord this moment, Beloved, and take Him to yourselves
   under that sweet name, "The God of my mercy." And, remember, that all
   the mercy you have had is little compared with the mercy you have yet
   to receive. There is a portion of mercy laid up and labeled for you.

   As the rich father thinks, "This will I give to my eldest son, and that
   to the second, and that to the third," and so he puts by a portion for
   each of his children, so has God mapped out and allotted for each one
   of us some choice and special mercy fitted for our peculiar case--which
   no one can receive but ourselves--but which we must and shall obtain.
   Is not our hymn delightfully suggestive where it sings--

   "And a new song is in my mouth,

   To long-loved music set

   Glory to You for all the Grace

   I have not tasted yet.

   I have a heritage of joy

   That yet I must not see--

   The hand that bled to make it mine,

   Is keeping it for me."

   Blessed be God for His reserves of mercy, for the blessing yet to be
   revealed--which is as sure as if we had it--is kept in a better hand
   than ours! It is preserved by Him who bought it, till the time
   appointed shall arrive. "The God of my mercy," that is, of the mercy I
   have had, and also of that which is treasured up for me in the Covenant
   purpose and decree, among the sure mercies of David.

   But I think David made a larger grasp than this, for when he said, "The
   God of my mercy," he felt as if all the mercy in the heart of God
   belonged to him! Let me utter a great saying, worth your treasuring
   up--if any one saint should have all the needs of all the saints in the
   world put upon him. And if his necessities should be so great that
   nothing would supply them but the whole of the infinite mercy which
   fills the heart of God, that child of God should have all the mercy
   which the Lord Himself can dispense. Great as your necessities may be,
   my dear Brethren, all the mercy that is in God belongs to you and is
   engaged to meet your case! Let me put it in another light. If there
   were no other person in the world but you, and God loved you infinitely
   and alone, would He not be able to do as much for you as if all His
   Omnipotence was devoted to your good, and if all the thoughts of His
   Divine Grace centered upon you and you were the focus of all His wise
   and loving purposes?

   "Oh, yes," you say, "I should be favored, indeed." You are just as
   favored as that! For the multiplicity of the objects of Divine Love
   necessitates no diminution to anyone. God can love a million and love
   each one as intensely as if there were but one to be favored! Our
   little minds are distracted with many objects. We cannot concentrate
   upon many--we are, therefore, straitened. But the full concentrated
   love of the eternal God is set upon each one of His dear children. God
   is entirely yours--not half of God! The Savior is yours--not a part of
   the Savior! God is All and that All belongs to you in Jesus Christ! Is
   there not comfort here? "The God of my mercy."

   One other word about it, and it is this--when God is called "the God of
   my mercy," we may understand it as being the Guarantor of mercy to me.
   If we say such a person is the guardian of a child, that child is then
   particularly under his care. If God is the God of my mercy, then He
   stands in a particular relationship to my mercy and binds Himself to
   secure it to me. The constable of the Tower of London stands in
   relationship to it and is concerned for its preservation. Now the Lord
   is not only the Keeper and Guarantor of my mercy, but the God of it,
   and therefore He is peculiarly interested in my mercy and will see that
   it comes to me--and is by no means allowed to fail. He is more than the
   Trustee of it, the Security for it, the Guarantee of it, the Giver of
   it, the Source of it, the Security of it--He is the God of my mercy!

   What condescension is this! He is the God of Heaven! Is not that His
   grand title? Yes, but He is, "the God of my mercy," as surely as He is
   the God of Heaven and earth. He is the Most High God, possessor of
   Heaven and earth, the God of angels and, "God over all, blessed
   forever." He is all this, but He is also, with equal truth, "the God of
   my mercy." There is a command which says, "You shall not take the name
   of the Lord your God in vain," and if He would not have us take it in
   vain, we may rest assured He will not make it vain, Himself! And if He
   calls Himself, as He does here, "the God of my mercy," He cannot allow
   it to be an empty title--He will surely make it good. What is an
   offense in the creature will not be performed by the Creator. He will
   not make vain any one of those august titles which He has been pleased
   to take to Himself. Your mercy is sure, O Christian, for God is the God
   of your mercy.

   Now I want you all to pause a moment and ask whether you really have
   appropriated, by faith, the mercy of God and the God of mercy. Why did
   not that unhappy artiste fly the other day? Why did he fall to the
   ground a mangled mass? Because his wings were not his own or a part of
   himself! The smallest bat which ventures out in the evening twilight
   can fly because it has its own wings. The tiniest hummingbird which
   dives into a flower bell can fly because its wings belong to it. But
   this man had only a borrowed contrivance, a mechanical invention which
   he could not appropriate to his own being! Another might use it as well
   as he, if, indeed, it could be used at all! If you wish to fly, you
   must have wings of your own.

   Many religious professors have a mechanical religion. They have the
   baptism of babyhood and the priestly efficacy of sacraments--a mere
   flying machine! It will not serve their turn--they must have faith and
   Grace of their own. They must have a personal faith in a personal God.
   Those who have such appropriating faith shall mount up with wings as
   eagles, but no others can. Wings which are not your own wings will be
   of no use to you, but ensure your destruction. If you are the most
   humble, weak and obscure of all God's children, if you have a real
   faith of your own, so that you can say, "My God, my Savior!" and can
   cry, "Abba, Father!" you shall mount aloft to His abode and make your
   nest forever by the Throne of Love! God grant us power to appropriate
   His precious things and call Him--"the God of my mercy."

   III. The last and practical point is, we see in the text, thirdly,
   David CONFIDING IN GOD. "The God of my mercy shall prevent me." Prevent
   is an old English word and it has shifted from its original meaning, so
   that the uninstructed reader is apt to be misled by it. Its old meaning
   is "to go before," and that is, indeed, the root meaning of the word.
   Here it means to anticipate, to be before, to go before as a guide, to
   make an easy way, to be beforehand. "The God of my mercy will prevent
   me," or anticipate me by His mercy. Now, it so happens that the Hebrew
   word may be read in all three tenses. And some have said it should be
   understood, "The God of my mercy has prevented me." Others "does
   prevent me." And a third party, like our translators, read it, "shall
   prevent me." Whichever tense you choose is true, and the whole three
   put together may be viewed as the full meaning of the passage. "The
   Lord has prevented me."

   Brethren, this is one of the grand doctrines of the Gospel, the
   doctrine of eternal love, spontaneous, self-generated, having no cause
   but itself. God loved us before we loved Him--He went before us with
   love. Before His people were born, God had elected and redeemed them,
   and prepared the Gospel by which, in due time, they are called. He is
   before us in all good things. Loving before our first parent had broken
   the Covenant of Works, the Covenant of Grace had been "ordered in all
   things and sure." In the eternal purpose the Lamb was slain from before
   the foundations of the world-- the provision for Atonement was made
   before sin actually existed! Before there was any defilement, there was
   an arrangement for cleansing us from all iniquity!

   In the volume of the Book it had been written that Christ would come
   and do the Father's will, by which will we are sanctified. Sin is a
   thing of time, but mercy is from everlasting! Transgression is but of
   yesterday, but mercy was ever of old. Before you and I sought the Lord,
   the Lord sought us. The first thought of reconciliation was not with
   man, but with his God. Some theologians dream that the sinner takes the
   first step, but I never met with a child of God who would say that he,
   himself, did so. They all, speaking from experience, declare, "we loved
   Him because He first loved us." The Grace of God is preventing
   Grace--unsought, undesired, unmerited--preceding all good impressions
   and emotions, and coming to us when we are yet ungodly and dead in
   trespasses and in sins.

   Before we thirsted the Living Water gushed from the smitten Rock!
   Before we were hungry, the oxen and the fatlings were killed. Before we
   were wounded, the oil and wine were ready to be poured into the gashes.
   Our Father knew that we should have need of these things and He
   prevented us with the blessings of goodness by laying them up in store
   for us from of old. O Lord, You have the first hand with Your people!
   They seek You early, but You are up before them! You have distanced
   them in the race of affection! You are Alpha, indeed! The Lord has
   prevented us, but the meaning of the passage is that He does still
   prevent us. Is He not daily doing so? You have many needs, but they are
   anticipated. Before you can feel the pinch of need, the mercy is given!
   God goes before you, day by day, and His paths drop fatness.

   You have often been fretting about what is to happen in a month's time
   when you expect to be in distress. When the month has come there has
   been no distress because the supply has been provided. You have gone to
   the sepulcher, saying, "Who will roll away the stone for us?" But when
   you have come to the spot, the stone has already been removed. Your
   troubles have been ended before they began! So, also, has the Lord
   prevented your sins. How often, when you have sinned, has the pardon
   for the sin and the deliverance from its consequences come upon you
   then and there, and restored

   you at once? While even yet more frequently the blessed God of your
   mercy has forestalled the temptation and prevented the sin altogether!

   Look at David with his angry heart and his naked sword in his hand,
   attended by his furious followers--"I will go," he says, "and slay this
   fellow, Nabal, and leave not a man of his house by the morning light.
   How dare he say there are many servants that run away from their
   masters nowadays? I will let him know that if a man cannot be generous
   to David he shall at least be civil, or his head shall answer for it!"
   David marches in hot passion, but at the moment when David puts his
   foot outside his tent God leads forth from Nabal's house a wise and
   gentle woman to be an angel of mercy to him. Abigail meets him half-way
   and turns him back from his design by telling him that if he would
   restrain his wrath, in later days it would be no grief to him that he
   had not avenged himself.

   Truly, David might say, "The God of my mercy has prevented me. Blessed
   be the Lord God of Israel which sent you this day to meet me." Even in
   the common acceptation of the word, "prevent," God has often so gone
   before us that He has prevented us from the commission of many sins
   into which, otherwise, we should have fallen to our sorrow and damage.
   Again, how often has He gone before our prayers? Before we have asked
   we have had! While we were yet calling, we have received! I have asked
   the Lord, sometimes, for blessings which have been on the road while I
   was asking--and I did not know it--but they have come almost before the
   words escaped my lips! Have you not known it so? "Before they call I
   will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will hear." The desire
   of the righteous is granted, oftentimes, as soon as it takes shape and
   before it is expressed. Brethren, it will always be so. God will
   prevent us.

   A good captain, when he is marching an army through a country, takes
   care to make provision for every emergency. It is time for the soldiers
   to camp and they need tents. Bring up the baggage wagons! Here are the
   tents which you ask for! The men must have their rations. Here they
   are! Serve them! The meat needs cooking. See, there are the portable
   kitchens and the fuel! The army comes to a river, by-and-by, how will
   they pass it? Why, the engineers are ready and are very soon thrown
   across. It is wonderful how the well-skilled commander foresees every
   possible emergency and has everything ready just in the nick of time.

   Much more is it so with our God. If any child of God is placed in a
   position where never a child of God was before, he shall get new light
   upon another part of God's Character and the world and the Church shall
   be the wiser because of the man's peculiar difficulties. "The God of my
   mercy shall prevent me." March on, child of God, for God goes before
   you. Be assured of this, His angels fly around you and you may hear the
   rustling of their wings if you have but faith enough! Since the eternal
   God, Himself, leads the van, march where He clears the course and your
   path shall be one of happiness and peace. The Lord will prevent us if
   we seek more Grace and higher attainments. Let us go from strength to
   strength, for at each halting place our table shall be spread. Let us
   climb the hill, for Grace, sufficient for the day, awaits us at each
   stage of progress.

   Let us rise into spiritual manhood, for the blessings peculiar to that
   state are waiting for us! Let us endeavor to do more for Jesus than we
   have ever done! Let us put forth greater effort, for God's Spirit will
   go before us to prepare the way! There is a sound of a going in the
   tops of the mulberry trees at the very time when we begin to bestir
   ourselves. When we preach, Jesus is with us, according to His promise.
   If we lift our hands in holy service, a hand unseen but Omnipotent is
   lifted at the same instant! Strike, then, feeble ones, for God strikes,
   too! Advance, for God is with you, and will give you the victory! We
   shall arrive at old age before long and, perhaps, with old age will
   come decrepitude or sickness--but the God of mercy will go before us to
   prepare the land Beulah in which we shall rest till He shall call us
   across the stream.

   As to death, when that shall come, I know, Beloved, that the Lord will
   prevent you, for Jesus has gone before for the very purpose of
   preparing a place for you. When we expect friends, we set open the
   gate, that when they come they may know that they are welcome. Christ
   has set Heaven's gate open for us and none can shut it. He awaits the
   coming of His people and when they enter Heaven they shall not be
   unexpected guests, but shall find, each one, his mansion furnished and
   ready for him. Our Forerunner is where we soon shall be! We shall cause
   no bustle of preparation when we arrive, but we shall be welcomed home
   as our children are when, on a set day, they return to us. The God of
   my mercy will, through the trackless ether, precede me, and into the
   Glory He will beckon me! And up to His Throne He will conduct me.

   So let us close with these three practical reflections. If He prevents
   us with mercy, let us not hesitate to come to Him. Loiter not, O Soul,
   if you would have the mercy of God! Is God so quick? Will you be slow?
   Does He go first and will you not follow? If any man or woman, or child
   in this place, this morning, desires salvation and eternal life, let
   him not hesitate to believe in Jesus, for the God of mercy has gone
   before him. Come, and welcome! All things are ready, come to the Gospel
   supper! The next reflection is, is God so quick in mercy? Let us, who
   are His people, be very quick in service. Do not let us wait to have
   suggested to us by others what we should do. That is true love to
   Christ which does not need reminding, forcing, or editing.

   When a man says to himself, "God has given me these unasked mercies,
   what shall I render to Him? I will not turn to the Law and say, 'This
   is what I ought to do,' neither will I require some good and earnest
   Brother to stir me up to an unwilling duty, but I am eager to serve
   God--what can I do? What will He permit me to bring?" Some saints have
   thought of one offering, and some of another--and the Lord has been
   pleased with each one. Imitate the readiness of love which shone in the
   woman who had but one costly possession in the world, an alabaster box
   of very precious ointment. Nobody expected or advised her to take it
   and pour its contents upon the head of Jesus. Indeed, there were those
   who reckoned such a gift an idle waste!

   But her own love bade her do it and so she consulted not with flesh and
   blood--she brought it out and broke it-- and filled the house with
   perfume, while she poured the sacred nard upon the head of Him she
   loved so well. Does no special act of consecration occur to you? Have
   you not some sacrifice to present? Can you not think of some design
   which shall be a memorial of your gratitude? Say in your heart, "My
   God, since You do prevent me, I cannot hope to keep pace with Your
   mercy, but at any rate I will not lag further behind You than I must.
   When I have done all I can for You, how little it is, but that little
   shall be done."

   George Herbert once described a good man as resolved, "to build a
   hospital, or mend common ways," and in his day these were acts of
   charity which piety delighted in. Other good deeds are more fitting for
   these days. Houses for worship are needed in many a populous district.
   Orphan children need to be fed. He who can buy no sweet cane with
   money, can bring time and zeal and effort--and these are precious. What
   then, my Brothers and Sisters, will you do?

   And now finally, Believer, cast yourself into your Lord's arms! Have
   done with fretting! Have done with anxiety and doubt! If you came in
   here this morning burdened, go out happy as the birds of the air! Mount
   like the lark to your God and sing as you mount! Shower down your song
   among the groveling sons of men while your eyes are upon your Father's
   home and your wings of faith bear you heavenward! God bless you for
   Jesus' sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Psalm 62. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--63, 690, 46.
     __________________________________________________________________

Is Conversion Necessary?

   (No. 1183)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JULY 19, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: old things
   are passed away; behold, all things are become new." 2 Corinthians
   5:17.

   A FEW days ago I was preaching in Lancashire upon the putting away of
   sin by our Lord Jesus and the consequent peace of conscience enjoyed by
   the Believer. In the course of the sermon I related my own conversion,
   with the view of showing that the simple act of looking to Jesus
   brought peace to the soul. Now, the diocese of Manchester is presided
   over by a bishop who has a deservedly high place in public esteem for
   his zeal, industry and force of character. And, feeling that he did not
   agree with me, he has very properly taken an opportunity to warn the
   working men, whom he addressed, against drawing improper inferences
   from my story. And he has done this in a manner so courteous that I
   only wish all discussions were conducted in the same spirit.

   The best return I can make for his courtesy is to enlarge upon the
   subject and carefully guard his utterances from injurious inferences,
   even as he has protected mine. The idea of controversy is not upon my
   mind at all, nor have I any other feeling towards Bishop Fraser than
   that which is honestly expressed in a hearty prayer that God may bless
   him. But I am thinking of the many who will read his remarks who, I
   trust, may afterwards read mine--and as the point is of the utmost
   conceivable importance and deeply concerns the souls of our hearers--it
   is well that neither should be misunderstood and that, by all means, a
   Truth of God so vital should be brought into prominence. The bishop
   does not doubt for a moment that my own conversion was correctly
   described by me--and that like cases have occurred at other times--but
   he fears lest others should suppose that they must be converted in
   exactly the same manner.

   In that fear I fully participate! It has always been a special point
   with me to show that God's Spirit calls men to Jesus in different ways.
   Some are drawn so gently that they scarcely know when the drawing
   began. Others are so suddenly affected that their conversion stands out
   with noonday clearness. Perhaps no two conversions are precisely alike
   in detail. The means, the modes, the manifestations all vary greatly.
   As our minds are not cast in the same mold, it may so happen that the
   Truth of God which affects one is powerless upon another. The style of
   address which influences your friend may be offensive to yourself--and
   that which leads him to decide may only cause you to delay. "The wind
   blows where it will." The Holy Spirit is called, "the free Spirit," and
   in the diversity of His operations, that freeness is clearly seen.

   Again and again have I warned you against imitating others in the
   matter of conversion, lest you be found counterfeits, and it is well
   when another voice unites with me in the warning. Yet in all true
   conversions there are points of essential agreement--there must be in
   all a penitent confession of sin and a looking to Jesus for the
   forgiveness of it-- and there must also be a real change of heart such
   as shall affect the entire life. Where these essential points are not
   to be found there is no genuine conversion! The bishop goes on to
   remark upon Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" and its description of the
   burdened pilgrim and his finding rest at the Cross. The bishop mistakes
   honest John, for he says that, "the pilgrim, having failed to get his
   wife to take the same gloomy view of fleeing from the wrath to come,
   and to accompany him in his flight, set out alone. There they had a man
   who deserted his home and home duties, leaving them to take care of
   themselves--but if a man stayed at home and his heart was right, he
   would have been saved in the day of doom."

   Surely allegory is not to be read in this fashion. John Bunyan never
   meant to teach that any man should forsake his home and neglect his
   family! No one ever charged him with doing so! In his imprisonment he
   worked hard at tagging laces to support his family and his affection
   for his poor blind child is well known. John Bunyan was no monk, but as
   true a father, citizen and friend as ever lived. The passage is part of
   an allegory and represents an awakened man as resolving to seek the
   Savior, whether others would do so or not--a man alive to his own
   condition and responsibility--and

   therefore determined to pursue the right road, even if the nearest and
   dearest refused to bear him company. It is not implied that he left the
   company of his family in temporal things, for with these the allegory
   has nothing to do! I feel sure the bishop knows too well the value of
   decision of mind and of that strong resolve to be right which dares to
   be singular, to say a word wittingly against one of the bravest of the
   virtues.

   The bishop continues, "The pilgrim went on his journey and at the sight
   of the Cross, the great bundle, which was the burden of his past sins,
   fell off his back. Falling down before the Cross, he thought of Him who
   hung upon it, and of the great doctrine of Atonement, and the burden
   dropped from his back, and he rose what is called 'a converted man.'"
   The bishop is inclined to think that this story of Bunyan's conversion
   has given a color to a great part of what is called Protestant Theology
   in these days. He has noticed that a great number of our theological
   ideas come, rather, from Milton, and "The Pilgrim's Progress," than
   from the Bible, for he does not find a single case in the Bible at all
   analogous to or resembling the case of John Bunyan. He then denies that
   the case of the penitent thief is at all to the point, or even the
   conversion of the Apostle Paul--and he bids his hearers remember that
   it is, "better not to dream those dreams of conversion that might
   happen to one and not to another."

   Now, so far as Milton is concerned, the bishop is right, but I
   challenge his statement with regard to Bunyan's, "Pilgrim," and differ
   from him altogether in his judgment of Paul's conversion. He fears that
   some may imagine a particular manner of conversion to be necessary, but
   my fear is much greater, that from Bishop Fraser's words, far more will
   infer that no conversion is necessary at all. My fear is not so much
   that they should say, "I must be converted like John Bunyan," but that
   they will whisper, "It is all an idle tale. The bishop means that we
   have only to do our duty and be sober and honest, and all will be well,
   whether we are converted or not."

   Our text says that "if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: old
   things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." And my
   point is just this that any man who is united to Christ has experienced
   a great change. I do not lay down hard and fast lines about how the
   conversion is to be worked, but the imperative word is, "You must be
   born again," and the exhortation speaks to all mankind, "Repent and be
   converted, that your sins may be blotted out." Even to this hour our
   Lord says, "Verily I say unto you, except you are converted and become
   as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven."

   My line of discourse will be as follows--according to our text and many
   other Scripture, a great change is needed in any man who would be
   saved. Secondly, this great change is frequently very marked. And
   thirdly, this change is recognizable by distinct signs.

   I. IN ORDER TO HAVE TRUE SALVATION A RADICAL CHANGE IS NECESSARY. This
   change is a thorough and sweeping one, and operates upon the nature,
   heart and life of the convert. Human nature is the same to all men and
   it will be idle to try to turn the edge of Scriptural quotations by
   saying that they refer to the Jews or to the heathen, for at that rate
   we shall have no Bible left us at all! The Bible is meant for mankind
   and our text refers to any man, of any country and of any age. "If any
   man is in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away;
   behold, all things are become new."

   We prove this point by reminding you, first, that everywhere in
   Scripture men are divided into two classes, with a very sharp line of
   distinction between them. Read in the Gospels and you shall find
   continual mention of sheep lost and sheep found, guests refusing the
   invitation and guests feasting at the table, the wise virgins and the
   foolish, the sheep and the goats. In the Epistles we read of those who
   are "dead in trespasses and sin," and of others to whom it is said,
   "And you has He quickened," so that some are alive to God and others
   are in their natural state of spiritual death. We find men spoken of as
   being either in darkness or in light. And the phrase is used of "being
   brought out of darkness into marvelous light." Some are spoken of as
   having been formerly aliens and strangers and having been made fellow
   citizens and brethren. We read of "children of God," in opposition to
   "children of wrath."

   We read of Believers who are not condemned and of those who are
   condemned, already, because they have not believed. We read of those
   who have "gone astray," and of those who have "returned to the shepherd
   and bishop of their souls." We read of those who are "in the flesh and
   cannot please God," and of those who are chosen and called and
   justified--whom the whole universe is challenged to condemn. The
   Apostle speaks of "us who are saved," as if there were some saved
   while, upon others, "the wrath of God abides." "Enemies" are
   continually placed in contrast with those who

   are "reconciled to God by the death of His Son." There are those that
   are "far off from God by wicked works," and those who are "made near by
   the blood of Christ."

   I could continue till I wearied you. The distinction between the two
   classes runs through the whole of the Scriptures, but never do we find
   a hint that there are some who are naturally good and do not need to be
   removed from the one class into the other, or that there are persons
   between the two who can afford to remain as they are. No, there must be
   a Divine work making us new creatures and causing all things to become
   new with us, or we shall die in our sins. The Word of God, besides so
   continually describing two classes, very frequently and in forcible
   expressions speaks of an inward change by which men are brought from
   one state into the other. I hope I shall not weary you if I refer to a
   considerable number of Scriptures, but it is best to go to the
   Fountainhead at once.

   This change is often described as a birth. See the third chapter of the
   Gospel of John, which is wonderfully clear and to the point, "Except a
   man is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." This birth is not
   a birth by Baptism, for it is spoken of as accompanied by an
   intelligent faith which receives the Lord Jesus. Turn to John 1:12, 13,
   "But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons
   of God, even to them that believed on His name: which were born not of
   blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of
   God." So that Believers are "born again," and receive Christ through
   faith--a regeneration imparted in infancy and lying dormant in
   unbelievers is a fiction unknown to Holy Scripture!

   In the third of John our Lord associates faith and regeneration in the
   closest manner, declaring not only that we must be born again, but also
   that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting
   life. We must undergo a change quite as great as if we could return to
   our native nothingness and could then come forth fresh from the hand of
   the Great Creator. John tells us, in his first Epistle, 5:4, that,
   "Whatever is born of God overcomes the world," and he adds, to show
   that the new birth and faith go together, "This is the victory that
   overcomes the world, even our faith." To the same effect is 1 John 5:1,
   "Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." Where there
   is true faith, there is the new birth, and that term implies a change
   beyond measure complete and radical.

   In other places this change is described as a quickening. "And you has
   He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins." (Eph. 2:1). We are
   said to be raised from the dead together with Christ and this is spoken
   of as being a very wonderful display of Omnipotence. We read, (Eph.
   1:19), of "the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who
   according to the working of His mighty power, which He worked in Christ
   when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in
   the heavenly places." Regeneration is a very prodigy of Divine strength
   and by no means a mere figment fabled to accompany a religious
   ceremony. We find this change frequently described as a creation, as,
   for instance, in our text, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new
   creature."

   And this, also, is no mere formality, or an attendant upon a rite, for
   we read in Galatians 6:15, "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision
   avails anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature." No outward
   rites, though ordained of God, Himself, effect any change upon the
   heart of man--there must be a creating over again of the entire nature
   by the Divine hand--we must be "created in Christ Jesus unto good
   works" (Eph. 2:10), and we must have in us "the new man, which after
   God is created in righteousness and true holiness" (Eph. 4:24). What a
   wonderful change that must be which is first described as a birth, then
   as a resurrection from the dead--and then as an absolute creation!
   Paul, in Colossians 1:13, further speaks of God the Father, and says,
   "Who has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has translated us
   into the kingdom of His dear Son." John calls it a "passing from death
   unto life" (1 John 3:14), no doubt having in his mind that glorious
   declaration of his Lord and Master--"Verily, verily, I say unto you, he
   that hears My word, and believes on Him that sent Me, has everlasting
   life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death
   unto

   life" (John 5:24).

   Once more, as if to go to the extremity of forcible expression, Peter
   speaks of our conversion and regeneration as our being "begotten
   again." Hear the passage (1 Peter 1:3), "Blessed be the God and Father
   of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy has
   begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus
   Christ from the dead." To the same purport speaks the Apostle James in
   his first chapter, at the 18th verse--"Of His own will He begat us with
   the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of His
   creatures." My dear Friends, can you conceive of any language more
   plainly descriptive of a most solemn change? If it is possible with the
   human tongue to describe a change which is total, thorough, complete
   and Divine, these words describe it! And if such a change is not
   intended by

   the language here used by the Holy Spirit, then I am unable to find any
   meaning in the Bible--and its words are rather meant to bewilder than
   to instruct, which God forbid we should think! My appeal is to you who
   try to be content without regeneration and conversion--I beseech you,
   do not be satisfied--for you never can be in Christ unless old things
   are passed away with you and all things become new.

   Further, the Scriptures speak of this great inner work as producing a
   very wonderful change in the subject of it. Regeneration and
   conversion--the one the secret cause and the other the first overt
   effect--produce a great change in the character. Read Romans 6:17, "But
   God be thanked, that you were the servants of sin, but you have obeyed
   from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you." Again at
   verse 22, "Now being made free from sin, and become servants to God,
   you have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life." Mark
   well the description the Apostle gives in Colossians 3:9, when, having
   described the old nature and its sins, he says, "Lie not one to
   another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds; and
   have put on the new man."

   The Bible swarms with proof texts. The change of character in the
   converted man is so great that, "they that are Christ's have crucified
   the flesh with the affections and lusts" (Gal. 5:24). And as there is a
   change in character, so there is a change in feeling. The man had been
   an enemy to God before, but when this change takes place he begins to
   love God. Read Colossians 1:21, "And you, that were sometime alienated
   and enemies in your mind by wicked worlds, yet now has He reconciled in
   the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and unblamable
   and unreprovable in His sight." This change from enmity to friendship
   with God arises very much from a change of man's judicial state before
   God. Before a man is converted he is condemned, but when he receives
   spiritual life we read, "there is therefore now no condemnation to them
   which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the
   Spirit." This altogether changes his condition as to inward happiness.
   "Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through
   Jesus Christ our Lord," which peace we never had before.

   "And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
   by whom we have now received the Atonement." O Brothers and Sisters,
   conversion makes a most mighty difference in us, indeed, or else what
   did Christ mean when He said, "Come unto Me, all you that labor and are
   heavy laden, and I will give you rest"? Does He, after all, give us no
   rest? Is the man who comes to Jesus just as restless and as devoid of
   peace as before? God forbid! Does not Jesus say that when we drink of
   the water which He gives to us we shall never thirst again? What? And
   are we to be told that there is never a time when we leave off
   thirsting, never a time when that Living Water becomes in us a well of
   water, springing up unto everlasting life? Our own experience refutes
   the suggestion!

   Does not Paul say in Hebrews 4:3, "We which have believed do enter into
   rest"? Our condition before God, our moral tone, our nature, our state
   of mind are made, by conversion, totally different from what they were
   before. "Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become
   new." Why, Beloved, instead of supposing that we can do without
   conversion, the Scriptures represent this as being the grand blessing
   of the Covenant of Grace! What did the Lord say by His servant
   Jeremiah? "This shall be the Covenant that I will make with the house
   of Israel; after these days, says the Lord, I will put My Law in their
   inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and I will be their God,
   and they shall be My people" (Jer. 31:33). This passage Paul quotes in
   Hebrews 10:16, not as obsolete, but as fulfilled in Believers!

   And what has the Lord said by Ezekiel? Listen to the gracious passage,
   and see what a grand blessing conversion is--"A new heart also will I
   give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away
   the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of
   flesh; and I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My
   statutes; and you shall keep My judgments and do them" (Eze. 36:26,
   27). Is not this the blessing of the Gospel by which we realize all the
   rest? Is not this the great work of the Holy Spirit by which we know
   the Father and the Son? And is not this necessary to make us in accord
   with future glory? "He that sat upon the Throne said, Behold, I make
   all things new"

   (Rev. 21:5).

   There is to be a new Heaven and a new earth, for the first Heaven and
   the first earth shall pass away. And can we believe that the old carnal
   nature is to enter into the new creation? Is that which is born of the
   flesh to enter into the spiritual kingdom? It can never be! No, a
   change as wonderful as that which will pass over this world when Christ
   shall re-create it must pass over each one of us, if it is not so
   already. In a word, if we are in Christ Jesus we are new creatures, old
   things are passed away! Behold, all things are become new! Do you know
   anything about this? I trust that a great number of you have
   experienced it and are showing it in your lives, but I fear some are
   ignorant of it. Let those who are

   unconverted never rest till they have believed in Christ and have a new
   heart created and a right spirit bestowed. Lay it well to heart that a
   change must come over you which you cannot work in yourselves, but
   which must be worked by Divine power.

   There is this for your comfort, that Jesus Christ has promised this
   blessing to all who receive Him, for He gives them power to become the
   sons of God.

   II. Secondly, I now remark that THIS CHANGE IS FREQUENTLY VERY MARKED
   AS TO ITS TIME AND CIRCUMSTANCES. Many souls truly born of God could
   not lay their finger upon any date and say, "At such a time I passed
   from death unto life." There was such a time, however, though they may
   not be able to fix upon it. The act of conversion is often, as to many
   of its circumstances, so surrounded by preceding works of restraining
   Grace that it appears to be a very gradual thing. The rising of the Sun
   of Righteousness in the soul is comparable to the dawning of day, with
   a gray light, at first, and a gradual increase to a noonday splendor.
   Yet, as there is a time when the sun rises, so is there a time of new
   birth. If a dead man were restored to life, he might not be able to say
   exactly when life began, but there is such a moment. There must be a
   time when a man ceases to be an unbeliever and becomes a believer in
   Jesus. I do not assert that it is necessary for us to know the day, but
   there is such a time.

   In many cases, however, the very day and hour and place are fully known
   and we might expect this, first, from many other works of God. How very
   particular God is about the time of creation! "The evening and the
   morning were the first day." "God said, 'Let there be light'--and
   months afterwards there came a little gray dawning and a solitary
   star." "Oh no!" you say, "You are quoting from imagination!" Yes, I am.
   The Scripture has it, "God said, Let there be light: and there was
   light." Immediate work is God's method of creating! All through the six
   days' work He spoke and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast.
   There is generally a likeness between one act of God and another--and
   if in the old creation the fiat did it all--it does seem likely upon
   the very face of things that in the new creation the fiat of the
   eternal Word should be equally quick and powerful in its working.

   Look at the acts of God in the Person of Christ when He was here among
   men. The water turns at once to wine, the fig tree immediately withers
   away, the loaves and fishes are at once multiplied in the hands of the
   disciples. Miracles of healing were, as a rule, instantaneous. In one
   instance the Lord puts clay on the blind man's eyes and sends him to
   wash--but lengthen the operation as much as you like--it is still very
   briefly summed up in, "I washed and do see." Yonder paralytic man is
   lying on his bed. Jesus says to him, "Take up your bed and walk," and
   he does so at once! The leprosy was cured with a touch, devils fled at
   a word, ears were unstopped instantly and withered limbs restored. He
   spoke to the waves and the winds and they were calm at once!

   And as to the resurrections which Christ worked, which are His acted
   parables of regeneration, they were all instantaneous. Jesus took the
   little girl by the hand and said, "Talitha cumi." She opened her eyes
   and sat up. He bade the bier stand still on which was the young man. He
   said--"Young man, I say unto you, arise"--and he arose straightway.
   Even the carcass of Lazarus, which had begun to corrupt, yielded at
   once to His word. He did but say, "Lazarus, come forth," and there was
   Lazarus! As the Master worked on men's bodies, so does He constantly
   work upon men's souls! And it is according to analogy to expect that
   His works will be instantaneous. Such they constantly are, for are they
   not daily before us?

   We might also look for many instances of vividness if we consider the
   work itself. If it is worthy to be called a resurrection, there must
   manifestly be a time in which the dead man ceases to be dead and
   becomes alive. Take the opposite process of dying--we commonly say that
   such a man was long in dying. That is a popular description, but
   strictly speaking, the actual death must be instantaneous. There is a
   time in which there is breath in the body and another time in which
   there is none. So must it be in the reception of life! That life may
   seem to come by slow degrees into the soul, but it cannot really be
   so--there must be an instant up to which there was no life and beyond
   which life began. Is not that self-evident? Isn't it wonderful that
   that instant should fix itself on the memory and in many cases be the
   most prominent fact in a man's whole history? It is called a creation.

   Now creation is necessarily a work which happens in an instant, for a
   thing either is or is not. There is no intervening space between
   non-existence and existence. There is the sharpest conceivable line
   between that which is not and that which is. So in the new creation
   there must be a time when Divine Grace is not received and a time when
   renewing it is, and we may naturally expect that in so grand a work
   there would be, in many cases, a marked boundary

   line at which the work begins. But, Brothers and Sisters, we need not
   talk of what we might expect--let us look at the facts. What are the
   facts about the conversions mentioned in Scripture? We hear much of
   educational processes which supersede conversion, but they are among
   the many inventions unknown to Apostolic history.

   The bishop tells us that he does not find a single case in the Bible at
   all resembling the case of John Bunyan. It is very curious how very
   differently we read. I at once turn to Paul, but the bishop says he is
   not a case in point, for he did not feel the burden of sin fall off his
   back. I cannot guess how the bishop knows what Paul endured during his
   three days' blindness, but my own notion, gathered from Paul's, after
   saying and doing, is very different. The man was one moment an opponent
   of Christ and the next moment was crying, "Who are You, Lord?" For
   three days he was blind and fasted. Was he not, then, feeling the power
   of the Law, and casting away his own righteousness? And when Ananias
   came to tell him more fully the Gospel and to bid him arise and be
   baptized, was there no removal of sin? Did he remain as before?

   There are two things spoken of--he was to be baptized, and also to
   receive another and spiritual washing--was the first real and not the
   second? The Apostle always speaks of the whole thing as if he had cast
   away his own righteousness and counted it but dung to lay hold on
   Christ. And he continually glories in having peace with God, though he
   did not claim perfection in the flesh. He had not attained perfection,
   but he had attained salvation! He calls himself the chief of sinners,
   but this was as a retrospect--surely Bishop Fraser does not really mean
   to insinuate that the great Apostle still remained the chief of
   sinners? If so, I must say the morality of his teaching is not such as
   one would expect from him.

   Some have said that Paul's case is a special and solitary one. But this
   is an error, for he says, himself, that Jesus Christ in him showed
   forth all long-suffering for a pattern to them which should hereafter
   believe on Him to life everlasting (1 Tim. 1:15, 16). That which is a
   pattern is not a special case. Though the Lord does not always work to
   a pattern in details, yet the case of Paul suddenly converted is the
   pattern, rather than the exception. Let us look at other instances. A
   Samaritan woman comes to the well to draw water. Christ speaks to her.
   She is converted and goes away to tell the men of the city. Is not that
   a case of sudden conversion? Zaccheus is in a tree--he is a rich
   publican, and a sinner. Jesus cries, "Zaccheus, make haste and come
   down." He comes down, receives Jesus into his house, and proves his
   salvation by his works. Is not that a sudden conversion?

   Matthew sits at the receipt of custom, another publican and sinner.
   Jesus says, "Follow Me." He rises and follows Jesus. Is not that a
   sudden conversion? Three thousand persons gather at Pentecost. Peter
   preaches to them and tells them that Jesus, whom they had murdered, was
   really the Christ of God. They are pricked in the heart! They believe
   and are baptized on the same day. Have we not here 3,000 sudden
   conversions? Sudden enough to prove my point. Further on, the jailer
   has gone to his bed, having fastened Paul and Silas in the stocks. His
   prisoners pray and sing praises unto God. There is an earthquake. The
   jailer in alarm cries, "What must I do to be saved?" He believes in
   Jesus, then and there, and is baptized with his believing household.
   Are not these "at all analogous to John Bunyan's pilgrim" and his
   losing his load? It really seems to me as if it would be much more
   difficult to find a gradual conversion in Scripture than a sudden one,
   for here they come, one another, men and women brought to Jesus Christ
   who knew Him not before, in whom the Scripture is fulfilled--"I am
   found of them that sought Me not."

   Furthermore, we need not go back to Scripture for this. The matter of
   the conversion of souls is one about which I feel it a weariness to
   argue, because these wonders of Divine Grace happen daily before our
   eyes. It is like trying to prove that the sun rises in the morning. By
   the space of 20 years there has certainly never occurred to me a single
   week, and I might with truthfulness say scarcely a solitary day, in
   which I have not heard of persons being converted by the simple
   preaching of the Gospel either here or elsewhere when I have borne
   witness for Christ. And these conversions have been in far the greater
   majority of instances very clear and well-defined.

   Sometimes the children of godly parents who have been long hearing the
   Word are converted, and in them the inward change is as marked as if
   they had never heard the Gospel before! Infidels become Believers!
   Romanists forsake their priests! Harlots become chaste, drunks leave
   their cups and, what is equally remarkable, Pharisees leave their
   self-righteous pride and come as sinners to Jesus! Why, if this were
   the proper time and place, I might say to you now assembled, "Brothers
   and Sisters, you who have experienced a great change and know that you
   have experienced it, and can tell how it came about, stand up"--and you
   would rise in numbers like a host and declare--"Thus and thus, God met
   with us under the preaching of His Truth, and thus did He turn us from
   darkness to marvelous light." I would to

   God that every man that hears me this day had received such a distinct
   conversion that it would be so plain to him that he was a new creature
   that he could no more doubt it than he can doubt his existence!

   III. Thirdly, THIS CHANGE IS RECOGNIZABLE BY CERTAIN SIGNS. It has been
   supposed by some that the

   moment a man is converted he thinks himself perfect. It is not so among
   us, for we question the conversion of any man who thinks himself
   perfect. It is thought by others that a converted man must be
   henceforth free from all doubts. I wish it were so. Unhappily, although
   there is faith in us, unbelief is there, also. Some dream that the
   converted man has nothing more to seek for--but we don't teach that--a
   man who is alive unto God has greater needs than ever. Conversion is
   the beginning of a lifelong conflict--it is the first blow in a warfare
   which will never end till we are in Glory.

   In every case of conversion there are these following signs. There is
   always a sense of sin. No man, rest assured, ever found peace with God
   without first repenting of sin and knowing it to be an evil thing. The
   horrors which some have felt are not essential, but a full confession
   of sin before God--and an acknowledgment of our guilt--is absolutely
   required. "The whole," says Christ, "have no need of a physician, but
   they that are sick; I came not to call the righteous but sinners to
   repentance." Christ does not heal those who are not sick! He never
   clothes those who are not naked, nor enriches those who are not poor.
   True conversion always has in it a humbling sense of the need of Divine
   Grace.

   It is also always attended with simple, true and real faith in Jesus
   Christ. In fact, that is the king's own mark and without it nothing is
   of any worth. "Like as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
   even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him
   should not perish, but have everlasting life." And that passage is put
   side by side with, "you must be born again," in the same address, by
   the same Savior, to the same inquirer! Therefore we gather that faith
   is the mark of the new birth, and where it is, there the Spirit has
   changed the heart of man--but where it is not, men are still, "dead in
   trespasses and sin."

   Conversion may be known, next, by this fact, that it changes the whole
   man. It changes the principle upon which he lives. He lived for
   self--now he lives for God. He did right because he was afraid of
   punishment if he did wrong--but now he shuns evil because he hates it.
   He did right because he hoped to merit Heaven, but now no such selfish
   motive sways him--he knows that he is saved and he does right out of
   gratitude to God! His objects in life are changed--he lived for gain,
   or worldly honor--now he lives for the Glory of God! His comforts are
   changed--the pleasures of the world and sin are nothing to him--he
   finds his comfort in the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the
   Holy Spirit. His desires are changed--that which he once panted and
   pined for, he is now content to do without. And that which he once
   despised, he now longs after as the hart pants after the water brooks.

   His fears are different--he no longer fears man, but fears his God. His
   hopes are also altered. His expectations fly beyond the stars--

   "He looks for a city which hands have not piled. He pants for a country
   by sin undefiled."

   The man has begun a new life. A convert once said, "Either the world is
   altered or else I am." Everything seems new! The very faces of our
   children look different to us, for we regard them under a new aspect,
   viewing them as heirs of immortality! We view our friends from a
   different standpoint. Our very business seems altered. Even taking down
   the shutters in the morning is done by the husband in a different
   spirit, and the children are put to bed by the mother in another mood.
   We learn to sanctify the hammer and the plow by serving the Lord with
   them! We feel that the things which are seen are shadows--and the
   things which we hear are but voices out of dreamland. But the unseen is
   substantial and that which mortal ears hear not is the Truth of God.

   Faith has become to us "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence
   of things not seen." I may go on to talk about this, but none will
   understand me except those who have experienced it--so let not those
   who have not experienced it say it is not true. How do they know? How
   can a man bear witness to what he has not seen? What is the value of
   testimony from a man who begins by saying, "I know nothing about it"?
   If a credible witness declares that he knows such a thing to have
   happened, it would be easy to find 50 persons who can say that they did
   not see it, but their evidence goes for nothing. Here are men of
   position, quite as keen in business and able to judge between fact and
   fiction as other men--they tell you solemnly that they have,
   themselves, experienced a wonderful, thorough and total change of
   nature. Surely if their honest testimony would be taken in any court of
   law it ought to be taken in this case! Brethren, I pray that

   we may know what this change is, and if we do know it, I again pray
   that we may so live that others may see the result of it upon our
   characters and inquire what it means. The phenomena of conversion are
   the standing miracles of the Church.

   "Greater things than these shall you do," said Christ, "because I go to
   My Father." And these are some of the greater things which the power of
   the Holy Spirit still performs. This day the dead are raised, blind
   eyes are opened and the lame are made to walk. The spiritual miracle is
   greater than the physical one. These spiritual miracles show that Jesus
   lives and puts life and power into the Gospel. Tell me of a ministry
   which never reclaims the drunk, never calls back the thief to honesty,
   never pulls down the self-righteous and makes him confess his
   sin--that, in a word, never transforms its hearers--and I am sure that
   such a ministry is not worth the time which men spend in listening to
   it! Woe unto the man who at the last shall confess to a ministry
   fruitless in conversions!

   If the Gospel does not convert men, do not believe in it! But if it
   does, it is its own evidence and must be believed. It may be to some of
   you a stumbling block, and to others foolishness, but unto those who
   believe, it is the power of God unto salvation, saving them from sin!
   Beloved Hearers, may we all meet in Heaven! But to meet in Heaven we
   must all be renewed, for inside yonder gates of pearl none can enter
   but those who are new creatures in Christ Jesus our Lord. God bless
   you, for Christ's sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--John 3. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--175, 448, 603.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Sad Plight and Sure Relief

   (No. 1184)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the
   ungodly." Romans 5:6.

   As I was sitting, the other day, with an aged Believer who is a local
   preacher among our Wesleyan friends, he said to me, "I cannot hope, in
   the course of nature, to stand up in the pulpit many more times.
   Therefore, every time I preach now, I preach of nothing but Jesus
   Christ. And I said to the people the other day, 'You will say when I am
   dead and gone, Poor old Mr. So-and-So will come and preach to us no
   more. But as he got older and older the more he preached about Jesus
   Christ, till for the last few months of his life the old man never
   spoke about anything but his Master.'" Then, as if confidentially
   addressing himself to me, he said, "I should like to leave just that
   impression upon the people's minds when I am taken from them."

   The resolution seems to me so good that I think that it might be taken
   up by us who are younger and adopted as our own. Paul, before he was,
   "Paul the aged," said, "I determined not to know anything among you
   save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." There is nothing like striking
   at the center and keeping to vital points. And if we are keeping to
   Christ crucified, we are keeping to that which will save souls, which
   will build up Believers and which will glorify God. But, dear Friends,
   if we might be allowed to go astray from this subject sometimes, yet
   certainly not on an evening like this, when we are about to gather
   around the Lord's Table which is loaded with the memorials of our
   Redeemer's passion. Tonight, you who are Believers in Jesus ought to
   have no eyes for any object but Him, no ear for any sound but that
   which tells of Him--indeed, no hearts with which to relish any theme
   save your crucified Lord. Blind, deaf, dead to every worldly
   consideration, let us be just now, all alive, all awake and all aglow
   with love to Him and the desire to have fellowship with Him.

   Our text brings us at once to the Cross and it sheds a light upon our
   former estate. Let us see where we were and what was needed to make us
   the children of God. Do you ask, How did our Redeemer view us when He
   died for us? The response is here clearly given, "When we were yet
   without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." Thus we
   have a two-fold description of the state in which Christ viewed mankind
   when He shed the blood of redemption. The men for whom His Propitiation
   was offered, were "without strength," and they were "ungodly." If you
   or I have any part or lot in the matchless death of Jesus, we must feel
   ourselves to have been in just this condition, for it cannot have any
   relation to any persons but those who, by nature, are "without
   strength" and "ungodly."

   I. THAT EACH MAN FOR WHOM CHRIST DIED WAS WITHOUT STRENGTH IS OBVIOUS.
   He was legally weak. Before God's bar he had a weak case, a case
   without strength. He stood up as a prisoner to be tried and of all the
   cases that were ever brought into court his was the most destitute of
   power. He was without strength. To make the case our own, as it really
   is ours, we could not deny the charge that we had broken the Law. We
   could not set up an alibi, nor could we put in a plea of extenuation.
   The fact was clear. Our own conscience vouched for it, as well as the
   record of God's Providence.

   We could not make apologies, for we sinned willfully, sinned against
   light and against knowledge, sinned repeatedly, sinned without any
   necessity and sinned with an extravagant willfulness. We sinned with
   many different aggravations. We sinned after we knew sin to be
   exceedingly sinful before God and extremely injurious to ourselves.
   Yes, we sinned deliberately and presumptuously when we knew the
   penalty--when we understood what we should lose for lack of obedience
   and what we should incur as the chastisement of transgression. I say
   again, man's case is well described as being extremely weak.

   Looked at legally, it is utterly without strength. No advocate who
   understood the case would have ventured to plead it, except that one
   glorious Advocate who did plead it, but at the cost of His own life. He
   knew that if He undertook it and stood up to plead with God for us, He
   must die for it, for it was a case in which, before the Law, we were
   without

   strength. We had no good works to be a setoff for our sin. We had no
   hope of ever performing any in the future which could ever stand in the
   place of the good works which ought to have been done in the past. The
   case, put however it might be, broke down utterly--and the prisoner
   himself, if, indeed, able to speak the truth, would be compelled to

   say--

   "Should sudden vengeance seize my breath,

   I must confess You just in death.

   And if my soul is sent to Hell,

   Your righteous Law approves it well."

   We were without strength. It was a bad case, altogether, and could not
   be defended. And man, by nature, is morally weak. We are so weak by
   nature that we are carried about like dust and driven to and fro by
   every wind that blows. We are swayed by every influence which assails
   us. Man is under the dominion of his own lusts--his pride, his sloth,
   his love of ease, his love of pleasure. Man is such a fool that he will
   buy pleasure at the most ruinous price. He will fling his soul away as
   if it were some paltry toy and barter his eternal interests as if they
   were but trash. For some petty pleasure of an hour he will risk the
   health of his body. For some paltry gain, he will jeopardize his soul.
   Alas! Alas! Poor Man, you are as light as the thistledown which goes
   this way or that, as the wind may turn. In your moral constitution you
   are as the weathercock which shifts with every breeze.

   At one time man is driven by the world--the fashions of the age prevail
   over him and he foolishly follows them. At another time a clique of
   small people, notables in their little way, is in the ascendant and he
   is afraid of his fellow men. Threats awe him, though they may be but
   the frowns of his insignificant neighbors. Or he is bribed by the love
   of approbation which may possibly mean no more than the nod of the
   squire, or merely the recognition of an equal. So he sacrifices
   principle and runs with the multitude to do evil. Then the evil spirit
   comes upon him and the devil tempts him--and away he goes! There is
   nothing which the devil can suggest to which man will not yield while
   he is a stranger to Divine Grace. And if the devil should let him
   alone, his own heart suffices. The pomp of this world, the lust of the
   eyes, the pride of life--any of these things will drive men about at
   random.

   Look at them rushing to murder one another with shouts of joy! Look at
   them returning blood-red from the battlefield! Listen to the
   acclamations with which they are greeted because they have killed their
   fellow men. Look at how they will go where poison is served to
   them--they will drink it till their brain reels--and they fall upon the
   ground intoxicated and helpless. This is pleasure which they pursue
   with avidity and having yielded themselves up to it once, they will
   repeat it over and over till the folly of an evil hour becomes the
   habit of an abandoned life! Nothing seems to be too foolish, nothing
   too wicked, nothing too insane for mankind. Man is morally weak--a
   poor, crazy child. He has lost that strong hand of a well-trained
   perfect reason which God gave him at the first. His understanding is
   blinded and his foolish heart is darkened. And so Christ finds him,
   when He comes to save him, morally without strength.

   Now, I know I have described exactly the condition of some here. They
   are emphatically without strength. They know how soon they yield. It is
   only to put sufficient pressure upon them and they give way despite
   their resolutions, for their strongest resolves are as weak as
   reeds--and when but a little trial has come, away they go back to the
   sins which in their conscience they condemn--though nevertheless they
   continue to practice them. Here is man's state, then--legally condemned
   and morally weak!

   But, further, man is, above all things, spiritually without strength.
   When Adam ate of the forbidden fruit he incurred the penalty of death
   and we are all involved in that penalty. Not that he at once died
   naturally, but he died spiritually. The blessed Spirit left him. He
   became a soulish or natural man. And such are we. We have lost the very
   Being of the Spirit by nature. If He comes to us, there is good need He
   should, for He is not here in us by nature. We are not made partakers
   of the Spirit at our natural birth. This is a gift from above to man.
   He has lost it and the spirit--that vital element which the Holy Spirit
   implants in us at regeneration--is not present in man by his original
   generation. He has no spiritual faculties, he cannot hear the voice of
   God, he cannot taste the sweets of holiness. He is dead, yes, and in
   Scripture he is described as lying like the dry bones that have been
   parched by the hot winds and are strewn in the valley dry, utterly dry.

   Man is dead in sin. He cannot rise to God any more than the dead in the
   grave can come out of their sepulchers by themselves and live. He is
   without strength--utterly so. It is a terrible case, but this is what
   the text says, "When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ
   died for the ungodly." Putting all these things into one, man, by
   nature, where

   Christ finds him, is utterly devoid of strength of every sort for
   anything that is good--at least anything which is good in God's
   sight--and acceptable unto God. It is of no use for him to sit down and
   say, "I believe I can force my way into purity." Man, you are without
   strength till God gives you strength! He may sometimes start up in a
   kind of alarm and say, "It shall be done," but he falls back again,
   like the madman who, after an attack of delirium, sinks, again, to his
   old state. It will not be done. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or
   the leopard his spots?" If so, then he that is accustomed to do evil
   may learn to do well. Not till, by his own unaided strength can he
   perform any right and noble purpose.

   Now, what am I talking about? Man has no strength of his own at all! He
   is without strength and there he lies-- hopeless, helpless, ruined, and
   undone, utterly destroyed--a splendid palace all in ruins, through
   whose broken walls sweep desolate winds with fearful wailings. Man is
   like a place where beasts of evil names and birds of foulest wings do
   haunt--a palace majestic even in ruins, but still utterly ruined and
   quite incapable of self-restoration. "Without strength." Alas! Alas!
   Poor humanity! The persons for whom Christ died are viewed by Him from
   the Cross as being "ungodly," that is to say, men without God. "God is
   not in their thoughts." They can live for the month together and no
   more remember Him than if there were no God. God is not in their
   hearts. If they do remember Him, they do not love Him. God is scarcely
   in their fears. They can take His name in vain, profane His Sabbaths
   and use His name for blasphemy. God is not in their hopes. They do not
   long to know Him, or to be with Him, or to be like He is. Practically,
   unconverted men have said, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey His
   voice?"

   If they do not say it in so many words, they imply it by a daily
   neglect of God. Even if they take up with religion, yet the natural man
   sticks to the sentiments or the ritual that belong to his profession.
   Subscribing to a creed, or observing a series of customs, he remains
   utterly oblivious of that communion with God which all true religion
   leads us to seek--and therefore he never gets to God. He adapts himself
   to the outward form, but he does not discern the Spirit. He listens to
   pious words, but he does not feel them. He joins in holy hymns, but his
   heart does not sing. He even gets down on his knees and pretends to
   pray, but all the while his heart is wandering far from God. He does
   not commune with his Maker and he cannot, for he is alienated from his
   Creator, or, as the text puts it, he is ungodly.

   "Now," you say, "you have made man out to be a strange creature."
   Believe me, I have not painted the picture one-half as black as it is,
   nor can I. But do not be angry with me for so painting it. So much the
   better for you, for now you see there is no man too bad to be included
   in this description--without strength and ungodly. For such as these
   did Christ die! The description of the men for whom Christ died has not
   one letter of goodness in it. It describes them as hopelessly,
   helplessly bad. Yet for such Christ died. O Sirs, I am not going to
   tell you that Christ died for saints! He died for sinners, not for the
   godly, but for the ungodly! He did not die for the strong in Divine
   Grace, strong in morals and the like, but for those who were without
   strength!

   Truly I know He died for the saints, but who made them saints? When He
   died for them they were sinners! I know He died for those whom He has
   made "strong in the Lord and in the power of His might," but who made
   them strong? When He died for them they were as weak as others. All the
   difference between Peter in Heaven and Judas in Hell is a difference
   made by free rich Sovereign Grace! There was the same raw material to
   begin with in one as in another, and Jesus Christ looked upon men, not
   at their best, when He laid down His life for their redemption, but at
   their worst! This is clear, yes, it is self-evident--had they been
   whole they would not have needed a physician--if they had not been lost
   they would not have needed a Savior!

   If the disease had not been very bad they would not have needed so
   matchless a medicine as the blood of Christ--if they had not been
   helplessly lost, there could have been no necessity for Omnipotence to
   step in to effect their rescue! And had not the ruin been terrible to
   the last degree, it would not have been demanded that God, Himself,
   should come in human flesh and make expiation for guilt by His own
   death upon the Cross. The glory of the remedy proves the desperateness
   of the disease. The grandeur of the Savior is a sure evidence of the
   terribleness of our lost condition. Look at it, then, and as man sinks,
   Christ will rise in your esteem--and as you value the Savior, so you
   will be more and more stricken with terror because of the greatness of
   the sin which needed such a Savior to redeem us from it!

   Thus I have described the way in which Christ viewed us when He died
   for us. I only wish the Spirit of God would give to poor trembling
   sinners the comfort which this doctrine ought to give. You will say,
   "Oh, I am one of the worst in the world." Christ died for the worst in
   the world! "Oh, but I have no power to be better." Christ died for
   those that were without strength. "Oh, but my case condemns itself."
   Christ died for those that legally are condemned. "Yes, but

   my case is hopeless." Christ died for the hopeless! He is the hope of
   the hopeless. He is the Savior, not of those partly lost, but of the
   wholly lost! Your case, however bad it may be, must come within the
   sweep of the glorious arm which wields the pierced hands! Christ came
   to save the very vilest of the vile!

   II. But now, secondly, the text tells us WHEN CHRIST INTERPOSED TO SAVE
   US. "When we were yet without

   strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." What does it mean
   by, "due time"? Why, it means that the death of Christ occurred at a
   proper period! I cannot suggest any other period in time which would
   have been so judiciously chosen for the death of the Redeemer as the
   one which God elected. Nor can I imagine any place more suitable than
   Calvary, outside the gates of Jerusalem. There was no accident about
   it. It was all fixed in the eternal purpose and for infinitely wise
   reasons.

   We do not know all the reasons and must not pretend to know them. but
   we do know this, that at the time our Savior died, sin among mankind in
   general had reached a climax. There never was a more debauched age. It
   is impossible to read the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans,
   and to understand its testimony, without feeling sick at the depravity
   it records. It is such a desperate and altogether truthful description
   of the infamous vices into which men had fallen in those days, that we
   feel that they must have gone, in fact, beyond all that we could
   suppose that the vilest imagination could have fabled! Indeed, so far
   as our modern time is concerned, the annals of crime are silent as to
   such atrocities. And for the most of us, it surpasses our belief that
   licentiousness should ever have grown so extravagant in committing
   willful violations of nature and indulging a propensity to revel in
   loathsome folly and unnecessary vice.

   Their own satirists said that there was no new vice that could be
   invented. Any person who has passed through Naples by Herculaneum and
   Pompeii, and seen the memorials of the state of society in which those
   cities existed, will almost rue the day in which he ever saw what he
   did--for there is no morgue that is so foul as was the common life of
   the Romans of that age. And, in all probability, the Romans were as
   good as any other nation then existing upon earth. Their very virtue
   was but painted vice! What little of virtue had existed among mankind
   before was gone. Socrates and Solon, so much vaunted everywhere, were
   in the habit of practicing vices which I dare not mention in any modest
   assembly. The very leaders of society would have done, openly, things
   which we should now be committed to prison for mentioning--which it is
   not lawful to think!

   Society was rotten through and through. It was a stench and offensive
   to the utmost by its corruption. But it was then, when man had got to
   his worst, that on the bloody tree Christ, Himself, was lifted up to be
   a standard of virtue-- to be a bronze serpent for the cure of the
   multitudes of mankind who everywhere were dying of the serpent bites!
   Christ came at a time when the wisdom of man had got to a great height
   and, whenever it does get to a great height, man becomes an
   extraordinary fool! The various masters of philosophy were then going
   up and down the earth seeking to dazzle men with the brightness of
   their teaching. But their science was absurdity and their morals were a
   systematized immorality. Putting the whole of it together, whatever was
   true in what they taught, our most common Sunday school child
   understands. But the bulk of it was altogether foolishness, couched in
   paradoxical terms to make it look like wisdom. "The world by wisdom
   knew not God."

   But, surely, man had a religion at that time! He had, but man's
   religion--well, the less we say about the religion which existed when
   Christ came into the world the better. One of their own poets, speaking
   of the Egyptians, ridiculed them by saying, "O happy people, who grow
   your gods in your own kitchen garden!"--for they worshipped leeks and
   onions! These well-trained and tutored people embalmed the ibis and the
   cat, and made these objects of religious reverence. If you had stepped
   into the temple of Isis anywhere, you would soon have discovered
   emblems of the utmost obscenity. And the holy rites of the common
   religion of the period--the holy rites, I say--done in honor of God
   were acts of flagrant sin! The temples were abominable and the priests
   were abominable beyond description. And where the best part of man, his
   very religion, had become so foul, what could we expect of his ordinary
   life?

   To give a boy a Lempriere's Dictionary, as schoolmasters do, is, I
   believe, to debauch that boy's mind, though the most of its execrable
   records concern the religion of the period of which I am now speaking.
   If such were the religion of the time, O God, what must its irreligion
   have been? But was there not a true religion in the world, somewhere?
   Yes, there was and it was in Judea. But those who inherited the canon
   of Divine Revelation, what manner of men were they? Not one bit better
   than the heathen, for they were gross hypocrites! Tradition had made
   void the Law of God. Ritualism

   had taken the place of spiritual worship. The Pharisee stood with
   uplifted eyes and thanked God that he was not as other men were--when
   he had in his pocket the deeds of a widow's estate of which he had
   robbed her!

   The Sadducee came forth and vaunted his superior light and
   intelligence, while at the same time he betrayed his gross darkness and
   his dire skepticism, for he said that there was no angel, or
   resurrection, or spirit. The best men of the period in Christ's days
   said to Him, because He was holy, "Away with such a fellow from the
   earth!" I have heard men tell of king killers, as if they were strange
   beings. But, O earth, you are a regicide! No, you are worse than that,
   you are a Deicide, for did you not put the Son at God, Himself to
   death? A certain flowery orator once said, "O Virtue, you are so fair
   and lovely, that if you were to come on earth all men would adore you."
   But Virtue did come on the earth, clothed not in helmet and in royal
   cape, nor with iron hand to crush the sons of men, but He came in the
   silken garments of love and peace, personified by the Incarnate Savior!
   And what said the world to Virtue? They said, "Crucify Him, crucify
   Him!" And the only answer the world could give to the question, "Why,
   what evil has He done?" was, "Crucify Him, crucify Him!" They would not
   have Him live upon the face of the earth!

   Now, it was when men had got to this pitch, in due time, that Christ
   came to die for them. If He had sat up in Heaven and launched His
   thunderbolts at them. If, from the heights of Glory, He had
   commissioned His mailed seraphim and sworded cherubim to come and sweep
   the whole race away--and bid the bottomless Pit open wide her jaws and
   swallow up these disgusting creatures--none could have blamed Him. They
   deserved it. But, instead of that, the pure and Holy One comes down to
   earth, Himself, to suffer and to bleed and die, that these
   wretches--yes, that we--might live through

   Him!

   Thus I have described how He looked upon us and at what time He came.

   III. But now, thirdly--and, oh, that these lips had language, or that
   this heart could do without poor lips to tell this tale--WHAT DID HE DO
   FOR US? There we were. Do not think that you are any better than the
   rest, or the worst, of our fallen race. If the current social habits
   and the spread of Christian light make us outwardly better, we had only
   to have been put in the circumstances of those heathen--and we should
   soon have been as bad as they. The heart is corrupt in every case--and
   yet Jesus came.

   What did He do for us? Well, first, He made the fullest degree of
   sacrifice that was possible. To lift us up He stooped. He made the
   heavens and yet He lay in Bethlehem's manger! He hung the stars in
   their places and laid the beams of the universe--and yet He became a
   carpenter's son, giving up all His rank and dignity for love's dear
   sake! And then when He grew up, He consented to be the Servant of
   servants, and made Himself of no reputation. He took the lowest place--
   "He was despised and rejected of men"--He gave up all ease and comfort,
   for He had not where to lay His head. He gave up all health of body,
   for He bore our sickness and He bared His back to the smiters that the
   chastisement of our peace might fall upon Him. He gave up the last rag
   He had, for they took His own clothes from Him, and upon His vesture
   did they cast lots. He gave up, for the world, all esteem.

   They called Him a blasphemer. Reproach broke His heart, but He gave
   that heart up for us. He gave His body to the nails and His heart to
   the spear--and He could do no more. When at last He gave his life, "It
   is finished," He said. And they took down His mangled body from the
   tree and laid it in the grave. Self-sacrifice had reached its climax!
   Further, He could not go, but He could not have saved us if He had
   stopped short of that. So lost, so utterly lost were we, that without
   this extreme self-devotion--till it could be said, "He saved others;
   Himself he could not save--without this self-devotion, I say, He could
   not have saved so much as one of us! In the fact that Christ's
   self-sacrifice went so far I see evidence of the extreme degree of our
   need.

   It may be thought, perhaps, that I speak in excitement when I describe
   the lost estate of man. Sirs, I have felt that lost estate in my own
   soul and I do but tell you what I know! And if you had ever felt
   it--and I pray God you may, if you never have--you would admit that it
   cannot be exaggerated. But look at this. I challenge any reasonable man
   to controvert the position. Would He who is "God over all, blessed
   forever," have come from the height of Heaven, given up all that is
   grand and honorable, have made Himself of no reputation and have
   humbled Himself even to the death, to save us, if it had not been a
   most terrible ruin to which we were subject? Could there need such a
   mighty heave of the eternal shoulders if it had not been a dead lift,
   indeed? Here is something more than a Samson needed to pull up the
   gates, posts and bars of our great dungeon--and carry all away upon His
   mighty shoulders that we might never be prisoners again.

   The splendid deed of Grace which Christ has accomplished was not a
   triviality, it could not be, and therefore there must have been some
   dire and urgent ruin imminent upon the sons of men for Christ to make
   so tremendous a sacrifice as to bleed and die for us! And, mark,
   Brothers and Sisters, while this death of Christ was to Him the height
   of sacrifice. And while it proved the depth of our ruin, it was the
   surest way of our deliverance! Behold how man has broken the Law! Can
   you help him? Can you help him, you pure spirits that stand around the
   Throne of God? Can you help him? Can you come and encourage him, cheer
   him, give him hope that, perhaps, he may do better? Your encouragements
   are all in vain, for you encourage him to do what cannot be done! He is
   so ruined that the case is beyond your aid.

   But suppose God, Himself, should take account of it? Yes, now there is
   hope for him! But, perhaps, God should show His pity and give His
   counsel--that would not go far in helping him. Then were the hope but
   slender. But what if God will go as far as ever God can go--does that
   need correction? No, let it stand! I cannot speak more correctly than
   that. I know of nothing that God, the Eternal, Himself, could do more
   than to become Incarnate and, in human flesh, to bleed and die for man!
   God has here shown all the attributes and perfections of His Godhead.
   What can I say more? He has purposed and effected the utmost that
   Infinite Love can do for our infinite wretchedness! Well, if God will
   do so much that no more can be done, and God is Infinite, then, depend
   upon it, that is the surest thing to be done! It claims admiration and
   defies argument while it excites inquiry.

   Do you ask how He will do it? Well, Christ shall take upon Himself the
   responsibility for this sin. He shall stand in the sinner's place. He
   shall be punished as if He had committed the sin, though in Him was no
   sin! The vials of wrath that were due to human transgression shall be
   poured upon Him. The sword of Justice that ought to be sheathed in the
   sinner's breast shall be plunged into the Savior's heart. Ah, was there
   ever such a plan devised? The Just dies for the unjust! The offended
   Judge, Himself, suffers for the offense against His own Law! Oh,
   matchless plan! This, indeed, makes sure work for man--for now it takes
   him, sinful and lost as he is--and puts Another in his place who is
   able to bear his sin and puts man into the place of that Other. Yes,
   hear it! It puts the sinner into the Savior's place--and God looks upon
   the Savior as if He had been the sinner! And then upon the sinner as if
   he had been the Perfect One. There is a transposition! Christ and the
   sinner change places! He was made sin for us that we might be made the
   righteousness of God in Him.

   This is the way to do it. Yes, and this is the way to sweep out of the
   path all attempts on our part to help, for this was so great a work
   that Jesus Christ, Himself, must sweat while He did it! He must bleed
   His soul away to accomplish it. O you self-righteous ones, stand back!
   With broken limbs and dislocated bones you come hobbling up to help
   this glorious Champion. Away with you! You are without strength and you
   are ungodly by nature. What can you do in this great enterprise? Christ
   has done it and every part of it is such a wondrous transaction that
   the very majesty thereof might make self-righteousness cover its face
   and fly away abashed, crying, "O God, I must lie down and die. I cannot
   live. I have seen the righteousness of Christ and there is no more room
   for me!" Come, Brothers and Sisters, since my words fail to set out
   what the Savior has done, I want you to think it over and I want you to
   love Him.

   For my part, I want to love and adore Him, too, with all my heart, soul
   and strength, for dying for me, for standing in my place, that I, a
   lost, condemned and all but damned sinner, might yet live and be
   justified and be loved and adopted and accepted--and at last crowned
   with glory for His dear sake!

   IV. Time fails me and, therefore, I must hurry to the last point, which
   is, What then? What then? "Christ died for the ungodly." What then?
   Then sin cannot shut any man out from the Grace of God if he believes.
   The man says, "I am without strength." Christ died for us when we were
   without strength. The man says, "I am ungodly." Christ died for the
   ungodly. I remember how Martin Luther hammers on that word, "He gave
   Himself for our sins." "There," says Martin, "it does not say He gave
   Himself for our virtues. He thinks better of our sins than our
   virtues," he says. "He gave Himself for our sins." He never says a word
   about our excellencies--never a syllable about our goodness. Rotten
   trash! But He gave Himself for our sins!"

   "Oh," says a man, "I would come to Christ if I were cleaner." Man, He
   did not die for the clean--He died for the filthy, that He might make
   them clean. "I would come to the Great Physician," says one, "if I were
   whole." Man, He never came to die for those that are whole! The
   physician does not come to cure those that are whole, but those that
   are sick. Look at it in this light. If you have committed every crime
   in the whole catalog of sin, no matter what that crime may be, if you
   will repent of it and look to Christ, there is pardon for you! There is
   more--there is a new life for you--

   and a new heart for you. There is a new birth for you, so complete you
   shall be no more a child of Satan, but a child of God! And that is to
   be had now. Oh, the splendor of the Grace of God! Our sins stand like
   some tremendous mountain, and the Grace of God plucks that mountain
   right up by its roots and hurls it into the sea!

   It shall never be seen again. Christ's blood shall cover it. Christ
   shall be seen and not you. He will stand between you and God, and God
   will see you through the wounds of Christ if you believe in Him--and
   you shall be "accepted in the Beloved." I have not put this too
   strongly, either. The text says, "When we were without strength He died
   for the ungodly," and it is to the ungodly and those without strength
   that this message is sent. But, what then? What more? Why, then, Jesus
   will never cast away a Believer for his future sins--for if when we
   were without strength He died for us, if, when we were ungodly, He
   interposed on our behalf--will He leave us now that He has made us
   godly?

   Did you notice the argument of the whole chapter as it was read to you
   just now? It is the strongest and most unassailable argument that I can
   deem possible. The Apostle declares that, "God commends His love toward
   us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us: much more
   then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath
   through Him; for if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by
   the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved
   through His life."

   Notice the triple cord of reasoning employed here. When we were
   enemies, He blessed us. Much more, now that we are reconciled. When we
   were enemies, He reconciled us--will He not now save us? Shall those
   who are reconciled be afterwards left to perish? And since we are so
   freely and fully saved by the death of Christ, much more shall we be
   saved by His life! If His death did so much, much more must His life be
   a motive for our confidence. Oh, it is clear! It is clear! It is clear!
   Though I may have backslidden and may have sinned, yet I have only to
   go back to my Father and say, "Father, I have sinned," and I am still
   His child and He will fall upon my neck and kiss me! And I shall yet
   sit at His table and hear music and dancing, because He that was lost
   is found! It is clear, now, from the text.

   Again, it is equally clear that every blessing any child of God can
   need he can have. He that spared not His own Son, when we were without
   strength and ungodly, cannot deny us inferior blessings now that we are
   His own dear children! Go, child of God, go with confidence to your
   heavenly Father! He gave you Jesus, what can He keep back from you?
   What then? Let us ask the question once more and I think a spontaneous
   outflow of gratitude should furnish the reply. If, when we were without
   strength, Christ died for the ungodly, let us praise Him! Let us praise
   Him! Let us praise Him! Oh, if He came when there was nothing to draw
   Him--when, if He looked us through and through He could not see a good
   point in us--if He loved us so that He would save us when we were
   altogether bad, hopeless and helpless, why, the very least thing we can
   ever do is to love Him and praise Him as long as we have any being!

   I am of that old woman's mind who said, "If Jesus Christ does save me,
   He shall never hear the end of it." Nor shall He. We will talk of it
   and we will praise Him. And we will bless Him for it as long as
   immortality endures. "What, does Christ Jesus take the utterly
   unworthy?" Yes, just so! Then, when He takes them, how they will serve
   Him! Love Him? Love Him? Is there any question about it? When He has
   forgiven me everything freely and saved me by the shedding of His own
   blood, can I not love Him? I were worse than a devil if I did not love
   Him! Yes, while this heart can beat--while memory holds her throne--His
   name shall be dearest of all names, and His service the pleasure of my
   life, if He does but give me Grace to stand to this!

   Do you say the same, Beloved? I am sure you do! And may He of His mercy
   touch the heart of some great sinner tonight! Perhaps there is a woman
   that is a sinner, here. Oh, that you may come to wash His feet with
   your tears and wipe them with the hairs of your head, because of His
   love to you! Perhaps there is some thief here. Oh, that you might be
   with Him in Paradise! And I am sure, if He pronounces you absolved, you
   will sing more sweetly in Heaven than any other, because of what He has
   done for you! Blessed be Your name, O Son of God, forever and forever!
   And all our hearts say, "Amen."

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Romans 5
     __________________________________________________________________

                     An Earnest Warning about Lukewarmness

   A Sermon

   (No. 1185)

   Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, July 26th, 1874, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   Unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things
   saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the
   creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot:
   I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and
   neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou
   sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing;
   and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and
   blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire,
   that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be
   clothed, and [that] the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and
   anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I
   love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. Behold, I
   stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the
   door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To
   him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I
   also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.''Rev.
   3:14-21

   No Scripture ever wears out. The epistle to the church of Laodicea is
   not an old letter which may be put into the waste basket and be
   forgotten; upon its page still glow the words, He that hath an ear, let
   him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.' This Scripture was
   not meant to instruct the Laodiceans only, it has a wider aim. The
   actual church of Laodicea has passed away, but other Laodiceas still
   exist'indeed, they are sadly multiplied in our day, and it has ever
   been the tendency of human nature, however inflamed with the love of
   God, gradually to chill into lukewarmness. The letter to the Laodiceans
   is above all others the epistle for the present times.

   I should judge that the church at Laodicea was once in a very fervent
   and healthy condition. Paul wrote a letter to it which did not claim
   inspiration, and therefore its loss does not render the Scriptures
   incomplete, for Paul may have written scores of other letters besides.
   Paul also mentions the church at Laodicea in his letter to the church
   at Colosse; he was, therefore, well acquainted with it, and as he does
   not utter a word of censure with regard to it, we may infer that the
   church was at that time in a sound state. In process of time it
   degenerated, and cooling down from its former ardour it became
   careless, lax, and indifferent. Perhaps its best men were dead, perhaps
   its wealth seduced it into worldliness, possibly its freedom from
   persecution engendered carnal ease, or neglect of prayer made it
   gradually backslide; but in any case it declined till it was neither
   cold nor hot. Lest we should ever get into such a state, and lest we
   should be in that state now, I pray that my discourse may come with
   power to the hearts of all present, but especially to the consciences
   of the members of my own church. May God grant that it may tend to the
   arousing of us all.

   I. My first point will be THE STATE INTO WHICH CHURCHES ARE VERY APT TO
   FALL. A church may fall into a condition far other than that for which
   it has a repute. It may be famous for zeal and yet be lethargic. The
   address of our Lord begins, I know thy works,' as much as to say,
   Nobody else knows you. Men think better of you than you deserve. You do
   not know yourselves, you think your works to be excellent; but I know
   them to be very different.' Jesus views with searching eyes all the
   works of his church. The public can only read reports, but Jesus sees
   for himself. He knows what is done, and how it is done, and why it is
   done. He judges a church not merely by her external activities, but by
   her internal pieties; he searches the heart, and tries the reins of the
   children of men. He is not deceived by glitter; he tests all things,
   and values only that gold which will endure the fire. Our opinion of
   ourselves and Christ's opinion of us may be very different, and it is a
   very sad thing when it is so. It will be melancholy indeed if we stand
   out as a church notable for earnestness and distinguished for success,
   and yet are not really fervent in spirit, or eager in soul-winning. A
   lack of vital energy where there seems to be most strength put forth, a
   lack of real love to Jesus where apparently there is the greatest
   devotedness to him, are sad signs of fearful degeneracy. Churches are
   very apt to put the best goods into the window, very apt to make a fair
   show in the flesh, and like men of the world, they try to make a fine
   figure upon a very slender estate. Great reputations have often but
   slender foundations, and lovers of the truth lament that it should be
   so. Not only is it true of churches, but of every one of us as
   individuals, that often our reputation is in advance of our deserts.
   Men often live on their former credit, and trade upon their past
   characters, having still a name to live, though they are indeed dead.
   To be slandered is a dire affliction, but it is, upon the whole, a less
   evil than to be thought better than we are; in the one case we have a
   promise to comfort us, in the second we are in danger of self-conceit.
   I speak as unto wise men, judge ye how far this may apply to us.

   The condition described in our text is, secondly, one of mournful
   indifference and carelessness. They were not cold, but they were not
   hot; they were not infidels, yet they were not earnest believers; they
   did not oppose the gospel, neither did they defend it; they were not
   working mischief, neither were they doing any great good; they were not
   disreputable in moral character, but they were not distinguished for
   holiness; they were not irreligious, but they were not enthusiastic in
   piety nor eminent for zeal: they were what the world calls Moderates,'
   they were of the Broad-church school, they were neither bigots nor
   Puritans, they were prudent and avoided fanaticism, respectable and
   averse to excitement. Good things were maintained among them, but they
   did not make too much of them; they had prayer-meetings, but there were
   few present, for they liked quiet evenings at home: when more attended
   the meetings they were still very dull, for they did their praying very
   deliberately and were afraid of being too excited. They were content to
   have all things done decently and in order, but vigour and zeal they
   considered to be vulgar. Such churches have schools, Bible-classes,
   preaching rooms, and all sorts of agencies; but they might as well be
   without them, for no energy is displayed and no good comes of them.
   They have deacons and elders who are excellent pillars of the church,
   if the chief quality of pillars be to stand still, and exhibit no
   motion or emotion. They have ministers who may be the angels of the
   churches, but if so, they have their wings closely clipped, for they do
   not fly very far in preaching the everlasting gospel, and they
   certainly are not flames of fire: they may be shining lights of
   eloquence, but they certainly are not burning lights of grace, setting
   men's hearts on fire. In such communities everything is done in a
   half-hearted, listless, dead-and-alive way, as if it did not matter
   much whether it was done or not. It makes one's flesh creep to see how
   sluggishly they move: I long for a knife to cut their red tape to
   pieces, and for a whip to lay about their shoulders to make them bestir
   themselves. Things are respectably done, the rich families are not
   offended, the sceptical party is conciliated, and the good people are
   not quite alienated: things are made pleasant all round. The right
   things are done, but as to doing them with all your might, and soul,
   and strength, a Laodicean church has no notion of what that means. They
   are not so cold as to abandon their work, or to give up their meetings
   for prayer, or to reject the gospel; if they did so, then they could be
   convinced of their error and brought to repentance; but on the other
   hand they are neither hot for the truth, nor hot for conversions, nor
   hot for holiness, they are not fiery enough to burn the stubble of sin,
   nor zealous enough to make Satan angry, nor fervent enough to make a
   living sacrifice of themselves upon the altar of their God. They are
   neither cold not hot.'

   This is a horrible state, because it is one which in a church wearing a
   good repute renders that reputation a lie. When other churches are
   saying, See how they prosper! see what they do for God!' Jesus sees
   that the church is doing his work in a slovenly, make-believe manner,
   and he considers justly that it is deceiving its friends. If the world
   recognizes such a people as being very distinctly an old-fashioned
   puritanic church, and yet there is unholy living among them, and
   careless walking, and a deficiency of real piety, prayer, liberality,
   and zeal, then the world itself is being deceived, and that too in the
   worst way, because it is led to judge falsely concerning Christianity,
   for it lays all these faults upon the back of religion, and cries out,
   It is all a farce! The thing is a mere pretence! Christians are all
   hypocrites!' I fear there are churches of this sort. God grant we may
   not be numbered with them!

   In this state of the church there is much self-glorification, for
   Laodicea said, I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of
   nothing.' The members say, Everything goes on well, what more do we
   want? All is right with us.' This makes such a condition very hopeless,
   because reproofs and rebukes fall without power, where the party
   rebuked can reply, We do not deserve your censures, such warnings are
   not meant for us.' If you stand up in the pulpit and talk to sleepy
   churches, as I pretty frequently do, and speak very plainly, they often
   have the honesty to say, There is a good deal of truth in what the man
   has said': but if I speak to another church, which really is half
   asleep, but which thinks itself to be quite a model of diligence, then
   the rebuke glides off like oil down a slab of marble, and no result
   comes of it. Men are less likely to repent when they are in the middle
   passage between hot and cold, than if they were in the worst extremes
   of sin. If they were like Saul of Tarsus, enemies of God, they might be
   converted; but if, like Gamaliel, they are neither opposed nor
   favouring, they will probably remain as they are till they die. The
   gospel converts a sincerely superstitious Luther, but Erasmus, with his
   pliant spirit, flippant, and full of levity, remains unmoved. There is
   more hope of warning the cold than the lukewarm.

   When churches get into the condition of half-hearted faith, tolerating
   the gospel, but having a sweet tooth for error, they do far more
   mischief to their age than downright heretics.

   It is harder a great deal to work for Jesus with a church which is
   lukewarm than it would be to begin without a church. Give me a dozen
   earnest spirits and put me down anywhere in London, and by God's good
   help we will soon cause the wilderness and the solitary place to
   rejoice; but give me the whole lot of you, half-hearted, undecided, and
   unconcerned, what can I do? You will only be a drag upon a man's zeal
   and earnestness. Five thousand members of a church all lukewarm will be
   five thousand impediments, but a dozen earnest, passionate spirits,
   determined that Christ shall be glorified and souls won, must be more
   than conquerors; in their very weakness and fewness will reside
   capacities for being the more largely blessed of God. Better nothing
   than lukewarmness.

   Alas, this state of lukewarmness is so congenial with human nature that
   it is hard to fetch men from it. Cold makes us shiver, and great heat
   causes us pain, but a tepid bath is comfort itself. Such a temperature
   suits human nature. The world is always at peace with a lukewarm
   church, and such a church is always pleased with itself. Not too
   worldly,'no! We have our limits! There are certain amusements which of
   course a Christian must give up, but we will go quite up to the line,
   for why are we to be miserable? We are not to be so greedy as to be
   called miserly, but we will give as little as we can to the cause. We
   will not be altogether absent from the house of God, but we will go as
   seldom as we can. We will not altogether forsake the poor people to
   whom we belong, but we will also go to the world's church, so as to get
   admission into better society, and find fashionable friends for our
   children. How much of this there is abroad! Compromise is the order of
   the day. Thousands try to hold with the hare and run with the hounds,
   they are for God and Mammon, Christ and Belial, truth and error, and so
   are neither hot nor cold.' Do I speak somewhat strongly? Not so
   strongly as my Master, for he says, I will spue thee out of my mouth.'
   He is nauseated with such conduct, it sickens him, and he will not
   endure it. In an earnest, honest, fervent heart nausea is created when
   we fall in with men who dare not give up their profession, and yet will
   not live up to it; who cannot altogether forsake the work of God, but
   yet do it in a sluggard's manner, trifling with that which ought to be
   done in the best style for so good a Lord and so gracious a Saviour.
   Many a church has fallen into a condition of indifference, and when it
   does so it generally becomes the haunt of worldly professors, a refuge
   for people who want an easy religion, which enables them to enjoy the
   pleasures of sin and the honours of piety at the same time; where
   things are free and easy, where you are not expected to do much, or
   give much, or pray much, or to be very religious; where the minister is
   not so precise as the old school divines, a more liberal people, of
   broad views, free-thinking and free-acting, where there is full
   tolerance for sin, and no demand for vital godliness. Such churches
   applaud cleverness in a preacher; as for his doctrine, that is of small
   consequence, and his love to Christ and zeal for souls are very
   secondary. He is a clever fellow, and can speak well, and that
   suffices. This style of things is all too common, yet we are expected
   to hold our tongue, for the people are very respectable. The Lord grant
   that we may be kept clear of such respectability!

   We have already said that this condition of indifference is attended
   with perfect self-complacency. The people who ought to be mourning are
   rejoicing, and where they should hang out signals of distress they are
   flaunting the banners of triumph. We are rich, we are adding to our
   numbers, enlarging our schools, and growing on all sides; we have need
   of nothing. What can a church require that we have not in abundance?'
   Yet their spiritual needs are terrible. This is a sad state for a
   church to be in. Spiritually poor and proud. A church crying out to God
   because it feels itself in a backsliding state; a church mourning its
   deficiency, a church pining and panting to do more for Christ, a church
   burning with zeal for God, and therefore quite discontented with what
   it has been able to do; this is the church which God will bless: but
   that which writes itself down as a model for others, is very probably
   grossly mistaken and is in a sad plight. This church, which was so rich
   in its own esteem, was utterly bankrupt in the sight of the Lord. It
   had no real joy in the Lord; it had mistaken its joy in itself for
   that. It had no real beauty of holiness upon it; it had mistaken its
   formal worship and fine building and harmonious singing for that. It
   had no deep understanding of the truth and no wealth of vital
   godliness, it had mistaken carnal wisdom and outward profession for
   those precious things. It was poor in secret prayer, which is the
   strength of any church; it was destitute of communion with Christ,
   which is the very life blood of religion; but it had the outward
   semblance of these blessings, and walked in a vain show. There are
   churches which are poor as Lazarus as to true religion, and yet are
   clothed in scarlet and fare sumptuously every day upon the mere form of
   godliness. Spiritual leanness exists side by side with vain-glory.
   Contentment as to worldly goods makes men rich, but contentment with
   our spiritual condition is the index of poverty.

   Once more, this church of Laodicea had fallen into a condition which
   had chased away its Lord. The text tells us that Jesus said, I stand at
   the door and knock.' That is not the position which our Lord occupies
   in reference to a truly flourishing church. If we are walking aright
   with him, he is in the midst of the church, dwelling there, and
   revealing himself to his people. His presence makes our worship to be
   full of spirituality and life; he meets his servants at the table, and
   there spreads them a feast upon his body and his blood; it is he who
   puts power and energy into all our church-action, and causes the word
   to sound out from our midst. True saints abide in Jesus and he in them.
   Oh, brethren, when the Lord is in a church, it is a happy church, a
   holy church, a mighty church, and a triumphant church; but we may
   grieve him till he will say, I will go and return to my place, until
   they acknowledge their offence and seek my face.' Oh, you that know my
   Lord, and have power with him, entreat him not to go away from us. He
   can see much about us as a people which grieves his Holy Spirit, much
   about any one of us to provoke him to anger. Hold him, I pray you, and
   do not let him go, or if he be gone, bring him again to his mother's
   house, into the chamber of her that bare him, where, with holy
   violence, we will detain him and say, Abide with us, for thou art life
   and joy, and all in all to us as a church. Ichabod is written across
   our house if thou be gone, for thy presence is our glory and thy
   absence will be our shame.' Churches may become like the temple when
   the glory of the Lord had left the holy place, because the image of
   jealousy was set up and the house was defiled. What a solemn warning is
   that which is contained in Jeremiah 7:12-15, But go ye now unto my
   place which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see
   what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. And now,
   because ye have done all these works, saith the Lord, and I spake unto
   you, rising up early and speaking, but ye heard not; and I called you,
   but ye answered not; therefore I will do unto this house, which is
   called by my name, wherein ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to
   you and to your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh. And I will cast you
   out of my sight, as I have cast out all your brethren, even the whole
   seed of Ephraim.'

   II. Now let us consider, secondly, THE DANGER OF SUCH A STATE. The
   great danger is, first, to be rejected of Christ. He puts it, I will
   spue thee out of my mouth,''as disgusting him, and causing him nausea.
   Then the church must first be in his mouth, or else it could not be
   spued from it. What does this mean? Churches are in Christ's mouth in
   several ways, they are used by him as his testimony to the world; he
   speaks to the world through their lives and ministries. He does as good
   as say, O sinners, if ye would see what my religion can do, see here a
   godly people banded together in my fear and love, walking in peace and
   holiness.' He speaks powerfully by them, and makes the world see and
   know that there is a true power in the gospel of the grace of God. But
   when the church becomes neither cold nor hot he does not speak by her,
   she is no witness for him. When God is with a church the minister's
   words come out of Christ's mouth. Out of his mouth went a two-edged
   sword,' says John in the Revelation, and that two-edged sword' is the
   gospel which we preach. When God is with a people they speak with
   divine power to the world, but if we grow lukewarm Christ says, Their
   teachers shall not profit, for I have not sent them, neither am I with
   them. Their word shall be as water spilt on the ground, or as the
   whistling of the wind.' This is a dreadful thing. Better far for me to
   die than to be spued out of Christ's mouth.

   Then he also ceases to plead for such a church. Christ's special
   intercession is not for all men, for he says of his people, I pray for
   them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me.'
   I do not think Christ ever prays for the church of Rome'what would he
   pray for, but her total overthrow? Other churches are nearing the same
   fate; they are not clear in his truth or honest in obedience to his
   word: they follow their own devices, they are lukewarm. But there are
   churches for which he is pleading, for he has said, For Zion's sake
   will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest,
   until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the
   salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth.' Mighty are his pleadings for
   those he really loves, and countless are the blessings which comes in
   consequence. It will be an evil day when he casts a church out of that
   interceding mouth, and leaves her unrepresented before the throne
   because he is none of his. Do you not tremble at such a prospect? Will
   you not ask for grace to return to your first love? I know that the
   Lord Jesus will never leave off praying for his own elect, but for
   churches as corporate bodies he may cease to pray, because they become
   anti-Christian, or are mere human gatherings, but not elect assemblies,
   such as the church of God ought to be. Now this is the danger of any
   church if it declines from its first ardour and becomes lukewarm.
   Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do thy
   first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy
   candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.'

   What is the other danger? This first comprehends all, but another evil
   is hinted at,'such a church will be left to its fallen condition, to
   become wretched,'that is to say, miserable, unhappy, divided, without
   the presence of God, and so without delight in the ways of God,
   lifeless, spiritless, dreary, desolate, full of schisms, devoid of
   grace, and I know not what beside, that may come under the term
   wretched.' Then the next word is miserable,' which might better be
   rendered pitiable.' Churches which once were a glory shall become a
   shame. Whereas men said, The Lord has done great things for them,' they
   shall now say, see how low they have fallen! What a change has come
   over the place! What emptiness and wretchedness! What a blessing rested
   there for so many years, but what a contrast now!' Pity will take the
   place of congratulation, and scorn will follow upon admiration. Then it
   will be poor' in membership, poor in effort, poor in prayer, poor in
   gifts and graces, poor in everything. Perhaps some rich people will be
   left to keep up the semblance of prosperity, but all will be empty,
   vain, void, Christless, lifeless. Philosophy will fill the pulpit with
   chaff, the church will be a mass of worldliness, the congregation an
   assembly of vanity. Next, they will become blind, they will not see
   themselves as they are, they will have no eye upon the neighborhood to
   do it good, no eye to the coming of Christ, no eye for his glory. They
   will say, We see,' and yet be blind as bats. Ultimately they will
   become naked,' their shame will be seen by all, they will be a proverb
   in everybody's mouth. Call that a church!' says one. Is that a church
   of Jesus Christ?' cries a second. Those dogs that dared not open their
   mouths against Israel when the Lord was there will begin to howl when
   he is gone, and everywhere will the sound be heard, How are the mighty
   fallen, how are the weapons of war broken.'

   In such a case as that the church will fail of overcoming, for it is to
   him that overcometh' that a seat upon Christ's throne is promised; but
   that church will come short of victory. It shall be written concerning
   it even as of the children of Ephraim, that being armed and carrying
   bows they turned their backs in the day of battle. Ye did run well,'
   says Paul to the Galatians, what did hinder you that ye should not obey
   the truth?' Such a church had a grand opportunity, but it was not equal
   to the occasion, its members were born for a great work, but inasmuch
   as they were unfaithful, God put them aside and used other means. He
   raised up in their midst a flaming testimony for the gospel, and the
   light thereof was cast athwart the ocean, and gladdened the nations,
   but the people were not worthy of it, or true to it, and therefore he
   took the candlestick out of its place, and left them in darkness. May
   God prevent such an evil from coming upon us: but such is the danger to
   all churches if they degenerate into listless indifference.

   III. Thirdly, I have to speak of THE REMEDIES WHICH THE LORD EMPLOYS. I
   do earnestly pray that what I say may come home to all here, especially
   to every one of the members of this church, for it has come very much
   home to me, and caused great searching of heart in my own soul, and yet
   I do not think I am the least zealous among you. I beseech you to judge
   yourselves, that you be not judged. Do not ask me if I mean anything
   personal. I am personal in the most emphatic sense. I speak of you and
   to you in the plainest way. Some of you show plain symptoms of being
   lukewarm, and God forbid that I should flatter you, or be unfaithful to
   you. I am aiming at personality, and I earnestly want each beloved
   brother and sister here to take home each affectionate rebuke. And you
   who come from other churches, whether in America or elsewhere, you want
   arousing quite as much as we do, your churches are not better than
   ours, some of them are not so good, and I speak to you also, for you
   need to be stirred up to nobler things.

   Note, then, the first remedy. Jesus gives a clear discovery as to the
   church's true state. He says to it''Thou are lukewarm, thou art
   wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.' I rejoice to
   see people willing to know the truth, but most men do not wish to know
   it, and this is an ill sign. When a man tells you that he has not
   looked at his ledger, or day-book, or held a stock-taking for this
   twelvemonths, you know whereabouts he is, and you say to your manager,
   Have you an account with him? Then keep it as close as you can.' When a
   man dares not know the worst about his case, it is certainly a bad one,
   but he that is right before God is thankful to be told what he is and
   where he is. Now, some of you know the faults of other people, and in
   watching this church you have observed weak points in many places,'have
   you wept over them? Have you prayed over them? If not, you have not
   watched as you should do for the good of your brethren and sisters,
   and, perhaps, have allowed evils to grow which ought to have been
   rooted up: you have been silent when you should have kindly and
   earnestly spoken to the offenders, or made your own example a warning
   to them. Do not judge your brother, but judge yourself: if you have any
   severity, use it on your own conduct and heart. We must pray the Lord
   to use this remedy, and make us know just where we are. We shall never
   get right as long as we are confident that we are so already.
   Self-complacency is the death of repentance.

   Our Lord's next remedy is gracious counsel. He says, I counsel thee to
   buy of me gold tried in the fire.' Does not that strike you as being
   very like the passage in Isaiah, Come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy
   wine and milk without money and without price?' It is so, and it
   teaches us that one remedy for lukewarmness is to begin again just as
   we began at first. We were at a high temperature at our first
   conversion. What joy, what peace, what delight, what comfort, what
   enthusiasm we had when first we knew the Lord! We bought gold of him
   then for nothing, let us go and buy again at the same price.

   If religion has not been genuine with us till now, or if we have been
   adding to it great lumps of shining stuff which we thought was gold and
   was not, let us now go to the heavenly mint and buy gold tried in the
   fire, that we may be really rich. Come, let us begin again, each one of
   us. Inasmuch as we may have thought we were clothed and yet we were
   naked, let us hasten to him again, and at his own price, which is no
   price, procure the robe which he has wrought of his own righteousness,
   and that goodly raiment of his Spirit, which will clothe us with the
   beauty of the Lord. If, moreover, we have come to be rather dim in the
   eye, and no longer look up to God and see his face, and have no bright
   vision of the glory to be revealed, and cannot look on sinners with
   weeping eyes, as we once did, let us go to Jesus for the eye-salve,
   just as we went when we were stone blind at first, and the Lord will
   open our eyes again, and we shall behold him in clear vision as in days
   gone by. The word from Jesus is, Come near to me, I pray you, my
   brethren. If you have wandered from me, return; if you have been cold
   to me I am not cold to you, my heart is the same to you as ever, come
   back to me, my brethren. Confess your evil deeds, receive my
   forgiveness, and henceforth let your hearts burn towards me, for I love
   you still and will supply all your needs.' That is good counsel, let us
   take it.

   Now comes a third remedy, sharp and cutting, but sent in love, namely,
   rebukes and chastenings. Christ will have his favoured church walk with
   great care, and if she will not follow him fully by being shown wherein
   she has erred, and will not repent when kindly counselled, he then
   betakes himself to some sharper means. As many as I love I rebuke and
   chasten.' The word here used for love' is a very choice one; it is one
   which signifies an intense personal affection. Now, there are some
   churches which Christ loves very specially, favouring them above
   others, doing more for them than for others, and giving them more
   prosperity; they are the darlings of his heart, his Benjamins. Now, it
   is a very solemn thing to be dearly loved by God. It is a privilege to
   be coveted, but mark you, the man who is so honoured occupies a
   position of great delicacy. The Lord thy God is a jealous God, and he
   is most jealous where he shows most love. The Lord lets some men escape
   scot free for awhile after doing many evil things, but if they had been
   his own elect he would have visited them with stripes long before. He
   is very jealous of those whom he has chosen to lean upon his bosom and
   to be his familiar friends. Your servant may do many things which could
   not be thought of by your child or your wife; and so is it with many
   who profess to be servants of God'they live a very lax life, and they
   do not seem to be chastened for it, but if they were the Lord's own
   peculiarly beloved ones he would not endure such conduct from them. Now
   mark this, if the Lord exalts a church, and gives it a special
   blessing, he expects more of it, more care of his honour, and more zeal
   for his glory than he does of any other church; and when he does not
   find it, what will happen? Why, because of his very love he will rebuke
   it with hard sermons, sharp words, and sore smitings of conscience. If
   these do not arouse it he will take down the rod and deal out
   chastenings. Do you know how the Lord chastens churches? Paul says, For
   this cause some are sickly among you, and many sleep.' Bodily sickness
   is often sent in discipline upon churches, and losses, and crosses, and
   troubles are sent among the members, and sometimes leanness in the
   pulpit, breakings out of heresy and divisions in the pew, and lack of
   success in all church work. All these are smitings with the rod. It is
   very sad, but sometimes that rod does not fall on that part of the
   church which does the wrong. Sometimes God may take the best in the
   church, and chasten them for the wrong of others. You say, How can that
   be right?' Why, because they are the kind of people who will be most
   benefited by it. If a vine wants the knife, it is not the branch that
   bears very little fruit which is trimmed, but the branch which bears
   much fruit is purged because it is worth purging. In their case the
   chastening is a blessing and a token of love. Sorrow is often brought
   upon Christians by the sins of their fellow-members, and many an aching
   heart there is in this world that I know of, of brethren and sisters
   who love the Lord and want to see souls converted, but they can only
   sigh and cry because nothing is done. Perhaps they have a minister who
   does not believe the gospel, and they have fellow-members who do not
   care whether the minister believes it or not, they are all asleep
   together except those few zealous souls who besiege the throne of grace
   day and night, and they are the ones who bear the burden of the
   lukewarm church. Oh, if the chastening comes here, whoever bears it,
   may the whole body be the better for it, and may we never rest till the
   church begins to glow with the sacred fire of God, and boil with
   enthusiastic desire for his glory.

   The last remedy, however, is the best of all to my mind. I love it best
   and desire to make it my food when it is not my medicine. The best
   remedy for backsliding churches is more communion with Christ. Behold,'
   saith he, I stand at the door and knock.' I have known this text
   preached upon to sinners numbers of times as though Christ knocked at
   their door and they had to open it, and so on. The preacher has never
   managed to keep to free grace for this reason, that the text was not
   meant to be so used, and if men will ride a text the wrong way, it will
   not go. This text belongs to the church of God, not to the unconverted.
   It is addressed to the Laodicean church. There is Christ outside the
   church, driven there by her unkindness, but he has not gone far away,
   he loves his church too much to leave her altogether, he longs to come
   back, and therefore he waits at the doorpost. He knows that the church
   will never be restored till he comes back, and he desires to bless her,
   and so he stands waiting, knocking and knocking, again and again; he
   does not merely knock once, but he stands knocking by earnest sermons,
   by providences, by impressions upon the conscience, by the quickenings
   of his Holy Spirit; and while he knocks he speaks, he uses all means to
   awaken his church. Most condescendingly and graciously does he do this,
   for having threatened to spue her out of his mouth, he might have said,
   I will get me gone; and I will never come back again to thee,' that
   would have been natural and just; but how gracious he is when, having
   expressed his disgust he says, Disgusted as I am with your condition, I
   do not wish to leave you; I have taken my presence from you, but I love
   you, and therefore I knock at your door, and wish to be received into
   your heart. I will not force myself upon you, I want you voluntarily to
   open the door to me.' Christ's presence in a church is always a very
   tender thing. He never is there against the will of the church, it
   cannot be, for he lives in his people's wills and hearts, and worketh
   in them to will and to do of his own good pleasure.' He does not break
   bolt and bar and come in as he often does into a sinner's heart,
   carrying the soul by storm, because the man is dead in sin, and Christ
   must do it all, or the sinner will perish; but he is here speaking to
   living men and women, who ought also to be loving men and women, and he
   says, I wish to be among you, open the door to me.' We ought to open
   the door at once, and say, Come in, good Lord, we grieve to think we
   should ever have put thee outside that door at all.'

   And then see what promises he gives. He says he will come and sup with
   us. Now, in the East, the supper was the best meal of the day, it was
   the same as our dinner; so that we may say that Christ will come and
   dine with us. He will give us a rich feast, for he himself is the
   daintiest and most plenteous of all feasts for perishing souls. He will
   come and sup with us, that is, we shall be the host and entertain him:
   but then he adds, and he with me,' that is, he will be the host and
   guest by turns. We will give him of our best, but poor fare is that,
   too poor for him, and yet he will partake of it. Then he shall be host,
   and we will be guest, and oh, how we will feast on what he gives!
   Christ comes, and brings the supper with him, and all we do is to find
   the room. The Master says to us, Where is the guest chamber?' and then
   he makes ready and spreads his royal table. Now, if these be the terms
   on which we are to have a feast together, we will most willingly fling
   open the doors of our hearts and say, Come in, good Lord.' He says to
   you, Children, have you any meat?' and if you are obliged to say, No,
   Lord,' he will come in unto you none the less readily, for there are
   the fish, the net is ready to break, it is so full, and here are more
   upon the coals ready. I warrant you, if we sup with him, we shall be
   lukewarm no longer. The men who live where Jesus is soon feel their
   hearts burning. It is said of a piece of scented clay by the old
   Persian moralist that the clay was taken up and questioned. How camest
   thou to smell so sweetly, being nothing but common clay?' and it
   replied, I laid for many a year in the sweet society of a rose, until
   at last I drank in its perfume'; and we may say to every warm-hearted
   Christian, How camest thou so warm?' and his answer will be, My heart
   bubbleth up with a good matter, for I speak of the things which I have
   made touching the King. I have been with Jesus, and I have learned of
   him.'

   Now, brethren and sisters, what can I say to move you to take this last
   medicine? I can only say, take it, not only because of the good it will
   do you, but because of the sweetness of it. I have heard say of some
   persons that they were pledged not to take wine except as a medicine,
   but then they were very pleased when they were ill: and so if this be
   the medicine, I will come and sup with him, and he with me,' we may
   willingly confess our need of so delicious a remedy. Need I press it on
   you? May I not rather urge each brother as soon as he gets home today
   to see whether he cannot enter into fellowship with Jesus? and may the
   Spirit of God help him!

   This is my closing word, there is something for us to do in this
   matter. We must examine ourselves, and we must confess the fault if we
   have declined in grace. An then we must not talk about setting the
   church right, we must pray for grace each one for himself, for the text
   does not say, If the church will open the door,' but If any man hear my
   voice and open the door.' It must be done by individuals: the church
   will only get right by each man getting right. Oh, that we might get
   back into an earnest zeal for our Lord's love and service, and we shall
   only do so by listening to his rebukes, and then falling into his arms,
   clasping him once again, and saying, My Lord and my God.' That healed
   Thomas, did it not? Putting his fingers into the print of the nails,
   putting his hand into the side, that cured him. Poor, unbelieving,
   staggering Thomas only had to do that and he became one of the
   strongest of believers, and said, My Lord and my God.' You will love
   your Lord till your soul is as coals of juniper if you will daily
   commune with him. Come close to him, and once getting close to him,
   never go away from him any more. The Lord bless you, dear brethren, the
   Lord bless you in this thing.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'Revelation 3.

   HYMNS FROM OUR OWN HYMN BOOK''184, 787, 992.
     __________________________________________________________________

                           The Blood of the Covenant

   A Sermon

   (No. 1186)

   Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, August 2nd, 1874, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus,
   that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting
   covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working
   in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ;
   to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.''Hebrews 13:20-21.

   WHAT WE ASK OTHERS to do we should be prepared to do ourselves. Precept
   fails unless it be followed up by example. The apostle had exhorted the
   Hebrew believers to pray for him in the words, Pray for us;' and then,
   as if to show that he did not ask of them what he was not himself.
   Willing to give, he utters this most wonderful prayer for them. He may
   confidently say to his congregation, Pray for me' who does unfeignedly
   from his soul pray for them. The prayer of the apostle, as you observe,
   is tinged with the subject upon which he had been writing. This Epistle
   to the Hebrews is full of distinctions between the old covenant and the
   new, the gist of it being to show that the former covenant was only
   typical of that abiding dispensation which followed it; for it had only
   the shadow, and not the very image of heavenly things. His subject had
   been the covenant, and when he prayed his garments were sweet with the
   myrrh and aloes and cassia among which his meditations had conducted
   him. According to the manner of his thoughts was the expression of his
   desires. He weaved into the texture of his prayer the meditations of
   his heart. And this is a very right method, especially when the prayer
   is public, for it ensures variety, it assists others to unite with us,
   and it tends to edification; in fact, as the bee gathers honey from
   many flowers, and the honey is often flavored with wild thyme or some
   other special flower which abounds in the region from which it collects
   its sweets, so doth our soul gather dainty stores of the honey of
   devotion from all sources, but that upon which she longest tarries in
   her meditations yields a paramount savor and flavor to the expression
   and the spirit of her prayer. What was more natural than that a
   discourse upon the covenant should be followed by this covenant prayer:
   The God of peace, that brought from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great
   Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,
   make you perfect in every good work to do his will'?

   The subject of the Epistle to the Hebrews is deep, for it passes on
   from the superficial rudiments to those underlying truths which are
   more mysterious and profound. It is a book for the higher classes in
   Christ's school; and hence this prayer is not for babes, but for men of
   understanding. We could not say to all the saints, after this manner
   pray ye,' for they would not know what they were asking; they have need
   to begin with something simpler, such as that sweet Our Father, which
   art in heaven,' which suits alike all believers. Full grown men feed on
   strong meat, think sublime thoughts, and offer mighty prayers. As we
   may admire in the prayer of the babe its simplicity, and in the prayer
   of the young man its vivacity, so in the prayer of one who has become a
   father in Christ, and feeds upon the covenant, we rejoice in its depth,
   compass, and sublimity. All these we find here. I invite those who
   would understand the deep things of God to ask the Holy Spirit's
   assistance while we follow the apostle in this his covenant prayer, a
   prayer of which the covenant is the thread, the substance, and the
   plea.

   I. The subject of our discourse this morning, therefore, is the
   covenant of grace, as it is here spoken of; and I shall begin by
   noticing, first, THE COVENANT NAMES which the apostle uses. He calls
   the ever-blessed Father the God of peace;' and to the Redeemer who has
   taken the other side of the covenant, he gives the title, Our Lord
   Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep.' Dear friends, as many of us
   as have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ are in Christ, and he is our
   Head and Representative, our Shepherd and Sponsor. On our behalf he
   made a covenant with the Father upon this tenor, that we having sinned,
   a full recompense should be made to injured justice, and the law of God
   should be fully honored; the Father on his part stipulating to grant
   full pardon, acceptance, adoption, and eternal life to us. Now, the
   covenant has been kept on Christ's side. The text assures us of that,
   for Jesus has according to his promise shed his blood, and now the
   covenant stands only to be fulfilled on the side of the eternal Father,
   and under that aspect of the covenant the apostle calls the Father the
   God of peace.' What a precious name! Under the covenant of works he is
   the God of vengeance; to sinners he is the thrice Holy God, terrible
   out of his holy places. Even our God is a consuming fire; and yet to
   us, seeing that the covenant has been fulfilled on our side by our
   great Head and Representative, he is only the God of peace.' All is
   peace between you and God, Christian; there is no past ground of
   quarrel remaining, nor any fear that a new one can arise; the
   everlasting covenant secures everlasting peace. He is not the God of a
   hollow truce, not the God of a patched-up forgetfulness of unforgiven
   injuries, but the God of peace in the very deepest sense; he is himself
   at peace, for there is a peace of God that passeth all understanding;
   and, moreover, by reason of his mercy his people are made to enjoy
   peace of conscience within themselves, for you feel that God is
   reconciled to you, your hearts rest in him, your sins which separated
   you have been removed, and perfect love has cast out the fear which
   hath torment. While the Lord is at peace with himself, and you are made
   to enjoy inward peace through him, he is also at peace with you, for he
   loves you with a love unsearchable; he sees nothing in you but that
   which he delights in, for in the covenant he does not look at you as
   you are in yourself, but in your Head, Christ Jesus, and to the eye of
   God there is no sight in the universe so lovely as his own dear Son,
   and his people in his Son. There is beauty enough in Jesus to make him
   forget our deformities, merits enough in Jesus to swallow up our
   demerits, and efficacy sufficient in the atoning blood of our great
   High Priest to wash away all our transgressions. As for us, our soul
   recognizing that blood, and perceiving the love of God towards us,
   feels now no war with God. We did rebel once, for we hated him, and
   even now, when the old nature champs the bit, and the Lord's will runs
   cross to our desires, we do not find it easy to bow before him and say,
   I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because it seemed
   good in thy sight : but yet the new nature which comes to the front
   does rule and govern, and all heart-contest between our soul and God is
   at an end. To us the Lord is in the widest and most perfect sense the
   God of peace. Oh, how I love that name; himself the peaceful, happy
   God, unruffled, undisturbed; ourselves within ourselves made to enjoy a
   peace that passeth all understanding, which keeps our hearts and minds.
   God at peace with us, declaring that he will never be wroth with us nor
   rebuke us, and ourselves rejoicing in him, delighting in his law, and
   living for his glory. Henceforth be it ours in every troubled hour to
   look to the Lord under this cheering name, the God of peace,' for as
   such the covenant reveals him.

   The apostle had a view of the other great party to the covenant, and he
   names him Our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep.' We must
   view our Redeemer in the covenant first as Jesus the Savior who leads
   us into the Canaan which has been given to us by a covenant of salt,
   even the rest which remaineth to the people of God; he is also the Lord
   Jesus, in all the dignity of his nature, exalted far above all
   principalities and powers, to be obeyed and worshipped by us; and our
   Lord Jesus'ours because he has given himself to us, and we have
   accepted and received him with holy delight to be the Lord whom we
   cheerfully serve. Our Lord Jesus because he saves us; our Lord Jesus
   because by bringing us under his kingdom he rescues us; and our Lord
   Jesus because we have a special relation both to his sovereignty and
   his salvation. We are not generally observant of the appropriateness of
   our Lord's names, we do not notice the instruction which is intended by
   the writers who use them, nor do we exercise discretion enough
   ourselves in the employment of them; yet is there great force in these
   titles when appropriately employed. Other names may have small
   significance, but in the titles of Jesus there is a wealth of meaning.

   Further, our Lord is called that great Shepherd of the sheep.' In the
   covenant we are the sheep, the Lord Jesus is the Shepherd. You cannot
   make a covenant with sheep, they have not the ability to covenant; but
   you can make a covenant with the Shepherd for them, and so, glory he to
   God, though we had gone astray like lost sheep, we belonged to Jesus,
   and he made a covenant on our behalf, and stood for us before the
   living God. Now, I have aforetime explained to you that our Lord Jesus
   in his death is the good Shepherd'the good Shepherd giveth his life for
   the sheep, and so shows his goodness; that in his rising again he is
   the great Shepherd, as we have it in the text, for his resurrection and
   return to glory display his greatness; but in his second advent he is
   the chief Shepherd''when the chief Shepherd shall appear ye also shall
   appear with him in glory''there he shows his superior sovereignty. Our
   Lord was good in laying down his life for the sheep, and there are
   other shepherds whom he makes good, who in his name feed his lambs and
   sheep. When he comes again the second time he will appear with others,
   the chief among them all; but in his resurrection for our
   justification, in connection with the covenant, he is alone, and bears
   the name of the or that great Shepherd,''that great Shepherd of whom
   all prophecy has spoken, in whom all the divine decrees are fulfilled,
   before whom all others shrink away, who stands alone, as in that
   covenant capacity the sole and only Shepherd of the sheep.

   It is very beautiful to trace the shepherds through the Old Testament,
   and to see Christ as Abel, the witnessing shepherd, pouring out that
   blood, which crieth from the ground; as Abraham, the separating
   shepherd, leading out his flock into the strange country where they
   dwelt alone; as Isaac, the quiet shepherd, digging wells for his flock,
   and feeding them in peace in the midst of the enemies; as Jacob, the
   shepherd who is surety for the sheep, who earns them all by long toils
   and weariness, separates them, and walks in the midst of them to
   Canaan, preserving them by his own lone midnight prayers. There, too,
   we see our Lord as Joseph, the shepherd who is head over Egypt for the
   sake of Israel, of whom his dying father said, From thence is the
   Shepherd, the stone of Israel.' Head over all things for his church,
   the King who governs all the world for the sake of his elect, the great
   Shepherd of the sheep, who for their sakes has all power committed unto
   his hands. Then follows Moses, the chosen shepherd, who led his people
   through the wilderness up to the Promised Land, feeding them with manna
   and giving them drink from the smitten rock,'what a wide theme for
   resection here! And then there is David, the type of Jesus, as reigning
   in the covenanted inheritance over his own people, as a glorious king
   in the midst of them all. All these together enable us to see the
   varied glories of that great Shepherd of the sheep.'

   Beloved, this is a great subject, and I can only hint at it. Let us
   rejoice that our Shepherd is great, because he with his great flock
   will be able to preserve them all from the great dangers into which
   they are brought, and to perform for them the great transactions with
   the great God which are demanded of a Shepherd of such a flock as that
   which Jesus calls his own. Under the covenant, Jesus is Prophet,
   Priest, and King'a shepherd should be all this to his flock; and he is
   great in each of these offices. While we rest in the covenant of grace
   we should view our Lord as our Shepherd, and find solace in the fact
   that sheep have nothing to do with their own feeding, guidance, or
   protection; they have only to follow their Shepherd unto the pastures
   which he prepares, and all will be well with them. He maketh me to lie
   down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters.'

   II. Secondly, the apostle mentions THE COVENANT SEAL. The God of peace
   that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd,
   of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant.' The seal
   of the covenant is the blood of Jesus. In olden times when men made
   covenants the one with the other, they generally used some ceremony to
   bind the bargain, as it were. Now, under the old dispensation covenants
   with God were always confirmed with blood. As soon as ever blood was
   shed, and the victim died, the agreement made was established. Now,
   when our heavenly Father made a covenant with Jesus Christ on our
   behalf, that covenant was true and firm, according to the sure mercies
   of David,' but to make it stand fast there must be blood Now, the blood
   ordained to seal the covenant was not the blood of bulls or of goats,
   but the blood of the Son of God himself; and this has made the covenant
   so binding that sooner may heaven and earth pass away than one Little
   of it fail. God must keep his own promises. He is a free God, but he
   binds himself; by two immutable things wherein it is impossible for him
   to lie, he has bound himself to bestow covenant blessings upon the
   flock which the great Shepherd represented. Brethren, you and I, as
   honest men, are bound by our word. If we took an oath, which I trust we
   would not, we should certainly feel doubly bound by it; and if we had
   lived in the old times, and blood had been sprinkled on an agreement
   which we had made, we should regard the solemn sign and never dream of
   running back from it. Think, for a moment, how impossible it is that
   the Lord should ever break that covenant of grace, which he
   spontaneously made with his own Son, and with us in him, now that it
   has been sprinkled with blood from the veins of his own well-beloved
   Son No; the covenant is everlasting. It stands fast for ever, because
   it is confirmed by blood which is none other than the blood of the Son
   of God.

   Remember, too, that in our case that blood not only confirmed the
   covenant, but actually fulfilled it; because the covenant stipulation
   was on this wise:'Christ must subtler for our sins and honor the divine
   law. He had kept the law in his life, but it was necessary to the
   complete fulfilling of the covenant on his part that he should also be
   obedient to death, even the death of the cross. The shedding of his
   blood therefore was the carrying out of his promised obedience to its
   extremity. It was the actual fulfillment of Christ's side of the
   covenant on our behalf; so that now the whole covenant must stand firm,
   for that upon which it depended is finished for ever. It is not only
   ratified with that bloody signature, but by that blood it is actually
   carried out on Christ's part, and it cannot be that the eternal Father
   should start back from his side of the compact since our side of it has
   been carried out to the letter by that great Shepherd of the sheep who
   laid down his life for us.

   By the shedding of the blood the covenant is turned into a testament.
   In some Bibles, the margin puts it testament,' and often in other cases
   we scarcely know how to translate the word, whether to say the new
   testament or the new covenant; certainly it is now a testament, for
   since Christ has kept his part of the covenant he wills to us what is
   due to him from God, and he makes over to us by his death all that
   comes to him as his reward, making us his heirs by a testament which is
   rendered valid by his death. So you may say testament' if you please,
   or covenant' if you will, only forget not that the blood has made both
   testament and covenant sure to all the sheep of whom Jesus is the
   shepherd.

   Dwell with pleasure upon that word everlasting covenant.' Certain men
   in these days declare that everlasting' does not mean everlasting, but
   indicates a period to which an end will come sooner or later; I have no
   sympathy with them, and feel no inclination to renounce the
   everlastingness of heaven and other divine blessings in order to
   gratify the tastes of wicked men by denying the eternity of future
   punishments. Human nature leans in that direction, but the word of God
   does not, and following its unerring track we rejoice in the
   everlasting covenant, which will abide for ever and ever. The covenant
   of works is gone; it was based on human strength, and it dissolved as a
   dream; in the nature of things it could not be everlasting. Man could
   not keep the condition of it, and it fell to the ground. But the
   covenant of grace depended only upon the power and love and
   faithfulness of Christ, who has kept his part of the covenant, and
   therefore the covenant now rests only upon God, the faithful and true,
   whose word cannot fail.

   As well might he his being quit,

   As break his promise, or forget.'

   His mercy endureth for ever, and his truth throughout all generations.'
   He has said, I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will
   not turn away from them to do them good,' and therefore do them good he
   must, for he is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that
   he should repent. So, then, the covenant seal makes all things sure.

   III. We have now to notice THE COVENANT FULFILMENT, for the Lord has
   commenced to fulfill it. The God of peace that brought again from the
   dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the
   blood of the everlasting covenant.' See, then, Jesus Christ has been
   brought back again from the dead through the blood of the covenant.
   Here is the story. He was the covenantor on our behalf; he took our sin
   upon himself, and undertook to suffer for it. Having been crucified he
   yielded up his life, and from the cross he was taken to the grave, and
   there he lay in durance vile. Now, it was a part of the covenant on God
   the Father's part that he would not leave Christ's soul in Hades, nor
   suffer his Holy One to see corruption; this agreement has been
   faithfully kept. Christ on the cross represented all of us who believe
   in him'we were crucified in him: Jesus in the tomb also represented us,
   for we are buried with him. Whatever happened to him happened also to
   the flock. Now, then, what will occur to the body of Jesus? Will God
   keep his covenant? Will the worm devour that lovely frame, or will it
   defy corruption? Will it come to pass that he who has descended into
   the earth shall never return? Wait. It is the third morning! The
   promised time has come. As yet no worm has dared to feed upon that
   God-like form, yet it lies among the dead; but on the third morning the
   slumberer awakes like one that has been refreshed with sleep. He rises.
   The stone is rolled away. Angels escort him to liberty. He comes into
   the open air of the garden, and speaks to his disciples. Jesus who bled
   has left the dead, no more to die. He waits for forty days that he may
   let his friends see that he is really risen, but he has to rise higher
   yet to be fully brought back to his former honors. Will God be faithful
   to him and bring him back from the dead all the way he once descended?
   Yes, for on the Mount of Olives, when the time is come, he begins to
   ascend; cleaving the ambient air he mounts from amidst his worshipping
   disciples, till a cloud receives him. But will he rise fully to the
   point from which he came? Will he in his own person gain for his church
   a full recovery from all the ruin of the fall? Ah, see him as he enters
   the gates of pearl! How he is welcomed by the Father! See how he climbs
   aloft, and sits upon the Father's throne, for God also hath highly
   exalted him, and given him a name above every name, that at the name of
   Jesus every knee should how.

   Now note by what means our Lord returned from the dead to all this
   glory. It was because he had presented the blood of the everlasting
   covenant. When the Father saw that Jesus had kept all his part of the
   covenant even to death, then he began to fulfill his portion of the
   contract by bringing back his Son from the grave to life, from shame to
   honor, from humiliation to glory, from death to immortality. See where
   he now sits expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. Now, what
   has been done to Jesus has been virtually done to all his people,
   because, you observe, the Lord brought again from the dead,' not the
   Lord Jesus as a private person only, but Our Lord Jesus,' as that great
   Shepherd of the sheep.' The sheep are with the Shepherd. Shepherd of
   the sheep, where is thy flock? We know that thou hast loved them even
   to the end; but thou art gone; hast thou left them in the wilderness?
   It cannot be, for it is written, Who can separate us from the love of
   Christ? Hear the Shepherd say, I will that they also whom thou hast
   given me be with me where I am.' Because I live ye shall live also.'
   Where I am there also shall my servant be.' Beloved, the sheep never
   are away from that great Shepherd of the sheep, they are always in his
   hand, and none can pluck them thence. They were on earth with him, and
   they are risen with him. If Jesus had remained in the grave there must
   all his sheep have perished; but when the Father brought him back by
   the blood, he brought us back by the blood, and gave us for our souls a
   lively hope that they shall never die, and for our bodies the
   expectation of resurrection.

   For though our inbred sins require

   Our flesh to see the dust,

   Yet as the Lord our Shepherd rose,

   So all his followers must.'

   Jesus in heaven is only there as our representative, and his flock is
   following him. I wish you could get a picture in your eye of the hills
   of heaven rising up from these lowlands. We are feeding here awhile
   under his watchful eye, and yonder is a river which runs at the foot of
   the celestial hills, and parts us from heavenly pasturage. One he one
   our beloved ones are being called across the flood by the Good
   Shepherd's voice, and they cross the river pleasantly at his bidding,
   so that a long line of his sheep may be seen going over the stream and
   up the hillside to where the Shepherd stands and receives them. This
   line joins the upper flock to the lower, and makes them all one
   company. Do you not see them continually streaming up to him, and
   passing again under the hand of him that telleth them, to be fed by the
   Lamb and made to lie down for ever where wolves can never come? Thus
   the one flock is even now with the Shepherd, for it is all one pasture
   to him, though to us it seems divided by Jordan's torrent. Every one of
   the sheep is marked with the blood of the everlasting covenant; every
   one of them has been preserved, because Jesus lived; and as he was
   brought again from the dead by the blood, even so must they be, for so
   the covenant stands.

   Remember, then, dear friends, that the punishment of the flock was
   borne by the Shepherd, that the flock died in the Shepherd, and that
   the flock now live because the Shepherd lives; that their life is
   consequently a new life; that he will bring all his sheep that as yet
   are not called, out of their death in sin, even as he has been brought
   out of his own death; that he will lead onward and upward those that
   are called, even as he went onward and upward from the grave to the
   throne; that he will preserve them all their journey through, even as
   he was preserved by the blood of the everlasting covenant; and that he
   will perfect them even as he is perfect. Even as the God of peace has
   glorified his Son, so also will he bring all his chosen to eternal
   glory with him.

   IV. Fourthly, we will view THE COVENANT BLESSING. What is one of the
   greatest of all the covenant blessings? The writer of this epistle here
   pleads for it. Now,' saith he, the God of peace, that brought again
   from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through
   the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good
   worry to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his
   sight.' Notice that one of the chief blessings of the covenant is power
   and will to serve God. The old covenant said, There are the tables of
   stone, mind that you obey every word that is written thereon: if you do
   you shall live, and if you do not you shall die.' Man never did obey,
   and consequently no one ever entered heaven or found peace by the law.
   The new covenant speaketh on this wise, Their sins and their iniquities
   will I remember no more. I will write my law in their hearts, and on
   their minds will I write them. I will put my fear in their hearts that
   they shall not depart from me.' The prophets enlarge most instructively
   upon this new covenant. It is not a covenant of if you will I will,'
   but it runs thus, I will and you shall.' As a covenant this exactly
   suits me. If there were something to be performed by me I could never
   be sure, but as it is finished I am at rest. God sets us working, and
   we work; but the covenant itself dependeth wholly upon that great
   promise, I will not turn away from them to do them good.' So that it
   was right of Paul to pray that God would make us meet in every good
   work to do his will, because of old this was the master promise, that
   those for whom Jesus died should be sanctified, purified, and made meet
   to serve their God. Great as the prayer is, it is asking what the
   covenant itself guarantees.

   Taking the text word by word, I perceive that the first blessing asked
   for by the apostle is meetness for the divine service, for the Greek
   word is not Make you perfect,' but meet, fit,' prepared,' able for.' I
   have no reference to the discussion upon the doctrine of perfection in
   this observation. No one text would decide that controversy; I simply
   make the observation because it is matter of fact. The expression
   should be rendered, Make you fully complete,' or fully fitted' to do
   his will. We ought to request earnestly that we may be qualified,
   adapted, and suited, to be used of God for the performance of his will.
   After the man once dead in sin is made alive again, the question
   arises, who shall be his master? We having died in our great Shepherd,
   and having been brought again from the dead, to whom shall we yield
   ourselves? Certainly unto God alone. Our prayer is that we may be made
   meet to do his will. Our Shepherd did his Father's will, for he cried,
   I delight to do thy will, O God,' by the which will we are sanctified,'
   and sanctified to the doing of that will each one of us thenceforth. It
   is a grand desire, but it burns in every Christian heart, that now he
   may be meet to serve his God, may be a vessel such as God can use, an
   instrument fit for the divine hand; weak and feeble, but not impure,
   unsuitable by reason of want of native strength, but suitable through
   having been cleansed by the blood of the covenant. Dear brothers and
   sisters, ask for meetness for service; pray day and night that you may
   be fully fitted for every good work.

   But the apostle asked for an inward work of grace, not merely meetness
   for service, but an operation felt''Working in you that which is
   well-pleasing in his sight.' I long above everything to possess in
   myself the inworking of the Holy Ghost more and more clearly. There is
   so much superficial religion, and we are so apt to be contented with it
   that it becomes us to pray for deep heart-work. We need to have our
   affections elevated, our will subdued, our understanding enlightened,
   and our whole nature deeply spiritualized by the presence of the Holy
   Ghost. Now this is the promise of the covenant: I will dwell in them
   and walk in them.' Remember, God worked in Christ in the grave by
   quickening his body into life, and he must work in us according to the
   working of that mighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised
   him from the dead. Ask the Lord to do it. Do not be satisfied with a
   little, weak, almost imperceptible, pulse of religion, of which you can
   hardly judge whether it is there or not; but ask to feel the divine
   energies working within you, the eternal omnipotence of God, struggling
   and striving mightily in your spirit until sin shall be conquered, and
   grace shall gloriously triumph. This is a covenant blessing. Seek ye
   for it.

   But we need outward as well as inward work. Working in you that which
   is well-pleasing in his sight'no small matter when you remember that
   nothing but perfect holiness can please God. Paul would have us made
   fit for every good work, wanted us to be many-sided men who could do
   every good work, just as Jesus did. He wished us to be qualified for
   any station and every position. When Jesus Christ rose from the dead he
   was seen; there was not merely a secret quickening in him, but a
   visible life, he was seen of angels and of men, and here below he lived
   for a period of time the observed of all observers. So, dear brethren,
   there ought to be in us not only an inner resurrection which we feel,
   but such a quickening that we shall be manifestly alive to newness of
   life. We must know the power of our Lord's resurrection, and exhibit it
   in every action of our lives. May God grant us this. There is much upon
   this point which time does not permit me to enlarge upon. May you know
   it all by experience.

   Observe, once more, the completeness of this covenant blessing. Just as
   Jesus is fully restored to the place from which he came, and has lost
   no dignity nor power by having shed his blood, but rather is exalted
   higher than ever, so God's design is to make us pure and holy as Adam
   was at the first, and to add to our characters a force of love which
   never would have been there if we had not sinned and been forgiven, an
   energy of intense devotion, an enthusiasm of perfect self-sacrifice,
   which we never could have learned if it had not been for him who loved
   us and gave himself for us. God means to make us the princes of the
   blood royal of the universe, or, if you will, the body guards of the
   Lord of Hosts. He desires to fashion an order of creatures who will
   come very near to him, and yet will feel the lovliest reverence for
   him. He will have them akin to himself, partakers of the divine natures
   and yet the most obedient of servants, perfectly free agents, and yet
   bound to him by bonds which will never let them disobey in thought, or
   word, or deed. And this is how he is fashioning this central battalion
   who shall wait upon his eternal marchings for ever'he is forgiving us
   great sins, he is bestowing upon us great blessings, he is making us
   one with his dear Son; and when he has entirely freed us from the
   cerements of our spiritual death he will call us up to where Jesus is,
   and we shall serve him with an adoration superior to all the rest of
   his creatures. Angels cannot love so much as we shall, for they have
   never tasted redeeming grace and dying love. This high devotion is the
   Lord's aim. He did not bring up the Lord Jesus from the dead that he
   might live a common life. He lifted him up that he might be head over
   all things to his church, and that all things might be under his feet;
   even so the destiny of Christians is mysteriously sublime: they are not
   lifted up from their native death to a mere morality. They are destined
   to be something more than philanthropists and men esteemed by their
   fellows, they are to exhibit to angels, and principalities, and powers,
   the wonderful grace of God, showing in their own persons what God can
   do with his creatures through the death of his Son. I do but touch like
   a swallow with my wing where it were delightful to dive.

   IV. We conclude with THE COVENANT DOXOLOGY, To whom be glory for ever
   and ever. Amen.' If anything in the world can make a man praise his God
   it is the covenant, and the knowledge that he is in it. I will leave
   off preaching and ask you to think over the love of God in the
   covenant. It does not belong to all of you. Christ is not the Shepherd
   of the whole herd of men; he is only the Shepherd of the sheep, and he
   has not entered into any covenant for all mankind, but for his sheep
   alone. The covenant is for his own people; if you believe in him it is
   a covenant for you, but if you reject him you can have no participation
   in that covenant; for you are under the covenant of works, which
   condemns you. But now, believer, just sit down for a moment and think
   over this exceeding mercy. Your God, the everlasting Father, has
   entered into a solemn compact with Christ on your behalf; that he will
   save you, keep you, and make you perfect. He has saved you; he has
   performed a large part of the covenant in you already, for he has
   placed you in the way of life and kept you to this day; and if, indeed,
   you are his, he will keep you to the end. The Lord is not as the
   foolish man who bedpan to build and was not able to finish. He does not
   commence to carry out a design, and then turn from it. He will push on
   his work till he completes it in you. Can you really believe it? With
   you, a poor puny mortal, who will soon sleep in the grave'with you he
   has made an everlasting covenant! Will you not say with our text, To
   whom be glory.' Like dying David you can say, Though my house be not so
   with God, yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant ordered in
   all things and sure.' I am sure you will joyfully add, Glory be to his
   name.'

   Our God deserves exclusive glory. Covenant theology glorifies God
   alone. There are other theologies abroad which magnify men; they give
   him a finger in his own salvation, and so leave him a reason for
   throwing up his cap and saying, Well done I;' but covenant theology
   puts man aside, and makes him a debtor and a receiver. It does, as it
   were, plunge him into the sea of infinite grace and unmerited favor,
   and it makes him give up all boasting, stopping the mouth that could
   have boasted by filling it with floods of love, so that it cannot utter
   a vainglorious word. A man saved by the covenant must give all the
   glory to God's holy name, for to God all the glory belongs. In
   salvation wrought by the covenant the Lord has exclusive glory.

   He also has endless glory. To whom be glory for ever and ever.' Have
   you glorified God a little, dear brethren, because of his covenant
   mercy? Go on glorifying him. Did you serve him well when you were
   young? Ah, not so well as you wish you had: then serve him better now
   in these riper days. Throw yourself into the glorifying of God. The
   task of saving yourself is not yours, Jesus has done it all. You may
   sing,

   A charge to keep I have,

   A God to glorify;'

   But you will not need to add'

   A never-dying soul to save,

   And fit it for the sky,'

   For that soul of yours is saved; he hath saved us and called us with a
   holy calling,' and you are fitted for the sky by the blood of the ever
   lasting covenant, for Paul says, Thanks be unto the Father who hath
   made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in
   light.' All you have to do is to glorify the Lord who has saved you and
   set your feet upon a rock, and established your goings. Now, go at it
   with all your might. Are you getting grey, dear brother? With all your
   experience yore ought now to glorify the Lord more than ever. You will
   soon be up yonder in the land of the living. Do not praise the Redeemer
   any longer at a poor dying rate, for you have but a short time to tarry
   here. And, oh, when we ascend above these clouds, how we will magnify
   our covenant God! I am sure I shall not feel my powers capacious
   enough, even in heaven, to express my gratitude for his amazing love. I
   do not wonder that the poet says'

   Eternity's too short

   To utter half his praise.'

   People find fault with that expression, and say it is an exaggeration.
   How would you have the poets talk? Is not hyperbole allowable to them?
   I might even plead that it is not an hyperbole, for neither time nor
   eternity can utter all the praises of the infinite Jehovah.

   On, for a thousand tongues to sing

   Our great Redeemer's praise.'

   This shall be the sweetest note of all our music,'the covenant, the
   covenant made with David's Lord, in all things ordered well,' the
   covenant with that great Shepherd of the sheep by which every sheep was
   preserved and kept, and brought into the rich pastures of eternal
   glory. We will sing of covenant love in heaven. This shall be our last
   song on earth and the first in Paradise''The covenant, the covenant
   sealed with blood.' How I wish Christ's ministers would spread more and
   more of this covenant doctrine throughout England. He who understands
   the two covenants has found the marrow of all theology, but he who does
   not know the covenants knows next to nothing of the gospel of Christ.
   You would think, to hear some ministers preach, that salvation was all
   of works, that it was still uncertain who would be saved, that it was
   all a matter of ifs,' and buts,' and peradventures' and if you begin to
   give them shells,' and wills,' and purposes, and decrees, and pledges,
   and oaths, and blood, they call you Calvinistic. Why, this doctrine was
   true before Calvin was born or thought of! Calvin loved it as we do,
   but it did not come from him. Paul had taught it long before; nay, the
   Holy Ghost taught it to us in the word, and therefore we hold it. The
   bringing back of this truth to the front will be a grand thing for the
   church. From the mouth of this cannon the Lord will blow the Pope and
   all his myrmidons into a thousand shivers, but no other doctrine will
   do it. By God's good grace, we must live this doctrine as well as
   preach it, and may he that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus,
   that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting
   covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will. Then will
   he have glory through the covenant and through you, both now and for
   ever. Amen and amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'Hebrews 13.

   HYMNS FROM OUR OWN HYMN BOOK''412, 1054, 317.
     __________________________________________________________________

                              The Three Witnesses

   A Sermon

   (No. 1187)

   Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, August 9th, 1874, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   There are three that bear witness on earth, the Spirit, and the water,
   and the blood: and these three agree in one.''1 John 5:8.

   CHRISTIANITY PUTS FORTH very lofty claims. She claims to be the true
   faith, and the only true one. She avows her teachings to be divine, and
   therefore infallible; while for her great Teacher, the Son of God, she
   demands divine worship, and the unreserved confidence and obedience of
   men. Her commands are issued to every creature, and though at present
   her authority is rejected by millions of mankind, she confidently looks
   forward to a time when truth shall obtain universal dominion, and Jesus
   the Lord shall take unto himself his great power and reign.

   Now, to justify such high claims, the gospel ought to produce strong
   evidence, and it does so. It does not lack for external evidences,
   these are abundant, and since many learned men have spent their lives
   in elaborating them, there is less need for me to attempt a summary of
   them. In these days scarce a stone is turned over among yonder eastern
   reins which does not proclaim the truth of the word of God, and the
   further men look into either history or nature, the more manifest is
   the truth of scriptural statements. The armoury of external evidences
   is well stored with weapons of proof. The gospel also bears within
   itself its own evidence, it has a self-proving power. It is so pure, so
   holy, so altogether above the inventive capacity of fallen man, that it
   must be of God. But neither with these external or internal evidences
   have we to do this morning, but I call your attention to the three
   witnesses which are spoken of in the text, three great witnesses still
   among us, whose evidence proves the truth of our religion, the dinning,
   of our Lord, and the future supremacy of the faith. Our text speaks of
   three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood: may the Holy
   Ghost who is our Interpreter, lead us into the full meaning of this
   very, remarkable passage.

   I. I shall note, first, that OUR LORD HIMSELF WAS ATTESTED BY THESE
   THREE WITNESSES. If you will carefully read in the twenty-ninth chapter
   of the Book of Exodus, or in the eighth chapter of the Book of
   Leviticus, you will see that when a priest was ordained (and a priest
   was a type of Christ) three things were always used: he was washed with
   water in every case, a sacrifice was brought, and his ear, his thumb,
   and his toe were touched with blood, and then he was anointed with oil,
   in token of that unction of the Spirit with which the coming High
   Priest of our profession would be anointed. So that every priest came
   by the anointing Spirit, by water, and by blood, as a matter of type,
   and if Jesus Christ be indeed the priest that was for to come, he will
   be known by these three signs.

   Godly men in the olden times also well understood that there was no
   putting away of sin except with these three things; in proof of which
   we will quote David's prayer, Purge me with hyssop''that is, the hyssop
   dipped in blood''and I shall be clean; wash me''there is the water''and
   I shall be whiter than snow;' and then, Restore unto me the joy of thy
   salvation, and uphold me with thy free Spirit.' Thus the blood, the
   water, and the Spirit were recognized of old as necessary to cleanse
   from guilt, and if Jesus of Nazareth be indeed able to save his people
   from their sins, he must come with the triple gift'the Spirit, the
   water, and the blood. Now it was evidently so.

   Our Lord was attested by the Spirit. The Spirit of God bore witness to
   Christ in the types and prophecies, Holy men of old spake as they were
   moved by the Holy Ghost;' and Jesus Christ answers to those prophecies
   as exactly as a well-made key answers to the wards of a lock. By the
   power of the Holy Spirit our Lord's humanity was fashioned and prepared
   for him, for the angel said unto Mary, The Holy Ghost shall come upon
   thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore
   also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the
   Son of God.' When our Lord in due time commenced his public ministry,
   the Spirit of God descended upon him like a dove, and rested upon him,
   and a voice was heard from heaven saying, This is my beloved Son, in
   whom I am well pleased.' This was indeed one of the surest seals of our
   Lord's Messiahship, for it had been given by the Spirit of prophecy
   unto John as a token''upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending
   and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy
   Ghost.' The Spirit abode in our Lord without measure, throughout his
   whole public career, so that he is described as full of the Spirit and
   led of the Spirit. Hence his life and ministry were full of power. How
   truthfully he said, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath
   anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he hath sent me to heal
   the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and
   recovering of sight to the blind.' Well said Peter, God anointed Jesus
   of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power, who went about doing
   good, and healing an that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with
   him.' Mighty signs and miracles were the witness of the divine Spirit
   to the mission of the Lord Jesus. The Spirit abode with our Lord all
   his life long, and to crown all, after he had died and risen again, the
   Holy Ghost gave the fullest witness by descending in full power upon
   the disciples at Pentecost. The Lord had promised to baptise his
   disciples with the Holy Ghost, and they tarried at Jerusalem in
   expectation of the gift: nor were they disappointed, for on a sudden
   they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other
   tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.' Those cloven tongues of
   fire, and the rushing mighty wind,' were sacred tokens that he who had
   ascended was Lord and God. The apostles said, We are witnesses of these
   things, and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that
   obey him.' The word of the apostles, through the Holy Spirit, convinced
   men of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment,' as the Master had
   foretold; and then the Spirit comforted the penitents, and they
   believed in the exalted Savior and were baptised the selfsame day. The
   words of Jesus were abundantly fulfilled,''When the Comforter is come,
   whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth,
   which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.' Thus from
   our Lord's birth, throughout his life, and after his ascension, the
   Holy Ghost bore conspicuous witness to him.

   It is also manifest that our Lord came with water too. I have shown you
   that every priest was washed with water; our Lord was not unclean, and
   therefore one would have thought he might dispense with this; but to
   fulfill all righteousness' his first step was to be washed in Jordan by
   the hands of John the Baptist, coming thus to the door of his ministry
   by that baptism in water which indicates that by death, burial, and
   resurrection, he was about to save his people. As soon as that baptism
   had been accomplished, ay, and before that, you could see that he had
   come with hater, for by water is signified that clean, pure, hallowed
   life which the outward washing was meant to typify. His first years of
   obscurity were years of holiness, and his after years of service were
   spotless. In him was no sin.' Who ever exercised a ministry so pure as
   his? Where else find we such immaculate holiness? He came not by the
   water merely as a symbol, but by that which the water meant, by
   unsullied purity of life. His doctrine was as pure as his example.
   Point me to a single syllable of all his teaching which would create,
   foster, or excuse sin! He was the friend of sinners, but not the
   apologist for their sins. His tenderness to sinners was that of a
   physician whose aim is to remove the disease. His whole doctrine is
   fitly comparable to purifying and life-giving water, and it operated
   upon men's hearts in that manner. In this last sense especially he came
   by water. It is very remarkable how John's Gospel is both the
   exposition and the text of John's First Epistle, for if you turn to it
   you find our Lord Jesus coming by water at the outset of his teaching.
   To Nicodemus he says a man must be born of water and of the Spirit;' to
   the woman of Samaria he speaks at large of living water;' and on the
   great day of the feast he vies, If any man thirst let him come unto me
   and drink.' In his ministry he not only issued the invitation, but to
   all who believed on him he gave of the water of the fountain life
   freely. Thus our Lord came by water in the sense of communicating a
   new; pure, and purifying life to men; for the water is the Emblem of
   the new life which springs up within the soul of believers, a life
   fresh and sparkling, leaping up from the eternal fountains of the
   divine existence; a life which will flow on for ever, and widen and
   deepen like Ezekiel's river, and increase in fullness of power and joy
   until it unites with the ocean of immortal bliss. Jesus came to pour
   forth this living flood among the sons of men. Blessed be his name!

   Our Lord closed his life with washing his disciples' feet, a fit
   conclusion to a life which had by its example been cleansing
   throughout, and still remains as the grandest corrective of the corrupt
   examples of the world. Even after death our Lord retained the
   instructive symbol by giving forth from his pierced heart water as well
   as blood, which John evidently thought very significant; for when he
   wrote concerning it he said, He that saw it bare record, and his record
   is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.' So
   that from the Jordan to the cross both the symbol and the substance
   were with our great Master, while his own personal purity, and his gift
   of life to others, proved his mission to be from above.

   With Jesus also was the blood. This distinguished him from John the
   Baptist, who came by water, but Jesus came not by water only, but by
   water and blood.' We must not prefer any one of the three witnesses to
   another, but what a wonderful testimony to Christ was the blood! From
   the very first he came with blood, for John the Baptist cried, Behold
   the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world! Now, the lamb
   which takes away sin is a slaughtered lamb, a bleeding lamb; so that at
   the time when the baptismal waters were upon him, John saw that he must
   bleed for human sin. In his ministry there was often a clear testimony
   to his future sufferings and shedding of blood, for to the assembled
   crowd he said, Except a man eat my flesh and drink my blood, there is
   no life in him:' while to his disciples he spake of the decease which
   he should shortly accomplish at Jerusalem. Then at the last, taking all
   our sins upon his shoulders, in the agony of Gethsemane, the blood bore
   witness that he was indeed the Lamb of God, and on yonder tree where he

   Bore all incarnate God could bear,

   With strength enough, but none to spare,'

   disinterestedly dying for his enemies, unselfishly suffering an
   ignominious doom that he might redeem those who had rejected and
   scoffed at him, his invincible love triumphed over death itself, and
   endured divine wrath without repining, as none but the Son of God could
   have done. Now Messiah was to be cut off, but not for himself; he was
   to make his soul an offering for sin, he was to make his grave with the
   wicked, and lie in the heart of the earth. The blood of the covenant
   was to be shed, the paschal victim was to be slain, the Shepherd was to
   be smitten, the Lamb was to be led to the slaughter, and therefore only
   by the shedding of his blood could Jesus prove himself to be the
   Messiah so long foretold. However pure the life he led, had he never
   died he could not have been the Savior appointed to bear the iniquity
   of us all. The blood was needed to complete the witness. The blood must
   now with the water, the suffering with the serving. The most pious
   example would not have proved him to be the divine Shepherd, if he had
   not laid down his life for the sheep. Take away the atonement, and
   Jesus is no more than any other prophet, the essential point of his
   mission is gone. It is evident that he who was to come was to finish
   transgression, and to make reconciliation for iniquity. Now, this could
   not be done except by an expiation, and as Jesus has made such an
   expiation by his own blood, we know him to be the Christ of God. His
   blood is the seal of his mission, the very life of his work.

   I have thus shown that our Lord himself was attested by these three
   sacred witnesses.

   II. Now, secondly, may God the Holy Spirit help me to show that THESE
   THREE REMAIN AS STANDING WITNESSES TO HIM TO ALL TIME.

   And first, the Holy Spirit is witness at this hour that the religion of
   Jesus is the truth, and that Jesus is the Son of God. I say not that he
   bears such witness everywhere, for there are many that preach in the
   wisdom of men, and in carnal excellency of speech, and God the Holy
   Ghost does not work with them, because he hath chosen other
   instruments. I do not say that he bears witness to the truth when it is
   defiled by a lukewarm ministry, and a prayerless church: but I do say
   this, that the Spirit of God, wherever Jesus is fully preached, is the
   great witness to the truth of his word; for what does he do? By his
   divine energy he convinces men of the truth of the gospel: and these so
   convinced are not only persons who, through their education are likely
   to believe it, but men like Saul of Tarsus who abhor the whole thing.
   He pours his influences upon men, and infidelity melts away like the
   iceberg in the Gulf Stream; he touches the indifferent and careless,
   and they repent, believe, and obey the Savior. He makes proud men
   tremble, and wicked men quake for fear. The conversions which are
   wrought where Christ is truly preached are the miracles which attest
   the truth of the gospel. He who can make the harlot to be chaste, the
   drunkard to be sober, the thief to be honest, the malicious to be
   forgiving, the covetous to be generous, and above all the
   self-righteous to be humble, is indeed the Christ of God, and when the
   Spirit does all this and more by the gospel, he bears conclusive
   witness to the power of the cross.

   Then, too, the Spirit goes forth among believers, and by them he bears
   witness to our Lord and his gospel. Great is the variety of his
   operations, for which cause he is called the Seven Spirits of God; but
   in each one he witnesses to Jesus; whether he quickens, consoles,
   enlightens, refreshes, sanctifies, anoints, or inflames the soul, he
   does it always by taking the things of Christ and revealing them to us.
   How mightily does he comfort the saints! Have you not been consoled by
   him in deep distress? Have you not endured the loss of dear ones
   without repining, because your heart has been sustained by the
   Comforter? Now, that wondrous influence which wrought peace in you
   through the gospel, must have confirmed you in the belief of the truth:
   and others who have seen your serenity under heavy trial, if they are
   not convinced, at least are led to inquire what strange thing is this
   which makes the Christian suffer without repining. The Spirit bears
   witness to Christ, then, when he comforts the saints.

   And he does the same when he gives them guidance, enlightenment and
   elevation of soul I will, however, for a moment, dwell upon utterance.'
   Some reject the idea, but for all that it is true that in the selfsame
   hour it is given to God's servants to speak in his name. Look at the
   martyr times! How wondrously feeble women like Anne Askew baffled all
   their foes! How ignorant weavers stood up before bishops and doctors
   and confounded them! Even now, in answer to prayer, the Spirit comes
   upon chosen men who yield themselves to his influence. And bears them
   along with a whirlwind, making them eloquent in the divine sense,
   speaking out of their hearts that which God gives them to deliver. Some
   of us know this, for we have cast ourselves upon that eternal Spirit,
   and thoughts have been given us, and mouth and utterance also. By this
   also the Spirit bears witness to the truth of our faith.

   I have not time to go into all the operations of the Spirit, only let
   me say that his sustaining, his consoling influences have been very
   especially seen in persecuting times. Men of God have been subjected to
   tortures which our mind finds it painful to dwell upon, yet they have
   not been vanquished by their foes; neither nakedness, nor peril, nor
   sword have separated them from the love of God. Blandina tossed in a
   net by a wild bull, and burned with hot plates of brass, wearies out
   her tormentors; and Lawrence, on his gridiron, finds joy enough for
   mirth. One cries aloud amid the flames, None but Jesus,' and another
   claps his blazing hands and shouts victory as his soul quits the body.
   The Spirit of God in the church has preserved her amid persecutions
   furious and long-continued, filling the saints with a dauntless courage
   and a serene invincibility which has both amazed and alarmed their
   enemies. So mightily has this patience convinced the world, that it has
   passed into a proverb, The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
   church.'

   With equal power does the Spirit of God bear witness to the gospel in
   great revivals of religion. How wondrously did the Spirit of God
   testify to Christ during the Reformation! Scarcely had Luther opened
   his mouth to proclaim the good news than straightway men received it
   eagerly; they sang psalms as they ploughed the field or threw the
   shuttle; the precious word was in all men's mouths. They said that
   angels carried Luther's writings all over the world: it was not so, but
   the ever-blessed Spirit makes the truth to fly like flames of fire. So
   was it in Whitfield's day, and in many revivals which we have read of,
   and some which we have seen. Sometimes men have been struck down and
   convulsed, and at other times, without outward violence, they have been
   with equal power renewed in their souls. Who that has been at
   Edinburgh, and seen many hundreds of people rushing through the streets
   to one appointed meeting-place, to fall on their knees and cry for
   mercy all at once, could doubt but what the gospel must be true? The
   Spirit of God, omnipotent in the realm of spirits, and able to guide
   the human will without violating it, has enlightened' men's darkened
   minds and made them see that Jesus Christ is God and Savior.
   Overwhelmed by the love of Jesus, they have yielded at once to his
   commands, A formal church, with a minister to stand up and talk
   officially, and a people who come and go mechanically, bears no witness
   to religion, but rather creates infidels; but where we see what some
   have called real Methodist fire,' and others the old Protestant
   enthusiasm,' or, rather, where we see the Holy Ghost, attended by
   marvellous conversion, deep repentance, singular illumination, the
   angelic and general love, we have indisputable evidence of the divinity
   of our faith.

   The next abiding witness in the church is the waternot the water of
   baptism, but the new life implanted in Christians, for that is the
   sense in which John's Master had used the word water': The water that I
   shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up unto
   everlasting life.' Where the Spirit of God comes he creates in the man
   a new nature, pure, bright, fresh, vigorous, like a fountain, and the
   fact that this new nature does exist in multitudes of men is a standing
   evidence that the gospel is true, for no other religion makes men new
   creatures, no other religion even pretends to do it; they may propose
   to improve the old nature, but none of them can say, Behold, I make all
   things new.' This is the sole prerogative of Jesus our Lord.

   The existence of the new life is matter of fact. We ourselves know many
   whose lives are pure and blameless; they have faults before God, but
   before the eyes of men they are perfect and upright, blameless and
   harmless. The godly lives of Christians are good evidence of the truth
   of the gospel. Did I hear some one object, But many professors of
   Christianity are not holy'? I grant you it, but then everybody knows
   that they are inconsistent with the religion which they profess. If I
   heard of a lustful Mahomedan I should not consider him inconsistent
   with Mahomedanism; is he not allowed his harem? If I heard of a
   licentious Hindoo, I should not consider him to be dishonoring his
   religion, for some of its sacred rites are disgusting and
   unmentionable. The same may be said of all the idolatries. But
   everybody knows that if a man professes to be a Christian and he is
   guilty of a gross fault, the world rings with the scandal, because it
   recognizes the inconsistency of his conduct with his profession. Though
   some may at the first breath of a slander blazon it abroad and say,
   This is your religion,' the world knows it is not our religion, but the
   want of it. Why do they themselves make such a wonder of a fallen
   professor? Are adulterers so very scarce that such a noise should be
   made when a minister is, truly or falsely, charged with the crime? The
   world's conscience knows that the religion of Jesus is the religion of
   purity, and if professed Christians fall into uncleanness the world
   knows that such a course of action does not arise out of the religion
   of Christ, but is diametrically opposite to it. The gospel is perfect,
   and did we wholly yield to its sway sin would be abhorred by us, and
   slain in us, and we should live on earth the life of the perfect ones
   above. Oh, may God produce in his church more and more the witness of
   the new life, the testimony of holiness, love, meekness, temperance,
   godliness, and grace: these are the gospel's logic, its syllogisms and
   demonstrations, which none can refute.

   The third abiding witness is the blood. The blood of Christ is still on
   the earth, for when Jesus bled it fell upon the ground and was never
   gathered up. O earth, thou still art bespattered with the blood of the
   murdered Son of God, and if thou cost reject him this will curse thee.
   But, O humanity, thou art blessed with the drops of that precious
   blood, and believing in him it doth save thee. Now, does the blood
   really save from guilt, terror, and despair? Does it operate among men?
   Let us our memory. Its answer is clear and full. I speak what I do
   know, and testify what I have seen. I have preached the blood of Jesus
   Christ and the love of the incarnate God, and I have seen proud,
   stout-hearted men shed tears in floods; the rock has wept when smitten
   with this wondrous rod of the cross. Men who could resist thee thunders
   of Sinai have melted before the tender notes of Calvary. Ay, and, on
   the other hand, I have seen the desponding, whose soul chose strangling
   rather than life, look up to that dear cross, and their faces have been
   brightened, and a joy unspeakable has chased away despair. Miracles of
   consolation the blood has wrought. We have seen men at war with God,
   and opposed to holiness, to whom the blood has spoken; they have seen a
   God reconciled to them, and they have been reconciled to him
   themselves. We have seen them beneath the spell of the blood throw down
   their weapons and cry'

   I yield, by Jesus' love subdued,'

   Who can resist its charms?'

   And throw myself to be reserved

   Into my Savior's arms.'

   The blood of Jesus, after speaking peace to the conscience, inflames
   the heart with fervent love, and full often leads men to high deeds of
   consecration, self-denial, and self-sacrifice, such as can scarce be
   understood till they are traced back to that amazing love which bled
   upon the tree. Well might the martyrs bleed for him who was crucified
   for them; the blood is working mightily in men to will and to do for
   the glory of God. Yes, brethren, the blood has such a melting, such a
   converting, such a subduing, such a sanctifying, such a joy-creating
   power to every conscience which hears its matchless voice, that it
   remains, with the Spirit and the water, a convincing witness to the
   Christ of God.

   III. In the third place, let us observe that THIS TRIPLE YET UNITED
   WITNESS IS PECULIARLY FORCIBLE WITHIN BELIEVING HEARTS. John tells us,
   He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself.' Now,
   brethren, these three witnesses bear testimony in our souls abidingly.
   I speak not of years ago, but of last night, when you bowed your knee
   in prayer and prayed, and were heard. Did not the Spirit when he helped
   you to pray bear witness that the gospel was no lie? Was not the answer
   to your prayer good evidence? And that Sabbath morning, when you prayed
   that you might gather up your thoughts and forget the week's cares, and
   you did so by the Spirit's aid, did not this sacred rest of your soul
   prove that Christ is indeed a Savior? Sitting here this morning as your
   soul has burned within you, and your Master has been near you, has not
   that communion, given you of the Spirit, been to you a fresh witness to
   Christ? The other day, when you were so sad and the Holy Spirit
   comforted you, when you were so rebellious, and he made you quiet, even
   as a weaned child, did not this confirm your faith? The other day when
   you were so in the dark, and he enlightened you, when you were in such
   dilemmas and he guided you had you not then fresh evidence that there
   is a life, a power, a divinity about the gospel? These sweet feelings
   of yours came to you by the Spirit of God revealing Jesus to you. He
   did not comfort you nor elevate you by the law, nor by the flesh, but
   by the love of God shed abroad in your heart, that precious love which
   comes streaming down from the cross of Jesus Christ our Lord. Ah, dear
   friends, I feel sick to death of the common talk about the healthiness
   of doubting and the beauty of modern thought.' This talk is only the
   self-praise of a set of concealed infidels treacherously lurking in
   God's church. There is a short way with sceptics which I commend to
   your use. Ask them'Do they know the Holy Ghost? Did they ever feel him
   in their own souls? If they say No,' we believe them; let them believe
   us when we declare that we do feel the operations of the Holy Ghost.
   There is the end of the controversy; if they are honest so are we, and
   we are witnesses to the divine working of the Holy Ghost in our own
   souls. If they never felt his power, their negative statements cannot
   in the least degree affect the truth of ours.

   The next witness in us is the water, or the new and pure life. Do you
   feel the inner life, my brethren? I know you do'you feel it fighting,
   struggling, contending, sometimes winning the mastery, and at other
   times captive and groaning; you feel it often aspiring, desiring,
   hungering, thirsting, yearning, sighing; and sometimes singing,
   shouting, dancing, and leaping up to heaven. You are conscious that you
   are not what you used to be, you are conscious of a new life within
   your soul which you never knew till the date of your conversion, and
   that new life within you is the living and incorruptible seed which
   liveth and abideth for ever. The fact that you know you are born of God
   forbids a doubt as to the truth by which you were begotten; the sense
   that you are forgiven forbids all scepticism as to the fact that Christ
   is come in the flesh, and that he is the Son of God, and that his
   gospel is the truth of God. To you all these things are clear.

   Witnessing within us is also the blood. Beloved, this is a witness
   which never fails, speaking in us better things than the blood of Abel.
   It gives us such peace that we can sweetly live and calmly die. It
   gives us such access to God that sometimes when we have felt its power
   we have drawn as near to our Father as if we had seen him face to face.
   And oh, what safety the blood causes us to enjoy! We feel that we
   cannot perish while the crimson canopy of atonement by blood hangs over
   our head. What victory it gives us! making us cry, Thanks be unto God,
   who giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.' These are
   mysterious sensations, not to be accounted for by fleshly enthusiasm,
   for they are strongest when we are calmest; not to be accounted for by
   any natural predilections to such emotions, for we are by nature as
   easily perturbed as others, and as apt to forget divine things. In
   times of trial we have looked to Jesus' flowing wounds and we have been
   comforted, we have found communion with Jesus to be so blessed that we
   would not envy Gabriel his angelhood.

   Now, then, you young men, you need not read Paley's Evidences,' the
   evidence of the Spirit, the water, and the blood is better. You do not
   grant to study Butler's Analogy,' though you may if you please, but
   such books, excellent as they are, only prove the skin and shell of our
   religion, and the vital matter is the kernel. If you come by simple
   prayer, and ask to have the blood of Jesus applied to devour soul, and
   if the Spirit of God works mightily in your spirit so that you obtain a
   new inner principle, and lead a new life as the result thereof, you
   will have the best evidence in the world. You will laugh at doubters,
   and make a fire of Colenso's objections, and Essays and Reviews,'
   Tyndal's challenge, and Huxley's dreams, and all that heap of worthless
   muck which has polluted the church, and defiled the souls of men. O
   heavens, that ever we should live to see a day in which ministers tell
   us that it is good to doubt, when poets almost deify that very
   scepticism of which John says that it makes God a liar, and which
   therefore is to be denounced as an insult to God, and the curse of the
   age. Go, fling your doubts away, ye doting men and dreaming women, and
   bow like penitents at Jesus' feet, and you will find far more than all
   your fancied learning can bestow. But if ye will not do this, yet know
   that in vain ye arraign your Maker at your bar, in vain do you re-judge
   his judgment, and act as if ye were the Gods of God!

   Thus I have tried to show that these three witnesses testify in our
   souls; I beg you now to notice their order. These three bear witness in
   us thus, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; why in this order?
   Because in this manner they operate. The Spirit of God first enters the
   heart, perhaps long before the man knows that such is the case; the
   Spirit creates the new life, which repents and seeks the Savior, that
   is the water; and that new life flies to the blood of Jesus and obtains
   peace. The Spirit mightily working, the new life is secretly created,
   and then faith in the blood is begotten, and the triple witness is
   complete. We have also found this to be the order of our consolation. I
   have said to myself, Do I know that the Spirit of God is in me?' and I
   have been afraid that it is not; I have then turned to my inner life,
   the water, and have not always been certain concerning it, but when I
   have looked away to the blood, all has been clear enough! Jesus died; I
   throw myself once again into his arms. When I do not know whether I
   have the Spirit, and when I am in doubt as to whether I have the living
   water, I still know that I believe in the blood, and this brings
   perfect peace.

   Having observed their order, now note their combination. These three
   agree in one,' therefore every true believer should have the witness of
   each one, and if each one does not witness in due time, there is cause
   for grave suspicion. For instance, persons have arisen who have said
   the Spirit of God has led them to do this and that. Of them we inquire
   what are your lives? Does the water bear witness? Are you pardoned?
   Does the blood testify for you? If these questions cannot be answered
   they may rave as they like about the Spirit of God, but the witness to
   their salvation is open to the gravest suspicion. We have known some
   who will say, Look at my life, I am very different from what I was. I
   am a sober, honest, excellent man.' Yes, but do you Test in the blood
   of Jesus? Practical evidence is good, but it must arise out of faith.
   If you do not believe in Jesus you have not the essential witness, and
   your case is not proved. Many also say to us, I believe that Jesus died
   for me,' but we must ask them concerning their lives. Are you cleansed
   in act? Are you an altered man? For remember, unless the water speaks
   with the blood, you have not the three-fold testimony. There may be
   some who say, Well, we believe in Jesus, and our lives are changed':
   but remember, you may say that, but is it so? If so, the Spirit of God
   has changed you: if you have merely excited yourself into the belief
   that it is so, or if you were born by your own free will, you have not
   the witness, because the truly saved are born not of blood, nor of the
   will of man, but of the Spirit of God.

   The three witnesses agree in one. He believes in pardon by the blood
   believes also in sanctification by the water; he who rests in Jesus
   Christ's blood always honors the Spirit of God, and, on the other hand,
   he that believes in the Holy Ghost values both the inner life and the
   cleansing blood. God has joined these three together, and let no man
   put them asunder. The old theologians spake of baptismus flaminis,
   baptismus fluminis, and baptismus sanguinis. May we know all these, and
   rejoice in the Spirit, the flood, and the blood.

   IV. Lastly, THESE WITNESSES CERTIFY TO US THE ULTIMATE TRIUMPH OF OUR
   RELIGION. Is the Spirit working through the gospel? then the gospel
   will win the day, because the Spirit of God is Almighty, and complete
   master over the realm of mind. He has the power to illuminate the
   intellect, to win the affections, to curb the will, and change the
   entire nature of man, for he worketh all things after his own pleasure,
   and, like the wind, he bloweth where he listeth.' When he puts forth
   his omnipotent energy none can stand against him. He has converted
   three thousand in a day, and he could as readily convert three
   millions, or three hundred millions. He can do this, and he will. The
   wind at times blows so gently as scarcely to stir the wing of a
   butterfly, but at another time it rushes in a tornado, sweeping all
   before it; do not judge from its soft breath what its full tempest
   would be, for nothing can stand against the wind when once it speeds
   forth with power. Let the Spirit of God blow across this land and it
   will at once drive away the miasmas of superstition, and the clouds of
   ignorance.

   The Holy Spirit is compared to fire. What can resist the energy of
   fire? There may be so little of it that a cowherd may carry it in his
   lantern, but lo, it sets a city on a blaze. One match contains all the
   fire on yonder prairie; it is flung into the dry grass, and lo, the
   heavens themselves are scorched with the exceeding heat. Is the Spirit
   of the Lord straitened? Is anything too hard for the lord? Behold, the
   universe was chaos once, and the Spirit brooded over it and this fair
   world came forth: let him in like manner incubate over this chaos of
   sin, and a new heaven, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness,
   shall rise therefrom. The gospel must conquer, because the Holy Ghost
   who works with it is almighty.

   Next, the gospel must conquer, because of the water, which I have
   explained to be the new life of purity. What says John? Whatsoever is
   born of God overcometh the world.' It is impossible for the gospel to
   be vanquished so long as there remains in the world one soul that is
   born of God. Living and incorruptible seed abideth for ever! Those who
   would destroy the church only scatter her living seeds, and when Satan
   raises a hurricane it only bears those seeds further afield. Satan once
   sat down for weeks together to scheme, land he called in all the devils
   one by one till Pandemonium all met in one conclave, and what think you
   came of it all? The Papal Inquisition. They set that horrible machine
   to work to crush out what they called heresy. They said they would ride
   up to their saddle girths in the blood of Lutherans, and they almost
   redeemed their promise; but their cruelty availed not, the living faith
   survived, and their murders and infernal cruelties did but stir the
   world to a groan of sympathy, which helped the progress of the gospel.
   They cannot destroy the gospel. Do not talk about the Pope of Rome, or
   the Ritualistic or the infidel party, destroying the gospel church,
   they can as soon annihilate the Lord himself, because the inner life of
   Christians is a spark struck from the eternal sun of life, and can
   never be extinct while God lives.

   Lastly, the gospel must spread and conquer because of the blood. Has
   that power? Oh, yes, I will tell you how. God, the everlasting Father,
   has promised to Jesus by covenant, of which the blood is the seal, that
   he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of
   the Lord shall prosper in his hand.' As surely as Christ died on the
   cross, he must sit on a universal throne. God cannot lie to his Son,
   cannot mock his wounds, or be deaf to his death-cries, and, therefore,
   Christ must have what his Father has promised him, and he has said, Ask
   of me and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the
   uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.' They that bow in the
   wilderness shall bow before him, and his enemies shall lick the dust;
   for he must reign until he hath put all enemies under his feet.

   Brethren, the inference from all this is, if you are not on Christ's
   side it is ill with you, for you will be surely conquered in the
   battle: but, if you are on Christ's side, never speak hesitatingly or
   despondingly. When they bring out a new book to disprove Genesis, and
   another to evaporate the atonement, do not be afraid. As long as the
   gospel is in the world the devil will find somebody to write books
   against it. Take no notice of them, they cannot stand against facts. A
   philosopher once wrote a book to prove that there is no such thing as
   matter, and a certain reader believed it till he chanced to knock his
   head against the bedpost, and then he abandoned the theory. When a man
   feels the power of the Holy Spirit, or the power of the inner life, he
   does not care to argue; he has a homespun philosophy of facts which
   answers his purpose better. Though others may round upon him and say,
   You are not learned,' he feels that it does not need learning to prove
   that which is a matter of personal consciousness, any more than we need
   proof that sugar is sweet when we have a piece in our mouths. Do you
   doubt the gospel? Try it! The men who speak against the Bible as a rule
   have never read it; those who rail against Christ do not know him; and
   those who deny the efficacy of grayer have never prayed. Nothing is
   more convincing than fact. Get out of the realm of word-spinning and
   wind-bag-filling into practical Christian life, proving personally that
   these things are so, and you will soon be convinced by the blessed
   witness of the Spirit, the water, and the blood.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'1 John 5.

   HYMNS FROM OUR OWN HYMN BOOK''335, 451, 331.
     __________________________________________________________________

                           A Word for the Persecuted

   A Sermon

   (No. 1188)

   Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, August 16th, 1874, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   What if thy father answer thee roughly?''1 Samuel 20:10.

   IT WAS NOT AN UNLIKELY THING that his father would answer Jonathan
   roughly. Saul had taken great umbrage against David, while Jonathan his
   eldest son, on the contrary, loved David as his own soul. Jonathan
   could hardly think that his father really meant harm to so good a man
   as David, and he expressed to David that opinion, and then David, to be
   prepared for the worst, put to him this question, What if thy father
   answer thee roughly? It did so turn out. Saul answered his son with
   bitter words, and in the desperation of his anger he even hurled a
   javelin at him to smite him; yet Jonathan did not forsake David, he
   clung to him with all the faithfulness of love, and until his death,
   which was much mourned by David, he remained his fast and faithful
   friend Now, this question of David to Jonathan is one which I wish to
   put this morning to all believers in Christ, especially to the younger
   ones who have lately entered into covenant with the great Son of David,
   and who, in the ardor of their hearts, feel that they could live and
   die for him. I want to put before them the supposition that they will
   meet with opposition from their dearest friends, that perhaps their
   father, brother, husband, or uncle will answer them roughly, or perhaps
   their mother, wife, or sister will become a persecutor to them. What
   then? What will they do under such circumstances? Will they follow the
   Lord through evil report? What if thy father answer thee roughly?'

   Remember that this supposition is a very likely one. There are a few
   Christians so favourably circumstanced that all their friends accompany
   them in the pilgrimage to heaven. What advances they ought to make in
   the sacred journey! What excellent Christians they ought to be! They
   are like plants in a conservatory'they ought to grow and bring forth
   the loveliest Bowers of divine grace. But there are not very many who
   are altogether in that case. The large proportion of Christians find
   themselves opposed by those of their own family, or by those with whom
   they labor or trade. Is it not likely to be so? Was it not so from the
   beginning? Is there not enmity between the seed of the serpent and the
   seed of the woman? Did not Cain slay his brother Abel because he was
   accepted of the Lord? In the family of Abraham was there not an Ishmael
   born after the flesh, who persecuted Isaac, who was born after the
   Spirit? Was not Joseph hated of his brethren? Was not David persecuted
   by Saul, Daniel by the Persian princes, and Jeremiah by the kings of
   Israel? Has it not ever been so? Did not the Lord Jesus Christ himself
   meet with slander, cruelty, and death, and did he not tell us that we
   must not look for favor where he found rejection? He said plainly, I
   came not to send peace upon the earth, but a sword;' and he declared
   that the immediate result of the preaching of the gospel would be to
   set the son against the father and the father against the son, so that
   a man's foes should be they of his own household. Did he not carefully
   inquire of every recruit who wished to enlist in his army, Have you
   counted the cost?' Have you not admired his perfect honesty and
   admirable caution in dealing with men, when he bids them remember that
   if they follow him they must deny themselves and take up their cross
   daily and be content to be hated of all men for his sake? He warns us
   not to expect that the disciple will be above his Master, for if men
   have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, they will assuredly
   confer no sweet titles upon his household. Since our Lord has
   forewarned us, it is well for us to stand ready for the trial which he
   predicts, and to ask ourselves whether we are ready to bear oppression
   for Christ's sake. I press the question Upon you who think of avowing
   yourselves believers, for most likely it will come practically home to
   you, and it is well when you begin to build a house to calculate
   whether you will be able to finish it.

   There are very many of God's servants here, whose life is made bitter
   by the continual worry they endure from their ungodly relatives and
   associates. Often do they sigh for the wings of a dove to fly away and
   be at rest. I feel the deepest sympathy with them, and it is not Only
   with the intention of forearming the younger ones, but with the hope of
   cheering and consoling those who have been long in the fiery furnace,
   that I shall speak this morning upon this text, What if thy father
   answer thee roughly?'

   I. Our first point is this, WHAT YOU MAY DO, what there is a
   possibility of your doing, should your friends answer you roughly. In
   the first confidence of your love to Christ you go and tell father of
   your conversion; well, what it he should ridicule it all? You run to
   mother, and communicate your change of heart; what if she should scoff
   at it? You tell a little of your heart to some friend; what if that
   friend should turn again and rend you? I will tell you what perhaps you
   will do, though I earnestly pray that you may do no such thing. You may
   by-and-by be offended.' I mean that you may leave Christ altogether,
   because you cannot bear his cross, and though willing enough to go to
   heaven with him if the way were smooth, it may be that, like Mr.
   Pliable, finding that there is a slough to be got through, you will
   turn your back upon the good country and return to the City of
   Destruction. Many have done so. Our Lord's parable of the seed sown in
   stony places teaches us that many shoots which promise fair for
   harvest, perish when the sun arises with burning heat because they have
   no root. Observation confirms this statement. If yonder fair-weather
   professors of religion could have been daily hailed with general
   acclamation, they would, after a certain fashion, have continued
   steadfast; but inasmuch as they have met with rebuffs and chills which
   they never bargained for, they have cast off all religion and joined
   with the fashionable world. To such the earthly father is dearer than
   the Father who is in heaven; the brother after the flesh is dearer than
   that Brother who is born for adversity, and the ungodly husband is more
   precious than the everlasting bridegroom; and so they desert their
   Lord.

   Or, it may happen to you that, instead of being by-and-by offended, you
   may continue for awhile, but you may gradually give way, and at last
   yield altogether. There are many among us who could bear to lose our
   heads at a stroke for Christ, but to be burned at a slow fire'ah, that
   would try us! And if that slow fire lasted not for a day or so, but for
   weeks, and months, and years! How then? If, after much patient
   endurance, the cruel mockings still continue, if the hard words and
   bitter speeches never cease'how then? Surely, unless grace sustains us,
   the flesh will clamor to be rid of this uneasy yoke, and will look out
   for some by-path by which it may escape the rigor of the rough road and
   go back again to the world. Grace will hold on and out to the end, but
   nature at her best, with firmest resolutions, has only to be tried up
   to a certain point, and it will surely yield. This is what we may do;
   but may God grant that we may be preserved from such a wretched course
   of action, for, if we do give way because of opposition from ungodly
   friends, it involves tremendous guilt. To give up religion because of
   persecution is to prefer ourselves to florist, to be selfish enough to
   regard our own ease rather than this glory, to consult our own peace
   rather than his honor, though we have said that we love him beyond all
   else for redeeming us by his blood. It will show that we love him not
   at all, but are ungrateful, false, and hypocritical. With all our true
   professions, if we flinch from persecution it will prove that we only
   want our price, and, like the traitor Judas, we too will sell our
   Master, not for thirty pieces of silver possibly, but to escape
   ridicule or avoid ill-will.

   It will become clear, also, that we prefer the praise of man to the
   approval of God. A smile from a face which is soon to die we value at a
   higher price than the love of God, or the Redeemer's approbation. Peter
   for a moment was more affected by the question of a silly maid than by
   his allegiance to his Lord, but how dreadful to fall into that
   condition deliberately, and think more of a man that shall die, and of
   the son of man that is but as a worm, than of the Lord our Maker and
   Judge, who alone is to be feared. Is not this folly, treason, and dire
   iniquity?

   To forsake the Lord through persecution is to set time before eternity,
   to barter heaven for this world's pleasures, to renounce eternal life
   for a few hours of ease, and to involve ourselves in endless misery
   rather than endure a stupid jest or a senseless jibe. It comes to that.
   Many a man has had life and death set before him, the life has been
   shaded with the cross, and the death has been gilded over with
   transient merriment, and he has chosen the everlasting death with its
   glitter in preference to eternal life with its momentary trial. May God
   grant we may never be of so insane a mind, for if we are, we shall be
   numbered with those mentioned in the Revelation, of whom it is said
   that the fearful,' which is being interpreted the cowardly, and the
   unbelieving, the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and
   sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars''for that is the class of
   persons with whom cowards are membered''shall have their part in the
   lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death'
   (Revelation 21:8), from which death may the infinite mercy of God
   deliver us. Like true soldiers may we buckle on our harness and resolve
   that let the battle rage as it may, through divine grace we will not
   desert our colors. We prefer death itself to the disgrace of forsaking
   a cause so true, a doctrine so pure, a Savior so gracious, a Prince so
   noble, and so worthy of our most loyal service.

   But if left to ourselves we may fall into what is as bad as open
   apostasy. When we find the father, or the wife, or the friend answering
   us roughly, we may make a pitiful compromise between Christ and the
   world. I warn you solemnly against this above everything else. It has
   the look of being the prudent and proper thing to do. Can I not please
   men and please God? May I not go a little way with Christ and a little
   way with the world?' O soul, if you attempt this you must fail, and
   moreover you will have chosen the roughest road of all, for if a man
   serves God, and serves him thoroughly, he will meet with many comforts
   to balance his crosses; and if a man serves Satan thoroughly he will
   enjoy whatever poor comfort is to be got out of sin; but if he goes
   betwixt and between he will feel the discomforts of both, and the
   pleasures of neither. Running the gauntlet on board ship is not worse
   than attempting to be friends with Christ and Satan at the same time. I
   believe many a professing woman has given way at first to her ungodly
   husband, where she should have been decided, and she has embittered all
   the rest of her life; and many a husband, many a son, many a man of
   business, has been undecided in a minor matter for peace sake, and from
   that very moment the other side has never believed in his sincerity,
   and having given an inch, the world has demanded its ell, and there has
   been an end to all liberty henceforth. If you yield a single point of
   honesty or true religion, the unconverted will not believe in you as
   they would have done if you had been firm throughout; men respect a
   thoroughbred Christian, but nobody has a good word for a mongrel. Be
   one thing or the other, either hot or cold, or Christ will reject you,
   and the world too. If a thing be right, do it; if you resolve to serve
   the Lord, do it, offend or please; and if, on the other hand, you
   prefer the service of Satan, do at least be honest enough not to
   pretend to be on the Lord's side. Remember the challenge of Elijah, If
   God be God, serve him; if Baal be God, serve him;' but do not attempt a
   compromise, which will end in a miserable breakdown. Mark Antony drove
   two lions yoked together through the streets of Rome, but no Mark
   Antony could ever drive the lion of the tribe of Judah and the lion of
   the pit in a leash together. They will never agree. Be ye warned, then,
   against falling into the meanness of compromise, for compromise is
   nothing better than varnished rebellion against God, a mockery of his
   claims, and an insult to his judgment. May the grace of God keep us
   from this, for left to ourselves we shall fall into this snare.

   I will tell you what you may do also, and I pray that the Holy Spirit
   may lead you to do it. You may take up humbly, but firmly, this decided
   stand:'If my father answer me roughly he must do so, but I have another
   Father who is in heaven, and I shall appeal to him. If the world
   condemn me, I shall accept its condemnation as a confirmation of that
   gracious verdict of acquittal which comes from the great Judge of all,
   for I do remember it is written, If the world hate you ye know that it
   hated me before it hated you' and If ye were of the world, the world
   would love its own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have
   chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.'' Be it
   ours to endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. May we count
   the reproach of Christ greater riches than all earth's treasures. Never
   may a coward blush defile our cheek because we are ashamed of Jesus;
   far rather may we be willing to be made a gazing-stock than for a
   moment think of turning aside from our Beloved Lord. False or fearful
   may we never be; firmly and calmly, with the confidence of a love which
   cannot falter, let us cleave to our Lord, even though all men should
   forsake him:'

   Oh, learn to scorn the praise of men!

   Oh, learn to lose with God;

   For Jesus won the world through shame,

   And beckons thee His road.'

   II. The second head is WHAT THE TRIAL WILL, DO FOR US IF WE ARE HELPED
   TO BEAR UP UNDER IT. What if thy father answer thee roughly? First, it
   will grieve us. It is by no means pleasant to be opposed in doing right
   by those who ought to help us in it. It is very painful to flesh and
   blood to go contrary to those we love. Moreover, those who hate
   Christians have a way of putting their revilings so that they are sure
   to make us wince. They watch our weak points, and with very wonderful
   skill they turn their discoveries to account; trained by the old master
   of all malice, they are not slow to ply their lash where we are most
   tender. If one thing is more provoking than another, they will be sure
   to say it, and say it when we are least able to bear it. It may be they
   are very polite people, and if so, your refined persecutors have a very
   dainty way of cutting to the bone, and yet smiling all the while. They
   can say a malicious thing so delicately that you can neither resent it
   nor endure it. The art of persecuting has been so long studied by the
   seed of the serpent that they are perfect masters of it, and know how
   to make the iron enter into the soul. Do not be astonished, therefore,
   if you are sorely vexed, neither be amazed, as though some strange
   thing kind happened unto you. The martyrs did not suffer sham pains;
   the racks on which they were stretched were not beds of ease, nor were
   their prisons parlours of comfort. Their pains were agonies, their
   martyrdoms were torments. If you had sham griefs you might expect
   counterfeit joys; let the reality of your tribulation assure you of the
   reality of the coming glory.

   The opposition of your friends will try your sincerity. If you are a
   hypocrite you will soon yield to opposition. The game is not worth the
   candle,' say you, and you will be off, and for the church's sake very
   likely it will be a blessing, for the wheat is all the better for being
   rid of the chaff, and if the wind of persecution can blow you away you
   are chaff. The rough answers of opponents will try your faith. You say
   you believe in Jesus: now we shall see if you do, for if you cannot
   bear a little trial from men and women, surely you will not be able to
   bear the worse trials from the devil and his angels. If thou hast run
   with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how easiest thou
   contend with horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou
   trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of
   Jordan? If you cannot bear the trials of life, how will you endure the
   ordeals of death?

   Persecution will try your love to Jesus. If you really love him you
   will cheerfully stand in the pillory of reproach with him, and when
   enemies have filth to hurl you will say, Throw it upon me rather than
   upon him: if there is a hard thing to be said, say it about me rather
   than against my Lord.'

   If on my face for his dear name

   Shame and reproach shall be,

   I'll hail reproach and welcome shame,

   For he'll remember me.'

   It will try your love, I say, and so it will all your graces in their
   turn; and this is good for you. These virtues will not increase in
   strength unless they are brought into action; and if they are not
   tested, who is to know of what sort they are? Your valiant soldier in
   quiet barracks at home could fight, no doubt, but how do you know till
   he has passed through a campaign? He who has charged up to the cannon's
   mouth, he who is adorned with a sabre cut across his brow, and bears
   many a wound beside, which he gained in the service of his king, he is
   brave beyond question. Good gold must expect to be tried in the fire,
   and these oppositions are sent on purpose that our faith, and our love,
   and all our graces should be proved genuine by enduring the test.

   The rough answers of those who should be our friends will keep us
   awake. I think it was Erskine who used to say, Lord, deliver me from a
   sleepy devil'; and truly it is a prayer well worth praying. When
   everything goes on smoothly, and nobody ridicules us, we are very apt
   to be off our guard, but when we are stung by undeserved reproaches and
   insults, and when for our love we receive only anger or unkindness, we
   are not very likely to go to sleep. Such afflictions drive you to your
   knees. Perhaps you have read the story of Mr. Eraser, one of the
   ministers in Ross-shire, who had a cold, unfeeling woman for a wife;
   she was very cruel to him, and would never allow light or fire in his
   study, so that he had actually worn two holes in the plaster at the
   ends of his room, where his hand had touched as he paced to and fro in
   the dark. At a meeting of ministers who were not of his mind in divine
   things, one of them thought to make sport of him by remarking that he
   would no doubt very heartily agree with the toast of Health to our
   wives.' To their astonishment he answered, Mine has been a better wife
   to me than any of yours has been to you, she has sent me to my knees
   seven times a day, when I would not otherwise have gone, which is more
   than any of you can say of yours.' Personally I should greatly prefer
   not to have such a perpetual blister applied to me, but had the good
   Physician appointed me so severe a trial, I doubt not that he would
   have had good reason for it. Out of what men call weeds the wise man
   extracts a medicine, and out of these bitter trials the Lord produces a
   sacred tonic which braces us for a higher life of communion with
   himself.

   Trials from the enemies of Jesus confirm our faith. Those who are never
   tried usually possess a poor, tottering faith, but trial, especially
   persecution, is like the rough March wind which goes howling through
   the forest, and while the young oaks are almost torn up by the roots at
   first, it loosens the soil for them, and they send out more rootless,
   till they get such a firm grip that they defy the hurricane. That which
   shakes them at first strengthens them afterwards. The tried saint is
   the bold saint, and the firm saint; therefore take the rough answer
   joyfully, and look for good results from it. A little persecution for
   the church in England would be a grand thing for her. We have fallen on
   very velvety days, when zeal for God is rare and decision for truth
   scarcely to be met with. The church has made terms with the world, and
   goes to sleep, Satan rocking her cradle. Many a man professes to be a
   Christian, who is nothing better than a baptized worldling, and many a
   man sets up to be a minister of Christ who is a mere reader of other
   people's sermons, and a hireling who cares not for the sheep. The fan
   of persecution, if it purged the threshing floor of the church, would
   bestow great benefits upon her.

   Rough speeches, too, will have this good effect upon genuine
   Christians, it will lead them to plead for those who utter them. I
   remember a good man who used to say of a certain swearing fellow who
   took delight to vex him with his horrid taunts and oaths, Well, after
   all, I might forget to pray for him, but he reminds me of it, for he
   will not let me go by without a curse.' If our friends were all very
   smooth-spoken, and concealed their enmity to Christ, we might entertain
   a false hope about them, and we might not pray for them; but when we
   see that the old nature is there, and very rampant, it drives us to
   intercession for them, and who can tell but what the Lord may give us
   their souls as our reward?

   Certainly opposition has another good effect, that it drives those
   subject to it into the truly separated path; they are known to be
   Christians, and proclaimed as such by their revilers. I do not think it
   is a bad thing, young man, when you go to that warehouse that they
   should advertise you as a Christian by crying out Halloa, here comes
   one of the Methodist sort.' It is good for you to be known. If you are
   what you should be, you will not mind being labelled, nor being tested
   either. It will help to keep you right when temptations arise; and it
   will frequently deliver you from trials of a more fascinating kind;
   for, suppose they forsake your company because you are a Christian,
   will not that be well? Those who leave you on that account are a very
   gainful loss. An honorable lady, now with God, when she joined this
   church told me how after her baptism many of her aristocratic friends
   had ceased to call upon her, or invite her to their houses. I
   congratulated her upon it, for it rendered it all the easier for her to
   select her own company. Her real worth of character and kindness of
   spirit soon won back all who were worth having, and the rest were
   happily removed. Such as shun you for following the Lord are persons
   whom you yourself might shun. We gain nothing by the love of those who
   love not God.

   One good effect of being persecuted at home is this, it makes you
   gentler abroad. If, my brother Christian, you have those at home who
   make you unhappy, if you are a wise man you will be the better ably to
   have patience with outsiders. Men wondered why Socrates was so patient
   with his pupils, and so good-tempered, but he ascribed it to having
   been hardened by the opposition of others, by being schooled at home by
   his shrewish wife, Xanthippe. Perhaps you will have the greater
   patience with those who scoff, and the greater sympathy with those who
   are scoffed at, from having had your share in the common lot of the
   saints. Thus to you as to Samson, out of the eater cometh forth meat,
   and out of the strong cometh forth sweetness. This lion roars upon you,
   but the day shall come when you will find honey in it, and bless the
   name of the Lord.

   III. My third point is, HOW SHOULD YOU BEHAVE UNDER THE TRIAL? May the
   Holy Spirit enable you to act very discreetly as well as decidedly.
   Never court opposition. God forbid we should do so. Some zealots seem
   bent on making religion objectionable. The cup we hold to a sinful
   world is in itself repugnant enough to fallen nature; there can be no
   wisdom in making it yet more objectionable by presenting it with a
   scowling face. It is as well when you have medicine to give to a child
   to show him a piece of sugar too: so let your kindness, and
   cheerfulness, and gentleness sweeten that which the world is not very
   likely to receive anyhow, but which it will the less resent if you
   present it with love, showing a desire to live peaceably with all men,
   and to consult the comfort of others rather than your own.

   And then endure whatever you have to endure with the greatest possible
   meekness. There was a farmer whose wife was very irritated with him
   because of his attending a dissenting place of worship, and joining
   with Christian people. She often declared that she would not bear it
   much longer, but he was very patient, and made no harsh reply to her.
   One day she fetched him out of the harvest field, and said, Now it is
   come to this; you will give up those people, or give me up'; and she
   brought out a web of cloth and said, Now you take half of this and I'll
   take the other half; for I am going.' He said, No, my dear, you are
   welcome to it all. You have always been a very good industrious wife,
   take it all.' Then she proposed taking a part of their household goods
   and settling everything for a final separation, but again he said, Take
   all there is. If you will go away take everything you like, for I
   should not wish you to be uncomfortable; and come back again whenever
   you please, I shall always be glad to see you.' Seeing that he talked
   in that way, she said, Do you mean me to go?' No,' said he, it is your
   own wish, not mine. I cannot give up my religion, but anything else I
   can do to make you stay and be happy, I will do.' This was too much for
   her, she resolved to cease her opposition, and in a short time went
   with her husband to the place of worship, and became herself a
   believer. This is the surest way to victory. Yield everything but what
   it would be wrong to yield. Never grow angry. Keep cool, and let the
   railing be all on one side. There was a poor godly woman who used to
   attend the ministry of Mr. Robinson, of Leicester, and her husband, a
   very coarse brutal man, said to her one day in his wrath, If you ever
   go to St. Mary's church again I'll cut both your legs off.' He was a
   dreadful man, and equal to any violence, but on the next occasion of
   worship his wife went as aforetime. As she came home, she commended
   herself to the care of God, expecting to be assailed. Her husband said
   to her, Where have you been?' I have been to St. Mary's church,' said
   she. With that he felled her to the ground with a terrible blow on the
   face. Rising up, she gently said, If you strike me on the other side I
   shall as freely forgive you as I do now.' She had been a very
   passionate woman before conversion, and had been accustomed to give her
   husband as good as he could send, and therefore he was struck with her
   gentleness. Where did you learn this patience?' said he. Her reply was,
   By God's grace I learned it at St. Mary's.' Then you may go as often as
   you like.' Presently he went also, and the war was over. There is
   nothing like meekness. It will conquer the strongest.

   After bearing with meekness return good for evil. For creel words
   return warmer love and increased kindness. The most renowned weapon for
   a Christian to fight his antagonists with is that of overcoming evil
   with good. Evil to evil is beastlike, and no Christian will indulge in
   it; but good for evil is Christlike, and we must practice it. I think I
   have before told you the story of the husband who was a very loose,
   gay, depraved, man of the world, but he had a wife who for many years
   bore with his ridicule and unkindness, praying for him day and night,
   though no change came over him, except that he grew even more bold in
   sin. One night, being at a drunken feast with a number of his boon
   companions, he boasted that his wife would do anything he wished, she
   was as submissive as a lamb. Now,' he said, she has gone to bed hours
   ago; but if I take you all to my house at once she will get up and
   entertain you and make no complaint.' Not she,' they said, and the
   matter ended in a bet, and away they went. It was in the small hours of
   the night, but in a few minutes she was up, and remarked that she was
   glad that she had two chickens ready, and if they would wait a little
   she would soon have a supper spread for them. They waited, and ere
   long, at that late hour, the table was spread, and she took her place
   at it as if it was quite an ordinary matter, acting the part of hostess
   with cheerfulness. One of the company, touched in his better feelings,
   exclaimed, Madam, we ought to apologize to you for intruding upon you
   in this way, and at such an hour, but I am at a loss to understand how
   it is you receive us so cheerfully, for being a religious person you
   cannot approve of our conduct.' Her reply was, I and my husband were
   both formerly unconverted, but, by the grace of God, I am now a
   believer in the Lord Jesus. I have daily prayed for my husband, and I
   have done all I can to bring him to a better mind, but as I see no
   charge in him, I fear he will be lost for ever; and I have made up my
   mind to make him as happy as I can while he is here.' They went away,
   and her husband said, Do you really think I shall be unhappy for ever?'
   I fear so,' said she, I would to God you would repent and seek
   forgiveness.' That night patience accomplished her desire. He was soon
   found with her on the way to heaven. Yield on no point of principle,
   but in everything else be willing to bear reproach, and to be despised
   and mocked at for Christ's sake. In hoc signo vincesby the cross
   patiently borne thou couquerest. This is a hard saying,' says one. I
   know it is, but grace can make the heaviest burden light, and transform
   duty into delight.

   Here let one also remark that to this gentle endurance there must be
   added by the persecuted Christian much exactness of life. We must be
   very particular when such lynx-eyes are upon us, because if they can
   find us trespassing they will pounce upon us at once. If it is only a
   little wrong, a thing which they would not have noticed in anybody
   else, they will magnify it and raise quite a clamor about it. Ah, that
   is your religion,' say they, as if we claimed to be absolutely perfect.
   Be watchful, therefore, walk circumspectly, do not put yourself into
   their hands; let them have nothing to say against you save only upon
   the point of your religion. Nothing bathes opponent) like integrity,
   truthfulness, and holiness: they long to speak against you, but cannot
   find a fair opportunity. Take care that you daily pray for grace to
   keep your temper, for if you fail there they will boast of having
   conquered you, and will assail you again in the same way. Ask for grace
   to be patient, and say as little as you can, except to God. Pray much
   for them, for prayer is still heard, and how knowest thou, O believing
   woman, but thou mayst save thy unbelieving husband? Only watch on and
   pray on, and a blessing will come.

   IV. In DOING ALL THIS WHAT COMFORT MAY YOU EXPECT? You may have this
   for your comfort, that the persecutor is in God's hands. He cannot do
   more than God lets him, and if God permits him to annoy, you may
   cheerfully bear it. Next, remember, if you keep your conscience clear
   it is a great joy. Conscience is a little bird that sings more sweetly
   than any lark or nightingale. Rough answers outside need not trouble
   you while within there is the answer of a good conscience towards God.
   Injure your conscience and you lose that consolation; preserve it from
   evil and you must be happy. Remember that by patiently enduring and
   persevering you will have fellowship with the grandest spirits that
   ever lived. You cannot be a martyr and wear the blood-red crown in
   these days, but you can at least suffer as far as you are called to do:
   grace enabling you, you may have a share in the martyr's honors.
   Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for
   so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.'

   Remember, too, that if you have extraordinary troubles Jesus will be
   doubly near to you. This is the greatest comfort of all, for in all
   your afflictions he is afflicted. You will find his presence in the
   ordinances to be very delightful. Those stolen waters which he gives
   you in secret fellowship are very choice, those morsels which you get
   by stealth, how sweet they are! The old covenantors said they never
   worshipped God with so much joy as in the glens and among the hills
   when Claverhouse's dragoons were after them. The living is very
   refreshing to the Lord's hunted harts. His bosom is very soft and warm
   for those who are rejected of all men for his sake. He has a marvellous
   way of unveiling his face to those whose faces are covered with shame
   because of their love to him. Oh, be content, dear friends, to watch
   with your Lord.

   You have the sweet thought also that you are doing more good where you
   are than if you were placed altogether among the godly. Yonder light,
   set up in mid ocean on the Eddystone rock, see how the storm sweeps
   around it, and the waters leap over it, threatening to put out its
   flame, but shall the light complain? Standing where it is, beaten by
   the Atlantic rollers, and braving the full fury of the storm, it is
   doing more good than if it were set up in Hyde Park for my lords and
   ladies to look at. The persecuted saint occupies a place where he warns
   and enlightens, and therefore suffers. He is like an advanced guard, to
   whom the place of danger is the place of honor: only let him ask for
   strength to bear and forbear, and he shall have glory at the last.
   Remember the rougher the road the sweeter the rest, and the greater the
   suffering the brighter the crown at the last. Those who have to bear
   most for Jesus will be those to whom he will most sweetly say, Well
   done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.'

   Ah, brethren, if you have a little rough language to put up with, what
   is it, compared with what many of the Lord's afflicted ones have to
   endure? I will tell you a little incident bearing upon that point, and
   then have done. Yesterday the postman brought me, amongst many others,
   a letter from Australia, which I prize more than any that have come to
   hand for a long while; it has touched my heart, and when you hear it
   you will not wonder. It is written at the desire of a man who is
   described by the gentleman who writes for him in the following terms: I
   have known the writer for near eight years, during which time he has
   been quite helpless, being paralyzed, he has had one leg cut off, the
   sight has left his eye, he cannot move hand or feet; as he is placed on
   his bed so must he lie and endure the annoyance of flies, or anything
   that may molest him. So that I am sure you will be pleased to be the
   means of giving comfort to such an one, and yet he is mostly rejoicing;
   and few are more apt to teach and exhort those who come to see him, and
   direct them to suitable portions of God's word far their reading.' Now
   this poor man, who has been helpless ever since the year 1858, or
   sixteen long years, writes me thus: Being moved by the Holy Spirit I
   send you these few lines to thank you for the benefit I have received
   by reading your sermons. In the year 1850 I was brought to the
   knowledge of the truth, and found peace through believing in Jesus. In
   1858 I met with a serious accident, so that I was not able to earn my
   bread, but trusting in the Lord he has led me in the right way. In 1866
   it pleased him to confine me entirely to my bed. I bless his Holy Name
   that I can say I am bound by the cords of his love, that he has upheld
   and comforted me through all my long confinement, and enabled me to
   rejoice in hope of his glory; and the reading of your excellent
   sermons, which privilege I have enjoyed for some years, having been a
   source of great comfort and delight to my soul, causing me to soar on
   high and enjoy sweet communion, I am constrained by love to send you
   this acknowledgment, hoping that perhaps you may be cheered a little by
   it in your arduous labors; and if our heavenly Father see fit, this my
   testimony to his faithfulness may be blessed by him to the comfort and
   encouragement of some afflicted ones in your flock, as I know that all
   these things work together for good to them that love God.' Think of
   this unselfish sufferer having a letter written to comfort me. One
   would have thought he needed comforting himself, but the Lord so cheers
   him that, instead of asking for consolation, he does not mention in his
   letter that he has lost his leg, or that he is paralyzed, or has lost
   his sight. He only tells me of his joy and peace. Now, if children of
   God in such extremities can yet bear testimony to his faithfulness, are
   you going to run away because some foolish person or other sneers at
   you? Will you in cowardly fashion desert the standard because fools
   point their fingers at you? If so, are you made of the same stuff as
   the true saints? Have you the same backbone of divine grace as they?
   Assuredly not. May the Lord in his infinite mercy give you such a sound
   conversion that, whatever trial comes, you may still sing, Yet will I
   rejoice in the Lord and glory in the God of my salvation.'

   If I am addressing any one who has persecuted God's saints in any way,
   let me say, Mind what you are at; there are many things a man will
   bear, but if you meddle with his children it will stir his soul, that
   is a tender point with all fathers.' Nothing provokes the Lord like
   interfering with his children. Mind what you are at. And, oh, I pray
   the Lord, if you have done it ignorantly, really thinking them to be
   wrong, and only scoffing at them because you thought them hypocrites,
   may he that spake out of heaven to Saul, and said, Why persecutest thou
   me?' let you see that you have really been wounding Jesus himself. May
   he make you see that those tears which you have forced from that
   faithful woman, and those sleepless nights which you have caused to
   that earnest man, were so much of evil done unto Christ, for which he
   will reckon with you at the last. Turn you unto the Lord Jesus, and may
   the Holy Spirit grant you to repent of this your wickedness, for Jesus
   is willing to receive and bless even you, as he did Paul of old.
   Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you also shall be saved. God bless you
   all, for Christ's sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'Mark 4.

   HYMNS FROM OUR OWN HYMN BOOK''76, 670, 667.
     __________________________________________________________________

                               The Turning Point

   A Sermon

   (No. 1189)

   Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, August 23rd, 1874, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   And he arose, and came to his father.'Luke 15:20.

   THIS SENTENCE EXPRESSES the true turning point in the prodigal's life
   story. Many other matters led up to it, and before he came to it there
   was much in him that was very hopeful; but this was the point itself,
   and had he never reached it he would have remained a prodigal, but
   would never have been the prodigal restored, and his life would have
   been a warning rather than an instruction to us. He arose, and came to
   his father.' Speaking, as I do, in extreme weakness, I have no words to
   spare; and while my voice holds out I shall speak straight to the
   point, and I pray the Lord to make every syllable practical and
   powerful by his Holy Spirit.

   I. We shall begin by noticing that HERE WAS ACTIONHe arose, and came to
   his father.' He had already been in a state of thoughtfulness; he had
   come to himself, but now he was to go further, and come to his father.
   He had considered the past, and weighed it up, and seen the hollowness
   of all the world's pleasures; he had seen his condition in reference to
   his father, and his prospects if he remained in the far-off country; he
   had thought upon what he ought to do, and what would be the probable
   result of such a course; but now he passed beyond the dreaminess of
   thought into matter-of-fact acting and doing. How long will it be, dear
   hearers, before you will do the same? We are glad to have you
   thoughtful; we hope that a great point is gained when you are led to
   consider your ways, to ponder your condition, and to look earnestly
   into the future, for thoughtlessness is the ruin of many a traveler to
   eternity, and by its means the unwary fall into the deep pit of carnal
   security and perish therein. But some of you have been among the
   thoughtful' quite long enough; it is time you passed into a more
   practical stage. It is high time that you came to action; it would have
   been better if you had acted already; for, in the matter of
   reconciliation to God, first thoughts are best. When a man's life hangs
   on a thread, and hell is just before him, his path is clear, and a
   second thought is superfluous. The first impulse to escape from danger
   and lay hold on Christ is that which you would be wise to follow. Some
   of you whom I now address have been thinking, and thinking, and
   thinking, till I fear that you will think yourselves into perdition.
   May you, by divine grace, be turned from thinking to believing, or else
   your thoughts will become the undying worm of your torment.

   The prodigal had also passed beyond mere regret. He was deeply grieved
   that he had left his father's house, he lamented his lavish expenditure
   upon wantonness and rebelling, he mourned that the son of such a father
   should be degraded into a swineherd in a foreign land; but he now
   proceeded from regret to repentance, and bestirred himself to escape
   from the condition over which he mourned. What is the use of regret if
   we continue in sin? By all means pull up the sluices of your grief if
   the floods will turn the wheel of action, but you may as well reserve
   your tears, if they mean no more than idle sentimentalism. What avails
   it for a man to say he repents of his misconduct if he still perseveres
   in it? We are glad when sinners regret their sin and mourn the
   condition into which sin has brought them, but if they go no further,
   their regrets will only prepare them for eternal remorse. Had the
   prodigal become inactive through despondency, or stolid through sullen
   grief, he must have perished, far away from his father's home, as it is
   to be feared many will whose sorrow for sin leads them into a proud
   unbelief and wilful despair of God's love; but he was wise, for he
   shook off the drowsiness of his despondency, and, with resolute
   determination, arose and came to his father.' Oh, when will you sad
   ones be wise enough to do the same? When will your thinking and your
   sorrowing give place to practical obedience to the gospel?

   The prodigal also pressed beyond mere resolving. That is a sweet verse
   which says, I will arise,' but that is far better which says, And he
   arose.' Resolves are good, like blossoms, but actions are better, for
   they are the fruits. We are glad to hear from you the resolution, I
   will turn to God,' but holy angels in heaven do not rejoice over
   resolutions, they reserve their music for sinners who actually repent.
   Many of you like the son in the parable have said, I go, sir,' but you
   have not gone. You are as ready at forgetting as you are at resolving.
   Every earnest sermon, every death in your family, every funeral knell
   for a neighbor, every pricking of conscience, every touch of sickness,
   sets you a resolving to amend, but your promissory notes are never
   honored, your repentance ends in words. Your goodness is as the dew,
   which at early dawn hangs each blade of grass with gems, but leaves the
   fields all parched and dry when the sun's burning heat is poured upon
   the pasture. You mock your friends, and trifle with your own souls. You
   have often in this house said, Let me reach my chamber and I will fall
   upon my knees,' but on the way home you have forgotten what manner of
   men you were, and sin has confirmed its tottering throne. Have you not
   dallied long enough? Have you not lied unto God sufficiently? Should
   you not now give over resolving and proceed to the solemn business of
   your souls like men of common sense? You are in a sinking vessel, and
   the life-boat is near, but your mere resolve to enter it will not
   prevent your going down with the sinking craft; as sure as you are a
   living man, you will drown unless you take the actual leap for life.

   He arose and came to his father.' Now, observe that this action of the
   prodigal was immediate, and without further parley. He did not go back
   to the citizen of that country and say, Will you raise my wages? If
   not, I must leave.' Had he parleyed he had been lost; but he gave his
   old master no notice, he concerned his indentures by running away. I
   would that sinners here would break their league with death, and
   violate their covenant with hell, by escaping for their lives to Jesus,
   who receives all such runaways. We want neither leave nor licence for
   quitting the service of sin and Satan, neither is it a subject which
   demands a month's consideration: in this matter instantaneous action is
   the surest wisdom. Lot did not stop to consult the king of Sodom as to
   whether he might quit his dominions, neither did he consult the parish
   officers as to the propriety of speedily deserting his home; but with
   the angel's hand pressing them, he and his fled from the city. Nay, one
   fled not; she looked and lingered, and that lingering cost her her
   life! That pillar of salt is the eloquent monitor to us to avoid delays
   when we are bidden to flee for our lives. Sinner, dost thou wish to be
   a pillar of salt? Wilt thou halt between two opinions, until God's
   anger shall doom thee to final impenitence? Wilt thou trifle with mercy
   till justice smite thee? Up, man, and while thy day of grace continues,
   fly thou into the arms of love.

   The text implies that the prodigal aroused himself, and put forth all
   his energies. It is said, he arose;' the word suggests that he had till
   then been asleep upon the bed of sloth, or the couch of presumption. If
   like Samson in Delilah's lap, he had been supine, inactive, and
   unstrung, but now, startled from his lethargy, he lifts up his eyes, he
   girds up his loins, he shakes off the spell which had enthralled him,
   he puts forth every power, he arouses his whole nature, and he spares
   no exertion until he returns to his father.

   Men are not saved between sleeping and waking. The kingdom of heaven
   suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.' Grace does not
   stupefy us, it but arouses us. Surely, sirs, it is worth while making
   an awful effort to escape from eternal wrath. It is worth while
   summoning up every faculty and power and emotion and passion of your
   being, and saying to yourself, I cannot be lost; I will not be lost: I
   am resolved that I will find mercy through Jesus Christ.' The worst of
   it is, O sinners, ye are so sluggish, so indifferent, so ready to let
   things happen as they may. Sin has bewitched and benumbed you. You
   sleep as on beds of down and forget that you are in danger of hell
   fire. You cry, A little more rest, and a little more slumber, and a
   little more folding of the arms to sleep,' and so you sleep on, though
   your damnation slumbereth not. Would to God you could be awakened. It
   is not in the power of my voice to arouse you; but may the Lord Himself
   alarm you, for never were men more in danger. Let but your breath fail,
   or your blood pause, and you are lost for ever. Frailer than a cobweb
   is that life on which your eternal destiny depends. If you were wise
   you would not give sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids,
   till you had found your God and been forgiven. Oh, when will you come
   to a real action? How long will it be ere you believe in Jesus? How
   long will you snort between the jaws of hell? How long dare you provoke
   the living God?

   II. Secondly, HERE WAS A SOUL COMING INTO ACTUAL CONTACT WITH GOD,''He
   arose and came to his father.' It would have been of no avail for him
   to have arisen if he had not come to his father. This is what the
   sinner has to do, and what the Spirit enables him to do: namely, to
   come straight away to his God. But, alas! very commonly, when men begin
   to be anxious, they go round about and hasten to a friend to tell him
   about it, or they even resort to a deceitful priest, and seek help from
   him. They fly to a saint or a virgin, and ask these to be mediators for
   then, instead of accepting the only Mediator Jesus Christ, and going to
   God at once by him. They fly to outward forms and ceremonies, or they
   turn to their Bibles, their prayers, their repentances, or their
   sermon-hearings; in fact, to anything rather than their God. But the
   prodigal knew better; he went to his father, and it will be a grand day
   for you, O sinner, when you do the same. Go straight away to your God
   in Christ Jesus. Come here,' says the priest. Pass that fellow by. Get
   away to your Father. Reject an angel from heaven if he would detain you
   from the Lord. Go personally, directly, and at once to God in Christ
   Jesus. But surely I must perform some ceremony first? Not so did the
   prodigal, he arose and went at once to his father. Sinner, you must
   come to God, and Jesus is the way. Go to him then, tell him you have
   done wrong, confess your sins to him, and yield yourself to him. Cry,
   Father, I have sinned: forgive me, for Jesus' sake.'

   Alas! there are many anxious souls who do not go to others, but they
   look to themselves. They sit down and cry, I want to repent; I want to
   feel my need; I want to be humble.' O man, get up! What are you at?
   Leave yourself and go to your Father. Oh, but I have so little hope; my
   faith is very weak, and I am full of fears.' What matters your hopes or
   your fears while you are away from your Father? Your salvation does not
   lie within yourself, but in the Lord's good will to you. You will never
   be at peace till, leaving all your doubts and your hopes, you come to
   your God and rest in his bosom. Oh, but I want to conquer my
   propensities to sin, I want to master my strong temptations.' I know
   what it is you want. You want the best robe without your Father's
   giving it you, and shoes on your feet of your own procuring; you do not
   like going in a beggar's suit and receiving all from the Lord's loving
   hand; but this pride of yours must be given up, and you must get away
   to God, or perish for ever. You must forget yourself, or only remember
   yourself so as to feel that you are bad throughout, and no more worthy
   to be called God's son. Give yourself up as a sinking vessel that is
   not worth pumping, but must be left to go down, and get you into the
   life-boat of free grace. Think of God your Father'of him, I say, and of
   his dear Son, the one Mediator and Redeemer of the sons of men. There
   is your hope'to fly away from self and to reach your Father.

   Do I hear you say, Well, I shall continue in the means of grace, and I
   hope there to find my God.' I tell you, if you do that, and refuse to
   go to God, the means of grace will be the means of damnation to you. I
   must wait at the pool,' says one. Then I solemnly warn you that you
   will lie there and die; for Jesus does not command you to lie there,
   his bidding is, Take up thy bed, and walk.' Believe in the Lord Jesus
   Christ, and thou shalt be saved.' You have to go unto your Father, and
   not to the pool of Bethesda, or any other pool of ordinances or means
   of grace. But I mean to pray,' says one. What would you pray for? Can
   you expect the Lord to hear you while you will not hear him? You will
   pray best with your head in your Father's bosom, but the prayers of an
   unyielding, disobedient, unbelieving heart are mockeries. Prayers
   themselves will ruin you if they are made a substitute for Doing at
   once to God. Suppose the prodigal had sat down at the swine trough and
   said, I will pray here,' what would it have availed him? or suppose he
   had wept there, what good would have come of it? Praying and weeping
   were good enough when he had come to his father, but they could not
   have been substituted for it. Sinner, your business is with God. Hasten
   to him at once. You have nothing to do with yourself, or your own
   doings, or what others can do for you, the turning point of salvation
   is, he arose and came to his father.' There must be a real, living,
   earnest, contact of your poor guilty soul with God, a recognition that
   there is a God, and that God can be spoken to, and an actual speech of
   your soul to him, through Jesus Christ, for it is only God in Christ
   Jesus that is accessible at all. Going thus to God, we tell him that we
   are all wrong, and walls to be set right; we tell him we wish to be
   reconciled to him, and are ashamed that we should have sinned against
   him; we then put our trust in his Son, and we are saved. O soul, go to
   God: it matters not though the prayer you come with may be a very
   broken prayer, or even if it has mistakes in it, as the prodigal's
   prayer had when he said, Make me as one of thy hired servants;' the
   language of the prayer will not signify so long as you really approach
   to God. Him that cometh to me,' says Jesus, I will in no wise cast
   out;' and Jesus ever liveth to make intercessions for them that come to
   God through him.

   Here, then, is the great Protestant doctrine. The Romish doctrine says
   you must go round by the back door, and half-a-dozen of the Lord's
   servants must knock for you, and even then you may never be heard; but
   the grand old Protestant doctrine is, come to God yourself; come with
   no other mediator than Jesus Christ; come just as you are without
   merits and good works; trust in Jesus and your sins will be forgiven
   you.

   There is my second point: there was action, and that action was contact
   with God.

   III. Now, thirdly, IN THAT ACTION THERE WAS AN ENTIRE YIELDING UP OF
   HIMSELF. In the prodigal's case, his proud independence and self-will
   were gone. In other days he demanded his portion, and resolved to spend
   it as he pleased, but now he is willing to be as much under rule as a
   hired servant, he has had enough of being his own master, and is weary
   of the distance from God which self-will always creates. He longs to
   get into a child's true place, namely, that of dependence and loving
   submission. The great mischief of all was his distance from his father,
   and he now feels it to be so. His great thought is to remove that
   distance by humbly returning, for then he feels that all other ills
   will come to an end. He yields up his cherished freedom, his boasted
   independence, his liberty to think and do and say whatever he chose,
   and he longs to come under loving rule and wise guidance. Sinner, are
   you ready for this? If so, come and welcome; your father longs to press
   you to his bosom!

   He gave up all idea of self-justification, for he said, I have sinned.'
   Before he would have said, I have a right to do as I like with my own;
   who is to dictate how I shall spend my own money. If I do sow a few
   wild oats, every young man does the same. I have been very generous, if
   nothing else, nobody can call me greedy. I am no hypocrite. Look at
   your canting Methodists, how they deceive people! There's nothing of
   that in me, I'll warrant you; I am an outspoken man of the world; and
   after all, a good deal better in disposition than my elder brother,
   fine fellow though he pretends to be.' But now the prodigal boasts no
   longer. Not a syllable of self-praise falls from his lips; he
   mournfully confesses, I have sinned against heaven and before thee.'
   Sinner, if you would be saved you also must come down from your high
   places, and acknowledge your iniquity. Confess that you have done
   wrong, and do not try to extenuate your offense; do not offer apologies
   and make your case better than it is, but humbly plead guilty and leave
   your soul in Jesus' hands. Of two things, to sin or to deny the sin,
   probably to deny the sin is the worse of the two, and shows a blacker
   heart. Acknowledge your fault, man, and tell your heavenly Father that
   if it were not for his mercy you would have been in hell, and that as
   it is you richly deserve to be there even now. Make your case rather
   blacker than it is if you can, this I say because I know you cannot do
   any such thing. When a man is in the hospital it cannot be of any
   service to him to pretend to be better than he is; he will not receive
   any more medical attention on that account, but rather the other way,
   for the worse his case the more likely is the physician to give him
   special notice. Oh, sinner, lay bare before God thy sores, thy
   putrifying sores of sin, the horrid ulcers of thy deep depravity, and
   cry, O Lord, have mercy upon me? This is the way of wisdom. Have done
   with pride and self-righteousness, and make thy appeal to the
   undeserved pity of the Lord, and thou will speed.

   Observe that the prodigal yielded up himself so thoroughly that he
   owned his father's love to him to be an aggravation of his guilt: so I
   take it he means when he says, Father, I have sinned.' It adds an
   emphasis to the I have sinned' when it follows after the word father.'
   Thou good God, I have broken thy good laws; thou loving, tender,
   merciful God, I have done wrong wantonly and wickedly against thee.
   Thou hast been a very loving Father to me, and I have been a most
   ungenerous and shameless traitor to thee, rebelling without cause. I
   confess this frankly and humbly, and with many tears. Ah! hadst thou
   been a tyrant I might have gathered some apology from thy severity, but
   thou hast been a Father, and this makes it worse that I should sin
   against thee.' It is sweet to hear such a confession as this poured out
   into the Father's bosom.

   The penitent also yielded up all his supposed rights and claims upon
   his father, saying, I am not worthy to be called thy son.' He might
   have said, I have sinned, but still I am thy child,' and most of us
   would have thought it a very justifiable argument; but he does not say
   so, he is too humble for that, he owns, I am no more worthy to be
   called thy son.' A sinner is really broken down when he acknowledges
   that if God would have no mercy on him, but cast him away for forever,
   it would be no more than justice.

   Should saddled vengeance seize my breath,

   I must pronounce thee just in death;

   And, if my soul were sent to hell,

   Thy righteous law approves it well.'

   That soul is not far from peace which has ceased arguing and submits to
   the sentence. Oh, sinner, I urge thee, if thou wouldst find speedy
   rest, go and throw thyself at the foot of the cross where God meets
   such as thou art, and say, Lord, here I am; do what thou wilt with me.
   Never a word of excuse will I offer, nor one single plea by way of
   extenuation. I am a mass of guilt and misery, but pity me, oh, pity me!
   No rights or claims have I; I have forfeited the rights of creatureship
   by becoming a rebel against thee. I am lost and utterly undone before
   the bar of thy justice. From that justice I flee and hide myself in the
   wounds of thy Son. According to the multitude of thy tender mercies,
   blot out my transgressions!'

   Once again, here was such a yielding up of himself to his father that
   no terms or conditions are mentioned or implied. He begs to be
   received, but a servant's place is good enough for him; amongst the
   scullions of the kitchen he is content to take his place, so long as he
   may be forgiven. He does not ask for a little liberty to sin, or
   stipulate for a little self-righteousness wherein he may boast; he
   gives all up. He is willing to be anything or nothing, just as his
   father pleases, so that he may but be numbered with his household. No
   weapons of rebellion are in his hands now. No secret opposition to his
   father's rule lingers in his soul, he is completely subdued, and lies
   at his father's feet. Our Lord never crushed a soul yet that lay
   prostrate at his feet, and he never will. He will stoop down and say,
   Rise, my child; rise, for I have forgiven thee. Go and sin no more. I
   have loved thee with an everlasting love.' Come and let us return unto
   the Lord, for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and
   he will bind us up. He will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the
   smoking flax.

   IV. Notice further, and fourthly, that IN THIS ACT THERE WAS A MEASURE
   OF FAITH IN HIS FATHER'a measure, I say, meaning thereby not much
   faith, but some. A little faith saves the soul. There was faith in his
   father's power. He said, In my father's house there is bread enough and
   to spare.' Sinner, dost thou not believe that God is able to save thee;
   that through Jesus Christ he is able to supply thy soul's needs. Canst
   thou not get as far as this, Lord, if thou wilt thou canst make me
   clean.' The prodigal had also some faith in his father's readiness to
   pardon; for if he had not so hoped he would never have returned to his
   father at all: if he had been sure that his father would never smile
   upon him he would never have returned to him. Sinner, do believe that
   God is merciful, for so he is. Believe, through Jesus Christ, that he
   willeth not the death of the sinner, but had rather that he should turn
   to him and live; for as surely as God this is truth, and do not thou
   believe a lie concerning thy God. The Lord is not hard or harsh, but he
   rejoices to pardon great transgressions. The prodigal also believed in
   his fathers readiness to bless him. He felt sure that his father would
   go as far as propriety would permit, for he said, I am not worthy to be
   called thy son, but make me at least thy servant.' In this also he
   admitted that his father was so good, that even to be his servant would
   be a great matter. He was contented even to get the lowest place, so
   long as he might be under the shade of so good a protector.

   Ah, poor sinner, dost thou not believe that God will have mercy on thee
   if he can do so consistently with his justice? If thou believest that,
   I have good news to tell thee. Jesus Christ, his Son, has offered such
   an atonement, that God can be just, and yet the justifier of him that
   believeth, he has mercy upon the vilest, and justifieth the ungodly,
   and accepteth the very chief of sinners through his dear Son. Oh, soul,
   have faith in the atonement. The atonement made by the personal
   sacrifice of the Son of God must be infinitely precious; believe thou
   that there is efficacy enough in it for thee. It is thy safety to fly
   to that atonement and cling to the Cross of Christ, and thou wilt honor
   God by so doing; is the only way in which thou canst honor him. Thou
   canst honor him by believing that he can save thee, even thee. The
   truest faith is that which believes in the mercy of God in the teeth of
   conscious unworthiness. The penitent in the parable went to his father
   too unworthy to be called his son, and yet he said, My father.' Faith
   has a way of seeing the blackness of sin, and yet believing that God
   can make the soul as white as snow. It is not faith that says, I am a
   little sinner, and therefore God can forgive me;' but that is faith
   which cries, I am a great sinner, an accursed and condemned sinner, and
   yet, for all that, God's infinite mercy can forgive me, and the blood
   of Christ can make me clean.' Believe in the teeth of thy feelings, and
   in spite of thy conscience; believe in God, though everything within
   thee seems to say, He cannot save thee; he will not save thee.' Believe
   in God, sinner, over the tops of mountain sins. Do as John Bunyan says
   he did, for he was so afraid of his sins and of the punishment thereof,
   that he could not but run into God's arms, and he said, Though he had
   held a drawn sword in his hands, I would have run on the very point of
   it, rather than have kept away from him.' So do thou, poor sinner.
   Believe thy God. Believe in nothing else, but trust thy God, and thou
   wilt get the blessing. It is wonderful the power of faith over God, it
   binds his justice and constrains his grace. I do not know how to
   illustrate it better than by a little story. When I walked down my
   garden some time ago I found a dog amusing himself among the flowers. I
   knew that he was not a good gardener, and no dog of mine, so I threw a
   stick at him and bade him begone. After I had done so, he conquered me,
   and made me ashamed of having spoken roughly to him, for he picked up
   my stick, and, wagging his tail right pleasantly, he brought the stick
   to me, and dropped it at my feet. Do you think I could strike him or
   drive him away after that? No, I patted him and called him good names.
   The dog had conquered the man. And if you, poor sinner, dog as you are,
   can have confidence enough in God to come to him just as you are, it is
   not in his heart to spurn you. There is an omnipotence in simple faith
   which will conquer even the divine Being himself. Only do but trust him
   as he reveals himself in Jesus, and you shall find salvation.

   V. I have not time or strength to dwell longer here, and so I must
   notice, fifthly, that THIS ACT OF COMING INTO CONTACT WITH GOD IS
   PERFORMED BY THE SINNER JUST AS HE IS. I do not know how wretched the
   prodigal's appearance may have been, but I will be bound to say he had
   grown none the sweeter by having fed swine, nor do I suppose his
   garments had been very sumptuously embroidered by gathering husks for
   then from the trees. Yet, just as he was, he came. Surely he might have
   spent an hour profitably in cleansing his flesh and his clothes. But
   no, he said, I will arise,' and no sooner said than done! he did arise,
   and he came to his father. Every moment that a sinner stops away from
   God in order to get better he is but adding to his sin, for the radical
   sin of all is his being away from God and the longer he stays in it the
   more he sins. The attempt to perform good works apart from God is like
   the effort of a thief to set his stolen goods in order, his sole duty
   is to return them at once. The very same pride which leads men away
   from God may be seen in their self-conceited notion that they can
   improve themselves while still they refuse to return to him. The
   essence of their fault is that they are far off from God, and whatever
   they do, so long as that distance remains, nothing is effectually done.
   I say the radical of the whole matter is distance from God, and
   therefore the commencement of setting matters right lies in arising and
   returning to him from whom they have departed.

   The prodigal was bound to go home just as he was, for there was nothing
   that he could do. He was reduced to such extremities that he could not
   purchase a fresh piece of cloth to mend his garments, nor a farthing's
   worth of soap with which to cleanse his flesh; and it is a great mercy
   when a man is so spiritually reduced that he cannot do anything but go
   to his God as a beggar, when he is so bankrupt that he cannot pay a
   farthing in the pound, when he is so lost that he cannot even repent or
   believe apart from God, but feels that he is for ever undone unless the
   Lord shall interpose. It is our wisdom to go to God for everything.

   Moreover, there was nothing needed from the prodigal but to return to
   his father. When a child who has done wrong comes back, the more its
   face is blurred with tears the better. When a beggar ask for charity,
   the more his clothes are in rags the better. Are not ram and sores the
   very livery of beggars? I once gave a man a pair of shoes because he
   said he was in need of them; but after he had put them on and gone a
   little way I overtook him in a gateway taking them off in order to go
   barefooted again. I think they were patent leather, and what should a
   beggar do in such attire? He was changing them for old shoes and
   clouted,' those were suitable to his business. A sinner is never so
   well arrayed for pleading as when he comes in rags. At his worst, the
   sinner, for making an appeal to mercy, is at his best. And so, sinners,
   there is no need for you to linger; come just as you are. But must we
   not wait for the Holy Spirit? Ah, beloved, he who is willing to arise
   and go to his Father has the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who
   moves us to return to God, and it is spirit of the flesh or of the
   devil that would bid us wait.

   How now, sinners? Some of you are sitting in those pews, where are you?
   I cannot find you out, but my Master can, he has made this sermon on
   purpose for you. Well, but I would like to get home and pray.' Pray
   where you are, in the pew. But I cannot speak out aloud.' You may if
   you like, I won't stop you. But I should not like.' Well, don't, then.
   God can hear you without a sound, though I wish sometimes we did hear
   people cry out, What must I do to be saved? I would gladly hear the
   prayer, God be merciful to me a sinner.' But if men cannot hear you,
   the Lord can hear the cries of their hearts. Now, just sit still a
   minute, and say, My God I must come to thee. Thou art in Jesus Christ,
   and in him thou has already come a great way to meet me. My soul wants
   thee; take me now and make me what I ought to be. Forgive me, and
   accept me.' It is the turning-point of a man's life when that is done,
   wherever it is, whether in a workshop, or in a saw-pit, in a church, or
   in a tabernacle; it does not matter where. There is the point'the
   getting to God in Christ, giving all up, and by faith resting in the
   mercy of God.

   VI. The last point of all is this'THAT ACT WROUGHT THE GREATEST
   CONCEIVABLE CHANGE IN THE MAN. He was a new man after that. Harlots,
   winebibbers, you have lost your old companion now! He has gone to his
   leather, and his Father's company and yours will never agree. A man's
   return to his God means his leaving the chambers of vice and the tables
   of riot. You may depend upon it whenever you hear of a professing
   Christian living in uncleanness, he has not been living anywhere near
   his God. He may have talked a great deal about it, but God and
   unchastity never agree; if you have friendship with God you will have
   no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.

   Now, too, the penitent has done with all degrading works to support
   himself. You will not find him feeding swine any more, or making a
   swine of himself either by trusting in priests or sacraments. He will
   not confess to a priest again, or pay a penny to get his mother out of
   purgatory; he is not such a fool as that any more. He has been to his
   God on his own account, and he does not want any of these shavelings to
   go to God for him. He has got away from that bondage. No more
   pig-feeding; no more superstition for him! Why,' says he, I have access
   with boldness to the mercy-seat, and what have I to do with the priests
   of Rome?'

   There is a change in him in all ways. Now he has come to his father his
   pride is broken down. He no longer glories in that which he calls his
   own; all his glory is in his father's free pardoning love. He never
   boasts of what he has, for he owns that he has nothing but what his
   father gives him; and though he is far better off than ever he was in
   his spendthrift days, yet he is as unassuming as a little child. He is
   a gentleman-commoner upon the bounty of his God, and lives from day to
   day by a royal grant from the table of the King of kings. Pride is
   gone, but content fills its room. He would have been contented to be
   one of the servants of the house, much more satisfied is he to be a
   child. He loves his father with a new love; he cannot even mention his
   name without saying, And he forgave me, he forgave me freely, he
   forgave me all, and he said, Bring forth the best robe and put it on
   him; put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet.' From the day of his
   restoration the prodigal is bound to his Father's home, and reckons it
   to be one of his greatest blessings that it is written in the covenant
   of grace, I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not
   depart from me.'

   This morning I believe that God in his mercy means to call many sinners
   to himself. I am often very much surprised to find how the Lord guides
   my word according to the persons before me. Last Sunday there came here
   a young son of a gentleman, a foreigner, from a distant land, under
   considerable impressions as to the truth of the Christian religion. His
   father is a follower of one of the ancient religions of the East, and
   this young gentleman naturally felt it a great difficulty that he would
   probably make his father angry if he became a Christian. Judge, then,
   how closely the message of last Sabbath came home to him, when the text
   was, What if thy father answer thee roughly? He came to tell me that he
   thanked God for that message, and he hoped to bear up under the trial,
   should persecution arise. I feel that I am with equal plainness
   speaking to some of you. I know I am. You are saying, May I now go to
   God joist as I am, and through Jesus Christ yield myself up; and will
   he forgive me? Dear brother, or dear sister, wherever you may be, try
   it. That is the best thing to do; try it; and, if the angels do not set
   the bells in heaven ringing, God has altered from what he was last
   week, for I know he received poor sinners then, and he will receive
   them now. The worst thing I dread about you is, lest you should say, I
   will think of it.' Don't think of it. Do it! Concerning this no more
   thinking is needed; but to do it. Get away to God. Is it not according
   to nature that the creature should he at peace with its Creator? Is it
   not according to your conscience? Is there not something within you
   which cries, Go to God in Christ Jesus.' In the case of that poor
   prodigal, the famine said to him, Go home!' Bread was dear, meat was
   scarce, he was hungry, and every pang of want said, Go home! Go home!'
   When he went to his old friend the citizen, and he asked him for help,
   his scowling looks said, Why don't you go home?' There is a time with
   sinners when even their old companions seem to say, We do not want you.
   You are too miserable and melancholy. Why don't you go home?' They sent
   him to feed swine, and the very hogs grunted, Go home?' When he picked
   up those carob husks and tried to eat them, they crackled, Go home.' He
   looked upon his rags, and they gaped at him, Go home.' His hungry belly
   and his faintness cried Go home.' Then he thought of his father's face,
   and how kindly it had looked at him, and it seemed to say, Come home!'
   He remembered the bread enough and to spare, and every morsel seemed to
   say, Come home! He pictured the servants sitting down to dinner and
   feasting to the full, and every one of them seemed be look right away
   over the wilderness to him and to say, Come home! Thy father feeds us
   well. Come home! Everything said, Come home! Only the devil whispered,
   Never go back. Fight it out! Better starve than yield! Die game! But
   then he had got away from the devil this once, for he had come to
   himself, and he said, No; I will arise and go to my father.' Oh that
   you would be equally wise. Sinner, what is the use of being damned for
   the sake of a little pride. Yield thee, man! Down with thy pride! You
   will not find it so hard to submit if you remember that dear Father who
   loved us and gave himself for us in the person of his own dear Son. You
   will find it sweet to yield to such a friend. And when you get your
   head in his bosom, and feel his warm kisses on your cheek, you will
   soon feel that it is sweet to weep for sin'sweet to confess your wrong
   doing, and sweeter still to hear him say, I have blotted out thy sins
   like a cloud, and like a thick cloud thy transgressions.' Though your
   sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red
   like crimson, they shall be as wool.'

   God Almighty grant this may be the case with hundreds of you this
   morning. He shall have all the glory of it, but my heart shall be very
   glad, for I feel nothing of the spirit of the elder brother within me,
   but the greatest conceivable joy at the thought of making merry with
   you by-and-by, when you come to own my Lord and Master, and we sit
   together at the sacramental feast, rejoicing in his love. God bless
   you, for his sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'Luke 15.

   HYMNS FROM OUR OWN HYMN BOOK''136 (Song I.), 614, 612.
     __________________________________________________________________

                            A Song Among the Lilies

   A Sermon

   (No. 1190)

   Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, August 30th, 1874, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.''Song of
   Solomon 2:16.

   LAST SABBATH, in our morning's sermon, we began at the beginning and
   described the turning point in which the sinner sets his face towards
   his God, and for the first time gives practical evidence of spiritual
   life in his soul. He bestirs himself, he goes to his Father's house,
   and speedily is pressed to his Father's bosom, forgiven, accepted, and
   rejoiced over. This morning we are going far beyond that stage, to a
   position which I may call the very crown and summit of the spiritual
   life. We would conduct you from the door-step to the innermost chamber,
   from the outer court to the Holy of Holies, and we pray the Holy Spirit
   to enable each one of us who have entered in by Christ Jesus, the door,
   to pass boldly into the secret place of the tabernacles of the Host
   High, and sing with joyful heart the words of our text, My beloved is
   mine, and I am his.'

   For he is mine and I am his,

   The God whom I adore;

   My Father, Savior, Comforter,

   Now and for evermore.'

   The passage describes a high state of grace, and it is worthy of note
   that the description is full of Christ. This is instructive, for this
   is not an exceptional case, it is only one fulfillment of a general
   rule. Our estimate of Christ is the best garage of our spiritual
   condition; as the thermometer rises in proportion to the increased
   warmth of the air, so does our estimate of Jesus rise as our spiritual
   life increases in vigor and fervency. Tell me what you think of Jesus
   and I will tell you what to think of yourself. Christ us, yea, more
   than all when we are thoroughly sanctified and filled with the Holy
   Ghost. When pride of self fills up the soul, there is little room for
   Jesus; but when Jesus is fully loved, self is subdued, and sin driven
   out of the throne. If we think little of the Lord Jesus we have very
   great cause to account ourselves spiritually blind, and naked, and
   poor, and miserable. The rebel despises his lawful sovereign, but the
   favored courtier is enthusiastic in his praise. Christ crucified is the
   revealer of many hearts, the touchstone by which the pure gold and the
   counterfeit metal are discerned; his very name is as a refiner's fire
   and like fuller's soap; false professors cannot endure it, but true
   believers triumph therein. We are growing in grace when we grow in the
   knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Let everything else be
   gone, and let Christ fill up the entire space of our soul, then, and
   only then, are we rising out of the vanity of the flesh into the real
   life of God.

   Beloved, the grandest facts in all the world to a truly spiritual man
   are not the rise and fall of empires, the marches of victory, or the
   desolations of defeat; he cares neither for crowns nor mitres, swords
   nor shields; his admiring gaze is wholly fixed upon Christ and his
   cross and cause. To him Jesus is the center of history, the soul and
   core of providence. He desires no knowledge so much as that which
   concerns his Redeemer and Lord; his science deals with what Jesus is
   and what he is to be, what he has done, what he is doing, and what he
   will do. The believer is mainly anxious as to how Jesus can be
   glorified, and how sinners can be brought to know him. That which
   concerns the honor of Jesus is our chief concern from day to day; as
   for other matters let the Lord do as he wills with them, only let Jesus
   Christ be magnified, and all the rest of the world's story has small
   significance for us. The Beloved is the head and front, the heart and
   soul of the Christian's delight when his heart is in its best state.
   Our text is the portrait of a heavenly-minded child of God, or rather,
   it is the music of his well stringed harp when love as minstrel touches
   the tenderest chords: My beloved is mine, and I am his; he feedeth
   among the lilies.'

   We shall note then, first, that here is a delighting to have Christ;
   secondly, a delighting to belong to Christ; and thirdly, a delighting
   at the very thought of Christ.

   I. First, here is A DELIGHTED TO HAVE CHRIST. My beloved is mine.' The
   spouse makes this the first of her joy notes, the cornerstone of her
   peace, the fountain of her bliss, the crown of her glory. Observe here
   that where such an expression is truthfully used the existence of the
   Beloved is matter of fact. Scepticism, and questioning have no place
   with those who thus sing. There are dreamers now-adays who cast doubt
   on everything; taking to themselves the name of philosophers, and
   professing to know something of science, they make statements worthy
   only of idiots, and demand for their self-evidently false assertions
   the assent of rational men. The word philosopher' will soon come to
   mean a lover of ignorance, and the term a scientific man' will be
   understood as meaning a fool, who has said in his heart there is no
   God. Such attacks upon the eternal verities of our holy faith can have
   no effect upon hearts enamoured of the Son of God, for, dwelling in his
   immediate presence, they have passed the stage of doubt, left the
   region of questioning far behind, and in this matter have entered into
   rest. The power of love has convinced us; to entertain a doubt as to
   the reality and glory of our Well-beloved would be torment to us, and
   therefore love has cast it out. We use no perhapses, buts, or ifs
   concerning our Beloved, but we say positively that he is, and that he
   is ours. We believe that we have better evidence of his being, power,
   Godhead, and love to us than can be given for any other fact. So far
   from being abashed by the cavils of sceptics, or quailing beneath the
   question, Is there such a Beloved?' we are not careful to answer in
   this matter, for we know that there is; our love laughs at the
   question, and does not condescend to answer it save by bidding those
   who seriously inquire to come and see' for themselves. We have ever
   found, beloved, that when a time of chilling doubt has come over us'and
   such ague fits will come'we have only to return to meditations upon
   Jesus and he becomes his own evidence by making our hearts burn within
   us with love of his character and person, and then doubt is doomed. We
   do not slay our unbelief by reason, but we annihilate it by affection.
   The influence of love to Jesus upon the soul is so magical'I wish I had
   a better word'so elevating, so ravishing, so transporting, it gives
   such a peace, and withal inspires such holy and lofty aspirations, that
   the effect proves the cause. That which is holy is true, and that which
   is true cannot rise out of that which is false. We may safely judge a
   tree by its fruit, and a doctrine by its result: that which produces in
   us self-denial, purity, righteousness, and truth, cannot itself be
   false, and yet the love of Jesus does this beyond everything else.
   There must be truth for a cause where truth is the effect; and thus
   love, by the savor which it spreads over the soul by contemplation of
   Christ, puts its foot upon the neck of doubt and triumphantly utters
   bold, confident declarations, which reveal the full assurance of faith.
   New-born love to Jesus, while yet in its cradle, like a young Hercules,
   takes the serpents of doubt and strangles them. He who can say from his
   heart My Beloved,' is the man who is in the way to confirmed faith.
   Love cannot, will not doubt; it casts away the crutches of argument and
   flies on the wings of conscious enjoyment, singing her nuptial hymn, My
   Beloved is mine, and I am his.'

   In the case before us the love of the heavenly-minded one is perceived
   and acknowledged by herself. My beloved,' saith she; it is no latent
   affection, she knows that she loves him, and solemnly avows it. She
   does not whisper, I hope I love the peerless one,' but she sings, My
   beloved.' There is no doubt in her soul about her passion for the
   altogether lovely one. Ah, dear friends, when you feel the flame of
   love within your soul, and give it practical expression, you will no
   longer inquire, Do I love the Lord or no? Then your inner consciousness
   will dispense with evidences. Those are dark days when we require
   evidences; well may we then fast, for the Bridegroom is not with us;
   but when he abides with us, enjoyment of his fellowship supersedes all
   evidences. I want no evidence to prove that food is sweet when it is
   still in my month; I want no evidence of the existence of the sun when
   I am basking in his beams, and enjoying his light, and even so we need
   no evidence that Jesus is precious to us when, like a bundle of myrrh,
   he perfumes our bosom. We are anxious doubters as to our safety, and
   questioners of our own condition, because we are not living with Jesus
   as we ought to be; but when he brings us to his banqueting house, and
   we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with him
   and with the Father, and then we believe and are sure, and our love to
   Jesus is indisputable, because it burns within too fervently to be
   denied. Why, when a Christian is in a right state, his love to Jesus is
   the mightiest force in his nature, it is an affection which, like
   Aaron's rod, swallows up all other rods; it is the mainspring of his
   action, and sways his whole body, soul, and spirit. As the wind sweeps
   over all the strings of the Alolian harp, and causes them all to
   vibrate, so does the love of Jesus move every power and passion of our
   soul, and we feel in our entire being that our Beloved is indeed ours,
   and that we love him with all our hearts. Here, then, is the Beloved
   realized, and our love realised too.

   But the pith of the text lies here, our possession of him is proven, we
   know it, and we know it on good evidence''My beloved is mine.' You know
   it is not a very easy thing to reach this point. Have you ever thought
   of the fact that to claim the Lord and call him my God,' is a very
   wonderful thing? Who was the first man in the Old Testament who is
   recorded as saying My God'? Was it not Jacob, when he slept at Bethel,
   and saw the ladder which reached to heaven? Even after that heavenly
   vision it took him touch effort to reach to My God.' He said If God
   will be with me and will keep me in the way that I go, and will give me
   bread to eat and raiment to put On, so that I come again to my father's
   house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God.' Only after long
   experience of divine goodness could he climb up to the height of saying
   My God.' And who is the first man in the New Testament that calls Jesus
   My Lord and My God'? It was Thomas, and he must needs have abundant
   proofs before he can speak thus: Except I see in his hands the print of
   the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my
   hand into his side, I will not believe.' Only when he had received such
   proofs could he exclaim My Lord and my God.' Blessed are they who reach
   it by simpler faith, who have not seen and yet have believed. My
   Beloved' is a strong expression. Beloved' is sweet, but MY Beloved' is
   sweetest of all. If you think of it, it is no little thing to claim God
   as ours, to claim Jesus the Beloved as ours, yea, to put it in the
   singular, and call him mine; and yet, when the believer's heart is in
   the right condition, he makes the claim, and is warranted in so doing;
   for Jesus Christ is the portion of all believers. His Father gave him
   to us, and he has given himself to us. Jesus was made over to every
   believing soul, as his personal possession, in the eternal covenant
   ordered in all things and sure; Jesus actually gave himself for us in
   his incarnation, becoming bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh; he
   has made himself ours by his passion and death, loving us and giving
   himself for us, to save us from our sins; he has also given us power to
   appropriate him by the gracious gift of faith, by which we are in very
   deed married to him, and are enabled to call him the husband of our
   souls, who is ours to have and to hold, for better for worse, for life
   and for death, by a bond of marriage union which neither death nor
   hell, time nor eternity, can break. Jesus is ours by the promise, the
   covenant, and oath of God; a thousand assurances and pledges, bonds and
   seals, secure him to us as our portion and everlasting heritage.

   This precious possession becomes to the believer his sole treasure. My
   beloved is mine,' saith he, and in that sentence he has summed up all
   his wealth. He does not say My wife, my children, my home, my earthly
   comforts are mine.' He is almost afraid to say so, because while he is
   yet speaking, they may cease to be his: the beloved wife may sicken
   before his eyes, the child may need a tiny coffin, the friend may prove
   a traitor, and the riches may take to themselves wings, therefore the
   wise man does not care to say too positively that anything here below
   is his; indexed, he feels that in very truth they are not his, but only
   lent to him to be returned anon'; but the Beloved is his own, and his
   possession of him is most firm. Neither doth the believer when his soul
   is in the best state so much rejoice even in his spiritual privileges
   as in the Lord from whom they come. He has righteousness, wisdom,
   sanctification and redemption; he has both grace and glory secured to
   him, but he prefers rather to claim the fountain than the streams. He
   clearly sees that these choice mercies are only his because they are
   Christ's, and only his because Christ is his. Oh, what would all the
   treasures of the covenant be to us if it were possible to have them
   without Christ? Their very sap and sweetness would be gone. Having our
   Beloved to be ours, we have all things in him, and therefore our main
   treasure, yea, our sole treasure, is our Beloved. O ye saints of God,
   was there ever possession like this? You have your beloveds, ye
   daughters of earth, but what are your beloveds compared with ours? He
   is the Son of God and the Son of Man! The darling of heaven and the
   delight of earth! The lily of the valley and the rose of Sharon!
   Perfect in his character, powerful in his atoning death, mighty in his
   living plea! He is such a lover that all earthly loves put together are
   not worthy to touch the hem of his garment, or loose the latchet of his
   shoes. He is so dear, so precious, that words cannot describe him nor
   pencil depict him, but this we will say of him, he is the chief among
   ten thousand, and the altogether lovely,' and he is ours. Do you wonder
   that we glory in this fact, and count this the crowning delight of our
   lives, My beloved is mine'?

   The very tenure upon which we hold this priceless possession is a
   matter to glory in. O worldlings, you cannot hold your treasures as we
   hold ours. If you knew all, you would never say of anything, It is
   mine,' for your holding is too precarious to constitute possession. It
   is yours till that frail thread of life shall snap, or that bubble of
   time shall burst. You have only a leasehold of your treasures,
   terminable at the end of one frail life; whereas ours is an eternal
   freehold, an everlasting entail. My beloved is mine,''I cannot lose
   him, nor can he be taken from me; he is mine for ever, for who shall
   separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord? So
   that, while the possession is rare, the tenure is rare also, and it the
   life of our life, and the light of our delight that we can sing'

   Yea, thou art mine, my blessed Lord,

   O my Beloved, thou art mine!

   And, purchased with thy precious blood,

   My God and Savior, I am thine.

   MY CHRIST! Oh, sing it in the heavens,

   Let every angel lift his voice;

   Sound with ten thousand harps his praise,

   With me, ye heavenly hosts, rejoice.

   The gift unspeakable is given,

   The grace of God has made him mine;

   And, now, before both earth and heaven,

   Lord, I will own that I am thine.'

   Now, beloved friends, I cannot talk about this as I feel, I can only
   give you hints of that which fills me to the full with joy. I beg you
   to contemplate for a single moment the delight which is stored up in
   this fact, that the blessed Son of God, the brightness of the Father's
   glory,' is all our own. Whatever else we may have, or may not have, he
   is ours. I may not exhibit in my character all the grace I could wish,
   but My beloved is mine'; I may have only one talent, but My beloved is
   mine'; I may be very poor and very obscure, but My beloved is mine'; I
   may have neither health nor wealth, but My beloved is mine'; I may not
   be what I want to be, but My beloved is mine.' Yea, he is altogether
   mine, his Godhead and his manhood, his life, his death, his attributes,
   and prerogatives, yea, all he is, all he was, all he ever will be, all
   he has done, and all he ever will do, is mine. I possess not a portion
   in Christ, but the whole of him. All his saints own him, but I own him
   as much as if there were never another saint to claim him. Child of
   God, do you see this? In other inheritances, if there are many heirs,
   there is so much the less for each, but in this great possession every
   one who has Christ has a whole Christ all to himself, from the head of
   much fine gold, down to his legs, which are as pillars of marble. The
   whole of his boundless heart of love, his whole arm of infinite might,
   and his whole head of matchless wisdom,'all is for thee, beloved.
   Whoever thou mayst be, if thou dost indeed trust in Jesus, he is all
   thine own.

   My beloved is all mine, and absolutely mine; not mine to look at and
   talk about merely, but mine to trust in, to speak to, to depend upon,
   to fly to in every troublous hour, yea, mine to feed upon, for his
   flesh is meat indeed, and his blood is drink indeed. Our beloved is not
   ours only to use in certain ways, but ours outright, without
   restriction. I may draw what I will from him, and both what I take and
   what I leave are mine. He himself in his ever glorious person is mine,
   and mine always; mine when I know it, and mine when I do not know it,
   mine when I am sure of it, and mine when I doubt it; mine by day, and
   mine by night; mine when I walk in holiness, ay, and mine when I sin,
   for if any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
   the righteous.' He is mine on the hill Mizar, and mine in the swellings
   of Jordan; mine by the grave where I bury those I love, mine when I
   shall be buried there myself, mine when I rise again; mine in judgment,
   and mine in glory; for ever mine.

   Note well that it is written, My beloved is mine,' in the singular. He
   is yours, I am glad of it; but still to me it is most sweet that he is
   mine. It is well to bless God that others have a possession in Christ,
   but what would that avail if we were strangers to him ourselves? The
   marrow and the fatness lie in the personal pronoun singular, My beloved
   is mine. I am so glad that Jesus loves me.' Oh for a blessed grip with
   both hands on such a Christ as this! Observe well that he is ours as
   our Beloved, so that he is ours as whatever our love makes of him. Our
   love can never praise him enough, or speak well enough of him, she
   thinks all descriptions fall short of his deservings; well, then, Jesus
   is ours at his best; if we think him so glorious, he is ours in all
   that glory. Our love says that he is a fair, lovely, sweet, and
   precious Christ, and let us be sure that, however lovely, sweet, and
   precious he is, he is all ours. Our love says there is none like him,
   he is King of kings and Lord of lords, he is the ever blessed; well, as
   the King of kings and Lord of lords he is yours. You cannot think too
   much of him, but when you think your best he is yours at that best. He
   has not a glory so high that it is not yours, nor a lustre so brilliant
   that it is not yours. He is my beloved, and I would fain extol him, but
   never can I get beyond this golden circle, when I most extol him he is
   still mine.

   Here, then, is the basis of Christian life, the foundation on which it
   rests: to know that most surely Christ is altogether ours is the
   beginning of wisdom, the source of strength, the star of hope, the dawn
   of heaven.

   II. The second portion of the text deals with DELIGHTING TO BELONG TO
   CHRIST. I am his.' This is as sweet as the former sentence. I would
   venture to put a question to each loving wife here present'when you
   were married which was the sweetest thought to you, that you were your
   husband's, or that he was yours? Why, you feel that neither sentence
   would be sweet alone: they are necessary to each other. Ask any fond,
   loving heart which of these declarations could best be parted with, and
   they will tell you that neither can be given us. Christ is mine, but if
   I were not his it would be a sorry case, and if I were his and he were
   not mine it would be a wretched business. These two things are joined
   together with diamond rivets''My beloved is mine, and I am his.' Put
   the two together, and you have reached the summit of delight.

   That we are his is a fact that may be proveyea, it should need no
   proving, but be manifest to all that I am his.' Certainly we are his by
   creation: he who made us should have us. We are his because his Father
   gave us to him, and we are his because he chose us. Creation, donation,
   election are his triple hold upon us. We are his because he bought us
   with his blood, his because he called us by his grace, his because he
   is married to us, and we are his spouse. We are his, moreover, to our
   own consciousness, because we have heartily, from the inmost depths of
   our being, given ourselves up to him, bound by love to him for ever. We
   feel we must have Christ, and be Christ's, or die''For me to live is
   Christ.' Brethren and sisters, mind you attend to this clause, I am
   sure you will if the former one is true to you. If you can say, My
   beloved is mine,' you will be sure to add, I am his, I must be his, I
   will be his: I live not unless I am his, for I count that wherein I am
   not his I am dead, and I only live wherein I live to him.' My very soul
   is conscious that I am his.

   Now this puts very great honor upon as. I have known the time when I
   could say My beloved is mine' in a very humble trembling manner, but I
   did not dare to add I am his' because I did not think I was worth his
   having. I dared not hope that I am his' would ever be written in the
   same book side by side with My beloved is mine.' Poor sinner, first lay
   hold on Jesus, and then you will discover that Jesus values you. You
   will prize him first, and then you will find out that he prizes you,
   and that though you do not feel worthy to be flung on a dunghill, yet
   Jesus has put a value upon you, saying Since thou wert precious in my
   sight thou hast been honorable, and I have loved thee.' It is no small
   joy to know that we poor sinners are worth Christ's having, and that he
   has even said, They shall be mine in the day when I make up my jewels.'

   This second part of the text is true as absolutely as the first. I am
   his''not my goods only, nor my time, nor my talents, nor what I can
   spare, but I am his.' I fear that some Christians have never understood
   this. They give the Lord a little of their surplus, which they never
   miss. The poor widow who gave all her living, had the true idea of her
   relation to her Lord. She would have put herself into the treasury if
   she could, for she felt I am his.' As for myself, I wish I could be
   dropped bodily through the little slit of Christ's treasure box, and be
   in his casket for ever, never to be heard of any more as my own, but to
   be wholly my Lord's. Paul desired to spend and be spent. It is not easy
   to do those two things distinctly with money, for when you spend a
   thing it is spent at one and the same time, but the apostle meant that
   he would spend himself by activity, and then when he could do no more,
   he would be glad to be spent by passive endurance for Christ's sake.
   The believer feels that he belongs to Jesus absolutely; let the Lord
   employ him as he may, or try him as he pleases; let him take away all
   earthly friends from him or surround him with comforts; let him either
   depress him or exalt him, let him use him for little things or great
   things, or not use him at all, but lay him on the shelf; it is enough
   that the Lord does it, and the true heart is content, for it truthfully
   confesses, I am his. I have no mortgage or lien upon myself, so that I
   can call a part of my being my own, but I am absolutely and
   unreservedly my Lord's sole property.' Do you feel this, brethren and
   sisters? I pray God you may.

   Blessed be God, this is true evermore'I am his,' his to-day, in the
   house of worship, and his to-morrow in the house of business; his as a
   singer in the sanctuary, and his as a toiler in the workshop; his when
   I am preaching, and equally his when I am walking the streets; his
   while I live, his when I die; his when my soul ascends and my body lies
   mouldering in the grave; the whole personality of my manhood is
   altogether his for ever and for ever.

   This belonging to the Well-beloved is a matter of fact and practice,
   not a thing to be talked about only, but really to be acted on. I am
   treading on tender ground now, but I would to God that every Christian
   could really say this without lying: I do live unto Christ in all
   things, for I am his. When I rise in the morning I wake up as his, when
   I sit down to a meal I eat as his, and drink as his. I eat, and drink,
   and sleep unto the Lord, in everything giving thanks unto him. It is
   blessed even to sleep as the Lord's beloved, to dream as his Abrahams
   and Jacobs do, to awake at night and sing like David, and then drop off
   to sleep in Jesus.' It is a high condition,' say you. I grant it, but
   it is where we ought to abide. The whole of our time and energy should
   be consecrated by this great master principle, I am his.' Can you say
   it? Never rest till you can. And if you can, beloved, it involves great
   privilege. I am his,' then am I honored by having such an owner. If a
   horse or a sheep is said to belong to the Queen, everybody thinks much
   of it: now you are not the Queen's, but you are the Lord's, and that is
   far more. Through belonging to Christ you are safe, for he will surely
   keep his own. He will not lose his own sheep, he paid too dear a price
   for them to lose them. Against all the powers of earth and hell the
   Redeemer will hold his own and keep them to the end. If you are his he
   will provide for you. A good husband careth for his spouse, and even
   thus the Lord Jesus Christ cares for those who are betrothed unto him.
   You will be perfected too, for whatever Christ has he will make worthy
   of himself and bring it to glory. It is because we are his that we
   shall get to heaven, for he has said, Father, I will that they also
   whom thou hast given me be with me where I am.' Because they are his he
   would have them with him.

   Now, give your thoughts licence to wonder that any one of us should be
   able to say, I am his.' I who used to be so giddy and thought' less, So
   sceptical, and perhaps profane, I am his.' Ay, and some of you can say,
   I who used to be passionate and proud, I who was a drunkard, I whose
   lips were black with blasphemy, I am his.' Glory he unto thee, O Jesus
   Christ, for this, that thou hast taken up such worthless things as we
   are and made us thine. No longer do we belong to this present evil
   world, we live for the world to come. We do not even belong to the
   church, so as to make it our master; we are part of the flock, but like
   all the rest we belong to the Great Shepherd. We will not give
   ourselves up to any party, or become the slave of any denomination, for
   we belong to Christ. We do not belong to sin, or self, or Satan; we
   belong entirely, exclusively, and irrevocably to the Lord Jesus Christ.
   Another master waits upon us and asks us to give our energies to his
   services, but our answer is, I am already engaged.' How is that?' I
   bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus, and therefore from
   henceforth trouble me no more.' But can you not serve me in part?' No,
   sir, I cannot serve two masters; I am not like a man who can do as he
   pleases, I have no time to call my own.' How is that?' I belong to
   Christ, I am wholly his. If there is anything to be done for him I am
   his man to the best of my ability; I decline no service to which he
   calls me, but I can serve no other Lord.' Lord Jesus, help each one of
   us now to say'

   I am thine, and thine alone,

   This I gladly, fully own;

   And in all my works and ways,

   Only now would seek thy praise.'

   III. To conclude: the saint feels DELIGHT IN THE VERY THOUGHT OF
   CHRIST. He feedeth among the lilies.' When we love any persons, and we
   are away from home, we delight to think of them, and to remember what
   they are doing. You are a husband travailing in a foreign land; this
   morning you said to yourself, At this time they are just getting up at
   home.' Perhaps the time is different, for you are in another longitude,
   and you say to yourself, Ah, now the dear children are just getting
   ready to go to the Sabbath-school;' and by-and-by you think they are at
   dinner. So delight in the thought of Christ made the church say, He
   feedeth among the lilies.' She was pleased to think of where he was and
   what he was doing.

   Now, where is Jesus? What are these lilies? Do not these lilies
   represent the pure in heart, with whom Jesus dwells? The spouse used
   the imagery which her Lord had put into her mouth. He said As the lily
   among thorns, so is my love among the daughters,' and she appropriates
   the symbol to all the saints. A preacher who is great at spiritualizing
   has well said on this verse, The straight stalk, standing up erect from
   the earth, its flowers as high from the ground as possible, do they not
   tell us of heavenly-mindedness? Do they not seem to say, set your
   affection on things above, not on things on the earth'? And if the
   spotless snow of the leaves teaches us of grace, then the gold of the
   anthers tells us of that crown which shall be the reward of grace.' The
   violet and the primrose in spring nestle close to the earth, as if in
   sympathy with her chill condition, but the lily lifts up itself towards
   heaven in sympathy with the summer's light and splendor. The lily is
   frail, and such are the saints of God; were not Jesus among them to
   protect them the wild beast would soon tread them down. Frail as they
   are, they are surpassingly lovely, and their beauty is not that which
   is made with hands. It is a beauty put upon them by the Lord, for they
   toil not, neither do they spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not
   arrayed like one of these.' The saints work not for life, and spin no
   righteousness of their own, and yet the royal righteousness which
   adorns them far surpasses all that wisdom could devise or wealth
   procure.

   Where, then, is my Lord to-day? He is up and away, among the lilies of
   Paradise. In imagination I see those stately rows of milkwhite lilies
   growing no longer among thorns: lilies which are never soiled with the
   dust of earth, which for ever glisten with the eternal dews of
   fellowship, while their roots drink in unfading life from the river of
   the water of life which waters the garden of the Lord. There is Jesus!
   Can you see him? He is fairer even than the lilies which bow their
   heads around him. But he is here too where we are, like lilies which
   have scarce opened yet, lily buds as yet, but still watered by the same
   river, and yielding in our measure the same perfume. O ye lilies of
   Christ's own planting, he is among you; Jesus is in this house to-day,
   the unction which has made his garments so fragrant is discerned among
   us.

   But what is he doing among the lilies? It is said, He feedeth among the
   lilies.' He is feeding himself, not on the lilies, but among them. Our
   Lord finds solace among his people. His delights are with the sons of
   men; he joys to see the graces of his people, to receive their love,
   and to discern his own image in their faces. As he said to the woman of
   Samaria, Give me to drink,' so does he say to each one of his people,
   Give me to drink,' and he is refreshed by their loving fellowship. But
   the text means that he is feeding his people. He feedeth that part of
   his flock redeemed by blood of which we read that the Lamb which is in
   the midst of the throne shall feed them and shall lead them into living
   fountains of waters.' Nor does he forget that part of his bock which is
   in the low lands of earth, but he gives them also their portion of
   food. He has fed us this morning, for he is the good Shepherd, and
   leaves none of his sheep to famish.

   Then what shall I do? Well, I will abide among the lilies. His saints
   shall be my companions. Where they flourish I will try to grow. I will
   be often in their assemblies. Ay, and I will be a lily too. By faith I
   will neither toil nor spin in a legal fashion, but I will live by faith
   upon the Son of God, rooted in him. I would be pure in life, and I
   would have the golden anther of looking to the recompense of the
   reward. I would lift up my soul aloft' towards heaven as the lily lifts
   up its flower. Jesus will come and feed by my side if I am a lily, and
   even I may yield him some pleasure by my humble gratitude.

   Beloved, this is a choice subject, but it is more sweet as a matter of
   fact than mere hearing can make it. He feedeth among the lilies.' This
   is our joy, that Christ is in his church, and the pith of all I want to
   say is this; never think of yourself or of the church apart from Jesus.
   The spouse says, My beloved is mine, and I am his', she weaves the two
   into one. The cause of the church is the cause of Christ; the work of
   God will never be accomplished by the church apart from Christ, her
   power lies in his being in her midst. He feedeth among the lilies, and
   therefore those lilies shall never be destroyed, but their sweetness
   shall make fragrant all the earth. The church of Christ, working with
   her Lord, must conquer, but never if she tries to stand alone or to
   compass any end apart from him.

   As for each one of us personally, let us not think of ourselves apart
   from Christ, nor of Christ apart from us. Let George Herbert's prayer
   be ours.

   Oh, be mine still, still make me thine,

   Or rather make nor mine nor thine.'

   Let mine melt into thine. Oh, to have joint stock with Christ, and to
   trade under one name; to be married to Christ and lose our old name,
   and wast his name, and say, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in
   me.' As the wife is lost in the husband, and the stone in the building,
   and the branch in the vine, and the member in the head, we would be so
   amalgamated with Christ, and have such fellowship with him that there
   shall be no more mine nor thine.

   Last of all, poor sinner, you will say, There is nothing in all this
   for me,' and I should not like to send you away without a word. You are
   saying This is a day of good tidings, but it is only for God's own
   people.' I beg you to read through the first and second chapters of the
   Song, and see who it was that said, My beloved is mine,' because I
   should not wonder but what you are very like her. She was one who
   confessed, I am black', and so are you. Perhaps grace will, one of
   these days, help you to say, I am comely.' She was one with whom her
   mother's children were angry'perhaps you, too, are a speckled bird. She
   had done servile work, for they made her a keeper of the vineyards. I
   should not wonder but what you are doing servile work, too, trying to
   save yourself instead of accepting the salvation which Jesus has
   already wrought out for sinners. So it came to pass that she became
   very sorrowful and passed through a winter of rain and cold. Perhaps
   you are there; and yet you know she came out of it her winter was past,
   and the birds began to sing. She had been hidden in the secret places
   of the stairs, as you are now; but she was called out from the dust and
   cobwebs to see the face of her Lord.

   One thing I wish to whisper in your ears'she was in the clefts of the
   rock. O soul, if thou canst but get there, if thou canst shelter in the
   riven side of our Beloved, that deep gash of the spear from which
   flowed blood and water, to be of sin the double cure'; if thou canst
   get there, I say, though thou be black and grimed with sin, and an
   accursed sinner, only fit to be a firebrand in hell, yet shalt thou,
   even thou, be able to sing with all the rapture of the liveliest saint
   on earth, and one day with all the transport of the brightest ones
   above, My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.'
   There, go your way with those silver bells ringing in your ears; they
   ring a marriage peal to saints, but they ring also a cheery invitation
   to sinners, and this is the tune they are set to'Come and welcome! Come
   and welcome! Come and welcome! Sinner, come! God bless you, for Jesus'
   sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'Song of Solomon 2.

   HYMNS FROM OUR OWN HYMN BOOK''660, 663, 614.

   The Turning Point.'
     __________________________________________________________________

                            For Whom Did Christ Die?

   A Sermon

   (No. 1191)

   Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, September 6th, 1874, by

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

   Christ died for the ungodly.''Romans 5:6.

   In this verse the human race is described as a sick man, whose disease
   is so far advanced that he is altogether without strength: no power
   remains in his system to throw off his mortal malady, nor does he
   desire to do so; he could not save himself from his disease if he
   would, and would not if he could. I have no doubt that the apostle had
   in his eye the description of the helpless infant given by the prophet
   Ezekiel; it was an infant'an infant newly born'an infant deserted by
   its mother before the necessary offices of tenderness had been
   performed; left unwashed, unclothed, unfed, a prey to certain death
   under the most painful circumstances, forlorn, abandoned, hopeless. Our
   race is like the nation of Israel, its whole head is sick, and its
   whole heart faint. Such, unconverted men, are you! Only there is this
   darker shade in your picture, that your condition is not only your
   calamity, but your fault. In other diseases men are grieved at their
   sickness, but this is the worst feature in your case, that you love the
   evil which is destroying you. In addition to the pity which your case
   demands, no little blame must be measured out to you: you are without
   will for that which is good, your cannot' means will not,' your
   inability is not physical but moral, not that of the blind who cannot
   see for want of eyes, but of the willingly ignorant who refuse to look.

   While man is in this condition Jesus interposes for his salvation. When
   we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly';
   while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,' according to his great
   love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses and
   sins.' The pith of my sermon will be an endeavour to declare that the
   reason of Christ's dying for us did not lie in our excellence; but
   where sin abounded grace did much more abound, for the persons for whom
   Jesus died were viewed by him as the reverse of good, and he came into
   the world to save those who are guilty before God, or, in the words of
   our text, Christ died for the ungodly.'

   Now to our business. We shall dwell first upon the fact'Christ died for
   the ungodly'; then we shall consider the fair inferences therefrom;
   and, thirdly, proceed to think and speak of the proclamation of this
   simple but wondrous truth.

   First, here is THE FACT''Christ died for the ungodly.' Never did the
   human ear listen to a more astounding and yet cheering truth. Angels
   desire to look into it, and if men were wise they would ponder it night
   and day. Jesus, the Son of God, himself God over all, the infinitely
   glorious One, Creator of heaven and earth, out of love to me stooped to
   become a man and die. Christ, the thrice holy God, the pure-hearted
   man, in whom there was no sin and could be none, espoused the cause of
   the wicked. Jesus, whose doctrine makes deadly war on sin, whose Spirit
   is the destroyer of evil, whose whole self abhors iniquity, whose
   second advent will prove his indignation against transgression, yet
   undertook the cause of the impious, and even unto death pursued their
   salvation. The Christ of God, though he had no part or lot in the fall
   and the sin which has arisen out of it, has died to redeem us from its
   penalty, and, like the psalmist, he can cry, Then I restored that which
   I took not away.' Let all holy beings judge whether this is not the
   miracle of miracles!

   Christ, the name given to our Lord, is an expressive word; it means
   Anointed One,' and indicates that he was sent upon a divine errand,
   commissioned by supreme authority. The Lord Jehovah said of old, I have
   laid help upon one that is mighty, I have exalted one chosen out of the
   people'; and again, I have given him as a covenant to the people, a
   leader and commander to the people.' Jesus was both set apart to this
   work, and qualified for it by the anointing of the Holy Ghost. He is no
   unauthorised saviour, no amateur deliverer, but an ambassador clothed
   with unbounded power from the great King, a Redeemer with full
   credentials from the Father. It is this ordained and appointed Saviour
   who has died for the ungodly.' Remember this, ye ungodly! Consider well
   who it was that came to lay down his life for such as you are.

   The text says Christ died. He did a great deal besides dying, but the
   crowning act of his career of love for the ungodly, and that which
   rendered all the rest available to them, was his death for them. He
   actually gave up the ghost, not in fiction, but in fact. He laid down
   his life for us, breathing out his soul, even as other men do when they
   expire. That it might be indisputably clear that he was really dead,
   his heart was pierced with the soldier's spear, and forthwith came
   there out blood and water. The Roman governor would not have allowed
   the body to be removed from the cross had he not been duly certified
   that Jesus was indeed dead. His relatives and friends who wrapped him
   in linen and laid him in Joseph's tomb, were sorrowfully sure that all
   that lay before them was a corpse. The Christ really died, and in
   saying that, we mean that he suffered all the pangs incident to death;
   only he endured much more and worse, for his was a death of peculiar
   pain and shame, and was not only attended by the forsaking of man, but
   by the departure of his God. That cry, My God, my God! why hast thou
   forsaken me?' was the innermost blackness of the thick darkness of
   death.

   Our Lord's death was penal, inflicted upon him by divine justice; and
   rightly so, for on him lay our iniquities, and therefore on him must
   lay the suffering. It pleased the Father to bruise him; he hath put him
   to grief.' He died under circumstances which made his death most
   terrible. Condemned to a felon's gibbet, he was crucified amid a mob of
   jesters, with few sympathising eyes to gaze upon him; he bore the gaze
   of malice and the glance of scorn; he was hooted and jeered by a ribald
   throng, who were cruelly inventive in their taunts and blasphemies.
   There he hung, bleeding from many wounds, exposed to the sun, burning
   with fever, and devoured with thirst, under every circumstance of
   contumely, pain, and utter wretchedness; his death was of all deaths
   the most deadly death, and emphatically Christ died.'

   But the pith of the text comes here, that Christ died for the ungodly;
   not for the righteous, not for the reverent and devout, but for the
   ungodly. Look at the original word, and you will find that it has the
   meaning of impious, irreligious, and wicked.' Our translation is by no
   means too strong, but scarcely expressive enough. To be ungodly, or
   godless, is to be in a dreadful state, but as use has softened the
   expression, perhaps you will see the sense more clearly if I read it,
   Christ died for the impious, for those who have no reverence for God.
   Christ died for the godless, who, having cast off God, cast off with
   him all love for that which is right. I do not know a word that could
   more fitly describe the most irreligious of mankind than the original
   word in this place, and I believe it is used on purpose by the Spirit
   of God to convey to us the truth, which we are always slow to receive,
   that Christ did not die because men were good, or would be good, but
   died for them as ungodly'or, in other words, he came to seek and to
   save that which was lost.'

   Observe, then, that when the Son of God determined to die for men, he
   viewed them as ungodly, and far from God by wicked works. In casting
   his eye over our race he did not say, Here and there I see spirits of
   nobler mould, pure, truthful, truth-seeking, brave, disinterested, and
   just; and therefore, because of these choice ones, I will die for this
   fallen race.' No; but looking on them all, he whose judgment is
   infallible returned this verdict, They are all gone out of the way;
   they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good,
   no, not one.' Putting them down at that estimate, and nothing better,
   Christ died for them. He did not please himself with some rosy dream of
   a superior race yet to come, when the age of iron should give place to
   the age of gold,'some halcyon period of human development, in which
   civilisation would banish crime, and wisdom would conduct man back to
   God. Full well he knew that, left to itself, the world would grow worse
   and worse, and that by its very wisdom it would darken its own eyes. It
   was not because a golden age would come by natural progress, but just
   because such a thing was impossible, unless he died to procure it, that
   Jesus died for a race which, apart from him, could only develop into
   deeper damnation. Jesus viewed us as we really were, not as our pride
   fancies us to be; he saw us to be without God, enemies of our own
   Creator, dead in trespasses and sins, corrupt, and set on mischief, and
   even in our occasional cry for good, searching for it with blinded
   judgment and prejudiced heart, so that we put bitter for sweet and
   sweet for bitter. He saw that in us was no good thing, but every
   possible evil, so that we were lost,'utterly, helplessly, hopelessly
   lost apart from him: yet viewing us as in that graceless and Godless
   plight and condition, he died for us.

   I would have you remember that the view under which Jesus beheld us was
   not only the true one, but, for us, the kindly one; because had it been
   written that Christ died for the better sort, then each troubled spirit
   would have inferred he died not for me.' Had the merit of his death
   been the perquisite of honesty, where would have been the dying thief?
   If of chastity, where the woman that loved much? If of courageous
   fidelity, how would it have fared with the apostles, for they all
   forsook him and fled? There are times when the bravest man trembles
   lest he should be found a coward, the most disinterested frets about
   the selfishness of his heart, and the most pure is staggered by his own
   impurity; where, then, would have been hope for one of us, if the
   gospel had been only another form of law, and the benefits of the cross
   had been reserved as the rewards of virtue? The gospel does not come to
   us as a premium for virtue, but it presents us with forgiveness for
   sin. It is not a reward for health, but a medicine for sickness.
   Therefore, to meet all cases, it puts us down at our worst, and, like
   the good Samaritan with the wounded traveller, it comes to us where we
   are. Christ died for the impious' is a great net which takes in even
   the leviathan sinner; and of all the creeping sinners innumerable which
   swarm the sea of sin, there is not one kind which this great net does
   not encompass.

   Let us note well that in this condition lay the need of our race that
   Christ should die. I do not see how it could have been written Christ
   died for the good.' To what end for the good? Why need they his death?
   If men are perfect, does God need to be reconciled to them? Was he ever
   opposed to holy beings? Impossible! On the other hand, were the good
   ever the enemies of God? If such there be are they not of necessity his
   friends? If man be by nature just with God, to what end should the
   Saviour die? The just for the unjust I can understand; but the just
   dying for the just' were a double injustice'an injustice that the just
   should be punished at all, and another injustice that the just should
   be punished for them. Oh no! If Christ died, it must be because there
   was a penalty to be paid for sin committed, hence he must have died for
   those who had committed the sin. If Christ died, it must have been
   because a fountain filled with blood' was necessary for the cleansing
   away of heinous stains; hence, it must have been for those who are
   defiled. Suppose there should be found anywhere in this world an
   unfallen man'perfectly innocent of all actual sin, and free from any
   tendency to it, there would be a superfluity of cruelty in the
   crucifixion of the innocent Christ for such an individual. What need
   has he that Christ should die for him, when he has in his own innocence
   the right to live? If there be found beneath the copes of heaven an
   individual who, notwithstanding some former slips and flaws, can yet,
   by future diligence, completely justify himself before God, then it is
   clear that there is no need for Christ to die for him. I would not
   insult him by telling him that Christ died for him, for he would reply
   to me, Why should he? Cannot I make myself just without him?' In the
   very nature of things it must be so, that if Christ Jesus dies he must
   die for the ungodly. Such agonies as his would not have been endured
   had there not been a cause, and what cause could there have been but
   sin?

   Some have said that Jesus died as our example; but that is not
   altogether true. Christ's death is not absolutely an example for men,
   it was a march into a region of which he said, Ye cannot follow me
   now.' His life was our example, but not his death in all respects, for
   we are by no means bound to surrender ourselves voluntarily to our
   enemies as he did, but when persecuted in one city we are bidden to
   flee to another. To be willing to die for the truth is a most Christly
   thing, and in that Jesus is our example; but into the winepress which
   he trod it is not ours to enter, the voluntary element which was
   peculiar to his death renders it inimitable. He said, I lay down my
   life of myself; no man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.'
   One word of his would have delivered him from his foes; he had but to
   say Begone!' and the Roman guards must have fled like chaff before the
   wind. He died because he willed to do so; of his own accord he yielded
   up his spirit to the Father. It must have been as an atonement for the
   guilty; it could not have been as an example, for no man is bound
   voluntarily to die. Both the dictates of nature, and the command of the
   law, require us to preserve our lives. Thou shalt not kill' means Thou
   shalt not voluntarily give up thine own life any more than take the
   life of another.' Jesus stood in a special position, and therefore he
   died; but his example would have been complete enough without his
   death, had it not been for the peculiar office which he had undertaken.
   We may fairly conclude that Christ died for men who needed such a
   death; and, as the good did not need it for an example'and in fact it
   is not an example to them'he must have died for the ungodly.

   The sum of our text is this'all the benefits resulting from the
   Redeemer's passion, and from all the works that followed upon it, are
   for those who by nature are ungodly. His gospel is that sinners
   believing in him are saved. His sacrifice has put away sin from all who
   trust him, and, therefore, it was offered for those who had sin upon
   them before. He rose again for our justification,' but certainly not
   for the justification of those who can be justified by their own works.
   He ascended on high, and we are told that he received gifts for men,
   yea, for the rebellious also.' He lives to intercede, and Isaiah tells
   us that He made intercession for the transgressors.' The aim of his
   death, resurrection, ascension, and eternal life, is towards the sinful
   sons of men. His death has brought pardon, but it cannot be pardon for
   those who have no sin'pardon is only for the guilty. He is exalted on
   high to give repentance,' but surely not to give repentance to those
   who have never sinned, and have nothing to repent of. Repentance and
   remission both imply previous guilt in those who receive them: unless,
   then, these gifts of the exalted Saviour are mere shams and
   superfluities, they must be meant for the really guilty. From his side
   there flowed out water as well as blood'the water is intended to
   cleanse polluted nature, then certainly not the nature of the sinless,
   but the nature of the impure; and so both blood and water flowed for
   sinners who need the double purification. To-day the Holy Spirit
   regenerates men as the result of the Redeemer's death; and who can be
   regenerated but those who need a new heart and a right spirit? To
   regenerate the already pure and innocent were ridiculous; regeneration
   is a work which creates life where there was formerly death, gives a
   heart of flesh to those whose hearts were originally stone, and
   implants the love of holiness where sin once had sole dominion.
   Conversion is also another gift, which comes through his death, but
   does he turn those whose faces are already in the right direction? It
   cannot be. He converts the sinner from the error of his ways, he turns
   the disobedient into the right way, he leads back the stray sheep to
   the fold. Adoption is another gift which comes to us by the cross. Does
   the Lord adopt those who are already his sons by nature? If children
   already, what room is there for adoption? No; but the grand act of
   divine love is that which takes those who are children of wrath even as
   others,' and by sovereign grace puts them among the children, and makes
   them heirs of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ.'

   To-day I see the Good Shepherd in all the energy of his mighty love,
   going forth into the dreadful wilderness. For whom is he gone forth?
   For the ninety and nine who feed at home? No, but into the desert his
   love sends him, over hill and dale, to seek the one lost sheep which
   has gone astray. Behold, I see him arousing his church, like a good
   housewife, to cleanse her house. With the besom of the law she sweeps,
   and with the candle of the word she searches, and what for? For those
   bright new coined pieces fresh from the mint, which glitter safely in
   her purse? Assuredly not, but for that lost piece which has rolled away
   into the dust, and lies hidden in the dark corner. And lo! grandest of
   all visions! I see the Eternal Father, himself, in the infinity of his
   love, going forth in haste to meet a returning child. And whom does he
   go to meet? The elder brother returning from the field, bringing his
   sheaves with him? An Esau, who has brought him savoury meat such as his
   soul loveth? A Joseph whose godly life has made him lord over all
   Egypt? Nay, the Father leaves his home to meet a returning prodigal,
   who has companied with harlots, and grovelled among swine, who comes
   back to him in disgraceful rags, and disgusting filthiness! It is on a
   sinner's neck that the Father weeps; it is on a guilty cheek that he
   sets his kisses; it is for an unworthy one that the fatted calf is
   killed, and the best robe is worn, and the house is made merry with
   music and with dancing. Yes, tell it, and let it ring round earth and
   heaven, Christ died for the ungodly. Mercy seeks the guilty, grace has
   to do with the impious, the irreligious and the wicked. The physician
   has not come to heal the healthy, but to heal the sick. The great
   philanthropist has not come to bless the rich and the great, but the
   captive and the prisoner. He puts down the mighty from their seats, for
   he is a stern leveller, but he has come to lift the beggar from the
   dunghill, and to set him among princes, even the princes of his people.
   Sing ye, then, with the holy Virgin, and let your song be loud and
   sweet,''He hath filled the hungry with good things, but the rich he
   hath sent empty away.' This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all
   acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.' He
   is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him, seeing
   he ever liveth to make intercession for them.' O ye guilty ones,
   believe in him and live.

   II. Let us now consider THE PLAIN INFERENCES FROM THIS FACT. Let me
   have your hearts as well as your ears, especially those of you who are
   not yet saved, for I desire you to be blessed by the truths uttered;
   and oh, may the Spirit of God cause it to be so. It is clear that those
   of you who are ungodly'and if you are unconverted you are that'are in
   great danger. Jesus would not interpose his life and bear the bloody
   sweat and crown of thorns, and nails, and spear, and scorn unmitigated,
   and death itself, if there were not solemn need and imminent peril.
   There is danger, solemn danger, for you. You are under the wrath of God
   already, and you will soon die, and then, as surely as you live, you
   will be lost, and lost forever; as certain as the righteous will enter
   into everlasting life, you will be driven into everlasting punishment.
   The cross is the danger signal to you, it warns you that if God spared
   not his only Son, he will not spare you. It is the lighthouse set on
   the rocks of sin to warn you that swift and sure destruction awaits you
   if you continue to rebel against the Lord. Hell is an awful place, or
   Jesus had not needed to suffer such infinite agonies to save us from
   it.

   It is also fairly to be inferred that out of this danger only Christ
   can deliver the ungodly, and he only through his death. If a less price
   than that of the life of the Son of God could have redeemed men, he
   would have been spared. When a country is at war, and you see a mother
   give up her only boy to fight her country's battles'her only
   well-beloved, blameless son'you know that the battle must be raging
   very fiercely, and that the country is in stern danger: for, if she
   could find a substitute for him, though she gave all her wealth, she
   would lavish it freely to spare her darling. If she were certain that
   in his heart a bullet would find its target, she must have strong love
   for her country, and her country must be in dire necessity ere she
   would bid him go. If, then, God spared not his Son, but freely
   delivered him up for us all,' there must have been a dread necessity
   for it. It must have stood thus: die he, or the sinner must, or justice
   must; and since justice could not, and the Father desired that the
   sinner should not, then Christ must; and so he did. Oh, miracle of
   love! I tell you, sinners, you cannot help yourselves, nor can all the
   priests of Rome or Oxford help you, let them perform their antics as
   they may; Jesus alone can save, and that only by his death. There on
   the bloody tree hangs all man's hope; if you enter heaven it must be by
   force of the incarnate God's bleeding out his life for you. You are in
   such peril that only the pierced hand can lift you out of it. Look to
   him, at once, I pray you, ere the proud waters go over your soul.

   Then let it be noticed'and this is the point I want constantly to keep
   before your view'that Jesus died out of pure pity. He must have died
   out of the most gratuitous benevolence to the undeserving, because the
   character of those for whom he died could not have attracted him, but
   must have been repulsive to his holy soul. The impious, the godless'can
   Christ love these for their character? No, he loved them
   notwithstanding their offences, loved them as creatures fallen and
   miserable, loved them according to the multitude of his
   loving-kindnesses and tender mercies, from pity, and not from
   admiration. Viewing them as ungodly, yet he loved them. This is
   extraordinary love! I do not wonder that some persons are loved by
   others, for they wear a potent charm in their countenances, their ways
   are winsome, and their characters charm you into affection; but God
   commendeth his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ
   died for us.' He looked at us, and there was not a solitary beauty spot
   upon us: we were covered with wounds, and bruises, and putrefying
   sores,' distortions, defilements, and pollutions; and yet, for all
   that, Jesus loved us. He loved us because he would love us; because his
   heart was full of pity, and he could not let us perish. Pity moved him
   to seek the most needy objects that his love might display its utmost
   ability in lifting men from the lowest degradation, and putting them in
   the highest position of holiness and honour.

   Observe another inference. If Christ died for the ungodly, this fact
   leaves the ungodly no excuse if they do not come to him, and believe in
   him unto salvation. Had it been otherwise they might have pleaded, We
   are not fit to come.' But you are ungodly, and Christ died for the
   ungodly, why not for you? I hear the reply, But I have been so very
   vile.' Yes, you have been impious, but your sin is not worse than this
   word ungodly will compass. Christ died for those who were wicked,
   thoroughly wicked. The Greek word is so expressive that it must take in
   your case, however wrongly you have acted. But I cannot believe that
   Christ died for such as I am,' says one. Then, sir, mark! I hold you to
   your words, and charge you with contradicting the Eternal God to his
   teeth, and making him a liar. Your statement gives God the lie. The
   Lord declares that Christ died for the ungodly,' and you say he did
   not, what is that but to make God a liar? How can you expect mercy if
   you persist in such proud unbelief? Believe the divine revelation.
   Close in at once with the gospel. Forsake your sins and believe in the
   Lord Jesus, and you shall surely live. The fact that Christ died for
   the ungodly renders self-righteousness a folly. Why need a man pretend
   that he is good if Christ died for the ungodly?' We have an orphanage,
   and the qualification for our orphanage is that the child for whom
   admission is sought shall be utterly destitute. I will suppose a widow
   trying to show to me and my fellow trustees that her boy is a fitting
   object for the charity; will she tell us that her child has a rich
   uncle? Will she enlarge upon her own capacities for earning a living?
   Why, this would be to argue against herself, and she is much too wise
   for that, I warrant you, for she knows that any such statements would
   damage rather than serve her cause. So, sinner, do not pretend to be
   righteous, do not dream that you are better than others, for that is to
   argue against yourself. Prove that you are not by nature ungodly, and
   you prove yourself to be one for whom Jesus did not die. Jesus comes to
   make the ungodly godly, and the sinful holy, but the raw material upon
   which he works is described in the text not by its goodness but by its
   badness; it is for the ungodly that Jesus died. Oh, but if I felt!'
   Felt what? Felt something which would make you better? Then you would
   not so clearly come under the description here given. If you are
   destitute of good feelings, and thoughts, and hopes, and emotions, you
   are ungodly, and Christ died for the ungodly.' Believe in him and you
   shall be saved from that ungodliness.

   Well,' cries out some Pharisaic moralist, this is dangerous doctrine.'
   How so? Would it be dangerous doctrine to say that physicians exercise
   their skill to cure sick people and not healthy ones? Would that
   encourage sickness? Would that discourage health? You know better; you
   know that to inform the sick of a physician who can heal them is one of
   the best means for promoting their cure. If ungodly and impious men
   would take heart and run to the Saviour, and by him become cured of
   impiety and ungodliness, would not that be a good thing? Jesus has come
   to make the ungodly godly, the impious pious, the wicked obedient, and
   the dishonest upright. He has not come to save them in their sins, but
   from their sins; and this is the best of news for those who are
   diseased with sin. Self-righteousness is a folly, and despair is a
   crime, since Christ died for the ungodly. None are excluded hence but
   those who do themselves exclude; this great gate is set so wide open
   that the very worst of men may enter, and you, dear hearer, may enter
   now.

   I think it is also very evident from our text that when they are saved,
   the converted find no ground of boasting; for when their hearts are
   renewed and made to love God they cannot say, See how good I am,'
   because they were not so by nature; they were ungodly, and, as such,
   Christ died for them. Whatever goodness there may be in them after
   conversion they ascribe it to the grace of God, since by nature they
   were alienated from God, and far removed from righteousness. If the
   truth of natural depravity be but known and felt, free grace must be
   believed in, and then all glorying is at an end.

   This will also keep the saved ones from thinking lightly of sin. If God
   had forgiven sinners without an atonement they might have thought
   little of transgression, but now that pardon comes to them through the
   bitter griefs of their Redeemer they cannot but see it to be an
   exceeding great evil. When we look to Jesus dying on the cross we end
   our dalliance with sin, and utterly abhor the cause of so great
   suffering to so dear a Saviour. Every wound of Jesus is an argument
   against sin. We never know the full evil of our iniquities till we see
   what it cost the Redeemer to put them away.

   Salvation by the death of Christ is the strongest conceivable promoter
   of all the things which are pure, honest, lovely, and of good report.
   It makes sin so loathsome that the saved one cannot take up even its
   name without dread. I will take away the name of Baalim out of thy
   mouth.' He looks upon it as we should regard a knife rusted with gore,
   wherewith some villain had killed our mother, our wife, or child. Could
   we play with it? Could we bear it about our persons or endure it in our
   sight? No, accursed thing! stained with the heart's blood of my
   beloved, I would fain fling thee into the bottomless abyss! Sin is that
   dagger which stabbed the Saviour's heart, and henceforth it must be the
   abomination of every man who has been redeemed by the atoning
   sacrifice.

   To close this point. Christ's death for the ungodly is the grandest
   argument to make the ungodly love him when they are saved. To love
   Christ is the mainspring of obedience in men'how shall men be led to
   love him? If you would grow love, you must sow love. Go, then; and let
   men know the love of Christ to sinners, and they will, by grace, be
   moved to love him in return. No doubt all of us require to know the
   threatenings of the wrath of God; but that which soonest touches my
   heart is Christ's free love to an unworthy one like myself. When my
   sins seem blackest to me, and yet I know that through Christ's death I
   am forgiven, this blest assurance melts me down.

   If thou hadst bid thy thunders roll,

   And lightnings flash, to blast my soul.

   I still had stubborn been;

   But mercy has my heart subdued,

   A bleeding Saviour I have view'd,

   And now I hate my sin.'

   I have heard of a soldier who had been put in prison for drunkenness
   and insubordination several times and he had been also flogged, but
   nothing improved him. At last he was taken in the commission of another
   offence, and brought before the commanding officer, who said to him, My
   man, I have tried everything in the martial code with you, except
   shooting you; you have been imprisoned and whipped, but nothing has
   changed you. I am determined to try something else with you. You have
   caused us a great deal of trouble and anxiety, and you seem resolved to
   do so still; I shall, therefore, change my plans with you, and I shall
   neither fine you, flog you, nor imprison you; I will see what kindness
   will do, and therefore I fully and freely forgive you.' The man burst
   into tears, for he reckoned on a round number of lashes, and had
   steeled himself to bear them, but when he found he was to be forgiven,
   and set free, he said, Sir, you shall not have to find fault with me
   again.' Mercy won his heart. Now, sinner, in that fashion God is
   dealing with you. Great sinners! Ungodly sinners! God says, My thoughts
   are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways. I have threatened
   you, and you hardened your hearts against me. Therefore, come now, and
   let us reason together: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be
   as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as
   wool.' Well,' says one, I am afraid if you talk to sinners so they will
   go and sin more and more.' Yes, there are brutes everywhere, who can be
   so unnatural as to sin because grace abounds, but I bless God there is
   such a thing as the influence of love, and I am rejoiced that many feel
   the force of it, and yield to the conquering arms of amazing grace. The
   Spirit of God wins the day by such arguments as these; love is the
   great battering-ram which opens gates of brass. When the Lord says, I
   have blotted out thy transgressions like a cloud, and like a thick
   cloud thine iniquities,' then the man is moved to repentance.

   I can tell you hundreds and thousands of cases in which this infinite
   love has done all the good that morality itself could ask to have done;
   it has changed the heart and turned the entire current of the man's
   nature from sin to righteousness. The sinner has believed, repented,
   turned from his evil ways, and become zealous for holiness. Looking to
   Jesus he has felt his sin forgiven, and he has started up a new man, to
   lead a new life. God grant it may be so this morning, and he shall have
   all the glory of it.

   III. So now we must close'and this is the last point'THE PROCLAMATION
   OF THIS FACT, that Christ died for the ungodly.' I would not mind if I
   were condemned to live fifty years more, and never to be allowed to
   speak but these five words, if I might be allowed to utter them in the
   ear of every man, and woman, and child who lives. CHRIST DIED FOR THE
   UNGODLY' is the best message that even angels could bring to men. In
   the proclamation of this the whole church ought to take its share.
   Those of us who can address thousands should be diligent to cry
   aloud''Christ died for the ungodly'; but those of you who can speak to
   one, or write a letter to one, must keep on at this''Christ died for
   the ungodly.' Shout it out, or whisper it out; print it in capitals, or
   write it in a lady's hand''Christ died for the ungodly.' Speak it
   solemnly, it is not a thing for jest. Speak it joyfully; it is not a
   theme for sorrow, but for joy. Speak it firmly; it is indisputable
   fact. Facts of science, as they call them, are always questioned: this
   is unquestionable. Speak it earnestly; for if there be any truth which
   ought to arouse all a man's soul it is this: Christ died for the
   ungodly.' Speak it where the ungodly live, and that is at your own
   house. Speak it also down in the dark corners of the city, in the
   haunts of debauchery, in the home of the thief, in the den to the
   depraved. Tell it in the gaol; and sit down at the dying bed and read
   in a tender whisper''Christ died for the ungodly.' When you pass the
   harlot in the street, do not give a toss with that proud head of yours,
   but remember that Christ died for the ungodly'; and when you recollect
   those that injured you, say no bitter word, but hold your tongue, and
   remember Christ died for the ungodly.' Make this henceforth the message
   of your life''Christ died for the ungodly.'

   And, oh, dear friends, you that are not saved, take care that you
   receive this message. Believe it. Go to God with this on your
   tongue''Lord save me, for Christ died for the ungodly, and I am of
   them.' Fling yourself right on to this as a man commits himself to his
   lifebelt amid the surging billows. But I do not feel,' says one. Trust
   not your feelings if you do; but with no feelings and no hopes of your
   own, cling desperately to this, Christ died for the ungodly.' The
   transforming, elevating, spiritualising, moralising, sanctifying power
   of this great fact you shall soon know and be no more ungodly; but
   first, as ungodly, rest you on this, Christ died for the ungodly.'
   Accept this truth, my dear hearer, and you are saved. I do not mean
   merely that you will be pardoned, I do not mean that you will enter
   heaven, I mean much more; I mean that you will have a new heart; you
   will be saved from the love of sin, saved from drunkenness, saved from
   uncleanness, saved from blasphemy, saved from dishonesty. Christ died
   for the ungodly''if that be really known and trusted in, it will open
   in your soul new springs of living water which will cleanse the Augean
   stable of your nature, and make a temple of God of that which was
   before a den of thieves. Trust in the mercy of God through the death of
   Jesus Christ, and a new era in your life's history will at once
   commence.

   Having put this as plainly as I know how, and having guarded my speech
   to prevent there being anything like a flowery sentence in it, having
   tried to put this as clearly as daylight itself,'that Christ died for
   the ungodly,' if your ears refuse the precious boons that come through
   the dying Christ, your blood be on your own heads, for there is no
   other way of salvation for any one among you. Whether you reject or
   accept this, I am clear. But oh! do not reject it, for it is your life.
   If the Son of God dies for sinners, and sinners reject his blood, they
   have committed the most heinous offence possible. I will not venture to
   affirm, but I do suggest that the devils in hell are not capable of so
   great a stretch of criminality as is involved in the rejection of the
   sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Here lies the highest love. The incarnate
   God bleeds to death to save men, and men hate God so much that they
   will not even have him as he dies to save them. They will not be
   reconciled to their Creator, though he stoops from his loftiness to the
   depths of woe in the person of his Son on their behalf. This is
   depravity indeed, and desperateness of rebellion. God grant you may not
   be guilty of it. There can be no fiercer flame of wrath than that which
   will break forth from love that has been trampled upon, when men have
   put from them eternal life, and done despite to the Lamb of God. Oh,'
   says one, would God I could believe!' Sir, what difficulty is there in
   it? Is it hard to believe the truth? Darest thou belie thy God? Art
   thou steeling thy heart to such desperateness that thou wilt call thy
   God a liar?' No; I believe Christ died for the ungodly,' says one, but
   I want to know how to get the merit of that death applied to my own
   soul.' Thou mayest, then, for here it is''He that believeth in him,'
   that is, he that trusts in him, is not condemned.' Here is the gospel
   and the whole of it''He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved:
   he that believeth not shall be damned.'

   I am a poor weak man like yourselves, but my gospel is not weak; and it
   would be no stronger if one of the mailed cherubim, or sworded
   seraphim' could take the platform and stand here instead of me. He
   could tell to you no better news. God, in condescension to your
   weakness, has chosen one of your fellow mortals to bear to you this
   message of infinite affection. Do not reject it! By your souls' value,
   by their immortality, by the hope of heaven and by the dread of hell,
   lay hold upon eternal life; and by the fear that this may be your last
   day on earth, yea, and this evening your last hour, I do beseech you
   now, steal away to Jesus.' There is life in a look at the crucified
   one; there is life at this moment for you. Look to him now and live.
   Amen.

   PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'Ezekiel 16:1-14; Romans
   5:1-11.

   HYMNS FROM OUR OWN HYMN BOOK'174, 502 (v. 4, 5, 6), 553.
     __________________________________________________________________

Hindrances to Prayer

   (No. 1192)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 13, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "That your prayers be not hindered." 1 Peter 3:7.

   TO many persons this discourse will have but little reference because
   they do not pray. I fear, also, there are some others whose prayers are
   so worthless that if they were hindered it would be of no very material
   consequence. It is even possible that their being forced to omit them
   might arouse them out of a self-righteous lethargy. Merely to bow the
   knee in formality, to go through a form of devotion in a careless or
   half-hearted manner is rather to mock God than to worship Him. It would
   be a terrible theme for contemplation to consider how much of vain
   repetition and heartless praying the Lord is wearied with from day to
   day. I would, however, most solemnly remind those who do not truly pray
   that the wrath of God abides on them! He who never seeks for mercy has
   certainly never found it. Conscience acknowledges it to be a righteous
   thing with God that He should not give to those who will not ask.

   It is the smallest thing that can be expected of us that we should
   humbly ask for the favors we need and if we refuse to do so, it is but
   right that the door of Divine Grace should be closed so long as men
   refuse to knock. Prayer is no hard requirement--it is the natural duty
   of a creature to its Creator--the simplest homage which human need can
   pay to Divine liberality. Those who refuse to render it may well expect
   that one of these days, when in dire extremity they begin to bemoan
   their folly, they will hear a voice from their insulted God, saying, "I
   called and you refused; I stretched out My hands and no man regarded;
   therefore I, also, will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your
   fear comes."

   The old story tells of a monarch who gave to a favorite courtier a ring
   which he might send to her in case he should be under her displeasure,
   promising that at the sight thereof he should be restored to favor.
   Later, when the courtier was implicated in treason, the Queen anxiously
   awaited the ring, but that ring was never shown, though long waited
   for, and it was little wonder that, concluding the offender to be
   stubbornly rebellious, a sentence of execution was carried out. If a
   sinner will not plead the name of Jesus to which the promise of
   forgiveness is appended--if he will not bend his knee in penitential
   prayer and ask for pardon at the hand of God, none will wonder that he
   perishes for his folly. None will be able to accuse the Lord of too
   great a severity when He casts away forever all prayerless souls! O you
   who never pray, I tremble for you! Would to God you would tremble for
   yourselves, for there is cause enough for it!

   To those who pray, prayer is a most precious thing, for it is the
   channel by which priceless blessings come to them, the window through
   which their needs are supplied by a gracious God. To Believers, prayer
   is the great means of soul enrichment--it is the vessel which trades
   with Heaven and comes home from the celestial country laden with
   treasures of far greater worth than ever Spanish galleon brought from
   the land of gold. Indeed, to true Believers, prayer is so invaluable
   that the danger of hindering it is used by Peter as a motive why, in
   their marriage relationships and household concerns, they should behave
   themselves with great wisdom. He bids the husband "dwell" with his wife
   "according to knowledge," and render loving honor to her, lest their
   united prayers should be hindered! Anything which hinders prayer must
   be wrong. If any management of the family, or lack of management, is
   injuring our power in prayer, there is an urgent demand for an
   alteration. Husband and wife should pray together, as joint-heirs of
   Divine Grace, and any temper or habit which hinders this is evil.

   The text would be most appropriately used to stimulate Christians to
   diligence in family prayer, and though I shall not so use it on this
   occasion, it is not because I undervalue the institution, for I esteem
   it so highly that no language of mine can adequately express my sense
   of its value. The house in which there is no family altar can scarcely
   expect a Divine blessing. If the Lord does not cover our habitation
   with His wings, our family is like a house without a roof. If we do not
   seek the Lord's guidance, our household is a ship without a pilot. And
   unless guarded by devotion, our family will be a field without a hedge.
   The mournful behavior of many of the children of professing parents is
   mainly due to the neglect

   or the coldness of family worship--and many a judgment has, I doubt
   not--fallen upon households because the Lord is not duly honored
   therein.

   Eli's sin still brings with it the visitations of a jealous God. That
   word of Jeremiah bears hard upon prayerless families, "Pour out Your
   fury upon the households that call not upon Your name." His mercy
   visits every house where night and morning vows are paid, but where
   these are neglected, sin is incurred. In the good old Puritan times it
   was said that if you had walked down Cheapside you would have heard in
   every house the voice of a Psalm at a certain hour of the morning and
   evening, for there was no house, then, of professed Christians without
   family prayer! I believe that the bulwark of Protestantism against
   Popery is family worship. Take that away--and the instruction of
   children in the fear of God--and you lay this country open, again, to
   the theory that prayer is most acceptable in the parish Church.

   And then you get into the sacredness ofplaces. Then, taking away the
   priesthood from the father of the family--who ought to be the priest in
   his own house--you make an opening for a superstitious priesthood and,
   leaving the teaching with these pretenders, mischief innumerable are
   introduced! If neglect of family prayer should become general
   throughout our Churches it will be a dark day for England! Children who
   observe that their parents are practically prayerless in the household
   will grow up indifferent to religion--and in many cases will be utter
   worldlings--if not altogether atheists. This is a matter about which
   the Church cannot make any inquisitorial inquiry--it must be left to
   the good sense and the Christian spirit of the heads of households! I
   therefore speak all the more strongly and pray you to order things at
   home that family prayer is not hindered.

   At this time, however, I shall use the text for another purpose, and
   apply it to the hindrances which beset private prayer. Our prayers may
   be hindered thus--first, we may be hindered from prayer. Secondly, we
   may be hindered in prayer. And, thirdly, we may be hindered from our
   prayers being effective with God.

   I. First, there is such a thing as being HINDERED FROM PRAYER--and that
   may be done by falling into a generally lax, lukewarm condition in
   reference to the things of God. When a man becomes cold, indifferent
   and careless, one of the first things that will suffer will be his
   devotion. When a sick man is in a decline his lungs suffer, and his
   voice--and so when a Christian is in a spiritual decline the breath of
   prayer is affected--and the cry of supplication becomes weak. Prayer is
   the true gauge of spiritual power. To hold back prayer is dangerous and
   of deadly tendency. You may depend upon it that, take it for all in
   all, what you are upon your knees you are really before your God.

   What the Pharisee and the Publican were in prayer was the true
   criterion of their spiritual state. You may maintain a decent
   reputation among men, but it is a small matter to be judged of man's
   judgment--men see only the surface--while the Lord's eyes pry into the
   recesses of the soul. If He sees that you are prayerless, He makes
   small account of your attendance at religious meetings, or your loud
   professions of conversion. If you are a man of earnest prayer and
   especially if the spirit of prayer is in you, so that in addition to
   certain seasons of supplication your heart habitually talks with God,
   things are right with you. But if this is not the case and your prayers
   are "hindered," there is something in your spiritual system which needs
   to be ejected, or something lacking which ought to be taken care of at
   once. "Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues
   of life," and living prayers are among those issues.

   Prayers may be hindered, next, by having too much to do. In this age
   this is a very common occurrence. We men have too much business for
   ourselves. The quiet days of our contented forefathers are gone and men
   allot to themselves an increasing drudgery. Not content to earn as much
   as is necessary for themselves and families, they must have much more
   than they can possibly enjoy for themselves, or profitably use for
   others. Wisdom seems to say that one staff is enough for a man to walk
   with, but ambition cannot be contented unless it carries a load of
   staves upon its back. "Enough is as good as a feast," said the old
   proverb, but nowadays neither enough nor a feast will satisfy men! They
   must accumulate more than would feast thousands of families before they
   can be content--no, they are not even content then!

   Many a man who might have been of great service to the Church of God
   becomes useless because he must branch out in some new direction in
   business which takes up all his spare time. Instead of feeling that his
   first care should be, "How can I best glorify God?" his all-absorbing
   objective is to "stretch his arms like seas and grasp in all the
   shore." Thousands, hundreds of thousands and even millions of pounds
   cannot silence the greedy horseleech which men have swallowed, which
   continually cries, "Give, give!" Many add house to house and field to
   field, as though they meant to be left alone in the land! Alas, that
   Christians should be infected with the same fever! The rich man in the
   parable had no time for prayer, for he was busy in planning new barns
   in which to bestow his goods--but he had to find time for dying

   when the Lord said, "This night shall your soul be required of you."
   Beware, I pray you, of "the desire of other things," the canker of
   riches, the insatiable greed which drives men into the snare of the
   devil, for if it works you no other ill, it will do you mischief,
   enough, if your prayers are hindered.

   We may even have too much to do in God's house, and so hinder our
   prayers by being like Martha, numbered with much serving. I never heard
   of anyone who was hindered with too much praying. The more we do, the
   more we should pray, and prayer should balance our service, or rather,
   it should be the lifeblood of every action and saturate our entire
   life, as the dew of Heaven filled Gideon's fleece. We cannot labor too
   much if prayer is proportionate, but I fear that some of us would do
   far more if we attempted less and prayed more about it. I even fear
   that some allow public religious engagements to override private
   communion with God--they attend too many sermons, too many conferences,
   too many Bible readings, too many committees--yes, and too many Prayer
   Meetings! They are all good in their way, but all acting injuriously
   when they cramp our secret, or private prayer.

   Mrs. Row said that if the Apostles were preaching at her time of
   private communion with God she would not forsake her closet to go and
   hear them. It must be better to be with God than with Peter or Paul1
   Praying is the end of preaching, and woe to the man who, prizing the
   means more than the end, allows any other form of service to push his
   prayers into a corner. There can be no doubt, also, that prayer is
   hindered by having too little to do. If you want a thing well done, you
   must go to the man who has a great deal to do, for he is the man to do
   it for you! People who have nothing to do generally do it with a great
   deal of fuss. From morning to night they waste other people's
   time--they are the callers, the interviewers, the people who write
   catching paragraphs about public men--very frequently invented in their
   own silly brains.

   These are the propagators of slander, who in very wantonness spit upon
   good men's characters. Having nothing to do, they are hired by Satan to
   hinder and injure others. If such people ever do pray, I am sure their
   indolence must very much hinder them. The man who has to teach in the
   Ragged School finds he must cry for help to master those wild young
   natures. The young lady who has, around her, a dozen girls whom she
   longs to bring to the Savior, feels it imperative upon her to pray for
   Jane and Ellen, that they may be converted to God. The minister, whose
   hands are full of holy toil and whose eyes fail with sacred watching,
   finds he cannot do without drawing near unto his God! If these servants
   of Jesus had less to do they would pray less, but holy industry is the
   nurse of devotion!

   I said we might do too much and I could not balance that truth unless I
   added that a very large proportion of Christians do too little. God has
   given them enough wealth to be able to retire from business. They have
   time upon their hands and they have even to invent ways of spending
   that time--and yet the ignorant require instructing, the sick need
   visiting, the poor need helping--should they not lay out their abundant
   leisure in the service of God? Would they not, then, be quickened in
   prayer? I wish that all could say with one of the Lord's saints,
   "Prayer is my business and praise is my pleasure"--but I am sure they
   never will till the zeal of the Lord's house shall more fully consume
   them. Some people hinder their prayers, again, by a lack of order. They
   get up a little too late and they have to chase their work all the day
   and never overtake it. They are always in a flurry, one duty tripping
   up the heels of another.

   They have no appointed time for retirement, to little space hedged
   about for communion with God and, consequently, something or other
   happens and prayer is forgotten--no, I hope not quite forgotten, but so
   slurred and hurried over that it amounts to little and brings them no
   blessing. I wish you would each keep a diary of how you pray next week,
   and see how much, or rather how little time you spend with God out of
   the 24 hours. Much time goes at the table, how much at the Mercy Seat?
   Many hours are spent with men, how many with your Maker? You are
   somewhat with your friends on earth, how many minutes are you with your
   Friend in Heaven? You allow yourself space for recreation, what do you
   set apart for those exercises which in very truth re-create the soul?

   "A place for everything, and everything in its place," is a good rule
   for schools and houses of business, and it will be equally useful in
   spiritual matters. Other duties should be done, but prayer must not be
   left undone--it must have its own place and sufficient time for it.
   Care must be taken that our "prayers be not hindered," so that we omit
   or abridge them. But time compels me to leave this wide subject and
   proceed.

   II. Secondly, we must watch that we are not HINDERED IN PRAYER, when we
   are really engaged in that holy work. Here I might go over the same
   ground as before and remark that some are hindered while in their
   prayers by being lax and lukewarm--a great hindrance. Others by having
   too much or too little to do, and another class by being in that

   hurried condition of heart which results from a lack of order. But I
   need not repeat myself when you are so eagerly drinking in my words!
   Let us note that some are hindered in prayer by selecting an unfit time
   and place. There are times when you may expect a knock at your own
   door, do not just then knock at God's door! There are hours when your
   letters arrive, when customers call, when trades people need attention,
   when workmen need orders--it would be foolish to be going into your
   closet just then!

   If you are employed by others, you must not present to God those hours
   which belong to your employer. You will be honoring the Lord better by
   diligence in your calling. There are times that are demanded of you by
   the necessities of the household and your lawful calling--these are
   already the Lord's in another way--let them be used for their own
   purpose. Never defile one duty with the blood of another. Give to God
   and prayer those suitable times in which you can reasonably expect to
   be alone. Of course you can pray at your work in ejaculations and
   silent groans--and you ought to be in the spirit of supplication all
   day long--but I am alluding, now, to times specially devoted to
   supplication--and I say choose a season and a place where you can be
   free from interruption.

   A pious lad who had no place at home to pray, went to the stable and
   climbed up into the hayloft. But very soon someone came up the ladder
   and interrupted him. The next time he took care to pull the ladder up
   after him--a very useful hint for us. It would be well, indeed, if we
   could so completely pull the ladder up that neither the devil nor the
   world could invade our sacred privacy. "You, when you pray, enter into
   your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father
   which is in secret. And your Father which sees in secret shall reward
   you openly." Select, then, the fittest time and place that your prayers
   are not hindered.

   Worldly cares are frequent and most mischievous hindrances to prayer. A
   Christian man should be the most careful man in the world and, yet,
   without carefulness. Do you understand that paradox? He should be
   careful not to sin, but as for other matters, he should cast his care
   on "Him who cares for him." To take everything from God's hands and to
   trust everything in God's hands, is a happy way of living and very
   helpful to prayer. Has not your Master told you of the ravens and the
   lilies? Your heavenly Father feeds and clothes them--will He not clothe
   you? "Seek you first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." Faith
   gives peace and peace leaves the soul clear for prayer--but when care
   comes in, it confuses the mind and puts the heart away from pleading. A
   heart clogged with care is like a man trying to swim with heavy clothes
   upon him--he must get them off if he hopes to swim to shore. Many a
   sailor has cut his clothes to pieces because he felt he should sink if
   he did not get them off.

   I could wish that many Christians would tear themselves away from their
   excessive worldly engagements, for they have such a mass of care upon
   them that they scarcely keep their heads above water! Oh, for more
   Grace and less worry! More praying and less hoarding! More intercession
   and less speculating! As it is, prayers are sadly hindered. Earthly
   pleasures, especially of a dubious kind, are the worst of hindrances.
   Some professors indulge in amusements which I am sure are not
   consistent with prayer. They resemble flies which plunge into the honey
   until the sweet sticks to their wings and legs and they cannot fly. I
   once remember reading, "A prayer to be said by a Christian man after
   coming home from a theater," "A collect for a saint on returning from
   the races," and, "A prayer for a Christian lady on returning from a
   ball." Of course they were written sarcastically and were, indeed, a
   broad farce.

   How can you come home from frivolity and sin and then look into the
   face of Jesus? How can the fashions of the world be followed and
   communion with God be maintained? You cannot roll in the mire and then
   approach with clean garments to the Mercy Seat! How can you come before
   the Throne of God with petitions when you have just been dishonoring
   the name of the Most High? O Christians, keep yourselves from
   everything about which you have any doubt as to its rightness or even
   its expediency--whatever is not of faith is sin and will hinder your
   prayers! Further, prayers may be hindered equally much by worldly
   sorrow. Some give way to sorrow so extremely that they cannot pray. The
   tears of rebellious repining dampen the powder of prayer so that a
   Christian man cannot send his desires heavenward as he should. The
   sorrow which prevents a man's praying is flat rebellion against the
   will of God!

   Our Lord was "exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death," but then He
   prayed--no--"therefore He prayed." It is right to be sorrowful, for God
   intends that affliction should be grievous and not joyous. But when
   sorrow is right it will drive us to prayer--not drive us from it. And
   when we find our grief at the loss of some dear child, or at the decay
   of our property hinders our prayers, I think we should say to
   ourselves, "Now I must pray, for it must be wrong for me to be so
   rebellious against my Father as to refuse to ask anything at His
   hands." You would think your child in a very mean

   temper if, because he could not have his own way, he would refuse to
   ask anything of you and went about the house pouting. Yet many mourners
   act in this fashion. We would deeply sympathize with their sorrow, but
   we may not excuse their repining--for the "sorrow of the world works
   death"--and is unfitting in a child of God. With all your grief, bowed
   into the very dust by affliction, still, like your Lord and Master,
   cry, "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will," and then your
   prayers will be helped and not hindered.

   There are cases in which prayer is very greatly hindered by a bad
   temper. I do not know where this may apply, but, wherever it does, I
   trust that it will go home. You cannot habitually speak sharp to
   servants and children. You cannot join in a grand row or in small
   squabbles and then go and pray with power. I cannot be effective in
   prayer if I feel anger in my heart and I do not believe that you can,
   either. Get up and go and settle the matter before you try to talk with
   God, for the prayer of angry men makes God angry. You cannot wrestle
   with the Angel while you are under the power of the devil. I appeal to
   your own consciences--you, yourselves, shall be judges--is it not so?
   That was good advice on our Lord's part--"Leave there your gift before
   the altar, and first go and be reconciled to your brother." If that is
   not done, the sacrifice cannot be accepted, nor do I see how you can
   dare offer it!

   I have heard of two good men who had a sharp difference with each other
   in business. I do not know which was to blame--perhaps neither of
   them--they might have misunderstood each other. One of them, as he
   walked home very much ruffled, saw the sun going down, and the passage
   occurred to him, "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." He thought,
   "I will go back and offer an apology, for I believe I have spoken much
   too strongly." He went back towards his friend's office and half way
   there he met the other coming to him on the same errand. Happy
   Christians to be both so mindful of the Holy Spirit's teaching and so
   like the Lord Jesus! It must be that offenses come, but blessed are
   those who are foremost in removing them! Alas, men of a certain mold
   cannot do this, but will keep a grudge till it rots and fills their
   whole nature with its vile odors. Surely they cannot expect to be heard
   in prayer while their unburied enmities pollute their souls! Endeavor,
   dear Christian Friends, as much as you can, whenever you are angry, not
   to sin. It is possible, for it is written, "Be you angry and sin not."

   A man who has no anger in him is scarcely a man and certainly not a
   good man, for he who is not angry at sin is not in love with virtue!
   They say of some that they are as easy as an old shoe--and they are
   generally worth no more than that article. Anger against injustice is
   right, but that anger against the person which degenerates into wishing
   him hurt is sinful and effectually blows out the fires of prayer. We
   cannot pray for forgiveness unless we forgive the trespasses of others
   against us.

   Prayer can be hindered--very terribly hindered--in three ways. If we
   dishonor the Father to whom we pray, or the Son through whom we pray,
   or the Holy Spirit by whom we pray. I say we can dishonor the Father.
   This can be done by inconsistency of life--if children of God are not
   obedient to the Father's will, they must not wonder if they find it
   difficult to pray. Something will rise in their throat that will choke
   their pleading. You cannot pour out your heart acceptably unless you
   believe in your heavenly Father. If you have harsh thoughts of God. If
   you have a cold heart towards Him and a lack of reverence for His name.
   If you do not believe in that great willing heart which is waiting to
   bless you, your lack of love, faith and reverence will strangle your
   prayers. Oh, when a man is fully at one with the great Father! When
   "Abba, Father," is the very spirit of his soul! When he speaks to God
   as One in whom he places implicit trust and to whose will he yields
   himself up perfectly! When God's glory is his soul's delight--then he
   is on a vantage ground in prayer--he will win what he wills of God. If
   he is not so with God, his prayers will limp most painfully.

   And, Brothers and Sisters, if we are wrong with Jesus, through whom we
   pray. If we are in any measure self-righteous. If we delight in self
   and forget our Beloved. If we fancy that we can do without the Savior
   and if, therefore, we pray like complacent Pharisees, our prayers will
   be hindered! If we are not like the Savior. If we do not make Him our
   Example. If we have none of His loving spirit. If, above all, we
   crucify Him afresh and put Him to an open shame--and if we are
   ungrateful for the blessings we have already received--our prayers will
   be hindered. You cannot plead in the court if you have quarreled with
   your Advocate. If your prayers are not taken in hand by the great
   Intercessor and offered by Him on your behalf, you will have no heart
   for the sacred exercise.

   So, again, with the Holy Spirit. There is never a prayer that God
   accepts but the Spirit first writes it in our hearts. True prayer is
   not so much our intercession as the Spirit of God making intercession
   in us. Now, if we grieve the Spirit, He will not help us to pray. And
   if we attempt to pray for something that is contrary to the Spirit's
   holy, gracious,

   loving Nature, we cannot expect Him to enable us to pray in
   contradiction to the mind of God. Take care that you vex not the Spirit
   of God in any way, especially by shutting your ears to His gentle
   warnings, His loving calls, His earnest entreaties, His tender
   monitions--for if you are deaf to the Divine Comforter, He will be
   speechless to you. He will not help you to pray if you will not yield
   to Him in other matters.

   So then, dear Friends, I have stated to you in a hurried manner some of
   the ways in which prayer may be hindered. May God grant that none of us
   may be overcome by them, but we may be delivered from everything which
   could mar our petitions!

   III. I shall now want your earnest attention to the most important part
   of all, upon which I shall endeavor to be brief. We may be HINDERED IN
   THE EFFECTIVENESS OF OUR PRAYERS. We may pray, but yet the prayer may
   not be heard. And here let me interpose a remark. The Lord will hear
   any man's prayer who asks for mercy through the mediation of the Lord
   Jesus Christ. He never despises the cry of the contrite. He is a God
   ready to hear all those who seek reconciliation. But concerning other
   matters it is true that God does not hear sinners--that is, while they
   remain sinners He will not grant them their wishes--indeed, to do so
   would encourage them in their sins! If they will repent and cry for
   mercy through Jesus Christ, He will hear their cry and will save them.
   But if they are not, first, reconciled to Him, their prayers are empty
   wind.

   A man will grant his child's request, but he does not listen to
   strangers. He will listen to his friends, but not to enemies. It is not
   right that the golden key which opens the caskets of Heaven should be
   hung at a rebel's belt. Yet more, God does not hear all His children,
   alike, or alike at all times. It is not every Believer who is mighty in
   prayer. Read the 96th Psalm, and, if I remember rightly, you will find
   words like these--"Moses and Aaron among His priests, and Samuel among
   them that call upon His name; they called upon the Lord and He answered
   them. They kept His testimonies, and the ordinances that He gave them."
   Yes, he answered them--Moses, Aaron, Samuel--He answered them, for they
   kept His testimonies. When children of God find that their prayers do
   not succeed, they should search--and they would soon discover a reason
   why their prayers are hindered.

   First, there must be holy living in a Believer if his prayers are to
   succeed greatly with God. Listen--"The effectual fervent prayer of a
   righteous man avails much." Note that point of a righteous man. Listen
   to our Savior (John 15:7)-- "If you abide in Me, and My Words abide in
   you, you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you." There
   is an if there! If you do not do Christ's will, He will not do your
   will. This is not legal! It has nothing to do with the Law, but is the
   Gospel rule of Christ's house that obedience should have for its reward
   power in prayer! Just as you do with your children--you have a
   discipline over them--you do not turn them out of doors or give them
   over to the policeman because they do amiss. But you have ways of
   chastening the willful and rewarding the obedient. You are in no hurry
   to grant the requests of yonder fractious boy--in fact you deny him his
   request. But that other dear, gentle, loving child has only to ask and
   have!

   This is correct discipline and such as God exercises among us. He does
   not cast off His children for sin and utterly disown them, but He
   chastens them in love. And one of His chastisements lies in shutting
   out their prayers. If we compare prayer to shooting with a bow, you
   must have clean hands or you cannot shoot, for this bow refuses to bend
   to hands polluted with unrepented sin. If a sinner prays for mercy for
   Jesus' sake he shall be heard, but for general blessings it is written,
   "The desire of the righteous shall be granted"--not the desire of the
   wicked. First wash in the Fountain of atoning Grace and have your heart
   cleansed by the Holy Spirit, or else you cannot succeed in prayer. If
   anyone should tell me of a man whom God greatly answered in prayer and
   then inform me that he lived in gross sin, I would not believe it! It
   is impossible for God to patronize a guilty professor of religion by
   giving him success in prayer! The blind man whom Jesus healed most
   truly said, "If any man does His will, him He hears."

   In addition to obedience there must be faith. "He that comes to God
   must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that
   diligently seek Him." "Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering, for he
   that wavers is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed:
   let not that man expect that he shall receive anything of the Lord."
   Faith "obtains promises, unbelief goes empty-handed." The Lord may give
   a blessing to a doubter, but that is more than the promise, and the
   doubter has no right to expect it. The prayer which avails most with
   God is the prayer of one who believes that God will hear him and who,
   therefore, asks with confidence. In a word, faith is the bow of prayer.
   You must lay hold on the bow or you cannot shoot--and the stronger that
   bow the further you can send the arrow--and the more

   execution you can do with it. Without faith it is impossible to please
   God in prayer or in anything else. Faith is the very backbone, sinew
   and muscle of intercession.

   Thirdly, there must be holy desires, or else prayer will be a failure.
   And those desires must be founded on a promise. If you cannot find that
   God has promised a blessing, you have no right to ask for it and no
   reason to expect it. There is no use in asking money of a banker
   without a check--at the counter they do not know you--they do know the
   promise to pay from a check and if you present that, you will get the
   amount. You must bring God's own promises to the Mercy Seat, which is
   the counter of the Divine bank, and you will obtain what you need, but
   only in that way. Observe, then, that faith is the bow and strong
   desire fits to the string the arrow which is to be sent upward. No
   arrow may be shot towards Heaven but that which came down from Heaven.
   Christians take their arrows from God's quiver and when they shoot them
   they shoot them with this on their lips, "Do as You have said. Remember
   Your Word unto Your servant upon which You have caused me to hope." So
   the successful prayer is the desire of a holy heart, sanctioned by the
   promise. True prayers are like those carrier pigeons which find their
   way so well--they cannot fail to go to Heaven, for it is from Heaven
   that they came--they are only going home!

   Furthermore, if prayer is to be effective, there must be fervor and
   importunity. It is written, "The effectual fervent prayer of the
   righteous man avails much." Not the dead-and-alive prayer of the mere
   professor--not the prayer of one who does not care whether he is
   answered or not. There must be eagerness, intensity, the pouring out of
   the heart before God! The arrow must be put on the bow string and the
   bow must be drawn with all our might. The best bow is of no use until
   you draw it. And if you draw the bow of faith and shoot at the target
   up there in Heaven, you will get what you will--only you must resolve
   to have it with only this boundary--"the will of the Lord be done"--and
   you will succeed.

   There must be, next, a desire for God's Glory--for that is the white of
   the target--and if we do not shoot towards that, the arrow will avail
   nothing. We must earnestly desire what we ask because we believe it
   will glorify God to give it to us. If we are wholly living unto God,
   our prayers will run side by side with His purposes and none of them
   will fall to the ground. "Delight yourself, also, in the Lord and He
   will give you the desires of your heart." We must also have holy
   expectancy or we shall hinder prayer. The man who shoots must look to
   see where his arrow goes. We must direct our prayer unto God and look
   up! Eyeing the Lord Jesus in all, we must look to succeed through the
   merits of the Redeemer. "If we believe that He hears us, we know that
   we have the petitions that we have asked of Him."

   Presumption in prayer shoots with the bow of self-confidence, not for
   God's Glory, but for the gratification of itself, and therefore it
   fails. Some have the idea that ask what they like of God, they are sure
   to have it. But I would ask them, first, "Who are you?" Secondly, "What
   is it you are going to seek?" And, thirdly, "What right have you to
   expect it?" These inquiries must be clearly answered, otherwise prayer
   may be an insult to God. I wish some Christians who pray about temporal
   things would be a little careful as to how they act. When they get into
   scrapes and messes by extravagance, do they expect God to get them out?

   I remember hearing of a remark of good Mr. Muller, of Bristol. At a
   Prayer Meeting he read a letter from a Brother who thanked him for a
   gift of some 20 pounds which had arrived very Providentially, for he
   owed half a year's rent. Mr. Muller remarked, "Yes, our Brother should
   be very thankful. But I intend to write to him and tell him he ought
   not to owe half a year's rent without being prepared to pay. And he is
   acting unwisely and unjustly by not laying by in store to meet the
   claim. When I took a house I said, 'This is another person's house. I
   am bound to pay his rent,' and therefore week by week, as I used the
   house, I put by a portion to pay what was due. I did not spend the
   money and at the end of the quarter expect the heavenly Father to send
   me more."

   This was sound morality and common sense, and I pray you attend to it.
   Pray by all means, but "owe no man anything." Daily bread is to be
   prayed for, but speculations which may involve you in ruin, or make
   your fortune, are not to be mentioned. If you take to gambling, you may
   as well give up praying! Straightforward transactions you may pray
   about, but do not get the Lord mixed up with your finances! I have been
   requested to pray for a young man who has lost his job, through an
   embezzlement, that he may get another place of employment. But instead
   of doing so I have suggested that he should, himself, pray to be made
   honest. Another who is deeply in debt wants me to pray that he may
   obtain help, but I suggest that he should let his creditors have a
   dividend while there is anything left. I shall not ask of my God what I
   would not ask of man!

   The approach to the Mercy Seat is holy ground and not to be trifled
   with, or made to minister to sin. "You ask and receive not because you
   ask amiss, that you may consume it upon your lusts." If we walk
   contrary to the Lord, He will walk contrary to us. And I say to every
   man and woman here who is in trouble and is a Christian, take the
   straight path out of it--do the right thing--and if it brings you
   trouble, bear it like a man, and then go to God, and say, "Lord, I
   have, by Your Grace, chosen a plain, honest path, now help me," and He
   will. God grant us Grace, as Christians, to walk with God in the power
   of His Spirit, resting alone on Jesus--and may He make each one of us
   mighty in prayer! A man whom God has taught to pray mightily is one
   with God's mind and is God's hand moving among the sons of men! When he
   acts, God acts in him. He must, however, be careful and watchful, for
   the Lord is a jealous God--and most jealous where He loves most.

   God grant you, Brothers and Sisters, to walk humbly with God and to
   live near to Him, "that your prayers be not hindered." Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Malachi 3. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK" 434 (SONG III), 1001, 994.
     __________________________________________________________________

Girding on the Harness

   (No. 1193)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON THURSDAY EVENING, AUGUST 6, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And the king of Israel answered and said, Tell him, Let not him that
   girds on his harness boast himself as he that takes it off" 1 Kings
   20:11.

   THESE two kings were about to proceed to war and they irritated one
   another by insulting messages. That was the custom of all combatants in
   the old heathen times. They seemed to delight in stinging each other
   and exciting each other's worst passions before they commenced the
   battle. Let it not be so among us. If we have to contend for the Truth
   of God let us endeavor to do it in the kindest spirit. And if we must
   smite, let it always be with the iron rod of Truth held in the hand of
   love, wounding none, nor exulting over them, but breaking in pieces
   their errors and their sins by the help of God. The blow will be none
   the weaker for being divested of anything like an evil spirit and an
   ungenerous temper. Speak the Truth firmly and contend earnestly for it,
   but never manifest a bitter spirit. Bring up the weightiest arguments
   you can find, but let them be accompanied with courtesy and kindness,
   for the wrath of man works not the righteousness of God--and it is ill
   for a Christian soldier to imitate the manners of the heathen.

   However insultingly intended, the text we have quoted contained a great
   deal of common sense. It is, in fact, a proverb of the wise, and we
   intend to use it so. It is right to learn, even from the lips of the
   wicked--for they are seldom so foolish in worldly things as they are in
   spiritual. Professing Christians might learn much from the children of
   darkness if they would take the trouble to do so, for are they not in
   their generation wiser than the children of light? Our text was the
   utterance of Ahab, who was one of the vilest kings of Israel! He
   greatly provoked the Lord to anger--still, what he said has wisdom in
   it--so let us try to profit by it.

   Do you remember how the Israelites of old went down to the Philistines
   to sharpen every man his knife and his axe? It is good to make our
   enemy turn the grindstone on which we may sharpen the weapons which we
   intend to use against him! The expressions used by a godless man may be
   taken from his mouth--washed and carefully cleansed of the sand of
   sin--and what remains of golden grains may be turned to good account.
   Full many a pearl has been discovered in an oyster shell on the dark
   bottom of the sea--throw away the shell, but keep the pearl! On a
   dunghill, a diamond sometimes has been found--it is not to be rejected
   because of the place where it lay!

   The text is peculiarly adapted to those who are commencing the battle
   of the Christian life. The young man who is newly converted is girding
   on his harness. He has newly made the profession of his faith and has
   come forward to be baptized and united with the Church. He is girding
   on his harness and soon he is going back to the warehouse where they
   will know that he professes to be a Christian. Or he will go home to a
   family whose other members have no respect for the things of God and he
   will have to bear witness among them. The young woman has to go back to
   her friends who have not the same love to Jesus that she has, to
   commence her lifelong testimony in their midst.

   You are girding on the harness, then, dear young Friends, and the text
   is for you--"Let not him that girds on his harness boast himself as he
   that takes it off." It will do, also, for young men and women who are
   commencing life for themselves, lately married, beginning housekeeping
   and intending to do well--opening a new shop with such fair
   prospects--moving to a new farm with such bright hopes. It may be a
   word in season to such. Girding on the harness, you have not put it off
   yet and, therefore, do not boast! It will also do for my new students
   who have just come to college. May they be preserved from the tendency
   to boast, which is natural enough, but is as silly as it is natural!

   Perhaps I address some young minister who is commencing his ministry,
   or some worker for Christ who has begun in the Sunday school, or taken
   a district for distributing tracts, or entered upon some other new
   labor. There are many other things which I need not mention here, but
   which each one of you can think of for yourself--and more especially if
   you happen to be in the condition intended. "Let not him that girds on
   his harness boast himself as he that takes it off."

   I. Let us think a little upon this ancient saying and remember, first,
   that THERE IS, IN THOSE WHO NEWLY PUT ON THEIR ARMOR, A GREAT TENDENCY
   TO BOAST. This is not at all remarkable, because, first, it is the
   nature of all men, more or less, to boast. Human nature is both poor
   and proud. It is so poor that it is naked and miserable. And yet it is
   so proud that it claims to be rich, increased in goods and to have need
   of nothing. If men carried their heads where they should, they would
   not be among the stars, but down in the dust--yet the less goodness
   poor mortals have, the more pride they usually manifest. The Pharisee
   who has been making a meal of a widow's house opens his mouth, while
   yet he is gorged with his robbery, and cries, "God, I thank You that I
   am not as other men!" And Herod, who has been murdering a holy Apostle
   and ought to be repenting of his great wickedness, assumes to be a god,
   and listens with delight to the flatteries of his foolish subjects. The
   poorer, generally the prouder--and those who have the least to boast of
   are those who brag the most.

   Now, this propensity in human nature to boast is sure to come out if we
   get a little preferment. We are about to be Church members! Is not that
   something? Is it not a grand matter to be numbered with the people of
   God? Are we not somebody, now? We shall come to the Communion Table and
   be regarded as children of God--is not that delightful? We have sat up
   in the gallery and often envied the communicants when we have seen them
   gathered at the Table, but now we shall sit among them and the devil
   whispers, "Ah, now you are somebody." We have commenced to teach in the
   Sunday school and we feel pleased to think we are to be teachers of the
   young--is it not a noble work? Nobody will be able to say, now, that we
   are mere babes in Grace! Why, we are getting to be quite defenders of
   the faith and bold servants of Christ--surely we may be allowed a
   little self-respect!

   If we have begun to preach and have been praised by many of our
   hearers, it is probable that we scarcely know whether we are in the
   body or out of it! We think we are already Whitfields and Apostles in
   embryo! What preachers we are going to be and what wonders we shall
   certainly accomplish! Satan has patted us with his black paw and told
   us that we have done amazingly well and deserve great credit--and we
   fully believe him! It is well known that even in natural things Jack in
   the office is apt to be proud. And the same thing will occur even to
   good young men when they are put a little forward. They can scarcely be
   trusted to open the door of the Lord's house, or to sweep a crossing in
   the streets of the New Jerusalem, and straightway they become
   important!

   It is much easier to be puffed up than to be built up, much easier to
   grow in self-conceit than in vital godliness. A little advancement
   turns many brains. Baruch was employed by the Prophet to write the roll
   and straightway he had high ideas of what Baruch must be. And he needed
   the message, "Do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not." We
   are always up in the air unless God, in His infinite mercy, chains us
   down to the rock and keeps us there, for pride is like the eagle and
   delights to soar on high.

   Those who gird on the harness are the more apt to be proud because they
   often mistake their intentions for accomplishments. Sitting down, they
   meditate upon what they hope to be--everything that is devout, humble,
   faithful, bold, tender, disinterested, pure and holy. And after they
   have made a fair concoction of what ought to be done and what they
   trust will be done, a gentle steam arises from the dim tillation of
   their thoughts and intoxicates their brain and they dream that what
   they purpose to be they already are! "Dear me, what a good fellow I
   am!" says the man who dreams that he is all that he hopes to be! He has
   put on his harness and he hardly knows whether it fits him--but he has
   already killed hosts of enemies! He can see them lying heaps upon heaps
   and there he is, all stained with blood, fighting on, conquering and to
   conquer--though as yet he has not even flashed his sword! He knows he
   shall be victorious to the end and he already hears it said, "Well
   done, good and faithful servant."

   But, young Friend, there is a difference, and more than a slight one,
   between intentions and accomplishments! We do not always perform what
   we think we shall, nor do we always reach where we hope to arrive.
   Failures are as numerous as successes and even the most successful have
   failures to mourn over. Good intentions are not so rare that you may
   begin to crow about them. There is a road which is paved with them, but
   I would not have you travel it. It sometimes happens to the young
   beginner that he mistakes the formation of his ideal for the attainment
   of it. He has sketched on paper the figure that is to be worked out of
   the block of marble. There it is! Will not that make a beautiful
   statue? Already he congratulates himself that it stands before him on
   its pedestal!

   But it is a very different thing--the forming the idea in one's mind
   and the realizing of it. Some of us would gladly preach the Gospel as
   simply, as earnestly and with as seraphic a zeal as Bunyan, Baxter, or
   Brooks. Yes, it is a good ideal

   and it is wise to have a grand model before you, but that is not all.
   He who aims high will shoot higher than he whose mark is low. But you
   have not struck that mark yet, young Man. You are far short of your
   mark and, therefore, do not begin to glory as though you had attained
   the goal. You want to be a McCheyne. Very well, be a McCheyne if God
   makes you one, but do not boast of what you are going to be.

   You wish to reach a higher life. Young Man. Young Woman, you desire to
   be as nearly perfect as may be possible. So be it! God help you and
   accomplish in you all the good pleasure of His will. But do not vainly
   dream that the life which you admire in others will readily be
   reproduced in yourself. Excellence comes of effort. They who labored,
   watched, prayed and trusted in the Lord, are they who never would have
   become what they were had they not. Be assured there is no royal road
   for you--you, too, must wrestle hard before victory will be won. Let
   the ideal be before your mind, but remember it is but an ideal--Divine
   Grace will be needed to work in you, "to will and to do of the Lord's
   good pleasure." To will is present with you even now, but perhaps
   before long you will have to say, "How to perform that which I would I
   find not."

   Boasting in putting on the harness sometime arises from the notion that
   we shall avoid the faults of others. We ought to do so and we think we
   shall. We hear of a person who fell through becoming proud and we feel
   sure that we shall keep humble, because we know the evil of pride. We
   hear of another man who was led astray by love of intoxicating drink,
   or another who fell a victim to his passions, or another who gave way
   to an evil temper and so lost all his moral influence. Now, having seen
   what others did, we feel that we are quite prepared to avoid the rocks
   on which they struck--and so we already congratulate ourselves as if we
   had done so! If we were wise we would learn another lesson and humbly
   say, "He fell yesterday and I may fall today."

   When I read of any minister turning aside to sin, I feel a horror of
   great darkness come over my soul lest I should do the same. And many a
   time do I breathe the prayer to God that I may die and be gathered at
   once into Heaven, sooner than be permitted to fall into any of those
   sins to which there is such a tendency in our corrupt nature. Instead
   of saying that I shall keep clear of grave sins, because another man
   will be my beacon, I ought rather to say, "That same current which
   drifted him upon the rock will drift me there, also, unless the
   infinite mercy of God and the eternal power of the Holy Spirit keep me
   from falling into the same catastrophe." "Will you, also, go away?" is
   the plaintive question of our Lord, which every apostasy suggests to
   those who know themselves.

   We also forget, when we start in the battle of life, that there is a
   great deal in novelty and that novelty wears off. Believe me, you who
   have just begun, when you have been five and 20 years serving God, you
   will learn that you have need of patience! And when you have been 50
   years in it you will find that running in the race is not merely making
   a start and a spurt, but it is plodding on and on through domestic
   troubles, through business cares, through the temptations of the flesh,
   through the machinations of Satan, fighting against the world and
   contending against every passion of your nature! For all this we must
   make perpetual drafts upon Divine strength or we shall lose the day.

   If the days of martyrdom were to come and the Papists would be kind
   enough to cut off our heads, I think I could go to Tower Hill and die
   without the slightest trepidation. But I tremble to think how I should
   behave if they were to roast me alive on a slow fire. To be a long
   while dying, with pains in the extremity of the body, hour after
   hour--that must be an awful test of faith! Now, if true religion
   consisted in a few days' resistance of temptation, that might readily
   enough be done. But to continue in your pilgrimage over hill and dale
   till you reach the Celestial City needs a resolute man, no, needs his
   God--for without Divine help he cannot possibly hold out.

   Putting on your harness, you feel how pleasant it is to have new
   Christian friends to encourage you, and warmhearted Brethren to help
   you over your first difficulties and troubles. But after a while these
   Christian friends will have others to attend to--they cannot always
   carry you like lambs in their bosoms! You will have to run alone and
   journey along the road like the rest of the flock. You may live to
   think that the service which seemed so interesting and delightful is
   not quite so fascinating as you thought! The work which is now
   surrounded with a halo of romance will sober down to stern reality--and
   then you will feel--if you boasted in putting on your harness, that you
   boasted a little too soon!

   So much upon the first head. The fault we wish to cure is a very common
   one--those who gird on the harness are very apt to boast.

   II. Now for the second point, namely--THOSE WHO PUT ON THE HARNESS HAVE
   GOOD REASON TO

   REFRAIN FROM BOASTING. They have good reason not to boast if they
   remember what the very harness, or armor,

   itself, is meant for. What do you need armor for? Because you are weak!
   Because you are in danger. When, then, you put on that helmet with
   nodding plume, think to yourself, "It is because this head may be
   struck with a deadly blow, that I put on this helmet of salvation."
   When, through Divine Grace, you buckle on your breastplate of
   righteousness, think to yourself, "This poor heart of mine would soon
   be wounded with mortal sin if it were not for God's infinite love in
   providing me this plate of impenetrable metal."

   When you fit on those shoes with which your feet are to be shod. When
   you receive "the preparation of the Gospel of peace," think to
   yourself, "What a feeble creature I am! Even a poor thorn would cripple
   me for my pilgrimage if God had not provided me with these protecting
   sandals." As you take each piece of the armor, look at it and say to
   yourself, "I cannot be proud, for my needing this proves that I am a
   poor weak creature." It is always very foolish to be proud of our
   garments. If we had not sinned, we should have needed no clothes and
   therefore our garments are the symbols of our sin! And so it would be
   equally absurd to be elated because we wear a suit of armor.

   Your armor, young Man, though it glistens, and in the sunlight looks
   like burnished silver, affords you no ground for boasting--for if sin
   had not made you weak you would have required no armor whatever! Again,
   it will be well to refrain from boasting, for your harness which you
   are putting on is meant for use. You are not dressing yourself out that
   you may be a thing of beauty, like a Life Guardsman in the park. Or to
   sit on horseback for show, like those heroes at the Horse Guards, for
   small country lads to look at and wonder how such sublime things could
   have been produced. You put on your armor because a conflict is
   expected! That bright breastplate of yours will be dented and bruised.
   That helmet will be battered by the saber of your foes.

   Every part of your harness will be tested and tried. It is bright now,
   but it will be rusted tomorrow with your own tears and spattered with
   the mire through which you will have to march. You could see yourself
   in it now if you took it off and gazed upon it, but other sights await
   you before you have ended the campaign. Worse than garments rolled in
   blood and the smoke and dust of a martial conflict will be the trials
   and troubles and temptations through which you will have to pass before
   you have ended your lifelong fight! How dare you boast, then? Surely
   you have something else to do than to glory in your harness, because
   that harness is meant for you to suffer and to labor in! Therefore get
   to your work and get away from your pride.

   You must not boast, again, because if you look at your harness you will
   see that it has joints in it. You think your armor fits so well, do
   you? Ah, so thought that man who, nevertheless, died by an arrow which
   found its way into his heart between the joints of his array. In every
   man among us there is some weak point--something in our character by
   which we may be destroyed--unless the Grace of God shall protect us.
   Yes, it may be true you cannot be hurt in those parts which the armor
   covers, but just an inch to this side, or to that, lies a vulnerable
   place. We are always most in peril where we think ourselves most
   secure. The prayer we uttered just now in our song was one which ought
   to be always on our lips--

   "Let us not fall! Let us not fall," for fall we shall, even into those
   faults from which we think ourselves free, unless the Sovereign Grace
   of God shall perpetually uphold us!

   You ought not to boast of your harness, because there are suits of
   armor which are good for nothing. There is armor about in the world,
   and some of it the brightest that was ever seen, which is utterly
   worthless! I have known young men put on that harness and come
   strutting into our ranks--but soon the enemy's sword has cut through
   their sham armor-plates and they have perished from before the Lord.
   Oh, it is a grand thing to have on that coat of mail which is made by
   Heaven's own artificers--made of that metal of proof which laughs at
   spear and battle-ax! But self-confidence is a counterfeit. And carnal
   presumption and rash heedlessness are worthless imitations which will
   not turn the edge of the sword in the day of battle.

   We should not boast when we put on our armor because, after all, armor
   and weapons are of little use except to strong men. The old coats of
   mail were so heavy that they needed a man of a strong constitution even
   to wear them, much less to fight in them! It was not the armor that was
   needed so much as the strong man who could sit upright under the
   weight! Think, too, of the sword, the great two-handed sword which the
   old warriors used. We have looked at one and said, "Is that the sword
   with which battles were won?" "Yes, Sir, but you need to see the arm
   which wielded it, or you see nothing. The young professor may put on
   that splendid harness--but is there vital godliness within his heart?
   Has he the

   life of God? Has he power with God? Is the real work of the Holy Spirit
   within his soul? For, if not, however excellent the external armor may
   seem to be, there will be a dreadful failure for LACK of force within!

   Lastly, we may not boast in our harness because if it is of the right
   sort and if it is well jointed, yet we have received it as a gift of
   charity. Most valiant warrior, not one single ring of your mail is your
   own! O Sir Knight with the red cross, no part of your array belongs to
   you by any rights but those of free gift! The infinite charity of God
   has given you all you have! How, then, can you boast? What if the Lord
   has preserved us for years? And what if we are enabled to feel that He
   will always preserve us? Yet this is nothing for us to glory in! We
   must give all the glory to His holy name to whom all the glory belongs.
   Therefore let not him that girds on his harness dare to glory in
   himself, but let him glory only in the Lord.

   III. But now the third point. HE WHO GIRDS ON HIS HARNESS HAS SOMETHING
   ELSE TO DO BESIDES

   BOASTING. Brave Sir, just knighted and belted for the fight, waste no
   time in braggart speech! I will tell you what else you have to do. You
   have, first, to see that you get all the pieces of your armor on. Look
   well to it that you "take to yourselves the whole armor of God," for
   one single part of that panoply, neglected, may lay you open to fatal
   blows. Open not your mouth to boast, but open your eyes--and look well
   to your ways that you make sound work of it--for some begin with a
   false fire of carnal confidence which dies out, to their disgrace. See
   to it that you begin aright, and this will dampen the fires of your
   conceit.

   Young Warrior, beginning with so much hope, I can recommend you to
   spend your time in gratitude. Bless God for making you what you are,
   for calling you out from a sinful world, for making you a soldier of
   the Cross. Boasting is excluded, for Grace reigns! If the Lord has
   called you to work for Him, I charge you to bless His name, for you are
   highly honored to unloose the laces of His shoes. The meanest work for
   Jesus is a grander thing than the dignity of an emperor! Bless the Lord
   for His condescension in permitting you to do anything for Him. You
   have no time for boasting! You need every moment for thanksgiving. You
   need every hour for prayer. If ever we ought to pray, it surely is when
   we are newly entered upon the Christian life. If ever a minister ought
   to pray, it is when he commences his ministry.

   Brothers and Sisters, when ought we not to pray? Surely there is no
   period when prayer is out of place. We have need to cry to the strong
   for strength all through life--but if there should be a special season
   set apart for prayer it should be in entering upon a new course of life
   or undertaking a fresh duty. In buckling on the harness we should ask
   the great Captain to watch over us, that we may be kept faithful unto
   death. Squander not precious time in vainglory, but consecrate it to
   devotion. Remember, young Soldier, that you are bound to use your armor
   in learning obedience, looking to your Captain and Commander as the
   handmaid looks to her mistress.

   You have enlisted beneath the standard--be careful that you march
   according to marching orders! Make sure that you stand fast when your
   Leader bids you stand. Walk without weariness when He bids you walk.
   And run without fainting when He bids you run. You are to take your cue
   from Jesus! He gives the word of command. It is yours by Grace to
   follow it. You have your hands full, I do assure you, to lead an
   obedient life. You will have no time to cry, "I have done well," for
   each moment calls upon you for fresh deeds of obedience and, therefore,
   bids you afresh to ask help from on high.

   Dear Friends, you have no space for boasting, for your full attention
   will be needed to maintain watchfulness. You have just put on your
   harness. The devil will speedily discover that! He will pay his
   respects to you very soon! As soon as he sees a new soldier of the
   Cross enlisted, he takes a fresh arrow from his quiver, makes it sharp,
   dips it in gall and fits it to his string. "I will try this youngster,"
   he says, and before long a fiery dart flies noiselessly through the
   air! He knows where to shoot it and if it does not wound the first
   time, he will learn by a little trial where your weak point is! And he
   will gall you and before he has done with you he will change your
   boasts into groans! It may be that even the people whom you seek to
   benefit will try you! The children whom you hope to convert will show
   that old Adam in them is too strong for you.

   You will find, O young Minister, that the soil will wear out your
   plowshare. Where you meant to bless, you will receive coldness and even
   anger in return. Fighting for Christ is not all parade. The young
   recruit puts on the colors, the sergeant gives him his shilling and he
   feels himself a mighty man as he goes down the village! He will feel
   rather different when he is carried on the ambulance into the hospital,
   to lose a limb, or pine away to a skeleton. He will know what

   fighting means and what battle means before long! I do not speak to
   dispirit anyone who is beginning warfare for Christ, but I do speak
   with this intent--that all vainglory may be put far from us!

   Once more upon this point. The young warrior may not boast, for he will
   need all the faith he has--and all the strength of God, also, to keep
   him from despondency. There is a tendency in us, especially when we are
   commencing the Divine life, to swing either this way towards
   self-confidence, or that way towards despondency. A raw recruit thinks
   himself a fine fellow, but when he finds he is not, he despairs. He
   ought to have despaired of himself at first, but in due time he makes
   the mistake of despairing of his God. Think as little as ever you can
   of yourself-- you will never err there--no man ever walks too humbly,
   or has too little self-conceit. But think as much as ever you can of
   your God-- you will never think too well of Him--the grandest reliance
   a man ever had upon God was warranted by the truth. He that believes in
   the Lord to any extent shall never be ashamed or confounded, world
   without end.

   "Cursed is he that trusts in man and makes flesh his arm. But blessed
   is he that trusts in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is." I make
   confession, here, that whenever I have failed, I have always failed in
   things which I thought I could do very well, indeed. I had done them so
   often that I was sure I could manage them. And where I have never
   failed has been in great difficulties, when I was quite out of my depth
   and could do nothing of myself! By God's Grace I have thrown the whole
   matter upon Him and rested in Him alone--and all has been well. I feel
   it now to be a great pleasure to get out of my depth, where I cannot
   touch the bottom, where the human is altogether exhausted--for then
   everlasting love and faithfulness come in--and it is blessed swimming,
   buoyed up by the waves of eternal love and the Immutable Truth of

   God!

   IV. I close with the fourth point, which is this--THOSE WHO GIRD ON THE
   HARNESS CERTAINLY OUGHT NOT TO GLORY, FOR THOSE WHO ARE TAKING IT OFF
   FIND NOTHING TO BOAST OF. I love to look upon

   my venerable Brothers and Sisters who have been in Christ these many
   years and have worn so well. But they may not take off their harness
   yet! For until we get across the river we are never out of gunshot of
   the enemy. I have heard say that horses fall more often at the bottom
   of a hill than anywhere else. And I am sure it is true with men. I have
   watched carefully and, though I sometimes hear of young men going aside
   (it is sad that we should hear of it), yet if there is any great blight
   upon Christian reputations, it almost always happens to a man of long
   experience. Very frequently to a man who is growing old. I do not know
   why.

   Whether it is that those advanced people begin to trust to their
   experience or not, I cannot tell. But I have so marked it around me and
   I have so noticed it in the records of the Bible. The falls are mostly
   of middle-aged or elderly people. We have hardly in Scripture an
   instance of any young professor that turned aside. The reason is, I
   think, because when we are weak, then are we strong--and when we
   conceive ourselves to be strong, we become weak. He who has been a
   servant of God for 70 years and borne an unblemished character all
   along, may, in the very last year of his life commit a folly which will
   mar his memory.

   Blessed be God, it will not destroy his soul, for the Lord will keep
   him from that--"that evil one touches him not." But even at the last
   the man may so injure himself that he may go with broken bones all the
   way to Heaven and be saved, "so as by fire." Troy kept off its invaders
   a long while, but, after all, it was taken. The 12 years in which the
   Greeks were kept at bay stood for nothing against the one night in
   which the hollow horse, filled with armed men, was dragged in. "He that
   endures to the end, the same shall be saved," and if there were not a
   Covenant promise of final preservation, we might give up our spiritual
   fighting in despair! Though the Christian man never ungirds his harness
   in this life, still we may say that the Brother is taking it off when
   there is but a step between him and death in the course of nature.

   Now, how do you find Christians of that kind when you have attended
   their dying beds, if you have had the privilege of doing so? Did you
   ever find a Christian stayed up with pillows in his bed boasting of
   what he had done? When Augustus, the Roman Emperor, was dying, he asked
   those who were around him whether he had acted his part well. They
   said, "Yes." Then he said, "Clap me as I go off the stage." Did you
   ever hear a Christian say that? I remember Addison, about whose
   Christianity little can be said, asked others to, "come and see how a
   Christian could die," but it was a very unchristian thing to do, for
   forgiven sinners should never make exhibitions of themselves in that
   fashion!

   Certainly I never saw dying Christians boastful! They always depreciate
   themselves and appreciate their Master. One of them said he was tying
   all his good works and all his bad works into a bundle, for, he said,
   he had tried to sort them

   and the good ones had so many spots on them that he hardly knew which
   was which! And so he tied them all up in one bundle and threw them all
   overboard--and he meant to swim to Glory on the plank of Free Grace! He
   did wisely--

   "Nothing in my hands I bring, Simply to the Cross I cling."

   That stanza has been the dying language of thousands of saints! They
   have cried, "None but Jesus!" And they have asked to have put upon
   their tombstones, "A sinner saved by Grace" or--

   "A guilty, weak, and helpless worm, On Christ's kind arms I fall He is
   my strength and righteousness, My Jesus, and my all."

   The tendency of advancing years on Christians is to take away
   self-confidence and to make them more confident in God. Those who have
   had real experience of the things of God do not talk about perfection
   in the flesh--they confess their past failures and mourn over them.
   They do not even say that if they had their lives to live over again
   they would do better--they are afraid they might do worse. And if they
   have done well in any point, and they know it, they will not deny it,
   but they say, "Ah, only Divine Grace kept me from making a terrible
   mistake there, but the Lord appeared for me and helped me." If these
   aged ones are communicative when throwing off their harness, they will
   tell you many wonderful stories of how the Lord came to their rescue
   when their steps had almost gone and their feet had well near slipped.

   And, young people! It will do you good to hear them tell how, when
   their strength was spent, the eternal might of God sustained them! How,
   when they had no merits, the love, blood and righteousness of Jesus
   Christ made them rejoice and triumph before God! And when they were
   fainting and ready to die, a touch from their dear Lord and Master's
   hand made them stand upon their feet full of strength and expectant of
   victory! If you could watch the saints as they doff their harness,
   piece by piece, and go down into the Jordan! If you could see them as
   they come up out of the river and begin to ascend the celestial hills
   on the other side, you would hear them sing but you could not detect a
   single note of self-glory in all their song! When you are privileged to
   stand upon yonder streets of shining gold and hear the hymns of the
   blood-washed ones, their one note will be, "Worthy is the Lamb! Worthy
   is the Lamb!" Though the Lamb says, "They shall walk with Me in white,
   for they are worthy," they do not count themselves so! Their reply to
   their Lord will be, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive
   honor, and glory, and majesty, and power, and dominion, and might!"

   Dear Friends who are girding on your harness, the gist of all I have
   said is this--confide in God, but distrust yourselves! Have done with
   every glorying, except glorying in the Lord! In pastoral observation I
   have seen, and wish to mention it here, many timid, trembling and even
   mourning Christians. And I could have wished that they had more faith
   and more joy. But yet I have seen them walk very carefully, humbly and
   tremblingly--and they have never brought any disgrace upon the Church
   or grieved my heart. But, on the other hand, I have seen others who
   were very sure and very loud. They have been very zealous and pushed
   themselves to the front and won a great deal of esteem.

   They have not only never been any better than they should be, but,
   by-and-by, have needed to be rebuked and censured--and, perhaps,
   ultimately severed from among us--for their glorying was in themselves.
   There is nothing like full assurance for excellence, and there is
   nothing like presumption for worthlessness! Never mistake the one for
   the other! You cannot trust God too much, nor trust yourself too
   little. I read a book one day called, "Self-made Men," and in its own
   sphere it was excellent--but spiritually I should not like to see a
   self-made man. I should think he would be an awful specimen of
   humanity! At any rate, a self-made Christian is one of a sort that very
   soon the devil takes, as I have seen children take a bran doll and
   shake it all out. Satan likes to shake out self-made Christians till
   there is nothing left of them. But God-made men--these are they that do
   exploits! And God-made Christians who fall back upon the eternal
   strength at all times and confide there--these are the men to hold on
   their way and wax stronger and stronger!

   My subject has little bearing upon unconverted persons, except
   this--that as you see Christian people are not to trust themselves--it
   is clear that unconverted people cannot be saved by any trust in
   themselves, or by anything that they can do. "The just shall live by
   faith." And for you who are not just, but are still sinners, the only
   way of salvation is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, that you may
   believe in Him, and you shall be saved! If there is any unconverted old
   man here, he is not taking off his harness, for he never was a soldier
   of Christ! But I would like to say to him--however old

   you may be, the mercy of God is still toward you and, if you believe in
   Jesus, at whatever age you may be, you shall be saved!

   Last night [Wednesday evening, August 5, 1874] I was preaching at a
   certain place and before I preached, one of God's children, a Wesleyan,
   said to me, "I shall always love you, dear Sir." And I said, "Why?"
   "You remember preaching," said he, "in the fields up in King Edward's
   Road, Hackney?" "Yes, I cannot forget it." "Well," said he, "my father
   was 70 years of age at that time and he had never felt the power of
   religion. But that sermon was the means, in God's hand, of his
   conversion, and he became a zealous, earnest Believer during the rest
   of his life." "Well, my Brother," I said, "I am glad I happened to come
   down here tonight, for that is 19 years ago, and I had never heard that
   God had brought a soul to Jesus by that sermon."

   I would to God, tonight, that some poor soul on the borders of the
   grave, who, apart from Divine Grace, lies at the very mouth of Hell,
   may even now make a desperate plunge into the arms of Jesus! Fall into
   the bosom of Jesus and He will not cast you away, for He is able to
   save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him! God grant you may
   come, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Psalm 27. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--683, 668.
     __________________________________________________________________

"I and the Children"

   (No. 1194)

   DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 20, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Behold, Iand the children whom the Lord has given me are for signs and
   for wonders in Israel from the Lord of Hosts, which dwells in Mount
   Zion." Isaiah 8:18.

   WE might possibly have had some difficulty in explaining this verse, or
   we might have referred it to the Prophet Isaiah and his sons, had not
   Inspiration been its own expositor. Turn to the New Testament and the
   text will be no mystery to you. Its key hangs on its proper nail. In
   the second chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and at the 11th
   verse, we read--"For both He that sanctifies and they who are
   sanctified are all of one: for which cause He is not ashamed to call
   them brethren, saying, I will declare Your name unto My brethren, in
   the midst of the Church will I sing praise unto You. And again, I will
   put My trust in Him. And again, Behold, I and the children which God
   has given Me."

   We have thus, from Divine Revelation, assured evidence that it is our
   Lord who speaks, and speaks of His people as His children. This clue we
   will follow. The context sets forth, as is most common throughout the
   whole of Scripture, the different results which result from the
   appearance of the Savior. He is rejected by many and accepted by
   others. He was set for the fall and rise of many in Israel. To those
   who received Him, He is a glory and a defense, but to others, "a stone
   of stumbling and a rock of offense."

   Even now His Gospel is a "savor of death unto death" as well as a
   "savor of life unto life." The election of Divine Grace is always being
   worked out. The separating process continues and will continue until
   the eternal purpose has been completely fulfilled. Those whom the Lord
   has chosen feel the attractions of the Savior and come to Him--while
   others willfully and wickedly close their eyes to His brightness and
   reject Him--and He leaves them in their willing unbelief. "He came unto
   His own and His own received Him not, but to as many as received Him to
   them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that
   believed on His name."

   Of those who received the Lord, we find it written that the Testimony
   of God would be left in their charge. "Bind up the Testimony; seal the
   Law among My disciples." The outside world rejects the Testimony of
   God--its own thoughts and opinions are much more pleasant to it--but
   among the Lord's disciples His commands are prized and His teachings
   sacredly preserved. They see the seal of the living God upon the Gospel
   and they also set to it their seal that God is true. They accept the
   Gospel of Jesus as the very Truth of God and hold it, and mean to hold
   it against all comers.

   To the true disciples of Jesus there may come times of darkness. It has
   been so with the Church of old and will always be so. But they have
   this star to gild their midnight--Christ, their Master and
   Representative--is waiting upon the Lord and expecting and pleading for
   brighter and happier times. "I will wait," says He, "upon the Lord that
   hides His face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for Him."
   Christ, in the dark ages of Judaism, looked for the dawn of the Gospel
   day and even now He sets Himself upon His watchtower and looks for a
   golden age for His redeemed people. So interested is He in their
   welfare that He will not rest till their brightness shines forth as a
   lamp that burns!

   Having thus noted the context, we will come closely to the text. On
   this earth a people exist who have accepted the Messiah and have become
   His disciples--and look for all from their Lord. Of these people the
   text says, "Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given Me."
   Here we shall notice, first, a remarkable relationship ascribed to
   Christ. Secondly, a spontaneous avowal of it--"Behold, I and the
   children whom You have given Me." And thirdly, a common
   function--common to the Lord and to His disciples--they are appointed
   to be "signs" and "wonders" in Israel from the Lord of Hosts which
   dwells in Mount Zion.

   I. First, here is A REMARKABLE RELATIONSHIP. Jesus is called a Father.
   Now, this is not according to precise theology, or according to the
   more formal doctrinal statements of Scripture, so we must, therefore,
   take care that we do not confuse ourselves. Jesus is not, "the Father,"
   and we must always carefully maintain the distinction of Persons in the

   Godhead. The Son of God is one with the Father, but He is not the
   Father. And we must take care we do not ascribe to the Son acts which
   are peculiar to the Father. According to correct speech, it is the
   first Person of the Divine Trinity whom we call the Father, who has
   begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus from
   the dead. And when we say, "Abba, Father," "Our Father which are in
   Heaven," and, "Thanks be unto the Father," we do not refer to the Lord
   Jesus, but to "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

   Still, the title of Father is very applicable to our Lord Jesus Christ
   for many reasons. First, because He is our federal Head. We speak
   correctly of "father Adam," and Jesus is the second Adam who heads up
   our race anew and is the representative Man of redeemed mankind. He,
   only, of all mankind, stands to others as Adam stood--head of a
   Covenant--involving others in His acts. The second Adam, therefore, may
   well regard us as His children in whom the Covenant promise is
   fulfilled, "His seed, also, will I make to endure forever."

   As the first Adam looking down the ages upon us, may well cry with
   astonishment, "Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me!"
   So Jesus, viewing the vast company of the faithful, sees in them His
   seed, and finds in them a sacred satisfaction for the travail of His
   soul. We are in Him. He stands for us and we are, in this sense, His
   children. Our Lord is also Father of the golden age of Grace and Glory.
   Isaiah calls Him, "the Son born," and, "the Child given," and yet, "the
   Everlasting Father." And our hymn has well translated that expression--

   "Sire of ages newer to cease, Prince of life and Prince of peace."

   There is an age of silver in which we now live, which Christ has
   produced by His first Advent and the consequent proclamation of the
   Gospel. And there is an age of gold yet to come, delightfully
   anticipated by the saints, of which Christ will be the Father and Lord.
   Then in Him, and in His seed, shall all the nations of the earth be
   blessed! Indeed, I might say, that the eternity of blessedness in which
   the sanctified shall dwell is an age which claims Christ for its
   Father--and so He may well be called, "the Father of Eternity," or,
   "the Everlasting Father."

   Again, there is a sense in which Christ is our Father because by His
   teaching we are born unto God. Just as the minister who brings a soul
   to Christ is said to be the spiritual parent to such a soul, and is,
   indeed, instrumentally so, so the Lord Jesus, as the Author of our
   faith, is our spiritual Father in the family of God. And of Him the
   whole family in Heaven and earth is named. Our Lord, in bringing many
   sons unto Glory, is truly their Father, for He calls them into
   spiritual life and puts them among the children of God. He is that
   "corn of wheat" which, except it fall into the ground and die, it
   abides alone. But, inasmuch as He has died, He brings forth much fruit.
   And we--all of us who have believed in Him-- are the living fruit of
   our dying and risen Savior! Therefore we speak correctly when we call
   Him Father. He is our elder Brother, but He is also "over His own
   house, whose house we are." The Word which quickened us came to us by
   Jesus Christ who is Lord of all!

   Now, let us see whether there is not much of teaching in this metaphor
   by which we are called children of the Lord Jesus. The expression
   denotes, first, that we derive our spiritual life from Him as children
   take their origin from their father. Of Him we are. If He had not
   created us, we had not been in the world. If He had not redeemed us, we
   had not possessed a portion in the world to come. If He had not called
   us, we had still been in darkness and in death. If He had not quickened
   us--for He quickens whom He wills--we had still lain among the dry
   bones of the valley of sin. That we are, we owe to the Father's
   Providence--but that we are born again, we owe to the Grace of our Lord
   Jesus Christ.

   Apart from that matchless scheme of which Christ is the Sum and
   Substance, there had been no pardoned sinners, no Believers, no
   children adopted into the family of God, no heirs of God, no priests
   and kings to reign with Christ forever and ever! As we look at the dear
   wounds of Jesus, we see the rock from where we were hewn. When we gaze
   upon His precious blood, we see the life blood of our souls! He is the
   Root that bears us, the Stem of which we are the branches. Children do
   not merely get their origin from their father, but they have a likeness
   to his nature--and this is most true in the case of our Lord and His
   regenerated people, for He has become like to us--and on the other
   hand, He has made us like to Him.

   Note how the Apostle puts it, "Forasmuch as the children were partakers
   of flesh and blood, He Himself also took part of the same." "Both He
   that sanctifies and they who are sanctified are all of one." "It
   behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren." As a father feels for
   his children because they are of the same flesh and blood as himself,
   so does the Lord sympathize with His people, for they are members of
   His body, of His flesh and of His bones. No father can be so

   thoroughly one with his offspring as Jesus is with us! Moreover, our
   Divine Lord is bringing us into His likeness and making us partakers of
   His Nature. True Believers are as like their Lord as little children
   are like their father.

   As I said last Thursday night, the likeness may be in some points a
   caricature, so that we smile to see ourselves represented and
   misrepresented in our children, yet there it is--we see our image in
   them--and so the image of Christ is upon all His believing people! It
   is much marred and very miniature, but still it is the true image of
   His love. As on the prepared glass of the photographer, the likeness is
   present, but needs to be brought out by means best known to himself. So
   it is with us--the image of God has been renewed in us, but it lies
   somewhat hidden--and the Holy Spirit has it in hand to develop in us
   the life of Christ. And His work will be complete at the appearing of
   our Lord and Savior, "for when He shall appear we shall be like He, for
   we shall see Him as He is."

   I believe that the text has in it very clearly the idea of charge and
   responsibility. Children are always a charge--a comfort sometimes. No
   parent has a child without being under obligations to God to take care
   of it and to nurse it for Him. Sometimes the responsibility becomes
   very heavy and involves much anxiety. Wherever conscience is lively,
   fatherhood is regarded as a solemn thing. Now, Jesus Christ, when
   looking upon His people, calls them, "children whom God has given Me,"
   as if He recognized the charge laid upon Him to keep, instruct and
   perfect His own people. Remember His last words to His Father before He
   went to His passion?

   "I have manifested Your name unto the men which You gave Me out of the
   world. Yours they were, and You gave them to Me and they have kept Your
   word. While I was with them in the world I kept them in Your name:
   those that You gave me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the
   son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled." Like Jacob
   with Laban's sheep, our Lord looked upon His elect as a charge for
   which He was responsible. And before He departed out of this life He
   rendered in an account to His heavenly Father. Even now that Great
   Shepherd of the sheep charges Himself with the preservation of His own
   ransomed ones! And when He, at the last, shall gather all His redeemed
   people around Him, there will not be one missing--and He will say,
   "Behold, I and the children that You have given Me." We call Him,
   Father, then, because as a father has charge of his family and is
   before God responsible for their training and up-bringing, so Christ
   Himself is Surety for His people and is under bond to bring the many
   sons unto Glory.

   In our relationship towards our children there is involved very often a
   great deal of care and grief. They are happy parents, indeed, who can
   say of a child, "He never caused me anxiety"! Happy father who can say
   of all his household, "I have had no sorrow from one of them"! I fear
   the case is rare. I know that this Father of whom we are speaking had
   care and grief enough for His household. Yes, for their sakes He bore a
   weight of woe which crushed Him to the ground! Oh, you sorrowing
   parents! Take comfort as you remember the greater griefs of the Head of
   the chosen family! For all their infirmities and sins and willful
   wanderings were laid upon Him and, for His children's sake, His "soul
   was exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death."

   The pangs of His sacred Fatherhood brought Him to Gethsemane and its
   bloody sweat. Yes, to Calvary, and its shameful doom--what are our
   griefs compared with these? Jesus must die for His family that He might
   be able to say, "Here am I, and the children which You have given Me."
   Count it not, therefore, a strange thing, since you cost your Lord so
   much anguish, if sometimes your children should pour coals of fire into
   your bosoms! But, Brothers and Sisters, the possession of children
   involves a very near and dear love. You may try to love other people's
   children, but I think there will always be a loving tenderness to your
   own which you cannot give to a stranger's child, however much you try.
   Your own children, after all--it is natural and it is right--must have
   the warmest place in your heart.

   Even thus the Lord has a special love for His own. He manifests Himself
   to them and not unto the world. It is almost a degradation of the love
   of Christ to compare it to anything human. It is so amazing, so Divine,
   that it transcends comparison! If all the loves of parents could be
   piled up together in one vast mound--the love of fathers and the most
   tender love of mothers--yet the whole of that Alp would not equal the
   immeasurable love of Jesus Christ to His own people! Who understands
   its heights and depths, its lengths and breadths? Oh, You dear Lord and
   Savior! Because of Your dear love to us we call You not only Rabbi, but
   Father! And as we hear You say to us, "Children, have you any meat?" We
   answer, "Yes, You, Father of Your Church. Your Table feasts us to the
   full."

   Children, however, when they behave aright, bring to the heart of their
   parent sweet solace and dear delight. Oh, I love the thought, and I
   long to bring it out before you, that as a father is pleased when he
   sees his children growing up in the fear of God--when he observes their
   good character and qualities, when he marks their struggles for that
   which is

   right and their attempts to curb themselves in that which is wrong--so
   is Jesus pleased with us! He speaks with great delight in our text,
   "Behold, I and the children." He is evidently gratified with them. The
   sight of them gives Him content. We readily see anything that is good
   in our children. We have a quick eye for their beauties. Sometimes,
   perhaps, we do not sufficiently see that which is deficient or
   wrong--but assuredly our Lord must have a very keen eye for His
   people's loveliness, for He says of His Church, "You are all fair, My
   Love. There is no spot in you."

   We can see many spots in ourselves, but He looks at us with other eyes.
   I suppose He looks at us through the glass of His own righteousness,
   with eyes fall of perfect love. His delights are with the sons of men.
   He rejoices over us with singing. Never does a prayer of penitence rise
   from a breaking heart without rejoicing the soul of Jesus, for, "There
   is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that
   repents." Never does a Believer struggle against wrong, endure
   oppression patiently, or conquer sin but Jesus is glad! Each budding
   Grace and growing virtue charms Him, even as parents are charmed with
   their hopeful little ones. Our joy in our sons and our daughters looks
   forward and refreshes us with the prospect of what they will be. How
   many bright hopes light up a mother's heart as she thinks of her son or
   daughter! She reckons upon comfort from them in her declining years.

   Our Lord knows what His people are to be and He rejoices therein. Oh,
   if you could see yourselves as you will be in the future, you would not
   know yourselves! If you could only have a photograph of your future
   Glory and could study it, you would say, "Shall I ever be like that?
   Shall I ever be so fair, bright and pure as that?" Remember, the Lord
   Jesus sees you as you shall be and He takes delight in you and says,
   "Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given Me." Putting, then,
   all these things together, you will not fail to see the fitness of the
   figure by which our Lord is represented as standing in the midst of His
   own redeemed--as Father among His children.

   II. Now we shall turn to the second point, and utter a few words upon
   it. There is a SPONTANEOUS AVOWAL. He says, "Behold, I and the children
   whom You have given Me." The Lord acknowledges His children. Sometimes
   they are ashamed to acknowledge Him and He might always be ashamed to
   claim them, but He never is. He speaks of them without hesitation. It
   is, "/and the children." They are defiled and unworthy. They have been
   falling in the mire and have torn their clothes and I know not what
   else, but He says, "They are My children." And He never thinks of
   casting them

   off.

   It amazes me that He does so claim them--but it is His infinite love to
   them and His boundless delight in them which make Him say--"I have
   called you by your name, you are Mine." Not only does Jesus claim them
   as His, publicly, but He glories in them as being God's gift to
   Him--"The children whom You have given Me," as if they were something
   more than ordinary children! They are the promised fruit of the
   "travail of His soul." They are the reward which Jehovah covenanted to
   bestow on Him for His agonies and death! He looks upon them as the
   spoil of His great battle of life, as the crown of His life's labor!
   Solomon gave to Hiram, the King of Tyre, certain cities. But he did not
   like them and called them Cabul, or "foul." But our Redeemer is
   well-pleased with His reward. He takes His purchased inheritance to His
   heart and rejoices, saying, "Behold, I and the children whom You have
   given Me."

   Observe that the Lord not only acknowledges His people and delights in
   them, but He challenges inspection. He says, "Behold!--look at them--I
   am not ashamed of them. Look at them, My Father--look at them all
   glorious in Your Son, all washed in My blood, all robed in My
   righteousness--look at them, and see how glorified I am in them! Your
   eyes, though full of fire against sin, can see no sin in them! Your
   hand, though it grasps the thunderbolt of vengeance against
   transgression, will not smite them, for I have made Atonement."
   "Behold, I and the children whom God has given Me," is a call to the
   whole world to look, "for these things were not done in a corner!"

   Jesus did not come into the world that He and His children should be
   hidden under a bushel and should not be known! No, standing right out,
   as a city set on a hill, Jesus says, "Behold, I and the children whom
   the Lord has given Me." "Look at them, for they are meant to be looked
   at! They are set 'for signs and wonders' throughout all generations."
   And notice again--for it affects my mind much more powerfully than I
   can express, "Behold, / and the children." I can understand a mother
   speaking thus about herself and children, but for Christ, the God of
   Glory, to unite His glorious name with such poor worms of the dust is
   very wonderful!

   There! Sit down and wonder and weep over it as Jesus says, "I and the
   children." Well did old Rowland Hill sing--

   "And when I shall die, receive me, I'll cry For Jesus has loved me--I
   cannot tell why.

   But this thing I find, we two are so joined He won't be in Hea ven and
   lea ve me behind." Jesus will not be without us! He cannot bear it! You
   mothers do not think it enough to be indoors in bed, yourselves, when
   night comes on--you want the dear children to be safely housed, too. If
   you were pursued by wolves on some snowy plain in Russia, you would not
   be satisfied to escape, yourself, and leave your children to be
   devoured. Your motto would be, "I and the children." You would live or
   die with them! How often, when mothers have been overtaken in
   snowstorms, have they been found dead--with their little ones nestling
   in their bosoms still alive! The mother has often taken off her
   garments to wrap them around her babe--and even so, Christ has stripped
   Himself of every honor and comfort--and died to prove His infinite love
   for His own!

   It is no idle sentence in which He sets forth His union with His
   beloved in very deed and binds Himself and them in one sacred bond. I
   cannot tell you how I rejoice in these words! I have them in my mouth
   and in my heart--"I and the children." Blessed be our Lord for speaking
   thus!

   Now, Beloved, if Jesus claims us so lovingly, let us always claim Him!
   And if Christ takes us into partnership--"I and the children"--let us
   reply, "Christ is all." Let Him stand first with us and let our name be
   forever joined with His name. Let us be bound up in the bundle of life
   with Him. It is plain that He delights in us--let us delight in Him! It
   is clear He glories in us--let us glory in Him! He invites others to
   look at us and Him--let us invite all mankind to behold our glorious
   Lord! Let us get behind our Lord and set Him always before us. Whoever
   visits us, let them not leave us without taking knowledge that we have
   been with Jesus!

   If we show our treasures, as Hezekiah did, let us begin with showing
   our Savior, for no Babylonians will ever come and take Him away from
   us! Our "soul shall make her boast in the Lord," and none shall ever
   stop us of this glorying here or hereafter! Enough, then, concerning
   the spontaneous avowal. Oh, may we be among the happy company of whom
   our Lord shall say, "Behold, I and the children whom God has given Me"!

   III. Thirdly--and into this I would throw the strength of the
   discourse--there is A COMMON FUNCTION. Christ and His people "are for
   signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of Hosts which dwells in
   Mount Zion." Both Christ and His people are set for a purpose. First,
   they are to be "signs and wonders" by way of testimony. Our Lord is
   called the "Word of God." A word is the means of communication between
   one mind and another. God speaks to men by Christ--no--Christ is His
   speech. If you want to know what God has to say to you, see what Christ
   was and is!

   In the same manner, only in an inferior degree, Believers are God's
   voice to men--He speaks to the world through His people. In a happy
   Christian, God says, "I will make you happy, too, as I have made this
   man, if you seek Me in the same way as this man did." In the Believing
   Christian who gets his prayers answered, God says to men, "I will hear
   your prayer if you pray as this man does, with faith in My promise."

   All the world of Nature reveals God, but the revelation is inarticulate
   and rather resembles the teaching of a picture or a hieroglyph than a
   clear distinct voice. But we, my Brothers and Sisters, are to be God's
   mouth among the sons of men! And our conversation, our profession, our
   life in its entirety is to be a witness from God to man--a testimony
   for the Truth of God, for righteousness, for holiness, for the power of
   the quickening Spirit, for the efficacy of redeeming blood--and for all
   the Truths contained in Divine Revelation. We are not to be blank
   sheets, or papers with a blot on them and nothing more. We are to be
   letters written by God and passed round among men that they may read in
   us what God has to say! Now, it is very clearly so in Christ--His holy
   life and blessed death are a wonderful witness to the people. And as to
   us, the Lord has said. "You are also My witnesses." I would inquire
   concerning many of you here who have made a profession, whether you are
   really God's voice to men. If not, what is the use of your dumb
   religion?

   We are, secondly, signs and wonders among sinners by way of marvel.
   Believers, by their declaration of God's Testimony, become more and
   more singular in the judgment of men. No man but a Christian can
   understand a Christian. The spiritual discerns all things, yet he,
   himself, is discerned of no man. Carnal minds cannot make us out, "for
   we are dead, and our life is hid with Christ in God." The person who
   never strikes you as having anything singular about him, who is just
   like men of the world, is probably no Christian. If you are a believer
   in Jesus Christ, yourself, the unregenerate will misunderstand and
   misrepresent you. But if everybody is pleased with you--it is pretty
   clear that God is not--for "the friendship of this world is enmity with
   God."

   Genuine Christians will generally be reckoned by the world to be
   singular people. For instance, they profess to have been converted--and
   so to have undergone a miraculous change. They profess to have a new
   life, compared with which they were dead before. The world calls this
   nonsense. Regeneration! What fanaticism! In the days of Whitfield and
   Wesley the loose spirits made rare fun of the idea of being born
   again--and the preacher of regeneration was dubbed Mr. Wildgoose--and
   his followers a set of enthusiasts. The world now practices the crafty
   device of using our terms and phrases, but meaning something else by
   them--thus talking of being regenerated by baptism and such other
   nonsense! To be "born again" is still a marvel to the sons of men!

   The real Christian is a man who has faith in Providence and believes in
   God--therefore he is calm and unmoved in times of distress. He believes
   in the lilies which do not spin and yet are clothed, in the ravens
   which sow not and do not reap and yet are fed--therefore, though using
   his utmost diligence, he is not anxious, but lives in peace. The world
   envies him, but cannot comprehend him! Moreover, the Christian is a man
   who has power in prayer--he asks and receives, knocks and it is opened
   unto him--and the outside world either disbelieves the fact or else
   looks upon it as a strange affair. It must be so! We must be wondered
   at!

   Yet I do not say that some of you Christian people are a marvel or
   wonder at all, for I do not think you are--the marvel is that you dare
   call yourselves Christians! I mean that the genuine Christian is, in
   many points, a singular person, so singular that others cannot read his
   riddle. When a man becomes converted in an ungodly family, he is like a
   young swan in a duck's nest--they cannot understand him. They say,
   "This is a strange bird! Where did he come from?" They count him ugly
   because he is not like the rest. Frequently, ungodly relatives consider
   the young convert to be going out of his mind, or as being naturally
   weak in the intellect. They put him down as insane while he is
   sorrowful, and as idiotic when he is joyous!

   The world cannot understand a Christian's endurance of trial, but they
   set it down to hard-heartedness. They see him calm and composed. He
   neither raves nor blasphemes nor tears his hair. And if the worst comes
   to the worst, he still says, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in
   Him." This perplexes worldlings and no wonder, for it puzzled the devil
   himself! He laid Job, covered with boils, on a dunghill--scraping
   himself with a piece of potsherd. He was brought to poverty. His own
   wife tempting him and his friends accusing him, yet that man, who was a
   greater conqueror than Alexander or Napoleon, still said, "What? Shall
   we receive good from the hands of the Lord, and shall we not receive
   evil? The lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of
   the Lord." "In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly."
   When the Lord allows any of us to be similarly tried and sustains us in
   the trial, we become "a wonder unto many."

   One of the greatest wonders to the ungodly is a Christian's deathbed.
   Ungodly men, who have despised religion altogether, have been troubled
   in conscience and almost persuaded to be Christians through the holy
   triumphs of dying saints! Many an Infidel remembers his mother's holy
   life--how quiet, how loving she was--making the house always happy. And
   he remembers how grieved she was when her boy began to be skeptical
   about his mother's Savior. That dying charge of hers will ring in his
   memory forever! That dying look of joyful triumph from those eyes which
   had no tear in them except for those that were left behind--that
   expiring song, that shout of victory--he cannot get over it! If a man
   wishes to be skeptical, he must not see true Christians either live or
   die--otherwise facts will convince him against his will--or make it
   hard to doubt.

   When the Believer's testimony for good becomes a marvel, it is not
   unusual if he, afterwards, becomes an object of contempt. What did the
   world say of the Master? "They called the Master of the house
   Beelzebub." He was despised and rejected of men. And if you are one of
   His disciples, the world will despise you, also! I will tell you what
   they say of us-- "They are all a parcel of dupes, led by the nose by a
   man. They will believe anything he tells them." All this because you
   are true to your pastor and the Word of God! Then, as soon as they see
   that you are not led by a man, but think for yourself, they cry, "Ah,
   you are one of those pig-headed ones! You will never be taught! Why
   don't you believe as your fathers did, and keep to the old Church?"

   If the world cannot wound us on one side, it tries the other. If they
   cannot accuse us of being black, our enemies will say that we are of a
   sickly white. Readily do accusers change their sweet voices and cry,
   "Ah! It is all a scheme for motley getting." If the minister is
   zealous, they any, "Self-interest is at the bottom. If it is not love
   of money, it is love of power and influence." To the Christian people
   they say, "No doubt you increase your business by it. Many a man puts
   his

   religion in his shop window and finds it pays amazingly well." They
   know in their own souls that you are free from any sinister motive, but
   they will not do you justice. Like Satan, they say, "Does Job serve God
   for nothing? Have You not set a hedge about him, and all that he has?"

   Meanwhile, if you were in poverty through religion, they would sing
   another tune and say, "A pretty thing comes of being a Christian! Why,
   you will soon be without shoes for your feet! Look what you bring
   yourself and your family to." If God pays good wages, the devil says,
   "You only serve Him for the wages." If present mercies are small, the
   old accuser tauntingly exclaims, "A pretty master you serve! See how He
   starves you?" There is no pleasing the world--and we have no desire to
   please it! As Paul said, "The world is crucified unto me and I unto the
   world." I know the kind of tone adopted by others--they plume
   themselves upon their intellect and set us down as behind our times.
   "We have no patience," they say, "with this believing in prayer, this
   expectation of conversion, this reliance upon atonement and imputed
   righteousness.

   "Why, it is downright stupidity! Such preaching is only an echo from
   the graves of Puritans! No doubt Puritanism was a power in the days of
   Cromwell, but it is out of date now. We require more advanced thought
   in this enlightened age when we have locomotives on railways and other
   grand improvements, and have discovered that the universe made itself!
   We cannot afford to keep behind these intelligent times and must go in
   for a splendid smash like other people." If this does not wound us they
   will say, "These people are not thinkers--they have no culture." And so
   they set us down for fools. In which we greatly rejoice--being glad to
   be fools for Christ's sake!

   Christians in all ages have been considered fools. If you are traveling
   in Switzerland and see an idiot, he is a "Cretin"--that is, a
   Christian. Yes! Such was the byword--the fool was called a Christian
   and the Christian was thought a fool! We are satisfied to bide our
   time, knowing that the day shall come in which the worldly wise will
   not only be called fools by Myers, but will confess themselves so in
   endless despair. But now they say, "These people are too precise, they
   make life dreary!" We are, in our own esteem, the happiest people in
   the world! And we could not be much happier this side of Heaven! But
   because we do not care for their vain pleasures, their husks, and
   swine's' meat, we are austere and miserable. Only they think so who
   know nothing about us! We have meat to eat which they know not of, and,
   like Daniel and his brothers, though we taste not of the world's
   dainties, we are in better shape than those who do.

   Men of the world are apt to say, "You are such a set of bigots! You
   think everybody wrong but yourselves." Is it a wonder that if we think
   we are right--we do not believe that those who are opposed to us can be
   right, also! If we know that two and two make four, we are intolerant
   enough to affirm that they cannot make five! It is a degradation to my
   intellect to expect me to believe that "yes" and "no" can be equally
   correct upon the same matter! Triflers with religion may consent to
   such folly, but those who are in earnest cannot do so. If to be sure
   that what God says is true is bigotry, we confess that bigotry! Our
   Master says, "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved; he that
   believes not shall be damned"--we believe this and the damnatory
   clause, too! And we are content to abide the judgment of the Last Great
   Day as to whether such a belief will then be accounted bigotry or not!

   Our despisers often cry, "See what conceit and pride! They think
   themselves God's elect and that He has a special favor for them, and
   pardons their sins, and saves them." That is correct! Call that conceit
   if you please--we are not ashamed to confess it! If you saw a rich man
   going down the street and were rude enough to say, "See how conceited a
   man he is! He thinks himself worth 10,000 pounds," he might quietly
   smile and say, "I do think so, and rightly, too, for I am worth several
   hundred thousand pounds." They say we are conceited because we
   rejoice--but it is our fault not to rejoice more! The Lord has done
   great things for us, we dare not deny it and have no wish to do so. He
   has made us to be His sons and daughters and we must glory in His name!

   If others mistake our joy for pride we cannot help it, for we know
   right well that we give all the glory to God in our own souls. When
   Believers thus become, as they will be, objects of contempt, they will
   be assailed with ridicule and spattered with slander! Bad motives will
   be imputed to them and the Truths for which they are willing to die
   will be attacked--both in their persons and their testimonies. They
   must bear reproach--and if they do--they will become wonders again! If
   they suffer but never retaliate. If they never return railing for
   railing. If they bear and forbear, their patience will make them
   wonders! As the ages shall roll on, the holy and the godly and the
   Christ-like--Jesus and His children--will go from victory to victory!
   In every coming age, even though persecution should rage as it did in
   former days, the Church of God will bear it and defeat it!

   Superstition, heresy and worldliness will come, but the Church will
   pass through the storm! And at the last, when Truth shall conquer, when
   Gethsemane shall be transfigured into Paradise and the shame of the
   Cross of Calvary shall be lost in the Glory of the "Great White
   Throne"--when there shall be no more the crown of thorns, and nails,
   and sponge and vinegar--but when Jesus shall be proclaimed, "King of
   kings and Lord of lords," and all His people shall reign with Him, then
   will the saints be signs and wonders, indeed! Know you not that you
   shall judge kings, sitting as assessors at the right hand of God? Know
   you not that you shall be the Glory of Christ in that day? When the
   ungodly shall cry, "Rocks, hide us! Mountains, fall on us!" "The
   righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father."

   Hold on, my Brothers and Sisters! And hold out to the end! Be humble
   and quietly faithful. Do not try to be a wonder, but be a wonder! Do
   not try to do some astonishing thing to attract attention, but "let
   your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and
   glorify your Father which is in Heaven." Do not believe that the common
   Christianity of the present age will carry anybody to Heaven! It is a
   counterfeit and a sham! It does not make men different from their
   fellows! It pretends to have faith and has none. It talks about love
   and does not show it. It brags of truth and evaporates it into thin air
   in its tolerant charity. May God give us back the real thing--strong
   belief in the Gospel, real faith in Jesus, real prayer to Him, real
   spiritual power!

   Then, again, there will be persecution, but it will only blow away the
   chaff and leave the pure wheat! The world likes us better because we
   like the world better--it calls us friends because we hide our colors
   and sheathe our swords and play the coward. But if we preach and live
   the Gospel in the old Apostolic way, we shall soon have the devil
   roaring round the camp and the seed of the serpent hissing on all
   sides! But we fear not, for "the Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of
   Jacob is our refuge."

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Isaiah 8:11-22; 9:1-7. HYMNS
   FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--PSALM 116 (SONG II) 255, 342.
     __________________________________________________________________

Abundant Pardon

   (No. 1195)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 27, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "He will abundantly pardon." Isaiah 55:7.

   IN our childhood we learned from Dr. Watts' Catechism that Isaiah was
   that Prophet who spoke more of Jesus Christ than all the rest. In the
   chapter before us Isaiah had been declaring in the name of the Lord the
   coming and the character of the Redeemer, speaking of Him thus, "Behold
   I have given Him for a witness to the people, a leader and a commander
   to the people." No sooner had he thus proclaimed the appearance of the
   Christ, than he beheld whole nations of the heathen rushing to Him and,
   inspired by that sight, he began at once to address himself to the
   sinners around him bidding them fly to Him, too. As there is a natural
   connection between the physician and the sick, so is there between the
   Savior and the sinner.

   The Prophet can hardly think of Christ as coming to be a leader, a
   witness and a commander without at once turning to the wicked and the
   unrighteous--bidding them forsake their ways, enlist beneath their
   Commander's banner--and participate in the blessings which He brings.
   Jesus is a grand attraction for guilty men! "Then drew near unto Him
   all the publicans and sinners for to hear Him." Christ is always
   welcomed by those who know they need Him. The self-righteous Pharisees
   and Scribes murmur at Him, but those who are humble and contrite,
   because conscious of their guilt, approach Him, wishing, as it were,
   but to touch the hem of His garment that they may be made whole! As the
   sun is attended by his planets who borrow all their light from him, so
   is the Lord Jesus waited on by crowds of sinners who find in Him their
   hope, their all! As the thirsty harts resort to the water brooks, so do
   needy souls hasten to Jesus--and it is according to the Divine order
   that it should be so.

   Notice what the Prophet has to say. He speaks to the unrighteous and
   the wicked, and invites them to immediate faith and repentance, for so
   I understand the passage to mean. "Seek you the Lord while He may be
   found, call you upon Him while He is near," is an exhortation to prayer
   and faith. We cannot approach God in prayer without faith, for a prayer
   that has no faith in it must die on the road. To seek the Lord aright
   we must believe that "God is, and that He is the Rewarder of them that
   diligently seek Him." I take that sixth verse, coupled with the third,
   to be a plain exhortation to faith. Faith comes by hearing and for this
   reason it is written, "Incline your ears and come unto Me; hear and
   your soul shall live."

   As for repentance, that is clear in the seventh verse. "Let the wicked
   forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts." The whole
   passage reads like a paraphrase of the Gospel message, "repent and
   believe the Gospel." It seems as if Isaiah were an Evangelist rather
   than a Prophet--as if he had lived before his time and preached the
   Gospel like an Apostle who had seen the Lord! Like the morning star,
   which shines upon the earth before the sun has risen, Isaiah rejoiced
   the hearts of Believers with his clear radiance! The gladness of his
   soul in the thought of the coming Messenger of the Covenant, even Jesus
   Christ, kindled his spirit and the light shone forth from him! He was
   so glad within his heart that his tongue was loosed and straightway he
   addressed himself to those that "sat in darkness and the valley of the
   shadow of death."

   He bade them arise and quit the shades and go unto their God, for there
   was no reason for despair. There was mercy, great mercy, abounding
   pardon to be had and he bade them obtain it then and there! "Seek you
   the Lord while He may be found, call you upon Him while He is near."
   The motive which he urged upon men was the certainty of their finding
   pardon. This was the tempting bait with which this ancient fisher of
   souls endeavored to "catch men." May the Holy Spirit aid me while I use
   the same, and invite you to consider with me--the abundant pardon which
   God bestows upon the guilty. Having discoursed upon that at length, we
   shall, in the second place, consider what fair inferences may be drawn
   from this encouraging Truth of God.

   I. First then, according to the text, God does ABUNDANTLY PARDON. We
   will turn that Truth over and over and see it in many lights. The
   pardon of God may well be abundant, for it wells up from an infinite
   fountain. "Mercy, which endures forever," is the attribute from which
   that pardon springs. Pardon is the child of Mercy, not of Justice-- and
   we may reckon that God will give abundant pardon because He delights in
   mercy! All the attributes of God are well balanced--like Himself they
   are infinite--and not one of them entrenches upon or dims the luster of
   another. He is infinitely just, yet infinitely good! He is infinitely
   powerful, yet infinitely tender!

   We are quite sure that whenever an attribute of God comes into action
   it will be sufficiently revealed to make its glory manifest. There
   could be no mercy exercised by God until there was sin. Where all was
   blameless, Mercy had no sphere. As soon as the angels fell, the Lord
   might have exercised mercy had He pleased. But He did not choose to
   provide salvation for Satan and his rebellious hordes. As if to teach
   us that it is not necessary that God should forgive, He suffered the
   fallen angels to fall irretrievably--and gave them up to everlasting
   fire as their due desert. Deceived by the old serpent, man also
   fell--and again there was space for Mercy. Man was an inferior creature
   to the angels--should he be allowed to perish or should Divine Grace
   step in?

   In this case Mercy bowed the heavens and came down, and the Lord of
   All, as if to show that He "will have mercy on whom He will have mercy,
   and will have compassion on whom He will have compassion," though He
   had passed the angels by, took up the race of men and determined that
   His pardons should be bestowed upon them! Now, when He had resolved to
   let Mercy come to the front and be seen--which I again say could not
   have been if there had been no sin--it was most amazing that He allowed
   that blessed attribute to come forth in all the fullness of its might!
   In the Creation you see power in its majesty and wisdom in its
   grandeur. In Providence you see goodness unbounded and faithfulness
   unlimited. In the gulf to which the Lord has condemned the wicked you
   see Justice in all its awful glory--and therefore when He determined to
   let Mercy come forth from her ivory palaces it seemed but natural that
   He should give ample room.

   It was not according to His mind that from the unfathomable depths of
   His love there should trickle forth a stinted stream of mercy which
   might wash out a little sin--and water a scanty patch of the desert of
   our nature! No, He poured floods upon the dry ground! When our sin
   abounded, His Grace did yet more abound! He opened the sluices of His
   mercy! He let down the cataracts of His infinite love from above and
   drowned the mountains of our sin in a deluge of Divine Grace so that we
   sang rightly just now--

   "See here an endless ocean flo ws Of never-failing Grace. Behold a
   dying Savior's veins The sacred flood increase. It rises high and
   drowns the hills, Has neither shore nor bound, Now, if we search to
   find our sins, Our sins can ne'er be found."

   "God is love" implies that love has a predominance in His
   Character--not so as to mar other attributes, much less to destroy
   them--but as the consequence and blending of the whole, and, therefore,
   we may be sure that this most conspicuous of all the attributes, this
   summing up of them all, will have full range and distribute abundantly
   its peculiar

   gifts.

   But, secondly, as the attribute from which the pardon comes is
   abundant, so we know for sure that the objects to which this pardon has
   been expended are abundant, too. Well is it said, "He will abundantly
   pardon," for God has already pardoned sinners more numerous than can be
   estimated by human arithmetic! From the first sinner down to the last
   that has ever fled for refuge to the hope set before him in the Gospel
   of our Lord Jesus, what incalculable numbers have looked to Him and
   have been lightened! Think, my Brothers and Sisters, of the myriads
   that have lived and died forgiven! Heaven is not scant of inhabitants!
   If you could now lift up your eyes, you should see that the old
   Covenant promise has been in part fulfilled--"your seed shall be as the
   sand, and the offspring of your bowels like the gravel

   thereof."

   The promised seed in Covenant with God, of which Covenant God spoke to
   Abraham, is already as many as the stars in Heaven and as the sand upon
   the sea shore, innumerable. They have come from every land, yes, from
   the uttermost

   parts of the earth have they come! Of every hue has their skin been and
   their raiment of many different colors. Their language has been varied
   and their condition, also, but they have alike found Divine Grace in
   the sight of the Lord. Multitudes of the poor and needy, yes, of the
   outcasts have come--the women that ground at the mill and the captives
   that fretted in the dungeon! God's wondrous eye of love has found out
   broken hearts by the millions and He has abundantly pardoned them. Yes,
   and even on the face of the earth, now, what a multitude there are whom
   God has pardoned! Blessed be His name!

   There may not be so many as latitudinarianism imagines, but there are
   certainly more than bigotry conceives. God has pardoned a great
   multitude of the sons of men and He intends to pardon yet more, for the
   Gospel will spread--and brighter days are coming! The halcyon period is
   on the wing when nations shall be converted at once and, like the
   flocks of doves that come to the dovecot, souls shall fly to Jesus for
   forgiveness! When the whole earth shall be filled with His Glory in the
   multitude of repentant and forgiven sinners of the golden age, men
   shall see that God does "abundantly pardon."

   His pardon is, in the third place, abundant, when we consider the
   abundance of the sins which the love of God blots out. Oh, what a
   subject I have now before me! Here is a river for depth, unfathomable,
   and for breadth, a river which cannot be passed over--it is a river to
   swim in! I must correct myself and call it an ocean! Indeed, what shall
   I say of this sea of sin? There are innumerable creeping things in it,
   both small and great beasts! There is that leviathan who does mightily
   disport himself and there are fierce tempests and horrible storms which
   well may sink the ships which tempt them. I am overwhelmed with the
   thought of the abundance of transgression!

   Sin! From your fruitful womb what myriads of ills proceed! What
   countless hosts of evils are the fruits of sin! How many are the sins,
   themselves! Sins of thought--rebellious thoughts, proud thoughts,
   blasphemous thoughts, atheistical thoughts, covetous thoughts, lustful
   thoughts, impatient thoughts, cruel thoughts, false thoughts--thoughts
   of ill memory and dreams of an unholy future--what swarms are there!
   However, the omission of thoughts which should have been, such as
   thoughts of repentance, gratitude, reverence, faith and the like--these
   are equally numerous! With the double list, my roll is written within
   and without with a hideous catalog. As the gnats which swarm the air at
   eventide, so numerous are the transgressions of the mind!

   Then there are sins of word. I should have to repeat the list again.
   What words have vexed the pure and holy ear of God! Words against
   Himself, against His Son, against His Law and Gospel, against our
   neighbor, against everything that is good and true! Words proud and
   hectoring, words defiant and obstinate, words untruthful, words
   lascivious, words of vanity and words of willful unbelief. Oh God! How
   many are our sinful words! The sins of our tongue--what man is there
   who is able to reckon them up?

   Then come the sins of deed, which in very truth are but the fruits
   which grow out of sins of thought. Can any man here estimate the number
   of his own sins from the first transgression of his childhood until
   gray old age, or to his present period of life? "Who can understand his
   errors? Cleanse me from secret faults." Perhaps the sins we do not know
   are more numerous than the sins we are conscious of! Conscience may not
   be properly enlightened and hence many a thing may not seem to be
   sinful which really is so. But God's clear eyes perceive everything
   that is obnoxious to His holy Law and all our errors are written down
   against us until the whole is wiped away by an abundant pardon through
   the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Our sins are as the countless horde
   of locusts which descend upon the fertile land and devour everything,
   leaving nothing for man but famine and despair.

   But as it was in Egypt so it is at this day--the Lord commands the wind
   of Mercy to blow every locust from off the face of the land--and as
   they all depart at once, our hearts rejoice and are glad. Our sins are
   countless as the drops of dew in these autumn mornings when every leaf
   is wet, for every tree is weeping tears of sorrow over the dying year.
   And yet when the sun has risen, with a little of his heat, the moisture
   is gone, the dews are all exhaled--they are as if they had never been.
   Our sins are countless--but the removal of our transgressions is
   complete when the infinite love of Jesus shines upon us and God in His
   Son has reconciled us by His atoning blood! Innumerable sins are
   forgiven by one word from the life of Divine Love.

   In the fourth place, we can see the truth of this in the abundant sin
   of those sins which are pardoned. Just think of the abundant sinfulness
   of any one transgression, for every sin has a myriad of sins in its
   heart. Did you ever find a spider's nest just when the young spiders
   have all come to life? It is a city of spiders! Now, such is any one
   sin--it is a colony of

   iniquities, a living mass of offenses! You have but to stir it and you
   will see countless sins running out of it--it is an aggregation of
   evil! I remember once studying, with much care, various works upon the
   sin of Adam. I was convinced by each writer that it was a different sin
   and came, at last, to the conclusion that the sin of Adam, simple as it
   was, had all sorts of sins hidden within it.

   Sin is not only a double flower, but it blooms sevenfold! It is a
   complicated mischief, in a thousand ways abhorrent to the holy God, and
   yet He pardons it! Abundantly pardons it! Some sins are plotted and
   planned and performed with presumptuous deliberation so that when the
   act, itself, is perpetrated, it is only one part of a whole mass of
   transgression! The man has first to consider how to do it--there is sin
   in the consideration. If it were a sin of revenge, for instance, the
   anger which first suggested it was a sin. Then the malice which preyed
   upon the supposed injury and turned it over was sin. And then the
   prostitution of wit and wisdom to the scheming of some cunning mode of
   vengeance--all this was sin!

   Many a sin is a development from a long succession of sins and may have
   a genealogy far longer than the pedigree of the man himself--and be
   intensely full of sin all along. Some sins have in them strange
   contradictory mixtures. We have known men sin from pride and
   covetousness, and yet fall into that which was at once mean and ruinous
   to their hope of gain. We have seen self-righteousness and dust riding
   on the same saddle. What are you, O Sin! A monster of forms uncouth and
   contrary! I see you one moment as an angel of light and the next you
   are a fiend, black as the midnight of Gehenna! You grovel like a
   serpent and soon you shine like a seraph! You are "all things to all
   men," if by any means you may deceive some and cast them down into the
   Pit! Yet this vile thing the Lord forgives of men for Jesus' sake! Does
   He not abundantly pardon?

   In addition to there being many sins in one sin, I want you to remember
   how much virus of sin we sometimes manage to stow away in a sin. A man
   has done wrong and smarted for it, yet he does the very same thing
   again willfully, against his own conscience and against the warning he
   has received. A man will sometimes acknowledge what a fool he has been
   and yet play the fool again. Some men sin for no motive whatever--for
   mere wantonness of sin. It is very astonishing to read in the
   newspapers of crimes that persons will sometimes fall into who appear
   to have had no inducement to do so at all--persons in good
   circumstances who might have purchased readily enough the very things
   they steal! This increases guilt and makes sin the more heinous, if we
   do it in sheer willfulness.

   If any of us have been blessed with a tender conscience and with pious
   training have heard the sound preaching of the Gospel and have had
   light and knowledge--if we go deliberately into sin--there is in that
   sin a degree of obnoxiousness to God which is not to be found in the
   transgressions of the poor and the ignorant who have lived in darkness
   and scarcely know what they do. Yet, sins against light and knowledge
   God pardons! Deliberate and presumptuous sins He forgives! Blasphemous,
   impudent and provoking sins--sins that would otherwise sink us low as
   the lowest Hell--His mighty mercy sweeps away in one single moment when
   we believe in Jesus Christ! At the foot of the Cross not merely sins
   vanish that are a little stain upon us--but the deep and double crimson
   of deliberate guilt and the staring scarlet of gross iniquity--all
   disappear when we are washed in the "fountain filled with blood" which
   is open for sin and for uncleanness. Abundance of sinners are forgiven
   the abundance of sins and the abundance of the sin which lies in each
   one of the sins is removed. "He will abundantly pardon." Our text
   grows, does it not?

   Let us notice, next, that the Lord "abundantly pardons," when we
   consider the abundant means of pardon which He has been pleased to
   provide for sinners. It was not possible that God should so pardon sin
   as to leave a slur upon His moral government! If a judge sitting on the
   bench should pass over great crimes without any kind of retribution, it
   would be a great misfortune to a country, for very soon crime would be
   regarded as a mere trifle. Leniency to the wicked would turn out to be
   cruelty to the just. When a man who commits violence in the streets has
   the lash used upon him, we may pity him if we like--but if that lash
   were not used, we should have a greater need to pity those good and
   honest citizens who are half killed when they are seeking their homes
   at nightfall!

   A judge must never so pass by offenses as to increase them. God will
   not show pardon in such a way that men shall think of sin, or question
   the vigor of His justice. What, then, was He to do? Why, He must
   provide a way by which He could be "just and yet the Justifier of the
   ungodly." And He did provide it! His own Son became the Substitute for
   the guilty--and in their place He suffered the wrath of God for man--so
   that now the severity of God is upheld in the death of Jesus and the
   mercy of God in the forgiveness of those for whom He died! That there
   is abundant pardon may be

   clearly seen from the fact that the Substitute was not an angel--was no
   creature of bounded power and merit--but He who came to save us was
   none other than God Himself--"very God of very God"!

   The fountain filled for us to wash in is not a fountain which can only
   cleanse a little and then will be exhausted of its virtues. The Son of
   God has filled it from His pierced heart and the merit of the atoning
   blood is without limit. There was a limit to the purpose for which it
   was shed, for He loved His Church and gave Himselffor it. But it is
   blasphemous to imagine that there is any boundary to the merit of the
   Atonement, itself. There is in the sacrifice of the Son of God a degree
   of power which seraphim cannot conceive! Were all the stars, worlds,
   and were they all filled with myriads of inhabitants who had revolted
   against God--if an Atonement had been minted for them all--it is not
   within my power to conceive that a greater Atonement could be required
   for the whole host of creatures than that which Christ presented upon
   the Cross! The boundless merit of it, therefore, makes us rejoice--for
   our God "will abundantly pardon."

   Sinner, if there had been a little Savior, you might have despaired!
   Sinner, if the Savior had offered a small Sacrifice, if there had been
   but a narrow degree of merit in His agonies and cries, I might have
   spoken to you with bated breath. But I know He is "able to save to the
   uttermost them that come unto God by Him" and, therefore, I am
   warranted to declare to you that God, even our God--in Christ
   Jesus--"will abundantly pardon." May God send these things home to the
   hearts of those who are laboring under a sense of guilt.

   And now I must notice, in the sixth place, the abundant ease of the
   terms of pardon. When a man says he will forgive another and does not
   mean it, he puts hard conditions and says, "I will forgive him under
   certain circumstances, if he does this, and if he does that." This is
   not abundant pardon. It is a little spirit of forgiveness--ill fact--it
   is no forgiveness at all! But look how God puts it. Does He say to a
   man, "I will forgive you if you weep for seven years, or do penance for
   a lifetime"? Or, "I will forgive you if you bring so much gold or
   silver, or promise this or promise that"? No, no, no! It is a hearty
   forgiveness and therefore the terms are simple and easy. When I say,
   "terms," I merely use the word from lack of a better, for, indeed, the
   terms are not terms at all!

   "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts,
   and let him return unto the Lord, for He will have mercy upon him, and
   to our God, for He will abundantly pardon." That is all! No man can
   expect to be forgiven if he goes on with his sin! You cannot expect God
   to pardon that which you continue to provoke Him with! That would be
   absurd! The sin must be given up. The Gospel says, "Believe in the Lord
   Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved." You cannot expect a medicine to
   cure you if you will not take it! Neither can you expect God to pardon
   you if you will not accept pardon from His Son, Jesus Christ. So all
   that He asks is that you ask and are willing to receive. And even that
   He gives you--for the power to pray, to repent and to believe--all come
   from Him!

   And though He bids men believe, and so makes it a duty, yet He gives
   them faith and so makes it a privilege. What a God He is! He gives to
   His enemies--to the rebellious, to revolters that go aside more and
   more--the Divine Grace which makes them repent of their sin and believe
   in His Son! And this puts their sin forever behind His back and casts
   it into the depths of the sea. "He will abundantly pardon."

   Observe, again, the abundance of this pardon may be seen in the
   fullness of it. God's pardons are no shams, no superficialities. "He
   will abundantly pardon"--that is to say, He will really pardon! Have
   you that are pardoned ever asked yourselves this question, "Is it
   really true? Can it be so? Am I really forgiven?" Yes, it is true! God
   does not pretend to forgive. He does not play at pardoning. When once
   He says, "/ absolve you," He does, indeed, absolve. The forgiveness is
   valid! It is valid on earth, in the court of conscience, and above, in
   the court of Heaven! The pardoned sinner is truly pardoned and no one
   shall ever condemn him! His sin is not merely supposed to be gone, it
   is gone. It is not put a little way off from him, but as far as the
   east is from the west--so far has He removed our transgressions from
   us. "I will cast their iniquities into the depths of the sea," He says.
   "I will cast them behind My back," is another of His strong
   expressions.

   Ah, Soul, if you believe in Jesus, your sins do not exist! For it is
   written, "He has finished transgression, and made an end of sin, and
   brought in everlasting righteousness." And here is the consequence of
   it--that when God puts away sin He so abundantly pardons that He even
   imputes righteousness to those who were unrighteous! He does not impute
   sin, but He gives to us the righteousness of Christ--with which we are
   rendered acceptable in His sight--and Christ Jesus is made unto us
   "wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption."

   Our Lord does nothing by halves. He found us black in sin. He washes us
   white--we are naked and He clothes us.--

   "And lest even shadow of a spot Should on our souls be found, He took
   the robe the Savior worked, And cast it all around."

   For filth there is washing, for nakedness dress, for deformity
   adornment, for uncomeliness beauty, for all our possible needs a
   boundless supply! Is not this pardon plenteous, when we see what is
   bound up with it? I am sure I do not know how to speak well enough of
   this glorious pardon which our God gives. But one point is always full
   of joy to me--that it is irreversible! Those whom the Lord forgives He
   never condemns. "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance."
   He does not play fast and loose with His creatures--forgive today and
   condemn tomorrow. Once let Him blot out the sin, the sin is gone
   forever. "If they search for it, it shall not be found; yes, it shall
   not be, says the Lord."

   How I delight to preach about everlasting salvation and irreversible
   pardon! My God and King changes not-- therefore you sons of Jacob are
   not consumed and the Covenant blessings are yes and amen in Christ
   Jesus! "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in
   Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit." Once
   more only. There is so much to say that I am obliged to multiply
   particulars.

   The eighth point is, He does "abundantly pardon," because of the
   abundant blessings which attend that pardon. See how He takes the poor
   imprisoned soul out of bondage and delivers it--takes off every chain
   from its hands and feet-- and makes it rejoice in Christ Jesus! Oh, you
   that have once been set in the stocks of conviction on account of sin
   and made to cry out in your sore bondage, you now know, since you are
   forgiven, what the glorious liberty of the children of God is! You are
   not now in "durance vile," but being justified by faith, you have peace
   with God through Jesus Christ your Lord! The Lord gives us freedom from
   the power as well as from the guilt of sin. Those dear lips of Christ
   are put to the wounds of our sin to suck the poison out lest the virus
   of our old transgressions should breed a fresh disease. The blessed
   dove descends with a healing branch from the Tree of Life, whose leaves
   are for the healing of the nations--and our soul is made to seek after
   holiness till it perfects it in the fear of God. This is abundant
   pardon, indeed!

   If a king were to forgive rebels, it would certainly be a great mercy.
   But to take those rebels and make them his friends--that is more
   abundant mercy. Then to adopt them and make them his children--yes, to
   put coronets on their heads and make them kings and priests in his
   empire--this were abundant pardon, indeed! To take the rebels and
   provide them royal sustenance. To place them at his table. To educate
   and train them. To admit them to his palace. To grant their requests,
   commune with them and take them into his palace with him--that would be
   an abundant pardon! And yet all this God does for sinners! He makes
   them His children! He hears their prayers! He gives them fellowship
   with Himself and His dear Son!

   He employs them in offices of trust! He sets them about bringing their
   fellow sinners to Himself and, by-and-by, He takes them home to Heaven
   where they shall dwell forever at His right hand in all the bliss and
   Glory of His only-begotten Son. Oh, is not this abundantly to pardon?!
   I would to God some seraph could descend with burning tongue to take my
   place and speak to you, this morning, on such a theme as this! But no,
   perhaps I am a better speaker to you in such a case, for--

   "Never did angels taste above

   Redeeming Grace and dying love." But I have tasted it! This forgiveness
   is mine, today, and I rejoice in it! And, as I preach it to you, I
   preach that which I know and set before you that which I have enjoyed!
   Oh, that others may come and participate in this amazing pardon-- this
   boundless forgiveness of boundless sin!

   II. We shall consider next, very briefly, what are THE INFERENCES WHICH
   FLOW OUT OF ABUNDANT

   PARDON. The first inference is this--There is no room for anybody to
   despair. If there is here, this morning, one who has been a drunk, a
   man of filthy and unclean life, a thief or worse, if worse can
   be--there is no reason why he should despair! Suppose I were only able
   to say this morning, "God does sometimes pardon some few sinners. There
   are a few people who have been guilty of great sin who have been
   forgiven and are in Heaven"? Why, if men were in their senses they
   would find hope even in this and would exclaim, "Who can tell? Who can
   tell? Perhaps He will pardon me?" Even on such a slender thread as
   that, they would have hope--and if they were wise they would go and
   seek mercy.

   Jonah could only go through Nineveh and say, "Yet forty days, and
   Nineveh shall be overthrown!" Nothing about mercy--not a word of it!
   But the people of Nineveh said, "Who can tell? He may turn from His
   fierce anger that we

   perish not." And on the strength of, "Who can tell?" they tried it and
   the God of Mercy spared the guilty city! Oh, poor Sinner! If you had
   only a, "Who can tell?" it were worth while to go and try it! But look
   at my text--there is no, "Who can tell?" in it! "He will abundantly
   pardon." "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his
   thoughts," for it must be heart-work--"and let him turn unto the
   Lord"--let him seek His face by repentance and faith, that is the
   meaning--"and He will abundantly pardon."

   The Lord has great mercy for great sinners! I will set the big bell
   ringing and I will let it ring and ring again, "Come and welcome! Come
   and welcome! Come and welcome, for the great gates are set wide open!
   The tables are long and the oxen and fatlings upon them are plentiful,
   and myriads are coming! Come along with you!" The great bell rings out
   again, "Come and welcome! Come and welcome! Come and welcome! For He
   will abundantly pardon." Would God some soul would hear the
   proclamation of this best of news and fly to Christ for pardon this
   very day!

   Another inference from my subject is this--that there is a loud call to
   everyone who has not repented to do so, for who would be so base as to
   offend so good, so kind a Lord? I think that ought to touch each man's
   heart. Here is one whom you have offended. You think he is very angry
   and you feel very angry, too--and therefore you offend again! You count
   him an enemy and you keep up the quarrel. You do more mischief to him.
   You damage his estate and speak against his reputation. You suppose
   that all this while he is preparing to deal a very heavy blow at you
   and avenge the injuries he has sustained. So you grow more angry,
   still, and hate him more and more.

   You chew the cud of malice and you get such bitterness out of it that
   you become worse and worse until you find, one day, that you have been
   mistaken all along. A friend meets you and says, "Why do you speak so
   ill of your neighbor?" "I hate him, abhor him." "What for?" asks the
   other. "Do you know that when he hears of all that you do he only says,
   'I am very sorry for him. I never did him any hurt and I never will.'
   Do you know he has often done you great service? You were in debt and
   you would have been in prison, only he called and paid your debts for
   you! When you were very ill he sent the physician to you! Although you
   never knew that he sent him, it was so, and you were restored. Do you
   know that he has been buying an estate for you against the time of your
   trouble which is creeping upon you? He has settled it in your name and
   entailed it on you--and he means that you shall live in a mansion
   forever?"

   The man says, "I never thought that--I could not have believed it and I
   do not believe it now." "Yet it is true," replies the other. "Does he
   know of all that I have done against him?" "Oh yes! He has been behind
   the door often and heard you call him all sorts of bad names." "What
   did he say, then?" "All he said, was, "Poor soul! He will be sorry for
   what he did one of these days, when he knows me better." "Do you mean
   to say that is all he said?" "Yes." "But did he not grow red in the
   face and threaten a lawsuit, or anything of that kind?" "No--he said he
   should win you one of these days, when you came to know him."

   Now, I am sure if you had thus treated any one of your fellow
   creatures, you would be ashamed of yourself and want to hide your face.
   Would you not? If you then received an invitation from the person whom
   you had so badly treated and he said, "You need not have any fear to
   come. I shall never say a word of upbraiding to you as long as you
   live." "Well," you would say, "bad as my nature is, I will go and make
   up with him." So I pray God that He may plead with you ungodly ones and
   turn you to Himself. What hurt has God ever done you? His Laws--is
   there anything wrong in them? Are they hard, harsh, severe? They are
   only meant for your good. They are nothing but danger signals, telling
   us not to hurt ourselves. Would God we would not persist in going where
   we should not. God has prepared for some of you full, unqualified
   forgiveness--and He means to bring you to Himself and bless you and
   carry you safely to Heaven!

   Oh, hold not out against Him, but yield by mighty Grace subdued! Can
   you resist its charms? Come, now, and reason with God while He thus
   reasons with you. Let your conscience say, "Lord, You are full of
   mercy. We come to You. We would be reconciled to You through the death
   of Your Son." God grant that the words of the text may have power with
   many of you!

   Another inference is this. /f there is anybody in this house the text
   specially calls this morning, it is the biggest sinner here because
   there cannot be abundant pardon where there is not abundant sin. If
   anyone here feels that he or she is an abundant sinner, you are the
   person this text is meant for! Where are you, dear Soul? Way back there
   in the fog? My Master calls you! "He will abundantly pardon." Mary! You
   who have been a Magdalene, you are the woman! John, there! You who have
   been a persecutor and opposed of the Gospel, you are the man! There is
   room for abundant pardon

   in you! You that have never cared for God or devil! You who feel your
   hearts so hard and stubborn that you think you can never be saved--you
   are the very people the text is for--for there is room for abundant
   mercy in you!

   While my text invites each sinner, it has a special finger with which
   to beckon, this morning, to those who have abundant sin--"Come here,
   come here, come here! For the Lord will abundantly pardon." Now, for
   such a forgiving God as this we ought, in return, to have great love.
   If He "abundantly pardons," we ought to be abundantly grateful--

   "Love Imust, I've more forgiven--

   I'm a miracle of Grace."

   You believe God has done much for you--never think you can do too much
   for Him! Evil sinners, when they get saved, make the fairest saints! In
   proportion as they earnestly rebelled, they often throw the same vigor
   into the service of God and become desperately in earnest for that dear
   Lord who loved them and gave Himself for them!

   But to close, dear Friends. What if that mercy should be slighted? What
   if there should be such abundant mercy and it should be rejected? What
   if we reject the mercy of God and the blood of His dear Son? Those that
   are unwilling to be forgiven doubly deserve to be left to their own
   deserts. If God speaks to you with mercy and you will not have Him, you
   must not wonder if, by-and-by, He changes His tune. The lamp holds out
   to burn and while it burns you may have mercy. But remember it will
   soon burn out! The longest life is short and after that there will be
   no further mercy, no terms of Divine Grace. The Mercy Seat will be gone
   and the Judgment Throne will fill its place!

   Oh, if God only gave us five minutes to find mercy in, surely, if we
   were not fools, we should avail ourselves of it! But while He has
   lingered with some of you for 50 years, and still lingers, do not
   provoke Him! But, "today, if you will hear His voice, harden not your
   hearts," but turn unto Him. Oh, may the Spirit of God turn you, for
   Jesus' sake. Amen.

   PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Isaiah 110-20; 4322-28;
   48:1-11
     __________________________________________________________________

The Stern Teacher

   (No. 1196)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Therefore the Law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that
   we might bejustified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no
   longer under a schoolmaster." Galatians 3:24-26.

   NEITHER the Jewish Law of Ten Commandments, nor its Law of ceremonies
   were ever intended to save anybody. It was not the intent of the
   ceremonial Law, in itself to effect the redemption of the soul--by a
   set of pictures it set forth the way of salvation--but it was not,
   itself, the way. It was a map, not a country. It was a model of the
   road, not the road itself. The blood of bulls and goats, nor the ashes
   of a heifer could take away sin! These sacrifices and offerings were
   but types of the great Sacrifice which, in due time, was presented by
   the true Priest. There was no inherent virtue in the victims that were
   slain, or in the services that were observed by the worshippers! Those
   sacred rites were intended to portray to the minds of the people the
   real Sacrifice, which was, in the fullness of time, to be offered by
   our Lord Jesus Christ--but they could do nothing more.

   The king's portrait is not himself, the king! The engraving of a
   banquet is not the feast, itself, and so the grand old ceremonial Law
   was but a shadow of good things to come. It did not contain the
   substance of spiritual blessings. Neither was the moral Law of the Ten
   Commandments proclaimed on Mount Sinai ever given with the view of
   sinners being saved by it. When that Law was announced by God, He knew
   that everyone to whom He gave that Law had already broken it and that,
   consequently, they could not keep its precepts or claim justification
   by their conformity to its requirements. He never intended it to be a
   way of salvation!

   Hundreds of years before He had revealed His Covenant of Grace and the
   way of faith to His servant, Abraham, and the Law was not meant to
   disannul the ancient promise. To look at the Law as a Savior is to
   place Sinai in the place of Zion and so to misuse and abuse the Law. It
   was sent with quite a different purpose, as we shall presently try to
   show you. It was sent to be our schoolmaster till Christ came--the
   schoolmaster of a world in its minority that had need to be under
   tutelage until it attained full age--which would not happen until
   Christ should be born of a woman and the doctrine of Salvation by Faith
   in Him should be fully preached and known.

   Now I shall try and show, first, the office of the Law. Then, secondly,
   the design of that office--"to bring us to Christ." And, thirdly, the
   termination of that office--"After faith has come, we are no longer
   under a schoolmaster."

   I. We begin with THE OFFICE OF THE LAW. It is to be a schoolmaster.
   Here I must endeavor to explain the figure. A schoolmaster nowadays is
   not at all like the personage Paul intended. He speaks of a pedagogue,
   an official, seldom, if ever, now seen among men. This was not a person
   who actually officiated as master in the school and gave instruction in
   the school itself, but one--a slave, generally--who was set to take the
   boys to school and to watch over them. He was to be a sort of general
   supervisor of them, both in school and out of school and, in fact, at
   all times.

   A pedagogue was very generally employed in the training of the young.
   Indeed, it was a common and customary thing for the sons of the Greek
   and Roman nobility to have appointed over them some trustworthy servant
   of the family who took them in charge. The boys were entirely under
   these servants--and thus had their spirits broken in and their vivacity
   restrained. As a rule, these pedagogues were very stern and
   strict--they used the rod freely, not to say cruelly-- and the
   condition of the boys was sometimes no better than slavery.

   The boys, (as it was supposed to be for their good), were kept in
   perpetual fear. Their recreations were restricted-- even their walks
   were under the surveillance of the grim pedagogues. They were sternly
   held in check in all points and were thus disciplined for the battle of
   life. As for the young women, they, also, had some elderly Roman of
   grim appearance who tried to keep them out of mischief and suppress
   anything like cheerfulness or girlish glee. It was considered necessary
   for young people that they should suffer from rigid discipline and bear
   the yoke in their youth.

   Therefore they were all put under pedagogues, whoever they might
   be--pedagogues armed with penalties and devoid of sympathies.

   Now Paul, taking up this thought, which was his idea in the word,
   "schoolmaster," says the Law was our pedagogue, our guardian, our
   custodian, ruler, tutor, governor until Christ came. Well, then, what
   is the business of the Law as a pedagogue? The business of the Law is,
   first, to teach us our obligations to God. Let us ask ourselves if we
   have ever heard the Law teaching us in that way. Brothers and Sisters,
   read the Ten Commandments and study each separate precept--you will
   find that in those 10 short precepts you have all the moral virtues,
   the full compass of your accountability to God and of your relationship
   to your fellow men.

   It is a wonderful condensation of morals. The essence of all just
   decrees and statutes lies there. Perfection is photographed there and
   holiness mapped out. No one has ever been able to add to it without
   creating an excrescence. Not a word could be taken from it without
   causing a serious omission. It is the perfect Law of God and tells us
   exactly what we ought to be--if we are in any degree deficient--we are
   to that extent guilty before God. When the Law comes to a man's
   conscience, it reveals to him the Divine standard of right--holds it up
   before him--makes him look at it and apprises him that the Commandments
   do not merely refer to acts and deeds, but with equal force to the
   words and thoughts from where they proceed.

   I guarantee you it is a humbling day when a man gets to understand that
   for every idle word he has spoken he will be brought to account--and
   that even his desires and imaginations will all come under Divine
   scrutiny! How startled is the purest mind when it understands that
   whoever looks upon a woman to lust after her has committed adultery
   with her already in his heart--so that even glances of the eyes and
   thoughts of the heart are offenses of the Law of God! The Law of God
   takes cognizance of the entire nature and reveals the evil which lurks
   in every faculty. The mere imagination of sin is sinful--the very
   conception of it, albeit that we should reject it and never carry it
   into act--would still be a stain upon our minds and render us impure
   before the thrice holy God! This is one of the first works of the
   Law--to show us what spotless purity it demands and to reveal to us the
   matchless perfection which alone can meet its requirements. He who has
   once gazed upon the blinding light of legal holiness will tremble at
   the memory of it--and abhor himself in dust and ashes as he feels how
   far short of it he falls!

   Having done that, the Law acts as a schoolmaster, next, by showing us
   our sinfulness. We are naturally prone to account ourselves very good.
   Our own opinion of ourselves is seldom too low--most generally it is a
   rather high one-- but just as a stern pedagogue would say to a boy who
   was getting a little proud, "Come along, Sir, I must take you down a
   little," so the Law takes us down. It says, "Look at that precept. You
   have not kept that! And consider this other precept, for you appear to
   have forgotten it." "Look," says the Law, "you talk about your
   holiness, but have you loved the Lord your God with all your heart, and
   all your soul, and all your might? And have you loved your neighbor as
   yourself?"

   And then, when Conscience, who is a great friend of this pedagogue,
   replies, "Indeed I have done nothing of the kind," the conviction of
   sin comes home to the soul and sadness reigns! You will tell me, "This
   is very unpleasant--to be made to feel that you are sinful." Yes, but
   it is very necessary--there is no getting to Christ in any other way!
   Christ died for sinners and if you are not sinners, what interest can
   you have in His death? Why should you think that He died for you? You
   must be convinced of your sinfulness before you can possibly realize
   the value and need of salvation! It is the business of the Law to lay
   before you the straight line--that you may see your crookedness--and
   put before you the pure gold. The Law is there that you may discern the
   humbling fact that what you thought to be pure metal is only so much
   worthless dross! It is the part of this pedagogue to bring you down--to
   humble you and make you feel how sinful you have been.

   When the Law has carried our education this far, its next business is
   to sweep away all our excuses and stop our mouths as to all
   self-justifying pleas. Did you ever know a boy without an excuse? I
   never did! I think I never knew a girl, either! We all make excuses
   readily enough. But those rough, surly pedagogues always answered the
   boy's idle apologies by giving the offender an extra stroke of the whip
   for daring to impose upon his guardian! And that is what the Law does
   with us. We say to it, "We have not done exactly as we ought, but then
   think of poor human nature!" Ah, how often we make that excuse! But the
   Law answers, "I have nothing to do with the poverty of human nature.
   This is what God commands and if you do not obey you will have to be
   cast away forever from His Presence."

   The Law makes no diminution of its claims because of fallen human
   nature! And what is more, when the Law comes with power to a man's
   conscience, he does not, himself, dare to plead human nature--for of
   all pleas that is one of the most fallacious. A man will say, "Well, I
   know I drank to intoxication, but that is merely gratifying an instinct
   of human nature." Now, just suppose that this drunk, when he gets
   sober, falls into the hands of a thief--will he not turn the rogue over
   to a policeman? But what if the defense is set up that it was human
   nature that robbed him? See what he will say about it. Says he, "I will
   get human nature locked up for 12 months if I can." He does not
   recognize soft speeches about human nature when anyone does wrong to
   him--and he knows, in his own soul, that there is no valid defense in
   such a plea when he does wrong to God!

   What if human nature is bad? That only proves that the man ought to be
   punished more! A man stands before my Lord Mayor tomorrow morning. He
   is brought up for a thief, charged with having picked somebody's
   pocket. He says, "My Lord Mayor, I ought to be forgiven, for the fact
   is, it is my nature to steal! I have stolen so long that whenever I see
   a pocket I feel a disposition, at once, to put my hand into it--such is
   the infirmity of my nature." What does the Lord Mayor say? He replies
   very gravely, "Why, I see that it is not merely in actions that you are
   guilty, but your very nature is poisoned with dishonesty. I shall give
   you a double punishment--your plea is not an excuse, but an
   aggravation." So when the Law comes, it sweeps all excuses away and
   makes us see how hollow, false and even wicked they are! Men, like
   boys, will say that circumstances were such that they could not help
   doing amiss--but the Law, like a stern pedagogue, says--"I have nothing
   to do with circumstances. Whatever your circumstances are, there is
   your duty and you have not done it, and, not having done it, you must
   be punished for your offense."

   Where does Moses, in the 20th chapter of Exodus, speak about
   exonerating or even extenuating circumstances? God spoke all these
   words, saying, "I am the Lord your God, which have brought you out of
   the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other
   gods before Me. You shall not make unto you any graven image, or any
   likeness of anything that is in Heaven above, or that is in the earth
   beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: You shall not bow
   down yourself to them, nor serve them." That is to say, not under any
   circumstances! "You shall not steal," not under any circumstances.
   Circumstances are not taken into account! The Law sweeps that excuse
   away and makes men speechless before the Judgment Seat.

   Many transgressors argue, "Well, but I have not done worse than other
   people." To which the Law replies, "What have you to do with other
   people? Each individual must stand or fall on his own account before
   the Law. The Law is to you. If another has broken it, he shall be
   punished even as you shall, inasmuch as you have broken it." Then the
   man cries, "But I have been better than others!" "But," says the Law,
   "If you have not perfectly walked in all the ways of the Lord your God
   to do them, I have nothing to do with comparing you with others. This
   is my sentence, 'Cursed is every man that continues not in all things
   that are written in the Book of the Law to do them.'"

   Now, my dear Hearers, these are not my words, they are the Words of God
   by His servant Moses! And there they stand like a flaming sword,
   turning every way, and blocking up the legal road to the Tree of Life.
   Conscience, when it is really awakened by the Law, confesses herself
   condemned and ceases to uphold her plea of innocence. How can it be
   otherwise, when the Law is so stern? Then, Perhaps, the man will say,
   "I mean to do better in the future"--to which the Law replies, "What
   have I to do with that? It is already due that you should be perfect in
   the future--and if you should be perfect, in what way would that wipe
   out your old offenses? You have only done what you ought to have done."

   But the man cries, "I repent of having done wrong." "Yes," says the
   Law, "but I have nothing to do with repentance." There is no provision
   in the Ten Commandments for repentance! Cursed is the man that breaks
   the Law-- and that is all that the Law says to him. Over the top of
   Sinai there were flames exceedingly bright and a trumpet sounded
   exceedingly loud--but there were no drops of the rain of pity there!
   Storm and tempest, thunder and lightning appalled the people so that
   they trembled in the camp--and such must be the sights and sounds we
   witness as long as we are under the Law!

   Having thus swept away excuses, this pedagogue does the next thing
   which pedagogues did to boys. It begins to chide us and to chasten us.
   And it will chide, too! I know it. I had the Law frowning and shaking
   its fist at me for years before I got from under it. Glad enough was I
   to escape from it, for well do I remember the weight of its club--that
   crab tree club of which John Bunyan speaks! I guarantee you it can give
   you such sore bones that you cannot lie down upon the bed of your
   self-confidence to take a rest. "Why," says the Law, "you have done
   this and that, and the other, and you

   know you have! You have sinned against light and against knowledge--and
   against conscience, love and against mercy." And each of these brings
   another blow from the great rod till we are all wounds and bruises--and
   we seem to ourselves to be covered with putrefying sores.

   The Law will serve us as the pedagogue did the boy--it will accompany
   and follow us everywhere. The old pedagogue went with the boy to the
   playground--he did not let him play in peace. He went upstairs to bed
   with him-- he did not let him go to sleep without a frown--and he woke
   him up in the morning much earlier than he liked to be awakened, and
   made him come out of his bed, whether he liked it or not. He could
   never go anywhere without this pedagogue with him, poor child. And so
   it is when the Law gets hold of a man--really gets hold of him. Does he
   go to the theater to find pleasure in sin? The Law will go with him and
   make him feel more wretched than when he was at home! He may get among
   the frivolous and try to sing some old song to get rid of his feelings,
   but the more he tries to drown his misery, the more the dark
   forebodings come before his mind.

   He cannot rest. The Law keeps on saying, "What are you doing, now? Why,
   you are only going from bad to worse." The Law also smites the awakened
   conscience, again and again--and frightens him with what is soon to
   come. "Suppose you were to die where you now are," says the Law.
   "Suppose you were now to appear before your Maker, unforgiven, where
   would you be?" Perhaps in this kind of feeling a man goes to the House
   of God. The Law follows him there. If the preacher preaches a
   contorting sermon, the Law says, "This is not for you. You have nothing
   to do with that. You are under my government, not under Christ." The
   sweeter the promise, the more bitter will be the taste of the sermon in
   the poor sinner's mouth, for the Law says, "You have broken my
   injunctions. You have violated my statutes. There is nothing for you
   but eternal punishment--to be driven forever from the Presence of God."

   "Hard lines," you say. You do not like this pedagogue. No, nor did I,
   when I was under him. I was glad when the day came that I was of age.
   Do you see what the drift of all this is? Why, the drift of it is to
   make you despair of being saved by your good works--and to make you
   feel that you can do nothing right, apart from Jesus! You are forced by
   the Law to cry out, "Why, I cannot do anything right! I have tried and
   failed! I have tried again and have failed! I thought I was going to
   improve myself into an angel, but I seem to be worse every day! I
   thought surely the Law would have smiled on me and said, 'That is well
   done,' but when I have done my best I am still condemned, I am allowed
   no peace!"

   No, dear Soul, and if God means to save you, you never will have any
   peace till you come to Christ! The man whom God does not intend to save
   is often left without the Law--to enjoy his portion in this life as
   best he may. What is the use of worrying that man? He may as well have
   peace in this life, for he will never see the face of the Lord in
   Heaven. But the Lord's elect are made to feel the rod and by that rod
   they are so beaten that they are driven out of all heart and confidence
   in themselves--and made to turn to Jesus--to find salvation by some
   better method than by their own works! The Law is our schoolmaster to
   whip us to Christ--our pedagogue to flog us and beat us till we are
   heartily sick of self--and look for our hope and confidence in some
   other source.

   II. Thus I have shown you the office of the Law and I will proceed to
   the second head, which is, THE DESIGN OF THIS OFFICE. The Law is not
   intended to conduct any man to despair. "But did not you say it was,
   just now?" No, I did not! I said it was sent to drive a man to despair
   of himself. That is the despair which hails the Gospel--and the sooner
   we have it the better--it would be quite another matter if we were
   driven to absolute despair. Brothers and Sisters, the Law says, "You
   shall not indulge the hope of being saved by me. I will whip it out of
   you." And it does this effectually, but it is not meant that the man
   should say, "Well, if I cannot be saved by my works there is no hope of
   my being saved at all."

   Oh, no! It is that he may ask, "What must I do to be saved?" And may
   get this answer--"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be
   saved." Its office is not to urge us to make an amalgam of works and
   faith, as some suppose. There are those who say, "I cannot keep the
   Law, but if I believe in Jesus, then the blood of Jesus will make up
   for my sins and deficiencies." That is not the way of salvation! Nobody
   will ever get to Heaven that way! If you have any engagements with the
   Law, you must pay it 20 shillings in the pound. It will not take a
   composition of any sort whatever--you must satisfy its utmost demands
   or it will give you no rest--either in time or in eternity!

   If you say to the Law, "I will give you so much in works and so much in
   Grace," the Law does not deal in that way-- it must be paid by a legal
   tender of current coin of the king's realm. It demands works and it
   will have nothing but works--and those absolutely perfect and in full
   tale and measure. The Law repudiates amalgamation and so does the

   Gospel of Free Grace. If you have anything to do with Jesus, you must
   get right away from your own good works--I mean from all reliance upon
   them--and come to rest in Him, and Him alone, for it can never be
   Christ and company. He will save from top to bottom, from first to
   last, or else not at all. Not a drop of His blood and then a drop of
   your tears! Not a work from Christ and then a work from you! Oh no!
   Such hideous patchwork cannot be endured. It is not the object of the
   Law to drive you to a compromise. Its object is this--to make you
   accept salvation as the free gift of God-- to make you stand and admit
   that you are a sinner, and accept a free, full, perfect
   forgiveness--according to the infinite Grace of the eternal Father. The
   Law is meant to keep you always holding on to salvation by Divine
   Grace.

   For my part, I cannot bear that preaching which is partly Law and
   partly Grace. I have had enough of the Law! If you had known five years
   of its rigor--five years of discipline of the pedagogue--you would
   never want to see even his back again! When a man once knows what
   law-work is in his soul, he knows the difference between that and the
   Gospel--and he will not have linsey-woolsey! He needs to have the pure
   white linen all of one material--and that material Free Grace! It must
   not be, "Yes, no," but, "Yes, yes"--Grace, Grace, all Grace, nothing
   but Grace, and not Grace and works, not Moses and Christ, but Jesus
   only! The Grace must be pure and unadulterated!

   It is a grand thing when this schoolmaster makes a man stick to Divine
   Grace and so flogs and whips him that he never wants to go back to the
   Law any more for, Brothers and Sisters, nobody is so happy in the
   liberty of Christ as the man who has thoroughly known the bondage of
   the Law! I think I have repeated to you a story my old friend, Dr.
   Alexander Fletcher, once told me. He said he was passing by the Old
   Bailey, or some other of our jails, and he saw a couple of boys turning
   somersaults, standing on their heads, making wheels of themselves and
   all sorts of things. He stopped and said, "Why, boys, whatever are you
   doing? You seem to be delighted." One of them said, "Yes, and you would
   be delighted, too, if you had been locked up in that jail three months!
   You would jump when you came out." And the good old doctor said he
   thought it was very likely he should. If he had been a prisoner there
   he should hardly know how to express his delight in getting out.

   Now, if a man has been once pummeled by the Law. If he has felt his sin
   and misery--and the impossibility of obtaining any relief by the way of
   human merit. When he comes to see that Christ has kept the Law for him.
   When he comes to know that he is saved, and saved perfectly by an act
   offaith in Jesus Christ--when he realizes all this--it is then that he
   lives under new conditions and is not under the Law but under Divine
   Grace! He is the man to know the sweets of liberty because before the
   iron had entered into his soul! He is the man to kiss the Emancipator's
   feet, for was he not heavily ironed in the days of his former estate?
   This, then, is the design of the Law--to make us sick of self and fond
   of Christ--to condemn us that we may accept Free Grace. To empty us
   that God may fill us, to strip us that God may clothe us--in a word--to
   kill us that Christ may make us alive!

   III. Now to our last point--TERMINATION OF THE LAW'S OFFICE. When does
   it terminate? The text says,

   "But after faith has come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster." We
   come to believe in Jesus and then the pedagogue troubles us no more.
   No, there is a great change in the pedagogue's behavior. When the young
   Roman, or we will say a young Hebrew, who had come under the Greek law,
   was under thirteen and a-half years old, this pedagogue was always
   beating, cuffing and buffeting him for his faults. But when he was a
   day over the time, then, according to the Law, he was free from the
   tutelage of the pedagogue.

   Do you think the pedagogue struck him that morning? He knew better! He
   had whipped him yesterday, but now he must know his master and render
   him another sort of service. The lad is come to his full age and is
   under other regulations. Under the old Roman law a man was not of full
   age till he was twenty-five. According to that law the pedagogue might
   be insulting and domineering over him when he was 23 or twenty-four.
   But when his young master had come of age, he changed his talk
   altogether--matters wore another phase. And so when a man becomes a
   Believer, he has come of age and the schoolmaster's rule is over. He is
   no longer under his former tutors and governors, for his time of
   liberty appointed by the Father is come!

   He is not under the pedagogue of the Law any longer, for Christ's work
   has set him entirely free. Certainly, a man sees the office of the Law
   as pedagogue ended when he ascertains that Christ has fulfilled it! I
   read the Ten Commandments and say, "These thundered at me and I
   trembled at them, but Christ has kept them, kept them for me! He was my
   Representative in every act of His obedient life and death--and before
   God it is as if I had kept the Law--and I

   stand accepted in the Beloved! When Jesus Christ is seen of God, God
   sees His people in Him, and they are justified through His
   righteousness because they have faith in Him. "He that believes in Him
   is not condemned."

   Oh, is it not a thousand mercies in one that the grand old cannons of
   the Law are no longer turned against us? Christ has either spiked them
   or else turned them on our enemies by fulfilling the Law so that they
   are on our side instead of against us. The Law ceases its office as
   schoolmaster when it comes to be written on our hearts. Boys have their
   lessons on slates, but men have their laws in their minds! We trust a
   man where we should carefully watch a boy. When the child becomes a
   man, his father and mother do not write down little rules for him as
   they did when he was a child--neither do they set servants over him to
   keep him in order. He is trusted. His manliness is trusted. His honor
   is trusted. His best feelings are trusted.

   So now, Brothers and Sisters, we who have believed in Jesus have the
   Law written, here, in our hearts and it corresponds with what is
   written there in the Scriptures! And now we do not say of a sin, "I am
   afraid to do that, for I should be lost if I did." We do not desire to
   do it. We loathe it. And of a virtue, we do not say, "I must do that,
   or else I shall not be a child of God." No, we love to do it--we want
   to do it! The more of holiness the better! We love the Law of the Lord
   and desire to keep its statutes unto the end. We no longer have, "You
   shall," and, "You shall not," constantly sounding in our ears as we did
   when we were children. We are men in Christ Jesus and now our sacred
   passions delight to run in the way of God's Commandments--and if the
   old nature rebels, Grace is given to put it down! There is a daily
   conflict, but the new life that is within us cannot sin because it is
   born of God! And it keeps down the old nature so that we walk in the
   ways of righteousness after the example of our Lord.

   A warfare goes on, but we are no longer children. When faith has come,
   we are no longer under a schoolmaster. This is not Antinomianism, for
   we are not against the Law, but the Law that once was on the stone
   tablets and there was broken, is now written on the fleshy tablet of a
   renewed heart--and the Lord sweetly inclines us to keep His Testimonies
   and observe His Statutes. Moreover, we get free from the Law when we
   take up our heirship in Christ. I am afraid some Christians have never
   fully done this. Can you say, Beloved, "I have believed in Jesus and
   therefore I am one with Him-- whatever Christ is before God, that I
   am--for I am a member of His body, of His flesh and of His bones"?--

   "So near, so very near to God, I cannot nearer be,

   For in the Person of His Son I am as near as He.

   So dear, so very dear to God, I cannot dearer be

   The love wherewith He loves His Son,

   Such is His love to me."

   Can you say, "He has made with me an Everlasting Covenant, ordered in
   all things and sure? As long as Jesus lives I cannot die, for it is
   written, 'Because he lives, I shall live, also"?--

   "My name from the palms of His hands Eternity cannot erase, Impressed
   on His heart it remains In marks of indelible Grace."

   When a man gets there and knows that his standing does not depend on
   himself, but that he is what he is in Christ-- when he knows that
   Christ has done everything for him and has saved him so that he can
   challenge every accuser in the words of Paul--"Who shall lay anything
   to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies, who is he that
   condemns?"--when he gets there, then he can truly say that he is no
   longer under a schoolmaster! O Brothers and Sisters, read the eighth
   and ninth chapters of Romans! Get into the spirit of the Apostle when
   he rejoiced and triumphed in the complete salvation of Christ--get away
   from all beliefs that you have something to do in order to save
   yourself!

   If there are any unconverted persons here, and I am afraid there are a
   great many, I beseech you do not abide under the Law, for the Law can
   do nothing for you but curse you! Give up all hope of being saved by
   anything that you can do and agree to be saved by what Christ has done.
   Plead guilty! Plead guilty, and then God will say, "I absolve you."
   Plead guilty and plead the blood of Jesus and, this done, you are
   accepted in the Beloved!--

   "There is life for a look at the Crucified One!

   There is life at this moment for you," and for every soul that will
   confess its guiltiness and renounce all hope of self-salvation! Only
   fly away to the wounds of Jesus!

   And how shall I urge you, O Christian, never to go back to the Law? Do
   not begin to judge yourself as if you were under the Law. What if you
   are a sinner? It is true you are! Confess your sin and mourn over it,
   but remember there is a Fountain open for sin and for uncleanness in
   the house of David. That sin of yours was laid on Christ before you
   committed it! It was laid on the Scapegoat's head of old and put
   away--and at this moment you are still clean in the sight of God
   through that great washing which you have received in the precious
   blood! Do not imagine that God will change His mind about you! He never
   did and never can change His mind! He has said concerning each soul
   that believes in His dear Son, "He that believes in Him is not
   condemned." You are complete in Christ Jesus! In Him you have
   righteousness and strength. In Him you may even glory! Get away from
   legal doctrines and stand upon the Gospel rock--and you will be happy
   and holy all your days!

   Let me speak to those of you who are engaged in Christian service. When
   you try to teach others, always keep the Law in its proper place. I
   remember hearing a sermon from this text, "They that sow in tears shall
   reap in joy," in which the preacher so thoroughly missed the mark as to
   leave the inference upon the minds of his hearers that, after all, our
   good works and repentance would save us! Now, that is not the Gospel!
   Neither ought it to be preached as such. We preach up good works with
   all our might as the result of faith, as the outgrowth of faith--but
   not as the groundwork of salvation! We tell you that the tree of human
   nature must be altered, first, or the fruit cannot be good. There will
   be no pears upon that crabapple tree till you change the stock! Do not,
   therefore, go preaching to crab trees and tell them to bear pears and
   apples!

   We testify that Christ is able to change a man's nature--and then good
   fruits will come as a matter of course--but I am afraid that in many
   Sunday schools the children are taught a different doctrine--somewhat
   after this fashion. "Now, dear Children, be very good and obey your
   parents, and love Jesus, and you will be saved." That is not the Gospel
   and it is not true! Often do I hear it said, "Love Jesus, dear
   Children." That is not the Gospel. It is, "Trust Him"--"Believe." Not
   love, but faith is the Saving Grace! That love of Jesus of a
   sentimental kind, which does not spring out of faith in Him, is a
   spurious emotion, a counterfeit love--not at all the love of God, shed
   abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit! The root of the matter is,
   "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved"--that is the
   Gospel for a child of two years of age--and the Gospel for a man of a
   hundred! There is only one Gospel for all that are born on the face of
   the earth--"Believe in Jesus." Not your doing, not your obeying the
   Law--you have broken that--you have put yourself out of all possible
   hope in that direction! But your acceptance of what Christ has done
   will save you at once, save you forever!

   But why should I multiply words? I do not know how to put the whole
   matter in a simpler form, or to commend it more plainly to your
   understanding. It is not the mere exposition of a few verses of
   Scripture, or the clearing up of some small critical difficulty. Rather
   would I have you consider it a direction of vital importance to every
   seeking soul--a counsel of thrilling interest to every tried and
   exercised heart! Oh, how anxious I am to make straight paths for your
   feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way! I wish that all
   of you, especially our young friends, would learn and often repeat that
   hymn of Dr. Watts till it becomes indelibly fixed on their memory--

   "The Law commands and makes us know

   What duties to our God we owe.

   But 'tis the Gospel must reveal

   Where lies our strength to do His will.

   The Law disco vers guilt and sin,

   And shows how vile our hearts have been.

   Only the Gospel can express

   Forgiving love and cleansing Grace.

   What curses does the Law denounce

   Against the man that sins but once!

   But in the Gospel, Christ appears

   Pardoning the guilt of numerous years.

   My Soul, no more attempt to draw

   Your life and comfort from the Law.

   Fly to the hope the Gospel gives,

   The man that trusts the promise lives."

   And remember, last of all, that the Law which is so sharp and terrible
   to men when it only deals with them for their good, will, if you and I
   die without being brought to Christ, be much more terrible to us in
   eternity, when it deals with us in justice for our punishment! Then it
   will not be enshrined in the body of Moses, but, terrible to tell, it
   will be incarnate in the Person of the Son of God sitting upon the
   Throne! He will be at once the Lawgiver, the Judge and the Savior--and
   you that have despised Him as the Savior will have to appear before Him
   as your Judge! And His justice will be clear and undiluted now that His
   mercy has been scorned.

   Oil is soft--but set it on fire and see how it burns! Love is
   sweet--but curdle it to jealousy and see how sour it is! If you turn
   the Lamb of Zion into the Lion of the tribe of Judah, beware, for He
   will tear you in pieces and there shall be none to deliver you!
   Rejected love will change its hand. The pierced hands were stretched
   out with invitations of mercy--but if these are rejected--! O Sinners,
   I am telling you the solemn truth! Please hear it, I pray you, before I
   send you away--if from those hands that were pierced you will not take
   the perfect salvation which He is prepared to give to all who confess
   their guilt, you will have to receive from those same hands the blows
   of that iron rod which shall break you in pieces as a potter's vessel.

   Fly now and kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish from the way
   while His wrath is kindled but a little! Blessed are all they that put
   their trust in Him! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Galatians 4. HYMNS FROM "OUR
   OWN HYMN BOOK"--567, 647, 565.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Claims of God

   (No. 1197)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, OCTOBER 11, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Know you that the Lord, He is God: it is He that has made us, and not
   we, ourselves; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture. Enter
   into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise: be
   thankful unto Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy
   is everlasting: and His Truth endures to all generations." Psalm
   100:3,4,5.

   BRETHREN, it is a trick of Satan to distract us from the most important
   and vital matters by the suggestion of trivial considerations. When the
   best blessings are asking for our acceptance, he will bring the most
   trivial things into our minds. He will fill our eyes with dust to
   prevent our looking to the bronze serpent for healing. From the
   preaching of Jesus he endeavored to distract human attention by debates
   upon the tithing of mint and anise and cumin--the making broad of the
   borders of one's garments, the wearing of phylacteries--the straining
   out of gnats, and I know not what else.

   He followed this method at Jacob's Well. When our Lord spoke to the
   woman about Living Water and the salvation of her soul, the evil spirit
   prompted her to ask concerning Gerizim and Zion--"Our fathers
   worshipped in this mountain, and You say that in Jerusalem men ought to
   worship." With this same art Satan still works. It should be our
   business, not being ignorant of the devices of the enemy, to be more
   than a match for him by breaking away from all vain jangling and
   trivial questions. We need to go to the foundational Truths of God, the
   cornerstones of faith, the realities of life everlasting, the
   vitalities of godliness. These lie all Godward and Christward, away
   from the shadow land of ceremonies and vain speculations.

   We must go to the eternal rock and everlasting hills whose golden tops
   are, to the eyes of faith, bright with the blessed daybreak. Let us get
   there, this morning, from the vanities of earth--and may the breath of
   the Spirit speed us toward the realities of Heaven--so to things
   essential we may give the attention which is essential to them. For
   what were we created, my Brothers and Sisters? I know no better answer
   than that of the Assembly's catechism, "Man's chief end is to glorify
   God and to enjoy Him forever." There is a vast amount both of theology
   and philosophy in that simple answer which our old Divines have put
   into the mouth of a child.

   Had man remained what God made him, it would have been his very element
   to glorify his God! To do the will of God would have been as natural to
   us as to breathe if we had not fallen from original perfection. I was
   about to say unconsciously, creatures which abide as God created them
   obey His will. But where there is consciousness there is added a
   supreme delight which makes their consciousness and willinghood the
   highest blessings. Look at yonder ponderous orbs--they are not stubborn
   with the so-called vis inertiae--but joyfully roll along in their
   predestined courses because God commands them to keep their settled
   track.

   See yonder watching stars--they close not their bright eyes, but smile
   upon us from age to age--those sentinels of Heaven quench not their
   lamps, but shine right on, day and night because God has said, "Let
   there be light," and from them light must come. We hear of no rebellion
   in the spheres, no revolt against the Law which holds them to their
   celestial courses. Orion breaks not his bands. The Pleiades cease not
   their sweet influences. These orbs, mighty as they are, are as
   subservient to God as the clay to the hand of the potter. And where
   there is intelligence, as long as the intelligence remains as God made
   it, there is no revolt against His will.

   Yon mighty angel, "whose staff might make a mast for some tall
   admiral," counts it his honor to fly like a flash of light at the
   bidding of the Eternal. It is no demeaning of his dignity. It is no
   diminution of his pleasure to do the command of the Most High,
   hearkening unto the voice of His word. Were we, today, what we should
   be, it would be our element to love, to serve, to adore our God--and we
   should not need ministers to stir us to our pleasurable duty or

   remind us of Jehovah's claims. Even the august language of our text
   would not be needed to bid us worship and bow down--and know that
   Jehovah is God who has made us, and not we ourselves--for we should
   bear this Truth in every particle of our being!

   As things are, however, we need recalling to duty and urging to
   obedience. This morning, with the help of God's Holy Spirit, are will
   submit our hearts to such a call.

   I. First we will consider THE CLAIMS OF GOD--ON WHAT ARE THEY GROUNDED?
   "Know you that the Lord, He is God; it is He that has made us and not
   we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter
   into His gates with thanksgiving." The claims of God are grounded,
   first of all, upon His Godhead. "Know you that Jehovah, He is God." As
   Matthew Henry has very properly said, ignorance is not the mother of
   devotion, though it is the mother of superstition. True knowledge is
   the mother and the nurse of piety.

   Really to know the Deity of God, to get some idea of what is meant by
   saying that He is God, is to have the very strongest argument forced
   upon one's soul for obedience and worship. The Godhead gave authority
   to the first Law that was ever promulgated when God forbade man to
   touch the fruit of a certain tree. Why might not Adam pluck the fruit?
   Simply and only because God forbade it. Had God permitted, it had been
   lawful. God's prohibition made it sin to eat the fruit. God gave no
   reason for saying to Adam, "In the day you eat thereof you shall surely
   die." His commandment, seeing He is God, was the supreme reason--and to
   have questioned His right, to disobey the law would have been, in
   itself, flat rebellion.

   God was to be obeyed simply because He is God. It was a case in which
   to have introduced an argument would have supposed unwillingness on
   man's part to obey. Adam could not need more than to know that
   such-and-such was the will of his God. This same Truth of Godhead is
   the authoritative basis of the moral law of the Ten Commandments. From
   Sinai no claim for obedience was set up but this, "I am the Lord your
   God, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
   bondage." In that word, "GOD," is comprehended the highest, the most
   weighty, the most righteous reasons for man's yielding up his entire
   nature to the Divine service.

   Because the Lord is God, therefore, should we serve Him with gladness
   and come before His Presence with singing. It was upon this point that
   God tested Pharaoh--and Pharaoh may be regarded as a sort of
   representative of all the enemies of the Lord. "Thus says the Lord, Let
   My people go." There was no reason given, no argument, but simply this,
   "Thus says the Lord." To which Pharaoh, fully appreciating the ground
   upon which God was acting, answered, "Who is the Lord that I should
   obey His voice?"

   So they stood, foot to foot, in fair battle--Jehovah saying, "Thus says
   the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let My people go"--and Pharaoh replying,
   "I know not the Lord neither will I let Israel go." You know how that
   battle ended. That song of Israel at the Red Sea, when the Lord of
   Hosts triumphed gloriously, was a prophecy of the victory which will
   surely come unto God in all conflicts with His creatures in which His
   eternal power and Godhead are assailed. The argument derived from the
   Godhead has not only been used with haughty rebels, but also with
   questioners and debaters.

   Observe how Paul speaks. He has entered upon the thorny subject of
   predestination--a matter which none of us will ever comprehend, a
   matter in which it is better for us to believe than to reason--and he
   is met with this, "If all things happen as God decrees, why does He yet
   find fault, for who has resisted His will?" To which the Apostle gives
   no reply but this, "No, but O man, who are you that replies against
   God?" Against God there can be no answer! If He wills it, so let it be.
   It is right. It is good because He so decrees it. Is He God? Submit! If
   there were no other argument, or reason, let the Godhead convince you.

   Good men have been argued with in the same way for their profit. That
   is the core and pith of the Book of Job. There is Job, in conflict with
   his three friends, who are arguing that he must be a wicked man or else
   God would not so sorely smite him. To which reasoning he replies that
   he will hold fast his integrity and will not let it go. Then comes
   Elihu and he has much to say that is wise, but he cannot settle the
   matter. At last comes God into the controversy--and what is the Lord's
   argument? Does He proceed to justify Himself in what He has done with
   Job, to give Job reasons for covering him with boils and pains, and
   excuse Himself for having taken a perfect and upright man and laid him
   prostrate on a

   dunghill?

   No, but instead He unveils a portion of His Godhead and reveals His
   power in some such language as this--"Where were you when the
   foundations of the earth were laid? Declare, if you have understanding.
   Who has laid the measures

   thereof, if you know? Or who has stretched the line upon it? Whereupon
   are the foundations fastened? Or who lays the cornerstone thereof? Have
   you given the horse strength? Have you clothed his neck with thunder?
   Does the eagle mount up at your command and make her nest on high? Have
   you an arm like God? Or can you thunder with a voice like He?" Thus the
   Lord displayed the greatness of His power while Job sat cowering down,
   and cried out, "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now
   my eyes see You: therefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and
   ashes."

   Ah, men and women, if you did but know what God is, and who He is--if
   but some flashes of His Divine Omnipotence, or any other of His
   glorious attributes were let loose upon you--you would perceive that He
   has the fullest claims upon your allegiance and that you ought to live
   for His Glory! Imagine that at this instant midnight darkness should
   settle over us, out of which should burst forth a thunderclap making
   each stone in this building tremble while down every one of yonder
   columns lurid lightning should begin to stream! Imagine that the earth
   beneath us rocked and reeled after the manner of the city of Lisbon, or
   Aleppo in years gone by! Conceive that peal on peal of that terrible
   thunder should be heard--why there is not one of us but would long to
   be the servant of that terrible God and instinctively inquire what He
   would have us to do!

   Atheists, in times of tempest and storm, have found but little help in
   their philosophy. Like Pharaoh, they have been ready to cry, "Entreat
   the Lord for me." But the reclining earth, or Heaven on a blaze--what
   were these? The touch of His finger and glance of His eyes would do far
   more. He touches the hills and they smoke, but as for Himself, who
   shall conceive of Him? Let us adore His overwhelming majesty and bow
   down before Him, for the Lord, He is God!

   The second ground of the Lord's claim is His creation of us. "It is He
   that has made us, and not we, ourselves." We are, every one of us, the
   offspring of the Divine power. This is a fact of which we are informed
   by Revelation, but it is also one which every instinct of our nature
   agrees with. You never saw a child startled when it was told, for the
   first time, that God made him--for within that little mind there dwells
   an instinct which accepts the statement. The theory that we are not
   made, but are mere developments of materialism, wears upon its face all
   the marks of unsupported fiction! Certain statements are called axioms,
   because they are self-evident truths--but this is an axiom reversed,
   for it is a self-evident lie!

   To an unsophisticated mind, its repetition is its refutation. Indeed,
   whenever I hear people mention it they seem unable to suppress a laugh,
   and I do not wonder, for even Nature, itself, forces them to despise
   what they pretend to believe. The evolution theory was originated, I
   have no doubt, either in Pandemonium or in Bedlam--it is worthy of
   either--but it is unworthy of any man who possesses either sanity or
   morality. No, we did not become what we are by chance or growth. God
   made us! This belief is the easiest escape from all difficulties and
   besides, it is true, and everything in us tells us it is so.

   Now, since the Lord made us, He has a right to us. The property which
   God has in man is proved beyond dispute by our being His creatures. The
   potter has a right to make the vessel for what use he pleases--still he
   has not such absolute right over his clay as God has over us, for the
   potter does not make the clay--he makes the vessel from the clay, but
   the clay is there from the first. The Lord has, in our case, made the
   clay from which He has fashioned us, and therefore we are entirely at
   His disposal and should serve Him with all our hearts. Why, man, if you
   make anything, you expect to use it! If you make a tool for your trade,
   you reckon upon employing it according to your pleasure! And if it
   would never bend to your will, or be useful to your purpose, you would
   speedily put it away.

   So is it with you. The Lord who made you has a right to your service
   and obedience. Will you not acknowledge His claim? Consider what He has
   made us. No mean things are we! Who but God could make a man? Raphael
   takes the pencil in his hand and, with a master touch, creates upon
   yonder canvas the most wondrous forms. And the sculptor, with his
   chisel and his hammer, develops amazing beauty. But there is no life,
   thought, intellect--and if you speak, there is neither voice nor
   answering. How different are you from the canvas and the marble--for in
   your bosom there is a mysterious principle which makes you akin to the
   Deity--for your soul can know reason, believe, understand and love.

   I had almost called the soul infinite, for God has made it capable of
   such wondrous things! Thus has He trusted us with high powers and
   faculties, and lifted us up to a high position. Surely, then, it is
   ours to serve Him with a loving loyalty. I like to think that the Lord
   has made us--and to yield myself to Him on that ground--because while
   the grandeur of what He has made us calls us to homage, even the lowly
   side has its claim, too, and a sweet one. Our powers

   are finite, and sometimes we are troubled about that fact, wishing we
   could do more for our Lord--but we need not fear when we remember that
   He has made us and, therefore, fixed the measure of our capacity.

   In Roger de Wendover's, "Flowers of History," an ancient Saxon
   chronicle, we read of a Saxon king who, riding through a forest, came
   upon a little Church in which a priest was saying prayers. This priest
   was lame and hump-backed and, therefore, the rough Saxon king was ready
   to despise him, till he heard him chant these words, "It is He that has
   made us, and not we ourselves." The king blushed and admitted his
   fault. If, then, we are of small beauty or slender talent, let us not
   complain, but serve Him who has made us what we are. If we are amazed
   at a Truth of God which we cannot comprehend. If we find portions of
   God's Word to be beyond our depth, let us not complain, but remember
   that the Lord could have made us understand all things if He had
   chosen, and as He has not done so. "It is He that has made us, and not
   we, ourselves."

   When any say to us, "Your religion is beyond you. The Truths you
   believe you cannot comprehend," we answer, "We are quite satisfied it
   should be so, for the Lord has made us, and not we, ourselves." If He
   has made us capacious to a larger degree than our fellows, we will give
   Him all the more honor. But, if we are vessels of small capacity, we
   will not wish to be other than our Maker would have us to be. Dear
   Brothers and Sisters, I cannot conceive any higher claim upon our
   service than this--that God has created us--except that the same Truth
   of God may be sung an octave higher! Common men may sing, "It is He
   that made us, and not we, ourselves." Even the brute creation might
   join in that confession! But, O you saints! Yours is a loftier note,
   for you have been twice made, born-again, created anew in Christ Jesus,
   and after a nobler fashion you can sing, "It is He that made us, and
   not we, ourselves. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture."
   Creation has its claims, but election and redemption rise still higher!
   From those peculiarly favored the Lord must have peculiar praise.

   A third reason for living unto the Lord lies in His shepherding of us.
   "We are His people, and the sheep of His pasture." God has not left us
   and gone away. He has not left us as the ostrich leaves her eggs, to be
   broken by the feet of the passersby. He is watching over us at every
   hour, even as a shepherd guards his flock. Over us all He exercises an
   unceasing care, a watchful Providence, and therefore we should return
   praise to Him daily. It has been well said that some men represent God
   as having taken the universe like a watch, wound it up, and then put it
   under His pillow and gone to sleep. But it is not so. God's finger is
   on every wheel of the world's machinery. God's power is that which puts
   force into the laws of the universe--they were a mere dead letter if He
   were not powerfully active evermore!

   Child of Adam, in your cradle you are not rocked by wild winds, but by
   the hand of Love. Daughter of affliction, you are not laid prostrate on
   yon bed to be the victim of heartless laws, but there is One who makes
   all your bed in your sickness with His own kind and tender hands. God
   gives us, day by day, our daily bread. God clothes us. He gives breath
   for these heaving lungs and blood for this beating heart. He keeps us
   in life and if His power were withdrawn we would sink immediately into
   death.

   Now, therefore, because it is so, we are bound to give to our great
   Shepherd our daily service. You are the sheep of His hand. For you the
   hourly provision, the constant protection, the wise and judicious
   governance--for you the royal leadership through the desert to the
   pastures on the other side of Jordan! For you the power that chases
   away the wolf, for you the ability that finds out the pastures of the
   wilderness. For you those superior comforts which come from the
   redeeming Angel's Presence and flow from the very fact that He is
   yours! Therefore, render to the Lord your homage and your praise. Men,
   because you are men, adore the God who keeps you living men--saintly
   men renewed and fed out of the storehouse of Divine Grace--serve your
   God, I pray you, with all your heart, soul and strength, because you
   especially are the sheep of His pasture and the people of His hand.

   A fourth reason for adoration and service is given in the last verse of
   our text, it is the Divine Character--"For the Lord is good; His mercy
   is everlasting, and His Truth endures to all generations." Here are
   three master motives for serving the Lord our God. Oh that all would
   feel their weight! First, He is good. Now, if I were to lift up a
   standard in this assembly this morning and say, "This banner represents
   the cause of everything that is just, right, true, kind and benevolent,
   I should expect many a young heart to enlist beneath it, for when
   pretenders in all lands have talked of liberty and virtue, choice
   spirits have been enchanted and rushed to death for the grand old
   cause.

   Now, God is good, just, right, true, kind, benevolent--in a word, God
   is Love--and therefore who would not serve Him? Who will refuse to be
   the servant of infinite perfection? Oh, were He not my God, but another
   man's God, I think I

   would steal away to Him to be enlisted beneath the banner of such a God
   as He is! To keep the Laws of God must always be incumbent upon us
   because those Laws are the very essence of right--none of them are
   arbitrary--all of them the requirements of unsullied holiness and
   unswerving justice. Indeed, commands of God are something more than
   merely right--they are good in the sense of kind.

   When God says, "You shall not," it is only like a mother forbidding her
   child to cut its fingers with a sharp tool, or to eat poisonous
   berries. When God says, "You shall," it is practically a direction to
   us to be happy, or at least to do that thing which, in due course,
   leads to happiness. The Laws of the Lord our God are right in all
   respects and, therefore, I claim from every one of you the obedience of
   your heart to God. Then it is added, "His mercy is everlasting." Who
   would not serve One whose mercy endures forever? Observe, that He is
   always merciful. Never does a sinner come to Him and find Him devoid of
   pity. The Lord is merciful and gracious when we are children. He is
   equally so to us in middle life and when we grow gray in years He is
   still merciful.

   We cannot wear out His patience nor exhaust His forgiving love. He has
   given us a Savior who always lives to make intercession for
   transgressors. What a blessing is this! So long as we sin we have an
   Advocate to plead for us! He has set up a Mercy Seat for us for all
   times and to it we may go as often as we will. He did not erect a Mercy
   Seat on earth for a hundred years and then withdraw it, but, blessed be
   His name, we always have the right of access and we have still a plea
   to urge, for Jesus' blood has not lost its savor. There, too, is the
   Spirit of God always waiting to help us to pray--and whenever we wish
   to draw near to the Mercy Seat, He is ready to teach us what we should
   pray for as we ought--and even to utter groans for us which we,
   ourselves, could not utter.

   Oh, who would not serve a God whose mercy is everlasting? Cruel is that
   heart which infinite gentleness does not persuade. If God is merciful,
   man should no more be rebellious. It is added, "His Truth endures to
   all generations." That is to say you will not find in God one thing
   today and another thing tomorrow. What He promises, He will perform.
   Every word of His stands fast forever, like Himself, Immutable. Trust
   Him today and you will not find Him fail you, neither tomorrow, nor all
   the days of your life! The God of Abraham is our God, today, and He has
   not changed through the revolutions of years. The Savior whom we
   trusted in our boyhood is still the same yesterday, today, and forever.

   Blessed be His name! I think it was this attribute of God that had the
   greatest charm to my young heart. It seemed so sweet to rest my soul
   with an Unchangeable God, so delightful to know that if I did once
   enjoy His love He would never take it away from me--that if He was once
   reconciled to me by the death of His Son, I should forever be His child
   and be dear to His heart. This gave my heart gladness and I hold forth
   this Truth, now, as a sweet inducement to those present who have not
   trusted to the Lord that they should do so--for the Lord is good and
   His mercy is everlasting and His Truth endures to all generations!

   Thus I have set before you the grounds of God's claims. Are they solid?
   Do you consent to them? Oh, that Sovereign Grace would constrain each
   of us to live alone for the glory of God! It is His most righteous due.

   II. Now very briefly, indeed, THE CLAIMS OF GOD--HOW HAVE WE REGARDED
   THEM? Answer for

   yourselves. Alas, some have paid no respect to these claims--in fact
   they have denied them and have said, in effect, "Who is the Lord that I
   should obey His voice?" Have I one such person here? I pray God to
   change his heart, for the gnat may much more wisely contend with the
   flame which has already burned its wings than you contend with your
   Maker! As surely as you live, God will vanquish you and make you
   acknowledge His supremacy! If you will not obey Him, He will dash you
   in pieces like a potter's vessel.

   A far larger number of persons, however, ignore, rather than oppose
   God's claims. They have lived in this world, now, perhaps, to middle
   age and never thought about God, at all, though He has made them and
   kept them in being. That is the way that many a debtor has done with
   his debts. He has felt easy because he has not been dunned about them.
   But surely that is a doubtful honesty which rests in peace because the
   creditor does not happen to clamor! A truly honest man is dissatisfied
   till he has discharged his obligations--and every noble spirit will be
   discontented with itself because it has not paid its due to God. What
   if the Lord has used no severities--has sent no sheriff's officers of
   sickness or bereavement--shall we not all the more heartily enquire,
   "What shall I render unto the Lord?"

   Shall we rob God because He is merciful? Shall we make His goodness a
   reason for neglecting Him? Can it be right that we should never render
   to the Most High according to the benefits received? There are
   multitudes who, in theory, acknowledge all the claims of God, but as a
   matter of fact they deny them, or they evade them by a merely outward

   religiousness. They will not be honest, but they will go to Church.
   They will not cleanse themselves from iniquity, but they will be
   baptized. To live a holy life is a matter they care not for, but they
   will take the sacraments, believe in Jesus and yield themselves up to
   the love of God.

   They will not, but they have not the slightest objection to joining in
   a procession or going upon a pilgrimage--thus giving God brass counters
   instead of gold, outward appearances instead of real obedience. The
   love of the heart and trust of the Spirit, man refuses to his
   Maker--and so long as he does so, all his offerings are in vain.
   Sorrowfully must we all confess, also, that where we have tried to
   honor the Lord and have done so, in a measure, by His Grace, yet we
   have failed in perfection. We have to confess that oftentimes the
   pressure of the body which is near, and of the things that are seen and
   tangible, has been greater upon us than the force of the things which
   cannot be seen, but are eternal. We have yielded to self too often and
   have robbed the Lord.

   What shall we do in this case? Why, we have to bless our everlasting
   God and Father, that He has provided an atoning Sacrifice for all our
   shortcomings. And there is One, partaker of our nature, who stands in
   the gap on our behalf, in whom we can be accepted, notwithstanding all
   our shortcomings and offenses! Let us go to God in Christ Jesus! He
   bids us believe in Jesus and assures us of pardon and salvation on the
   spot if we do so! The demands of God are met in the life and death of
   His only-begotten Son. Faith lets us see that they were met for us and
   that we are clear. Brothers and Sisters, we have believed, yes, and we
   will believe, that Jesus died for us--and here comes our joy--that we
   are delivered from the wrath of God, notwithstanding that we have
   fallen short of His commands.

   And now, what follows? I feel, concerning it, this--that now there are
   more bonds to bind me to the service of God than ever! He has forgiven
   me for His name's sake and washed me in the blood of His own Son--and I
   am His by firmer bonds than ever. No obligations are so forcible as
   those which arise out of Free Grace and dying love. Pardoned sin is no
   argument for the indulgence of future sin, but an abundant argument for
   future holiness in every heart that feels its power. O you saints of
   God, transgression being blotted out, you will no more transgress! Made
   His elect, you elect to serve Him! Being His adopted children, you
   rejoice to do your Father's will! And now and forever you are the
   Lord's!

   III. This brings me to the concluding note of our discourse, which is
   this--THE CLAIMS OF GOD, WHEN THEY ARE REGARDED, HOW DO THEY INFLUENCE
   MEN? Give me your hearts a few minutes. I am persuaded, Brothers and
   Sisters, that the noblest form of man that is to be found on the face
   of the earth is the man who serves God. I am convinced that all other
   forms of manhood are faulty and imperfect in themselves, to a very high
   degree, and are also far inferior in force and beauty to that which is
   produced in men by consecration to the service of God.

   A man who is guided by the Holy Spirit to live for the Lord is
   altogether a nobler being than one moved by a less lofty aim. Let me
   show you how healthy it is to serve God. The man who serves God, led by
   the Spirit of God to do so, is humble. Were he proud, it were proof, at
   once, that he was not serving God! But the remembrance that God is His
   Sovereign and has made him--that in His hands is his breath--makes the
   good man feel that he is nothing but dust and ashes at his very best.
   He cannot cry out with Nebuchadnezzar, "Behold this great Babylon which
   I have built"--he is far more likely to crouch down where
   Nebuchadnezzar did after God had taught him better and to say--"Now I
   extol and honor the King of Heaven."

   Serving God keeps man in his right place. It is a balance to him,
   without which he might be drifted to destruction like the myriads of
   butterflies which I have seen far out at sea, condemned, before long,
   to sink into the wave. At the same time, while it sobers a man, it
   fills him with joy, praise and gratitude, thus giving him sail as well
   as ballast. A man who loves to serve God receives mercies at His hand
   with great thankfulness and joy. He is content with the will of God
   and, therefore, is full of gratitude to Him. And let me tell you there
   are no sweeter moments in a man's life than those which are occupied
   with adoring gratitude! Nothing is more purging, or cleanses a man from
   earthly grossness, and from all the defilement of selfishness, than to
   serve the ever-living and ever-blessed God and to feel that there is
   One so much greater, so much better than one's self, towards whom we
   aspire, for whom we live! Thus is a man at once humbled, cheered and
   elevated. The service of God is honorable as no other service is.

   There is a man who lives for himself--his great object is to get money.
   Look at him and consider him well! Is not the greed of wealth one of
   the most beggarly passions that can possess a human bosom? Yon ant,
   which labors for its commonwealth, is, to my mind, up among the angels,
   compared with a man who sweats and toils and starves himself merely for
   the sake of heaping up for himself a mass of yellow metal! Can I more
   highly commend the lover of pleasure?

   What is pleasure? As the world understands it, it is a hollow sham, a
   veneer of mirth covering deep dissatisfaction. I often think, when I
   hear worldlings laughing at such poor nonsense, that they pull each
   other's sleeves and say, "Laugh. You ought to laugh."

   I cannot see the mirth of their amusements, but they do. They struggle
   to seem happy, but what, after all, is it to have lived to be amused?
   To have spent all one's powers in killing time? Is anything more
   contemptible? How horrible it is when man lives for lust and puts forth
   all his strength to indulge his passions! Brutes! Beasts! Alas, I
   slander the beasts when I compare them to such men! The man who lives
   for God is a far nobler being. Why, in the very act of
   self-renunciation and of dedication to God the man has been lifted up
   from earth and from all that holds him down to its dust and mire. He
   has risen so much nearer to the cherubim, so much nearer, in fact, to
   the Divine! This makes a man a man, for a man who serves is courageous
   and too manly to be a slave.

   "No," he says, "God bids me do such an act and I will do it straight
   ahead. And though such-and-such a thing you bid me do, since God has
   not commanded me, your bidding is no law to me. My knee was made to bow
   before my God and not to you--and my mind to believe what God reveals
   and not what you choose to tell." He is the free man whom the love of
   God makes free. What wonderful proofs we have had of this throughout
   history, for the men who have served God have been the most intrepid of
   mortals. Behold the burning fiery furnace and the tyrant's face almost
   as red as the furnace itself--he can hardly speak, he is choked with
   passion because the three young men will not worship the bronze image!
   But look how cool they are as they say, "The God whom we serve is able
   to deliver us, but if not, be it known unto you that we will not bow
   down to the image which you have set up."

   Here is the true style of manhood! The love of God makes heroes! Give a
   man a resolve to serve God and he is endowed with wondrous
   perseverance. Look at the Apostles, martyrs and missionaries of the
   faith--how they have pressed on despite a world in arms! When a nation
   has been apparently inaccessible they have found an entrance! When the
   first missionary has died, another has been ready to follow in his
   footsteps! The first Church, in her weakness, poverty and ignorance,
   struggled with philosophy and wealth and all the power of heathen Rome,
   till at last the weak overcame the strong, and the foolish overthrew
   the wise! They that serve God cannot be conquered--from defeats they
   learn victory! If they have to wait they can wait, for they have linked
   with the lifetime of the Eternal and God is in no hurry, nor are they.

   If to secure a hearing for the Truth of God takes a generation, let it
   take a generation! If it takes 50 generations, let it take them, but
   the deed shall be done and the Truth shall be preached--and the idols
   shall be abolished--and God shall be adored! O Lord, Your service makes
   us akin to You! Blessed are they that wear Your yoke! How strong they
   grow, how patient to endure, how firm to stand fast, how swift to run!
   They mount with wings as eagles when they learn to serve You! The man
   who is led by the Holy Spirit to serve God is incited, thereby, to a
   zeal, a fervor and a self-sacrifice to which nothing else could bring
   him.

   If you are familiar with the lives of the pioneers of the Cross, and
   especially with the deaths of the martyrs, you will have seen what
   Divine Grace can make of men! Are not their deeds sublime? Why, these
   men laughed at impossibilities and scorned difficulties! They counted
   the rack and the torture mere everyday things and learned to smile in
   the face of death, itself, because they served God! They never thought
   of running away, nor dreamed of retracting their testimony. Men said,
   "You are fools." They were prepared to hear them say that and reckoned
   it a fulfillment of prophecy. The kings of the earth stood up and the
   rulers took counsel together and said, "We will stamp you out." They
   were prepared for that, also, but they were not stamped out!

   They saw insuperable difficulties in their way to the eye of sense, but
   they did not care what the eye of sense saw-- they used the eye
   offaith--and believing that they were engaged in the service of God
   they knew that God would be with them. They felt that all the forces of
   Nature on earth, and all the angels in Heaven, and all the attributes
   of Deity were on the side of the man who is doing God's service--and
   therefore they went straight on! I have heard say that a mad man will
   often display the strength of 10 men and I know there is another side
   to that fact. For when a man becomes possessed with the Divine Spirit
   and is carried right away with it, there is no telling what force is in
   him--he will be 10 men in one!

   Why, there are cases in which a nation of men seem to have been bound
   up into one single humanity when the man has surrendered himself to the
   service of God. Look at Martin Luther! You cannot regard him as an
   ordinary man. You cannot help viewing him as a conglomeration of a
   whole tribe of men! He believes he has the Truth of God to proclaim

   and in God's name he preaches it! And if there are as many devils in
   Worms as there are tiles on the tops of the houses it is nothing to
   Luther! And if the Elector of Saxony tells him that he will no longer
   shelter him, what will he do? Why he declares that he will shelter
   himself beneath the broad shield of the eternal God! When the Pope
   issues a Bull against him, he burns the document! What did he care? He
   would have burned Rome, itself, for that matter! The man had courage
   enough for anything.

   Or take John Knox, all emaciated, weak and ready to die--and yet so
   God-possessed, so inspired that he is not preaching for a
   quarter-of-an-hour before you think he will dash the pulpit to shivers!
   He shakes the whole of Scotland and is more dreaded by the Popish Queen
   than an army of 10,000 men, for God is in the man! Oh, get to feel, "It
   is God's will, and at all hazards I am going to do it, for God bids
   me." Why, Sir, you may as well try to stop the sun in its course as to
   stop a man who is mastered by that conviction! If ever this driveling
   age of little men is to be lifted up into something like respectability
   and redeemed from the morass of falsehood in which it lies festering,
   we must breed a race of men who mean to serve God, come what may--and
   to make no reckoning but this--"Is this right? It shall be done. Is
   this wrong? Then it shall cease."

   There must be no compromise, no talk about marring our usefulness and
   spoiling our position by being too exact. Usefulness and position! Let
   them be marred and spoiled if the Truth of God comes in the way, for
   God is to be followed into the jungle--yes--and down the wild beasts'
   throats and into the jaws of Hell if He leads the way! God must be the
   Guide and if we follow God it shall be well with us. But if we do not,
   that which man thinks easiest, is, after all, the hardest. He thinks it
   easiest to be as near right as he can, but to run no risks. He thinks
   it best to keep peace at home, to yield many points and not be too
   Puritanical and too precise, and so on. That is the easy way--and the
   way which God abhors! It is the way which will end in a festering
   conscience and in being shut out of Heaven!

   The way to serve God is to be washed in the blood of Jesus--and then to
   obey the Lord without reserve and seek only His honor. This is the way
   to Heaven! And when we reach those blissful seats we shall be all in
   tune with the perfected, for they serve the Lord day and night--and
   find it bliss to do so. This preparation and service on earth is
   absolutely essential to the enjoyment of Heaven above! May God grant
   you, then, by His Holy Spirit, to yield yourselves up to God, to serve
   Him--and may we meet above. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Psalm95,96. HYMNS FROM "OUR
   OWN HYMN BOOK"--187, 66 (SONG I), 195.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Master

   (No. 1198)

   DELIVERED BY

   C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "She called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and
   calls for you." John 11:28.

   I SUPPOSE by Martha's whispering the word, "The Master," in Mary's ear,
   that it was the common name by which the sisters spoke of our Lord to
   one another in His absence. Perhaps it was His usual name among all the
   disciples, for Jesus said, "You call me Master and Lord: and you say
   well; for so I am." It often happens that for persons whom we love we
   have some special title by which we speak of them familiarly when we
   are in the circle of those who join in our esteem of them. Instead of
   always using their official titles or their actual names, there is some
   one name which we have attached to them which calls up happy
   associations, or reminds us of endearing traits in their character and,
   therefore, it is very sweet in our mouths.

   So I suppose that most of the disciples called Jesus, "The Master,"
   many of them coupling with it the word, "Lord." Mary, I should suppose,
   was peculiarly given to the use of the term--it was her name for the
   Lord. I fancy that she called Him "my Master," only, of course, Martha
   could not say to her, "your Master is come," for that would have been
   to cast suspicion on her own loyalty to Jesus and perhaps she did not
   feel exactly in a frame of mind to say, "our Master," remembering that
   He was Master of so many more, besides, and half hoping that He might
   be Master over Death himself. She therefore said, "The Master."

   It was an emphatic title, "The Master is come." Very remarkable is it
   that minds of a kindred spirit to Mary have always loved this title,
   "The Master," and more especially that wondrous, sweet, mystic poet and
   dear lover of His Lord, George Herbert, who, whenever he heard the name
   of Jesus mentioned, would always say, "my Master." He has given us that
   quaint poem, called "The Odor," which begins--

   "How sweetly does my Master sound, my Master." There must be something
   exceedingly precious about the title for a Mary and a Herbert thus to
   be enamored of it above all others. Jesus has many names, all full of
   music--this must be choice, indeed, to be selected before them all as
   the title which His best beloved prefer to apply to Him.

   There are many among us who are, ourselves, accustomed to speak of the
   Lord as, The Master and, though there are many other titles, such as
   "The Well-Beloved," "The Good Shepherd," "The Friend," "The
   Bridegroom," "The Redeemer," and "The Savior," yet we still cherish a
   very special affection for this one name which gives forth to us "an
   oriental fragrance" with which, "all day we perfume our mind." You are
   aware that the word might just as well be translated, "The Teacher,"
   the authoritative teacher, for that is the gist of its meaning. I am
   glad to pronounce it, Master, because usage and sweet association have
   enshrined the word. And also because we have still among us the custom
   of calling the Chief Teacher in a School or College, the Master, but
   still, had our version given us, "The Teacher is come," it would have
   been nearer the mark.

   I. I shall speak a few words, first, upon THE DEEP PROPRIETY OF THIS
   TITLE AS APPLIED TO OUR LORD. He is, indeed, The Master--The Teacher.
   What if I put the two together and say, The Master-Teacher? He has a
   peculiar fitness for this office to be a Master-Teacher. To be so, a
   man must have a masterly mind. Certainly all minds are not cast in the
   same mold and are not possessed with the same vigor, depth, force and
   quickness of action. Some mental organizations are princely by their
   very formation--though they may belong to plowboys, the imperial stamp
   is on them! These minds cannot be smothered by a peasant's smock frock,
   nor kept down by the load of poverty--master minds are recognized by an
   innate superiority--and force their way to the front.

   I say nothing of the moral qualities of Napoleon, but a mind so vast as
   his could not have been forever hidden away among the soldiers in the
   ranks. He must become a captain and a conqueror. So, too, a Cromwell or
   a Washington must rise to be masters among men because the caliber of
   their minds was masterly. Such men see a thing quickly. They hold it

   with a comprehensive grasp and they have a way of infusing faith into
   others about it which, before long, pushes them into a master's
   position, with the common consent of all around them. You cannot have,
   for a master-teacher, a man with a little soul. He may insinuate
   himself into the chair of the teacher, but everyone will see that he is
   out of place and no one will delight to think of him as his master.

   There are many painters, but there have been few Raphaels, or
   Michelangelos--few who could found schools to perpetuate their names.
   Many songsters have there been, but few poets have founded schools of
   tuneful thought in which they have been the beloved choirmasters. Many
   philosophers have there been, but a Socrates or an Aristotle will not
   be found every day--for great teachers must have great minds--and these
   are rare among men. The teacher of all teachers, the master of all the
   teachers, must be a grand, colossal spirit--head and shoulders above
   other men! Such a soul Mary saw in her Lord Jesus Christ. And such we
   see there, also, and we therefore claim, for our Lord, the name of,
   "The Master."

   There we have Divinity itself, with its Omniscience and Immutability,
   and at the same time a complete, full-orbed Manhood, harmonious in all
   its qualities--a perfect equilibrium of excellence in which there is no
   excess and no deficiency. You find in Him a perfect mind and that mind
   so human as to be intensely manly and sweetly womanly, also. In Jesus
   there was all the tenderness and sympathy of woman joined with the
   strength and courage of man. His love was feminine, but not effeminate.
   His heart was masculine, but not hard and stern. He was the complete
   Man, unfallen Manhood in its perfection! Our Lord was a Man who
   impressed all who came near Him--they either hated Him intensely or
   loved Him fervently!

   Wherever He was, He was seen to be a Prince among the sons of men! The
   devil recognized Him and tempted Him beyond all others. He saw in Him a
   foe worthy of his steel--and took Him into the wilderness to have a
   duel with Him, hoping to defeat the race by vanquishing its manifest
   Chief. Even scribes and Pharisees, who despised everyone who made not
   broad the borders of his garment, could not despise this Man--they
   could hate Him--but their hate was the unconscious reverence which evil
   is forced to render to superlative goodness and greatness! Jesus could
   not be ignored and overlooked. He was a force in every place, a power
   wherever He might be. He is a master, yes, "The Master." There is a
   grandeur about His whole human Nature so that He stands out above all
   other men, like some mighty Alpine peak which overtops the minor hills
   and casts its shadow all adown the vales.

   But to make a master teacher, a man must not only have a master mind,
   he must have a master knowledge of that which he has to teach--and it
   is best if that is acquired by experience rather than by instruction.
   Such was the case with our Lord Jesus. He came to teach us the science
   of life and in Him was life. He experienced life in all its phases and
   was tempted in all points like we are, though without sin. The highest
   were not above Him, the lowest He did not regard as beneath Him, but He
   condescended to their infirmities and sorrows. There are no dreary
   glens of melancholy which His feet have not trod, nor lofty peaks of
   joy which He has not scaled. Wondrous was the joy, as well as the
   sorrow of our Lord Jesus Christ.

   He leads His people through the wilderness and, like Hobab of old, He
   knows where they should encamp in the wilderness and understands all
   the way which they must traverse to reach the promised land. He was
   made "perfect through suffering." He teaches us no Truth of God as mere
   theory, but as matter of actual experiment on His own Person. The
   remedy He gives to us He has tested. If there is bitterness for us, He
   has quaffed full bowls of it--and if there is sweetness in His cup He
   gives us of His joy. All things that have to do with this life and
   godliness--the whole science of salvation from the gates of Hell up to
   the Throne of God--He understands right well by personal acquaintance.
   There is not a single chapter of the Book of Revelation which He does
   not comprehend, nor a solitary page of the book of experience which He
   does not understand and, therefore, He is fit to teach, having both a
   master mind and a master knowledge of that which He comes to inculcate.

   Moreover, our great Master, while here below, had a masterly way of
   teaching, and this, also, is essential, for it is not every man of vast
   knowledge and great mind that can teach others. Aptness to teach is
   required. We know some whose utterances never seem to be in the tongue
   of ordinary men. If they have anything to say, they say it in a jargon
   of their own which they and a few of their disciples probably
   comprehend, but it is Greek to the common people. Blessed is that
   teacher who teaches what he understands, himself, in a way which
   enables others to understand him! I like the style of old Cobbett when
   he said, "I not only speak so that men can understand me, but so that
   they cannot misunderstand me."

   And such a teacher was Christ to His own disciples. When they sat at
   His feet He made the Truth of God so clear that wayfaring men, though
   fools, need not err therein. By homely parables and phrases which
   caught the ear and won the heart, He brought down celestial Truths to
   ordinary comprehensions--when the Spirit of God had once cleansed those
   comprehensions and made them able to receive the Truth. He taught,
   moreover, not only plainly, but lovingly. So gently did He open up
   things to His own disciples that it must have been a pleasure to be
   ignorant in order to require to be taught--and a greater pleasure,
   still, to learn--to learn in such a way! The way in which He taught was
   as sweet as the Truth He taught.

   Everybody that came into Christ's school felt at home, felt pleased
   with their Master and confident that if they could learn anywhere they
   must learn at His feet. The Master gave, in connection with His
   teaching, a measure of the Holy Spirit--not the full measure--for that
   was reserved until He had ascended up on high and the Spirit should
   baptize the Church. But He gave to each of His people a measure of the
   Spirit of God, by which Truths were not taught to their ears, only, but
   to their hearts. Ah, my Brothers, we are not such teachers as Christ!
   For, when we have done our best, we can only reach the ear. We cannot
   give the Holy Spirit--only He can.

   And when the Spirit, this day, comes from Christ and takes of His
   things and reveals them to us, then we see yet more of our Lord's
   masterly modes of teaching and learn what a Master Jesus is, who writes
   His lessons, not on the blackboard, but on the fleshy tablets of the
   heart! It is Jesus who gives us schoolbooks--no--He is, Himself, the
   Book! It is He who gives us lessons--yes--is, Himself, the Lesson. He
   performs before us that which He would have us do, so that when we know
   Him, we know what He has to teach! And when we imitate Him, we have
   followed the precepts which He gives. Our Lord's way of embodying His
   instruction in Himself is a right royal one and none can rival Him in
   it.

   Do not children learn infinitely more by example than they do by
   precept? And this is how our Master teaches us. "Never man spoke like
   this Man" is a grand Christian proverb, but it might be eclipsed by
   another--"Never man acted like this Man," for this Man's deeds and
   words tally with each other--the deeds embody and enforce the words,
   give them life--and help us to understand them. He is a Prophet like
   unto Moses, because He is mighty both in word and in deed--and so He is
   of Prophets and teachers, The Master. Here a master mind, a master
   experience and a master mode of teaching! Well is He called, "The
   Master."

   But, dear Friends, there was, over and above this--if I have not
   reached it in what I have already said--a master influence which Jesus,
   as The Teacher, had over those who came within His range. They did not
   merely see, but feel. They did not only know, but love. They did not
   merely prize the lesson, but they worshipped the Teacher. What a Master
   was this Christ, whose very Self became the power by which sin was
   checked and ultimately cast out! And by which virtue was implanted and
   the new life commenced, nourished and brought to perfection. To have
   one to teach you who is very dear to you is to make lessons easy.

   No child learns better than from a mother qualified to teach, who knows
   how to make her lessons sweet by crystallizing them in the sugar of her
   own affection! Then it is pleasure, as well as duty, to learn! But no
   mother ever won her child's heart, (and there have been tender and
   affectionate mothers, too), so thoroughly as Jesus won the heart of
   Mary! Or, I may say, as Jesus has won your heart and mine, if you feel
   as my heart feels to my Lord. From Him we need no reasons to prove what
   He says--His love is the logic which proves everything to us. With Him
   we hold no debate-- what He has done for us has answered every question
   we could raise. If He tells us what we do not understand, we believe
   it. We ask if we may understand it and if He tells us," No"--we stay
   where we are and believe the mystery.

   We love Him so that we are as glad not to know as to know, if such
   should is His will! We believe His silence to be as eloquent as His
   speech. And that which He conceals to be as kindly intended as that
   which He reveals. Because we love Him He exercises such an influence
   over us that, straightway, we prize His teaching and receive it. The
   more we know Him and the more His inexpressibly delightful influence
   dominates our nature, the more completely we yield up imagination,
   thought, reason, everything, to Him! Men may call us fools for it, but
   we have learned, at Jesus' feet, that "the world by wisdom knew not
   God" and that unless we are converted and become as little children, we
   shall in no wise enter the kingdom of Heaven. And therefore we are not
   upset when the world thinks us childish and credulous.

   The world is growing more manly and more foolish--and we are growing
   more childlike and more wise. We reckon that to grow downward into our
   Lord Jesus is the surest and truest growth! And when we shall have
   grown clean down to nothing--and even lower till we are less than
   nothing--then we shall be fully grown in the school of Jesus! And then

   we shall take a high degree in true learning, knowing the love of
   Christ which passes knowledge. We may well call Him Master who has a
   masterly mind, a masterly experience and a masterly way of teaching.
   And, moreover, wields a masterly influence over His pupils, so that
   they are forever bound, heart and soul, to Him and count Him to be,
   Himself, His own highest lesson, as well as the chief of all
   instructors!

   Having proved that our beloved Lord is fairly entitled to the name, let
   me add that He is, by office, the sole and only Master of the Church.
   There is, in the Christian Church, no authority for a doctrine but
   Christ's Word. The inspired Book which He has left us, charging us
   never to diminish a letter or add a syllable, is our imperial code, our
   authorized creed, our settled standard of belief. I hear a great deal
   said of sundry, "bodies of divinity," but my own impression is that
   there never was but one Body of Divinity and there never will be but
   one--and that is Jesus Christ in whom "dwells all the fullness of the
   Godhead bodily." To the true Church, her Body of Divinity is Christ.
   Some Churches refer to other standards, but we know no standard of
   theology but our Master. "I, if I am lifted up," He says, "will draw
   all men unto

   Me."

   We feel no drawings towards any other master! Jesus Christ is the
   standard--"Unto Him shall the gathering of the people be." We are not
   of those who will go no further than Martin Luther. Blessed be God for
   Martin Luther! God forbid that we should say a word in depreciation of
   him. But were we baptized unto Martin Luther? Of course not! Some can
   never budge an inch beyond John Calvin, whom I reverence, first, of all
   merely mortal men. But still, John Calvin is not our master but only a
   more advanced pupil in the school of Christ! He teaches, and, as far as
   he teaches as Christ taught, he is authoritative, but where Calvin goes
   apart from Jesus, he is no more to be followed than Voltaire, himself!

   There are brethren whose one reference for everything is to the
   utterances of John Wesley. "What would Mr. Wesley have said?" is a
   weighty question with them. We think it a small matter what he would
   have said, or what he did say for the guidance of Christians, now, so
   many years after his departure! Far better is it to enquire what Jesus
   says in His Word! One of the grandest of men that ever lived was
   Wesley, but he is no master of ours. We were not baptized in the name
   of John Wesley, or John Calvin, or Martin Luther! "One is our Master,
   even Christ." And now the Parliament of our country is about to set
   apart a learned judge to decide what is right in a so-called Church of
   Christ! And he is to say, " This garment you may wear, and that you
   shall not; up to here your ritual shall go but no further."

   In his person the House of Commons is to be recognized as the creator,
   lord and master of the Church of England, to whom he will say, "Do
   this," and she will do it, or "Refrain," and she will stay her hand.
   She must crouch and bend, and take her meat like any dog from the hand
   that patronizes her! And her collar, made of what brass or leather
   Caesar chooses to ordain, shall bear this motto, "His servants you are
   whom you obey." Why, the poorest minister in the most despised of our
   Churches, whose poverty is thought to make him contemptible, but whose
   poverty is his glory if he bears it for Christ's sake, would scorn to
   have any spiritual act of his Church submitted to the judgment of the
   State! And he would sooner die than be dictated to in the matter of
   Divine worship!

   What has the Church to do with the State? Our Master and Lord has set
   up a kingdom which acknowledges no other King but Himself. We cannot
   bow and will not bow before decrees of Parliament and lords and kings
   in spiritual things. Christ's Church has but one Head and that is
   Christ! The doctrines which the Church has to teach cannot be tested by
   a Court of Arches, or a bench of bishops, or a synod of ministers, or a
   presbytery, or a conference. The Lord Jesus Christ has taught us this
   and if His teaching is contradicted, the contradiction is treason
   against His crown! Though the whole Church were assembled and that
   Church the true one, if it should contradict the teaching of Christ,
   its decrees ought to be no more to a Christian than the whistling of
   the wind upon the mountain wilds! Christ is Master and none but Christ!

   Though an Apostle or an angel from Heaven preach any other doctrine
   than that of our Lord, let him be accursed! I would God that all
   Christians stood up for this. Then would--

   "Sects and names and parties fall, And Jesus Christ be All in All."

   He is the sole Teacher and the sole Legislator. A Church has a right to
   execute Christ's Laws, but she has no right to make a law. The
   ministers of Christ are bound to carry out the rules of Christ--and
   when they do so, what is bound on earth is bound in Heaven. But if they
   have acted upon any rules other than those of this Book, their laws are
   only worthy of contempt! Be they what they may, they bind no Christian
   heart! The yoke Christ put on us shall be our joy to wear! But the yoke
   which prelates would thrust upon us shall be our glory to trample on!
   "If the Son make you free, you shall

   be free, indeed." "Stand fast, therefore in the liberty wherewith
   Christ has made you free and be not entangled, again, with the yoke of
   bondage."

   "The Master." That is the name Christ should receive throughout the
   whole Church and He should be regarded always, and on all occasions,
   and in reference to all spiritual subjects, as the last Court of
   Appeal, whose inspired Word is--

   "The judge that ends the strife Where wit and reason fail."

   Thus much upon the propriety of the title.

   II. But now, secondly, let us consider THE PECULIAR RECOGNITION WHICH
   MARY GAVE TO CHRIST AS

   THE MASTER. How did she give that recognition? She became His
   pupil--she sat right reverently at His feet. Beloved, if He is our
   Master, let us do the same! Let us take every Word of Jesus, weigh it,
   read it, mark it, learn it, feed on it and inwardly digest it. I am
   afraid we do not read our Bibles as we should, or attach such
   importance as we ought to every shade of expression which our Master
   uses.

   I would like to see a picture of Mary sitting at the Master's feet.
   Great artists have painted the Virgin Mary so often that they might
   consider a change and sketch this Mary looking up with a deep, fixed
   gaze--drinking all in and treasuring all up--sometimes startled by a
   new thought and a fresh doctrine and then inquiringly waiting till her
   face beams with unspeakable delight as new light gladdens her heart.
   Her attentive discipleship proved how truly Jesus was her Master.

   Then, mark, she was not only His disciple, but she was a disciple of
   nobody else. I do not know whether Gamaliel was in fashion, then, but
   she did not sit at his feet. I dare say there was some Rabbi Ben Simon,
   or other famous doctors of the period--but Mary never spent an hour
   with them--for every moment she could spare was set apart, joyously
   spent at the feet of a far dearer Rabbi! I wonder whether she was a
   little deaf and so sat close to the Teacher for fear of losing a word!
   Perhaps she feared she might be slow of heart and so she got as near
   the Preacher as others do who have a little deafness in their ears! Any
   way, her favorite place was close at His feet. That shows us, since we
   are always dull of hearing in our souls, that it is good to get very
   close to Jesus when we are hearing Him and commune while we listen. She
   did not change from Him to someone else for variety's sake. No, The
   Master, her Master, her only Master, was the Nazarene whom others
   despised, but whom she called her Lord.

   She was a willing scholar, for, "Mary has chosen the good part," said
   Jesus. Nobody sent her to sit at Jesus' feet. Jesus drew her and she
   could not help coming, but she loved to be there. She was a willing and
   delighted listener. Never was she so happy as when she had her
   choice--that choice being always to learn of Him. Children at school
   always learn well if they want to learn. If they are forced to attend
   school, they learn but little, comparatively--but when they want to go,
   and when they love the teacher--it is quick learning with them and
   happy is the teacher who has a class that has chosen him to teach them!
   Mary could well call Him, "The Master," for she rendered Him her sole
   attention, her loving and delighted attention.

   And, mark you, in choosing Christ for Master, sheperseveringly stuck to
   Him. Her choice was not taken away from her and she did not give it up.
   Martha looked very cross one day. How was she to see to the roast and
   the other dishes at once? How could she be expected to prepare the
   table and to look to the fire in the kitchen, too? Why could not Mary
   come? And she scowled, I do not doubt. But it did not matter. Mary
   still sat there. Perhaps she did not even notice Martha's face--I think
   she did not, for the saints do not notice other countenances when
   Christ's beauty is to be seen-- there is something so absorbing about
   Him! He takes you all into Himself and bears you right away, drawing
   not only all men, but all of men to Himself, when He does draw. And so
   she sat there and listened.

   Those children will learn who stick to their books, who come not
   sometimes to study, but are always learning. So Mary recognized the
   Lord Jesus Christ's Master-Teachership by giving to Him that
   persevering attention which such a Master-Teacher had a right to claim.
   She went humbly to Him, for while she sat at His feet for nearness, she
   sat there, too, out of deep humiliation of spirit. She felt it her
   highest honor to be sitting in the lowest place, for lowly was her
   mind. They shall learn most of Christ who think least of themselves.
   When a place at His feet seems to be too good for us, or at any rate we
   are more than content with it, then will His speech distil as the rain
   and drop as the dew--and we shall be as the tender herbs that drink in
   sweet refreshment--and our souls shall grow!

   Blessed were you, O Mary! And blessed is each one of you, if you can
   call Christ your Master and prove it as she did! You shall have the
   good part which shall not be taken away from you.

   III. Now I come to my third point, which is this--THE SPECIAL SWEETNESS
   OF THE NAME TO US. I have

   shown why it was peculiarly recognized by Mary and now I would show
   that it has a peculiar sweetness for us, also. "The Master," or, "My
   Master," or, "My Teacher." I love that name in my own soul, because it
   is as a Teacher that Jesus Christ is my Savior. The best illustration I
   can give you is that of one of those poor little boys in the street, an
   "Arab," without father and mother, or with parents worse than none. The
   poor child is covered with filth and rags. He is well-known to the
   police and has seen the inside of many a jail. But a teacher of a
   Ragged School has laid hold of him and instructs him--and he is now
   washed and clothed and happy.

   Now, that poor boy does not know the sweetness of, "my father," or, "my
   mother." He does not recognize anything in those titles. Perhaps he
   never knew them, or only knew such a form of them as to disgust him.
   But with what a zest does he say, "My teacher!" These little children
   say, "My teacher," with quite as much affection as others speak of
   their mother! Where there has been a great moral change worked by the
   influence of a teacher, the name, "my teacher," has great sweetness in
   it.

   Now listen to the parable of the ragged boy and his teacher! I was that
   ragged child! Truly, I did not think myself ragged, for I was foolish
   enough to think my rags were fine garments and that my filth was my
   beauty! I knew not what I was. My Teacher saw me. He knew how foul I
   was and how ragged I was. And He taught me to see myself--and also to
   believe that He could wash me whiter than snow. Yes, He went further
   and actually washed me till I was clean before the Lord. My Teacher
   showed me a wardrobe of snow-white linen garments and clothed me in
   them. My Teacher has taught me a thousand things and worked innumerable
   good works upon me! I owe my salvation wholly to my Teacher, my Master,
   my Lord.

   Can you say the same? I know you can if you are, indeed, disciples of
   Jesus! "My Teacher" means to you, "my Savior," for He saved you by
   teaching you your disease and your remedy--teaching you how wrong you
   were and making you right by His teaching. The word, Master, or,
   Teacher, has to us a delightful meaning, for it is by His teaching that
   we are saved. Let me tell you how, as a preacher, I love that name, "my
   Master." I like to feel that what I said to those people on Sunday was
   not mine. I preached my Master--and I preached what my Master told me.
   Some find fault with the doctrine. I do not mind that, because it was
   none of mine, it was my Master's! If I were a servant and went to the
   front door with a message--and the gentleman to whom I took it did not
   like the message--I would say, "Do not be vexed with me, Sir. I have
   told you my master's message to the best of my ability--and I am not
   responsible for it. It is my master's word, not mine."

   When there are no souls converted it is dreary work, and one's heart is
   heavy, but it is sweet to go and tell your Master. And when souls are
   converted and your heart is glad, it is a happy and a healthy thing to
   give all the glory to your Master. It must be an awkward thing to be an
   ambassador from the English court in some far-off land where there is
   no telegraph and where the ambassador has to act on his own
   responsibility. He must feel it a serious burden. But, blessed be God,
   between every true minister and his Master there is a telegraphic
   communication--he need never do anything on his own account. He may
   imitate the disciples of John, who, when they had taken up the
   Baptist's mangled body, went and told Jesus. That is the thing to do!

   There are difficulties in all Churches, troubles in all families and
   cares in all businesses--but it is good to have a Master to whom you
   can go as a servant, feeling, "He has the responsibility of the whole
   concern--not I! I have only to do what He bids me." If we once step
   beyond our Lord's commands, the responsibility rests on us--and our
   trouble begins! But if we follow our Lord, we cannot go astray. And is
   not this a sweet name to quote when you are troubled, dear Friends?
   Perhaps some of you are in trouble now. How it removes fear when you
   find out that He who sent the trouble is the Teacher who teaches you by
   the trouble--the Master who has a right to use what form of teaching He
   likes! In our schools much is learned from the blackboard. And in
   Christ's school much is learned from affliction.

   You have heard the story often, but I venture to repeat it again, of
   the gardener who had preserved with great care a very choice rose. One
   morning when he went into the garden it was gone. He scolded his fellow
   servants and felt very grieved, till someone said, "I saw the master
   coming through the garden, this morning, and I believe he took the
   rose." "Oh, then," said the gardener, "if the master took it, I am
   content." Have you lost a dear child, or a wife, or a friend? It

   was HE that took your flower! It belonged to Him. Would you wish to
   keep what Jesus wants? We are asked to pray, sometimes, for the lives
   of good people, and I think we may. But I have not always exercised
   faith while pleading, because it seemed to me that Christ pulled one
   way and I pulled the other.

   I said, "Father, let them be here," and Jesus said, "Father, I will
   that they be with Me where I am." And one could not pull very hard,
   then! Only feel that Christ is drawing the other way and you directly
   give up. You say, "Let the Master have it. The servant cannot oppose
   the Master." It is the Lord. Let Him do what seems good to Him. I was
   dumb with silence. I opened not my mouth because You said it. Our
   Master learned that lesson, Himself, which He teaches us. That is a
   very striking expression, "Father, I thank You that You have hid these
   things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them unto babes.
   Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight." It pleased God
   to pass by the wise and prudent and, therefore, it pleased Christ that
   it should be so.

   It is well to have our hearts like that poor shepherd to whom a
   gentleman said, "I wish you a good day." Said he, "I never knew a bad
   day." "How is that, my Friend?" "The days are such as God chooses to
   make them and, therefore, they are all good." "Well," said the other,
   "but some days please you more than others?" "No," he said, "what
   pleases God pleases me." "Well, but have you not a choice?" asked the
   other. "Yes, I have a choice, and that is, I choose that God should
   choose for me." "But have you not a choice whether you would live or
   die?" "No," he said, "for if I am here Christ will be with me. And if I
   am in Heaven I shall be with Him." "But suppose you had to choose?" "I
   would ask God to choose for me," he said. Oh, sweet simplicity which
   leaves everything with God! This is calling Jesus, Master, to
   perfection--

   "Pleased with all the Lord provides, Weaned from all the world
   besides."

   Once again, dear Friends, it is sweet for us to call Jesus, Master,
   because in so doing we take a position easy to reach and yet most
   delightful. To call Him, Bridegroom--what an honor it is to be so near
   akin to the Son of God! Friend is a familiar and honorable title--to
   call Him, Master, however, is often easier and it is quite as
   sweet--for in His service, if we take no higher place, is pure delight
   to us! If our hearts are right, to do the Lord's bidding is as much as
   we can ask for! Though we are sons, now, and not slaves, and therefore
   our service is of a different character from what it ever was before,
   yet service is delight. What will Heaven be but perpetual service? Here
   we labor to enter into rest--there they enter into rest while they
   labor! Their rest is the perfect obedience of their fully sanctified
   spirits.

   Are you not panting for it? Will it not be one of your greatest joys in
   Heaven to feel that you are His servant? The glorified ones are called
   His servants in Heaven. "His servants shall serve Him and they shall
   see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads." Rid us of sin
   and we should be in Heaven now! Earth would be Heaven to us! I want
   you, dear Brethren in Christ, to go away rolling this sweet word under
   your tongue--"My Master." "My Master!" You will never hear better music
   than that--"My Master!" "My Master!" Go and live as servants should
   live. Mind you, make Him truly your Master, for He says, "If I am a
   Master where is My honor?" Speak well of Him, for servants should speak
   well of a good Master. And no servant ever had so dear a Master as He
   is.

   But there are some of you who cannot say this. I wish you could. Jesus
   is not your Master. Who is, then? You have a master somewhere, for,
   "his servants you are whom you obey." Now, if you obey the lusts of the
   flesh, your master is your flesh and the wages will be corruption--for
   that is what flesh comes to--corruption, and nothing better! Or your
   master is the devil, and his wages must be death. Run away from such a
   master! Mostly, when servants leave their masters they are bound to
   give notice, but here is a case in which no notice should ever be
   given. When the prodigal son ran away from feeding the swine, he never
   stopped to give notice that he was going to leave the pigs. He just
   took off--and I recommend every sinner to run, by the Grace of God,
   straight away from his sins.

   Stopping to give notice is the ruin of many. They mean to be sober, but
   they must treat their good resolution to another glass or two. They
   intend to think about Divine things, but they must go to the theater
   once more. They would gladly serve Christ, but tomorrow, not tonight.
   If I had such a master as you have--you who live in sin--I would get up
   and away at once, by the Grace of God, and say, "I will have Christ for
   my Lord." Look at your evil master. Look at his cunning eyes! Can you
   not see that he is a flatterer? He means your ruin! He will destroy you
   as he has already destroyed millions! That horrid leer of sin, that
   painted face--consider them and abhor them! Serve not a master who,
   though he

   gives you fair promises, labors for your destruction! Up and away, you
   slaves of sin! Eternal Spirit, come and break their chains! Sweet Star
   of Liberty, guide them to the free country and let them find, in Jesus
   Christ, their liberty!

   My Master rejoices to receive runaways! His door is open to vagrants
   and vagabonds, to the scum of the earth and the off-scouring of all
   things--to men that are dissatisfied with themselves--to wretches who
   have no joy in their lives and are ready to lie down and die! "This Man
   receives sinners." He is like David who went into Adullam. Every man
   that was in debt and discontented came to him and he became a captain
   over them. As Romulus and Remus gathered the first population of new
   Rome by harboring escaped slaves and robbers, whom they trained into
   citizens and made to be brave soldiers, so my Master has laid the
   foundation of the new Jerusalem and He looks for His citizens--yes, the
   noblest of them, over yonder there, where sin and Satan hold them
   captive--and He bids us sound out the silver trumpet and tell the
   slaves of sin that if they flee to Him, He will never give them up to
   their old master! He will emancipate them, make them citizens of His
   great city, sharers of His bounties, partakers in His triumphs and they
   shall be His in the day when He makes up His jewels!

   I remember preaching in this strain, once, and an old sea captain told
   me after the sermon that he had served under the black flag for 50
   years, and by the Grace of God he would tear the old rag down and run
   up the blood red Cross at the masthead. I recommended him not merely to
   change his flag, but to see that the vessel was repaired. But he wisely
   replied that repairing would be of no use to such an old water-logged
   hulk--he had better scuttle the old ship and have a new one. I reckon
   that is the best thing to do--to be dead, indeed, unto sin, and made
   alive in Christ Jesus--for you may do what you will with the old wreck
   of fallen Nature, you will never keep it afloat.

   The old man must be crucified with Christ! It must be dead, buried and
   sunk fifty thousand fathoms deep, never to be heard of again. In the
   new vessel which Jesus launches in the day of our regeneration, with
   the blessed flag of atoning blood above us, we will sail to Heaven
   convoyed by Irresistible Grace, giving God the glory forever and ever!
   Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--John 11. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--797, 769, 768.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Agony in Gethsemane

   (No. 1199)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING. OCTOBER 18, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly: and His sweat was, as
   it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground." Luke 22:44.

   OUR Lord, after having eaten the Passover and celebrated the supper
   with His disciples, went with them to the Mount of Olives and entered
   the Garden of Gethsemane. What induced Him to select that place to be
   the scene of His terrible agony? Why there, in preference to anywhere
   else would He be arrested by His enemies? May we not conceive that as
   in a garden Adam's self-indulgence ruined us, so in another garden the
   agonies of the second Adam should restore us? Gethsemane supplies the
   medicine for the ills which followed upon the forbidden fruit of Eden.
   No flowers which bloomed upon the banks of the four-fold river were
   ever so precious to our race as the bitter herbs which grew hard by the
   black and sullen stream of Kidron.

   May not our Lord also have thought of David, when on that memorable
   occasion he fled out of the city from his rebellions son, and it is
   written, "The king also, himself, passed over the brook Kidron," and he
   and his people went up barefoot and bareheaded, weeping as they went?
   Behold, the greater David leaves the Temple to become desolate and
   forsakes the city which had rejected His admonitions! And with a
   sorrowful heart He crosses the foul brook to find in solitude a solace
   for His woes. Our Lord Jesus, moreover, meant us to see that our sin
   changed everything about Him into sorrow--it turned His riches into
   poverty, His peace into travail, His glory into shame--and so the place
   of His peaceful retirement, where, in hallowed devotion He had been
   nearest Heaven in communion with God, our sin transformed into the
   focus of His sorrow, the center of His woe. Where He had enjoyed most,
   there He must be called to suffer most.

   Our Lord may, also, have chosen the Garden because, needing every
   remembrance that could sustain Him in the conflict, He felt refreshed
   by the memory of former hours there which had passed away so quietly.
   He had prayed there and gained strength and comfort. Those gnarled and
   twisted olives knew Him well--there was scarcely a blade of grass in
   the Garden which He had not knelt upon. He had consecrated the spot to
   fellowship with God! What wonder, then, that He preferred this favored
   soil? Just as a man would choose, in sickness, to lie in his own bed,
   so Jesus chose to endure His agony in His own place of prayer where the
   recollections of former communings with His Father would come vividly
   before Him.

   But, probably, the chief reason for His resort to Gethsemane was that
   it was His well-known haunt. John tells us, "Judas also knew the
   place." Our Lord did not wish to conceal Himself. He did not need to be
   hunted down like a thief, or searched out by spies. He went boldly to
   the place where His enemies knew that He was accustomed to pray, for He
   was willing to be taken to suffering and to death. They did not drag
   Him off to Pilate's Hall against His will, but He went with them
   voluntarily. When the hour was come for Him to be betrayed--there He
   was, in a place where the traitor could readily find Him. And when
   Judas would betray Him with a kiss, His cheek was ready to receive the
   traitorous salutation. The blessed Savior delighted to do the will of
   the Lord though it involved obedience unto death!

   We have thus come to the gate of the Garden of Gethsemane, let us now
   enter--but first, let us take off our shoes, as Moses did, when he saw
   the bush which burned with fire and was not consumed. Surely we may say
   with Jacob, "How dreadful is this place!" I tremble at the task which
   lies before me, for how shall my feeble speech describe those agonies
   for which strong crying and tears were scarcely an adequate expression?
   I desire, with you, to survey the sufferings of our Redeemer, but oh,
   may the Spirit of God prevent our mind from thinking anything amiss, or
   our tongue from speaking even one word which would be derogatory to Him
   either in His immaculate Manhood or His glorious Godhead!

   It is not easy, when you are speaking of one who is both God and Man,
   to observe the exact line of correct speech. It is easy to describe the
   Divine side in such a manner as to trench upon the human, or to depict
   the human at the cost of the Divine. Make me not an offender for a word
   if I should err! A man had need, himself, to be Inspired, or to confine
   himself to the very Words of Inspiration to fitly speak, at all times,
   upon the great "mystery of godliness"--God manifest in the flesh--and
   especially when he has to dwell most upon God so manifest in suffering
   flesh that the weakest traits in manhood become the most conspicuous.

   O Lord, open my lips that my tongue may utter right words! Meditating
   upon the agonizing scene in Gethsemane we are compelled to observe that
   our Savior endured, there, a grief unknown to any previous period of
   His life. Therefore we will commence our discourse by raising the
   question, WHAT WAS THE CAUSE OF THE PECULIAR GRIEF OF GETHSEMANE? Our
   Lord was the "Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief throughout His
   whole life and yet, though it may sound paradoxical, I scarcely think
   there existed on the face of the earth a happier man than Jesus of
   Nazareth! The griefs which He endured were counterbalanced by the peace
   of purity, the calm of fellowship with God and the joy of benevolence.
   This last, every good man knows to be very sweet--and all the sweeter
   in proportion to the pain which is voluntarily endured for the carrying
   out of its kind designs. It is always joy to do good, cost what it may.

   Moreover, Jesus dwelt at perfect peace with God at all times. We know
   that He did so, for He regarded that peace as a choice legacy which He
   could bequeath to His disciples. Before He died, He said to them,
   "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you." He was meek and
   lowly of heart, and therefore His soul had rest. He was one of the meek
   who inherit the earth. He was one of the peacemakers who are and must
   be blessed. I think I am not mistaken when I say that our Lord was far
   from being an unhappy Man. But in Gethsemane all seems changed, His
   peace is gone, His calm is turned to tempest.

   After supper our Lord had sung a hymn, but there was no singing in
   Gethsemane. Down the steep bank which led from Jerusalem to the Kidron
   He talked very cheerfully, saying, "I am the Vine and you are the
   branches," and that wondrous prayer which He prayed with His disciples
   after that discourse is full of majesty--"Father, I will that they,
   also, whom You have given Me be with Me where I am"--is a very
   different prayer from that inside Gethsemane's walls, where He cries,
   "If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me." Notice that all His
   life you scarcely find Him uttering an expression of grief. But here He
   says, not only by His sighs and by His bloody sweat, but in so many
   words, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even unto death."

   In the Garden the Sufferer could not conceal His grief and does not
   appear to have wished to do so. Thrice he ran backward and forward to
   His disciples--He let them see His sorrow and appealed to them for
   sympathy. His exclamations were very piteous and His sighs and groans
   were, I doubt not, very terrible to hear. Chiefly did that sorrow
   reveal itself in bloody sweat, which is a very unusual phenomenon,
   although I suppose we must believe those writers who record instances
   somewhat similar. The old physician, Galen, gives an instance in which,
   through extremity of horror, an individual poured forth a discolored
   sweat, so nearly crimson as, at any rate, to appear to have been blood.
   Other cases are given by medical authorities.

   We do not, however, on any previous occasion observe anything like this
   in our Lord's life. It was only in the last grim struggle among the
   olive trees that our Champion resisted unto blood, agonizing against
   sin. What ailed You, O Lord, that You should be so sorely troubled just
   then? We are clear that His deep sorrow and distress were not
   occasioned by any bodily pain. Our Savior had doubtless been familiar
   with weakness and pain, for He took our sicknesses, but He never, in
   any previous instance, complained of physical suffering. Neither at the
   time when He entered Gethsemane had He been grieved by any bereavement.
   We know why it is written, "Jesus wept"--it was because His friend
   Lazarus was dead--but here there was no funeral, nor sick bed, nor
   particular cause of grief in that direction.

   Nor was it the revived remembrance of any past reproaches which had
   lain dormant in His mind. Long before this "reproach had broken His
   heart," He had known to the full the vexations of contumely and scorn.
   They had called Him a "drunken man and a winebibber." They had charged
   Him with casting out devils by the Prince of the devils--they could not
   say more and yet He had bravely faced it all--it could not be possible
   that He was now sorrowful unto death for such a cause. There must have
   been a something sharper than pain, more cutting than reproach, more
   terrible than bereavement, which now, at this time, grappled with the
   Savior and made Him "exceedingly sorrowful, and very heavy."

   Do you suppose it was the fear of coming scorn, or the dread of
   crucifixion? Was it terror at the thought of death? Is not such a
   supposition impossible? Every man dreads death and as Man, Jesus could
   not but shrink from it. When we were originally made, we were created
   for immortality and, therefore, to die is strange and uncongenial work
   to us. The instincts of self-preservation cause us to start back from
   it, but surely in our Lord's case that natural cause could not have
   produced such specially painful results. It does not make even such
   poor cowards as we are sweat great drops of blood! Why, then, should it
   work such terror in Him?

   It is dishonoring to our Lord to imagine Him less brave than His own
   disciples, yet we have seen some of the most feeble of His saints
   triumphant in the prospect of departing. Read the stories of the
   martyrs and you will frequently find them exultant in the near approach
   of the most cruel sufferings. The joy of the Lord has given such
   strength to them that no cowardly thought has alarmed them for a single
   moment--they have gone to the stake, or to the block with songs of
   victory upon their lips! Our Master must not be thought of as inferior
   to His boldest servants! It cannot be that He should tremble where they
   were brave. Oh, no! The noblest spirit among yon band of martyrs is the
   Leader, Himself, who in suffering and heroism surpassed them all! None
   could so defy the pangs of death as the Lord Jesus, who, for the joy
   which was set before Him, endured the Cross, despising the shame!

   I cannot conceive that the pangs of Gethsemane were occasioned by any
   extraordinary attack from Satan. It is possible that Satan was there
   and that his presence may have darkened the shade--but he was not the
   most prominent cause of that hour of darkness. This much is quite
   clear, that our Lord, at the commencement of His ministry, engaged in a
   very severe duel with the Prince of Darkness, and yet we do not read
   concerning that temptation in the wilderness a single syllable as to
   His soul's being exceedingly sorrowful. Neither do we find that He "was
   sore amazed and was very heavy." Nor is there a solitary hint at
   anything approaching to bloody sweat. When the Lord of Angels
   condescended to stand foot to foot with the Prince of the power of the
   air, He had no such dread of him as to utter strong cries and tears and
   fall prostrate on the ground with threefold appeals to the Great
   Father.

   Comparatively speaking, to put His foot on the old serpent was an easy
   task for Christ and did but cost Him a bruised heel. But this
   Gethsemane agony wounded His very soul even unto death. What is it
   then, do you think, that so peculiarly marks Gethsemane and the griefs
   thereof? We believe that, then, the Father put Him to grief for us. It
   was then that our Lord had to take a certain cup from the Father's
   hand. Not from the Jews, not from the traitor, Judas. Not from the
   sleeping disciples, nor from the devil came the trial, then--it was a
   cup filled by One whom He knew to be His Father, but Who, nevertheless,
   He understood to have appointed Him a very bitter potion, a cup not to
   be drunk by His body and to spend its gall upon His flesh, but a cup
   which specially amazed His soul and troubled His inmost heart.

   He shrunk from it and, therefore, you can be sure that it was a draught
   more dreadful than physical pain, since from that He did not shrink. It
   was a potion more dreadful than reproach--from that He had not turned
   aside. It was more dreadful than Satanic temptation--that He had
   overcome! It was a something inconceivably terrible and amazingly full
   of dread--which came from the Father's hand. This removes all doubt as
   to what it was, for we read, "It pleased the Lord to bruise Him, He has
   put Him to grief: when You shall make His soul an offering for sin."
   "The Lord has made to meet on Him the iniquity of us all." He has made
   Him to be sin for us though He knew no sin.

   This, then, is that which caused the Savior such extraordinary
   depression. He was now about to "taste death for every man." He was
   about to bear the curse which was due to sinners because He stood in
   the sinner's place and must suffer in the sinner's stead. Here is the
   secret of those agonies which it is not possible for me to set forth
   before you! It is so true that--

   "'Tis to God, and God alone, That His griefs are fully known."

   Yet would I exhort you to consider these griefs, that you may love the
   Sufferer. He now realized, perhaps for the first time, that He was to
   be a Sin-Bearer. As God He was perfectly holy and incapable of sin. And
   as Man He was without original taint--He was spotlessly pure--yet He
   had to bear sin, to be led forth as the Scapegoat bearing the iniquity
   of Israel upon His head. He had to be taken and made a Sin
   Offering--and as a loathsome thing, (for nothing was more loathsome
   than the sin offering)--to be taken outside the camp and utterly
   consumed with the fire of Divine wrath!

   Do you wonder that His infinite purity started back from that? Would He
   have been what He was if it had not been a very solemn thing for Him to
   stand before God in the position of a sinner? Yes, and as Luther would
   have said it, to be

   looked upon by God as if He were all the sinners in the world, and as
   if He had committed all the sin that ever had been committed by His
   people--for it was all laid on Him and on Him must the vengeance due
   for it all be poured. He must be the center of all the vengeance and
   bear away upon Himself what ought to have fallen upon the guilty sons
   of men. To stand in such a position, when once it was realized, must
   have been very terrible to the Redeemer's holy soul.

   Then, also, the Savior's mind was intently fixed upon the dreadful
   nature of sin. Sin had always been abhorrent to Him, but now His
   thoughts were engrossed with it. He saw its worse than deadly nature,
   its heinous character and horrible aim. Probably at this time, beyond
   any former period, He had, as Man, a view of the wide range and
   all-pervading evil of sin and a sense of the blackness of its
   darkness--and the desperateness of its guilt as being a direct attack
   upon the Truth of God. Yes, and upon the very being of God! He saw, in
   His own Person, to what lengths sinners would go. He saw how they would
   sell their Lord, like Judas, and seek to destroy Him as did the Jews.
   The cruel and ungenerous treatment He had Himself received displayed
   man's hate of God, and, as He saw it, horror took hold upon Him and His
   soul was heavy to think that He must bear such an evil and be numbered
   with such transgressors--to be wounded for their transgressions and
   bruised for their iniquities. But not the wounding nor the bruising
   distressed Him so much as the sin itself. That utterly overwhelmed His
   soul.

   Then, too, no doubt, the penalty of sin began to be realized by Him in
   the Garden--first the sin which had put Him in the position of a
   suffering Substitute. Then the penalty which must be borne because He
   was in that position. I dread, to the last degree, that kind of
   theology which is so common, nowadays, which seeks to depreciate and
   diminish our estimate of the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
   Brothers and Sisters, that was no trifling suffering which made
   recompense to the Justice of God for the sins of men! I am never afraid
   of exaggeration when I speak of what my Lord endured. All Hell was
   distilled into that cup of which our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, was
   made to drink! It was not eternal suffering, but since He was Divine He
   could, in a short time, offer unto God a vindication of His Justice
   which sinners in Hell could not have offered had they been left to
   suffer in their own persons forever.

   The woe that broke over the Savior's spirit--the great and fathomless
   ocean of inexpressible anguish which dashed over the Savior's soul when
   He died--is so inconceivable that I must not venture far lest I be
   accused of a vain attempt to express the unutterable! But this I will
   say--the very spray from that great tempestuous deep--as it fell on
   Christ, baptized Him in a bloody sweat! He had not yet come to the
   raging billows of the penalty itself, but even standing on the shore,
   as He heard the awful surf breaking at His feet, His soul was sorely
   amazed and very heavy. It was the shadow of the coming tempest. It was
   the prelude of the dread desertion which He had to endure when He stood
   where we ought to have stood and paid to His Father's justice the debt
   which was due from us! It was this which laid Him low. To be treated as
   a sinner, to be smitten as a sinner, though in Him was no sin--this it
   was which caused Him the agony of which our text speaks.

   Having thus spoken of the cause of His peculiar grief, I think we shall
   be able to support our view of the matter while

   we lead you to consider WHAT WAS THE CHARACTER OF THE GRIEF ITSELF? I
   shall trouble you, as little as

   possible, with the Greek words used by the Evangelists. I have studied
   each of them, to try and find out the shades of their meaning, but it
   will suffice if I give you the results of my careful investigation.
   What was the grief itself? How was it described? This great sorrow
   assailed our Lord some four days before He suffered. If you turn to
   John 12:27, you find that remarkable utterance, "Now is My soul
   troubled." We never knew Him say that before! This was a foretaste of
   the great depression of spirit which was so soon to lay Him prostrate
   in Gethsemane.

   "Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? 'Father, save Me from
   this hour'? But for this cause came I unto this hour." After that we
   read of Him in Matthew 26:37, that, "He began to be sorrowful and
   deeply distressed." The depression had come over Him again. It was not
   pain. It was not a palpitation of the heart, or an aching of the brow.
   It was worse than these. Trouble of spirit is worse than pain of
   body--pain may bring trouble and be the incidental cause of sorrow--but
   if the mind is perfectly at peace, how well a man can bear pain! And
   when the soul is exhilarated and lifted up with inward joy, bodily pain
   is almost forgotten, the soul conquering the body. On the other hand
   the soul's sorrow will create bodily pain, the lower nature
   sympathizing with the higher.

   Our Lord's main suffering lay in His soul--His soul-suffering was the
   soul of His suffering. "A wounded spirit who can bear?" Pain of spirit
   is the worst of pain. Sorrow of heart is the climax of griefs. Let
   those who have ever known sinking spirits, despondency and mental
   gloom, attest the truth of what I say! This sorrow of heart appears to
   have led to

   a very deep depression of our Lord's spirit. In Matthew 26:37, you find
   it recorded that He was "deeply distressed," and that expression is
   full of meaning--of more meaning, indeed, than it would be easy to
   explain. The word, in the original, is a very difficult one to
   translate. It may signify the abstraction of the mind and its complete
   occupation, by sorrow, to the exclusion of every thought which might
   have alleviated the distress.

   One burning thought consumed His whole soul and burned up all that
   might have yielded comfort. For a while His mind refused to dwell upon
   the result of His death, the consequent joy which was set before Him.
   His position as a Sin Bearer and the desertion by His Father which was
   necessary, engrossed His contemplation and hurried His soul away from
   all else. Some have seen in the word a measure of distraction--and
   though I will not go far in that direction--yet it does seem as if our
   Savior's mind underwent perturbations and convulsions widely different
   from His usual calm, collected spirit. He was tossed to and fro as upon
   a mighty sea of trouble, which was worked to a tempest, and carried Him
   away in its fury. "We did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God and
   afflicted." As the Psalmist said, innumerable evils compassed Him about
   so that His heart failed Him. His heart was melted with sheer dismay.
   He was "deeply distressed."

   Some consider the word to signify at its root, "separated from the
   people," as if He had become unlike other men, even as one whose mind
   is staggered by a sudden blow or pressed with some astounding calamity,
   is no more as ordinary men are. Mere onlookers would have thought our
   Lord to be a man distraught, burdened beyond the possibility of men,
   and borne down by a sorrow unparalleled among men. The learned Thomas
   Goodwin says, "The word denotes a failing, deficiency and sinking of
   spirit such as happens to men in sickness and wounding." Epaphroditus'
   sickness, whereby he was brought near to death, is called by the same
   word, so that we see that Christ's soul was sick and faint--was not His
   sweat produced by exhaustion? The cold, clammy sweat of dying men comes
   through faintness of body. But the bloody sweat of Jesus came from an
   utter faintness and prostration of soul. He was in an awful soul-swoon
   and suffered an inward death whose accompaniment was not watery tears
   from the eyes, but a weeping of blood from the entire man.

   Many of you, however, know in your measure what it is to be deeply
   distressed without my multiplying words. And if you do not know, by
   personal experience, all explanations I could give would be in vain.
   When deep despondency comes on. When you forget everything that would
   sustain you and your spirit sinks down, down, down--then can you
   sympathize with our Lord. Others think you foolish, call you nervous
   and bid you rally yourself, but they know not your case. If they
   understood it, they would not mock you with such admonitions. Our Lord
   was "deeply distressed," very sinking, very despondent, overwhelmed
   with grief.

   Mark tells us, next, in his 14th chapter and 33rd verse that our Lord
   was "sore amazed." The Greek word does not merely import that He was
   astonished and surprised, but that His amazement went to an extremity
   of horror, such as men fall into when their hair stands on end and
   their flesh trembles. As the delivery of the Law made Moses exceedingly
   fear and quake, and as David said, "My flesh trembles because of Your
   judgments," so our Lord was stricken with horror at the sight of the
   sin which was laid upon Him and the vengeance which was due on account
   of it. The Savior was first "distressed," then depressed, "heavy," and
   lastly, sore amazed and filled with amazement--for even He, as a Man,
   could scarcely have known what it was that He had undertaken to bear.

   He had looked at it calmly and quietly and felt that whatever it was He
   would bear it for our sake. But when it actually came to the bearing of
   sin He was utterly astonished and taken aback at the dreadful position
   of standing in the sinner's place before God--of having His holy Father
   look upon Him as the sinner's Representative, and of being forsaken by
   that Father with whom He had lived on terms of amity and delight from
   old eternity. It staggered His holy, tender, loving Nature--and He was
   "sore amazed" and was "very heavy." We are further taught that there
   surrounded, encompassed and overwhelmed Him an ocean of sorrow, for the
   38th verse of the 26th of Matthew contains the word perilupos, which
   signifies an encompassing around with sorrows.

   In all ordinary miseries there is, generally, some loophole of escape,
   some breathing place for hope. We can generally remind our friends in
   trouble that their case might be worse. But in our Lord's griefs, worse
   could not be imagined, for He could say with David, "The pains of Hell
   get hold upon Me." All God's waves and billows went over Him. Above
   Him, beneath and around Him, outside Him, and within--all--all was
   anguish and neither was there one alleviation or source of consolation.
   His disciples could not help Him--they were all, but one, sleeping--and
   he who was awake was on the road to betray Him. His spirit cried out in
   the Presence of the Almighty God beneath the crushing burden and

   unbearable load of His miseries! No griefs could have gone further than
   Christ's and He, Himself, said, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful," or
   surrounded with sorrow "even unto death."

   He did not die in the Garden, but He suffered as much as if He had
   died. He endured death intensively, though not extensively. It did not
   extend to the making His body a corpse, but it went as far in pain as
   if it had been so. His pangs and anguish went up to the mortal agony
   and only paused on the verge of death. Luke, to crown all, tells us in
   our text, that our Lord was in an agony. The expression, "agony,"
   signifies a conflict, a contest, a wrestling. With whom was the agony?
   With whom did He wrestle? I believe it was with Himself. The contest
   here intended was not with His God-- no--"not as I will but as You
   will," does not look like wrestling with God. It was not a contest with
   Satan, for, as we have already seen, He would not have been so sorely
   amazed had that been the conflict. It was a terrible combat within
   Himself, an agony within His own soul.

   Remember that He could have escaped from all this grief with one
   resolve of His will and, naturally, the Manhood in Him said, "Do not
   bear it!" And the purity of His heart said, "Oh, do not bear it, do not
   stand in the place of the sinner." The delicate sensitiveness of His
   mysterious Nature shrunk altogether from any form of connection with
   sin-- yet infinite Love said, "Bear it, stoop beneath the load." And so
   there was agony between the attributes of His Nature-- a battle on an
   awful scale in the arena of His soul. The purity which cannot bear to
   come into contact with sin must have been very mighty in Christ--while
   the love which would not let His people perish was very mighty, too. It
   was a struggle on a titanic scale, as if a Hercules had met another
   Hercules--two tremendous forces strove and fought and agonized within
   the bleeding heart of Jesus.

   Nothing causes a man more torture than to be dragged here and there
   with contending emotions. As civil war is the worst and most cruel kind
   of war, so a war within a man's soul, when two great passions in him
   struggle for the mastery, and both noble passions, too, causes a
   trouble and distress which none but he that feels it can understand. I
   marvel not that our Lord's sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood,
   when such an inward pressure made Him like a cluster trod in the
   winepress! I hope I have not presumptuously looked into the Ark, or
   gazed within the veiled Holy of Holies. God forbid that curiosity or
   pride should urge me to intrude where the Lord has set a barrier. I
   have brought you as far as I can and must again drop the curtain with
   the words I used just now--

   "'Tis to God, and God alone, That His griefs are fully known."

   Our third question shall be, WHAT WAS OUR LORD'S SOLACE IN ALL THIS? He
   sought help in human

   companionship and it was very natural that He should do so. God has
   created in our human nature a craving for sympathy. We do not err when
   we expect our Brethren to watch with us in our hour of trial. But our
   Lord did not find that men were able to assist Him--however willing
   their spirit might be, their flesh was weak. What, then, did He do? He
   resorted to prayer and especially prayer to God under the Character of
   Father. I have learned by experience that we never know the sweetness
   of the Fatherhood of God so much as when we are in very bitter anguish.
   I can understand why the Savior said, "Abba, Father"--it was anguish
   that brought Him down as a chastened child to appeal plaintively to a
   Father's love.

   In the bitterness of my soul I have cried, "If, indeed, You are my
   Father, by the heart of Your Fatherhood have pity on Your child." And
   here Jesus pleads with His Father as we have done. And He finds comfort
   in that pleading. Prayer was the channel of the Redeemer's
   comfort--earnest, intense, reverent, repeated prayer--and after each
   time of prayer He seems to have grown quiet and to have gone to His
   disciples with a measure of restored peace of mind. The sight of their
   sleeping helped to bring back His griefs and, therefore, He returned to
   pray again. And each time He was comforted, so that when He had prayed
   for the third time, He was prepared to meet Judas and the soldiers and
   to go with silent patience to judgment and to death. His great comfort
   was prayer and submission to the Divine will, for when He had laid His
   own will down at His Father's feet, the feebleness of His flesh spoke
   no more complainingly--but in sweet silence, like a sheep dumb before
   her shearers--He contained His soul in patience and rest.

   Dear Brothers and Sisters, if any of you shall have your Gethsemane and
   your heavy griefs, imitate your Master by resorting to prayer, by
   crying to your Father and by learning submission to His will. I shall
   conclude by drawing two or three inferences from the whole subject. May
   the Holy Spirit instruct us.

   The first is this--Learn, dear Brothers and Sisters, the real Humanity
   of our Lord Jesus Christ. Do not think of Him merely as God, though He
   is assuredly Divine, but feel Him to be near of kin to you, bone of
   your bone, flesh of your flesh. How thoroughly can He sympathize with
   you! He has been burdened with all your burdens and grieved with all
   your griefs. Are the waters very deep through which you are passing?
   They are not deep compared with the torrents with which He was
   buffeted! Never a pang penetrates your spirit to which your Covenant
   Head was a stranger. Jesus can sympathize with you in all your sorrows,
   for He has suffered far more than you have ever suffered! He is able,
   therefore, to succor you in your temptations. Lay hold on Jesus as your
   familiar Friend, your Brother born for adversity, and you will have
   obtained a consolation which will bear you through the uttermost deeps.

   Next, see here the intolerable evil of sin. You are a sinner, which
   Jesus never was--yet even to stand in the sinner's place was so
   dreadful to Him that He was sorrowful even unto death, What will sin
   one day be to you if you should be found guilty at the last? Oh, could
   we understand the horror of sin, there is not one among us that would
   be satisfied to remain in sin for a single moment! I believe there
   would go up from this House of Prayer this morning a weeping and a
   wailing such as might be heard in the very streets, if men and women
   here who are living in sin could really know what sin is, and what the
   wrath of God is that rests upon them--and what the judgments of God
   will be that will shortly surround them and destroy them!

   Oh Soul, sin must be an awful thing if it so crushed our Lord! If the
   very imputation of it fetched bloody sweat from the pure and holy
   Savior, what must sin, itself, be? Avoid it, pass not by it, turn away
   from the very appearance of it, walk humbly and carefully with your God
   that sin may not harm you, for it is an exceeding plague, an infinite
   pest!

   Learn next, but oh, how few minutes have I in which to speak of such a
   lesson, the matchless love of Jesus, that for your sakes and mine He
   would not merely suffer in body, but consented even to bear the horror
   of being accounted a sinner! Coming under the wrath of God because of
   our sins--though it cost Him suffering unto death and sore
   amazement--yet rather than that we should perish, the Lord stood as our
   Surety! Can we not cheerfully endure persecution for His sake? Can we
   not labor earnestly for Him? Are we so ungenerous that His cause shall
   suffer lack while we have the means of helping it? Are we so base that
   His work shall flag while we have strength to carry it on? I charge you
   by Gethsemane, my Brothers and Sisters, if you have a part and lot in
   the passion of your Savior, love Him much who loved you so
   immeasurably! Spend and be spent for Him!

   Again, looking at Jesus in the Garden, we learn the excellence and
   completeness of the Atonement. How black I am, how filthy, how
   loathsome in the sight of God--I feel myself only fit to be cast into
   the lowest Hell and I wonder that God has not long ago cast me there!
   But I go into Gethsemane, I peer under those gnarled olive trees and I
   see my Savior! Yes, I see Him wallowing on the ground in anguish and
   hear such groans come from Him as never came from human lips before! I
   look upon the earth and see it red with His blood, while His face is
   smeared with gory sweat. And I say to myself, "My God, my Savior, what
   ails You?"

   I hear Him reply, "I am suffering for your sins." And then I take
   comfort, for while I gladly would have spared my Lord such an anguish,
   now that the anguish is over I can understand how Jehovah can spare me,
   because He smote His Son in my place! Now I have hope of justification,
   for I bring before the justice of God and my own conscience the
   remembrance of my bleeding Savior, and I say, "Can You twice demand
   payment, first at the hand of Your agonizing Son and then, again, at
   mine? Sinner as I am, I stand before the burning Throne of the severity
   of God and am not afraid of it! Can You scorch me, O consuming Fire,
   when You have not only scorched but utterly consumed my Substitute?"

   No, by faith my soul sees Justice satisfied, the Law honored, the moral
   government of God established and yet my once guilty soul absolved and
   set free! The fire of avenging Justice has spent itself and the Law has
   exhausted its most rigorous demands upon the Person of Him who was made
   a curse for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him!
   Oh the sweetness of the comfort which flows from the atoning blood!
   Obtain that comfort, my Brethren, and never leave it! Cling to your
   Lord's bleeding heart and drink in abundant consolation!

   Last of all, what must be the terror of the punishment which will fall
   upon those men who reject the atoning blood and who will have to stand
   before God in their own proper persons to suffer for their sins? I will
   tell you, Sirs, with pain in my heart as I tell you, what will happen
   to those of you who reject my Lord! Jesus Christ, my Lord and Master,
   is a sign and prophecy to you of what will happen to you. Not in a
   garden, but on that bed of yours where you have so often been
   refreshed--you will be surprised and overtaken--and the pains of death
   will get hold upon you. With an exceedingly

   sorrow and remorse for your misspent life and for a rejected Savior you
   will be made very miserable. Then will your darling sin, your favorite
   lust, like another Judas, betray you with a kiss! While yet your soul
   lingers on your lips you will be seized and taken off by a body of evil
   ones and carried away to the bar of God, just as Jesus was taken to the
   judgment seat of Caiaphas.

   There shall be a speedy, personal, and somewhat private judgment by
   which you shall be committed to prison where, in darkness, weeping and
   wailing, you shall spend the night before the great assize of the
   Judgment Morning. Then shall the day break and the resurrection morning
   come, and as our Lord then appeared before Pilate, so will you appear
   before the highest tribunal, not that of Pilate, but the dread judgment
   seat of the Son of God whom you have despised and rejected! Then will
   witnesses come against you, not false witnesses, but true--and you will
   stand speechless, even as Jesus said not a word before His accusers.
   Then will Conscience and Despair buffet you! You will become such a
   monument of misery, such a spectacle of contempt as to be fitly noted
   by another Ecce Homo, and men shall look at you and say, "Behold the
   man and the suffering which has come upon him, because he despised his
   God and found pleasure in sin."

   Then you shall be condemned. "Depart, you cursed," shall be your
   sentence, even as, "Let Him be crucified" was the doom of Jesus. You
   shall be taken away by the officers of Justice to your doom. Then, like
   the sinner's Substitute, you will cry, "I thirst," but not a drop of
   water shall be given you! You shall taste nothing but the gall of
   bitterness. You shall be executed publicly with your crimes written
   over your head that all may read and understand that you are justly
   condemned. And then will you be mocked as Jesus was, especially if you
   have been a professor of religion and a false one! All that pass by
   will say, "He saved others, he preached to others, but himself he
   cannot save." God Himself will mock you! No, think not that I dream!
   Has He not said it--"I, also, will laugh at your calamity. I will mock
   when your fear comes"? Cry unto your gods that you once trusted in! Get
   comfort out of the lusts you once delighted in, O you that are cast
   away forever! To your shame and to the confusion of your nakedness, you
   shall, that have despised the Savior, be made a spectacle of the
   justice of God forever.

   It is right it should be so. Justice rightly demands it. Sin made the
   Savior suffer an agony--shall it not make you suffer? Moreover, in
   addition to your sin, you have rejected the Savior. You have said, "He
   shall not be my trust and confidence." Voluntarily, presumptuously and
   against your own conscience you have refused eternal life! And if you
   die rejecting mercy what can come of it but that first, your sin, and
   secondly, your unbelief shall condemn you to misery without limit or
   end? Let Gethsemane warn you! Let its groans, tears and bloody sweat
   admonish you! Repent of sin and believe in Jesus! May His Spirit enable
   you, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

   PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Mark14:32-42, and Psalm 40.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Power of the Risen Savior

   (No. 1200)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, OCTOBER 25, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "And Jesus came and spoke unto them, saying, All power is given unto Me
   in Hea ven and in earth. Go you, therefore, and teach all nations,
   baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
   Holy Spirit teaching them to observe all things whatever I have
   commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the
   world. Amen." Matthew 28:18-20.

   THE change from "the Man of Sorrows," before His crucifixion, to the
   "Lord over All" after His Resurrection is very striking. Before His
   Passion He was well-known by His disciples and appeared only in one
   form, as the Son of Man, clad in the common peasant's garment without
   seam, woven from the top throughout. But after He had risen from the
   dead He was, on several occasions, unrecognized by those who loved Him
   best. He is once, at least, described as having appeared to certain of
   them "under another form." He was the same Person, for they saw His
   hands and His feet-- Thomas even handled Him and placed his finger in
   the print of the nails! But yet it would seem that some gleams of His
   Glory were, at times, manifested to them--a Glory which had been hidden
   during His previous life, except only when He stood on the Mount of
   Transfiguration.

   Before His death, His appearances were to the general public--He stood
   in the midst of Scribes and Pharisees, publicans and sinners, and
   preached the glad tidings. But now He appeared only to His disciples,
   sometimes to one, at another time to two. On one occasion to about 500
   brethren at once, but always to His disciples and to them only. Before
   His death His preaching was full of parables, plain to those who had
   understanding, but often dark and mysterious even to His own followers,
   for it was a judgment from the Lord upon that evil generation that
   seeing they should not see and hearing they should not perceive.

   Yet with equal truth we may say that our Lord, before His death,
   brought down His teaching to the comprehension of the uninstructed
   minds which listened to it, so that many of the deeper Truths of God
   were slightly touched upon because they were not able to bear them as
   yet. Till His crucifixion He veiled the effulgence of many
   Truths--after His Resurrection He spoke in parables, but introduced His
   disciples into the inner circle of the great doctrines of the kingdom
   and, as it were, showed Himself face to face to them. Before His death
   the Lord Jesus was ever with His followers and even the secret places
   of His retirement were known to them. But after He had risen He came
   and went among them at irregular intervals.

   Where He was during many of those 40 days, who among us can tell? He
   was seen in the Garden upon Olivet. He walked to Emmaus. He comforted
   the assembly at Jerusalem. He showed Himself, again, to the disciples
   at the Sea of Tiberius. But where did He go when, other than the
   various interviews, He vanished out of their sight? They were in the
   room alone, the doors were shut, and suddenly He stood in the midst of
   them. Again, He called to them from the beach, and on landing they
   found a fire of coals kindled, and fish laid on them, and bread. His
   appearances were strange and His disappearings equally so.

   Everything pointed to the fact that after He had risen from the dead,
   He had undergone some marvelous change which had revealed in Him that
   which had been concealed before! But His identity was still
   indisputable. It was no small honor to have seen our risen Lord while
   yet He lingered here below. What must it be to see Jesus as He is now!
   He is the same Jesus as when He was here--yonder memorials as of a lamb
   that has been slain assure us that He is the same Man. Glorified in
   Heaven, His real Manhood sits--and it is capable of being beheld by the
   eye and heard by the ear--but yet how different! Had we seen Him in His
   agony, we should all the more admire His Glory!

   Dwell with your hearts very much upon Christ Crucified, but indulge
   yourselves full often with a sight of Christ glorified. Delight to
   think that He is not here, for He is risen! He is not here, for He has
   ascended! He is not here, for He sits at the right hand of God and
   makes intercession for us! Let your souls travel frequently the blessed
   highway from the sepulcher to the Throne. As in Rome there was a Via
   Sacra along which returning conquerors went from the gates of the city
   up to the heights of the Capitol, so is there another Via Sacra which
   you ought often to survey, for along it the risen Savior went in
   glorious majesty from the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea up to the eternal
   dignities of His Father's right hand!

   Your soul will do well to see her dawn of hope in His death and her
   full assurance of hope in His risen life. Today my business is to show,
   as far as God, the Spirit, may help me, first, Our Lord's resurrection
   power and secondly, Our Lord's mode of exercising the spiritual part of
   that power so far as we are concerned.

   I. OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION POWER. "All power is given unto Me in Heaven
   and in earth." At the risk of repeating myself, I should like to begin
   this head by asking you to remember last Sunday morning's sermon, when
   we went to Gethsemane and bowed our spirits in the shade of those gray
   olive trees at the sight of the bloody sweat. What a contrast between
   that and this! There you saw the weakness of man, the bowing, the
   prostrating, the crushing of the Manhood of the Mediator.

   But here you see the strength of the Godman! He is girt with
   Omnipotence though still on earth. When He spoke words He had received
   a privilege, honor, glory, fullness and power which lifted Him far
   above the sons of men. He was, as Mediator, no more a sufferer, but a
   Sovereign! No more a victim, but a Victor! No more a servant, but the
   Monarch of earth and Heaven! Yet He had never received such power if He
   had not endured such weakness. All power had never been given to the
   Mediator if all comfort had not been taken away. He stooped to conquer!
   The way to His Throne was downward! Mounting upon steps of ivory,
   Solomon ascended to his throne of gold--but our Lord and Master
   descended that He might ascend--and went down into the awful deeps of
   unutterable agony that all power in Heaven and earth might belong to
   Him as our Redeemer and Covenant Head!

   Now think a moment of these words, "Allpower." Jesus Christ has given
   to Him, by His Father, as a consequence of His death, "all power." It
   is but another way of saying that the Mediator possesses Omnipotence,
   for Omnipotence is but the Latin of "all power." What mind shall
   conceive, what tongue shall set in order before you the meaning of all
   power? We cannot grasp it! It is high, we cannot attain unto it! Such
   knowledge is too wonderful for us. The power of self-existence, the
   power of creation, the power of sustaining that which is made, the
   power of fashioning and destroying, the power of opening and shutting,
   of overthrowing or establishing, of killing and making alive, the power
   to pardon and to condemn, to give and to withhold, to decree and to
   fulfill, to be, in a word, "head over all things to His Church"--all
   this is vested in Jesus Christ our Lord!

   We might as well attempt to describe infinity, or map the boundless as
   to tell what "all power" must mean. But whatever it is, it is all given
   to our Lord, all lodged in those hands which once were fastened to the
   wood of shame--all left with that heart which was pierced with the
   spear--all placed as a crown upon that head which was surrounded with a
   coronet of thorns. "All power in Heaven" is His! Remember that! Then He
   has the power of God, for God is in Heaven, and the power of God
   emanates from that central Throne. Jesus, then, has Divine power.
   Whatever Jehovah can do, Jesus can do!

   If it were His will to speak another world into existence, we should
   see, tonight, a fresh star adorning the brow of night. Were it His
   will, at once, to fold up creation like a worn out vesture, lo, the
   elements would pass away and yonder heavens would be shriveled like a
   scroll! The power which binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades and
   looses the bands of Orion is with the Nazarene! The Crucified leads
   forth Arcturus with his sons! Angelic bands are waiting on the wing to
   do the bidding of Jesus of Nazareth--and cherubim and seraphim and the
   four living creatures before the Throne unceasingly obey Him. He who
   was despised and rejected of men now commands the homage of all Heaven,
   as "God over All, blessed forever."

   "All power in Heaven" relates to the Providential skill and might with
   which God rules everything in the universe. He holds the reins of all
   created forces and impels or restrains them at His will, giving force
   to law, and life to all existence. The old heathen dreamed of Apollo as
   driving the chariot of the sun and guiding its fiery steeds in their
   daily course, but it is not so--Jesus is Lord of All! He harnesses the
   winds to His chariot and thrusts a bit into the mouth of

   the tempest, doing as He wills among the armies of Heaven and the
   inhabitants of this lower world. From Him in Heaven emanates the power
   which sustains and governs this globe, for the Father has committed all
   things into His hands. "By Him all things consist."

   "All power" must include--and this is a practical point to us--all the
   power of the Holy Spirit. In the work which lies nearest our heart, the
   Holy Spirit is the great force. It is He that convicts men of sin and
   leads them to a Savior-- gives them new hearts and right spirits--and
   plants them in the Church and then causes them to grow and become
   fruitful. The power of the Holy Spirit goes forth among the sons of men
   according to the will of our Lord. As the anointing oil poured upon
   Aaron's head ran down his beard and dampened the skirts of his
   garments, so the Spirit which has been granted to Him without measure
   flows from Him to us! He has the residue of the Spirit and, according
   to His will, the Holy Spirit goes forth into the Church--and from the
   Church into the world--to the accomplishment of the purposes of saving
   Grace. It is not possible that the Church should fail for lack of
   spiritual gifts or influence while her heavenly Bridegroom has such
   overflowing stores of both! All the power of the sacred Trinity,
   Father, Son and Spirit, is at the command of Jesus who is exalted far
   above all principality, power, might, dominion and every name that is
   named--not only in this world--but in that which is to come!

   Our Lord also claimed that all power had been given to Him on earth.
   This is more than could be truly said by any mere man. None of mortal
   race may claim all power in Heaven and when they aspire to all power on
   earth it is but a dream! Universal monarchy has been strained after,
   but it has seldom, if ever, been attained. And when it seemed within
   the clutch of ambition, it has melted away like a snowflake before the
   sun! Indeed, if men could rule all their fellows, yet they would not
   have all power on earth, for there are other forces which scorn their
   control. Diseases laugh at the power of men. The King of Israel, when
   Naaman came to him to be recovered of his leprosy, cried, "Am I God, to
   kill and to make alive, that this man does send unto me to recover a
   man of his leprosy?" He had not all power.

   Winds and waves, moreover, scorn mortal rule. It is not true that even
   Britannia rules the waves. Canute, to rebuke his courtiers, places his
   throne at the margin of the tide and commands the billows to take care
   that they wet not the feet of their royal master. But his courtiers
   were soon covered with spray and the monarch proved that "all power"
   was not given to him. Frogs and locusts and flies were more than a
   match for Pharaoh--the greatest of men are defeated by the weak things
   of God! Nebuchadnezzar, struck with madness and herding with cattle,
   was an illustration of the shadowy nature of all human power! The
   proudest princes have been made to feel sickness, pain and death. After
   all, they were but men, and oftentimes their weaknesses have been such
   as to make more apparent the truth that power belongs unto God, and
   unto God, alone, so that when He entrusts a little of it to the sons of
   men, it is so little that they are fools if they boast!

   See you, then, before us, a Man who has power over all things on earth
   without exception--and is obeyed by all creatures, great and
   small--because the Lord Jehovah has put all things under His feet. For
   our purposes it will be most important for us to remember that our Lord
   has "all power" over the minds of men, both good and bad. He calls
   whomever He pleases into His fellowship and they obey. Having called
   them, He is able to sanctify them to the highest point of holiness,
   working in them all the good pleasure of His will with power. The
   saints can be so influenced by our Lord, through the Holy Spirit, that
   they can be impelled to the most Divine desires and elevated to the
   most sublime frames of mind. Often do I pray, and I doubt not the
   prayer has come from you, too, that God would raise up leaders in the
   Church--men full of faith and of the Holy Spirit--standard-bearers in
   the day of battle.

   The preachers of the Gospel who preach with any power are few. John
   might still say, "You have not many fathers." More precious than the
   gold of Ophir are men who stand out as pillars of the Lord's house,
   bulwarks of the Truth of God, champions in the camp of Israel! How few
   are our Apostolic men! We need, again, Luthers, Calvins, Bunyans,
   Whitfields--men fit to mark eras--whose names breathe terror in our
   enemies' ears. We have dire need of such! Where are they? From where
   will they come to us? We cannot tell in what farmhouse or village
   smithy, or schoolhouse such men may be, but our Lord has them in store.
   They are the gifts of Jesus Christ to the Church and will come in due
   time.

   He has power to give us back, again, a golden age of preachers, a time
   as fertile of great Divines and mighty ministers as was the Puritan age
   which many of us account to have been the golden age of theology! He
   can send, again, the men of studious heart to search the Word and bring
   forth its treasures! The men of wisdom and experience rightly to divide
   it! The golden-mouthed speakers who, either as sons of thunder or sons
   of consolation, shall deliver the message of

   the Lord which the Holy Spirit sent down from Heaven. When the Redeemer
   ascended on high He received gifts for men and those gifts were men fit
   to accomplish the edification of the Church, such as evangelists,
   pastors and teachers. These He is still able to bestow upon His people!
   It is their duty to pray for them, and when they come, to receive them
   with gratitude. Let us believe in the power of Jesus to give us valiant
   men, and men of renown, and we little know how soon He will supply
   them!

   Since all power on earth is lodged in Christ's hands, He can also
   clothe any and all of His servants with a sacred might by which their
   hands shall be sufficient for them in their high calling. Without
   bringing them forth into the front ranks He can make them occupy their
   appointed stations till He comes, girt with a power which shall make
   them useful. My Brother, the Lord Jesus can make you eminently
   prosperous in the sphere in which He has placed you! My Sister, your
   Lord can bless the little children who gather at your knee through your
   means. You are very feeble, and you know it, but there is no reason why
   you should not be strong in Him! If you look to the Strong for
   strength, He can endue you with power from on high and say to you as to
   Gideon, "Go in this, your might."

   Your slowness of speech need not disqualify you, for He will be with
   your mouth as with Moses. Your lack of culture need not hinder you, for
   Shamgar with his ox goad smote the Philistines, and Amos, the Prophet,
   was a herdsman. Like Paul, your personal presence may be despised as
   weak and your speech as contemptible, but yet like he you may learn to
   glory in infirmity because the power of God rests upon you! You are not
   straitened in the Lord, but in yourselves, if straitened at all. You
   may be as dry as Aaron's rod, but He can make you bud and blossom--and
   bring forth fruit! You may be as nearly empty as the widow's cruse, yet
   will He cause you to overflow towards His saints. You may feel yourself
   to be as near to sinking as Peter amid the waves, yet will He keep you
   from your fears. You may be as unsuccessful as the disciples who had
   toiled all night and taken nothing, yet He can fill your boat till it
   can hold no more. No man knows what the Lord can make of him, nor what
   He may do by him. Only this do we know, for sure, that "all power" is
   with Him by whom we were redeemed, and to whom we belong.

   Oh, Believers, resort to your Lord to receive, out of His fullness,
   Grace for Grace! Because of this power we believe that if Jesus willed,
   He could stir the whole Church at once to the utmost energy. Does she
   sleep? His voice can awaken her. Does she restrain prayer? His Grace
   can stimulate her to devotion. Has she grown unbelieving? He can
   restore her ancient faith. Does she turn her back in the day of battle,
   troubled with skepticisms and doubts? He can restore her unwavering
   confidence in the Gospel and make her valiant till all her sons shall
   be heroes of faith and put to flight the armies of the aliens. Let us
   believe and we shall see the Glory of God! Let us believe, I say, and
   once again our conquering days shall come when one shall chase a
   thousand and two shall put 10,000 to flight! Never despair for the
   Church! Be anxious for her and turn your anxiety into prayer--but be
   hopeful evermore--for her Redeemer is mighty and will stir up His
   strength. "The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our
   refuge." Degenerate as we are, there stands One among us whom the world
   sees not, whose shoe lace we are not worthy to unloose--He shall again
   baptize us with the Holy Spirit and with fire--for "all power is given
   unto Him."

   It is equally true that all power is given unto our Lord over the whole
   of mankind, even over that part of the race which rejects and continues
   in willful rebellion. He can use the ungodly for His purposes. We have
   it on Inspired authority that Herod and Pilate, with the Gentiles and
   the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever the Lord's
   hand and counsel determined, before, to be done. Their utmost
   wickedness did but fulfill the determinate counsel of God. Thus does He
   make the wrath of man to praise Him and the most rebellious wills to be
   subservient to His sacred purposes. Jesus' kingdom rules over all! The
   powers of Hell and all its hosts, with the kings of the earth and the
   rulers, set themselves and take counsel together--and all the while
   their rage is working out His designs! Little do they know that they
   are but drudges to the King of Kings, scullions in the kitchen of his
   imperial palace!

   All things do His bidding. His will is not thwarted. His resolves are
   not defeated. The pleasure of the Lord prospers in His hands. By faith
   I see Him ruling and overruling on land and sea, and in all deep
   places. Guiding the decisions of parliaments, dictating to dictators,
   commanding princes, and ruling emperors! Let Him but arise and they
   that hate Him shall flee before Him! As smoke is driven, so will He
   drive them away! As wax melts before the fire, so shall all His enemies
   perish at His Presence. As to sinful men in general, the Redeemer has
   power over their minds in a manner wonderful to contemplate. At the
   present moment we very much deplore the fact that the current of public
   thought runs strongly towards Popery, which is the alias of idolatry.

   Just as in Old Testament history, the people of Israel were always
   breaking away after their idols and so is it with this nation. The
   Israelites were cured of their sin for a little while, so long as some
   great teacher or judge had power among them. But at his death they
   turned aside to worship the Queen of Heaven or the calves of Bethel, or
   some other visible symbols. So it is now. Men are mad after the idols
   of old Rome! They are turning the old churches into jog-houses and
   building new ones on all sides. Idol temples are becoming as numerous
   in London as in Calcutta! The worshippers and priests call themselves
   Christians, but they might better call themselves wafer-worshippers or
   adorers of a fetish made of flour and water, for that is nearer the
   truth.

   Well, what next? Are we despairing? God forbid that we should ever
   despond while all power is in the hands of Jesus! He can turn the whole
   current of thought in an opposite direction, and that right speedily.
   Did you not observe, when the Prince of Wales was ill some months ago,
   that everybody paid respect to the doctrine of prayer? Did you not
   notice how the Times and other newspapers spoke right believingly as to
   prayer? At this moment it is fashionable to pooh-pooh the idea of God's
   hearing our requests--but it was not so then! A great philosopher has
   told us that it is absurd to suppose that prayer can have any effect
   upon the events of life--but God has only to visit the nation with some
   judgment severely felt by all and your philosopher will become as quiet
   as a mouse! In the same way, I am firmly persuaded that, by one turn of
   the wheel of Providence, the Popery which is now so fashionable will be
   made, as it has been before, a red rag to set mobs a rioting--and my
   Lords and Ladies, instead of hastening to the Pope, will be most
   anxious to disown all connection with the whole concern!

   To my mind it matters very little which way these fine folks go at any
   time, except that they are the straws which show which way the wind
   blows! I repeat it--the current of thought can readily be turned by our
   Lord--He can as easily manage it as the miller controls the stream
   which flows over his wheel or rushes past it! The times are safe in our
   Redeemer's management! He is mightier than the devil, the Pope, the
   infidel and the Ritualist all put together! All glory be to Him who has
   all power in earth and Heaven!

   So too, our Lord can give, and He does give to the people, an
   inclination to hear the Gospel. Never be afraid of getting a
   congregation when the Gospel is your theme. Jesus, who gives you a
   consecrated tongue, will find willing ears to listen to you. At His
   bidding deserted sanctuaries grow crowded and the people throng to hear
   the joyful sound. Yes, and He can do more than that, for He can make
   the Word powerful to the conversion of thousands! He can constrain the
   frivolous to think, the obstinately heretical to accept the Truth of
   God and those who set their faces against Him like a flint to yield to
   His gracious sway! He has the key of every human heart! He opens and no
   man shuts! He shuts and no man opens. He will clothe His Word with
   power and subdue the nations.

   It is ours to proclaim the Gospel and to believe that no man is beyond
   the saving power of Jesus Christ. Doubly dyed, yes, sevenfold steeped
   in the scarlet dye of vice, the sinner may be cleansed and the
   ringleader in vice may become a pattern of holiness. The Pharisee can
   be converted--was not Paul? Even priests may be saved, for did not a
   great multitude of the priests believe? There is no man in any
   conceivable position of sin who is beyond the power of Christ! He may
   be gone to the uttermost in sin--so as to stand on the verge of
   Hell--but if Jesus stretches out His pierced hand, he will be plucked
   like a brand out of the burning! My soul glows as I think of what my
   Lord can do! If all power is given unto Him in Heaven and in earth,
   then this morning He could convert, pardon and save every man and woman
   in this place! No, He could influence the four millions of this city to
   cry, "What must we do to be saved?"!

   Nor in this city, only, could He work, but throughout the whole earth!
   If it seemed good to His infinite wisdom and power, He could make every
   sermon to be the means of conversion of all who heard it, every Bible
   and every copy of the Word to become the channel of salvation to all
   who read it--and I know not in how short a time the cry would be heard,
   "Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!" That cry shall be
   heard, rest assured of that! We are on the conquering side. We have
   with us One who is infinitely greater than all that can be against us,
   since "all power" is given unto Him.

   Brothers and Sisters, we have no doubts, we entertain no fears, for
   every moment of time is bringing on the grand display of the power of
   Jesus! We preach, today, and some of you despise the Gospel. We bring
   Christ before you and you reject Him. But God will change His hand with
   you before long and your despising and your rejecting will then come to
   an end--for that same Jesus who went from Olivet and ascended into
   Heaven, will so come in like manner as He was seen to go up into
   Heaven. He will descend with matchless pomp and power--and this
   astonished world which saw Him

   crucified shall see Him enthroned! And in the same place where men
   dogged His heels and persecuted Him, they shall crowd around Him to pay
   Him homage, for He must reign and put His enemies under His feet. This
   same earth shall be gladdened by His triumphs which once was troubled
   with His griefs.

   And more. You may be dead before the Lord shall come--and your bodies
   may be rotting in the tomb--but you will know that all power is His,
   for at the blast of His trumpet your bodies shall rise again to stand
   before His terrible Judgment Seat. You may have resisted Him here, but
   you will be unable to oppose Him then! You may despise Him now, but
   then you must tremble before Him. "Depart, you cursed," will be to you
   a terrible proof that He has "all power," if you will not now accept
   another and a sweeter proof of it by coming unto Him who bids the
   laboring and heavy laden partake of His rest. "Kiss the Son, lest He be
   angry, and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a
   little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him."

   II. I have, secondly, by your patience, to show our LORD'S USUAL MODE
   OF EXERCISING HIS GREAT SPIRITUAL POWER. Brethren, the Lord Jesus might
   have said, "All power is given to Me in Heaven and earth; take you,
   then, your swords and slay all these, My enemies who crucified Me." But
   He had no thoughts of revenge. He might have said, "These Jews put Me
   to death, therefore go straightway to the Isles and to Tarshish and
   preach, for these men shall never taste of My Grace." But no, He
   expressly said, "beginning at Jerusalem," and bade His disciples first
   preach the Gospel to His murderers! In consequence of His having "all
   power," His servants were bid to disciple all nations.

   My Brothers and Sisters, the method by which Jesus proposes to subdue
   all things unto Himself appears to be utterly inadequate! To teach, to
   make disciples, to baptize these disciples and to instruct them further
   in the faith! Good Master, are these the weapons of our warfare? Are
   these Your battleaxe and weapons of war? Not thus do the princes of
   this world contemplate conquest, for they rely on monster guns,
   ironclads and engines of death-doing power! Yet what are these but
   proofs of their weakness? Had they all power in themselves they would
   not need such instruments! Only He who has all power can work His
   bidding by a word and dispense with all force but that of love.

   Mark that teaching and preaching are the Lord's way of displaying His
   power. Today they tell us that the way to save souls is to dress out an
   altar with different colored silks and satins, variable according to
   the almanac, and to array priests in garments of different colors--"of
   different colors of needlework, on both sides, meet for the necks of
   them that take the spoil"--and to make men wear petticoats,
   dishonorable to their sex! With these ribbons and embroideries, joined
   with incense-burning, posturing and incantations, souls are to be
   saved! "Not so," says the Master, but, "Go you into all the world and
   preach the Gospel to every creature."

   Do any of you fear that, after all, the preaching of the Gospel will be
   defeated in this land of ours by these new editions of the old
   idolatry? God forbid! If there were only one of us left to preach the
   Gospel, he would be a match for 10,000 priests! Only give us the tongue
   which is set on fire by the Holy Spirit and an open Bible--and one
   solitary preacher would rout the whole rabble of your monks and friars
   and father-confessors, sisters of misery, nuns, pilgrims, bishops,
   cardinals and popes--because preaching and teaching and baptizing the
   disciples are Christ's way--and priestcraft is not Christ's way.

   If Christ had ordained sacramental efficacy it would succeed, but He
   has ordained nothing of the kind. His mandate is--"All power is given
   unto Me in Heaven and earth. Go you, therefore," disciple, baptize, and
   then still further instruct in the name of the Triune God. My Brethren,
   remember who the men were who were sent on this errand. The 11 who were
   foremost were mostly fishermen! Does the Omnipotent Jesus choose
   fishermen to subdue the world? He does, because He needs no help from
   them--all power is His! We must have an educated ministry, they tell
   us--and by "an educated ministry" they mean not the ministry of a man
   of common sense, clear head and warm heart, deep experience, and large
   acquaintance with human nature--but the ministry of mere classical and
   mathematical students, theorists and novices, more learned in modern
   infidelities than in the Truth of God.

   Our Lord, if He had wished to employ the worldly-wise, might certainly
   have chosen 11 in Corinth or in Athens who would have commanded general
   respect for their attainments. Or He could have found 11 learned rabbis
   near home. But He did not want such men--their vaunted attainments were
   of no value in His eyes. He chose honest, hearty men who were childlike
   enough to learn the Truth of God and bold enough to speak it when they
   knew it. The Church must get rid of her notion that she must depend on
   the learning of this world! Against a sound education we cannot have a
   word to say, especially an education in the Scriptures--but to place
   learned degrees in the place of the gift of the Holy Spirit--or

   to value the present style of so-called culture above the spiritual
   edification of our manhood, is to set up an idol in the house of the
   living God!

   The Lord can as well use the most illiterate man as the most learned,
   if it so pleases Him. "Go you," He said, "you fishermen, go and teach
   all nations." Carnal reason's criticism on this is that it is a feeble
   method to be worked out by feebler instruments! Now let it be noted
   that the work of preaching the Gospel, which is Christ's way of using
   His power among men, is based only upon His having that power. Listen
   to some of my Brethren--they say, "You must not preach the Gospel to a
   dead sinner because the sinner has no power." Just so, but our reason
   for preaching to him is that all power is given unto Jesus--and He bids
   us preach the Gospel to every creature!

   "But when you tell a sinner to believe, you have not the power to make
   him believe." Truly so, nor do we dream that we have, for all power
   lies in Christ! There is neither in the sinner the power to believe,
   nor in the preacher power to make him believe--all power is in our
   Lord! "But do you think," they ask, "that your persuasions will ever
   make a man repent and believe?" Certainly not! The power that leads men
   to repent and believe does not lie in rhetoric or in reason, or in
   persuasion, but in Him who says, "All power is given unto Me in Heaven
   and in earth."

   I tell you this--if my Lord and Master should bid me go tomorrow to
   Norwood Cemetery and bid the dead to rise, I would do it with as much
   pleasure as I now preach the Gospel to this congregation! And I would
   do it for the same reason which now leads me to urge the unregenerate
   to repent and be converted, for I regard men as being dead in sin, and
   yet I tell them to live because my Master commands me do so! That I am
   right in thus acting is proved by the fact that while I am preaching,
   sinners do live! Blessed be His name, thousands of them have been
   quickened into life!

   Ezekiel had to cry, "You dry bones, live." What a foolish thing to say!
   But God justified His servant in it and an exceedingly great army stood
   upon their feet in what was once a large morgue. Joshua's men were bid
   to blow their trumpets around Jericho--a most absurd thing to blow a
   trumpet to fetch city walls down--but they came down for all that!
   Gideon's men were told to simply carry lamps within their pitchers, to
   break their pitchers and stand still and cry aloud, "The sword of the
   Lord and of Gideon"--a most ridiculous thing to hope by this means to
   smite the Midianites--but they were smitten! God never sends His
   servants on a fool's errand!

   It pleases God by the foolishness of preaching to accomplish His Divine
   purposes--not because of the power of preaching, nor the power of the
   preacher, nor any power in those preached to--but because "all power"
   is given unto Christ "in Heaven and in earth"--and He chooses to work
   by the teaching of the Word! Our business, then, is just this. We are
   to teach, or as the Greek word has it, to make disciples. Our business
   is, each one according to the Divine Grace given, to tell our fellow
   men the Gospel and to try and disciple them to Jesus. When they become
   disciples, our next duty is to give them the sign of discipleship by
   "baptizing them." That symbolic burial sets forth their death in Jesus
   to their former selves and their resurrection to newness of life
   through Him.

   Baptism enrolls and seals the disciples--and we must not omit or
   misplace it. When the disciple is enrolled, the missionary is to become
   the pastor, "teaching them to observe all things whatever I have
   commanded you." The disciple is admitted into the school by obeying the
   Savior's command as to Baptism--then he goes on to learn--and as he
   learns he teaches others. He is taught obedience, not to some things,
   but to all things which Christ has commanded. He is put into the
   Church, not to become a legislator or a deviser of new doctrines and
   ceremonies, but to believe what Christ tells him and to do what Christ
   bids him.

   Thus our Lord intends to set up a kingdom which shall break in pieces
   every other. Those who know Him are to teach others and so, from one to
   the other, the wondrous power which Christ brought from Heaven shall
   spread from land to land. See, then, my Brothers, your high calling.
   And see, also, the support you have in pursuing it! In the front,
   behold "all power" going forth from Christ! In the rear, behold the
   Lord Himself--"Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the
   world." If you are enlisted in this army, I charge you be faithful to
   your great Captain! Do His work carefully in the way which He has
   prescribed for you and expect to see His power displayed to His own
   Glory.

   I would close this sermon very practically. The greater part of my
   congregation at this time consists of persons who have believed in
   Jesus, who have been baptized and have been further instructed. You
   believe that Jesus has all power and that He works through the teaching
   and preaching of the Gospel. Therefore I wish to press home to you a
   few questions. How much are you doing as to teaching all nations? This
   charge is committed to you as well as to me--for this purpose

   are we sent into the world--we are, ourselves, receivers that we may be
   afterwards distributors. How much have you distributed?

   Dear Brother, dear Sister, to how many have you told the story of
   redemption by the blood of Jesus? You have been a convert, now, for
   some time--to whom have you spoken of Jesus, or to whom have you
   written? Are you distributing, as best you can, the words of others if
   you are not capable of putting words together, yourself? Do not reply,
   "I belong to a Church which is doing much." That is not to the point. I
   am speaking of that which you are personally doing. Jesus did not die
   for us by proxy--He bore our sins in His body on the tree. I ask, then,
   what are you personally doing? Are you doing anything at all? "But I
   cannot go for a missionary," says one. Are you sure you cannot? I have
   been long looking for a time when numbers of you will feel that you
   must go to preach the Gospel abroad--and will relinquish comforts and
   emoluments for the Lord's sake.

   I shall never feel that we have reached the full degree of Christian
   zeal until it becomes a very common thing among us to have young
   Brothers, such as the two who left us a little while ago, consecrating
   themselves to the grandest of all services. Perhaps some among you have
   that intent half formed in your hearts. I hope you will not repress it
   and that your parents will not hinder you from the blessed sacrifice.
   There can be no greater honor to a Church than to have many sons and
   daughters bearing the brunt of the battle for the Lord! Lo, I set up a
   standard among you this day! Let those whose hearts God has touched
   rally to it without delay!

   The heathen are perishing! They are dying by millions without Christ!
   And Christ's last command to us is, "Go you, teach all nations." Are
   you obeying it? "I cannot go," says one, "I have a family and many ties
   to bind me at home." My dear Brother, I ask you, are you going as far
   as you can? Do you travel to the utmost length of the providential
   tether which has fastened you where you are? Can you say, "Yes"? Then,
   what are you doing to help others to go? As I was thinking over this
   discourse, I reflected how very little we were, most of us, doing
   towards sending the Gospel abroad. We are, as a Church, doing a fair
   share for our heathen at home and I rejoice at the thought of it. But
   how much a year do you each give to foreign missions?

   I wish you would put down in your diary how much you give per annum for
   missions--and then calculate how much percent it is of your income.
   There let it stand--"Item: Gave to the collection last April . . . 1s."
   One shilling a year towards the salvation of the world? Perhaps it will
   run thus--"Item: Income £5000, annual subscription to mission £1." How
   does that look? I cannot read your hearts, but I could read your
   pocketbooks and work a sum in proportion! I suggest that you do it
   yourselves, while I, also, take a look at my own expenditure. Let us
   all see what more can be done for the spread of the Redeemer's kingdom,
   for all power is with Him, and when His people shall be stirred up to
   believe in that power, and to use the simple but potent machinery of
   the preaching of the Gospel to all nations, then God, even our own God,
   shall bless us and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him! Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Mark 16. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK" 337, 679, 332.
     __________________________________________________________________

Providence--as Seen in the Book of Esther

   (No. 1201)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 1, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Though it was turned to the contrary, that the Jews had rule over them
   that hated them." Esther 9:1.

   YOU are probably aware that some persons have denied the Inspiration of
   the Book of Esther because the name of God does not occur in it. They
   might, with equal justice, deny the Inspiration of a great number of
   chapters in the Bible, and of a far greater number of verses. Although
   the name of God does not occur in the Book of Esther, the Lord Himself
   is there most conspicuously in every incident which it relates. I have
   seen portraits bearing the names of persons for whom they were
   intended, and they certainly needed them, but we have all seen others
   which required no name because they were such striking likenesses that
   the moment you looked upon them you knew them.

   In the Book of Esther, as much as in any other part of the Word of God,
   and I had almost committed myself by saying--more than anywhere
   else--the hand of Providence is manifestly to be seen. To condense the
   whole of the story of the Book of Esther into one sermon would be
   impossible and, therefore, I must rely upon your previous acquaintance
   with it. I must also ask your patience if there should be more of
   history in the sermon than is usual with me. All Scripture is given by
   Inspiration and is profitable, whether it is history or doctrine. God
   never meant the Book of Esther to lie dumb--whatever it seemed good to
   Him to teach us by it, it ought to be our earnest endeavor to learn.

   The Lord intended, by the narrative of Esther's history, to set before
   us a wonderful instance of His Providence, so that when we had viewed
   it with interest and pleasure, we might praise His name and then go on
   to acquire the habit of observing His hand in other histories, and
   especially in our own lives. Well does Flavel say that he who observes
   Providence will never be long without a Providence to observe. The man
   who can walk through the world and see no God is said upon Inspired
   authority to be a fool--but the wise man's eyes are in his head--he
   sees with an inner sight and discovers God everywhere! It is his joy to
   perceive that the Lord is working according to His will in Heaven,
   earth and in all deep places.

   It has pleased God at different times in history to startle the heathen
   world into a conviction of His Presence. He had a chosen people to whom
   He committed the true light--and to these He revealed Himself
   continually. The rest of the world was left in darkness, but every now
   and then the Divine Glory flamed through the gloom as the lightening
   pierces the blackness of storms. Some, by that sudden light, were led
   to seek after God and found Him. Others were rendered uneasy and
   without excuse, though they continued in their blind idolatry. The
   wonderful destruction of Pharaoh and his armies at the Red Sea was a
   burst of light which startled the midnight of the world by giving proof
   to mankind that the Lord lived and could accomplish His purposes by
   suspending the laws of Nature and working miracles.

   The marvelous drama enacted at Shushan, the capital of Persia, was
   intended to be another manifestation of the Being and Glory of God,
   working not as formerly, by a miracle, but in the usual methods of His
   Providence and yet accomplishing all His designs. It has been well said
   that the Book of Esther is a record of wonders without a miracle and,
   therefore, though equally revealing the Glory of the Lord, it sets it
   forth in another fashion from that which is displayed in the overthrow
   of Pharaoh by miraculous power.

   Let us come now to the story. There were two races, one of which God
   had blessed and promised to preserve, and another of which He had said
   that He would utterly put out the remembrance of it from under Heaven.
   Israel was to be blessed and made a blessing, but of Amalek the Lord
   had sworn that, "The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to
   generation." These two peoples were, therefore, in deadly
   hostility--like the Seed of the woman and the seed of the
   serpent--between whom the Lord, Himself, has put at enmity. Many years
   had rolled away. The chosen people were in great distress and at this
   time there still existed upon the face of the earth some relics of the
   race of Amalek.

   Among them was one descended of the royal line of Agag, whose name was
   Haman. He was in supreme power at the court of Ahasuerus, the Persian
   monarch. Now it was God's intent that a last conflict should take place
   between Israel and Amalek--the conflict which began with Joshua in the
   desert was to be finished by Mordecai in the king's palace. This last
   struggle began with great disadvantage to God's people. Haman was prime
   minister of the far-extending empire of Persia, the favorite of a
   despotic monarch who was pliant to his will. Mordecai, a Jew in the
   employment of the king, sat in the king's gate. When he saw proud Haman
   go to and fro, he refused to pay him the homage which others rendered
   insincerely.

   He would not bow his head or bend his knee to him, and this exceedingly
   galled Haman. It came into his mind that this Mordecai was of the seed
   of the Jews--and with the remembrance came the high ambition to avenge
   the quarrel of his race. He thought it scorn to touch only one man and
   resolved that in himself he would incarnate all the hate of
   generations--and at one blow sweep the accursed Jews, as he thought
   them--from off the face of the earth! He went to the king, with whom
   his word was power, and told him that there was a singular people
   scattered up and down the Persian empire, different from all others,
   who opposed the king's laws and that it was not for the king's profit
   to let them live.

   He asked that they might all be destroyed--and he would pay into the
   king's treasury an enormous sum of money to compensate for any loss of
   revenue by their destruction. He intended that the spoil which would be
   taken from the Jews should tempt their neighbors to kill them and that
   the part allotted to himself should repay the amount which he advanced,
   thus he would make the Jews pay for their own murder! He had no sooner
   asked for this horrible grant than the monarch conceded it. Taking his
   signet ring from off his finger, he bade Haman do with the Jews as
   seemed good to him. Thus the chosen seed were in the hands of the
   Agagite who thirsted to annihilate them.

   Only one thing stands in the way. The Lord has said, "No weapon that is
   formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue that rises against
   you in judgment you shall condemn." We shall see what happens, and
   learn from it.

   I. First, we shall learn from the narrative that GOD PLACES HIS AGENTS
   IN FIT PLACES FOR DOING HIS WORK. The Lord was not taken by surprise by
   this plot of Haman. He had foreseen it and forestalled it. It was
   necessary, in order to match this cunning, malicious design of Haman,
   that someone of the Jewish race should possess great influence with the
   king. How was this to be effected?

   Should a Jewess become Queen of Persia, the power she would possess
   would be useful in counteracting the enemy's design. This had been all
   arranged years before Haman had concocted in his wicked heart the
   scheme of murdering the Jews. Esther, whose sweet name signifies
   myrtle, had been elevated to the position of Queen of Persia by a
   singular course of events. It happened that Ahasuerus, at a certain
   drinking bout, was so far gone with wine as to forget all the
   proprieties of eastern life. He sent for his queen, Vashti, to exhibit
   herself to the people and the princes. No one dreamed, in those days,
   of disobeying the tyrant's word and, therefore, all stood aghast when
   Vashti, evidently a woman of right royal spirit, refused to degrade
   herself by being made a spectacle before that ribald rout of drinking
   princes. She refused to come.

   For her courage Vashti was divorced and a new queen was sought. We
   cannot commend Mordecai for putting his adopted daughter in competition
   for the monarch's choice--it was contrary to the Law of God and
   dangerous to her soul in the highest degree. It would have been better
   for Esther to have been the wife of the poorest man of the house of
   Israel than to have gone into the den of the Persian despot. The
   Scripture does not excuse, much less commend, the wrong doing of Esther
   and Mordecai in thus acting, but simply tells us how Divine Wisdom
   brought good out of evil, even as the chemist distils healing drugs
   from poisonous plants.

   The high position of Esther, though gained contrary to the wisest of
   laws, was overruled for the best interests of her people. Esther, in
   the king's house, was the means of defeating the malicious adversary.
   But Esther alone would not suffice. She is shut up in the harem,
   surrounded by her chamberlains and her maids of honor, but quite
   secluded from the outside world. A watchman was needed outside the
   palace to guard the people of the Lord and to urge Esther to action
   when help is needed. Mordecai, her cousin and foster father, obtained
   an office which placed him at the palace gate. Where could he be better
   posted? He is where much of the royal business will come under his eye
   and he is both quick, courageous and unflinching.

   Never had Israel a better sentinel than Mordecai, the son of Kish, a
   Benjamite--a very different man from that other son of Kish who had
   suffered Amalek to escape in former times! His relationship to the
   queen allowed him to communicate with her through Hatach, her
   chamberlain. When Haman's evil decree was published, it was not long
   before intelligence of it reached her ear and she felt the danger to
   which Mordecai and all her people were exposed. By singular Providences
   did the Lord place those two most efficient instruments in their
   places. Mordecai would have been of little use without Esther--and
   Esther could have rendered no aid had it not been for Mordecai.
   Meanwhile, there is a conspiracy hatched against the king which
   Mordecai discovers and communicates to the highest authority--and so
   puts the king under obligation to him--which was a necessary part of
   the Lord's plan.

   Now, Brothers and Sisters, whatever mischief may be brewing against the
   cause of God and Truth, and I dare say there is very much going on at
   this moment, for neither the devil, nor the Jesuits, nor the atheists
   are long quiet--this we are sure of--the Lord knows all about it and He
   has His Esther and His Mordecai ready at their posts to frustrate their
   designs! The Lord has His men well placed and His ambushes hidden in
   their coverts to surprise His foes. We need never be afraid but what
   the Lord has forestalled His enemies and provided against their
   mischief. Every child of God is where God has placed Him for some
   purpose. The practical use of this first point is to lead you to
   inquire for what practical purpose has God placed each one of you where
   you now are.

   You have been wishing for another position where you could do something
   for Jesus--do not wish anything of the kind, but serve Him where you
   are! If you are sitting at the King's gate, there is something for you
   to do there. And if you were on the queen's throne, there would be
   something for you to do there. Do not ask either to be gatekeeper or
   queen, but whichever you are, serve God in that position! Brother, are
   you rich? God has made you a steward--take care that you are a good
   steward. Brother, are you poor? God has thrown you into a position
   where you will be the better able to give a word of sympathy to poor
   saints. Are you doing your allotted work? Do you live in a godly
   family? God has a motive for placing you in so happy a position. Are
   you in an ungodly house? You are a lamp hung up in a dark place--mind
   you, shine there!

   Esther did well because she acted as an Esther should. And Mordecai did
   well because he acted as a Mordecai should. I like to think, as I look
   over you all, that God has put each one of you in the right place, even
   as a good captain well arranges the different parts of his army. And
   though we do not know His plan of battle, it will be seen during the
   conflict that He has placed each soldier where he should be. Our wisdom
   is not to desire another place, nor to judge those who are in another
   position, but each one, being redeemed with the precious blood of
   Jesus, should consecrate himself fully to the Lord, and say, "Lord,
   what would You have me to do, for here I am, and by Your Grace I am
   ready to do it." Forget not, then, the fact that God, in His
   Providence, places His servants in positions where He can make use of
   them!

   II. Secondly, the Lord not only arranges His servants, but HE RESTRAINS
   HIS ENEMIES. I would call your attention, particularly, to the fact
   that Haman, having gained a decree for the destruction of all the Jews
   upon a certain day, was very anxious to have his cruel work done
   thoroughly and, therefore, being very superstitious and believing in
   astrology, he bade his magicians cast lots that he might find a lucky
   day for his great undertaking. The lots were cast for the various
   months, but not a single fortunate day could be found till hard by the
   close of the year--and then the chosen day was the 13th of the 12th
   month.

   On that day the magicians told their dupe that the heavens would be
   propitious and the star of Haman would be in the ascendant! Truly the
   lot was cast into the lap, but the disposal of it was of the Lord! See
   you not that there were 11 whole months left before the Jews would be
   put to death--and that would give Mordecai and Esther time to turn
   round--and if anything could be done to reverse the cruel decree they
   had space to do it! Suppose that the lot had fallen on the second or
   third month--the swift dromedaries and camels and messengers would
   scarcely have been able to reach the extremity of the Persian
   dominions--certainly a second set of messengers to counteract the
   decree could not have done so and, humanly speaking, the Jews could
   have been destroyed!

   But oh, in that secret council chamber where sit the sorcerers and the
   man who asks counsel at the hands of the infernal powers, the Lord
   Himself is present, frustrating the tokens of the liars and making
   diviners mad! Vain were their enchantments and the multitude of their
   sorceries! The astrologers, the star-gazers and the monthly
   prognosticators were all fools, together, and led the superstitious
   Haman to destruction. "Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob,
   nor

   divination against Israel." Trust in the Lord, you righteous, and in
   patience possess your souls. Leave your adversaries in the hands of
   God, for He can make them fall into the snare which they have privately
   laid for you!

   Notice attentively that Haman selected a mode of destroying the Jews
   which was wonderfully overruled for their preservation. They were to be
   slain by any of the people among whom they lived who chose to do
   so--and their plunder was to reward their slayers. Now, this was a very
   cunning device, for greed would naturally incite the baser sort of men
   to murder the thrifty Jews and, no doubt, there were debtors who would
   also be glad to see their creditors disposed of! But see the loophole
   for escape which this afforded! If the decree had enacted that the Jews
   should be slain by the soldiers of the Persian empire, it would have
   been done, and it is not easy to see how the Jews could have escaped.
   But, the matter being left in private hands, the subsequent decree that
   they might defend themselves, was a sufficient counteraction of the
   first edict. Thus the Lord arranged that the wisdom of Haman should
   turn out to be folly, after all!

   In another point, also, we mark the restraining hand of God--namely,
   that Mordecai, though he had provoked Haman to the utmost, was not put
   to death at once. Haman "refrained himself." Why did he do so? Proud
   men are usually in a mighty tiff if they consider themselves insulted,
   and are ready, at once, to take revenge. But Haman "refrained himself"
   until that day in which his anger burned furiously. Then he set up the
   gallows. But until then he smothered his passion. I marvel at this! It
   shows how God makes the wrath of man to praise Him and the remainder He
   does restrain. Mordecai must not die a violent death by Haman's hands.

   The enemies of the Church of God and of His people can never do more
   than the Lord permits--they cannot go a hair's breadth beyond the
   Divine license! And when they are permitted to do their worst, there is
   always some weak point about all that they do--some extreme folly which
   renders their fury vain. The wicked carry about them the weapons of
   their own destruction--and when they rage most against the Most High,
   the Lord of All brings out of it good for His people and Glory to
   Himself! Judge not Providence in little pieces--it is a grand
   mosaic--and must be seen as a whole! Say not of any one hour, "This is
   dark"--it may be so, but that darkness will minister to the light, even
   as the ebony gloom of midnight makes the stars appear the more bright!

   Trust in the Lord forever, for in the Lord Jehovah there is everlasting
   strength. His wisdom will undermine the mines of cunning. His skill
   will overtop the climbings of craft! "He takes the wise in their own
   craftiness and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong."

   III. Next we will notice that God, IN HIS PROVIDENCE, TRIES HIS PEOPLE.
   You must not suppose that those

   who are God's servants will be screened from trial--that is no part of
   the design of Providence. "If you are without chastisement," says the
   Apostle, "then you are bastards and not sons." God's intent is to
   educate His people by affliction. We must not, therefore, dream that an
   event is not Providential because it is grievous! No, you may count it
   to be all the more so, for, "the Lord tries the righteous."

   Observe that God tried Mordecai. He was a quiet old man, I have no
   doubt, and it must have been a daily trial to him to stand erect, or to
   sit in his place when that proud peer of the realm went strutting by.
   His fellow servants told him that the King had commanded all men to pay
   homage to Haman, but he held his own, not, however, without knowing
   what it might cost him to be so sternly independent. Haman was an
   Amalekite--and the Jew would not bow before him. But what a trouble it
   must have been to the heart of Mordecai, when he saw the proclamation
   that all the Jews must die! The good man must have bitterly lamented
   his unhappy fate in being the innocent cause of the destruction of his
   nation!

   "Perhaps," he thought within himself, "I have been too obstinate. Woe
   is me! My whole house and my whole people are to be slain because of
   what I have done!" He put on sackcloth and cast ashes on his head. And
   he was full of sorrow-- a sorrow which we can hardly realize--for even
   if you know you have done right, yet if you bring down trouble, and
   especially destruction, upon the heads of others, it cuts you to the
   quick. You could bear martyrdom for yourself, but it is sad to see
   others suffer through your firmness.

   Esther, also, had to be tried. Amid the glitter of the Persian court
   she might have grown forgetful of her God. But the sad news comes to
   her, "Your cousin and your nation are to be destroyed." Sorrow and
   dread filled her heart. There was no hope for her people unless she
   would go in unto the king--that despot from whom one angry look would
   be death. She must risk all and go unbidden into his presence and plead
   for her nation. Do you wonder that she trembled? Do you marvel that she
   asked the prayers of the faithful? Are you surprised to see both
   herself and her maids of honor fasting and lamenting before God?

   Do not think, my prosperous Friend, that the Lord has given you a high
   place that you may escape the trials which belong to all His
   people--yours is no position of ease, but one of the hottest parts of
   the battle! Neither the lowest and most quiet position, nor the most
   public and exposed condition will enable you to escape the "much
   tribulation" through which the Church Militant must fight its way to
   Glory. Why should we wish it? Should not the gold be tested in the
   crucible? Should not the strong pillar sustain great weights? When the
   Menai bridge was first flung across the straits, the engineer did not
   stipulate that his tube should never be tried with great weights! On
   the contrary, I can imagine his saying, "Bring up your heaviest trains
   and load the bridge as much as ever you will, for it will bear every
   strain."

   The Lord tries the righteous because He has made them of metal which
   will endure the test--and He knows that by the sustaining power of His
   Holy Spirit they will be held up and made more than conquerors!
   Therefore is it a part of the operation of Providence to try the
   saints. Let that comfort those of you who are in trouble at this time.

   IV. But we must pass on to note, fourthly, that THE LORD'S WISDOM IS
   SEEN IN ARRANGING THE

   SMALLEST EVENTS SO AS TO PRODUCE GREAT RESULTS. We frequently hear
   persons say of a pleasant or a great event, "What a Providence!" while
   they are silent as to anything which appears less important, or has an
   unpleasant savor. But, my Brothers and Sisters, the place of the shrub
   upon the heath is as fixed as the station of a king! And the dust which
   is raised by a chariot wheel is as surely steered by Providence as the
   planet in its orbit! There is as much Providence in the creeping of an
   aphid upon a rose leaf as in the marching of an army to ravage a
   continent. Everything--the most minute as well as the most
   magnificent--is ordered by the Lord who has prepared His Throne in the
   heavens, whose kingdom rules over all!

   The history before us furnishes proof of this. We have reached the
   point where Esther is to go in unto the king and plead for her people.
   Strengthened by prayer, but doubtless, still trembling, Esther entered
   the inner court and the king's affection led him, instantly, to stretch
   out the golden scepter. Being told to ask what she pleases, she invites
   the king to come to a banquet and bring Haman with him. He comes, and
   for the second time invites her to ask what she wills to the half of
   his kingdom. Why, when the king was in so kind a spirit, did not Esther
   speak? He was charmed with her beauty and his royal word was given to
   deny her nothing! Why not speak out?

   But no, she merely asks that he and Haman will come to another banquet
   of wine tomorrow. O, daughter of Abraham, what an opportunity have you
   lost! Why did you not plead for your people? Their very existence hangs
   upon your entreaty and the king has said, "What will you?" and yet you
   are slow to ask! Was it timidity? It is possible. Did she think that
   Haman stood too high in the king's favor for her to prevail? It would
   be hard to say. Some of us are very unaccountable, but on that woman's
   unaccountable silence far more was hanging than appears at first sight!
   Doubtless she longed to bring out her secret, but the words came not.

   God was in it! It was not the right time to speak and, therefore, she
   was led to put off her disclosure. I dare say she regretted it and
   wondered when she should be able to come to the point, but the Lord
   knew best. After that banquet Haman went out joyfully at the palace
   gate, but being mortified beyond measure by Mordecai's unbending
   posture, he called for his wife and his friends and told them that his
   riches and honors availed him nothing so long as Mordecai, the Jew, sat
   in the king's gate. They might have told him, "You will destroy
   Mordecai and all his people in a few months, and the man is already
   fretting himself over the decree. Let him live and be content to watch
   his miseries and gloat over his despair!"

   But no, they counsel speedy revenge! Let Mordecai be hanged on a
   gallows on the top of the house--and let the gallows be set up at
   once--and let Haman, early in the morning, ask for the Jew's life and
   let his insolence be punished. Go, call the workmen, and let the
   gallows be set up at a great height that very night! It seemed a small
   matter that Haman should be so enraged at just that hour, but it was a
   very important item in the whole transaction, for had he not been so
   hasty he would not have gone so early in the morning to the palace. And
   he would not have been at hand when the king said, "Who is in the
   court?"

   But what has happened? Why, that very night, when Haman was devising to
   hang Mordecai, the king could not sleep! What caused the monarch's
   restlessness? Why did it happen on that night of all others? Ahasuerus
   is master of 127 provinces, but not master of 10 minutes' sleep! What
   shall he do? Shall he call for soothing instruments of music, or
   beguile the hours with a tale that is told, or with a merry ballad of
   the minstrel? No, he calls for a book. Who would have thought that this
   luxurious prince must listen to a reader in the dead of night? "Bring a
   book!" What book? "A volume

   perfumed with roses, musical with songs, sweet as the notes of the
   nightingale?" "No, bring the chronicles of the empire." Dull reading,
   that!

   But there are 127 provinces--which volume shall the page bring from the
   recorder's shelves? He chose the record of Shushan the royal city. That
   is the center of the empire and its record is lengthy. In which section
   shall the reader make a beginning? He may begin where he pleases, but
   he chooses the section which contains the story of the discovery of a
   conspiracy by Mordecai! The reader settles upon that one of all others!
   The Jews tell us that he began at another place, but that the book
   closed and fell open at the chapter upon Mordecai. Be that as it may,
   this is certain--the Lord knew where the record was and guided the
   reader to the right page! Speaking after the manner of men, there were
   a million chances against one that the king of Persia should, in the
   dead of the night, be reading the chronicle of his own kingdom--and
   that he should light upon this particular part of it!

   But that was not all. The king is interested. He had desired to go to
   sleep, but that wish is gone and he is in haste to act. He says, "This
   man, Mordecai, has done me good service. Has he been rewarded?" "No."
   Then cries the impulsive monarch, "He shall be rewarded at once! Who is
   in the court?" It was the most unlikely thing in the world for the
   luxurious Ahasuerus to be in haste to do justice, for he had done
   injustice thousands of times without remorse--and chiefly on that day
   when he wantonly signed the death warrant of that very Mordecai and his
   people! For once the king is intent on being just--and at the door
   stands Haman--but you know the rest of the story. How he had to lead
   Mordecai in state through the streets.

   It seems a very small matter whether you or I shall sleep tonight or
   toss restlessly on our beds, but God will be in our rest or in our
   wakefulness. We know not what His purpose may be, but His hand will be
   in it! Neither does any man sleep or wake but according to the decree
   of the Lord. Observe well how this matter prepared the way for the
   queen at the next banquet. When she unfolded her sorrow and told of the
   threatened destruction of the Jews--and pointed to that wicked
   Haman--the king must have been the more interested and ready to grant
   her request. Especially since the man who had saved his life was a Jew
   and that he had already awarded the highest honors to Mordecai, fitted,
   in every way, to supersede his worthless favorite!

   All was well. The plotter was unmasked, the gallows ready and he who
   ordered it was made to try his own arrangements!

   V. Our next remark is THE LORD, IN HIS PROVIDENCE, CALLS HIS OWN
   SERVANTS TO BE ACTIVE. This

   business was done, and well done, by Divine Providence. But those
   concerned had to pray about it. Mordecai and all the Jews outside and
   in Shushan fasted and cried unto the Lord. Unbelievers inquire, "What
   difference could prayer make?" My Brethren, prayer is an essential part
   of the Providence of God. It so essential that you will always find
   that when God delivers His people, His people have been praying for
   that deliverance!

   They tell us that prayer does not affect the Most High and cannot altar
   His purposes. We never thought it did, but prayer is a part of the
   purpose and plan, and a most effective wheel in the machinery of
   Providence. The Lord sets His people praying and then He blesses them.
   Moreover, Mordecai was quite sure the Lord would deliver His people,
   and he expressed that confidence, but he did not, therefore, sit
   still--he stirred up Esther. And when she seemed a little slack, he put
   it very strongly--"If you altogether hold your peace at this time, then
   enlargement and deliverance will arise from another place, but you and
   your father's house shall be destroyed." Nerved by this message, Esther
   braced herself to the effort. She did not sit still and say, "The Lord
   will arrange this business, there is nothing for me to do." No, she
   both pleaded with God and ventured her life and all for her people's
   sake. And then acted very wisely and discreetly in her interviews with
   the king.

   So, my Brothers and Sisters, we rest confidently in Providence, but we
   are not idle! We believe that God has an elect people and therefore we
   preach in the hope that we may be the means, in the hands of His
   Spirit, of bringing this elect people to Christ. We believe that God
   has appointed for His people both holiness here and Heaven hereafter.
   Therefore we strive against sin and press forward to the rest which
   remains for the people of God. Faith in God's Providence, instead of
   repressing our energies, excites us to diligence! We labor as if all
   depended upon us and then fall back upon the Lord with the calm faith
   which knows that all depends upon Him.

   VI. Now we must close our historical review with the remark that in the
   end THE LORD ACHIEVES THE TOTAL

   DEFEAT OF HIS FOES AND THE SAFETY OF HIS PEOPLE. Never was a man so
   utterly defeated as Haman! Never

   was a project so altogether turned aside. He was taken in his own trap
   and he and his sons were hanged up on the gallows set up for Mordecai!
   As for the Jews, they were in this special danger, that they were to be
   destroyed on a certain day, and though Esther pleaded with the king for
   their lives, he was not able to alter his decree! Though willing to do
   so, it was a rule of the constitution that the law of the Medes and
   Persians could not be altered.

   The king might determine what he pleased, but when he had once decreed
   it, he could not change it--the people feeling it better to submit to
   the worst established law than to be left utterly to every capricious
   whim of their master. Now, what was to be done? The decree was given
   that the Jews might be slain--and it could not be reversed. Here was
   the door of escape--another decree was issued giving the Jews
   permission to defend themselves and take the property of any who dared
   to attack them! Thus one decree effectually neutralized the other.

   With great haste this mandate was sent all over the kingdom and on the
   appointed day the Jews stood up for themselves and slew their foes.
   According to their tradition nobody attempted to attack them except the
   Amalekites-- and consequently, only Amalekites were slain--and the race
   of Amalek was, on that day, swept from off the face of the earth! God
   thus gave to the Jews a high position in the empire and we are told
   that many became Jews, or were proselytes to the God of Abraham because
   they saw what God had done.

   As I commenced by saying that God sometimes darted flashes of light
   through the thick darkness, you will now see what a flash this must
   have been. All the people were perplexed when they found that the
   Hebrews might be put to death, but they must have been far more
   astonished when the decree came that they might defend themselves! All
   the world enquired, "Why is this?" And the answer was, "The living God
   whom the Jews worship has displayed His wisdom and rescued His people."
   All nations were compelled to feel that there was a God in Israel and
   thus the Divine purpose was fully accomplished--His people were secured
   and His name was glorified to the world's end!

   From the whole we learn the following lessons. First, it is clear that
   the Divine will is accomplished, and yet men are perfectly free agents.
   Haman acted according to his own will. Ahasuerus did whatever he
   pleased. Mordecai behaved as his heart moved him. And so did Esther. We
   see no interference with them, no force or coercion. Therefore the
   entire sin and responsibility rest with each guilty one, yet, acting
   with perfect freedom, none of them acts otherwise than Divine
   Providence had foreseen. "I cannot understand it," says one. My dear
   Friend, I am compelled to say the same--I do not understand it, either!
   I have known many who think they comprehend all things, but I fancy
   they had a higher opinion of themselves than truth would endorse.

   Certain of my brethren deny free agency and so get out of the
   difficulty. Others assert that there is no predestination, and so cut
   the knot. As I do not wish to get out of the difficulty and have no
   wish to shut my eyes to any part of the Truth of God, I believe both
   free agency and predestination to be facts. How they can be made to
   agree, I do not know, or care to know! I am satisfied to know anything
   which God chooses to reveal to me--and equally content not to know what
   He does not reveal. There it is. Man is a free agent in what he does,
   responsible for his actions, and verily guilty when he does wrong. And
   he will be justly punished, too! And if he is lost, the blame will rest
   with only himself. But yet there is One who rules over all, who,
   without complicity in their sin, makes even the actions of wicked men
   to subserve His holy and righteous purposes. Believe these two Truths
   of God and you will see them in practical agreement in daily life,
   though you will not be able to devise a theory for harmonizing them on
   paper.

   Next, we learn what wonders can be worked without miracles. When God
   does a wonderful thing by suspending the laws of Nature, men are
   greatly astonished, and say, "This is the finger of God." But nowadays
   they say to us, "Where is your God? He never suspends His laws, now!" I
   see God in the history of Pharaoh, but I must confess I see Him quite
   as clearly in the history of Haman. And I think I see Him in even a
   grander light, for, (I say it with reverence to His holy name), it is a
   somewhat rough method of accomplishing a purpose to stop the wheels of
   Nature and reverse wise and admirable laws. Certainly it reveals His
   power, but it does not so clearly display His Immutability.

   When, however, the Lord allows everything to go on in the usual way,
   and gives mind and thought, ambition and passion their full
   liberty--and yet achieves His purpose--it is doubly wonderful! In the
   miracles of Pharaoh we see the finger of God, but in the wonders of
   Providence, without miracles, we see the hand of God. Today, whatever
   the event may be, whether it is the war between the Germans and the
   French, or the march into Coomassie, or the change of our own
   government, the attentive eye will as clearly see the Lord as if by
   miraculous power the hills had leaped from their places, or the floods
   had stood upright in a heap! I am sure that God is in the world, yes,
   and is at my own fireside and in

   my chamber. And I am sure He manages my affairs and orders all things
   for me, and for each one of His children. We need no miracles to
   convince us of His working. The wonders of His Providence are as great
   marvels as miracles themselves.

   Next we learn how safe the Church of God is. At one time the people of
   God seemed to be altogether in Haman's power. Nero once said that he
   wished his enemies had but one neck that he might destroy them all at a
   blow. Haman seemed to have realized just such power. Yet the chosen
   nation was delivered, the Jewish people lived on until the Messiah
   came, and does exist, and will exist till they shall enjoy the bright
   future which is decreed for them. So is it with the Church of God
   today. The foes of the Truth of God can never put out the candle which
   God has lit. They can never crush the living seed which the Lord Jesus
   has sown in His own blood-bought people. Brethren, be not afraid, but
   establish your hearts in God!

   Again, we see that the wicked will surely come to an ill end. They may
   be very powerful, but God will bring them down. They may be very crafty
   and may plot and plan, and may think that even God, Himself, is their
   accomplice because everything goes as they desire. But they may be sure
   their sin will find them out. They may dig deep as Hell, but God will
   undermine them. They may climb as high as the stars, but God will be
   above them to hurl them down. Wicked man, I charge you, if you are
   wise, to turn from your career of opposition to the Most High! You
   cannot stand against Him-- neither can you outwit Him. Cease, I beseech
   you, from this idle opposition, and hear the voice of His Gospel which
   says, "Confess your sin and forsake it. Believe in Jesus, the Son of
   God, the great atoning Sacrifice, and even you shall yet be saved." If
   you do not so, upon your own head shall your iniquities fall!

   Last of all, let each child of God rejoice that we have a guardian so
   near the Throne. Every Jew in Shushan must have felt hope when he
   remembered that the queen was a Jewess. Today let us be glad that Jesus
   is exalted--

   "He is at the Father's side, The Man of Love, the Crucified.'" How safe
   are all His people, for, "if any man sins, we have an Advocate with the
   Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous." There is one that lies in the
   bosom of God who will plead for all those who put their trust in Him!
   Therefore be you not dismayed, but let your souls rest in God and wait
   patiently for Him--for sooner shall Heaven and earth pass away than
   those who trust the Lord perish! "They shall not be ashamed nor
   confounded, world without end." Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Esther 5:9-14; 6, 7. HYMNS
   FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--251, 210, 207.
     __________________________________________________________________

Holy Water

   (No. 1202)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 8, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Whoever drinks of the water that Ishall 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." John 4:14.

   ALL things that are of earth are unsatisfactory. Our spirit craves for
   something more than time and sense can yield. Nothing which comes of
   earth, even if it should yield a transient satisfaction, can long
   maintain its excellence. Pointing to the water in Jacob's well, our
   Lord said, "He that drinks of this water shall thirst again." And
   therein He took up His parable against all earthly things, whether they
   are fame, or riches, or fleshly pleasure, or anything else beneath the
   sun. He that drinks at these shallow wells shall not quench, but
   thirst, or if, for a time, he imagines that he has done so, he will be
   deceived and, in a little season, the old craving will return. That
   which is born of the flesh is still flesh at its best--and all flesh is
   grass and the goodliness thereof is as the flower of grass--the grass
   withers and the flower thereof fades away and in like manner fades the
   flesh and its glory.

   The religion of the flesh shares in the common fate. If it has a man's
   own self for its author, his own energy as its impulse and his own
   opinions for its creed, it may, for a little while, flourish like the
   flower of the field, but the wind passes over it and it is gone. Waters
   from his own cistern may stay a man's desires for a while, but before
   long he must thirst again. Nothing can abide forever but that which
   comes from the Eternal One. Not from the will of man, but from the work
   of the Holy Spirit, all truly satisfying religion must proceed. It is
   the prerogative of the Gospel of Christ to thoroughly satisfy the soul
   of man and to do this abidingly. The chief object of our present
   discourse is to set forth that most admirable fact.

   I. Finding that it greatly helps the memory of the hearer if the
   preacher keeps to the words of the text, I shall do so, and note,
   first, that we have here before us THE WAY OF OBTAINING TRUE RELIGION.
   "Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst."
   It is clear from this that true religion must come to us as a gift. The
   water that I shall give him, says Christ. There is no suggestion as to
   digging deep with much learning into the deeps of mysterious truth to
   find the water for ourselves. This priceless drink is freely handed out
   to us by our Redeemer, without our bringing either bucket or line.

   There is no hint in the text that we are to purchase the life-giving
   water. It is presented to us without money and without price. There is
   no allusion to a certain measure of fitness to qualify us for the
   drink--it is purely a gift to be received by us here and now. Our Lord
   Jesus told the woman that had she known the gift of God she would have
   asked and He would have given. Sinner as she was, she had only to ask
   and have! There is no other way of obtaining eternal life but as the
   free gift of Sovereign Grace. The Divine Life is not in us by nature.
   It cannot be produced in us by culture, nor infused into us by
   ceremonies. Nor can it be propagated in us by natural descent--it must
   come as a blessing of infinite charity from Heaven--unpurchased,
   undeserved.

   Wisdom cannot impart it. Power cannot fashion it. Money cannot buy it.
   Merit cannot procure it. Grace, alone, can give it! If men desire wages
   they may earn them beneath the mastership of sin, for, "The wages of
   sin is death." On the side of God all is of Grace, for, "the gift of
   God is eternal life." Whoever, then, is to be saved, must be saved by
   the boundless charity of God. In other words, by the free gift of the
   Father through Jesus Christ our Lord. This is an elementary Truth of
   the Gospel, but it needs to be told in every sermon, for man is so
   hostile to it and the natural mind so runs upon merit and its own
   boasted doing, that man will not understand the doctrine of Salvation
   by Grace though it is as plain as the sun at noonday.

   Observe, next, that true religion is a gift from Jesus. Our Lord says,
   "the water that I shall give him." The only true religion in the world
   is that which comes from Jesus Christ. And the only realization of that
   true religion in your own

   soul is by receiving it from the hands of Christ, for it is, in all its
   details, connected with Him. Do we want peace of conscience because sin
   is forgiven? We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of
   sins! Do we desire deliverance from the power of sin within us? We can
   only overcome by the blood of the Lamb! Do we need teaching? The best
   instruction comes from His lips! Do we desire an example which will
   inspirit us to obey the teaching? He is our pattern, yes, "He is made
   of God unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption."
   He is our All in All!

   If any man dreams that he has a God-given religion, he is in deadly
   error if there is not the mark of the pierced hands upon it. That peace
   which does not come to us sealed with the blood of the Mediator's
   sacrifice is a false peace! Your soul is deceived with the semblance of
   satisfaction, but its thirst will soon be upon you again, like an armed
   man, unless you have been drinking from the fountain opened upon
   Calvary. Drink from the cup which Jesus fills! Do not think that
   satisfying waters can be drawn from any well but Himself!

   True godliness is next described in the text as a gift which must be
   received. "Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him." It is
   received, you see, not merely into the hands, but inward. When we drink
   water it enters into us, saturates us, becomes a part of our being and
   helps to build up the fabric of our body. Even so we must receive Jesus
   Christ into our innermost self. We must not profess to believe with the
   creed of the head while the heart remains in unbelief. We must not pay
   to our Lord the empty compliment of praising His Character while we
   reject His mission. We must so trust Him, depend upon Him, love Him,
   follow Him, yield ourselves up to Him, live upon Him and in Him that it
   may be clear that He has entered into and become one with us forever!
   We need Christ in us--Christ in the secret fountain of our being. The
   Holy Spirit must create in us a new heart and a right spirit--and then
   dwell in our renewed nature as a king in his palace.

   My Brothers and Sisters, be sure that this is so with you. Be not
   content with the outward name which is no more a part of yourself than
   if it were a label hung about your neck. Be not satisfied with mere
   externals which do not enter into the heart. Never rest till you have
   the Divine Life within you. We need not the faith which prates and
   talks, but the faith which eats the flesh of the Son of Man and drinks
   His blood. What we need is not Jesus Christ pictured on the wall, nor
   His name on the lips, nor words about Him from pious books! We need the
   Lord Himself received into our heart-- "Christ in you the hope of
   glory." Oh for Christ living, dwelling, reigning within our entire
   nature, looking out from our eyes, speaking by our lips, blessing the
   poor by our hands, going about doing good with these feet and
   magnifying God in these mortal bodies as once He did on earth in His
   own body! This, then, is true religion--Jesus Christ received by an act
   of faith into our inner-most soul.

   Dear Friend, have you got this? Before we go an inch further let every
   man and woman among us press this question home. Do I know what it is
   to drink of the life-giving stream which Jesus Christ bestows?

   II. We notice, in the second place, THE SATISFYING POWER OF TRUE
   RELIGION. We are told in the text,

   "Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst."
   Grace relieves our soul-thirst as soon as it is received. In Eastern
   countries the idea of thirst is much more vivid than it is with us.
   Owing to the great heat and the dryness of the atmosphere--and the
   frequency with which thirst really happens to men--they feel it to be
   one of the most severe physical sufferings.

   To the Oriental, thirst would be a forcible metaphor of the longing of
   an awakened soul. Let it be so to us. A man, once startled from the
   sleep of sinful indifference so as to look about him and to ask what he
   is, and where he is, and where he is going, finds in his spirit an
   eager craving. He scarcely knows what it is, nor what will satisfy
   it--but urged on by an insatiable sense of need, he searches after a
   something which will fill what Dr. Watts has very aptly called the
   "aching void" within him. He tries the virtue of riches, but gold and
   silver cannot fill a soul. He seeks after knowledge, and it is no mean
   pursuit, but science has no well from which a weary spirit may be
   refreshed. "Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a
   weariness of the flesh."

   It may be he dazzles his fancy with fame, or charms his eyes with
   beauty and his ears with music, but, "Vanity of vanities, all is
   vanity, thus says the Preacher." And the Preacher's verdict finds a
   thousand echoes in experience. There is a horseleech in human nature
   which continually cries, "Give, give!" And had it all the stars for a
   possession, it would still cry for more, for like the sea it cannot be
   quiet. Man, though he knows it not, needs his God. He needs
   reconciliation to his offended Maker, and until he gets it, he cannot
   rest. He is like "a rolling thing before the whirlwind"--he is tossed
   up and down like a thistledown in the breeze. And like Noah's dove, he
   finds no rest for the soles of his feet.

   He who believes in Christ has received the Atonement and finds in it an
   at-one-ment with God--the great quarrel is ended! His Nature is also
   changed and now he seeks after that which God delights in--and in the
   Lord his soul is satisfied. He has the new birth. He belongs to the
   family of God. He begins to understand Divine realities and to see
   them, taste them, handle them and to find rest for his soul in them.
   "Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through
   Jesus Christ our Lord." Faith in Jesus quenches our souls' thirst and
   it continues to do so. This is the beauty of it. He that drinks of the
   water from earth's wells is refreshed, but after a little while the
   effect of his drinking is gone, and he thirsts again.

   But he that drinks of the water that Christ shall give him, shall never
   thirst. That one draught has created in him an inexhaustible fountain
   of supply which will satisfy his mouth with good things, so that his
   youth shall be renewed like the eagle's. Though the thirst will forever
   strive to return, yet shall it be always met by the well within which
   shall spring up into everlasting life! Accept the Gospel of Christ,
   poor thirsty Heart, and you have accepted a satisfaction which will
   endure as long as you endure! Glory be to God that we have such living
   water to present to you in Jesus Christ's name this morning!

   Here is the secret cause of this abiding satisfaction--it continues
   because Divine Grace continues. Our Lord adds, "The water that I shall
   give him shall be in him." The water drank today has its uses and is
   gone. It serves our present purpose and disappears. But he that drinks
   of the water which Jesus gives, has it always in him and hence he
   always enjoys a freedom from spiritual thirst. Whatever effect the
   Grace of God produces today, it will be capable of producing the same
   tomorrow--and other effects as they shall be required--for it retains
   its potency and the same cause will produce the same effect. O the
   matchless draught, which never leaves the man who drinks it, but
   remains in him as part and parcel of his noblest self, forever
   contenting his whole nature and causing rivers of living water to flow
   out of him, even the Spirit which those who believe in Jesus have
   received! Well may every instructed heart pray, "Lord, give us this
   water."

   Now this final and abiding removal of thirst by a draught of Grace,
   which remains in the man, is a matchless blessing and averts a thousand
   ills. It is often useful to measure our mercies by their negative
   aspect, asking ourselves, What should we have been without them? O
   Sinner without the living water, you are thirsting now--or if not
   thirsting, a deadly stupor is upon your soul--which is worse than
   thirst! How mournful is your condition! And yet, my Brother in the
   Lord, you would be in the same pitiable case had you not believed! You
   would be cast into the same lethargic sleep with which sin steeps the
   senses of your fellow man! Or had you been awakened out of that sleep,
   you would be in bondage to fears, dreads and innumerable horrors!

   Sin would have been as a burning fever to your nature and all the joys
   of earth a mockery to your anguish. You would have been crushed beneath
   an awful sense of present wrath and a deadly fear of coming judgment!
   Perhaps, also, at this time you had been going from bad to worse,
   trying to satisfy your cravings with the delusions of Satan, poisoning
   your heart by drinking down what seemed to be water but turned out to
   be liquid fire, inflaming your passions with intoxicating vices and
   preparing in your heart a fame which shall burn even to the lowest
   Hell! Your fleshly lusts might at this hour have been steeling your
   spirit more and more with a dreadful hate of God and proud disdain of
   His Gospel. Ah, perhaps at this moment you would have been in
   Hell--where thirst rages both in body and in soul forever--and not a
   drop of water can be found to allay the torment.

   But now you have drunk of what Jesus Christ has given you and you are
   satisfied and at peace. Blessed be the Lord for this! The ills averted
   and the good bestowed you can not sufficiently calculate, but you can,
   today, adore that dear hand which bestowed this matchless draught upon
   you. I think I hear someone interpose the observation that there is
   still in the Believer a thirst. I answer, yes, it is true, and blessed
   be God for it! We sang right well in our hymn just now--

   "I thirst, but not as once I did, The vain delights of earth to share.
   Your wounds, Immanuel, all forbid That I should find my pleasure
   there." The moment a man knows Christ, he thirsts to know more of Him.
   But there is a very great difference between the thirsting of horrible
   unappeased longings--and the thirsting of unutterable joy which longs
   to continue--and of burning love which gladly would know more and more
   of its adorable Lord.

   The inward desires of the Christian after more holiness, more communion
   with God and more love to Christ are not so much a thirst for Grace as
   the bubbling up of the well of spiritual life which is in the soul
   already! I would not wish to be in such a state as to be satisfied with
   myself, or satisfied with my attainments. Satisfied with Christ, the
   Christian always is. But altogether and entirely satisfied with his own
   realization of the blessings which Jesus brings--so as to desire no
   more--I think he never will be till he gets to Heaven! Have you never
   heard of that great painter who, one day breaking his palette and
   putting aside his brush, said to a friend that he should paint no more,
   for his day was over. And when his friend inquired why he had come to
   that singular conclusion, he said, "Because the last painting which I
   executed perfectly contented me and, therefore, I feel that the high
   ideal which led me on has departed and I shall succeed no more."

   It is so. There is in every man who is a master of his art a high ideal
   after which he strains. And the fact that he has that ideal ever above
   him is one of the tokens of his lofty genius. I suppose that Milton, as
   a poet, never reached the "height of that great argument" as he desired
   to reach it. When he had composed a portion of his wondrous epic he
   would feel that his thoughts were above his words and that he had an
   inner, unshaped conception towering higher than his actually formed and
   shaped thoughts. He was a poet because that was the case. Other
   rhymesters are not poets because their verses please them.

   That man is holy who mourns the unholiness of his holiest deeds--and
   that man is no longer holy who conceives himself to be without sin and
   to have reached the highest attainable excellence. The mariner who has
   reached the Ultima Thule and dreams that he has cast anchor hard by
   earth's utmost boundary, where the universe comes to an end, will never
   be a Columbus. Up with your anchor, my Brother, for there are wide seas
   beyond and a land of gold across the main! Self-satisfaction is the
   grave of progress! He who thinks himself perfect is never likely to be
   so. Brothers and Sisters, shun the spirit of self-content! Whatever
   doctrinal views you may hold as to the higher life, I will not dispute
   with you. But I practically beseech you to shun the spirit which lulls
   the heart into soft slumbers by the music of spiritual flattery.

   Whoever you are, I make bold to say that you are not all you should be,
   nor all you can be. There is a blessed hunger and thirst after
   righteousness--a panting after God as the hart pants after the water
   brooks--which still abides in the Christian. But it is in no degree
   akin to the thirst which is mentioned in the text. Grace in the heart
   gives rest, peace, joy and holy calm of soul. It satisfies our cravings
   and fills our largest desires--and all because by the indwelling power
   of the Holy Spirit it daily enables us to realize Jesus and God in
   Jesus. What fullness there is in Him--

   "In want, my plentiful Supply;

   In weakness, my almighty Power;

   In bonds, my perfect Liberty;

   My Refuge in temptation's hour;

   My Comfort 'midst all grief and thrall,

   My Life in death, my All in All." III. Having noticed the way of
   obtaining true religion and the satisfying effect of it, we will now
   observe ITS ABIDING CHARACTER. "The water that I shall give him shall
   be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." There is
   a theory of religion which supposes that a man may be regenerated and
   yet may so depart from the Lord that the inner life may become extinct.
   And I have met with persons of whom I have been told that they have
   been born again three or four times--that after experiencing
   regeneration they had fallen from Grace altogether--and yet had been
   renewed again unto repentance.

   I must confess I have not believed what I have been told, for it is
   contrary to those many Scriptures which declare that "if these shall
   fall away it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance," for,
   "if the salt has lost its savor wherewith shall it be seasoned?" My
   heart believes, and as I read the Scriptures I believe it more and
   more, that where a good work is begun by God, He will carry it on and
   that the new life bestowed upon us is an incorruptible seed which lives
   and abides forever, so that, "the righteous shall hold on his way and
   he that has clean hands shall wax stronger and stronger."

   Notice how the text describes the matter. "The water that I shall give
   him shall be in him--not of him, not upon him, not around him--but in
   him--and hence it cannot be lost. You know how we use that expression.
   Here is a man trying to write poetry. (Ah, how many are guilty of that
   folly)? But it is not in him and it cannot come out of him. So he

   rhymes his nonsense, but a poet he never becomes. But if a man has it
   in him, who can take it away? Another sits down to paint. But if it is
   not in him, he becomes eminent in the school of Van Daub, but reaches
   no further--it is not in him-- but if in him who shall deprive him of
   the gift?

   True religion is, however, more than a faculty, it is a new life. And
   so it is even more abidingly in the man than my illustration sets
   forth. The poet may be despoiled of his goods. He may be deprived of
   his liberty. He may be shut up within iron bars--but he still
   sings--you cannot rob him of his poetic faculty, for it is in him. The
   artist may scarcely be allowed a ray of light in the dark dungeon into
   which he is thrust. But he follows the lone sunbeam around his prison
   wall and works by its light, for his art is in him. We all agree with
   the remark that it is better to give a lad an education than a fortune,
   for the one he carries in him and cannot lose, but the other may soon
   be gone, since it is no part of himself. That part of our inheritance
   which we carry in us is beyond the thief's cunning and the tyrant's
   power.

   If we have the Grace of God we shall have it still, for Jesus says--"it
   shall be in him." Blessed be God it is not in our frail body nor in our
   feeble mind, but in our Heaven-born spirit--and so it is in that part
   of our nature which Death, itself, cannot cause to die--which no power
   on earth is able to touch. If religion were a garb it could be laid
   aside. If it were a rite, its efficacy might cease. But since it is a
   life, a vital principle, an essential part of our new nature and is
   interwoven with the warp and woof of our renewed manhood, it is ours
   eternally! Christ has said it, and we believe it, "The water that I
   shall give him shall be in him," and in us it shall be as long as we
   live!

   Our Lord also promises that this water shall be in the man, "a well of
   living water." It shall always remain in him as an operative force,
   full of freshness and life. It shall not be there like water in a
   cistern which may gradually evaporate and cannot have the freshness of
   spring water. Nor as a stagnant pool which becomes useless and even
   pestilential to all around. It shall not even be as water forced into
   our houses by pressure--it shall have a springing up power of its own!
   It shall be as permanent and changeless as Jacob's well which was there
   in the Patriarch's day and is there, still, as full as ever! It shall
   be forever new, yet ever the same. It shall have an energy and force in
   it which shall cause a perpetual uprising in the soul.

   Like the village brook born at the springhead, our new life shall flow
   on, and as it flows it shall sing--

   "Men may come and men may go, But I go on forever."

   As surely as the well continues to fill itself without machinery of
   man's invention, or a pump of earthly power, so surely shall the new
   life within the Christian continue to stir and move and bubble up.
   There will always be in it a vitality which comes from the quickening
   Spirit. Mechanical religion, which consists in ceremonies and
   observances, is a very stale thing. I should think, after seeing the
   mass, or any other Popish display some 50 times, it must become rather
   a dreary business, however prettily the show may be arranged. And the
   mere repetition of a liturgical service, without heart, with the same
   words and tones, must become very monotonous. Certainly extempore
   prayer and the most varied service is heavy enough when the soul is
   taken out of it.

   Anything which has not spiritual life in it becomes, in due time,
   insipid, flat, wearisome. As well be a blind horse going round in a
   mill as the performer of religious acts without the inner life. Coming
   to this place, sitting in these seats and listening to me may soon
   become a piece of mere clockwork to you if your hearts are not alive
   towards God. How very different is worship in Spirit and in Truth! Real
   inward vitality is as perpetually beautiful as the sea which never
   appears to be twice alike, though it is always the same. Or like the
   rising of the sun, a perpetual novelty, forever exhibiting some new
   phase of God's Glory. It is a joy for me to linger near a spring and
   mark the widening circles, the countless wavelets, the sparkling
   ripples and the translucent streams which, in their perpetual variety
   and laughing joyousness, are the very image of youth and freshness.

   True religion is like a well because it is independent of its
   surroundings--it flows in summer and in winter. The pond overflows
   because there has been a shower of rain, but the deep well is full in
   the drought and the villagers flock to it in the driest season, for
   they never knew it to fail. Its secret sources are too abundant to be
   affected by a few weeks of parching heat. Would you go in search of
   them, they are far away on yonder cloud-capped hills, where the river
   of God, which is full of water, empties itself into reservoirs which
   the Lord has dug. "I will look unto the hills from whence comes my
   help," says the Christian. He directs his expectations to the
   all-sufficiency of God and sings, "All my fresh springs are

   in You."

   He knows that it is the Lord who "sends the springs into the valleys
   which run among the hills." The Believer is independent of his outward
   surroundings. He is not exalted by riches, nor crushed by poverty. He
   trusts not in man whose breath is in his nostrils, for in which he is
   to be accounted. Nothing earthly can feed or famish the Divine Life in
   man and even the visible means of Grace are not absolutely necessary to
   it, for concerning them it may be said, "man shall not live by bread
   alone." Should a Christian be cast into a heathen land, or cared to
   live where the Truth of God has fallen in the streets, and zeal is
   dead, and corruption abounds, he is greatly tried--but still the inner
   well springs up because his faith has tapped "the deep which lies
   under"--and he draws his supplies from the Infinity of God--not from
   outward ordinances.

   Elijah is strong amid idolaters and Paul's faith is vigorous on board
   ship among heathen, just as wells are found in places where all around
   is arid as a desert. Elim was in the wilderness, not in the king's
   garden. And many a Believer is found in a dry and thirsty land where
   there is no water. God is Infinite and All-Sufficient--and the man
   whose sources lie in the All-Sufficient One receives of His fullness!
   When natural religion and fleshly excitement are gone, the faith, hope
   and joy of vital godliness manifest the dew of their youth. Alas, how
   often is the contrast seen! Do I not know some who were converted under
   a very earnest preacher and as long as they heard him they remained in
   their apparent godliness? But when he was gone, what became of them?

   I enquired the other day as to the permanent results of a certain
   revival which, at the time, I hoped was a genuine one. Some two or
   three hundred were added to a certain Church, but the pastor left and I
   asked his successor whether the converts remained. He replied, "I
   cannot give a good account of them. Very few are with us now." That is
   not a rare case. I have other instances within my knowledge where
   Churches have been revived into absolute annihilation! The balloon has
   been filled till it burst! Warmed up into a furnace heat by tremendous
   blasts of excitement, a cold of corresponding intensity has set in when
   the heating apparatus has consumed its fuel. Not a word have I to say
   against real spiritual revivals, but I warn you excitable people that
   principle is the main matter, not passion.

   Give me a man who does not depend upon a preacher, nor drink in his
   inspiration from warm-hearted friends and crowded meetings--but has
   inward, vital experience by which he knows the Lord for himself--and
   has had personal dealings with a personal Savior! Such a man will
   follow the Lamb though every preacher should die and every outward
   ministry should be struck dumb. The indwelling power of the Holy Spirit
   rises superior to all disadvantages, like a spring which cannot be kept
   under, do what you may! Our engineers and builders know how hard it is
   to bind up the earth-floods from overflowing--and the spiritual floods
   are yet more unconquerable!

   It is wonderful how springs will bubble up in places where we least
   expect them. The great Sahara Desert will, no doubt, be made a very
   easy country to traverse and, perhaps, may even become a fertile plain,
   from the fact that there is water everywhere at no great depth below
   the surface--and when it is reached an oasis is formed. The Government
   of Algeria has sent engineers into parts of the Sahara bordering on the
   French possession--and these men have bored the rock by Artesian wells
   and greatly astonished the natives, for in the wilderness have waters
   leaped out and streams in the desert! At the magic touch of the living
   water, palm trees have sprung up and an undergrowth of vegetation, so
   that the solitary places have been made to sing together.

   When the Lord gives our souls to drink from the fountains of the great
   deep of His own eternal Love and to have a vital principle of Divine
   Grace within us, our wilderness rejoices and blossoms as the rose!
   Neither can the Sahara around us wither our verdure--our soul is as an
   oasis, though all around is barrenness! Happy is the man whose life is
   hid with Christ in God, for he shall be filled with all the fullness of
   God--

   "From You the overflowing spring, His soul shall drink a fresh supply;
   While such as trust their native strength Shall melt away and droop and
   die." When God shall fail, the Believer will fail, but not till then.
   On him He fits the blessing given to Joseph, securing to him the
   precious things of Heaven and of the dew and of the deep which couches
   beneath. Observers tell us, and we may have noticed ourselves, that
   wells are not always equally full, for verily earthly things must
   change and none of them are full types of the heavenly.

   Springs which are never frozen in the coldest winter and never dry in
   the hottest summer, yet exhibit certain ebbs and flows and, even so,
   the Christian, because he is still in the body, is not always at his
   best by reason of infirmity and fault.

   There are happy times when we overflow delightfully--and there are
   other seasons when we have to cry most anxiously, "Spring up, O well."
   Yet, blessed be God, the well is always there and as it is never
   disconnected from its springs, it never utterly fails. Our Lord says
   the well shall always be in us and, therefore, we may exultantly cry,
   "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Who shall destroy the
   life which is one with His?"

   The notion that our Lord's spiritual body is undergoing a constant
   change in the loss of its members and the growth of new ones is so
   strange--and so dishonoring to Him--that I must leave its defense to
   those who can tolerate it. I believe that no member of Christ shall be
   amputated from His body and, "not a bone of Him shall be broken." He
   says, "I give unto My sheep eternal life, and they shall never perish,
   neither shall any pluck them out of My hand." "Because I live, you live
   also." He has said, moreover, "Verily, verily I say unto you, he that
   believes in Me has everlasting life." But a life which expires is not
   everlasting and, therefore, we are sure that it will live on eternally.
   The principle implanted in us when we believe is an abiding one, for we
   were, "born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by
   the Word of God, which lives and abides forever." If it is so, how can
   we perish? No, Brothers and Sisters, Grace will remain in us and the
   Lord will perfect that which concerns us.

   The text further says it is a well which is springing, a well which
   never ceases to flow--upon which we will not dwell. We will only say
   this--that God works up to now, and works always--therefore the life of
   God in the soul is usually operative in some form or other. The great
   motives which set the Christian working at first are as forcible in his
   old age as in his youth. And his obedience to them is even more
   complete. Therefore he ceases not from spiritual activity. His soul
   bubbles up in prayer, praise, love, hope and joy forevermore. He must
   do the will of Him that sent him. He cannot but work out his own
   salvation, for God continues to work in him to will and to do of His
   good pleasure. Thus all that happens to a Christian, overruled by the
   Grace of God, tends to keep him springing up.

   Is he surrounded by the wicked? He feels it his duty to bear his
   protest the more vigorously. Is he in the midst of the righteous? He
   owns that in such congenial society he ought to do more for Christ. Is
   he poor? He feels that he had need be rich in faith to sustain his
   spirits. Is he rich? He knows that uncertain riches are certain
   temptations--and that he needs great Grace, both to escape the snare
   and bear up under the responsibility of his station. Thus even adverse
   things are made to help him! And even as the Nile overflows in the hot
   season because of the melting of the snows on the far-off mountains, so
   does the inner life. How all the more when we might have imagined it
   would be drawn dry.

   The text adds, "Springing up into everlasting life"--not to life,
   merely, but to that life which is everlasting! I, for one, shall never
   be able to attach any meaning to the word everlasting but that of
   lasting forever! The Believer lives on forever and Divine Grace
   blossoms into Glory. The life of the saints on earth is of the same
   essence as the life of the saints in Heaven--they receive no new life
   when they enter into Glory--only that which they received in
   regeneration is purged from every hindrance and is developed to
   perfection! Our life below tends in the same direction as the heavenly
   life, for both flow towards God and seek His Glory and delight in
   fellowship with Him.

   We have now within us the germs of the glorified character--a holy
   life, a humble life, an obedient life, a blessed life, we always have
   here--and such is the life of the golden city. Our life is sustained by
   the same power as the life of those in Heaven. "Because I live, you
   shall live also," is the gift both of saints in Heaven and saints on
   earth. It is guaranteed by the same Covenant and if a child of God on
   earth can perish, a child of God in Heaven may, for anything I can see.
   The fidelity which will keep the blessed is the same fidelity which
   preserves us while here below. And if our life, which is hid with
   Christ, can fail, I know not what additional security belongs to a soul
   in Heaven. The whole text together gives us this full assurance, that
   if we have drunk of the water which Christ gives us, it cannot be
   extracted from us or fail to save us! It is a living well, and must
   spring up into everlasting life!

   The practical outcome of it all is just this. Let each one answer this
   question--where did you get your religion? Does anyone reply, "I am of
   the religion of my father before me, and that's enough for me." Yes,
   that is what the old heathen chieftain said when he had one foot in the
   baptismal font. He turned round to the missionary and asked where his
   ancestors' souls were. And when he heard that they had gone to Hell, he
   said he would not be parted from them. I see no sense in such talk! I
   suppose if your parents had been blind you would have put your eyes
   out. Or if they had been lame, you would have made yourself a cripple!

   No, dear Friends, we should follow our parents so far as they followed
   Christ, but when they leave Jesus we must take another road! Where did
   you get your religion from? Is it of your own manufacture? Is it the
   creature of your own

   power and will? Then it will come to nothing! Nothing is worth having
   as to everlasting life but that which comes from the hand which was
   nailed to the Cross--and there bought our redemption--and now freely
   bestows it upon us. The next question is, what has your religion done
   for you? Has it satisfied your heart? Does it bring rest to your soul?
   Has it quenched your thirst?

   Now, there are many religions in the world which do not profess to do
   this. When nine persons out of 10 talk of what they call the Christian
   religion, their notion is that perhaps a man may know he is safe when
   he is dying. Perhaps he may get his sins forgiven in the last solemn
   article. But as to any idea of being saved now, they do not comprehend
   it-- their religion does not deal with present salvation. How few
   rejoice in that text, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it does
   not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear
   we shall be like He, for we shall see Him as He is"! How few can say,
   "Being justified by faith we have peace with God"! They think it
   presumption, for they are ignorant of the power of faith. Go to Jesus
   Christ then, dear Friends, and receive from Him the free gift of His
   mercy and you will say, "Lord, it is enough, my soul is satisfied."

   The next question is this--Does your religion abide with you? You had
   great joy in it once. Do you possess it now? Is it in you? That
   religion which you can lose, it might be well to lose at once so that
   you might be driven to seek a better! But that religion which you never
   can lose is the religion of Christ! Now for a straightforward question.
   Does your religion always dwell in you? I know some people whose
   godliness lies in their best hats. They put them on when Sunday comes
   round and then they are wonderfully religious! And when they get into a
   place of worship they look into the hats to which they owe so much--but
   when the new garments are laid by and the work-day hat is on in which
   they go to the city or the workshop--they act as badly as other men.

   The Sunday bonnet and go-to-meeting dress make a deal of difference to
   some people. When the hymn book and the Bible are near at hand, they
   are devout. When the ledger and the day book are near, what a change
   comes over the scene! Genuine religion is in a man. You cannot lay it
   aside as the soldier may hang up his sword or put away his uniform--you
   carry it with you everywhere--it is your delight to do so.

   Lastly, does your religion spring up within your soul by the secret
   energy of the Spirit of God? Do you feel emotions, longings, regrets
   and desires arising in you without any outward prompting? You do not
   pray by order, but because you cannot help it--you are in need and must
   pray. Nobody stands by and says, "Lament before God." You groan because
   you must groan, and sing because you feel like singing! You pray
   continually because your soul's needs are constant. And you praise
   frequently because your soul's gratitude bursts forth like a mighty
   spring. Your obedience does not arise from a Law upon stone, but from a
   Law written on your hearts, from life in you, from heavenly instinct,
   from the sacred impulses of the Spirit!

   "For me to live is Christ." Happy is the man who feels the well within
   him bubbling up, so that it is in his very life to obey the Lord Jesus!
   God grant we all may drink of the living water for Jesus' sake Amen.

   PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-John 4:1-42. HYMNS FROM "OUR
   OWN HYMN BOOK" 435, 775, 805.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Consecration of Priests

   (No. 1203)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 15, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "This is the thing that you shall do onto them to hallow them, to
   minister unto Me in the priest's office." Exodus 29:1.

   UNDER the Law, only one family could serve God in the priest's office,
   but under the Gospel all the saints are "a chosen generation, a royal
   priesthood" (1 Peter 2:9). In the Christian Church no persons whatever
   are set apart to the priesthood above the rest of their Brethren, for
   in us is fulfilled the promise which Israel, by reason of her sin,
   failed to obtain--"You shall be a kingdom of priests unto Me." Paul, in
   addressing all the saints, bids them present their bodies a living
   sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is their reasonable
   service. It is the grand design of all the works of Divine Grace, both
   for us and in us, to fit us for the office of the spiritual priesthood,
   and it will be the crown of our perfection when, with all our Brothers
   and Sisters, we shall sing unto the Lord Jesus the new song, "Unto Him
   that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has
   made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and
   dominion forever and ever."

   All the saints have this honor. According to Peter, in the second
   chapter of his first Epistle, it belongs even to newborn babes in
   Grace, for even such are spoken of as forming part of an holy
   priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices. Nor is this confined to
   men as was the Aaronic priesthood, for in Christ Jesus there is neither
   male nor female. My subject, today, is the consecration of priests, but
   it does not refer exclusively, or even especially, to persons called
   clergymen, or ministers--but to all of you who believe in Jesus, for
   you are God's clergy, His cleros, that is, His inheritance, and you
   should be all ministers, ministering according to the Divine Grace
   given to you. The family of Aaron was chosen unto the priesthood, "for
   no man takes this honor upon himself, but he that was called thereunto
   as was Aaron," and even thus, all the Lord's people are chosen from
   before the foundation of the world.

   Being chosen, Aaron and his sons were at God's command brought near
   unto the door of the tabernacle. None ever come to God except they are
   brought to Him. Even the spouse sings, "He brought me into the
   banqueting house." Jesus said, "No man can come unto Me except the
   Father, which has sent Me, draw him." We are made near by the blood of
   Jesus and brought near by the drawing of the Holy Spirit. Assuming that
   you and I have made our calling and election sure, let us further see
   what is needed to qualify us to serve as priests at the altar of the
   living God. Follow me carefully as I mention the ceremonies prescribed
   in the chapter before us, for they teach us necessary things--the
   outward ceremonies are abolished--but their inner meaning remains.

   I. First, THE PRIESTS WERE WASHED. We read in the 4th verse, "Aaron and
   his sons you shall bring unto the door of the tabernacle of the
   congregation, and shall wash them with water." The pure and holy God
   cannot be served by men of unclean hands and impure hearts. He would
   not endure it under the Law, nor will He tolerate it under the Gospel.
   "Be you clean that bear the vessels of the Lord," and, "Be you holy for
   I am holy," are standing precepts of our priesthood. It was well said
   by the Psalmist, "I will wash my hands in innocence, so will I compass
   Your altar, O Lord."

   This washing is afforded us in two ways, answering to our double need.
   First, it is given to us in regeneration, in which we are born of water
   and of the Spirit. By the power of the Holy Spirit we are made new
   creatures in Christ Jesus and in us is fulfilled the type set forth in
   Naaman, who washed in the Jordan, and his flesh came, again, unto him,
   even as a little child. Not in the waters of Baptism, but in the living
   water of the Holy Spirit are we cleansed from Nature's original
   defilement. He it is who causes old things to pass away and makes all
   things new. Through His sanctifying operations we are cleansed from all
   filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit--and made vessels fit for the
   Master's use. This washing is essential in every case.

   You may say, "I desire to serve God," but you cannot do it till you are
   born again. Your whole nature must be cleansed, or you will never be
   qualified to stand as a priest before the thrice holy God! I marvel how
   some who know nothing about regeneration can dare call themselves
   priests. They are strangers to the renewing influences of the Spirit
   and yet they style themselves God's ministers! Has God set blind men to
   be guides and dead men to quicken souls? Onto such as these, God says,
   "What have you to do to declare My statutes?" The need of another form
   of washing was indicated by the double stream which flowed from the
   pierced breast of Christ, for, "forthwith came there out blood and
   water."

   We must be washed by remission of sin, of which David sang, "Purge me
   with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than
   snow." In the first moment of our faith in Jesus there is given to us a
   washing which makes us, once and for all, clean in the sight of God. It
   is that washing to which the Lord Jesus referred when He said, "He that
   is washed needs not save to wash his feet, for he is clean." The
   priests were washed once, from head to foot, to make them ceremonially
   clean--after that they needed only to wash their feet when they came
   into the holy place. Even thus our Lord told His disciples, when He
   washed their feet, that they had no need of another complete bathing,
   for they were clean every whit.

   Believers should not pray to their heavenly Father as if their sins
   still rested upon them and had never been forgiven, for the Lord has
   put away their sin--and as far as the east is from the west so far has
   He removed their transgressions from them. Yet as they continually
   accumulate some evil and stain by being in this body and in this world,
   they have need to come each day with, "Forgive us our trespasses as we
   forgive them that trespass against us." Our first washing has removed
   all sin as before God the Judge. Our daily washing cleanses us from
   offenses towards God as our Father. Even when we walk in the light as
   God is in the light, and have fellowship with one another, we yet need
   daily cleansing from all sin by the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son.
   And, blessed be God, we have it!

   Now, my dear Hearers, have you thus been cleansed from all sin? Do you
   know, today, the power of that word, "Being made free from sin, you
   became the servants of righteousness"? Have you the blessedness of that
   man unto whom the Lord imputes not iniquity and in whose spirit there
   is no guile? Do not try to stand as a priest before God till you have
   received this double washing! Remember the great aim of the Gospel is
   to make us priests unto God--but the consecrating process must begin by
   our being cleansed as sinners from the guilt of sin and the defilement
   of our nature. He who would serve the Lord must first confess his
   iniquities and obtain remission, or he can no more approach the living
   God than a leper could enter into the Holy Place!

   II. After being washed, THE PRIESTS WERE CLOTHED. They might not wear
   one of the garments which belonged to themselves or to their former
   calling. Undergarments were provided for them and outer garments, too--
   within and without their raiment was new and appropriate. They put on
   what was given them, nothing more and nothing less. No man can serve
   God acceptably in his own righteousness, it is but filthy rags. We must
   have the fine linen of an inward sanctification and the outer garment,
   for glory and for beauty, of the Imputed Righteousness of our Lord and
   Savior Jesus Christ. We must, in a word, sing with the hymn--

   "Jesus, Your blood and Righteousness, My beauty are, my glorious
   dress." We cannot worship God unless it is so, or He will drive us from
   His Presence.

   Note that these garments were provided for them. They were at no
   expense in buying them, nor labor in weaving them, nor skill in making
   them. They had simply to put them on. And you, dear child of God, are
   to put on the garments which Jesus Christ has provided for you, at His
   own cost, and freely bestows upon you out of boundless love. These
   garments formed a complete apparel. They had no shoes upon their feet,
   it is true, but they would have been superfluous, for the place where
   they stood was holy ground. They were sandaled with reverence. The
   child of God, when he is bedecked in the Righteousness of Christ, still
   feels a solemn awe of the Lord and comes into the Presence of the Most
   High with adoration, for he remembers that he is but a creature at his
   best.

   These garments were very comely to look upon. Though the common priests
   did not wear the breastplate ofjewels, nor the bells and pomegranates,
   nor the girdle of blue and fine twisted linen, yet, in their ordinary
   dress of pure white, they must have been very comely to look upon. Fine
   white linen is the emblem of the righteousness of the saints and truly,
   in God's eyes, with the exception of His dear Son, there are no
   lovelier objects in the world than His own people when they

   are dressed in the garments of salvation. The dress provided was
   absolutely necessary to be worn. No priest might offer sacrifice
   without the appointed garments, for we read in the 43rd verse of the
   28th chapter, "They shall be upon Aaron, and upon his sons, when they
   come in unto the tabernacle of the congregation, or when they come near
   unto the altar to minister in the Holy Place; that they bear not
   iniquity, and die."

   They would have died had they attempted to sacrifice without being
   clothed according to the Law of God! A man pretending to serve God
   without the Divine Righteousness upon him, puts himself in a most
   perilous position. He is where the flaming wrath of God burns terribly.
   Better for him to keep his own place, in the distance, than to draw
   near unto the service of God, unless he is adorned with the glorious
   array which Christ has woven in the loom of His life and dyed in His
   own blood. Dear Brothers and Sisters, if you desire to worship God
   aright in holy labor, or prayer, or praise, you must go to your
   engagements dressed in the Righteousness of Jesus, for in that way,
   only, can you be "accepted in the Beloved."

   III. Then, thirdly, THESE PRIESTS WERE ANOINTED. It does not appear
   that they were each one personally

   anointed so early in the ceremony, but they saw the fragrant oil poured
   upon Aaron on their behalf. So you find it written in the 7th verse,
   "Then shall you take the anointing oil and pour it upon his head, and
   anoint him." So that in order to serve God aright, it is necessary for
   us to see the anointing which has been given without measure to our
   Covenant Head.

   But you say to me, "Of what benefit can that be to us? We require the
   unction of the Holy Spirit upon ourselves." True, but the oil which was
   poured upon Aaron's head went down his beard and its copious flow
   descended even to the skirts of his garments. And what you need to
   know, if you are to be a true priest to God, is that the Holy Spirit
   comes to you through Christ and from Christ--and it is because your
   Head is anointed that you have an unction from the Holy One. You could
   not have been Christians if He had not, first, been the Christ. Be of
   good cheer concerning this, for though you may be one of the lowest
   members of the mystical body of Jesus Christ, you have an anointing
   from the Holy One because Jesus has that anointing--and in the power of
   that anointing you may minister before the Lord.

   Further on in the discourse we shall have to show you the personal
   anointing which you must individually receive, but it is highly
   important for every worker to see where his fragrance before God must
   lie--never in himself-- but always in his Covenant Head. Be filled with
   the Spirit, but do not dream that the Spirit of God comes to you apart
   from your Lord! You are the branch, and the sap can only come to you
   through the stem. You are a member, but your life dwells in your Head.
   Divided from Jesus you are dead! Never forget this, for any attempt at
   independence will be fatal. A man in Christ is fragrant with a holy
   perfume before the Lord, but out of Christ he is an unclean thing and
   cannot approach the altar.

   IV. Fourthly, having been washed, clothed and representatively
   anointed, they had, next, TO SHARE IN THE SIN OFFERING. They were
   sinful men. How could they approach a thrice holy God? You and I are
   sinful, as we know by bitter experience. How can we hope to stand
   before the Mercy Seat and present acceptable sacrifices unto such an
   One as God is? There is no way of approaching Him while our sin is
   seen. It must be covered--covered by a sin offering. We are told that
   the sin offering selected was a bullock without blemish, of the first
   year, strong and vigorous--a perfect being as far as it could be.

   Lift your eyes to Jesus, in whom is no spot of sin, being undefiled in
   Nature and immaculate in life. He it is who stands for you, even He who
   knew no sin, and yet was made sin for you that you might be made the
   Righteousness of God in Him. He, in the fullness of His strength, and
   in the perfection of His Manhood, gave Himself as a ransom and a
   substitute for you. View Him with wondering gratitude! The bullock of
   the sin offering being brought to the altar, Aaron and his sons were to
   lay their hands upon it. Read the 10th verse--They "shall put their
   hands upon the head of the bullock." The Hebrew word means more than
   lightly placing the hands--it gives the idea of pressing hard upon the
   bullock's head.

   They came, each one, and leaned upon the victim, loading him with their
   burden, signifying their acceptance of its substitution and their joy
   that the Lord would accept that victim in their place. When they put
   their hands on the bullock, they made a confession of sin, and the
   Rabbis have preserved for us the form in which that confession was
   made, but time forbids our reading it to you. The act was evidently
   understood by all concerned as a typical transfer of guilt--

   and the placing of the bullock as the sin offering in the place of the
   sinner. Come, Brothers and Sisters, though washed, though clothed,
   though anointed--come as penitents and rejoice in the vicarious
   Sacrifice of Jesus!

   Draw near unto the Lord with sincere hearts and acknowledge your
   transgressions! Come and again accept your Savior as your Sin Bearer,
   for a sin bearer who is not accepted by you can be of no service to
   you. The hands of faith must be laid upon the Sacrifice--for my part, I
   like to lay them there every day, no, I desire to keep them there
   always-- believing without ceasing that my sin is imputed no more to
   me, but by a sacred act of God was laid upon Jesus, according to that
   sentence, "He has laid on Him the iniquity of us all."

   The bullock was killed as a token that just as the poor beast was
   slain, so they deserved to die for their sins. And that done, the blood
   was caught in bowls and taken to the altar where it was poured out, at
   the bottom of the altar, round about. Read the 17th verse. There must
   have been a pool of blood all round the altar, or, at any rate, a
   crimsoned line. What did it signify? Did it not show that our only
   access to God is by the blood? Oh, my Brothers and Sisters, there is no
   way for you to God as His priest except through the precious blood! We
   cannot draw near to God, or serve Him aright, if we forget the blood of
   Atonement. Our standing is upon and within the blood of sprinkling! We
   must bring our prayers, praises, preaching, almsgiving and all other
   offerings to the altar around which the blood is poured! In vain are
   all good works which are not so presented! See you well to this, my
   Brethren. It is essential beyond all else.

   This done, the choicer and more vital parts of the bullock were taken
   and burned upon the altar, to show that even when our Lord Jesus is
   viewed as a Sin Offering, He is still a sweet savor unto God. And
   however He might hide His face from His Son because of our sin, yet He
   was always, in Himself, well-pleasing unto the Father. Hence the
   inwards of the bullock were burned on the altar, where nothing could be
   presented but that which was a sweet savor to God. O You Lamb of God,
   under whatever aspect we behold You, You are still precious to Your
   Father! You were beloved by Him even when You had to cry, "My God, My
   God, why have You forsaken Me?"

   But because the bullock was a sin offering, and therefore obnoxious to
   God, its flesh, skin and all that remained were carried outside the
   camp and burned with a quick, consuming fire--as a thing worthy to be
   destroyed--for sin was upon it and it must be burned up. Believer, have
   you seen Jesus as the great Offering for sin, made a curse for us? You
   will never serve God in the priestly office aright unless you see that
   sin is a hateful thing to God--so hateful that even when it only lay
   upon His dear Son by imputation, He could not look upon Him--but
   bruised and smote Him until He cried in anguish, "Eloi, Eloi, lama
   Sabachthani." "Jesus, also, that He might sanctify the people with His
   own blood, suffered outside the camp," to show that not without His
   being treated as a transgressor could we be treated as righteous and,
   also, that sin is, in itself, a deadly pest which must not be endured
   in the camp of the chosen.

   Never let your joy concerning the Atonement lessen your horror of
   transgression--

   "With your joy for pardoned guilt, Mourn that you pierced the Lord." I
   am persuaded that no one will ever serve the Lord humbly and devotedly
   unless he obtains a clear view of the Lord Jesus as his Sin Offering
   and Substitute. Some preachers either do not know that Truth of God or
   else they think too little of it to make it prominent in their sermons,
   hence their ministry does not save souls. The great saving Truth of God
   is the doctrine of Atonement by Substitution. Without it, ministers
   will keep souls in bondage year after year because they do not proclaim
   the finished redemption, nor let men know that sin was laid on Jesus
   that it might be forever removed from the Believer. "He was made sin
   for us that we might be made the Righteousness of God in Him."

   Brothers and Sisters, get that Truth clearly into your heads--and
   intensely into your hearts--and you will become devoted to the Lord! Do
   not only believe that grand Truth, but to the spirit of it serve the
   Lord without weariness, seeing you have been redeemed with a price far
   more precious than silver and gold!

   V. After the sin offering, the consecrated ones went on to TAKE THEIR
   SHARE IN THE BURNT OFFERING. The burnt offering differed widely from
   the sin offering. The sin offering indicated Christ as bearing our sin,
   but the burnt offering sets Him forth as presenting an acceptable
   offering unto the Lord. God required of us perfect obedience. He
   demanded from us a pure and holy life--and the requirement was a just
   one--but among us all there is none righteous, no, not one. How, then,
   could we stand before the thrice Holy Lord?

   Beloved, Jesus stands in the gap! Before God, His Righteousness was
   perfect, acceptable and delightful. And for us it is presented. He is
   made of God unto us Righteousness. The burnt offering does not bring to
   light the remembrance of sin

   except so far as it reminds us that we were in need of a perfect
   Righteousness. It brings before us only the thought of Jesus offering
   Himself as a sweet savor unto God and making us accepted in the
   Beloved. The priests were to bring a ram without blemish. And when
   killed, before it was laid on the altar, its innards were to be washed,
   for otherwise the natural foulness of its body would prevent its being
   a fit type of that Savior who is pure within--in whom there is no taint
   of original sin.

   When this ram was brought, the priests were to lay their hands upon it,
   as much as to say, "We accept this ram, that it may represent us as
   acceptable before God." Oh, Beloved, lay your hands on Jesus, now, by
   faith, and say, "Jesus, I accept You as my Righteousness before the
   Lord, and believe that as God sees in You all that is delightful, and
   smells a sweet savor of rest, so He will be well-pleased with me for
   Your sake." This offering, when placed upon the altar, was wholly
   burnt. Not a fragment of it was put outside the camp, not a morsel of
   it was eaten by man--the whole ram was utterly consumed with fire, for
   it was a burnt offering unto the Lord.

   And thus, dear Friends, it is very delightful for us to see that God
   received Jesus, the whole of Jesus--there was nothing in Him to
   reject--and nothing that could be done without. He satisfied the Lord.
   He asked no more, He would have no less. Jesus has rendered to the
   Father all that He could desire from men and the Lord is well-pleased
   for His Righteousness' sake. A sense of acceptance is a very necessary
   thing to those who would worship God aright, for if you do not enjoy
   it, the legal spirit will begin to work to win acceptance by merit, and
   that will spoil it all. If men dream that they are to pray or preach
   their way to Heaven, or to do this and to do that, to be acceptable
   with God, they will offer strange fire on the Lord's altar and bring
   sacrifices with which He can never be pleased.

   He will call them vain oblations and frown on the offerer. How
   delightful it is to serve God with a sense that we are pleasant in the
   sight of God, for this fills us with gratitude, inspires us with zeal,
   creates boldness and fosters every Grace! With what joy will you stand
   to minister daily whatever your calling may be--whether it is as a
   mother in the family, a servant in the house, a minister in the
   pulpit--or a teacher in the class! You will not need driving like a
   slave to his toil, but like a dearly beloved child you will rejoice to
   please your Father in all things. Work in the prison of the Law under
   the lash of conscience is a very different thing from holy work in the
   sunlight of the Lord's Countenance and the liberty of full acceptance
   where one knows that he is not to be judged and condemned by the Law,
   but stands forever justified because of what Christ has done for him
   and serves his God with a holy alacrity unknown to others!

   VI. After the priests had seen for themselves the sin offering and the
   burnt offering, it was necessary that they should partake of a third
   sacrifice, which was a PEACE OFFERING. Another ram was brought as
   unblemished and vigorous as the former, for Jesus is never to be
   typified by anything but the best of its kind. We are told in the 19th
   verse that Aaron and his sons were to put their hands upon it, for,
   whatever view of the great sacrifice they might gaze upon, it was
   imperatively necessary that they should have a personal interest in it.
   Mere theory will never do--we must have personal acquaintance with the
   Lord--and we must have Him to be our own.

   So long as we have no part or lot in Jesus we are as much excluded from
   the service of the Lord as were the uncircumcised and the unclean. No
   man can run the heavenly race unless he is looking unto Jesus! He
   cannot be a soldier of the Lord unless he has Christ for his Captain.
   He cannot feed others until he has, himself, fed on Jesus. He cannot
   bring others to Jesus till he has come himself. "The husbandman that
   labors must first be partaker of the fruits." This is one of the laws
   of spiritual husbandry and cannot be set aside. Lay your hands upon the
   head of the Substitute before you venture to lay it upon the work of
   the Lord.

   When this was done, the peace offering was slain. A sin offering was a
   thing obnoxious to God and represented expiation made for sin. A burnt
   offering was a sweet savor unto God and it was all burned on the altar,
   all being for the Lord alone--thus representing the Lord Jesus as
   rendering to the Lord a complete obedience which magnified the Law and
   made it honorable. But the peace offering was shared between the Lord
   and the priest or offerer. The Lord's part was consumed with fire upon
   the altar and another portion was eaten by man in the holy place. The
   peace offering was thus an open declaration of the communion which had
   been established between God and man, so that they ate together,
   rejoicing in the same offering.

   Beloved Brothers and Sisters, when you have felt the sweets of seeing
   the Lord as a Sin Offering and then have tasted the high joys of
   acceptance as you have gazed upon Him as the Burnt Offering, satisfying
   Jehovah's heart, it is surpassingly delightful to behold the Lamb of
   God as our Peace Offering, making glad the heart of God and man--and

   bringing both, in bonds of friendship, to a common meeting place! The
   Eternal Father says, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am
   well-pleased." And we cry, "This is our beloved Lord, in which our
   inmost soul rejoices!" In the peace offering the communion between the
   priests and the Lord commenced outwardly by their being consecrated by
   the blood of the peace offering. Moses dipped his finger in the blood
   and smeared, first, the priest's right ear, then his thumb, and then
   his toe.

   As Matthew Henry says, as if they marked the boundaries and extremities
   of man's being to show that all that was enclosed within the crimson
   lines was consecrated unto the Lord. We go not too far when we add that
   it signified the dedication of each faculty. The ear was henceforth to
   hear God's commands, to listen to Divine teaching and to drink in
   Divine promises--no more to regard falsehood, sin and vice. The hand
   was henceforth to be engaged in the Divine service with diligence and
   intelligence, for the right hand was thus marked, and the thumb, the
   most useful part of it-- for holy work the hand must be reserved.

   The feet were to be equally holy. The priest, wherever he stood, or
   walked, or ran, was to be, "holiness unto the Lord." He had no right to
   go anywhere if that blood-marked foot would be out of place. The whole
   man was thus consecrated by the blood of the Everlasting Covenant--a
   solemn seal, indeed! Our personal share of the blood of Jesus has
   already done this for us! It has constrained us to yield unto God our
   whole manhood, spirit, soul and body. My Brother, you can never serve
   God as His priest unless you are wholly given up to God through the
   blood of Jesus! You must have this verse in your very soul and must
   masticate it, digest it, assimilate it into your nature--"You are not
   your own, you are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your
   bodies and your spirits, which are His." This surrender of yourself
   unto the Lord commences your communion with the Lord--the peace
   offering has begun.

   The next thing was to sprinkle the priests all over with a mixture of
   oil and blood. This is that anointing which I said we should see
   by-and-by. "You shall take of the blood that is upon the altar, and of
   the anointing oil, and sprinkle it upon Aaron, and upon his garments,
   and upon his sons, and upon the garments of his sons with him: and he
   shall be hallowed, and his garments, and his sons, and his sons'
   garments with him." Yes, Brethren, we need to know that double
   anointing--the blood of Jesus which cleanses--and the oil of the Holy
   Spirit which perfumes us. It is well to see how these two blend in one,
   Jesus and His Atonement, the Spirit and His sanctification--the world
   for us and the work in us.

   Read the third of John, and there you find, "You must be born again."
   But side by side with it you get, "Whoever believes in Him is not
   condemned." It is not so easy for the preacher to always give these two
   doctrines with equal clearness and distinctness. He is very apt, when
   he is preaching up simple faith and saying, "Only believe," to forget
   that equally important statement, "You must be born again." It is a
   terrible blunder to set the blood and the oil in opposition--they must
   always go together! Yet there are some who have even spoken
   depreciatingly of repentance, which is an essential part of the work of
   the Spirit of God. Their zeal for holding up the Righteousness of
   Christ by faith has driven them beyond the bounds of the Truth of God!

   Brothers, do not err in this matter, but abide in equal loyalty to
   these equally sure and important verities! If you would serve the Lord
   aright, you must have the blood and the oil sprinkled upon you, that is
   to say, you must know personally the influence of them both. What a
   strange sight these men in white garments must have presented,
   bespattered all over with blood and oil! Did that stain their garments?
   No, it adorned and perfumed them. Remember that saying, "They have
   washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." No
   purity is comparable to that which comes by the Spirit and by the
   atoning blood--in God's sight these priests thus stained were more
   beautiful, by far, than they had been before!

   Oh, my Soul, prize Jesus and His blood! Don't forget that you need the
   gifts and Graces of the Holy Spirit! Bless God for justification, but
   seek after sanctification! Praise Him for perfection in Christ Jesus
   and go on to obtain the perfect work of the Holy Spirit! We have a
   cleansing and we also have an unction from the Holy One. As our
   experience is, so let our teaching be, for the priests' garments taught
   the people. We are to go forth as priests and declare the virtue of the
   atoning Sacrifice--but we must also manifest the sanctifying power of
   the Holy Spirit in our daily lives.

   The next part of the ceremony was very singular. The priests had their
   hands filled. Certain parts of the ram were taken and "one loaf of
   bread, and one cake of oiled bread, and one wafer out of the basket of
   unleavened bread, which is before the Lord," and all these were put
   into the hands of Aaron and his sons, so that they stood with their
   hands full before the Lord. See the beauty of this and pray for a
   complete realization of it, yourself! The Lord intends to make you a

   priest, but your hands are full of sin. What have you to do? You must
   lay those guilty hands on the Sin Offering and make confession, and
   exercise faith--then the sin is gone, being transferred to Another, and
   your hands are empty.

   What next? Will the Lord leave you empty-handed? No, He gives you
   something to offer. He allows you a part of the Peace Offering to fill
   your hands with--and this you present before Him as a Wave Offering. It
   is a blessed thing to stand before God with your hands full of Christ!
   The service which consists in holding forth Jesus is most blessed. I
   love preaching when I have to preach only Jesus! Then I come before
   you, not empty-handed, but loaded with meat and bread for you. How idle
   it is for us to stand before God with nothing to offer! And if we have
   not Jesus we have nothing, or worse than nothing!

   We may also interpret the full hands of the priests as representing our
   being enriched with the Truth of God. I believe it used to be a
   ceremony in the English Church that, when the bishop ordained a
   minister, he always placed the Bible in his hands to set forth what he
   was expected to deal out to the people. When the Lord ordains His
   people to be priests unto Him, He puts the Bible into their hands and
   fills their heads and hearts with the Truths of God. When you have the
   Inspired Word in your hands, you have both meat for strong men and
   bread for children. You have all sorts of spiritual food for all sorts
   of persons--and you need not fear that they will turn away
   dissatisfied--they cannot need more to feed upon than the bread of
   God's altar and the flesh of God's Peace Offering.

   When their hands were full and they stood at the altar, it indicated
   the way in which they brought to the Lord all that they had. We cannot
   act as priests before God with empty hands. "None of you shall appear
   before Me empty," is His command. Has He given us wealth? Let us give
   without grudging, devising liberal things. Never neglect weekly storing
   and weekly offering--these are fit parts of Sunday worship. Have we
   time, talent, influence? Let us consecrate them all and come with those
   possessions which Jesus has lent us--and present them with the flesh of
   the Peace Offering and the sacred oil! Holding this in their hands, the
   priests had to wave their pleasant burden to and fro.

   I scarcely know why, except that you, who are God's priests, have not
   had your hands filled that you may stand still, but that you may move
   them to and fro in the earth--that east, west, north and south may know
   the benefit thereof-- and that your Brethren on either hand may commune
   with you in your ministering. Every now and then the priests stopped
   the horizontal motion and heaved or lifted up their offering, as if to
   say, "It is all for You, O Jehovah. We lift it up into the Presence of
   Your august Majesty, for it is Yours and we are about to lay it on Your
   altar." Believers, if you have had your hands filled by God, you must
   not be idle! Your fullness is meant for distribution to God's Glory.

   If the clouds are full of rain they empty themselves upon the earth. If
   the rivers are full of water, they run into the sea, and if God gives
   you a fullness, it is that you may communicate it to others and devote
   it to Himself. Jesus Christ breaks the bread, multiplies it and gives
   it to the disciples to divide among the multitude. Nary a man becomes
   empty-handed because he does not know the art of distribution. He has
   his hands full and cries out, "Where shall I bestow my goods? My hands
   are full and I would not keep it for myself and my family." My Brother,
   wave it among your neighbors! Lift it up to God in solemn consecration
   and then let it be laid upon God's altar, since for this purpose you
   were called to be a priest unto the Most High.

   Last of all there followed a very pleasant part of the matter--they sat
   down and feasted. God had received His part in the burning of the
   victim on the altar--and now Aaron and his sons were to "eat those
   things with which the atonement was made." You cannot serve God without
   strength. You cannot have strength except you eat, but you must be
   careful what you take into your soul, for according to what your food
   is will your strength be. The Lord would have His people fed daily upon
   Christ, and fed in the holy place where they serve. Christ is
   delightful to God and is delightful to you, so you must feed on Him in
   communion with God, in the place of holy fellowship. There is no
   sustenance for our inner nature anywhere but in Jesus, but, blessed be
   His name, no other sustenance can be desired, for He fills us to the
   full and gives us a strength which is equal to our day.

   I know some good people who are very busy, indeed, in the services of
   God. And I am very delighted that they should be, but I would caution
   them against working and never eating. They give up attending the means
   of Grace as hearers because they have so much to do as workers. That is
   very well--and some strong men may be able to do it safely--but I do
   not think many of us can afford to do without the regular hearing of
   the Word of God. Whatever may be our zeal to work like Martha, we must
   also sit at Jesus' feet like Mary, or we shall become "numbered with
   much serving." The priest is to offer sacrifice, but he must have time,
   also, to feed on the portion allotted to him.

   How sweet it is to enjoy the food of God, the flesh of Jesus, the bread
   of Heaven! Aaron and his sons had the breast and the shoulder for their
   part--the love of Christ's heart and the power of Christ's arm. I am
   thankful, as one of God's priests, to have the shoulder and breast, for
   power and love are necessary for my comfort and support. Eli's vile
   sons were apt to drive a three-pronged hook into the cauldron and bring
   up what they thought the choicer portions--but my soul is more than
   content with what the rules of the house allot me--in fact, these are
   the best parts of the sacrifice!

   In closing, I would call the attention of Believers, for a moment, to
   the fact that Aaron and his sons received this consecration for life.
   You will find in the 9th verse, the words, "The priests' office shall
   be theirs for a perpetual statute." "Once a priest, always a priest,"
   is the rule in the priesthood to which we belong! We abide in Christ
   and we also have an anointing which abides in us, for we have been
   sealed with "that Holy Spirit of promise." Do not act, at any time, as
   if you were not priests. If you profess to be the Lord's, do not lie
   about it, let it be truly so--and that every day, and all the day, and
   in all things--for He has made us kings and priests unto God forever.
   Do not, I beseech you, dishonor your sacred character.

   I shall ask two questions in closing. Do you and I offer sacrifice
   continually? Unto this we are called, according to the Apostle, that we
   should offer the sacrifice of prayer and praise continually. To Him the
   cherubim continually cry "Holy, holy, holy." Do we, every day, feel
   that our whole being is "Holiness unto the Lord"? In the workshop, in
   the home, at the fireside, in the field as well as in the Prayer
   Meeting the vows of God are upon us. We are a separated people and
   belong unto God alone. O see you to this! What have you, now, to offer?
   Have you brought an offering? What will you render unto God for all His
   benefits towards you? Is there nothing to be done for Christ this
   afternoon? No sick one to be visited, no poor child to be instructed,
   no backslider to be reclaimed? Shall a single hour go by without a
   sacrifice?

   I charge you, Brothers and Sisters, continually bring of your
   substance, continually bring of your talent, continually bring of your
   influence! If God is God, and if you are His priests, serve Him! If you
   are not His ordained ones, then you live unto yourselves and it will be
   well to know it! Anything is better than to be hypocrites! But if you
   are true men and women, I beseech you, by the mercies of God, present
   your bodies, your souls, your spirits unto God, which is but a
   reasonable service. When you have once and for all made the
   consecration, may God grant you Divine Grace continually to stand to
   it, and He shall have the Glory, forever and ever. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Exodus29:1-37. HYMNS FROM "OUR
   OWN HYMN BOOK"--411, 663, 878.
     __________________________________________________________________

The Reception of Sinners

   (No. 1204)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 22, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and
   put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And
   bring here the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat and be merry."
   Luke 15:22,23.

   LAST Lord's-Day we spoke upon the consecration of priests. That theme
   might seem too high for troubled hearts and trembling consciences who
   fear that they shall never be made priests and kings unto God. So
   glorious a privilege appears to them to hang in the dim, distant
   future, if, indeed, they reach it at all. Therefore, at this time, we
   will go down from the elevated regions to comfort those who are seeking
   the Lord--with the view of helping them, in their turn, to climb, also!

   We speak this morning, not of the consecration of priests, but of the
   reception of sinners, and this, according to our text, is a very joyful
   business. It is even described as a merrymaking, accompanied with music
   and with dancing. We, very frequently, speak of the sorrow for sin
   which accompanies conversion, and I do not think we can speak of it too
   often. But yet there is a possibility of our overlooking the equally
   holy and remarkable joy which attends the return of a soul to God. It
   has been a very common error to suppose that a man must pass through a
   very considerable time of despondency, if not of horror of mind, before
   he can find peace with God.

   But in this parable the father seems determined to cut short that
   period. He stops his son in the very middle of his confession and,
   before he can ask to be made as one of the hired servants, his mournful
   style is changed to rejoicing, for the father has already fallen on his
   neck and kissed his trembling lips into a sweet silence! It is not the
   Lord's desire that sinners should tarry long in the state of
   unbelieving conviction of sin. It is something wrong in themselves
   which keeps them there--either they are ignorant of the freeness and
   fullness of Christ, they harbor self-righteous hopes--or they cling to
   their sins. Sin lies at the door but it is no work of God which blocks
   the way. He delights in their delight and joys in their joy!

   It is the Father's will that the penitent sinner should at once believe
   in Jesus, at once find complete forgiveness and enter into rest. If any
   of you came to Jesus without the dreary interval of terror which is so
   frequent, I pray you do not judge yourselves as though your conversions
   were dubious--they are all the more, instead of all the less, genuine,
   because they bear, rather, the marks of the Gospel than of the Law! The
   weeping of Peter, which in a few days turns to joy, is far better than
   the horror of Judas which ends in suicide! Conversions, as recorded in
   Scripture, are, for the most part, exceedingly rapid.

   They were pricked in the heart at Pentecost and the same day baptized
   and added to the Church because they had found peace with God through
   Jesus Christ! Paul was struck down with conviction and in three days
   was a baptized Believer! Perhaps the figure is inapt, but I was about
   to say that sometimes God's power is so very near us that the lightning
   flash of conviction is often attended at the very same moment by the
   deep thunder of the Lord's voice which drives away our fears and
   proclaims peace and pardon to the soul! In many cases the sharp needle
   of the Law is immediately followed by the silken thread of the
   Gospel--the showers of repentance are succeeded at once by the sunshine
   of faith--Peace overtakes Penitence and walks arm in arm with her into
   yet fuller rest!

   Having thus reminded you that God would have penitents very soon
   rejoice, I want to spend this morning in setting forth the joy which is
   caused by pardoned sin. That joy is threefold. We will talk about it,
   first, as the joy of God over sinners. Secondly, the joy of sinners in
   God. And, thirdly, what is so often forgotten--the joy of the
   servants--for they, too, rejoiced, for the father said, "Let us eat and
   be merry." One of the points of the parable is just this, that as in
   the case of the lost sheep the shepherd calls together his friends and
   neighbors, and as in the case of the piece of money the

   woman calls her neighbors together, so in this case, also, others share
   in the joy which chiefly belongs to the loving father and the returning
   wanderer.

   I. THE JOY OF GOD OVER SINNERS. It is always difficult to speak of the
   ever-blessed God becomingly when we have to describe Him as touched by
   emotions. I pray, therefore, to be guided in my speech by the Holy
   Spirit. We have been educated to the idea that the Lord is above
   emotions, either of sorrow or pleasure. That He cannot suffer, for
   instance, is always laid down as a self-evident postulate. Is that
   quite clear? Cannot He do or bear anything He chooses to do? What does
   the Scripture mean which says that man's sin, before the flood, made
   the Lord repent that He had made man on the earth, "and it grieved Him
   at His heart"?

   Is there no meaning in the lord's own language, "Forty years long was I
   grieved with this generation"? Are we not forbidden to grieve the Holy
   Spirit? Is He not described as having been vexed by ungodly men?
   Surely, then, He can be grieved--it cannot be an altogether meaningless
   expression. For my part, I rejoice to worship the living God, who,
   because He is living, dose grieve and rejoice! It makes one feel more
   love to Him than if He dwelt on some serene Olympus, careless of all
   our woes because incapable of any concern about us, or interest in us,
   one way or the other. To look upon Him as utterly impassive and
   incapable of anything like emotion does not, in my mind, exalt the
   Lord, but rather brings Him down to be comparable to the gods of stone
   or wood which cannot sympathize with their worshippers.

   No, Jehovah is not insensible! He is the living God and everything that
   goes with life--pure, perfect, holy life--is to be found in Him. Yet
   must such a subject always be spoken of very tenderly, with solemn awe,
   because, albeit we know something of what God is, for we are made in
   the image of God and the best likeness of God undoubtedly was man as he
   came from his Maker's hand, yet man is not God and, even in his
   perfectness, he must have been but a very tiny miniature of God! While
   now that he has sinned he has blotted and blurred that image.

   The finite cannot fully mirror the Infinite, nor can the grand,
   glorious, essential properties of Deity be communicated to
   creatures--they must remain peculiar to God, alone. The Lord is,
   however, continually represented as displaying joy. Moses declared to
   sinful Israel that if they returned and obeyed the voice of the Lord,
   the Lord would again rejoice over them for good as He rejoiced over
   their fathers (Deut. 30:9). The Lord is said to rejoice in His works
   and to delight in mercy--and surely we must believe it! Why should we
   doubt it? Many passages of Scripture speak very impressively of God's
   joy in His people.

   Zephaniah puts it in the strongest manner: "He will save, He will
   rejoice over you with joy, He will rest in His love, He will joy over
   you with singing." Our God is forever the happy or blessed God. We
   cannot think of Him as other than supremely blessed. Still, from the
   Scriptures we gather that He displays, on certain occasions, a special
   joy which He would have us recognize. I do not think that it can be
   mere parable, but it is real fact, that the Lord does rejoice over
   returning and repenting sinners. Every being manifests its joy
   according to its nature and seeks means for its display suitable to
   itself. It is so with men.

   When the old Romans celebrated a triumph because some great general
   returned a victor from Africa, Greece, or Asia with the spoils of a
   long campaign, how did the fierce Roman nature express its joy? Why, in
   the Coliseum, or in some yet more vast amphitheatre where buzzing
   nations choked the ways! They gathered in their myriads to behold not
   only beasts, but their fellow men, "butchered to make a Roman holiday."
   Cruelty upon an extraordinary scale was their way of expressing the joy
   of their iron hearts. Look at the self-indulgent man! He has had a
   prosperous season and has made a lucky hit, as he calls it, or some
   event has occurred in his family which makes him very jubilant. What
   will he do to show forth his joy? Will he bow the knee in gratitude, or
   lift a hymn of praise? Not he! He will hold a drinking bout and, when
   he and his fellows are mad with wine, his joy will find expression! The
   sensual show their joy by sensuality.

   Now, God whose name is Good, and whose Nature is Love--when He has
   joy--expresses it in mercy, in lovingkindness and Grace. The father's
   joy in the parable before us showed itself in the full forgiveness
   accorded in the kiss of perfect love bestowed, in the gift of the best
   robe, the ring, the sandals and in the gladsome festival which filled
   the whole house with hallowed mirth! Everything expresses its joy
   according to its nature. Infinite Love, therefore, reveals its joy in
   acts of love. The Nature of God--being as much above ours as the Heaven
   is above the earth--the expression of His joy is, therefore, all the
   loftier and His gifts the greater. But there is a likeness between
   God's way of expressing joy and ours which it will be profitable to
   note.

   How do we express ourselves, ordinarily, when we are glad? We do so
   very commonly by a display of bounty. When, in the olden times, our
   kings came into the city of London, or a great victory was
   celebrated--the conduit in Cheapside ran with red wine and even the
   gutters flowed with it! Then there were tables set in the street and My
   Lords, and the aldermen, and the mayor kept open house and everybody
   was fed to the full. Joy was expressed by hospitality. You have seen
   the picture of the young heir coming of age and have noticed how the
   artist depicts the great yard of the manor as full of men and women who
   are eating and drinking to their hearts' content.

   At Christmas seasons and upon marriage days and harvest homes, men
   ordinarily express their joy by bountiful provision. So also does the
   father, in this wondrous parable, exhibit the utmost bounty,
   representing, thereby, the boundless liberality of the great Father of
   spirits who shows His joy over penitents by the manner in which He
   entertains them. The best robe, the ring, the shoes, the fatted calf
   and the, "Let us eat and be merry," all show, by their bountifulness,
   that God is glad! His oxen and His fatlings are killed, for the feast
   of Mercy is the banquet of the Lord! So unrivalled are the gifts of His
   gracious hand that the receivers of His favors have cried out in
   amazement, "Who is a God like unto You!"

   Beloved, consider, awhile, the Lord's bounty to returning sinners,
   blotting out their sins like a cloud and like a thick cloud their
   iniquities--justifying them in the Righteousness of Christ, endowing
   them with His Holy Spirit, regenerating them, comforting them,
   illuminating them, purifying them, strengthening them, guiding them,
   protecting them, filling them with all His own fullness, satisfying
   their mouth with good things--and crowning them with tender mercies. I
   see, in the bounty of God with which He so liberally endows returning
   sinners, a mighty proof that His inmost soul rejoices over the
   salvation of men!

   At glad times men generally manifest some specialty in their bounty. On
   the day of the young heir's coming of age the long-stored cask of wine
   is broached and the best bullock is roasted whole. So here in the
   parable we read, "Bring forth the best robe," indicating that it had
   been laid by and kept in store until then. Nobody had used that robe.
   It was locked up in the wardrobe, only to be brought out on some very
   special occasion. This was the happiest day that ever had made glad the
   house and, therefore, "Bring forth the best robe." No other will
   suffice! If meat is needed for the banquet, let a calf be killed. Which
   shall it be? A calf taken at random from the herd? No, but the fatted
   calf which has been standing in the stalls and is well fed--and has
   been reserved for a festival!

   Oh, Beloved, when God blesses a sinner He shows His joy by giving him
   the reserved mercies, the special treasures of everlasting love, the
   precious things of Divine Grace, the secret of the Covenant--yes, He
   has given to sinners the best of the best in giving them Christ Jesus
   and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit! The best that Heaven affords,
   God bestows on sinners when they come to Him. No scraps and odds and
   ends are dealt out to hungry and thirsty seekers, but in princely
   munificence of unstinting love the heavenly Father deals out abundant
   Grace! I would that sinners would come and try my Lord's hospitality!
   They would find His table to be more richly loaded than even that of
   Solomon, though 30 oxen and a hundred sheep did not suffice for one
   day's provision for the household of that magnificent sovereign!

   If they would but come, even the largest-hearted among them would be
   wonder-struck as they saw how richly God supplied all their needs
   according to His riches in Glory by Christ Jesus--

   "Rags exchanged for costly treasure Shoe and ring and Hea ven's best
   robe! Gifts of love, which knows no measure; Who can tell the heart of
   God? All His loved ones His redeemed ones, Perfect are in His abode."

   We also shower our joy by a concentration of thought upon the object of
   it. When a man is carried away with joy, he forgets everything else and
   gives himself up to the one delight. David was so glad to bring back
   the Ark of the Lord that he danced before the Lord with all his might,
   being clad only with a linen ephod. He laid aside his stately garments
   and thought so little of his dignity that Michal sneered at him. He was
   so much absorbed in adoring his Lord that all regard to appearances was
   quite gone.

   Observe well the parable and listen, as you hear the father say, "Bring
   forth the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and
   shoes on his feet, and let us eat and be merry, for this, my son, was
   dead and is alive again." The son, alone, is in the father's eyes and
   the whole house must be ordered in reference to him. Nothing is to be
   thought of

   today but the long-lost son! He is paramount in the wardrobe, the jewel
   room, the farmyard, the kitchen and the banqueting chamber. He that was
   lost--that was dead--he, being found and alive, engrosses the whole of
   the father's mind!

   Sinner, it is wonderful how God sets all His thoughts on you according
   to His promise, "I will set My eyes upon them for good," (Jer. 24:6).
   And again, "I will watch over them to build and to plant says the
   Lord." The Lord thinks upon the poor and needy! His eyes are upon them
   and His ears are open to their cry! He thinks as much of each penitent
   sinner as if he were the only being in the universe! O Penitent, for
   you is the working of the Lord's Providence to bring you home! For you
   the training of His ministers that they might know how to reach your
   heart! For you the gifts of the Spirit upon them that they might be
   powerful with your conscience! Yes, for you His Son, His eternal Son,
   once bleeding on the Cross, and now sitting in the highest heavens
   making intercession for you!

   I saw, in Amsterdam, the diamond cutting, and I noticed great wheels, a
   large factory and powerful engines--and all the power was made to bear
   upon a small stone no larger than the nail of my little finger. All
   that huge machinery for that little stone, because it was so precious!
   I think I see you, poor insignificant sinners, who have rebelled
   against your God, brought back to your Father's house--and now the
   whole universe is full of wheels and all those wheels are working
   together for your good--to make out of you a jewel fit to glisten in
   the Redeemer's crown! God is not represented as saying more of Creation
   than, "it was very good." But in the work of Grace He is described as
   singing for joy! He breaks the eternal silence and cries, "My son is
   found!"

   As the philosopher, when he had compelled Nature to yield her secret,
   ran through the street crying, "Eureka! Eureka! I have found it! I have
   found it!" so does the Father dwell on the word, "My son that was dead,
   is alive again, he that was lost is found." The whole of Scripture aims
   at the bringing back, again, of the Lord's banished! For this the
   Redeemer leaves His Glory! For this the Church sweeps her house and
   lights her candle--and when the work is done, all other bliss is
   secondary to the surpassing joy of the Lord, of which He bids His
   ransomed ones partake, saying--"Enter you into the joy of your Lord."

   We also show our joy by an alacrity of motion. I quoted David just now.
   It was so with him. He danced before the ark. I cannot imagine David
   walking slowly before the ark, or creeping after it like a mourner at a
   funeral. I often notice the difference between your coming to this
   place and people going to other places of worship. I remark a very
   solemn, stately and somber motion in almost everybody else--but you
   come tripping along as if you were glad to go up to the House of the
   Lord! You do not regard the place of our joyous assemblies as a sort of
   religious prison, but as the palace and banqueting house of the great
   King!

   When anyone is joyous, he is sure to show it by the quickness of his
   motions. Listen to the father--he says, "Bring forth the best robe and
   put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, and
   bring here the fatted calf, and let us eat and be merry." As quickly as
   possible he pours out sentence after sentence. There is no delay--no
   interval between the commands. Might he not have said, "Bring forth the
   best robe and put it on him, and let us look at him awhile, and sit
   down and prepare him for the next step. And in an hour's time, or
   tomorrow, we will put a ring on his hand. And then, soon, we will put
   shoes on his feet--he is best without shoes for the present--for
   perhaps if he has shoes on, he will run away. As to the festival,
   perhaps we had better rejoice over him when we see whether his
   repentance is genuine." No, no, no! The father's heart is too glad! He
   must bless his boy at once, heap on his favors and multiply his tokens
   of love!

   When the Lord receives a sinner, He runs to meet him. He falls on his
   neck. He kisses him. He speaks to him. He forgives him! He justifies
   him! He sanctifies him! He puts him among the children. He opens the
   treasures of His Grace to him--and all in quick succession. Within a
   few minutes after he has been cleansed from sin, the prodigal is robed
   and adorned, and shod for service! The love of our Redeemer's heart
   made Him say to the poor thief, "Today shall you be with Me in
   Paradise." He would not let him linger in pain on the cross, but
   carried him away to Paradise in an hour or two. Love and joy are ever
   quick of foot. God is slow to anger, but He is so plenteous in His
   mercy that His Grace overflows and rushes on like a torrent when it
   leaps along the ravine.

   Once more, the joy of the father was shown, as it often is, by open
   utterance. It is hard for a glad man to hold his tongue! What can dumb
   people do when they are very happy? I cannot imagine how they endure
   silence at such times. It must then be a terrible misfortune. When you
   are very happy you must tell somebody! So does this father. He pours
   out

   his joy and the utterance is very simple. "My son was dead, and is
   alive again, was lost, and is found." Yet, simple as it is, it is
   poetry. The poetry of the Hebrews consisted in parallelism, or a
   repetition of the sense or a part of the words. Here are two lines
   which pair with each other and make a verse of Hebrew poetry. Glad men,
   when they speak naturally and simply, always say the right thing in the
   very best manner, using Nature's poetry, as does the father here.

   Note, also, that there is reiteration in his utterance. He might have
   been satisfied to say, "This, my son, was dead and is alive again." No,
   the fact is so sweet he must repeat it, "He was lost, and is found."
   Even thus we speak when we are very full of sweet content. The heart
   bubbles up with a good matter and over and over again we rehearse our
   joy. When the morsel is sweet, we roll it under the tongue. We cannot
   help it! So the Lord rejoices over sinners and tells His joy in Holy
   Scripture in varied phrases and metaphors. And though those Scriptures
   are simple in their style, yet they contain the very essence of poetry.

   The bards of the Bible stand in the first rank among the sons of song!
   God Himself deigned to use poetry to utter His joy because a more
   prosaic manner would be all too cold and tame. Hear how He puts it--"As
   the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over
   you." "I will rejoice in Jerusalem and joy in My people." We might have
   been left in the dark about this joy of God. We might have been coldly
   informed that God would save sinners and we might never have known that
   He found such joy in it--but the Divine Joy was too great to be
   concealed! The great heart of God could not restrain itself--He must
   tell to all the universe the delight which the exercise of mercy
   brought to Him! It was meet that He should make merry and be glad and,
   therefore, He did it, for nothing that is meet to be done will ever be
   neglected by the Lord our God!

   Thus, dear Friends, have I feebly spoken of the joy of God. And I want
   you to notice that it is a delight in which every attribute of God
   takes a share. Condescension ran to meet the son. Love fell on his
   neck. Grace kissed him. Wisdom clothed him. Truth gave him the ring.
   Peace shod him. Wisdom provided the feast and Power prepared it. No one
   attribute of the Divine Nature quarrels with the forgiveness and
   salvation of a sinner! Not one attribute holds back from the beloved
   employ. Power strengthens the weak and Mercy binds up the wounded.
   Justice smiles upon the justified sinner, for it is satisfied through
   the atoning blood. Truth puts forth her hand to guarantee that the
   promise of Grace is

   fulfilled.

   Immutability confirms what has been done and Omniscience looks around
   to see that nothing is left undone. The whole of Deity is brought to
   bear upon a poor worm of the dust, to lift it up and transform it into
   an heir of God, joint-heir with the Only Begotten! The joy of God
   occupies the whole of being, so that when we think of it we may well
   say, "Bless the Lord, O my Soul, and all that is within me, bless His
   holy name," since all that is within Him is engaged to bless His
   saints! This joy of the Lord should give every sinner great confidence
   in coming to God by Jesus Christ, for if you would be glad to be saved,
   He will be glad to save you!

   If you long to lay your head in your Father's bosom, your Father's
   bosom longs to have it there! If you pant to say, "I have sinned," He
   equally longs to say to you, by acts of love, "I forgive you freely."
   If you pine to be His child in His own house once more, the door is
   open and He, Himself, is on the watch! Come and welcome! Come and
   welcome! No more delay!

   II. I have now to speak of THE JOY OF THE SINNER. The son was glad. He
   did not express it in words, as far as I can see in the parable, but he
   felt it, none the less. Sometimes silence is discreet and it was so in
   this case. At other times it is absolutely forced upon you by inability
   to utter the emotion--this was also true of the prodigal. The son's
   heart was too full for utterance in words, but he had speaking eyes and
   a speaking countenance as he looked on that dear father. As he put on
   the robe, the ring and the shoes, he must have been too astonished to
   speak. He wept in showers that day, but the tears were not salted with
   grief--they were sweet tears, glittering like the dew of the morning.

   What do you think would make the son glad? Why, the father's love, the
   father's forgiveness--and restoration to his old place in the father's
   heart! That was the point. But then, each gift would serve as a token
   of that love and make the joy overflow. There was the robe put on--the
   dress of a son, and of a son well-beloved and accepted. Have you
   noticed how the robe answered to his confession? The sentences match
   each other thus--"Father, I have sinned."--"Bring forth the best robe
   and put it on him." Cover all his sins with Christ's Righteousness! Put
   away his sin by imputing to him the Righteousness of the Lord Jesus.

   The robe also met his condition. He was in rags, therefore, "Bring
   forth the best robe and put it on him," and you shall see no more of
   his rags. It was fit that he should be thus arrayed, in token of his
   restoration. He who is re-endowed with the privileges of a son should
   not be dressed in sordid clothes, but wear raiment suitable to his
   station. Moreover, as a festival was about to begin, he ought to wear a
   festive garment. It would not be seemly for him to feast and be merry
   in his rags. Put the best robe on him that he may be ready to take his
   place at the banquet. So, when the penitent comes to God, he is not
   only covered, as to the past, by the Righteousness of Christ, but he is
   prepared for the future blessedness which is reserved for the pardoned
   ones. Yes, he is fitted to begin the rejoicing at once!

   Then came the ring, a luxury rather than a necessity, except that now
   he was a son, it was well that he should be restored to all the honors
   of his relationship. The signet ring in the east, in former times,
   conferred great privileges--in those days men did not sign their names,
   but stamped with their signet, so that the ring gave a man power over
   property and made him a sort of other self to the man whose ring he
   wore. The father gives the son a ring, and how complete an answer was
   that gift to another clause of his confession. Let me read the two
   sentences together, "I am no more worthy to be called your son." "Put a
   ring on his hand." The gift precisely meets the confession!

   It also tallied with his change. How singular that the very hand which
   had been feeding swine should now wear a ring. I guarantee you there
   were no rings on his hands when they were soiled at the trough! But now
   he is a swine-feeder no longer! He is now an honored son of a rich
   father. Slaves wear no rings. Juvenal laughed at certain freed men
   because they were seen walking up and down the Via Sacra with
   conspicuous rings on their fingers, the emblems of their newfound
   liberty. The ring indicated the penitent's liberty from sin and his
   enjoyment of the full privileges of his father's house.

   O Beloved, the Lord will make you glad if you come to Him, by putting
   the seal of the Holy Spirit's indwelling upon you--which is both the
   earnest of the inheritance and the best adornment of the hand of your
   practical character! You shall have a sure and honorable token and
   shall know that all things are yours, whether things present, or things
   to come. This ring upon your finger will declare your marriage union to
   Christ, set forth the eternal love which the Father has fixed upon you,
   and be the abiding pledge of the perfect work of the Holy Spirit!

   Then they put shoes on his feet. I suppose he had worn out his own. In
   the East servants do not usually wear shoes at home, and especially in
   the best rooms of the house. The master and the son wear the sandals,
   but not the servants, so that this order was an answer to the last part
   of the penitent's prayer, "Make me as one of your hired servants."
   "No," says the father, "put shoes on his feet." In the forgiven sinner,
   the awe which puts off its shoes is to be overmatched by the
   familiarity which wears the shoes which infinite love provides. The
   forgiven one is no longer to tremble at Sinai, but he is to come unto
   Mount Zion--and to have familiar union and communion with God! Thus,
   also, the restored one was shod for filial service--he could run upon
   his father's errands, or work in his father's fields. He had now, in
   every way, all that he could need--the robe that covered him, the ring
   that adorned him--and the shoes that prepared him for travel or labor.

   Now you awakened and anxious ones who are longing to draw near to God,
   I would that this description of the joy of the prodigal would induce
   you to come at once! Come, you naked, and He will say, "Bring forth the
   best robe!" Come, you that see your natural deformity through sin, and
   He will adorn you with a ring of beauty! Come, you who feel as if you
   could not come, for you have bleeding, weary feet, and He will shoe you
   with the silver sandals of His Divine Grace! Only come and you shall
   have such joy in your hearts as you have never dreamed of! There shall
   be a young Heaven born within your spirit which shall grow and increase
   until it comes to the fullness of bliss.

   III. The time has now come for us to dwell upon THE JOY OF THE
   SERVANTS. They were to be merry and they were merry, for the music and
   the dancing which were heard outside could not have proceeded from one
   person only! There must have been many to join in it and who should
   these be but the servants to whom the father gave his commands? They
   ate, they drank, they danced, they joined in the music!

   There are many of us, here, who are the servants of our own heavenly
   Father. Though we are His children, we delight to be His servants. Now,
   whenever a sinner is saved, we have our share of joy. We have joy,
   first, in the Father's joy. They were so glad because their lord was
   glad--good servants are always pleased when they see that their master
   is greatly gratified. And I am sure the Lord's servants are always
   joyous when they feel that their Lord is well-pleased. That

   servant who went out to the elder brother, showed, by his language that
   he was in sympathy with the father, for he pleaded with the son upon
   the matter.

   And when you are in sympathy with God, my dear Brother or Sister, if
   the Lord lets you see poor sinners saved, you must and will rejoice
   with Him! It will be to you better than finding a purse full of money,
   or making a great gain in business! Yes, nothing in the world can give
   you more delight than to see some brother of yours or some child of
   yours made to rejoice in Christ! A mother once beautifully said, "I
   remember the new and strange emotions which trembled in my breast when,
   as an infant, he was first molded to my heart--my first-born child. The
   thrill of that moment still lingers--but when he was 'born again,'
   clasped in my arms a 'new creature in Christ Jesus,' my spiritual
   child, my son in the Gospel, pardoned, justified, adopted, saved,
   forever saved! Oh! It was the very depth of joy! Joy unspeakable! My
   child was a child of God! The prayers which preceded his birth, which
   cradled his infancy, which girdled his youth were answered! My son was
   Christ's! The weary watching, the yearning desires, the trembling hopes
   of years were at rest! Our first-born son was avowedly the Lord's."

   May every father and mother here know just such joy by having sympathy
   with God. But they had sympathy with the son. I am sure they rejoiced
   to see him back again, for somehow, usually even bad sons have the
   goodwill of good servants. When young men go away and are a great grief
   to their fathers, the servants often stick to them. They will say,
   "Well, Master John was very inconsiderate and he vexed his father a
   great deal, but I should like to see the poor boy back again."
   Especially is this true of the old servants who have been in the house
   since the boy was born--they never forget him. And you will find that
   God's old servants are always glad when they see prodigal children
   return! They are delighted beyond measure, because they love them,
   notwithstanding their wanderings.

   Sinner, with all your faults and hardness of heart, we do love you and
   we should be glad, for your sake, to see you delivered from eternal
   ruin and from the wrath of God, which now abides on you, and brought to
   rejoice in pardoned sin and acceptance in the Beloved! We would rejoice
   for the sinner's sake, but I think the servants rejoiced most of all
   when they were the instruments in the father's hand of blessing the
   son. Just look at this. The father said to the servants, "Bring forth
   the best robe." He might have gone to the wardrobe, himself, with a
   key, and opened it, and brought out the robe himself. But he gave them
   the pleasure of doing it.

   When I get my orders from my Lord and Master on the Lord's-Day morning
   to bring forth the best robe, I am delighted, indeed! Nothing delights
   me more than to preach the Imputed Righteousness of Jesus Christ and
   the substitutionary sacrifice of our exalted Redeemer! "Bring forth the
   best robe." Why, my Master, I might be content to keep out of Heaven if
   You would always give me this work to do--to bring forth the best robe
   and extol and exalt Jesus Christ in the eyes of the people!

   Then he said, "Put it on him." When our Lord gives us Divine Grace to
   do that, there is still more joy! How many times I have brought forth
   the best robe, but could not put it on you! I have held it up and
   expatiated on its excellencies--and pointed to your rags and said what
   a delightful thing it would be if I could put it on you--but I could
   not. But when the heavenly Father, by His Divine Grace and the power of
   the Spirit, makes us the means of bringing these treasures into the
   possession of poor sinners, oh, what joy! I should rejoice to bring
   forth the ring of the Spirit's sealing work and the shoes of the
   preparation of the Gospel of Peace, for it is a joy to exhibit these
   blessings and a greater joy, still, to put them upon the poor,
   returning wanderer!

   God be thanked for giving His servants so great a pleasure! I would not
   have dared to describe the Lord's servants as putting on the robe, the
   ring and the shoes--but as He has, Himself, done so, I am rejoiced to
   use the Holy Spirit's own language! How sweet was the command, "Put it
   on him." Yes, put it on the poor trembling, ragged, shivering sinner!
   "Put it on him," even on him, though he can hardly believe such mercy
   to be possible. "Put it on him?" Yes, on him. He who was a drunk, a
   swearer, an adulterer? Yes, put it on him, for he repents! What joy it
   is when we are enabled, by God's commission, to throw that glorious
   mantle over a great sinner! As for the ring, put it on him! That is the
   beauty of it. And the shoes, put them on him. That they are for him is
   the essence of our joy--that such a sinner, and especially when he is
   one of our own household--should receive these gifts of Divine Grace is
   wonderful!

   It was most kind of the father to divide the labor of love. One would
   put on the robe, another the ring and a third the shoes. Some of my
   Brothers can gloriously preach Jesus Christ in His Righteousness and
   they put on the best robe. Others seem most gifted in dwelling upon the
   work of the Spirit of God, and they put on the ring. While yet another
   class

   are practical Divines, and they put on the shoes. I do not mind which I
   have to do, if I may but have a part in helping to bring to poor
   sinners those matchless gifts of Grace which, at infinite expense, the
   Lord has prepared for those who come back to Him!

   How glad those were who helped to dress him, I cannot tell. Meanwhile,
   another servant was gone off out of doors to bring in the fatted calf
   and perhaps two or three were engaged in killing and dressing it, while
   another was lighting a fire in the kitchen and preparing the spits for
   the roast. One laid the table and another ran to the garden to bring
   flowers to make wreaths for the room--I know I should have done that if
   I had been there. All were happy! All ready to join in the music and
   dancing. Those who work for the good of sinners are always the most
   glad when they are saved! You who pray for them, you who teach them,
   you who preach to them, you who win them for Christ--you shall share in
   their merriment!

   Now, dear Brothers and Sisters, we are told that they "began to be
   merry," and according to the description it would seem that they were
   merry, indeed, but still they only "began." I see no intimation that
   they ever left off. "They began to be merry," and as merriment is apt
   to grow beyond all bounds when it once starts, who knows what they have
   come to by this time? The saints begin to be merry now and they will
   never cease, but rejoice evermore. On earth all the joy we have is only
   beginning to be merry--it is up in Heaven that we get into full swing!
   Here our best delight is hardly better than a near tide at its ebb.
   There the joy rolls along in the majesty of a full spring tide--

   "Oh what rapturous hallelujahs

   In our Father's home above!

   Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

   O'er the embraces of His love!

   Wondrous welcome--

   God's own welcome,

   May the chief of sinners pro ve.

   Sweet melodious strains ascending,

   All around a mighty flood;

   Servants, friends, with joy attending--

   Oh! the happiness of God!

   Grace abounding, all transcending,

   Through a Sa vior's precious blood." Let us begin to be merry this
   morning! But we cannot unless we are laboring for the salvation of
   others in all ways possible to us. If we have done and are doing that,
   let us praise and bless the Lord and rejoice with the reclaimed ones.
   And let us keep the feast as Jesus would have it kept, for I hope there
   is no one here of the elder brethren who will be angry and refuse to go
   in. Let us continue to be merry, as long as we live, because the lost
   are found and the dead are made alive! God grant you to be merry, on
   this account, world without end. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Luke 15:11-32. HYMNS FROM "OUR
   OWN HYMN BOOK"--548, 1002, 1004.
     __________________________________________________________________

All For Jesus!

   (No. 1205)

   A SERMON DELIVERED OF LORD'S-DAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 29, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "You serve the Lord Christ." Colossians 3:24.

   The Gospel does not merely supply us with directions for holy living
   but furnishes us with reasons for obedience and tells us where to find
   the power to obey. Hence in the commencement of this chapter, before
   the Apostle comes to any practical exhortation, he reminds us of our
   position and privileges. He bids us remember who and what we are as
   Believers in Christ, that we may act accordingly. We are risen with
   Christ and, therefore, our affection should not be set on earthly
   things. We are dead to the world and, therefore, we must not, cannot
   live in sin. Christ is our life and, therefore, we must walk after His
   example.

   The Apostle knew right well that the conditions of Believers here below
   are various and, therefore, he laid down distinct precepts for each
   position. Some are masters and others servants. Some parents and others
   children--and in each case the requirements differ. But while he suited
   the exhortation to each one, he proposed a common motive for all. He
   reminded all Believers, whether wives or husbands, children or fathers,
   servants or masters, that there is another and a better life which
   rewards are worthy of our ambition, which service should engross all
   our strength. He bade them have respect to that higher life, for they
   had been representatively lifted up into the highest Heaven in the
   Person of Jesus Christ and with Him their hearts and desires should
   always be.

   He bade them live the life of Heaven here below and order their
   footsteps, not in accordance with the fleeting things of time, but the
   enduring realities of eternity. He knew that in so doing, the
   inconveniences of the present would be forgotten in the glories of the
   future--and the trials of today would be more than counterbalanced by
   the joys of the hereafter. Our authorized translation is in the
   indicative and states the fact, "You serve the Lord Christ." Is it the
   fact with each of you? To how many in this place can it be truly said,
   "You serve the Lord Christ"? I find it might also, and not incorrectly,
   be translated in the imperative. "Serve you the Lord Christ." In this
   sense it may be directed to those who have no share in it as a
   statement of fact.

   Let us take it in both senses. If we dare to hope that we serve the
   Lord Christ, let us listen to further exhortation and serve Him better,
   still. Let us thank God for the measure of service which He has worked
   in us, and let us earnestly ask Him to work in us still further to will
   and to do. But if any of you are not yet included in the sacred band
   who call Jesus, "Master and Lord," then when you have trusted in His
   blood, come and yield your whole selves unto Him. If, indeed, you are
   redeemed from wrath through Him, I charge you to not be disloyal to the
   obligations under which you are laid, but from this time forth make it
   your joy to "serve the Lord Christ."

   To me, my text is one of the most joyful sentences from which I have
   ever preached. "You serve the Lord Christ." What an exaltation for a
   slave of Satan to become a servant of Christ! With what exultation do I
   hail permission to do anything for my Lord! To be blessed by Him, to be
   enriched with priceless gifts from His bounteous hand--this is
   lovingkindness! But to be allowed to render tokens of gratitude in
   return is sweetest of all! Truly, we may say of this condescension,
   "Your gentleness has made me great." By receiving anything from us, the
   Lord has lifted us as beggars from the dunghill and set us among
   princes, even the princes of His people! It is a greater honor to serve
   Christ in the most menial capacity than to occupy the throne of the
   Caesars!

   I speak of honor. I may also dilate upon the happiness of the service
   of Jesus! It is the purest of pleasures. We long to express our
   affection for Jesus by acts of zeal. Love pants for expression and is
   not obedience the tongue of Love? That love is counterfeit which does
   not declare itself in some practical form or other by deeds of
   kindness, or gifts, or sacrifices, or patient endurance, or hearty
   praise. Beloved, let us count it an unrivalled honor and an unsurpassed
   delight

   to do anything for Jesus! For this service let us be insatiably
   ambitious, resolved at all costs to show our loyalty to our Prince.

   To serve us He laid aside His glorious array and girt about Him the
   garments of a servant! For us He took a basin and towel and stooped to
   wash His disciples' feet! For us He became obedient to death, even the
   death of the Cross! Now, therefore, in our turn, by all the shame He
   bore, by all the labor He endured, by all the agonies He suffered, let
   us serve Him and Him, alone, forever!

   In handling the subject of Christian service, I shall note three
   things--first, we serve the Lord Christ in the common acts of life.
   Secondly, we serve Him in what are usually called religious acts. And
   thirdly, we have learned to serve Him, and, I trust, we may do it more
   and more, in special acts of direct homage to Himself.

   I. First, then, "you serve the Lord Christ," IN THE COMMON ACTS OF
   LIFE. The fact that our text was addressed to the lowest rather than to
   the highest in worldly circumstances is very instructive. Paul has been
   visiting a family and he has spoken a word to the wife and a word to
   the husband. He has paid attention to the children and given a warning
   to the father. He has, also, a message for the master of the house--but
   he does not address to either master, mistress, or children, that
   choice saying which he reserves for servants--"You serve the Lord
   Christ."

   The Greek word, here, translated servants, may be rendered, "slaves,"
   though its meaning is not confined to slaves, yet it includes them--and
   there were many such in the Christian Church in Paul's days--truly
   converted men and women who were still held in bondage according to the
   cruel Roman law. The Apostle goes into the kitchen, the cellar, the
   field, the winepress, the stable and he says to his Brothers and
   Sisters toiling there--"You serve the Lord Christ." He whispers in the
   ear of the aged man who acts as porter at the door, whom he knows to be
   a devout Believer--and this is the secret which he whispers--"Fear not,
   Brother, for despite your bonds you serve the Lord Christ."

   In those hard days, when Paul wrote from Rome to Colosse, many a slave
   crept out from Caesar's household by stealth to listen to his gracious
   words. And poor workpeople gathered around him and were converted--and
   as he felt deep sympathy with them, he did not merely admonish them to
   be honest, industrious, conscientious and obedient, as many a preacher
   would have done--but he went further and cheered them in the
   performance of their duties by assuring them that they served the Lord
   Jesus, and from Him they would receive a reward! He knew their sorrows
   and their provocations and, therefore, presented them with a rich
   consolation and a stimulus.

   He exhorted them to act "as the servants of Christ, doing the will of
   God from the heart; with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and
   not unto men." This he said to servants and to no other class in
   particular. He did not mean, thereby, that the wife, the husband, the
   master and the child might not and did not serve Christ, but he would
   have us infer that of those who did--whose lot was least
   distinguished--much more should those do whose responsibilities and
   opportunities are so much greater. If my poor servant should serve
   Jesus, how much more ought I to do it? If those with the least
   education and means are bound to serve Him, how much more should those
   who have 10 talents, lay out all for

   His Glory?

   My Brothers and Sisters, you see that those to whom Paul spoke were not
   preachers, nor deacons, nor elders of the Church. Neither were they
   magistrates, or persons of influence--they were simple servants,
   engaged in domestic duties--but he says of them, "You serve the Lord
   Christ." Though what I have to say bears upon all present, I will keep
   to the line of thought which this fact naturally suggests. Those who
   are in low estate serve the Lord Christ by a quiet acquiescence in the
   arrangement of Providence which has placed them where they are.
   Everyone knows that while the human race exists in its present
   condition, somebody must serve. It is a paradox, but it is also a
   truth, that if there were no servants we should practically be all
   servants.

   There are a thousand offices which, if each person were obliged to
   perform them for himself, would be exceedingly tedious and unpleasant.
   They are now done for us by persons to whom use renders them not at all
   irksome. As things are at present constituted, there will be poor and
   there will be rich, there will be servants and there will be masters.
   And when a man can say, "I have learned in whatever state I am
   therewith to be content, for I bow to the Providence of my heavenly
   Father," that man is, in his heart, serving the Lord Christ. To stand
   where the Lord places us and keep our position cheerfully, has in it
   the essence of obedience.

   We serve the Lord, next, in service, or in any other form of life, if
   we exercise the Graces of the Holy Spirit in the discharge of our
   calling. The servant who is in all things trustworthy and neither
   wastes his employer's time nor goods--

   the servant who does not watch his master's steps so as to loiter when
   he is out of sight, but conscientiously renders a fair day's work for
   his wage, treating his master as he would wish to be treated if their
   positions were exchanged--such an one, exhibiting truthfulness,
   gentleness, sobriety, honesty and industry, serves the Lord Christ as
   much in his labor as if he were an Evangelist or an Apostle!

   He does not preach vocally, but his life is a powerful sermon. He is a
   standing evidence of the power of religion, an argument which logic
   cannot overthrow, nor the most cunning sophistry confute. Holy living
   preaches where the minister cannot enter--it preaches from the nursery
   to a worldly mother, from the shop to a graceless tradesman--from the
   workroom to a godless employer. Where the preachers' words are denied a
   hearing, your lives will, nevertheless, win attention. At the first the
   Gospel was very much spread in the noble families at Rome by means of
   their slaves. They noticed how different they were from other slaves
   and as they observed their conduct, they inquired what this new
   religion was which so much improved them.

   Christians were Christians then! They made their Lord their first and
   last object. They surrendered their whole lives to His service and
   hence they were a power in all places. The poorest and meanest did not
   think themselves exempt from the sacred duty of spreading the faith!
   None, indeed, asked for a discharge in this war. Domestic servants
   became missionaries to the families in which they resided and acted as
   Apostles in houses where the Apostles could not enter! We serve Christ
   in such a position by displaying the joy of the Lord in our service. I
   lay great stress upon this point. Many a soul has been converted to our
   Lord Jesus by noticing the cheerfulness of poor Christians.

   If a heathen master had a Christian slave, he noticed how contentedly
   he accepted his hard toil and hard fare. He saw his countenance beaming
   with delight and he even heard him sing for joy! He would naturally
   want to know the reason for that cheerfulness. Servants had a sorry lot
   with Roman masters and mistresses. I have seen some of the mere dog
   holes in which the slave who kept the door found sleeping quarters in
   the city of Pompeii--yet from such wretched abodes would rise the voice
   of Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs--and the children would wish to
   hear them and the mistresses, too. Thus would the Truth of God be
   spread!

   The Christian would not join in the general jollity upon heathen
   festivals--he would be absent from the amphitheatre when all the rest
   of the family were eager to view the spectacle. He had a quiet
   cheerfulness and settled calm of mind which was all his own. And when
   trouble and distress were in the house he was the general comforter and
   friend. When he lay sick and scarcely anybody cared for him, he still
   did not lose heart. And when he was near to die, his joy came to a
   climax and he breathed out his soul with a song! Such a servant served
   the Lord most effectually. I hope there are many in this Church who, in
   these better days, are rendering equally valuable service in households
   where the name of Jesus is not reverenced.

   We, too, should be doing the same in the circles in which we move. Our
   holy cheerfulness should be an invitation to our friends to come to
   Jesus. We shall never bring men to believe in a Master whose servants
   are unhappy in His service! To toll a knell as an invitation to a
   wedding feast is most absurd! When we invite men to the banquet of
   Saving Grace let us do it with smiling faces. Beloved, let us mingle
   with the sternness of our integrity and the solemnity of our life
   purpose that cheerfulness and joy which are the most natural and the
   most attractive ornaments of the Christian character. The true way to
   serve the Lord in the common acts of life is to perform them as unto
   Himself and this can be done with everything which is lawful to do. God
   forbid we should maintain, as some do, a broad, unbending distinction
   between things secular and religious.

   This wicked age must, indeed, have its holy places and its holy days.
   What is this but a confession that most of its buildings are unholy and
   its days unholy, too? Of Heaven it is written, "I saw no temple there,"
   and we get nearest to the heavenly state when all superstitious notions
   about sacred places and sacred substances shall be swept away once and
   for all! To a man who lives unto God nothing is secular, everything is
   sacred! He puts on his workday garment and it is a vestment to him. He
   sits down to his meal and it is a sacrament. He goes forth to his labor
   and exercises the office of the priesthood. His breath is incense and
   his life a sacrifice. He sleeps on the bosom of God and lives and moves
   in the Divine Presence. To draw a hard and fast line and say, "This is
   sacred and this is secular," is, to my mind, diametrically opposed to
   the teaching of Christ and the spirit of the Gospel!

   Paul has said, "I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there
   is nothing unclean of itself." Peter saw a sheet let down from Heaven
   in which were all manner of beasts and four-footed creatures which he
   was bid to kill and

   eat. And when he refused because they were unclean, he was rebuked by a
   Voice from Heaven, saying, "What God has cleansed that call not you
   common." The Lord has cleansed your houses, my Brethren. He has
   cleansed your bed chambers, your tables, your shops. He has made the
   bells upon your horses holiness to the Lord. He has made the common
   pots and pans of your kitchens to be as the bowls before the altar if
   you know what you are and live according to your high calling.

   You housemaids, you cooks, you nurses, you plowmen, you housewives, you
   traders, you sailors--your labor is holy if you serve the Lord Christ
   in it--if by living unto Him as you ought to live. The sacred has
   absorbed the secular! The overarching Temple of the Lord covers all
   your houses and your fields. My Brothers and Sisters, this ennobles
   life! The bondsman is henceforth free--he serves not man, but God. The
   galley slave tugs the oar for Jesus! The menial ministers to the Lord.
   This cheers the darkest shades, for now we no longer complain of the
   hardness of our lot, but rejoice in it because we bear all for
   Jesus--and the burden which we carry is His Cross which He, Himself,
   places on our shoulders! This ensures us a reward for all we do.

   If in our service we receive but little thanks from man and, if, after
   a life of toil, find ourselves but scantily furnished for old age, we
   will not complain, for our recompense is sure, our reward is in the
   hands of One who never forgets His servants! There is no unrewarded
   toil in the service of the Lord Christ, even a cup of cold water He
   remembers. He who serves Christ shall have it said of him at last,
   "Well done, good and faithful servant," and in the fullness of His
   Master's joy, into which He shall enter, He shall forget that for a
   while he lived unremunerated among the sons of men! Let this stimulate
   your zeal, my Brethren! If you serve the Lord Christ, serve Him well!
   If you had work to do for her Majesty the Queen, you would try to do
   your best. If she honored you with her commands you would cheerfully
   obey them--how much more should you be aroused to diligence by the call
   of the Infinite Majesty of Him who bled for you!

   Perform your daily work with a heartiness which nothing else could
   beget in you. Serve the Lord with gladness and do all for love of His
   name. This I thought most important to bring forward, and though I
   cannot speak upon it as I would, yet I do earnestly urge all of you to
   remember that piety shines best around the domestic hearth--and that
   true religion is always best esteemed by unconverted men when they see
   it in connection with the common duties of life. They do not care how
   beautifully you pray at Prayer Meetings.

   They have very little respect for the excellent addresses you deliver
   in the Sunday school. But to live godly, soberly, righteously--to make
   other people happy, to be gentle in temper, to be yielding and
   forgiving, to be strictly upright and honest in your dealings with your
   fellow men--this is what the world will read and recognize! And when
   they see these things in you, the Gospel will be commended to them and
   they will be the more likely to listen to the Truth of God as it is in
   Jesus.

   II. Secondly, Brethren, we ought to serve the Lord Christ in what we
   more commonly, but incorrectly, call RELIGIOUS ACTIONS. Every professor
   of religion should have something to do for Jesus Christ. Though the
   discipline of our Church does not turn out of it everyone who is an
   idler, I almost wish it did. I am afraid such a rule would diminish our
   numbers, but it would materially quicken our energy! Drones in the hive
   are of very little use as to making honey. They are at the bottom of
   all the quarrels, but they cannot really benefit the community. God
   save us from being drones! Let every man and woman who is really
   redeemed by the blood of Jesus have something to do and do it.

   I wish I could go round the whole of this company, this morning, and
   say, "Brother, do you serve the Lord Christ? Sister, do you the same?"
   But I will ask Conscience to be my deputy and leave your own hearts to
   answer the question. Brother, Sister, do you really serve Christ, or
   does it amount to this--you enjoy hearing, you enjoy singing, and so
   on, but you do nothing for Jesus? Bestir yourself, dear Brother--put
   out your talent to interest! Your Lord has said, "Occupy till I come."
   Take heed lest He come and find your talent buried in the earth--your
   Lord's money and your napkin rotting in the soil. Let each one be
   serving Christ always according to his ability.

   But supposing that we are serving Christ, as we think? It is well to
   raise a further question--are we with our whole soul serving Christ.
   For mark you, it is very easy to make a mistake here! We may be working
   in a legal spirit and so not serving Christ. No doubt many attend to
   the outward matters of religion that they may win merit, or that they
   may prepare themselves for the receipt of the Divine blessing. I do not
   wonder at the zeal and earnestness which some people show--if they hope
   to get to Heaven by their works they ought to be zealous, indeed! The
   legal spirit has a measure of power in it--the lash drives the slave
   on--the fear of punishment impels man to toil.

   But from such bondage you are free--"you are not under the Law, but
   under Grace." Do, therefore, nothing with the hope of deserving well at
   the Lord's hands, for this would be serving self. You are saved--serve,
   then, your Savior out of gratitude! Work, not to obtain life, but
   because you have life already and delight to exercise that life to the
   honor of Him who gave it!

   Some, I fear, do not serve Christ in what they do, for they go about it
   as a part of the general routine of their existence. It is the proper
   thing to go to a place of worship, therefore they go. It is generally
   expected of persons in their station to teach in the Sunday school and
   they do so accordingly. They reckon that they ought to give a guinea if
   they see the name of a friend down on the list, therefore they do it. I
   am afraid that a great deal which is put down as work for Christ is a
   kind of sleep-walking, done without thought, or heart, or desire to
   glorify God! May the Holy Spirit awaken us out of such mere mechanical
   acts and bring us to be in heart and soul the Lord's willing, ardent
   workers.

   Some, I fear, render service in a party spirit. They serve and they
   think it is Christ they are serving--but in fact it is their own
   denomination or little Church. They would be almost vexed to hear of
   God's being honored among any other sort of Christians! They hope there
   will be a revival, but they would like it to be pretty nearly confined
   to the walls of their own Chapel. They serve a clique, not Christ.
   Their sympathies never go beyond the particular section of the Church
   to which they belong and they are rather moved by emulation to see
   their own opinions dominant than by zeal for the Glory of God. Oh,
   Brothers and Sisters, break those bonds if they hold you! We ought to
   be zealous for the whole Truth of God! We ought to labor to increase
   the number of those Christians who hold the Gospel in its purity--but
   still-- never let our jealousy for pure religion degenerate into
   bigotry! Let us love the whole Church more than a part, and Christ best
   of all!

   In more instances, still, the self-spirit comes in to usurp the place
   of Jesus. I wonder how large a proportion of our zeal, if it were
   analyzed, could be accounted for by the desire of prominence, the
   ambition to be thought useful and the wish to shine among our fellow
   men? I cannot set up a furnace here and put my own zeal or yours into
   the crucible just now, but again I ask your conscience to be my deputy
   to analyze, honestly, the motive which sways you and to tell you
   plainly how far you are serving self and how far you are serving
   Christ. We are not always serving Jesus, I fear, when we think we are
   most doing so, for our main object may be to please our fellow
   creatures.

   Our parents wish us to be active in the Church and, therefore, we do
   it. Our friends would not be pleased if we were idle and, therefore, we
   make ourselves active. From our position we are expected to be engaged
   in some department of Christian service and, therefore, we enter upon
   it. Brothers and Sisters, we must rise above this! What we do--whether
   we teach in the school, or visit the sick, or distribute tracts, or
   preach the Gospel--we must do as unto the Lord, alone. And the master
   motive which should, indeed, crush out every other, must be this--"we
   serve the Lord Christ." Brethren, let others take what they will for
   their motto, I charge you by the Holy Spirit--write this upon your
   banners--"We serve the Lord Christ."

   If any request you to serve this literary group or that political
   faction, or to give your whole attention to some great moral reform,
   let your answer be, "We serve the Lord Christ." Aid in anything that is
   good--whatever things are lovely and of good report, and are for the
   benefit of mankind, you are bound to consider--but still your main
   lifework, your true business which must absorb your energies and eat
   you up, is this--"We serve the Lord Christ." They beckon us from this
   point, crying, "Come over and help us." They call to us from the other
   corner, "Come and work with us," but our answer must be, "We are an
   independent brigade. We are already committed to the noblest cause--we
   are sworn to a Captain who has no rival! We are not able to promise
   ourselves to any of you, though in which you do good we are your
   allies. Jesus we serve and none else. God forbid that we should glory
   save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." May God help us to do this
   always!

   III. Now I am coming to the last part of my discourse, which, to me, is
   the most interesting, and I trust it may be so to you. We serve the
   Lord Christ IN SPECIAL ACTS DONE TO HIMSELF. I cannot tell how you
   feel, but I often wish I could do something for my Lord, Himself,
   personally. I frequently meet with kind souls to whom God has blessed
   my ministry. They express their thankfulness to God and their love to
   me by aiding the various works committed to my charge, for which I am
   deeply grateful to them. But now and then a friend says, "I will
   cheerfully subscribe to your work, but I desire, also, to show my
   personal thanks to yourself. What can I do for you?"

   Now, towards those whom we esteem, this is a natural feeling. And in
   spiritual things there is a similar desire towards our Divine
   Benefactor. Our hearts long to offer something to Jesus, distinctly to
   Jesus, Himself. He has gone from us, or we would delight to minister to
   Him of our substance, to make Him a feast, to furnish Him a chamber, or
   to wash His feet. How gladly would we lend Him our coat, our animal,
   our guest chamber or anything we possess! We would watch His every need
   and endeavor to forestall it if He were here. But He has gone. Are we,
   therefore, denied the privilege of rendering personal service to Him? I
   think not.

   Let it be our pleasant task, now, to consider what we can do directly
   and distinctly for Him. First, we can adore our Lord. We can bow at His
   feet and worship Him as our Lord and our God. We shall do well to
   exercise our hearts in frequent acts of devotion to the Son of God. I
   do not mean offering prayers and petitions, excellent as these are, but
   holy contemplation, meditation, admiration, thanksgiving and worship of
   Jesus. Far be it from us to neglect the adoration of any one Person of
   the adorable Trinity in Unity--that were a grievous sin--but to worship
   Jesus does not involve forgetfulness of the Father or of the Holy
   Spirit.

   Fix your eyes on the Person of Jesus. View His work on earth.
   Contemplate His holy life and expiatory death. Meditate upon His great
   love, His dying love, His living love. Follow Him from the tomb to
   Olivet, and from the mountain's brow to Heaven's gate and the right
   hand of the Father. Pay your homage before His Throne, blessing,
   praising and adoring Him. We ought not to be satisfied without special
   acts of personal thanksgiving in which we exercise our love and
   reverence for Him who is altogether lovely in our eyes. True, we may be
   doing nothing for our fellow men while thus occupied, but Jesus is
   dearer to us than the whole race of men--and it is only His due that we
   render Him when we bow adoringly at His ever-blessed feet.

   Then, Brethren, when you have adored Him in secret, you should do the
   like in public by speaking well of Him and extolling Him before
   others--not so much for their good as for Christ's Glory. I must
   confess I enjoy a sermon, best, in which I have to speak most of my
   Beloved. If I have to set Him forth rather than to exhort you, I feel
   best pleased. There are other things to be done besides, but this is
   the sweetest task. I love to spend all my preaching time in making
   Jesus lovely in man's eyes, in lifting Him up on a gloriously high
   Throne in the esteem of those who listen to me. Brothers and Sisters,
   do this, yourselves, in your common talk! Make a point of turning the
   conversation round till it bears on Him. Frequently begin a
   conversation about Jesus and let men know that you glorify Him! In such
   special acts of devotion to His Person, I pray you abound.

   Next, we should pray for Him. Do you understand that? Some do not. The
   Psalmist says, "Prayer also shall be made for Him continually." It is
   very delightful to pray for sinners and pray for Believers--but there
   should be special prayer for Jesus Christ--for the extension of His
   kingdom. That He may see of the travail of His soul and that His Second
   Advent may speedily arrive. We should pray for the conversion of those
   who deny His Deity and those who fall into deadly errors as to His
   substitutionary sacrifice. We should make earnest supplication for the
   quickening of the love of Jesus in the hearts of the faithful and for
   the turning of the disobedient to the knowledge of the Truth of God.
   Such prayers should be very frequent with us for His sake and with an
   eye to His Glory. We pray for this and that, but surely Jesus ought to
   have a larger measure of our supplications!

   Brethren, next to this there should be much communion with Him. I think
   I hear someone say, "Is that serving Him? I call it enjoying Him!" Yes,
   I know it is, and you may take it in which way you will, for He says,
   "If any man serve Me, let Him follow Me, and where I am there shall
   also My servant be." So that you will be sure to be with Him if you
   serve Him. To be near Him is one of the great essentials of true
   service. Remember His dying request, "This do you in remembrance of
   Me." And what was that? Why, it was to observe the Lord's Supper, which
   is the outward and visible sign of communing with Him! If He attaches
   so much importance to the outward sign, how much more does He value the
   inner reality of fellowship with Himself?

   The fact is that the head which leans upon His bosom is thereby
   consecrated to His love and is rendering Him service. The cheek on
   which He imprints the kisses of His month is doing Him its best homage
   while it receives His best favors. Walk not at a distance from Jesus or
   you will grieve Him! Abide in Him and you will bring forth fruit to
   Him. Let no day pass without a word with Jesus. You are His spouse--can
   you live without a loving word from your Husband? You are of His flesh
   and of His bones--let unbroken communion be the very habit of your
   being! Brethren, the Lord's Supper is worship rendered to Jesus and is
   mainly an act which begins and ends upon Him--you commemorate His
   death, you set

   forth His flesh and blood. Your union and communion with Christ are not
   so much meant to benefit others, as to spend itself upon Him. Therefore
   attend to it for His sake. Let your eyes be fixed upon only Him.
   Whatever others may think of your raptures and delights in
   Jesus--however much they may call them emotional and
   unpractical--remain content with having done it unto Him.

   Bear with me while I mention other ways in which you may serve Jesus
   personally. You may do so by sitting at His feet and learning of Him,
   studying the Word and pleading for the Holy Spirit to give you light
   into its meaning. Martha prepared a feast for Him and our Lord did not
   blame her. But He gave Mary the preference who sat at His feet. One in
   the crowd said concerning Christ, "Blessed is the womb that bore You
   and the paps that gave You suck." To administer to His childhood seemed
   the highest of earthly favors. But Jesus said, "Yes, rather, blessed
   are they that hear the Word of God, and keep it." Get that blessing!
   Hear it from His own lips! Study His Word--make much of every syllable.
   Try to get at the essential spirit and do not tarry in the killing
   letter--and you will then be personally serving Him, for as a Teacher
   He is pleased when we are His attentive pupils. This is a sweet way of
   pleasing the Lord Christ.

   Then, Brothers and Sisters, remember, if you would serve Christ
   personally, you must obey Him. "Oh," you say, "I did not think that
   would be a very choice way of serving Him." Listen! "If you love Me,
   keep My commandments." He has chosen obedience as the special pledge
   and token of our love! You have said, "I wish I could build a Chapel,
   or support a minister or a missionary out of my own purse." I wish you
   could, but still, Jesus has not selected that as the love token. He has
   said, "If you love Me, keep My commandments." Complete, prayerful,
   habitual obedience to Christ is the most choice pledge of affection
   which we can present to our Lord. May Infinite Mercy help us to present
   it!

   We may do to Christ personal service, next, by being willing to bear
   reproach for His sake. When you are willing to take upon yourself the
   defense of a man's character. To throw yourself so completely into him
   that the reproaches of them that reproach him fall upon you--you have
   rendered to that man no mean proof of love. Oh, Brothers and Sisters,
   if, when they laugh at you for Christ's sake, you clap your hands for
   very glee to be counted worthy to be ridiculed for Him! If you take,
   joyfully, the spoiling of your goods, or the slandering of your
   character! If you know the meaning of this word, "Rejoice in that day
   and leap for joy, for so persecuted they the Prophets that were before
   you"--then have you rendered personal service to Him whom you love! And
   then you may sit down and be thankful for having been allowed to drink
   of His cup and to be baptized with His Baptism.

   Further, you can show personal kindness to Christ by caring for His
   Church. The Lord had forgiven Peter and Peter, no doubt, wished to do
   something to prove his love. His Lord somewhat vexed him by three times
   putting to him the question, "Simon, son of Jonas, do you love Me?" And
   when the disciple had protested his love, the Master said to him, "Feed
   My sheep," and, "Feed My lambs." Go, then, and teach the little
   children and instruct those of riper years. What He has taught you,
   teach to others, and you will be doing service to Him. He bids you
   consider it so, for to you who love Him, He says, "Feed My sheep."

   If you cannot serve with your tongue, there remains another mode of
   pleasing Jesus. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and
   relieve distress of every kind. "But that is not doing service for
   Him." I have the best authority for saying that it is, for, "Then shall
   the King say unto them on His right hand, I was hungry and you gave Me
   meat, I was thirsty and you gave Me drink. Sick and in prison, and you
   visited Me. Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of
   these, My brethren, you have done it unto Me."

   Actual gifts to the poor and helps afforded to those who need them are
   grateful love tokens to the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is not here, but
   His poor saints are. Any saint is an image of Christ, but a poor saint
   is the express image of Christ! There is a something more about him
   than about the rich, in which he is even, in detail and circumstances,
   more like his Lord. Do, then, to your Lord's own members what you would
   have done to Him if He, Himself, were here. Still, I think that every
   now and then, for Jesus, there ought to be a little special
   wastefulness of love. The woman with her alabaster box of very precious
   ointment would, no doubt, gladly have joined with the holy ones of
   substance who ministered to Him. I have no doubt she would very gladly
   have poured water on His feet when He came into the house weary, or she
   would have waited at the table when He ate.

   But all this would not have sufficed her ardent love. She wanted to
   perform an extraordinary act which would be all for Him--she looked at
   that precious box--she must break that, for she would give Him
   something which she could not afford to do every day--in fact, which
   she never did attempt to give but once in her life! Brothers and
   Sisters, think of

   something special you can do for Jesus. Let it cost you something and
   if it pinches you, so much the better! It will be sweet to bear a pinch
   for Jesus! Think of something that you could not justify in prudence if
   you had to sit down and talk it over. Do it for Him, not to talk about
   to others, afterwards, nor for others to brazen abroad. But do it for
   Him--and then if they do publish it you need not be angry, for Jesus
   said, "Where ever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole world,
   there shall also this, that this woman has done, be told for a memorial
   of her."

   Be not ostentatious, but do not be in such a great worry to hide your
   work for Jesus, for the knowledge of it may do other people good and
   lead them to imitate the deed. Still, do it unto Jesus, only. I cannot
   suggest what you shall do. And it would be indelicate for me to attempt
   to do so. Who would think of suggesting to a wife what she should give
   to her husband as a special private love token? Oh, no! These things
   are too choice for others to meddle with. They are secrets between the
   Lord and His elect, suggestions of personal love which cannot come from
   without. Do you enquire, "What shall I do for Jesus to praise Him?"
   Bring forth the choicest that you have and offer it when your heart is
   best attuned and ready for the giving of it.

   My whole soul thirsts to be doing this often, for I owe all I have and
   all I am to Jesus, my Lord! Here stands a man before you who has not
   one single thing in all the world but what he has received from his
   Lord! He has not a penny but what is lent him! He is clothed by charity
   and fed by mercy! He is a pauper by nature and yet wealthier than a
   millionaire because he lives as a gentleman commoner upon the daily
   bounty of God in Christ Jesus! Here stands before you an unworthy
   servant of the best of masters! He is a poor relation of the most
   generous of householders! He is happy to be in such a case!

   Are there other men and women here who owe all to my Lord? If they do,
   let it be said of them, "You serve the Lord Christ." So let it be said
   of them while they live and till they die! What better can they desire?
   For myself, I am resolved, by Divine Grace, more fully to yield my
   whole body, soul and spirit to Him whose I am, whom I serve. Grace be
   with you. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Colossians 3,4:1-6. HYMNS FROM
   "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--179, 710, 784.
     __________________________________________________________________

Heart-Knowledge of God

   (No. 1206)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, DECEMBER 6, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord." Jeremiah
   24:7.

   WITH what blindness has sin struck the heart of man, for man does not
   know his own Maker! It is implied in the text that in his heart he is
   ignorant of Jehovah, though in Him he lives, and moves, and has his
   being. What an impotence has sin brought upon the mind of man, since
   being ignorant of God he is also incapable of finding Him out! This,
   also, may be most readily gathered from the text. The fact that a
   promise is made in the Covenant that to the chosen shall be given
   hearts to know the Lord is a clear proof that without the Divine
   teaching and without the reception of a new heart from the Lord, man
   not only does not know, but cannot find out his God!

   You boast of your intellect, O vain Man, but your foolish heart is
   darkened so that you stumble in the noonday as at midnight. You have
   eyes, and you say, "I see," but your eyes are closed, your ears are
   dull of hearing and your heart has waxed gross. And your soul has
   become so dull that only He who formed the ear can make you hear. And
   only He who fashioned the eye can give you sight.

   How can we sufficiently admire the condescension of God, that He should
   stoop to instruct the heart of man? Man forgets his God, but God does
   not forget him. Though man knows not God, yet God knows him and, seeing
   that his powerlessness to grasp Divine knowledge lies in his heart, He
   visits him in Grace and renews the fountain of his strength and the
   center of his nature by giving him a new heart and a right spirit.

   The infinitely glorious God might have regarded it as a matter of
   indifference whether such an insignificant creature as man knew Him or
   not. He might well have said, and it had been consistent with the
   majesty of His justice to say it, "Seeing that you do not desire to
   know Me, you shall not perceive Me. And inasmuch as you close your eyes
   to Me, you shall continue in outer darkness. Because you will not
   glorify Me as God, your hearts shall abide in midnight, I will leave
   you to your own devices."

   But the Lord of Love said not so to the sons of men, upon whom His
   heart was set! On the contrary, He has made a Covenant of Mercy on our
   behalf and His speech is the reverse of what we might have expected. He
   declares in the words of the text, "I will give them a heart to know
   Me, that I am Jehovah." What is meant by this great promise of the text
   is not merely that God will lead the converted to know that there is a
   God, because that may be known without a new heart. Any man possessed
   of reason may know that there is a Supreme Being who created all things
   and preserves the universe in existence.

   The heavens declare the Glory of God and the firmament show His
   handiwork. The tokens of Divine skill and power are so abundant that,
   "The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are already
   seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal
   power and Godhead." The knowledge intended here is much deeper than
   that which comes from observation--and only affects the intellect. To
   know that there is a God is a lower step which every man takes except
   the fool who has said in his heart, "There is no God." The text
   promises that the favored ones shall know that God is Jehovah! So the
   original text has it, "I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am
   Jehovah."

   God leads men to see that the God revealed in Scripture and manifested
   in the Person of the Lord Jesus, is the God who made Heaven and earth.
   Man fashions for himself a god after his own liking. He makes to
   himself, if not out of wood or stone, yet out of what he calls his own
   consciousness, or his cultured thought, a deity to his taste who will
   not be too severe with his iniquities or deal out strict justice to the
   impenitent. He rejects God as He is and makes other gods such as he
   thinks the Divine One ought to be. And he says concerning these works
   of his own imagination, "These are your gods, O Israel."

   The Holy Spirit, however, when He illuminates our minds, leads us to
   see that Jehovah is God and beside Him there is none else. He teaches
   His people to know that the God of Heaven and earth is the God of the
   Bible, a God whose attributes are completely balanced, Mercy attended
   by Justice, Love accompanied by Holiness, Grace arrayed in Truth and
   Power linked with Tenderness. He is not a God who winks at sin, much
   less is pleased with it, as the gods of the heathen are supposed to be.
   No, He is a God who cannot look upon iniquity and will, by no means,
   spare the guilty.

   This is the great quarrel of the present day between the philosopher
   and the Christian. The philosopher says, "Yes, a god if you will, but
   he must be of such a character as I now dogmatically set before you."
   But the Christian replies, "Our business is not to invent a god, but to
   obey the one Lord who is revealed in the Scriptures of Truth." The God
   of Holy Scripture is Love, but He is also possessed of justice and
   severity. He is merciful and gracious, but He is also stern and
   terrible towards evil. Therefore unregenerate hearts say, "We cannot
   accept such a God as this," and they call Him cruel and I know not what
   besides.

   Herein they are idolaters--they set up another god and forsake the true
   God--and it does not alter the case if they plead that they make no
   graven image, for the First Commandment says, "You shall have no other
   gods before Me." The Lord teaches His people that He is Jehovah, who
   brought Israel up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
   bondage. He teaches them He is the Jehovah who smote Pharaoh with
   plagues and drowned his hosts in the Red Sea. The Jehovah who led His
   people through the wilderness, but cast out their enemies from before
   them with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. The Jehovah that
   redeemed His people, but chastened them for their iniquities and took
   vengeance upon their inventions.

   The God of Sinai is the same God as the God of Calvary. "I am Jehovah
   your God," is His solemn proclamation, and it is well for the soul when
   it understands and knows that Jehovah, He is God, yes, Jehovah, He is
   God alone. When the heart is content to believe in God as He is
   revealed and no longer goes about to fashion a deity for itself
   according to its own fancies and notions, it is a hopeful sign. The
   main stress of the promise lies, however, in this--"I will give them a
   heart to know ME." That is, not merely to know that I am and that I am
   Jehovah, but to have a personal knowledge of Myself. I can scarcely
   express the idea which I wish to convey to you, but you all know the
   difference between knowing who a man is--what his character is and all
   about him--and knowing the man himself.

   There are hundreds of people of whom we know a great deal. We are
   favored by some prying gentleman or other with stories of how our great
   men dress, what they say, what they eat, when they eat and all sorts of
   minute details of their personal habits. Still, despite all this
   information, we do not know these people--we should speak falsely if we
   said we did. To know them we must be on speaking terms with them. There
   must be a mutual recognition. There must be dealings of some kind
   between us.

   Now, it is so in the far higher matter of which we now speak. It is not
   enough to know that our Creator is the Jehovah of the Bible and that He
   is perfect in Character and glorious beyond thought--to know God we
   must have perceived Him--we must have spoken to Him! We must have been
   made at peace with Him. We must have lifted up our heart to Him and
   received communications from Him. If you know the Lord, your secret is
   with Him and His secret is with you. He has manifested Himself unto you
   as He does not unto the world. He has made Himself known unto you by
   the mysterious influences of His Spirit--because of this you know Him.

   I cannot explain this knowledge, but it is delightful to remember that
   many of you understand what it means by experience. Is it not sweet to
   traverse the world discerning God on every side? Your Father ever near!
   Is it not a blessing to be in trouble and find Him helping us? To be in
   a dilemma and to hear His voice saying, "This is the way, walk you in
   it"? To be depressed in spirit and to feel that His comforts rejoice
   our souls? To be exulting in joy and to feel that His Presence calms
   and sobers us and keeps us from undue delight in created things? It is
   inexpressibly honorable and joyful to walk with God as Enoch did, to
   speak with Him as Abraham did of old, as a man speaks with his friend,
   or to be hidden in the hollow of His hand, as Moses was in Horeb! This
   is to know God after the manner of the text.

   My Hearer, do you know God? Have you beheld the Glory of God in the
   face of Jesus Christ? Have you discerned the Father in the Son? Do you
   see all the attributes of God shining mildly through the Mediator,
   toned down to our capacity, lest the effulgence of the Deity should
   blind our finite sense? Do you know God by going to Jesus as your
   Savior? He that has seen Christ has seen the Father! "No man knows the
   Father save the Son and he to whom the Son will

   reveal Him." If you know Christ and are found in Him, then, Beloved,
   you know the Lord and are among the blessed company who are taught of
   the Spirit, for flesh and blood have not revealed the Lord unto you!

   We will consider our text in the following manner. We will first of all
   describe the seat of this knowledge--"I will give them a heart to know
   Me." Then the necessity of this knowledge. Then the excellency of this
   knowledge and, lastly the source of this knowledge. May the Holy Spirit
   aid us in speaking upon each topic.

   I. THE SEAT OF THIS KNOWLEDGE--"I will give them a heart to know Me."
   Observe that it is not said, "I will give them a head to know Me." As I
   have already said, man's great stumbling block in coming to God does
   not lie in his reason--there is a difficulty in his reason, but not the
   major one. The first and primary impediment to his knowledge of God
   lies in the affections. Man's heart is set upon that which is
   evil--consequently he wants a God after his own fashion--who will smile
   upon sin, or at least tolerate it.

   The Lord complains in the Psalm, "You thought that I was altogether
   such an One as yourself"--it is the tendency of man to think that God
   is like himself. The impure in heart cannot conceive of a pure God! If
   he could conceive Him, he would detest, rather than worship Him. "The
   pure in heart shall see God," is one of the opening benedictions of the
   Savior's ministry. But the impure in heart cannot see God and cannot,
   therefore, know Him! The heart is the seat of the blindness--there lies
   the darkness which beclouds the whole mind. Hence to the heart the
   light must come and to the heart that light is promised.

   I understand by the fact that the knowledge of God here promised lies
   in the heart, first, that God renews the heart so that it admires the
   Character of God. The understanding perceives that God is just,
   powerful, faithful, wise, true, gracious, long-suffering and the like.
   Then the heart, being purified, admires all these glorious attributes
   and adores Him because of them. You can in a measure test your
   knowledge of the Lord by the enquiry--Do you approve the Character of
   God? Perceiving the God of the Scriptures to be the true God, do you
   admire Him as He reveals Himself? I must repeat what I have already
   said. There are many who have imagined God to be what they would like
   Him to be and then, of course, they admire the image which they have
   set up.

   But to see God as the Scripture reveals Him, especially in His
   holiness, is a gift of His Divine Grace! Have you noted how David sings
   in the 103rd Psalm, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within
   me, bless His holy name"? It would have sounded more in accordance with
   the context to have said His gracious name, for he goes on to speak of
   the Lord's deeds of Grace--"who forgives all your iniquities, who heals
   all your diseases." But that which the Psalmist most admired was the
   Lord's holiness in all this--the way in which He could deal mercifully
   with the guilty and yet retain His spotless holiness. Holiness is the
   great terror of the ungodly and, therefore, it is a token of our
   knowing God in our hearts when we can bless His holy name.

   How do the angels praise Him? Do they sing, "Mighty, mighty, mighty,
   Lord God of Hosts"? Or, "Bounteous, bounteous, bounteous Creator of the
   universe"? No, but, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth." They adore
   the whole of God and God as a whole--holiness means completeness of
   character, the absence of everything like excess, the presence of
   everything that is perfection. O my Soul, can you, in some measure, see
   the infinite perfection of the Lord in all points? And seeing, do you
   admire? Do you see Him as a consuming fire, burning up evil? And do you
   approve Him as such? Do you see His sovereignty, His hatred of sin, His
   immutability, His jealousy and yet admire Him? Do you, indeed, delight
   in even the sterner traits of the Divine Character, knowing that under
   all aspects the Lord is good?

   Then in you is fulfilled the promise, "I will give them a heart to know
   Me"! The heart-knowledge promised in the Covenant of Grace means,
   however, much more than approval. Grace enables the renewed heart to
   take another step and appropriate the Lord, saying, "O God, You are my
   God, early will I seek You." All the saved ones cry, "This God is our
   God forever and ever. He shall be our God even unto death." The man who
   only knows the Lord with his head regards Him as anybody's God, or
   another man's God. But the man who knows the Lord with his heart
   exclaims with Thomas, "My Lord and my God."

   By an act of appropriating faith the gracious man cries out, "The Lord
   is my Portion says my soul," and then in return he dedicates himself to
   the service of his God. And there is fulfilled in him that other
   promise of His, "I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a
   people." Admiration of God leads on to appropriation and this to
   something higher, still. All true knowledge of God is attended by
   affection for Him. In spiritual language, to know God is to love Him.
   "He that loves not, knows not God, for God is Love." "I love the Lord,"
   says David, "because He has heard my

   voice and my supplication." He had been no stranger to the Lord, but
   had conversed with Him in prayer and received tokens of favor and,
   therefore, his love overflowed.

   He cries out in another Psalm, "I will love You, O Lord, my Strength,"
   and then he goes on to heap up and pack together a host of words of
   love and praise--"The Lord is my rock and my fortress, my deliverer; my
   God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my
   salvation, and my high tower." Where the Lord is fully known, He is
   intensely loved. The spouse first described her Beloved as the apple
   tree among the trees of the woods, and then she cried out, "I am sick
   of love." At another time, after drawing a full-length portrait of her
   Lord, she could not refrain from exclaiming, "His mouth is most sweet,
   yes, He is altogether lovely." Such is our love of God when we know
   Him-- that we feel bound to glory in Him before others.

   "My soul shall make her boast in the Lord; the humble shall hear
   thereof and be glad." It is the great passion of the renewed soul to
   glorify God, whom He knows and loves. Knowledge without love would be a
   powerless thing, but God has joined this knowledge and love together in
   a sacred wedlock--and they can never be put asunder. As we love God we
   know Him--and as we know Him we love Him. Admiration, appropriation,
   affection are crowned with adhesion. To know a thing by heart is, in
   our common talk, to know it thoroughly. When a child knows his lesson
   by heart, we hope that he will not forget it.

   That which is learned in the head may be unlearned, for our
   understanding is very fickle and our memory frail, but that which is
   written upon the heart cannot be erased. Holy Scripture asks, "Can a
   maid forget her ornaments or a bride her attire?" These she dotes upon
   and, therefore, she will not forget them. Can a woman forget her
   sucking child? No, she cannot, because her knowledge of her child is
   heart knowledge. Memories of the heart abide when all others depart. A
   mother's love, a wife's fondness, a sweet child's affection will come
   before us even in the last hours of life. When the mind will lose its
   learning and the hand forget its cunning, the dear names of our beloved
   ones will linger on our lips. And their sweet faces will be before us
   even when our eyes are dim with the shadow of approaching death.

   If we can sing, "O God, my heart is fixed, O my heart is fixed," then
   the knowledge which it possesses will never be taken away from it. To
   know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, is not a fleeting
   attainment, but shall abide with us and increase until we know even as
   we are known. This is not the knowledge which shall vanish away, but
   that which shall be perfected when the day breaks and the shadows flee
   away.

   Now, beloved Friend, have you such a knowledge of God? Do you admire,
   appropriate, love and cleave to the Lord, your God? Can you hope that
   you have been taught of the Lord according to that promise, "They shall
   know Me from the least even unto the greatest." Do not say, "I am so
   little in Israel that I cannot be expected to know." Does not the
   Covenant promise imply that the least must know the Lord as well as the
   greatest? This blessed knowledge is essential to every Christian! Do
   you possess it? If not, do you desire it? If so, plead for it, and say,
   "I beseech You show me Your Glory. Let me know You as the Lord God,
   merciful and gracious, passing by transgression, iniquity and sin." He
   will hear you if you plead for Jesus' sake.

   II. This brings us at once to the second point, namely, THE NECESSITY
   OF THIS KNOWLEDGE. If we think a minute we shall see how necessary it
   is. To know God is a necessary preparation for every other true
   knowledge because the Lord is the center of the universe, the basis,
   the pillar, the essential force, the All in All, the fullness of all
   things. Not to know God is as if a student should attempt to construct
   a system of astronomy and be altogether ignorant of the sun! Or a
   mariner should be a stranger to the sea! Or a farmer should not know
   the existence of seeds! The place which God occupies must be settled in
   our minds or we shall have no arrangement in our knowledge--and our
   science will be nothing but a conglomeration of truth and error.

   You may learn the doctrines of the Bible, but you do not know them
   truly till you know the God of the doctrines. You may understand the
   precepts in the letter of them and the promises in their outward
   wording, but neither precept nor promise do you truly know until you
   know the God from whose lips they fell. The knowledge of God is, at
   once, the beginning and the end of wisdom. The ancient sage said, "Man,
   know yourself." He spoke well, but even for this, man must first know
   his God. I venture to say that no man rightly knows himself till he
   knows his God--because it is by the light and purity of God that we see
   our own darkness and sinfulness.

   There must be a perfect model before us before we can discern our own
   departures from perfection. You must have a standard by which to weigh
   yourself or you cannot tell whether you are lacking or not. God is the
   Standard and until a

   man knows the Standard he does not know how far he has fallen short of
   it. The proper study of mankind is God. And that attended to, the next
   appropriate subject of study is man. We must know God, or our other
   knowledge may be dangerous to others and certainly will be hurtful to
   ourselves. It will puff us up or load us with responsibilities which we
   shall not be able to meet. For the highest and most practical purposes,
   without the knowledge of God, we abide in utter ignorance.

   The knowledge of God is necessary to any real peace of mind. Suppose a
   man is in the world and feels that he is right in every way except with
   regard to God, and as to Him he knows nothing? Hear him say, "I go
   about the world and see many faces which I can recognize and I perceive
   many friends upon whom I can trust, but there is a God somewhere, and I
   know nothing at all about Him. Whether He is my friend or my foe I know
   not." If that individual is thoughtful and intelligent he must suffer
   unrest in his spirit, because he will say to himself, "Suppose this God
   should turn out to be a just God and I should be a breaker of His Laws?
   What a peril hangs over me. How is it possible for me to be at peace
   till this dreadful ignorance is removed?"

   The Old Testament Scripture says, "Acquaint now yourself with God and
   be at peace." There is no peace to the heart while God is unknown. He
   is the God of peace and there can be no peace till the soul knows Him.
   Does it not strike you as being most certainly so? To leave this point
   unknown would be to leave in jeopardy the most vital part of happiness,
   the hinge upon which our eternal destiny must turn. Are you doing this?
   Or is the Lord known to you? That this knowledge of God is necessary is
   clear, for how could it be possible for a man to have spiritual life
   and yet not know God? The very first being which a man discerns when he
   is quickened into spiritual life is the Father of Spirits. His first
   cry is, "Father, I have sinned," and all his life he cries, "Abba
   Father."

   Prayer is his breath, but he cannot truly pray to an unknown God. Faith
   is his life, but how shall he believe in Him whom he does not know? I
   cannot imagine such a being as a spiritual man who knows not God. It is
   a self-evident impossibility--to be of the sons of God and not yet know
   the Father! To be pressed upon the Father's bosom. To receive the
   Father's forgiveness and yet to be an utter stranger to that forgiving
   God is impossible--it is utterly inconceivable! The knowledge of God is
   an absolute necessity of the spiritual life, without which we cannot
   see or enter into the kingdom of Heaven.

   Certainly it is necessary for the spiritual life when fully developed
   above. In Heaven and not know the King who reigns there? The golden
   harp in your hand and not know for whom to sweep its melodious strings?
   White-robed in Glory and not know the Redeemer in whose blood our robes
   were washed? Absurd supposition! It cannot be endured for a moment!
   Sinner, you must know the Lord! If you do not know Him you are not a
   partaker of His Grace, but you abide in darkness. Into His Heaven you
   can never enter till He has given you a heart to know Him! Do not
   forget this warning, or trifle with it.

   III. Our third theme is THE EXCELLENCY OF THIS KNOWLEDGE. And here I
   shall spend a little longer time and I hope I shall not tire you. I
   shall not weary those who care more for sense than sound. One of the
   first effects of knowing God in the soul is that it turns out our
   idols. Paul tells the Galatians in the 4th chapter and 8th verse of his
   Epistle, that it was when they knew not God that they did service unto
   them which by nature are not gods. But when they knew God, or rather
   were known of Him, they turned from their idols at once.

   A knowledge of God! O my Brothers and Sisters, it creates an abhorrence
   of idols--especially of those which have enslaved our own hearts. It
   seems to us most monstrous that the ancient Greeks and Romans could
   have worshipped the deities which their poets fabled for them. And yet,
   at this very time, as I have said, men imagine for themselves a god
   such as they would choose and then they worship this god of their own
   fabrication. Only let the Lord reveal Himself to the soul. Let the
   heart know the true God and away these idols go! With loathing are they
   cast to the moles and to the bats. Get a view of the Jehovah of
   Revelation--shining through the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
   you say--"What have I to do, anymore, with idols?"

   With holy scorn you pour contempt upon the gods of man's invention and
   glory, instead, in the living God, the God of Israel! Your hearts burn
   with the jealousy of Elijah and flames with indignation against the
   rivals of the Lord of Hosts! You would take the prophets of Baal and
   let not one escape, because they have dared to set up "the image of
   jealousy" in the temple of the Most High and have seduced the minds of
   men to pay their worship to the gods that are not God! Beloved, God so
   enamors the soul of the converted man, so engrosses every spiritual
   faculty, that he cannot endure

   an idol, however dear in former times! And if, perhaps, in some
   backsliding moment an earthly love intrudes, it is because the man has
   withdrawn his eyes from the splendor of the Deity. When once he gets
   his eyes back, again, to the God of Love, then does Dagon fall before
   the Ark of the Lord and not so much as the stump is left! Blessed Lord,
   let us know You, for then we shall know our idols no more.

   The second good effect of the knowledge of God is that it creates faith
   in the soul. To prove this I might give a great many texts, but one
   will suffice. From Psalm 9:10, "they that know Your name will put their
   trust in You." We cannot trust an unknown God. But when God reveals
   Himself to us by His Spirit, then to trust Him is no longer difficult.
   It is, indeed, inevitable! Whenever a man does not believe God, it is
   because he does not know Him. If you doubt His willingness to pardon
   sin, you do not know the abundance of His mercy. If you doubt His skill
   to bring you through your present difficulties, you do not know the
   infinite resources of His wisdom. If you dream that He cannot deliver
   you in this, your time of need, you have closed your eyes to the
   unlimitedness of His power. If you think He has forsaken you, you have
   failed to know His immutability. Know Him and you must trust Him!

   Thirdly, this knowledge of God not only creates faith, but creates good
   works, also. Turn to 1 John 2:3 and you read, "Hereby we do know that
   we know Him, if we keep His commandments"--meaning it is absolutely
   certain that wherever there is a knowledge of God there must follow the
   keeping of His commandments. And it is certainly so--know the Lord and
   with holy reverence you will obey Him. See what a great deal the
   Apostle ascribes to the knowledge of God in Colossians 1:9--"For this
   cause we, also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for
   you, and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of His
   will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding." What was to be the
   benefit of this? Let us read on--"That you might walk worthy of the
   Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and
   increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might,
   according to His glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering
   with joyfulness."

   See what a string of excellent Graces spring out of our being filled
   with the knowledge of God?! It is a tree which bears 12 manner of
   fruits! The soul that knows the Lord is like a tree planted by the
   rivers of water, which brings forth its fruit in its season. Daniel
   says (11:32), that "The people who do know their God shall be strong
   and do great exploits," so that courage, valor and prowess are learned
   in this sacred school! A heart to know the Lord begets and nurtures
   every virtue and every Grace--and is the basis of the noblest
   character--the very food which feeds Divine Grace till it matures into
   Glory!

   Brothers and Sisters, to know God has over us a transforming power.
   Remember how the Apostle writes (in 2 Cor. 3:18), "We all, with open
   face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into
   the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."
   The knowledge of God is the most effectual influence under Heaven, for
   the Spirit works thereby, and by its means we are renewed in knowledge
   after the image of Him that created us. Everything that we learn and
   know affects our character in some measure, even as the flesh of an
   animal tastes of its food. A constant sight of any object, good or bad,
   tells upon us.

   We heard a German missionary say, last Monday night, that when he was
   in Coomassie, the sight of dead bodies and of mangled corpses from week
   to week so hardened him to it that the horror was almost gone. Every
   thought which crosses the mind affects it for the better or the worse.
   Every glance is molding us, every wish fashions the character. A sight
   of God is the most wonderfully sanctifying influence that can be
   conceived of! Know God and you will grow to be like He. Dear Hearer,
   have you beheld this marvelous vision?

   The knowledge of God has a further effect. It causes us to praise Him.
   Here is a proof text--"In Judah is God known; His name is great in
   Israel." Wherever the Lord is known He must be magnified! It is not
   possible for us to have low thoughts of Him, or to give forth mean
   utterances concerning Him, or to act in a miserly way towards His cause
   when we know Him practically. There are some men whom we know whose
   presence renders paltry actions impossible-- you feel that you could
   not act towards them in any but a generous manner. To know them
   elevates you! You must do the good and the great and the generous thing
   when they are concerned.

   So, when once we know God it is much more so, for to know Him
   constrains us to praise Him, not only with our lips, but with our
   lives! It makes us feel that nothing is good enough for Him and we
   would even die for His name's sake. We wish for a glorious high throne
   on which He may be exalted above the highest heavens, King of kings and
   Lord of lords. The knowledge of God brings comfort and that is a very
   desirable thing in a world of trouble. What does the

   Psalmist say? "God is known in her palaces for a refuge." Do you know
   Him? Then He is your refuge. Blessed be God, in days of storm we put
   into this harbor and in days of battle we fly to this castle and dwell
   in this high tower. If you know God you will not be ruffled, or if for
   a little while you are disturbed, your heart will soon come back to its
   rest. You will cast your cares on Him, wait patiently for Him and
   rejoice in Him at all times--and surely it shall be well with you.

   To know God also brings a man great honor. I cannot attempt, at this
   time, to explain the noble text which I am about to quote. I throw it
   out as a pleasing theme for meditation. It is the 14th verse of the
   91st Psalm. "Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore will I
   deliver him: I will set him on high, because he has known My name."
   Think of it--"set on high"--and set on high by the Lord Himself! And
   all as the result of knowing the name of the Lord! There is no getting
   on high and staying there, no dwelling above the world and sin, no
   sitting in the heavenlies, no triumphing over death and Hell except by
   knowing God! When we do know Him, our meditation of Him shall be sweet.
   Then shall our head be lifted up above our enemies round about us. Then
   our heart shall mount above the cares and sorrows of the world and our
   soul shall dwell on high, where our place of defense shall be the
   munitions of rocks.

   One thing more, and that is, the man who knows the Lord will have
   usefulness given him. And to prove that I will quote a passage in 2
   Corinthians 2:14--"Now thanks be unto God which always causes us to
   triumph in Christ, and makes manifest the savor of His knowledge by us
   in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them
   that are saved and in them that perish." Do you not see that the
   Apostle knew Christ and Christ's name was in him as ointment poured
   forth? The man who knows God has a savor about him and wherever he goes
   he will be a power among men! The savor of Christ will come streaming
   out of him, as incense from a censor filled with glowing coals!

   Our usefulness very much depends upon our knowledge of God. We cannot
   teach others of things that we do not know ourselves. If we have no
   savor in us there cannot be a savor coming out of us. We shall only be
   a drag upon the Church in any position if we are destitute of the
   knowledge of God in Christ Jesus. But if we are filled with a knowledge
   of Christ, then the sweet savor of His name will pour forth from us as
   perfume from the flowers!

   Thus I have put together many things upon which we cannot expatiate,
   but they will make you see how excellent a thing it is to know the Lord
   in the heart.

   IV. Our fourth point is, THE SOURCE OF THIS KNOWLEDGE. Upon this I will
   dwell but briefly. We are clearly taught in the text that it is a
   Divine work--"I will give them a heart to know Me." None but the
   Creator can give a man a new heart. The change is too radical for any
   other hand. It would be hard to give a new eye, or a new arm, but a new
   heart [intellect] is still more out of the question! All the preaching,
   teaching and reforming in the world cannot do it. The Lord Himself must
   do it!

   As surely as God made you, God must make you new or you will never know
   Him. It is evidently a work of pure Grace. "I will give them a heart,"
   not, "They shall grow into it, or purchase it," but, "I will give it to
   them." He freely gives to whomever He wills, according to His own
   declaration, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy." It is
   evidently a work which is possible. All things are possible to God and
   He says, "I will give it to them." He does not speak of it as a
   desirable blessing, but unattainable. On the contrary, He says, "I will
   give them a heart to know Me."

   It is a work which the Lord has promised to do. How many precious
   passages there are in Holy Writ in which the Lord declares that this
   shall be done? I have lately read them with much sweetness to my own
   heart. Here are some of them. In Hosea 2:19, "I will betroth you unto
   Me forever; yes, I will betroth you unto Me in righteousness and in
   judgment, and in lovingkindness and in mercies, I will even betroth you
   unto Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord." Then in the 8th
   chapter of the prophecy of Hosea, in the 2nd verse we read, "Israel
   shall cry unto Me, my God, we know You."

   That wonderful passage in Jeremiah 31:33-34, is so nearly reproduced by
   the Apostle in the 8th of Hebrews that I need only read the New
   Testament version (Heb. 8:10-12). "This is the covenant that I will
   make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord; I will
   put My laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will
   be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people: and they shall not
   teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know
   the Lord: for all shall know Me, from the least to the greatest. For I
   will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their
   iniquities will I remember no more." So then it is a promised blessing!
   A blessing all Divine and Divinely guaranteed to those with whom
   Jehovah has entered into Covenant.

   The sum of my discourse is this. If you have received this heart to
   know the Lord, bless Him every minute of your existence for this
   choicest of all blessings without which you could not enjoy any other
   Covenant blessing! Never cease to

   praise the Lord, for He has favored you above measure in giving you so
   priceless a blessing. But suppose you stand in doubt as to whether you
   know God? How should you act? Listen to good counsel--consider your
   ways and turn unto the Lord your God, even now. Confess your ignorance,
   dear Friend. A sense of ignorance is the very vestibule of knowledge.

   Go before God this very day with an acknowledgment that you know
   nothing. Tell Him how ignorant, blind and stupid you are. Confess it
   all before Him. That being done, remember that it is by the knowledge
   of Christ that you are to be justified--"By His knowledge shall my
   righteous Servant justify many" (Isa. 53:11). Study the Character of
   Christ. Contemplate, with eager attention, His work and Person. See God
   in Christ Jesus and when you have done so, cry mightily unto the Lord,
   saying, "You have given this promise in Your Covenant! Lord, let it be
   a promise unto me and do You fulfill it. You have said, 'I will give
   them a heart to know Me.' Lord, give me a heart to know You!"

   "For this," He says, "I will be inquired of by the house of Israel to
   do it for them." Go and inquire of Him concerning it. He will give you
   that heart! He will reveal Himself to you and you shall yet have to
   bless and praise His holy name, that He has turned you from darkness to
   light, and from the ignorance of your natural estate unto the true
   knowledge of His name. God grant it may be so with you this very day!

   Time flies, we are almost at the end of the year and some of you still
   remain ignorant of God! Shall the year return to Heaven to accuse you?
   Let not this blessed Sabbath go until you have thought upon your ways
   and turned your steps unto His testimonies! May His Spirit sweetly
   incline you to seek His face and He will be known of you. God grant His
   blessing, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Jeremiah 31:18-37. HYMNS FROM
   "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--908, 231, 489.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Solemn Impeachment of Unbelievers

   (No. 1207)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, DECEMBER 13, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "He that believes not God has made Him a liar; because he believes not
   the record that God gave of His Son." 1 John 5:10.

   NO doubt if our Lord Jesus were on earth He would find many persons for
   whom He would pray, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
   do." It is no doubt true of many who are living in great sin that they
   do it ignorantly, not knowing the full measure of their guilt or its
   real character in the sight of God. It is the duty of the Christian
   minister and, indeed, of all Christians, to render sins of ignorance
   impossible by imparting Scriptural knowledge. We must let men know what
   they are doing and never suffer them to go on in the dark. If they will
   commit sin, let them at least know what is involved in it, for "that
   the soul be without knowledge is not good."

   It is not meet that any man should continue in darkness now that the
   true light has dawned upon mankind. It is true, our testimony will not
   always be received, for men love darkness rather than light because
   their deeds are evil. But our duty remains the same--we are to bear
   witness of the Truth of God and to be, in the hands of God, the
   instruments of convincing the world of the exceeding sinfulness of sin.
   The great sin of not believing in the Lord Jesus Christ is often spoken
   of very lightly and in a very trifling spirit, as though it were
   scarcely any sin at all. Yet, according to my text, and, indeed,
   according to the whole tenor of the Scriptures, unbelief is the calling
   God a liar--and what can be worse?

   I earnestly desire that every unbeliever may see his unbelief at this
   time in its true colors and, perhaps, as the Spirit of God enables him
   to see the evil of his past unbelief, he will be so shocked at himself
   and horrified at his crime, that he will continue in it no longer, but
   yield himself to the faith. My soul longs, yes, even faints, that
   Divine Grace may be given to the unbelieving--that they may now believe
   in the Lord Jesus Christ!

   When our race had been lost by sin, it was infinite mercy on God's part
   to provide a way of salvation--and infinite condescension to make that
   way of salvation suitable to our lost condition. If it had been
   salvation which depended upon works, it would have been impossible for
   us. It would have mocked our sorrow, but could not have relieved it. In
   abounding mercy God has set forth Jesus Christ to be a Propitiation for
   sin and He bids guilty men believe in Him as the atoning Sacrifice and
   see in Him the love of God made manifest. He bids sinners lay hold upon
   eternal life by accepting Jesus Christ by faith as their Savior.

   Now, had not man been very vile and grossly wicked at heart, he would
   have leaped for joy at the proclamation of the Gospel--and have
   believed, at once, the Truth to which God bears witness! But, being
   desperately set on mischief, man does not believe in Jesus Christ, and
   if you preach Christ to him and set the Crucified One before him,
   still, except where the Holy Spirit works effectually, he remains in
   his unbelief, refuses to receive the witness of God and rejects the
   Redeemer.

   What I desire to do, this morning, is to bring every man who is in that
   condition to look at himself as in a glass-- and see clearly what he is
   doing. I wish to make him feel, as he hears this discourse, "Yes, I see
   what I am doing--by not believing Jesus I am despising the blood of
   Atonement and I am telling God to His face that He is a liar." It is
   always well for every man to know exactly where he is. On the sea of
   life the more often we take observations as to our longitude and
   latitude, the better. Many bankruptcies arise from careless trading.
   And in such cases the traders have no mind to consult their account
   books, but go on, with their eyes half open, hoping that things will
   take a turn, which turn is never taken.

   It is always good for a man to know who he is, what he is, where he is
   and where he is going. I would plead with the unbeliever to look well
   to his position, to see how God regards it, and to judge himself that
   he be not judged. If I should not seem to speak very tenderly at this
   time, you must not be astonished. I believe there is such a thing as
   pitying sinners

   and comforting them till they consider themselves to be no longer
   blameworthy--and even regard themselves as unhappy people who deserve
   sympathy!

   I talked not long ago with a troubled one and after much battling I
   brought her to this point--"There is the way of salvation. Jesus Christ
   has come into the world to save sinners and whoever believes in Him is
   saved." She replied, "I cannot believe in Him." And then I came to the
   push of the bayonet and said, "Will you, then, stand up in the sight of
   Almighty God and declare to Him that you cannot believe Him, which, of
   course, is the same thing as saying, in other words, that God is a
   liar? Rise, then, and let me hear you say what is in your heart." She
   replied most earnestly, "I could not say anything of the kind." My
   answer was, "But you did say so just now. And by your unbelief you have
   been saying so for years! You are practically saying it every moment
   that you remain in unbelief." That troubled one said to me as she left,
   "I thank you for not trying to comfort me. I wanted to be faithfully
   dealt with and I bless God that you have done

   so."

   Now I will, out of love to the souls of those who do not believe in
   Jesus, deal fairly with them. I will give them no comfort, for there is
   no comfort for those who believe not. I will try to make them see what
   their sin is, that they may be ashamed and confounded, and repent of
   their wicked unbelief. May the Spirit of God make them see that "he
   that believes not God has made Him a liar, because he believes not the
   record that God gave of His Son."

   First we shall see the sinner's inability to believe dissected. Then,
   the nature of his sin detected. Then, the unbeliever's sin abhorred.
   And fourthly, his fate predicted.

   I. First, THE SINNER'S INABILITY TO BELIEVE DISSECTED. He pleads that
   he cannot believe. He often says this and quiets his conscience with
   it. When he is aroused and awakened he declares that he cannot believe
   in Jesus Christ and cannot believe God--and goes off to his deadly
   sleep, again. He quotes the Scriptures to back up his excuse and
   perhaps reminds us of the Words of the Lord Jesus, Himself--"No man
   comes to Me except the Father who has sent Me draws him." To which we
   reply that the Words of our Lord are always very weighty with us and we
   would not wrest one of them for a moment--but our Lord explains His own
   Words in another place, where He says, "You will not come unto Me that
   you might have life."

   So then the sinner's inability lies in his will--it is because he will
   not that he cannot. Let every sinner be assured of this and let his
   conscience confirm the truth of the statement. Listen, O Unbeliever,
   you have said, "I cannot believe," but it would be more honest if you
   had said, "I will not believe." The mischief lies there. Your unbelief
   is your fault, not your misfortune! It is a disease, but it is also a
   crime--it is a terrible source of misery to you, but it is justly
   so--for it is an atrocious offense against the God of Truth! Let me
   take your unbelief to pieces and show why it is that you cannot
   believe.

   The inability of many of you lies in the fact that you do not care to
   think about the matter at all. A great many of you do not believe in
   the Lord Jesus Christ because you do not care about your souls, or see
   the importance of being saved. You give your minds to your business,
   your pleasure, or your sin--you dream that there is time enough to
   think of heavenly things--and you think them to be of secondary
   importance. This is the source of a large proportion of ordinary
   unbelief. Let any man who disbelieves the Bible, for instance, answer
   this question--Did you ever candidly read that Book with the view of
   seeing for yourself whether or not it is the Book of God? Did you ever
   seriously sit down to study the evidences of its being the Revelation
   of God?

   It is very seldom that any infidel can be found who will say "yes" to
   those questions. They rail at what they do not understand and condemn
   off-hand what they have never studied! Is this right? Many, however,
   say, "Oh, yes, I believe the Bible, I believe it is God's Book. I
   believe the Gospel to be God's Gospel." Why, then, do you not believe
   in Jesus? It must be because you do not think the Gospel message
   important enough to be obeyed. And in so doing you are practically
   calling God a liar, for you tell Him that your soul is not so precious
   as He says it is, neither is your state so perilous as He declares it
   to be.

   You are dying--the doctor says, "Here is a medicine which will cure
   your disease. It is the only medicine that will save your life and you
   will die if you do not take it." Suppose you do not take the medicine?
   I shall be right in saying that however you may view the matter, you
   call that physician a liar in the most blunt manner! You do not say in
   so many words, "I am not as bad as you say I am." You do not say, "I do
   not believe in your medicine," but, by refusing to take it,

   you say so most unmistakably! The physician will quite understand your
   action, even if you do not speak a sentence and, as he sees you die
   before his eyes, he will feel that your death lies at your own door.

   In refusing to come to the Gospel feast you do as good as tell the Lord
   that He makes too much of it. That He makes Heaven and earth ring with
   the Glory of it, but in your esteem your farm and your merchandise are
   far more worthy of attention. You, by your neglect of the great
   Salvation, declare that you are not in any pressing danger and do not
   stand in urgent need of a Savior. You also say that the pardon of sin,
   the favor of God and a good hope of Heaven are not worthy to be sought
   first and above all other things. You state that Jesus neither is the
   Chief among ten thousand, nor is His love necessary to make you truly
   happy. In all these points, and many others, your carelessness calls
   the Lord a liar!

   A second reason of the sinner's inability to believe lies in the fact
   that the Gospel is true. "No," you reply, "that is precisely why we
   would believe it." Yes, but what does Jesus say in John 8:45? He says,
   "Because I tell you the truth, you believe Me not." Strange reason for
   not believing a statement--because it is true! Yet there are thousands
   of individuals whose capacity for believing a lie is enormous--while
   their ability for accepting the Truth of God appears to have gone from
   them. When religious impostors have arisen, the very men who have heard
   the Gospel from their youth up and have not received it because it is
   true, have become dupes of imposition at once!

   The Truth of God did not suit their nature, which was under the
   dominion of the Father of Lies, but no sooner was a transparent lie
   brought under their notice than they leaped at it at once like a fish
   at a fly! The monstrous credulity of unbelief amazes me! I meet with
   persons who consider themselves to be bold thinkers and philosophers.
   They express their astonishment that I can really believe the things
   which I preach--but no sooner do I learn from them what their positive
   creed is than the astonishment comes to be on my side--and is a
   thousand times greater than theirs could be! The faith which accepts
   Christ has but a small throat, indeed, compared with that credulity
   which believes, for instance, in the development of man from a
   monkey--that creed requires the swallow of the great fish which
   swallowed Jonah!

   A lie you will believe, but because the Gospel is true you do not
   believe it. "You give us a bad character," says one. It is your true
   character! Some of you are in the habit of accepting no teaching but
   that which chimes in with your depraved tastes and skeptical notions!
   But because the Gospel is true and, therefore, crosses your corrupt
   tastes, you cannot endure it! If we were to trim it a little, cut it
   down and make it suit you, you would accept it! But in the name of the
   Everlasting God we assure you we will not do it--we dare not do it for
   God's sake, nor even for your sakes--for to preach to you another
   Gospel would only be to deceive you.

   There are persons who do not receive the Gospel because it is despised
   among men. The Gospel is sneered at by the great ones of the earth and
   the mass of mankind ridicule it. And therefore cowards turn their backs
   upon it. If princes and great men followed after the Truth of God, then
   there might be something in it, but are not Believers in Jesus
   generally a poor company? Do you not virtually say, "I cannot believe
   God's witness alone, but I would believe it if a learned professor or a
   great lord would add his testimony." What did they say in Christ's day?
   "Have any of the rulers believed?" The opinions of the rulers were
   evidently more considered than the witness of the Blessed God!

   We know a certain class of people who always ask, "Is it fashionable?"
   And there are others of another class who cautiously inquire, "What do
   the men in our shop think about it?" They set more store by the
   judgment of men than by the declarations of God! They will believe
   their fellow creatures who are as fallible as themselves, but God they
   will not believe! Let me tell you that even if you were, after a
   fashion, to believe God because His testimony is supported by the great
   ones of the earth, or by the many around you, it would not be believing
   God at all! It would at bottom resolve itself into believing the
   testimony of men. Sinner, this is no small offense--to be ready to
   accept the verdict of your fellow men--but not ready to accept the
   declaration of your God!

   Many, however, do not receive the Gospel because they are much too
   proud to believe it. The Gospel is a very humbling thing. It says to
   the sinner, "Now, Sir, you have no merits of your own and what is more,
   you have no power to obtain merit in the future." The man claims to
   have been temperate, chaste, honest and generous. But the Gospel says
   to him, "You have broken God's Law, and you are condemned for it." All
   that you have done was but your duty and cannot blot out your
   shortcomings in other respects. "For whoever shall keep the whole Law
   and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all"--so says the Book
   which cannot err (James 2:10). If you are to be saved, you must be
   saved as a sinner, or not at all, for Christ has not come to call the
   righteous, but sinners, to repentance!

   You must be saved through the merits of Another and washed from sin in
   the precious blood of Jesus! Your own works must not have a finger in
   it. It must be by Grace and Grace, alone. Of course the proud man
   cannot believe that. He turns his back upon it in scorn! Why can't he
   believe it? Because he will not believe it! He is so proud that it
   offends him. It goes against the grain, and he will not endure it. Many
   of you must confess that you do not like the Gospel because it does not
   leave you room to stow away your pride. If it said to you, "Attend to
   the sacraments," why, you would be baptized tomorrow and come to the
   Lord's Table, if that would save you!

   And if I were allowed to preach that if any man walked barefooted from
   his house to the Land's End he would be saved, you would start off this
   afternoon, wet as it is! If there were any great thing for you to do,
   you would do it. But because there is nothing for you to do but to
   accept what Another has done, you will not have it! Your detestable
   pride is at the bottom of your rejection of Free Grace! If this is the
   secret of your inability, does it excuse you? Or does it make your
   offense the greater?

   Another reason why men cannot believe God's testimony concerning Jesus
   lies in the holiness of the Gospel. If the Gospel came to them and
   said, "You can confess your sins, obtain absolution and then go and sin
   again," would not that suit many of you? That is the religion for
   sinful men! Do you think there ever will be a time when such teaching
   will cease to be popular? It is a most attractive religion Satan,
   himself, invented--and it shows his genius in lying! Confess your sin
   to a priest! Pay a shilling! Get absolved and go away and live as you
   like till next time! Rub sin off as you go along with a little penance!
   Human nature rejoices in that religion!

   But the Gospel says to the man, "You must forsake your evil ways. What
   is more, the very nature that suggests these sins must be changed. You
   must be born again." The Gospel cries, "Repent!" Let the wicked forsake
   his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him turn unto
   the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him. The Gospel proclaims Jesus,
   who saves men from their sins, but you do not want that! The impurity
   of your hearts is that which makes it hard to believe a pure Gospel. O
   Souls, I pray you, look at this Truth of God! When you say, "I cannot
   believe"--it is either because you are too careless, or else because
   your nature, itself, is too deceitful and too impure to accept the
   Truth of

   God!

   It would be easy enough to believe if these things were gone. Do the
   angels find it difficult to believe? Would pure spirits find it
   difficult to believe? No, your sin lies at the foundation of your
   unbelief! It is the root which bears this wormwood. We cannot expect a
   spendthrift to believe in the excellence of economy, or a vicious man
   to believe in the pleasures of chastity. Loose men even deny that
   anyone is pure! What an opinion bad men have of all mankind! Why do
   they think so ill of others? Because they judge them by themselves!
   When a dove flies over a landscape, it sees the clear streams and the
   fields of corn. But when a vulture passes over the same landscape what
   does it see? A dead horse here, a carcass there, or a piece of carrion!

   Everybody sees according to his eyes. A graceless, impure man cannot
   see purity. Christ said to the proud Pharisees, "How can you believe
   that receive honor from one another?" Their pride stood in the way! And
   in every case in which a man declares concerning the Lord Jesus, "I
   cannot believe," the difficulty is in himself and not in the facts to
   be believed, nor in the evidence of those facts. There is one excuse
   for unbelief, and only one. "How can they believe in Him of whom they
   have not heard?" That excuse will do for the heathen, but not for you,
   for you have heard and read about Jesus and know the Gospel. The only
   excuse that can be accepted is not for you! Of you it must be said, "He
   that believes not has made Him a liar."

   II. Secondly, I must now come to closer quarters and DESCRIBE THE
   NATURE OF THE SIN OF UNBELIEF, in

   that it makes God a liar. I will take many forms of it and show this to
   be the case. Those are guilty of this sin who deny that Jesus is the
   Messiah, the promised Savior, the Son of God. Out of Heaven, God
   Himself declared, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased."
   Peter truly said at Pentecost (Acts 2:22) that Jesus of Nazareth was "a
   Man approved of God by miracles, and signs, and wonders, which God did
   by Him." God says in many ways "He is my beloved Son," and if you say
   He is not, you make God a liar! That is clear enough.

   There are some who deny His Deity. Now, over and over in Scripture we
   are told that Jesus Christ is "God manifest in the flesh." "The Word
   was God." "By Him were all things created that are in Heaven and that
   are in earth, visible and invisible" (Col. 1:16). He is "called
   Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God." The miracles which Christ worked
   and especially His Resurrection from the dead--all prove His Deity--the
   Father bearing witness that He is His equal and

   His fellow. When a man says that Jesus is not God, and the Father says
   He is, there is no question God is being called a liar. But, as I
   believe there are very few of that kind of unbelievers here, I will
   leave such persons and pass on.

   A poor trembling, weeping sinner comes to me and among other things he
   says, "My sins are so great that I do not believe they can be
   pardoned." I meet him thus. God says, "Though your sins are as scarlet,
   they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they
   shall be as wool." "But, Sir, my sin is very great, indeed!" "The blood
   of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin." "But my
   transgressions have been exceedingly aggravated." "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."

   "Sir, I cannot believe it." Stand up, then, and tell the Lord so in the
   plainest manner--"O God, You have said You will abundantly pardon, but
   it is a lie!" I challenge you to make that statement outright, for you
   are making it in your hearts! It is idle to deny it, for it is so. God
   says, "I will and I can pardon," and you say He cannot--what is that
   but accusing the Lord of falsehood? Another will say, "Oh, but my heart
   is so hard I cannot believe in the power of God to make a new man of me
   and deliver me from the love of sin." Yet God declares in His Word, "A
   new heart, also, will I give them, and a new spirit will I put within
   them. I will take away the heart of stone out of their flesh, and will
   give them a heart of flesh." That is what God says. "It cannot be," you
   say. Very well, then, admit it--you are calling God a liar! God says,
   "I can." You say He cannot. There is your position!

   In many there exists a doubt about the willingness of God to save. They
   say, "I believe that the blood of Jesus Christ does blot out sin, but
   is He willing to pardon me?" Now, listen to what Jehovah says, for He
   says it with an oath, and to me it is a very startling thing that God
   should swear! He swears by Himself because He can swear by no greater.
   Mark that! "As I live, says the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death
   of him that dies, but had rather that he turn unto Me and live." Over
   and over again, in all sorts of circumstances, He gives us assurance
   that He delights in mercy! Now, then, Sinner, if you say God is
   unwilling and Christ is unwilling, and yet the Lord swears that He is
   willing, and Christ dies to prove it--what, then, is your unbelief?

   I hardly like to utter what I feel I must say--you do deliberately
   charge God with perjury and what could the greatest blasphemer out of
   Hell, or the blackest devil in Hell do, more than that? That is exactly
   what you have done and are doing now! "Alas," cries one, "my ground for
   doubt is deeper. I hear that God can pardon, regenerate and all that.
   And I believe it, but then I cannot see that any of this is for me. I
   do not see that these things are sent for me." Listen, then, to what
   God says, "Ho, everyone that thirsts, come you to the waters, and he
   that has no money, let him come buy wine and milk." You skillfully
   reply, "But I do not thirst." More shame for you, then!

   Listen again--"Come unto Me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and
   I will give you rest." "But I do not labor." Do not labor? How do you
   get your living? I feel sorry for you if you are a rich and lazy man
   that you have no labor. That text includes every laboring man and every
   heavy-laden man under Heaven. Listen, yet again, "Whoever will, let him
   come." Does not that invite every living man who is willing to come? If
   you say, "I am not willing," then I leave you, for you confess that you
   are unwilling to be saved--unwilling to be reconciled to God, and that
   is exactly what I am trying to prove--you cannot believe, because you
   are unwilling to do so. On your own head be your blood!

   I do not know what more I can say to you. You must be mad to be willing
   to incur, forever, the flames of Hell and the wrath of God! It is not
   for me to comfort you when you are in such a condition as that! If you
   choose your own destruction, why, so it must be. Yet hear me once
   again. Jesus has said to His disciples, "Go you into all the world and
   preach the Gospel to every creature; he that believes and is baptized
   shall be saved." Are you a creature? "Yes, I am a creature." Well, Man,
   God has put it as plain as it can be put--the Gospel is to be preached
   to you and, therefore, it has a relation to you! Would God send it to
   you to tantalize you? When you say, "It is not for me," you make God a
   liar! He says it is for "every creature" and you know you are a
   creature--how, then, dare you say it is not for you? In speaking thus,
   you accuse the Lord of trifling with you and mocking you.

   "Well," says one, "but I cannot see how simply trusting in Christ and
   believing God's witness of Him would save my soul." My dear Man, are
   you never to believe anything but what you can see? And how are you to
   see this thing till you have tried it? A physician says, "that medicine
   will heal you." The patient replies, "I need to see that it heals me
   before I take it." The man is a fool and so are you if that is how you
   trifle with God! You must believe the Gospel on the evidence

   of God and not otherwise, or your faith is not faith in God at all! The
   faith which He commanded in the Gospel is faith in the record which God
   has given concerning His Son, a faith which takes God at His Word.

   Believes then, on the Lord Jesus Christ and you have believed God to be
   true. Refuse to trust in Jesus Christ, unless you get some other
   evidence beyond the witness of God, and you have practically said that
   God's testimony is not enough--that is to say, you have made God a
   liar! Many a time I have heard men say, "Oh, but I cannot believe it,
   it seems so wonderful." Is not that why you should believe it? What
   should come from the glorious Lord but that which is wonderful? He is
   glorious in holiness, fearful in praise, doing wonders! Another cries
   out, "That it is too good to be true!" Ah, poor Soul, but have you
   never read, "As high as the heavens are above the earth, so are My ways
   above your ways, and My thoughts above your thoughts"? A less salvation
   would not do you any good nor glorify God.

   Some feel that the Gospel is too simple. They want a more complicated
   system than--"believe and live." How can it be too simple for finite
   minds like ours? Then I have heard them turn round and say, "It is too
   mysterious," and yet after all, where is this a mystery--"Believe in
   the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved"? What can be more plain
   than that? Anyway, dear Friends, let me say to you, whether it is a
   mystery or not, God bears witness to it! And if you do not believe it,
   you call God a liar! Whether you think it too simple, or too good, or
   too wonderful, or too anything, you must either believe God or call Him
   a liar! There is no third course for, be it simple or mysterious,
   wonderful or commonplace, the Lord asserts it to be true--and if you
   refuse His witness you make Him a liar and must take the consequences.

   III. And now I pray the Holy Spirit to rest upon my words while I
   treat, for a few minutes, upon the third and most awful point, namely,
   THE ABHORRANCE OF THIS SIN. To disbelieve God is, indeed, a sin! It was
   the mother sin of all--the door by which all other evil came into the
   world. The devil whispered in the ear of mother Eve, "Yes, has God
   said?" That insinuated doubt commenced our fall. And when that had
   tarnished the brightness of her intellect, the fiend added, "You shall
   not surely die"--calling God a liar. When she believed him and her
   husband joined her in it, our ruin was complete.

   Unbelief of God drove our race out of Eden and, in consequence, we are
   born in sore travail and plow the ground with toil. Oh, accursed
   Unbelief! It is time you were hung up on a gallows high as that of
   Haman! Alas, that any man should hug you to his heart! You destroyer of
   our race, you are loathsome, indeed! When the children of Israel were
   in the wilderness journeying towards Canaan, how was it that so many
   graves were dug in the desert? And that out of 600,000 footmen who came
   out of Egypt only two survived to enter the promised land? Who slew all
   these? The inspired Apostle tells us, "They could not enter in because
   of unbelief."

   Go, today, to Jerusalem. Look beneath the buildings of the modern town
   and mark the excavations which reveal the utter ruin of the holy city.
   See how fully the prophecy was fulfilled that not one stone should
   remain upon another! Stand upon the steeps of Zion and ask, "Who
   destroyed this fair city? Who burned her holy and beautiful house with
   fire? She was once so beautiful, the joy of the whole earth! Who cast
   her down to the dust, and why? The palaces of David and Solomon are
   overthrown and the plow has been driven over their foundations--why all
   this? Why was the siege of Jerusalem the most bloody and horrible in
   all history?"

   It was because the Jews rejected the Messiah and would not believe the
   testimony of the living God! O, accursed unbelief! It spits its venom
   against the holy God and He cannot but abhor it. How can the absolutely
   true submit to be charged with falsehood? This sin of making God a
   liar--I pray you look at it very solemnly, for it is a stab at God,
   Himself! What is it that would most easily provoke you? If a person
   stole your goods? If he struck you? If he injured you in business, you
   might bear it patiently. But when a man tells you to your face that he
   cannot believe you, the insult is acutely felt! You are not truthful if
   you can be content to be called a liar! Nothing stings like it--it is
   the unkindest cut of all! Oh, do not tell me that you find it difficult
   to believe my words, for that will cut me to the quick! Yet would I, a
   thousand times rather have you treat me thus than offer the same insult
   to the Lord my God!

   Then, remember, this unbelief insults God on a very tender point. He
   comes to the guilty sinner and says, "I am ready to forgive." The
   sinner says, "I do not believe You." "Hear Me," says the Lord, "What
   proof do you ask? See, I have given My only-begotten Son. He has died
   upon the tree to save sinners." "Still I do not believe You," says the
   unbeliever. Now, what further evidence can be given? Infinite Mercy has
   gone its utmost length in giving the Savior to

   bleed and die! God has laid bare His inmost heart in the wounds of His
   dying Son and still He is not believed! Surely, man has reached the
   climax of enmity to God in this!

   Nothing proves the utter baseness of man so much as this refusal to
   believe his God! And nothing proves so much the greatness of Almighty
   Grace as that God should, after all this, condescend to work faith in a
   heart so depraved! O miracle of sin! O greater miracle of love! I would
   have you remember that you are not only calling God a liar once or
   twice, but you deny what He has, over and over again, declared! To tell
   a man that he is a liar once is a great insult. But if he continues to
   assert the truth and you still contradict him, the provocation gathers
   force. If the man is perfectly truthful, it is a piece of wickedness on
   your part to refuse him credence when he repeats his evidence again and
   again.

   But the Lord has gone further than repeating His Word--He has sworn
   it--and yet you will not believe Him! I pray you remember that you are
   in the Presence of God at this very moment and that the Lord is now
   looking right into your heart. He sees clearly that in your inmost soul
   your unbelief is saying to Him, "O God, the maker of Heaven and earth,
   You are a liar! O God, who gave Your Son to die, I believe that fact,
   but I will not even now trust You. I do not believe in Your power or
   willingness to pardon me, though Your Word very clearly declares You to
   be both able and willing. You have promised to forgive all who believe
   in your Son, but I will not believe! You are ready now, at once, to put
   away sin from every man that believes Your witness with regard to
   Christ, but I do not believe Your witness--You lie!"

   I know you shudder at such sentiments and there is good need that you
   should. So why do you continue to act upon them? Did I not hear someone
   say, "Ah, Sir, I have been trying to believe for years." Terrible
   words! They make the case still worse! Imagine that after I had made a
   statement, a man should declare that he did not believe me, in fact, he
   could not believe me though he would like to do so. I should certainly
   feel grieved. But it would make matters worse if he added, "In fact, I
   have been trying to believe you for years and I cannot do it." What
   does he mean by that? What can he mean but that I am so incorrigibly
   false and such a confirmed liar, that though he would like to give me
   some credit, he really cannot do it? With all the effort he can make in
   my favor, he finds it quite beyond his power to believe me?

   Now, a man who says, "I have been trying to believe in God," in reality
   says just that with regard to the Most High! How idle is it to talk of
   trying to believe! If a statement is true, a right judgment believes
   it, not of choice, but because the evidence commands faith. The trying
   lies in the other direction--men do not want to believe the Truth of
   God-- therefore they are careless and negligent. They raise quibbles
   and questions. They demand signs and wonders, and feelings, and
   impressions. They struggle against the evidence. They shut out the
   light.

   In you who believe the Bible to be God's Word and yet are unbelievers,
   it is evidently so, for if Jesus is the Savior, why do you not believe
   Him? The talk about trying to believe is a mere pretence! But pretence
   or not, let me remind you that there is no text in the Bible which
   says, "Try and believe." It says, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ."
   He is the Son of God. He has proved it by His miracles. He died to save
   sinners, therefore trust Him. He deserves implicit trust and childlike
   confidence. Will you refuse Him these? Then you have maligned His
   Character and called Him a liar!

   IV. I shall leave this matter when I have, with a heavy burden on my
   soul, said a few words upon THE FATE OF THE UNBELIEVER. If this man
   continues to say he cannot believe God and that Christ is not to be
   trusted, what will happen to him? I wonder what the angels think must
   befall a being who calls God a liar? They see His Glory and as they see
   it they veil their faces and cry, "Holy, holy, holy!" What horror would
   they feel at the idea of calling God a liar! The saints in Heaven, when
   they see the Glory of God, fall down on their faces and adore Him! Ask
   them what they think must happen to those who persist in calling God a
   liar, and a liar in the matter of His mercy to rebels through Jesus

   Christ!

   As for me, I cannot conceive any punishment too severe for final
   unbelief. Only this I know, it is written, "He that believes not shall
   be damned." May you never know what that means--but you will know it as
   sure as you live if you continue in unbelief. God is not a liar, but if
   He does not damn the man who dies an unbeliever, He will be! Therefore
   depend upon it, He will do it! He has said, "He that believes not shall
   be damned." If He is a liar, He may let you escape, but if He is not,
   He will cast you into Hell! There is nothing else before you. The other
   day an enquirer said to me, "I cannot believe," and I gave him no
   answer but this--"then you must be damned." Had I nothing else to say?
   No, nothing else. I have no comforts to offer, no hopes to present to
   an unbeliever. "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he
   that believes not shall be damned."

   There is an honest intolerance about these words of our Lord. He does
   not stammer and hesitate and say, "I fear some ill may occur to you."
   No, He says outright that you will be damned. Nothing on earth or in
   Heaven can save you except you believe in Jesus Christ.. You may knock
   at a thousand doors and you may cry, and pray, and groan, and agonize
   and sweat--yes, even to drops of blood--but there is only one door to
   Heaven and that door is faith in Jesus Christ. If you will not enter by
   that door, God Himself will not open another. God has been pleased to
   empty out the infinite mercy of His heart into the Person of His dear
   Son, and He cries, "Whoever will, let him come and take of the Water of
   Life freely." But, if Jesus is rejected by you, and God's witness about
   Him is refused, do not look for any other help.

   Do you think that God has another son who will die for you? You would
   not believe in Him if He had! Do you think He will alter the whole plan
   of Salvation and the Covenant of Grace, and reverse the purposes of His
   Wisdom to gratify your wicked whims? That were to make Him an
   accomplice in your wickedness and a patron of your insolence! Believe
   me, He will keep His Word--if you believe not in Christ, you shall be
   utterly damned at the Last Great Day! The last word I have to say is
   this, not only will the unbeliever be lost, but he will be lost by his
   unbelief. Thus says the Lord, "He that believes not is condemned
   already." Why? "Because he has not believed on the Son of God."

   Has he not committed a great deal more that will condemn him? Oh, yes,
   a thousand other sins are upon him, but Justice looks for the most
   flagrant offense that it may be written as a superscription over his
   condemned head--and it selects this monster sin and writes--"Condemned,
   because he has not believed on the Son of God.''" When the Spirit of
   God came into the world to convince men of sin, He began by convincing
   them of the greatest of all. Which did He choose as the most glaring?
   "Of sin because they believed not on Me." I am only telling you what I
   find in the Scriptures. Certain Brethren will say, "This sermon is not
   orthodox." I care nothing for their criticism--what I have advanced is
   God's Word and God's Word against any man's word all the world over.

   His word is sharper than a two-edged sword, and I pray Him to use it to
   cut to your very marrow this morning--to wound and kill--that
   afterwards Christ may make alive! If any one of you should be finally
   cast into the prison of despair, to suffer, in Hell, the wrath of God,
   the accusation which will appear over your condemned cell will run
   thus, "This man knew the Gospel to be true and yet he would not believe
   it." That thought will torture you with a vengeance, "I am condemned
   because I believed not the Truth of God. Because I called my God a
   liar. Because I trusted not in Christ. He told me it would be so, and
   it is so. This is the sting of it all, that for my unbelief I am justly
   left to perish."

   Oh, dear Hearers, do not call the Lord a liar! By your reason which is
   yet left to you. By your love to yourselves. By Heaven and by Hell. By
   the bleeding wounds of Jesus and by the Truth of God, I entreat you,
   accept Jesus! May the Holy Spirit go with my entreaties that your souls
   may relent, that your stony hearts may melt before the Cross and you
   may receive Jesus Christ to be your All in All this day. Amen and Amen!

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--1 John 5. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--485, 600, 483.
     __________________________________________________________________

Infallibility--Where To Find It and How To Use It

   (No. 1208)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, DECEMBER 20, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "It is written." Matthew 4:4.

   THOUGHTFUL minds anxiously desire some fixed point of belief. The old
   philosopher wanted a fulcrum for his lever and believed that if he
   could only obtain it he could move the world! It is uncomfortable to be
   always at sea--we would gladly discover terra firma and plant our feet
   upon a rock. We cannot rest till we have found out something which is
   certain, sure, settled, decided and no longer to be questioned. Many a
   mind has peered into the hazy region of rationalism and has seen
   nothing before it but perpetual mist and fog. And, shivering with the
   cold chill of those arctic regions of skepticism, it has yearned for a
   clearer light, a warmer guide, a more tangible belief.

   This yearning has driven men into strange beliefs. Satan, seeing their
   ravenous hunger, has made them accept a stone for bread. Many have
   held, and still hold, that it is possible to find your infallible
   foundation in the Pope of Rome. I do not wonder that they would rather
   have an infallible man than be altogether without a standard of truth.
   Yet it is so monstrous an idea that men should believe in papal
   infallibility, that did they not, themselves, swear to it, we would
   think it most insulting to accuse them of it! How any mind can, by any
   possible contortion, twist itself into a posture in which it will be
   capable of accepting such a belief is one of the mysteries of manhood!

   Why, the popes err in trifles, how much more in great matters? In
   Disraeli's, "Curiosities of Literature," is the following amusing
   incident, under the title of, "Errata" [plural of erratum--an error in
   printing or writing]--"One of the most conspicuous of all literary
   blunders is that of the edition of the Vulgate, by Sixtus V. His
   Holiness carefully superintended every sheet as it passed through the
   press and, to the amazement of all the world, the world remained
   without a rival--it swarmed with errors! A multitude of scraps were
   printed to satiate the erroneous passages, in order to give the true
   text. The book makes a whimsical appearance with these patches and the
   heretics exulted in this demonstration of papal infallibility! The
   copies were called in and violent attempts made to suppress it. A few
   still remain for the raptures of Biblical collectors--at a late sale
   the Bible of Sixtus V. fetched above 60 guineas--not too much for a
   mere book of blunders! The world was highly amused at the bull of the
   editorial pope prefixed to the first volume--excommunicates all
   printers who, in reprinting the work, should make any alterations in
   the text!"

   The notion of infallibility residing in mortal man is worthy of a
   madhouse and scarcely deserves to be seriously discussed. You can
   scarcely read a page of such history, as even Catholics admit to be
   authentic, without discovering that popes have been men and not
   gods--and their bulls have been as blundering and erroneous as the
   decrees of worldly princes! So long as a clear understanding remains to
   a man, he cannot repose in the imaginary infallibility of a priest!

   Others, however, linger hopefully around the idea of an infallible
   Church. They believe in the judgment of general councils and hope,
   there, to find the rock of certainty. Apparently this is more easy, for
   in the multitude of counselors there is wisdom--but in reality it is
   quite as preposterous! If you mass together a number of men, each one
   of whom is fallible, it is clear that you are no nearer infallibility!
   It is quite as easy to believe that one man is inspired as that five or
   600 are so! The fact is that Churches have made mistakes as well as
   individual men and have fallen into grievous errors both in practice
   and doctrine.

   Look at the Churches of Galatia, Corinth, Laodicea, Sardis and so on.
   No, we find that the first disciples of our Lord, who made up the truly
   primitive and Apostolic Church, were not infallible. They made a great
   mistake about a simple saying of our Lord. He said, concerning John,
   "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to you?" "Then went
   this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not
   die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that
   he tarry till I come, what is that to you?" Even the Apostles,
   themselves, could blunder and did blunder. They were infallible in what
   they wrote when they were under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but
   at no other time.

   Yet, Brothers and Sisters, I marvel not that in the sore distress to
   which the mind is often brought, it has found it better to believe in
   an infallible Church than to be left to mere reason or to be tossed to
   and fro, a desolate waif, driven by ever changeful winds over the awful
   leagues of questions which are found in the restless ocean of unbelief.
   Longing, as I do, for a sure foundation, and rejecting both popes and
   councils, where shall I look?

   We have a more sure word of testimony, a rock of Truth upon which we
   rest, for our infallible standard lies in, "It is written." The Bible,
   the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, is our religion! Of this
   inspired Book we say--

   "This is the judge that ends the strife When wit and reason fail."

   It is said that it is hard to be understood, but it is not so to those
   who seek the guidance of the Spirit of God. There are, in it, great
   Truths which are above our comprehension--placed there, on purpose, to
   let us see how shallow are our finite minds. But concerning vital and
   fundamental points, the Bible is not hard to be understood--neither is
   there any excuse for the multitudes of errors which men pretend to have
   gathered from it. A babe in Grace taught by the Spirit of God may know
   the mind of the Lord concerning salvation and find its way to Heaven by
   the guidance of the Word alone. But be it profound or simple, that is
   not the question--it is the Word of God and is the pure, unerring Truth
   of God. Here is Infallibility and nowhere else!

   I wish to speak, this morning, upon this grand, Infallible Book, which
   is our sole court of appeal. I desire to speak especially to the young
   converts who, during the last few days, have found the Savior, for by
   them this Book must be used as the sword of the Spirit in the spiritual
   conflicts which await them. I would zealously exhort them to take to
   themselves this part of the whole armor of God that they may be able to
   resist the great enemy of their souls. "It is written." I shall commend
   this unfailing weapon to the use of our young soldiers by noting that
   this is our Champion's own weapon. Secondly, I shall urge them to note
   to what uses He turned this weapon. And, thirdly, we shall watch Him to
   see how He handled it.

   I. I commend to every Christian here the constant use of the Infallible
   Word because IT WAS OUR CHAMPION'S CHOSEN WEAPON when He was assailed
   by Satan in the wilderness. He had a great choice of weapons with which
   to fight with Satan, but He took none but this Sword of the Spirit--"It
   is written." Our Lord might have overcome Satan by angelic force. He
   had only to pray to His Father and He would presently have sent Him 12
   legions of angels, against whose mighty rush the arch-fiend could not
   have stood for a single moment!

   If our Lord had but exercised His Godhead, a single word would have
   sent the tempter back to his infernal den. But instead of angelic power
   or Divine, He used, "It is written," thus teaching His Church that she
   is never to call in the aid of force, or use carnal weapons, but must
   trust, alone, in the Omnipotence which dwells in the sure Word of
   Testimony! This is our battle-ax and weapon of war! The patronages or
   the constraints of civil power are not for us! And neither dare we use
   either bribes or threats to make men Christians--a spiritual kingdom
   must be set up and supported by spiritual means only.

   Our Lord might have defeated the tempter by unveiling His own Glory.
   The brightness of the Divine Majesty was hidden within the humility of
   His Manhood, but if He had lifted the veil for a moment, the fiend
   would have been as utterly confounded as bats and owls when the sun
   blazes in their faces. But Jesus deigned to conceal His excellent
   Majesty and only to defend Himself with, "It is written." Our Master
   might also have assailed Satan with rhetoric and logic. Why did He not
   discuss the points with him as they arose? Here were three different
   propositions to be discussed, but our Lord confined Himself to the one
   argument, "It is written."

   Now, Beloved, if our Lord and Master, with all the choice of weapons
   which He might have had, nevertheless selected this true Jerusalem
   blade of the Word of God, let us not hesitate for a moment, but grasp
   and hold fast this one and only weapon of the saints in all times! Cast
   away the wooden sword of carnal reasoning! Trust not in human
   eloquence! Arm yourselves with the solemn Declarations of God, who
   cannot lie, and you need not fear Satan and all his hosts! Jesus, we
   may be sure, selected the best weapon. What was best for Him is best
   for you.

   This weapon, it is to be noted, our Lord used at the outset of His
   career. He had not yet come into His public ministry, but, if I may use
   the expression, while His young hand was yet untried in public warfare,
   He grasped at once the Weapon ready forged for Him and boldly said, "It
   is written." You young Christians lately converted have probably
   already been tempted, or before long you will be, for I remember that
   the very first week after I found the Savior I was

   subjected to a very furious spiritual temptation, and I should not
   wonder if the same happens to you. Now, I charge you, do as Jesus did
   and grasp firmly--"It is written."

   It is the child's weapon as truly as it is the defense of the strong
   man. If a Believer were as tall as Goliath of Gath, he need have no
   better sword than this and, if he was a mere pigmy in the things of
   God, this sword will equally befit his hand and be equally effectual
   for offense or defense. What a mercy it is for you, young Christian,
   that you have not to argue but to believe, not to invent but to accept!
   You have only to turn over your Bibles, find a text, and hurl that at
   Satan, like a stone from David's sling, and you will win the battle.
   "It is written," and what is written is Infallible--here is your
   strength in argument. "It is written." God has said it, that is enough.
   O blessed sword and shield which the little child can use to purpose,
   fit for the illiterate and simple-hearted, giving might to the
   feeble-minded and conquest to the weak!

   Note next, that as Christ chose this weapon out of all others, and used
   it in His earliest conflict, so, too, He used it when no man was near.
   The value of Holy Scripture is not, alone, seen in public teaching or
   striving for the Truth of God--its still small voice is equally
   powerful when the servant of the Lord is enduring personal trial in the
   lonely wilderness. The severest struggles of a true Christian are
   usually unknown to any but himself. Not in the family do we meet the
   most subtle temptations, but in the closet. Not in the shop so much as
   in the recesses of our own spirit do we wrestle with principalities and
   powers. For these dread duels, "It is written," is the best sword and
   shield!

   Scripture to convince another man is good, but Scripture is most
   required to console, defend and sanctify our own soul. You must know
   how to use the Bible when you are alone, and understand how to meet the
   subtlest of foes with it, for there is a real and personal devil, as
   most Christians know by experience--they have stood foot to foot with
   him and known his keen suggestions, horrible insinuations, blasphemous
   assertions and fiendish accusations. We have been assailed by thoughts
   which came from a mind more vigorous, more experienced and more subtle
   than our own. And for these there is but one defense--the Infallible,
   "It is written."

   Conflicts have taken place full many a time between God's servants and
   Satan which are more notable in the unpublished annals of the sacred
   history which the Lord records than the bravest deeds of ancient heroes
   whom men praise in their national songs. He is not the only conqueror
   who is saluted with blast of trumpet and whose statue stands in the
   public square--there are victors who have fought with angels and
   prevailed--whose prowess even Lucifer must grimly own. These all
   ascribe their victories to the Divine Grace which taught them how to
   use the Infallible Word of the

   Lord!

   Dear Friend, you must have, "It is written," ready by your side at all
   times! Some, when a spiritual conflict begins, run to a friend for
   help. I do not condemn the practice, but it would be much better if
   they turned to the Lord and His sure promises. Some, at the first
   onslaught are ready to give up all hope. Do not act in so dastardly a
   manner! Seek Grace to play the man. You must fight if you are to enter
   into Heaven. Look to your weapon, it cannot bend or grow blunt! Wield
   it boldly and plunge it into the heart of your enemy. "It is written"
   will cut through soul and spirit--and wound the old dragon, himself.

   Note, that our Lord used this weapon under the most trying
   circumstances, but He found it to be sufficient for His need. He was
   alone. No disciple was there to sympathize. The Word of God was the man
   of his right hand, the Scripture communed with Him! He was hungry, for
   He had fasted 40 days and nights, and hunger is a sharp pain.
   Oftentimes the spirits sink when the body is in need of food. Yet, "It
   is written," held the wolf of hunger at bay. The Word fed the Champion
   with such meat as not only removed all faintness, but made Him mighty
   in spirit! He was placed by his adversary in a position of great
   danger--high on the pinnacle of the lofty House of the Lord--yet there
   He stood and needed no surer foothold than that which the promises of
   the Lord supplied Him!

   "It is written," enabled Him to look down from the dizzy height and
   still baffle the tempter. He was placed, also, where the kingdoms of
   the world were stretched beneath His feet--a matchless panorama which
   has full often dazzled great men's eyes and driven them onward to
   destruction--but, "It is written," swept aside the snares of ambition
   and laughed at the fascination of power! Or in the desert, or on the
   Temple, or on an exceedingly high mountain, no change in His mode of
   warfare was required--the Infallible, "It is written," availed in every
   position in which He found Himself! And so shall it be with us.
   Earnestly do I commend the Word of God to you who have lately enlisted
   beneath the banner of my Lord! As David said of Goliath's sword, "there
   is none like it." Even so say I of the Holy Scriptures! Our

   Lord was tempted in all points like as we are and, therein, He
   sympathizes with us. But He resisted the temptations and, therein, He
   is our example--we must follow Him fully if we would share His
   triumphs.

   Observe that our Savior continued to use His one defense, although His
   adversary frequently shifted his point of attack. Error has many forms,
   the Truth of God has only one. The devil tempted Him to distrust, but
   that dart was caught upon the shield of, "It is written, Man shall not
   live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds out of the mouth
   of God shall man live." The enemy aimed a blow at Him from the side of
   presumption, tempting Him to cast Himself down from the Temple. But how
   terribly did that two-edged sword fall down upon the head of the fiend,
   "It is written, You shall not tempt the Lord your God." The next
   impudent blow was leveled at our Lord with the intent of bringing Him
   to His knees--"Fall down and worship me." But it was met and returned
   with crushing force by--"It is written, You shall worship the Lord your
   God, and Him only shall you serve." This smote leviathan to the heart!

   This weapon is good at all points--good for defense and for attack--to
   guard our whole manhood or to strike through the joints and marrow of
   the foe. Like the seraph's sword at Eden's gate, it turns every way.
   You cannot be in a condition which the Word of God has not provided
   for! It has as many faces and eyes as Providence itself. You will find
   it unfailing in all periods of your life, in all circumstances, in all
   companies, in all trials and under all difficulties. Were it fallible
   it would be useless in emergencies, but its unerring Truth renders it
   precious beyond all price to the soldiers of the Cross. I commend to
   you, then, the hiding of God's Word in your heart, the pondering of it
   in your minds!

   "Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom." Be rooted
   and grounded and established in its teaching, and saturated with its
   spirit. To me it is an intense joy to search diligently in my Father's
   Book of Grace. It grows upon me daily. It was written by Inspiration in
   old times, but I have found, while feeding upon it, that not only was
   it Inspired when written, but it is still so! It is not a mere historic
   document--it is a letter fresh from the pen of God to me. It is not a
   sermon once delivered and ended--it still speaks! It is not a flower
   dried and put by in the hortus siccus, with its beauty clouded and its
   perfume evaporated--it is a fresh blooming flower in God's garden, as
   fragrant and as fair as when He planted it!

   I look not upon the Scriptures as a harp which once was played by
   skillful fingers and is now hung up as a memorial upon the wall. No, it
   is an instrument of 10 strings still in the minstrel's hand, still
   filling the Temple of the Lord with Divine music which those who have
   ears to hear delight to listen to! Holy Scripture is an Aeolian harp
   through which the blessed wind of the Spirit is always sweeping and
   creating mystic music, such as no man's ears shall hear elsewhere, nor
   hear even then, indeed, unless they have been opened by the healing
   touch of the Great Physician! The Holy Spirit is in the Word, and it
   is, therefore, living Truth! O Christians, be sure of this, and because
   of it, make the Word your chosen weapon of war!

   II. Our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us TO WHAT USES TO PUT THIS, "IT IS
   WRITTEN." Notice, first, that He

   used it to defend His Sonship. The fiend said, "If you are the Son of
   God," and Jesus replied, "It is written." That was the only answer He
   deigned to give. He did not call to mind evidences to prove His
   Sonship. He did not even mention that Voice out of the excellent Glory
   which had said, "This is My beloved Son." No, but, "It is written."
   Now, my dear young Brothers and Sisters, converted but newly, I do not
   doubt but that you have been already subjected to that

   infernal, "if."

   Oh, how glibly it comes from Satan's lips! It is his darling word, the
   favorite arrow of his quiver! He is the Prince of skeptics and they
   worship him while he laughs in his sleeve at them, for he believes and
   trembles. One of his greatest works of mischief is to make men doubt.
   "If"--with what a sneer he whispers this in the ear of the
   newly-converted. "If," says he--"if." "You say you are justified and
   pardoned, and accepted but IF "May you not, after all, be deceived?"
   Now, dear Friends, I beseech you never let Satan get you away from the
   solid ground of the Word of God. If he once gets you to think that the
   fact of Christ being the Savior of sinners can only be proved by what
   you can see within yourself, he will very soon plunge you into despair!

   The reason why I am to believe in Jesus lies in Jesus and not in me! I
   am not to say, "I believe in the Lord Jesus because I feel so happy,"
   for within half an hour I may feel miserable! But believe in Christ for
   salvation because it is written, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and
   you shall be saved." I believe in the salvation provided by Jesus
   Christ, not because it agrees with my reason or suits my frame of mind,
   but because it is written, "He that believes in Him is not

   condemned." "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believes in Me has
   everlasting life." Nothing can alter this Truth of God--it stands and
   must stand forever!

   Believer, abide by it, come what may. Satan will tell you, "You know
   there are many evidences. Can you produce them?" Tell him to mind his
   own business. He will say to you, "You know how imperfectly you have
   behaved, even since your conversion." Tell him that he is not so
   wonderfully perfect that he can afford to find fault with you. If he
   says, "Ah, but if you were really a changed character you would not
   have those thoughts and feelings." Do not argue at all with him, but
   dwell upon the fact that it is written, "Jesus Christ came into the
   world to save sinners, and whoever believes in Him shall not perish,
   but have everlasting life." If you believe in Him, you cannot perish,
   but you have everlasting life, for so it is written! "It is written."
   Stand there, and if the devil were 50 devils in one, he could not
   overcome you!

   On the other hand, if you leave, "It is written," Satan knows more
   about reasoning than you do. He is far older, has studied mankind very
   thoroughly and knows all our sore points--therefore the contest will be
   an unequal one. Do not argue with him, but wave in his face the banner,
   "It is written." Satan cannot endure the Infallible Truth of God, for
   it is death to the falsehood of which he is the father. So long as
   God's Word is true, the Believer is safe. If that is overthrown, our
   hope is lost, but, blessed be God, not till then! Flee to your
   stronghold, you tempted ones!

   Our Lord next used the Scripture to defeat temptation. He was tempted
   to distrust. There lay stones at His feet, for all the world like
   loaves. There was no bread and He was hungry. Distrust said, "God has
   left You. You will starve. Therefore leave off being a Servant! Become
   a Master and command that these stones be made bread." Jesus, however,
   met the temptation to provide distrustfully for Himself by saying, "It
   is written." Now, young Christians or old Christians, you may be placed
   by Providence where you think you will be all alone. And, then, if you
   are afraid that God will not provide for you, the dark suggestion will
   arise, "I will deal after the way of the unjust, and so put myself in
   comfortable circumstances."

   True, the action would be wrong, but many would do it, and therefore
   Satan whispers, "Necessity has no law! Take the opportunity now before
   you." In such an hour foil the foe with, "It is written, you shall not
   steal." We are commanded to never go beyond or defraud our neighbor. It
   is written, "Trust in the Lord and do good, so shall you dwell in the
   land, and verily you shall be fed." It is written, "No good thing will
   He withhold from them that walk uprightly." In that way, only, can you
   safely meet the temptation to distrust. Then Satan tempted the Lord to
   presumption. "If you are the Son of God, cast Yourself down," he said.
   But Christ had a Scripture ready to parry his thrust.

   Many are tempted to presume. "You are one of God's elect, you cannot
   perish. You may, therefore, go into sin. You have no need to be so very
   careful since you cannot fall finally and fatally"--so Satan whispers
   and it is not always that the uninstructed convert is ready to answer
   the base argument. If we are at any time tempted to yield to such
   specious, special pleadings, let us remember it is written, "watch and
   pray, that you enter not into temptation." It is written, "Keep your
   heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." It is
   written, "Be you holy, for I am holy. Be you perfect, even as your
   Father which is in Heaven is perfect." Begone, Satan! We dare not sin
   because of the mercy of God--that were, indeed, a diabolical return for
   His goodness! We abhor the idea of sinning that Grace might abound.

   Then Satan will attack us with the temptation to be traitors to our God
   and to worship other gods. "Worship me," he says, "and if you do this
   your reward shall be great." He sets before us some earthly object
   which he would have us idolize. Some selfish aim which he would have us
   pursue. At that time our only defense is the sure Word, "It is written,
   You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
   soul, with all your strength." "You are not your own, you are bought
   with a price." "Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy,
   acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." "Little
   children keep yourselves from idols." Quoting such Words as those with
   all our hearts, we shall not be suffered to fall.

   Beloved, we must keep from sin! If Christ has, indeed, saved us from
   sin, we cannot bear the thought of falling into it! If any of you can
   take delight in sin, you are not the children of God! If you are the
   children of God you hate sin with a perfect hatred and your very soul
   loathes it. To keep you from sin, arm yourselves with this most holy
   and pure Word of God which shall cleanse your way and make your heart
   obedient to the voice of the thrice-holy God.

   Next our Lord used the word as a direction to His way. This is a very
   important point. Too many direct their ways by what they call
   Providences. They do wrong things and they say, "It seemed such a
   Providence." I wonder whether Jonah,

   when he went down to Joppa to flee to Tarshish, considered it a
   Providence that a ship was about to sail? If so, he was like too many,
   nowadays, who seek to lay their guilt upon God by declaring that they
   felt bound to act as they did, for Providence suggested it! Our Lord
   was not guided as to what He should do by the circumstances around Him.
   Anyone but our holy Lord would have obeyed the tempter and then have
   said, "I was very hungry, and I was sitting down in the wilderness--and
   it seemed such a Providence that a spirit should find me and
   courteously suggest the very thing that I needed, that is, to turn the
   stones into bread."

   It was a Providence, but it was a testing Providence. When you are
   tempted to do evil to relieve your necessities, say to yourself, "This
   Providence is testing me, but by no means indicates to me what I ought
   to do, for my rule is, 'It is written.'" If you make apparent
   Providence your guide, you will make a thousand mistakes. But if you
   follow, "It is written," your steps will be wisely ordered. Neither are
   we to make our special gifts and special privileges our guide. Christ
   is on the pinnacle of the Temple and it is possible, no, it is certain,
   that if He had chosen to cast Himself down, He could have safely done
   so. But He did not make His special privileges a reason for
   presumption.

   It is true that the saints shall be kept. Final Perseverance I believe
   to be undoubtedly the teaching of God's Word-- but I am not to presume
   upon a doctrine--I am to obey the precept. For a man to say, "I am a
   child of God, I am safe, therefore I live as I like," would be to prove
   that he is not a child of God at all, for the children of God do not
   turn the Grace of God into licentiousness. It were only according to
   the devil's logic to say, "I am favored more than others and,
   therefore, I may provoke the Lord more than they." "It is written we
   love Him because He first loved us, and by this we know that we love
   God, if we keep His commandments."

   Then Satan tried to make his own personal advantage our Lord's guide.
   "All these things will I give you," he said, but Christ did not order
   His acts for His own personal advantage, but replied, "It is written."
   How often have I heard people say, "I do not like to remain in a Church
   with which I do not agree, but my usefulness would be quite gone if I
   were to leave it." On this system, if our Lord had been a mere man, He
   might have said, "If I fall down and perform this small act of
   ritualism I shall have a noble sphere of usefulness. All the kingdoms
   of the earth will be mine! Look at all those poor oppressed slaves--I
   could set them free! The hungry and the thirsty--how I could supply
   their needs! And with me for a King, the earth would be happy! Indeed,
   that is the very thing I am about to die for, and if it is to be done
   so easily, and in an instant, by bowing the knee before this spirit,
   why not do it?"

   Far, far removed was our Lord from the wicked spirit of compromise.
   Alas, too many now say, "We must give and take in little points. It is
   of no use to stand out and to be so absurdly wedded to your own ideas!
   There is nothing like yielding a little to carry your point in greater
   things." Thus many talk, nowadays, but our Lord did not so speak!
   Though the whole world would be at His disposal if He did but once bow
   His head before the fiend, He would not do it. "It is written" was His
   guide, not His usefulness or personal advantage.

   My dear Brothers and Sisters, it will sometimes happen that to do the
   right thing will appear to be most disastrous. It will shipwreck your
   fortune and bring you into trouble, but I charge you do the right thing
   at any cost! Instead of your being honored, respected and accounted a
   leader in the Christian Church, you will be regarded as eccentric and
   bigoted if you speak straight out. But speak straight out and never
   mind what comes of it. You and I have nothing to do with what becomes
   of us, or our reputations, or with what becomes of the world, or
   becomes of Heaven itself! Our one business is to do our Father's will.
   "It is written" is to be our role and with dogged obstinacy, as men
   call it, but with resolute consecration, as God esteems it, through the
   mire and through the slough, through flood and through the flame,
   follow Jesus and the Infallible Word! Follow the written Word wholly
   and never mar the perfection of your obedience to Him on account of
   usefulness, or any other petty plea which Satan puts in your way.

   Note, further, that our Lord used, "It is written," for maintaining His
   own Spirit. I love to think of the calmness of Christ. He is not one
   whit flurried. He is hungry and He is told to create bread. And He
   answers, "It is written." He is lifted to the Temple's summit, but He
   says, "It is written," just as calmly as you or I might do sitting in
   an easy chair. There He is with the whole world beneath His feet,
   gazing on its splendor, but He is not dazzled. "It is written" is still
   His quiet answer. Nothing makes a man self-contained, cool and equal to
   every emergency like always falling back upon the Infallible Book and
   remembering the declaration of Jehovah, who cannot lie! I charge you,
   Brethren, see to this!

   The last thought on this point is that our Lord teaches us that the use
   of Scripture is to vanquish the enemy and chase him away. "Go," said He
   to the fiend, "for it is written." You, too, shall chase away
   temptation if you keep firmly to

   this. "God has said it, God has promised it. God that cannot lie, whose
   very Word of Grace is strong as that which built the skies."

   III. As our Lord chose the weapon and taught us its uses, so HE SHOWED
   US HOW TO HANDLE IT. How are we to handle this Sword of, "It is
   written"? First, with deepest reverence. Let every Word that God has
   spoken be Law and Gospel to you. Never trifle with it. Never try to
   evade its force or to change its meaning. God speaks to you in this
   Book as much as if, again, He came to the top of Sinai and lifted up
   His voice in thunder. I like to open the Bible and to pray, "Lord God,
   let the Words leap out of the page into my soul, Yourself making them
   vivid, quick, powerful and fresh to my heart."

   Our Lord Himself felt the power of the Word. It was not so much the
   devil who felt the power of, "It is written," as Christ Himself. "No,"
   He says, "I will not command stones to be made bread. I trust in God
   who can, without bread, sustain Me. I will not cast Myself down from
   the temple; I will not tempt the Lord, My God. I will not worship
   Satan, for God, alone, is God." The Manhood of Christ felt an awe of
   the Word of God and so it became a power to Him. To trifle with
   Scripture is to deprive yourself of its aid. Reverence it, I beseech
   you, and look up to God with devout gratitude for having given it to
   you.

   Next have it always ready. Our Lord Jesus Christ, as soon as He was
   assailed, had His answer prepared--"It is written." A ready reckoner is
   an admirable person in a house of business--and a ready textuary is a
   most useful person in the House of God. Have the Scriptures at your
   fingertips! Better, still, have them in the center of your heart! It is
   a good thing to store the memory with many passages of the Word--the
   very Words themselves. A Christian ought no more to make a mistake in
   quoting a text of Scripture than a classic does when he quotes from
   Virgil or Homer. The scholar likes to give the ipsissima verba and so
   should we, for every Word is precious to us.

   Our Savior knew so much of Holy Scripture that out of one single book,
   the Book of Deuteronomy, He obtained all the texts with which He fought
   the wilderness battle. He had a wider range, for the Old Testament was
   before Him, but He kept to one book, as if to let Satan know that He
   was not short of ammunition. If the devil chose to continue the
   temptation, the Lord had abundant defense in reserve. "It is written"
   is an armory in which hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty
   men! It is not merely one, but a thousand, no, 10,000 weapons of war!
   It has texts of every kind, suitable for our aid in every emergency and
   effectual for repelling every attack.

   Brothers and Sisters, study much the Word of God, and have it ready at
   hand. It is of no use treating the Bible as the fool did his anchor,
   which he had left at home when he came to be in a storm--have the
   Infallible Witness at your side when the Father of Lies approaches.
   Endeavor, also, to understand its meaning and so to understand it that
   you can discern between its meaning and its perversion. Half the
   mischief in the world, and perhaps more, is done, not by an ostensible
   lie, but by a perverted truth.

   The devil, knowing this, takes a text of Scripture, clips it, adds to
   it, and attacks Christ with it. But our Lord did not, therefore,
   despise Scripture because the devil, himself, might quote it, but He
   answered him with a flaming text right in his face. He did not say,
   "The other is not written--you have altered it"--but He gave him a
   taste of what, "It is written" really was, and so confounded him! Do
   you the same! Search the Word. Get the true taste of it in your mouth
   and acquire discernment so that when you say, "It is written," you may
   not be making a mistake. There are some who think their creed,
   Scriptural, and yet it is not so. Texts of Scripture, out of their
   connection, twisted and perverted, are not, "It is written." The plain
   meaning of the Word should be known and understood. Oh, read the Word
   of God and pray for the anointing of the Holy Spirit, that you may know
   its meaning, for so will you contend against the foe.

   Brethren, learn also to appropriate Scripture to yourselves. One of the
   texts our Lord quoted, He slightly altered. "You shall not tempt the
   Lord your God." The original text is also, "You shall not tempt the
   Lord your God." But the singular lies in the plural, and it is always a
   blessed thing to be able to find it there. Learn so to use Scripture
   that you take home to yourself all its teaching, all its precepts, all
   its promises, all its doctrines--for bread on the table does not
   nourish--it is bread which you eat that will really sustain you.

   When you have appropriated the texts to yourself, stand by them,
   whatever they may cost you. If to give up the text would enable you to
   make stones into bread, do not give it up! If to reject the precept
   would enable you to fly through the air like a seraph, do not reject
   it! If to go against the Word of God would make you emperor of the
   entire world, do not accept the bribes! To the Law and to the
   Testimony--stand there! Be a Bible man, go so far as the Bible, but not
   an

   inch beyond it. Though Calvin should beckon you, and you esteem him, or
   Wesley should beckon, and you esteem him, keep to the Scripture, only
   to the Scripture! If your minister should go astray, pray that he may
   be brought back again, but do not follow him. Though we, or an angel
   from Heaven preach any other Gospel than this Book teaches you, do not,
   I pray you, give any heed to us--no, not for a single moment! Here is
   the only Infallibility--the Holy Spirit's witness in this Book.

   Remember, lastly, that your Lord at this time was filled with the
   Spirit. "Jesus, being filled with the Spirit," went to be tempted. The
   Word of God, apart from the Spirit of God, will be of no use to you. If
   you cannot understand a book, do you know the best way to reach its
   meaning? Write to the author and ask him what he meant! If you have a
   book to read and you have got that author always accessible, you need
   not complain that you do not understand it. The Holy Spirit is come to
   abide with us forever. Search the Scriptures, but cry for the Spirit's
   light and live under His influence.

   So Jesus fought the old dragon, "being filled with the Spirit." He
   smote leviathan through with this Weapon because the Spirit of God was
   upon Him. Go with the Word of God like a two-edged sword in your hand!
   But before you enter the battle, pray the Holy Spirit to baptize you
   into Himself and so shall you overcome all your adversaries and triumph
   even to the end. May God bless you, for Jesus' sake.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Matthew 4. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
   HYMN BOOK"--478, 119 (VERS. I), 262.
     __________________________________________________________________

A Grateful Summary of Twenty Volumes

   (No. 1209)

   A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, DECEMBER 27, 1874,

   BY C. H. SPURGEON,

   AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

   "Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this Grace
   given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches
   of Christ." Ephesians 3:8.

   THIS is a very remarkable day for me, for if I am spared to preach this
   present sermon, I shall have completed 20 years of printed discourses
   issued week by week. This will be the last sermon of my 20th volume,
   making 1,209 in all. This is by no means a common occurrence. Indeed, I
   have not heard of another case in which for so long a time published
   discourses have been welcomed by the Christian Church and scattered
   broadcast over the land. Having obtained help of God, I continue unto
   this day testifying the Gospel of Christ Jesus. For this I magnify the
   name of the Lord and ask my dear friends associated with me to assist
   me in the expression of my thankfulness to Almighty God for such
   special lovingkindness.

   I could not find, even in the rich volume of Inspiration, any language
   more expressive of the deep emotions of my soul than the verse which is
   now before us, "Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is
   this Grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the
   unspeakable riches of Christ." How long or how short the time allotted
   to my future ministry may be, I do not wish to know. Whether I shall
   complete another 20 years or become silent in a few months, for these
   20 years of blessed assistance in the ministration of the Gospel of
   Jesus Christ I must, and will, adore the name of the Lord, even if
   never again He should permit me to open my lips in His service. It is
   enough of mercy for one man to have enjoyed, even if there were no more
   to follow. Bless the Lord, O my Soul!

   While we shall consider the verse as Paul's own expression, we shall
   retain our own hold upon it, and use it very much as a summary of our
   own emotions. Note from the text that Paul thought very little of
   himself. "Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints," he says,
   "is this Grace given." I am sure Paul was never guilty of mock modesty
   and never pretended to be more humble than he really was. At suitable
   times he could vindicate himself and claim his position among his
   fellow men. If any denied his Apostleship, he proved it by abundant
   arguments. Yes, he even became, on one occasion, what he calls a "fool
   in glorying"--he recounted his abundant labors and his frequent
   sufferings--he pointed to his success and protested that he was not a
   whit behind the very chief of the Apostles though he was nothing!

   Although all this was true and Paul expressed only the bare truth when
   he thus defended himself, yet in his heart of hearts he chose to take
   the lowest seat in the lowest room. And because there were no
   adjectives in correct language which could express his opinion of
   himself, he did violence to language and said that he was "less than
   the least of all saints." His straining of words is not to be censured,
   for language was made for man and not man for language. And when,
   within the bounds of grammar, a mighty heart cannot express itself, it
   does well to snap the bonds and let its strength have space to exercise
   itself.

   I do not quarrel with Paul's language, but I do dispute his right to
   push me out of my place! Less than the least is a position which I had
   hoped to occupy, but he has taken it from me and I would gladly give
   him a touch on the shoulder and say, "Friend, go up higher." For as
   there are no lower seats and we could not think of sitting above the
   great Apostle, he must allow us to allot him a higher place. Was Paul
   really less than the least of all saints? Was not this too low an
   estimate of himself? Brothers and Sisters, I suppose he meant that he
   felt this to be the case when he looked at himself from certain
   aspects. He was one of the late converts--many of his comrades were in
   Christ before him--and he yielded precedence to the older ones.

   He had been, before, a persecutor and injurious and, though God had
   forgiven him, he had never forgiven himself. And when he remembered his
   share in the sufferings and martyrdom of the saints, he felt that
   though now numbered among them, he could only dare to sit in the lowest
   place. Besides, any devout man, however eminent he may be in most

   respects, will find that there are certain other points in which he
   falls short. And the Apostle, instead of looking at the points in which
   he excelled, singled out with modest eye those qualities in which he
   felt he failed. It is in these respects he put himself down as, "less
   than the least of all saints."

   This strikes us as being a very different mode of speech from that
   which is adopted by certain Brethren. One friend asserts that he has
   ceased from known sin for some months. Then another Brother, to go a
   little further, asserts that the very being of sin in him has been
   destroyed, root and branch--of which I believe, in both cases, not one
   single word! If those Brothers had said that they were 16 feet high,
   that their eyes were solid diamonds and that their hair was Prussian
   blue, I should feel towards them very much as I do now. They simply do
   not know themselves and the best article of furniture they could have
   in their houses would be a mirror which would let them see their own
   reflection! If they had once had such a sight, I guarantee you they
   would sing another tune, pitched to a far lower key.

   Many who now shine in the highest places of self-estimation will, one
   day, be glad enough to sit at the feet of the poorest of the saints,
   unless I am greatly mistaken--for everyone that exalts himself shall be
   abased. For my part I had sooner hear Paul say that he was less than
   the least of all the saints than I would hear the holiest Brother out
   of Heaven say that he had been living without sin. I could believe the
   one, but I could not believe the other. Paul was as holy as the holiest
   now upon earth, but among the humble he was the most humble. The Lord
   make us each so.

   Our next remark is that Paul thought very much of his Brethren. These
   two things usually go together--a low opinion of one's self and a high
   estimate of others. He calls himself less than the least--not of all
   the Apostles, though even that would have been a lowly judgment--but
   less than the least of all saints. And yet there were some very
   imperfect saints among his acquaintance. His pastoral observation had
   discovered many weak, trembling, half-instructed and even backsliding
   Brothers and Sisters. Remember how he differed from Barnabas about John
   Mark and how he rebuked Peter to his face because he was to be blamed?

   He was not insensible of the defects of the saints, for in some of his
   Epistles he gives us a very sad picture of the condition of some of the
   members of the Churches. Yes, and of some who were true saints he tells
   them that he could only write to them as to carnal, as to babes in
   Christ and that when they ought to have been teachers they needed,
   themselves, to be taught the very elements of the faith! And yet he
   says he was less than the least of them! He must have thought very
   highly of the least instructed and most imperfect of the Divine family.
   After all, dear Brothers and Sisters, though we hear much fault found
   with professing Christians and Church members, and hear it said that
   they are no better than men of the world, we dare not be among their
   detractors. If we cannot find saints in the Church of God, certainly we
   shall find them nowhere else.

   They are faulty, no doubt, but still, they are the Lord's elect and the
   people on whom His heart is set! They are the excellent of the earth
   and if we may but be numbered with them we shall be thankful even if
   our name should stand lowest and last on the list! We count the
   regenerate and the sanctified to be the true aristocracy, the real
   nobility of the world. "O God You are my God, my goodness extends not
   to You, but to the saints that are in the earth and to the excellent in
   whom is all my delight." The Church, notwithstanding her spots, is
   fairest among women, and though her garments are sometimes stained,
   (would God they were not), yet, for all that, she is all glorious
   within--her clothing is of worked gold. She is beautiful in the eyes of
   her Lord! He loved her well enough to redeem her with His precious
   blood and to make her His bride!

   It would be shameful on our part to despise her. She ought to be lovely
   in our eyes, yes, and she is, for we love the people of God beyond all
   others. My inmost soul can say of the Church of God--

   "My soul shall pray for Zion still While life or breath remains. There
   my best friends, my kindred dwell There God my Savior reigns."

   The next reflection suggested by the text is that Paul thought very
   highly of his work. He says, "Unto me, who am less than the least of
   all saints, is this Grace given, that I should preach." He looked upon
   his ministry as a great gift from God, an honor bestowed, a favor
   granted. Yet, my Brethren, Paul's office was not such a very attractive
   thing, after all, looking upon it after the manner of men. Paul was not
   a Lord Bishop or a Right Reverend. His salary was less than nothing. He
   received no homage from men. His greatest gains were his losses. His
   honors came from his dishonors and his glory from his sufferings!

   Stripes and imprisonments awaited him in every city. Stoning and
   shipwreck, perils of robbers and perils of traitors, care and grief
   were his portion. He was made an outcast for Christ's sake. His Jewish
   brethren even foamed at the mouth at the very thought of the renegade
   Pharisee who preached to the Gentiles! He had suffered the loss of all
   things for Christ's sake and he says he, "counted them but dung that he
   might win Christ and be found in Him." If the vacancy and next
   presentation of Paul's office had been put up at Garraway's, our modern
   imitators of Simon Magus would have been very slow in the bidding--they
   would rather have paid a heavy fee to be excused! Paul, himself, said
   of it, "If in this life, only, we have hope, we are of all men most
   miserable."

   Yet so content was he to preach the Gospel that, notwithstanding all
   the hardships and reproaches which went with it, he considered it to be
   a special favor granted him of the Lord that he was permitted to
   proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ among the Gentiles! The
   Apostle even lifts up his hands in grateful astonishment that so great
   an honor should be bestowed upon him. He says "Unto me--unto me, who am
   less than the least of all saints, is this Grace given, that I--the
   persecutor, the man who breathed out threats and slaughter--that I
   should preach among the Gentiles." He marvels at it! He cannot
   understand it!

   The passage reads as if he paused in his writing and burst into a song
   of adoring gratitude because the Lord had honored him so exceedingly as
   to put him in trust with the Gospel! How deeply do I sympathize with
   him in his wonder at electing love! My heart cries, "Why me, Lord, why
   me?" Note well that the Apostle had a very clear view of what he had to
   do. "That I should preach," he says, "among the Gentiles." Paul does
   not claim to be sent to regenerate the Gentiles by sprinkling them, or
   to hear their confessions of secret sin, or to pry into their private
   lives with filthy questions and to absolve them on the fulfillment of
   appointed penances--he has not a word to say about playing the priest!

   He does not glory in the Grace which enabled him to display a comely
   ritual, or restore a pompous ceremonialism. He boasts not of carrying a
   crucifix or a banner in a procession up and down the aisles to delight
   the Gentiles. Nor, in a word, does he set himself up as a sort of
   demi-god, able to kill and to make alive, to distribute pardons and to
   regenerate babes. Paul was quite satisfied to preach the Gospel--that
   was as far as his commission went--and whenever God, the Holy Spirit,
   sends forth a minister to bless the Church, that is the purpose of his
   mission and nothing else--he is to preach among the Gentiles the
   unsearchable riches of Christ!

   Neither our Lord nor His Apostles command us to set up altars--the
   grand command is "preach the Gospel to every creature." O you priests
   of the Church of England, take off your tag-rags and stand out like men
   and preach the Gospel, if, indeed, you are ministers of God and not
   sappers and miners for the pope of Rome! God sends men to preach the
   Gospel--He never sends them to intrude into the office of Christ and
   set themselves up as priests offering sacrifices for the quick and
   dead--when in Him the priesthood is fulfilled! Paul knew what his
   vocation was and he kept to it. Find me one instance of his acting the
   priest! Wherever he went, he was preaching and teaching--preaching and
   teaching, preaching and teaching--that was the one object of his life.

   Whether in Damascus or Corinth, Jerusalem or Rome, he must preach! When
   he was amid the Areopagites on Mars' Hill, why did he not show them the
   beauty of Divine service as performed in the most approved fashion? Why
   at Lystra did he not offer a sacrifice to God and wave a censer?--all
   the materials were ready! No. He preached everywhere! When detained at
   Rome he did not train a choir, or instruct a company of clergy in
   ecclesiastical calisthenics, or Church millinery--he taught Jesus to
   all around. We read nothing of his genuflexions and intonations--but a
   great deal of his preaching the Word in season and out of season!

   This, too, is our work. The Church must see to it that this ordinance
   is used above every other for the conversion of men. It pleases God, by
   the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe! Stand to your
   guns, my Brothers--preach the Word of God--make full proof of your
   ministry and cease not to teach all men the Truth of God concerning
   Jesus. Remark how Paul calls his ministry a "Grace." Every true
   preacher of the Gospel will have to thank God that he has been
   permitted to preach. I do not know how my soul would have been kept
   alive if it had not been for the searching of Scripture, the prayer,
   the faith and the joy which preaching has involved!

   Though it may be true that professional familiarity with sacred things
   is apt to breed a lack of personal enjoyment in men, I do not find it
   so. To me it is a great blessing to have to prepare for preaching.
   Often the best means of Grace to my own soul are the groans, the
   pleading, the meditation and the communion needed for the selection of
   the right subject

   upon which to feed your souls. Preachers have to grow in Grace, for
   their very calling places them at a great advantage, since they are
   bound to search the Scriptures and to be much in prayer. It is a choice
   mercy to be permitted to preach the Gospel! I wish some of you would be
   desirous of it, for earnest preachers are needed. There are several
   Brothers here who ought to preach--and I believe they would preach with
   great power if they were once driven to the attempt. A modesty which
   may be cowardice silences many. A diffidence, which may also be
   culpable love of ease, keeps them back from speaking in the name of the
   Lord. Brothers, let it be so no longer!

   Thus, you see, Paul thought little of himself, much of his Brethren,
   and highly of his work. Again, Paul thought very lovingly of his
   congregation. He counted it a great Grace that he was permitted to
   preach among the Gentiles. Peter had a much more respectable sphere,
   for he was the Apostle of the Circumcision and preached to the ancient
   aristocratic race of the Hebrews. But Paul was sent to preach to the
   Gentile dogs who were despised by the Jews as uncircumcised and
   unclean. Our Lord Jesus Christ, Himself, gave the Gentiles a sad
   character, for when speaking of worldly things He said, "After all
   these things do the Gentiles seek," as if they were utterly gross and
   carnal and entirely besotted with groveling pursuits.

   Paul, however, rejoiced to preach to these "worldly-minded Gentiles."
   He was glad to bring the outcasts to Jesus! They were such an ignorant
   crew, these Gentiles, ignorant of the true God and eternal life. Though
   there were some of them wise in their own conceits, yet were they sunk
   in spiritual ignorance. There were the Greeks, proud of their learned
   folly. The Romans, boasting of brute force and despising a merely
   spiritual kingdom. The Scythians, barbarous and uncouth. And the
   bondsmen, sunk in vice and degradation. But he who was sent to labor
   among them preferred them to any other audience! Paul thanked God for
   his congregation, ignorant as they were.

   Worse than ignorant, they were worshippers of idols--they had many gods
   and lords--and they bowed themselves before the personifications of
   their own wickedness. Yet Paul was glad to preach to idolaters! The
   first chapter of his Epistle to the Romans contains a fearful
   indictment against the Gentiles for their horrible vices. They were
   sunk in a horrible slough of corruption and yet Paul considered it a
   great privilege to preach among these ignorant, debased, vicious
   heathen Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ! And a privilege it
   was! It is a royal honor to preach to the lowest of the low.

   Dear Brothers and Sisters, wherever you and I are called to labor we
   ought to be thankful that God has given us that particular place to
   labor in. I like to see Christian workers fall in love with their
   spheres. For instance, the Brethren who work in Golden Lane and Seven
   Dials do well to look upon their districts as the most important in
   London. And every city missionary, if he is to succeed, must feel that
   his particular part of the city is that which is best for him. I like
   to hear Mr. Moffat speak as if there were no people in the world of
   more consequence than Bechuanas and Hottentots. I never knew a man to
   succeed among a people unless he preferred them to all others as the
   objects of his care. When ministers despise their congregations, their
   congregations are very likely to despise them--and then usefulness is
   out of the question.

   When a man thinks himself above his work, the probability is that he is
   altogether in the clouds, or stands in the way of some practical worker
   of a more commonplace kind who would do the work which he is despising.
   Oh you who teach little children, love them or you cannot teach them!
   If you preach in the street, feel a sympathy with the people who gather
   around you, or you had better give it up. Paul became a Gentile for the
   Gentiles' sake. Pharisee as he had been, we see nothing of his
   phylacteries or the broad borders of his garment. He always loved his
   kinsmen, according to the flesh, and would have gladly died to save
   them. Jew as he was and at one time bound by the strongest possible
   Jewish prejudices, he had broken them all down and had made the
   Gentiles his clients, his flock, his children! It was his daily joy
   that he was ordained to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable
   riches of Christ!

   Upon our next remark we will more fully enlarge. It is this--Paul
   thought most of all, of his Subject. That he had to preach the
   unsearchable riches of Christ was his highest bliss. The glories of
   Jesus, whom once he had persecuted, were his one and only theme. All he
   had to say was contained within the circumference of that word, Christ,
   and all that he aimed at was to glorify his Lord. Neither ceremonies,
   nor orthodoxies, nor philosophies, nor sects, nor parties did Paul
   labor for--he exalted only in Christ Jesus the Lord! Nor did he feel
   that his engrossment by one solitary Subject restricted him in his
   thought or speech, for he looked upon his theme as full of riches,
   riches altogether unsearchable! He had a deep

   insight into the Truth which he had to proclaim and saw within it veins
   of precious thought which he could never exhaust--lodes of more than
   golden treasure which no research could ever fully explore!

   O to be in this fashion enamored of the Gospel, absorbed in it and
   wholly carried away by its charms! Let us meditate a few minutes upon
   the unsearchable riches of Christ, which it has been our joy to preach,
   even as it was Paul's. Notice, first, that the Apostle dwelt much upon
   the essential riches of Christ's Person. Beloved, there are
   unsearchable riches in Christ, for He is, by Nature, "God over all,
   blessed forever." Others may make Him a mere man, but we behold the
   unsearchable riches of the Deity in Jesus Christ, "In whom dwells all
   the fullness of the Godhead bodily." He is the Creator, without whom
   was not anything made that was made!

   He is the Preserver of all things and by Him all things consist. What
   riches there must be in Him who both makes and sustains the universe by
   the Word of His power! In Jesus Christ all the attributes of God are
   manifest--the Wisdom, the Power, the Immutability, the Truth, the
   Faithfulness, the Justice and Love of God are all to be found in the
   Character of Jesus Christ our Lord! Even while He was here on earth and
   clothed Himself in mortal flesh, the Godhead shone through the veil!
   The winds knew Him and were silent. The waves knew Him and kissed His
   feet. The angels ministered to Him and the devils fled before Him.
   Diseases were healed, for His touch was Omnipotent. The dead lived, for
   His voice was almighty. He was God, even while to mortal eye He was
   only the carpenter's son.

   Today He has put off His servant's garments and laid aside the towel
   which with He wiped His disciples' feet--and all power is given unto
   Him in Heaven and on the earth! Let us, then, proclaim His unsearchable
   riches. Now is He crowned with universal Sovereignty and the government
   is upon His shoulders! His name is called, "Wonderful, Counselor, The
   Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." Riches beyond
   compare belong to Him who, for our sakes, became poor, though He has
   riches unsearchable, for He is God, and, "Who, by searching, can find
   out God? Who can find out the Almighty unto perfection?" Jesus is "very
   God of very God" and as such we adore Him, and glory in the wealth of
   His Nature.

   Jesus, our Lord, is also Man--Man of the substance of His mother--bone
   of our bone. And here we may sing of the wealth of human love which is
   treasured up in Him and manifested to His Brethren. His wealth of
   sympathy with His people, for He has been tempted in all points like as
   they are. His wealth of discernment, for He knows the secrets of our
   nature, having worn that nature, Himself. Because of the riches of His
   love He is not ashamed to call His redeemed ones Brethren. It is a
   wonderful subject, the wealth of pure Manhood which dwelt in Jesus, for
   He both thought and spoke and acted as man--with a richness of perfect
   Manhood which never dwelt in any other son of man! He was the true
   Adam--the sum of humanity's best Glory, made to have dominion over all
   the works of Jehovah's hands. Thus, in the two Natures which make up
   His mysterious Person, Son of man and Son of God, there was a
   measureless wealth--and this Paul preached.

   My Brethren, I boldly ask you whether during these 20 years I have not
   tried to set forth the unsearchable riches of my Lord and Master in His
   blessed Person? I have preached Him to you as no mere abstraction, but
   as a real Christ. I have not talked of Him as if He were a myth. I have
   spoken of Him always as an actual Person who lived and died, and is
   risen and gone into Heaven. I have also preached Him as still among you
   in Spirit, Head of the Church and Lord over all. Neither have I
   preached to you a Christ stinted in power or Glory. I have endeavored,
   according to my ability, to set Him forth as King of kings and Lord of
   lords. Your hearts have rejoiced to hear of Him and mine has rejoiced
   to speak of One so altogether lovely, so good, so kind, so ready to
   forgive, so faithful and mighty! In a word, I have preached the
   unsearchable riches of His Person.

   Next, we have to preach the riches of our Lord Jesus as the Christ.
   That is to say, in His relationship towards us. Now, think a minute or
   two. In the old eternity, before ever the earth was, the unsearchable
   riches of Christ were displayed when He entered into Covenant with the
   Father on our behalf. What matchless love it was which prompted the
   Second Person of the Divine Unity to become the Surety of the Covenant
   of Grace for His elect! Unsearchable were the riches of Love which
   suggested the Covenant and the riches of the Wisdom which planned it.
   It was worthy of a God!

   Remember, that as time rolled on, His people, as they were one by one
   created, were saved simply on the ground of His word and pledge. And if
   the bare bond of Christ, before He had shed a drop of His blood, was
   able to save myriads of His elect, what riches there must be in His
   Atonement, itself! If His promise to redeem was enough for thousands of
   years

   to save multitudes from death and Hell, what must be the riches of the
   finished Righteousness and the accomplished Substitution?

   Think of the riches of Christ's Grace from the day of man's Fall until
   the day of his redemption. He saw man in his waywardness and knew what
   he would be under the best conditions, yet He did not turn aside from
   His pledge of love because of the baseness of fallen humanity. He knew
   that men would prove ungrateful, yet He resolved to redeem His people.
   He had, throughout those ages, an opportunity of estimating what the
   pangs of death would be. He knew the cost at which He must seek and
   save the lost--but through those thousands of years such were the
   riches of His infinite Love that He never started back from the compact
   which He had made--but determined to push on till, by His death He had
   delivered man from sin and the earth from the curse!

   Wealth of mercy! What can transcend this? Down the Lord descends to
   Bethlehem's manger and there He lies, a Baby wrapped in swaddling
   clothes! Who shall tell the riches of the condescending love which made
   the Infinite, Incarnate? Among the sons of men He tarries, going about
   doing good! Calculate, if you can, the riches of that generous heart
   which detained Him for years among a sinful and gainsaying generation!
   The life of Jesus on earth is a mint of Grace! But oh, the unsearchable
   Love which led Him to give His hands to the nails and His heart to the
   spear! What unspeakable love is centered in the Cross! What riches of
   Divine Grace that He should deign to die a malefactor's death for His
   enemies!

   Can any of us conceive the unsearchable riches of merit which must lie
   in the holy life and painful death of our beloved Lord? If the Son of
   God, Himself, deigns to die, the Just for the unjust, surely no limit
   can be set to the virtue of that death! Neither, indeed, can we
   calculate how precious it must be in the Father's sight. O You bleeding
   Savior, when You had become poorest of all in Your own Glory, surely
   You did also become richest of all for the redemption of the sons of
   men! None shall ever know, nor even eternity, itself, fully declare the
   infinite value of Your tears and bloody sweat, and agony and death! But
   look, He rises again, for the tomb could not contain Him--He rises for
   our Justification! In the risen Savior what wealth may be seen, for
   while He justifies all His people by His rising, He also secures
   eternal life for them and guarantees to their bodies a glorious
   resurrection! Think of our Lord as the first fruits of them that sleep
   and you will see in His Resurrection a Truth of God which is the
   cornerstone of the entire Gospel--and the sure pledge of eternal bliss.

   But lo, He spurns the hill of Olivet and mounts into the opened
   heavens--a cloud receiving Him from mortal sight! As He ascends, He
   scatters gifts among the sons of men. The Holy Spirit is given--He
   rests in tongues of fire upon the heads of chosen men. He gave "some
   Apostles, some pastors and teachers" for the building up of His Church.
   Those gifts He still continues to bestow, for He "received gifts for
   men, yes, for the rebellious, also, that the Lord God might dwell among
   them." The riches of the ascended Savior--it is not possible for the
   mind to calculate! Look again! Behold Him in Heaven! There He sits at
   the right hand of the Father to represent His people! Is there not a
   wealth of comfort in that representation? He sits on the Throne to rule
   for His people--there is another mine of consolation! His Presence is
   the guarantee of our being there--is not this full of richness?

   He intercedes for all His saints before the Eternal Throne--there is
   another treasure house of marvelous instruction and delight! Jesus sits
   forever at the right hand of God, because His work is done. He waits
   until His enemies become His footstool--is He not to us a treasure of
   unsearchable riches? But He is soon to come and who shall tell the
   riches which then shall be revealed--when sin shall fly before Him and
   this burdened earth shall be eased of the load which has made her
   continually groan? When, instead of thorn and thistle, shall come up
   the cedar and the rose! When the desert shall rejoice and blossom and
   men down-trod and weary, shall lift up their eyes to behold a new
   Paradise and enjoy a Glory such as eye has not seen nor ear heard--a
   splendor of millennial bliss of which may every one of us be partakers!
   All this shall be because He comes!

   There are unsearchable riches in Christ, whether living, dying, rising,
   dwelling in Heaven, or descending a second time to earth. See what a
   subject Paul had to preach! And we have preached it, too. These 20
   years our one theme has been Christ Jesus in His relationship to His
   people, in His everlasting love, in His once-offered, completely
   atoning Sacrifice, in His pleading before the Father's Throne and in
   the kingdom which is yet to subdue all things to itself. What a joy it
   is to have been privileged to preach all this!

   Thirdly and briefly, Paul had preached the unsearchable riches of Jesus
   Christ in and to His people. He had told them that Christ had paid
   their debts and they were free. How wondrously had he put it--"There is
   therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." We
   cannot stop to repeat the texts, but Paul had been clear enough upon
   the point--that the riches of Christ in pardoning sin were
   unsearchable. He had told the saints that Christ had provided all that
   could be needed by them between where they were and the gates of
   Heaven, for, he said, "you are complete in Him." "All things are yours,
   whether things present or things to come."

   Paul had delighted to dive into the depth of overflowing Grace. What a
   grand swimmer he was in the sea of Joy! He had also told the saints
   that they might have whatever they asked for in answer to believing
   prayer. How often had he put it before them that He who spared not His
   own Son, but freely delivered Him up for them, would also, with Him,
   freely give them all things? What riches of Christ are found at the
   Mercy Seat! He who knows how to draw near to God by Jesus Christ will
   find great stores of wealth there. He had assured them that the Lord,
   Himself, was theirs, yes, he said, "all things are yours, and you are
   Christ's, and Christ is God's."

   He had told them that Heaven was theirs, for they had obtained an
   inheritance in Christ and were on their way to Glory, every hour
   bringing them nearer. Truly, if you want to know the deep things of
   God, you must listen to Paul, for he tells us of the eternity of
   Christ's Love, a Love without beginning and without end! He tells us of
   the Immutability of that Love, for Jesus Christ is "the same yesterday,
   today, and forever." He tells us of the Infinity of that Love, and
   delights to declare that it passes knowledge. In fact, he tells us that
   God, Himself, is ours, to be our portion forever. Oh, children of God,
   if you are limited, you are not limited in the preaching of the
   Apostle--you are limited in yourselves! I venture, also, to say that in
   my own preaching I have not knowingly held back any of the blessings of
   the Covenant of Grace, nor spoken lightly of the blessings which Jesus
   gives to His beloved. No, I have delighted to speak upon what the Lord
   has given to His saints and have bid Believers enjoy the fat things
   full of marrow which He has provided for them. Happy people to have
   such a Savior!

   But lastly, the point Paul most rejoiced to preach upon was this--the
   unsearchable riches of our Lord towards sinners, for he says that he
   preached among the Gentiles--the sinners--the unsearchable riches of
   Christ. This is the most delightful theme of all--to tell poor sinners
   that there is an unspeakably rich Savior! I lament to say that there
   are preachers who do not preach this among the Gentiles. They have a
   great deal to say to God's own people, but they have nothing to say to
   the Gentiles, to the sinners--to the insensible, unquickened
   sinners--nothing to say to them. I have known them close a sermon by
   saying, "The election has obtained it, the rest are blinded," and sit
   down with not a word for those dead in sin.

   Brothers and Sisters, we have not so learned Christ! We delight to
   preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to make
   all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery. What have we to say
   to Gentile sinners? Why, we have to tell them that our Lord Jesus is so
   rich in Divine Grace that He keeps open house all day and all night
   long-- and, "Come and welcome," is written over His palace gates!
   "Whoever will, let him come and take of the water of life freely." We
   have to tell you that, though millions of sinners have already come,
   the banquet table is as loaded as it ever was! He has as much Grace and
   Mercy to distribute as He had 1,800 years ago! He is as able to cleanse
   from sin, as able to justify and to sanctify as He was when first He
   began His work of mercy! There is no limit to His Grace for those that
   come to Him! Whoever comes to Him shall receive eternal salvation!

   My Master is so rich that He needs nothing from any of you. You need
   not bring a rag with you--He will cover you from head to foot. You need
   not bring a moldy crust--He will give you of the Bread of Heaven! You
   need not stop to cleanse away a single spot--He will wash you white as
   snow. Help from you? Does the sun need help from darkness? Christ needs
   no help from sinners! Let them come empty-handed, naked, sick, helpless
   and believe that He is able to do for them all that they require.

   I am bold to tell you that my Master's riches of Divine Grace are so
   unsearchable that He delights to forgive and forget enormous sin! The
   bigger the sin the more Glory to His Grace! If you are over head and
   ears in debt, He is rich enough to discharge your liabilities. If you
   are at the very gates of Hell, He is able to pluck you from the jaws of
   destruction. So mighty is His Mercy that no case did ever exceed His
   power to save or ever will! I will challenge you to a contest with
   regard to my dear Lord and Master, that if you will sit down and think
   the best and largest thoughts you can of Him, you will not think Him to
   be so good and loving as He really is! If you will try and wish for the
   largest

   blessings you can conceive, you shall not be able to wish for such
   blessings as He is prepared to bestow! And if you will open your mouth
   wide and make a request for the greatest favor that ever a human being
   asked of God or man, you shall not ask for a tenth of what He is
   prepared to give!

   Come and try Him! Let it be a wrestling match between your needs and
   Christ's abundance--and see which will win the day! I tell you that, as
   Aaron's rod swallowed up the rods of the magicians, so my Master's
   All-Sufficiency will swallow up all the demands of your dreadful
   necessities! Only come and try Him now! All that you need between the
   gates of Hell and the gates of Heaven you shall find in Christ--and you
   shall have it all for nothing--all just for the asking. Open your hands
   and take it, it is all He asks of you--that you believingly receive
   what He freely bestows! Trust in Him, in Him as dead and risen, and
   ascended, and reigning! Rely upon Him, and by so doing you shall find
   that there are unsearchable riches of Grace in Him.

   Now, I have done when I have said just this. I have no doubt Paul would
   not have been so pleased to preach Christ as he was unless something
   had come of it. Now, at the close of 20 years of printed sermons, my
   great delight in having preached the unsearchable riches of Christ lies
   in this--that something, by the Grace of God, has come of it! How many
   souls have been converted is not in my power to tell. I do not think I
   ever pass a single day, nor have done so for some years, without having
   intimations of some persons at the very ends of the earth, or at home,
   having been led to the Savior by the reading of the sermons.

   I am not prepared to say how many persons have gone through this Church
   to other Churches or to Heaven. The number can hardly be far short of
   those which remain, and of these it may suffice to say that 4,700 souls
   are with us, still kept by the power of Grace, and knit together in
   Church fellowship. Is not this matter of great thankfulness to God?
   During these 20 years the dew has never ceased to fall! The Church has
   been planted like a tree by rivers of water--she has brought forth her
   fruit in her season--and whatever she has attempted has prospered. I
   joy, therefore, and will joy in this.

   Yet, once more, I think Paul must have felt a special gladness that
   through his preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ, others had
   been raised up to preach it, too. So has it been with us, by God's
   Grace. How many tongues this day are preaching Christ out of our Church
   members and students, I cannot assert definitely, but that they are to
   be counted by hundreds is certain. Would to God they were 10 times as
   many! I wish all the rest of this congregation who love Christ would go
   and talk about Him, too. Some among you are very diligent and I bless
   God for you. I wish more of you were trying to bring these unsearchable
   riches of Christ within the knowledge of the ignorant and sinful.

   It is the last Sabbath of the year. Could we not begin, next year, with
   a great deal more industry than we have strewn this year? I am afraid
   there are many members who have no work to do for Jesus and these are
   the sort of people to backslide. You that have neither to do nor to
   suffer are the baggage of the army, the impediments which prevent the
   host from marching on to victory! Bestir yourselves! Feed upon Jesus
   and then take the good cheer to those who do not know the riches of
   Christ. And as God gives you Grace, go and fulfill this ministry and
   you will then say, as I do, and as the Apostle said of old, "Unto me,
   who am less than the least of all saints, is this Grace given, that I
   should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ."
   The Lord bless you. Amen.

   PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON--Ephesians 3. HYMNS FROM "OUR
   OWN HYMN BOOK"--1,035, 1,041, 960.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture References

   Genesis

   [2]49:10

   Exodus

   [3]21:5   [4]21:6   [5]29:1

   Deuteronomy

   [6]2:7   [7]30:9

   1 Samuel

   [8]20:10

   2 Samuel

   [9]7:18-22

   1 Kings

   [10]20:11

   2 Kings

   [11]5:11

   2 Chronicles

   [12]14   [13]15   [14]16:9

   Nehemiah

   [15]4:10

   Esther

   [16]9:1

   Psalms

   [17]9:10   [18]40   [19]59:10   [20]78:58   [21]78:59   [22]95
   [23]100:3   [24]100:4   [25]100:5   [26]103:9   [27]119:59

   Song of Solomon

   [28]2:16

   Isaiah

   [29]8:18   [30]33:14-16   [31]44:3-6   [32]53:11   [33]55:1
   [34]55:7   [35]60:20

   Jeremiah

   [36]7:12-15   [37]24:6   [38]24:7   [39]31:33   [40]31:33-34

   Ezekiel

   [41]12:27   [42]36:26   [43]36:27

   Daniel

   [44]6:10

   Hosea

   [45]2:19

   Matthew

   [46]4:4   [47]7:21   [48]26:37   [49]26:37   [50]27:29   [51]28:18-20

   Luke

   [52]7:50   [53]8:48   [54]14:25-35   [55]14:28-30   [56]15:20
   [57]15:22   [58]15:23   [59]17:19   [60]18:42   [61]22:44   [62]24:16

   John

   [63]1:12   [64]1:13   [65]4:14   [66]5   [67]5   [68]5:24   [69]8:29
   [70]8:45   [71]10:10   [72]11:28   [73]12:27   [74]14:21   [75]15:7
   [76]116

   Acts

   [77]2:22   [78]2:29   [79]7:59   [80]7:60

   Romans

   [81]5:1-11   [82]5:6   [83]5:6   [84]6:17

   1 Corinthians

   [85]1:31   [86]3   [87]6:20   [88]7:23   [89]9:22

   2 Corinthians

   [90]2:14   [91]3:18   [92]5:17

   Galatians

   [93]3:24-26   [94]5:24   [95]6:15

   Ephesians

   [96]1:19   [97]2:1   [98]2:10   [99]3:8   [100]4:24   [101]5:30

   Colossians

   [102]1:9   [103]1:13   [104]1:16   [105]1:19   [106]1:21   [107]3:9
   [108]3:24

   1 Timothy

   [109]1:15   [110]1:16

   Hebrews

   [111]3:7   [112]4:1   [113]4:2   [114]4:3   [115]5:9   [116]8:10-12
   [117]10:16   [118]13:16   [119]13:20-21

   James

   [120]2:10

   1 Peter

   [121]1:3   [122]2:9   [123]3:7

   1 John

   [124]2:3   [125]3:14   [126]5:1   [127]5:8   [128]5:10

   Revelation

   [129]3:14-21   [130]21:5   [131]21:8
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture Commentary

   Genesis

   [132]49:10

   Exodus

   [133]21:5-6   [134]29:1

   Deuteronomy

   [135]2:7

   1 Samuel

   [136]20:10

   2 Samuel

   [137]7:18-22

   1 Kings

   [138]20:11

   2 Kings

   [139]5:11

   2 Chronicles

   [140]16:9

   Nehemiah

   [141]4:10

   Esther

   [142]9:1

   Psalms

   [143]59:10   [144]100:3-5   [145]103:9   [146]119:59

   Song of Solomon

   [147]2:16   [148]6:12

   Isaiah

   [149]8:18   [150]44:3-6   [151]55:1   [152]55:7   [153]60:20

   Jeremiah

   [154]24:7

   Ezekiel

   [155]12:27

   Daniel

   [156]6:10

   Matthew

   [157]4:4   [158]7:21   [159]27:29   [160]28:18-20

   Luke

   [161]7:50   [162]14:28-30   [163]15:20   [164]15:22-23   [165]18:42
   [166]22:44   [167]24:16

   John

   [168]4:14   [169]8:29   [170]10:10   [171]11:28

   Acts

   [172]2:47   [173]7:59-60

   Romans

   [174]5:6   [175]5:6

   1 Corinthians

   [176]1:31   [177]7:23   [178]9:22

   2 Corinthians

   [179]5:17

   Galatians

   [180]3:24-26

   Ephesians

   [181]3:8   [182]5:30

   Colossians

   [183]1:19   [184]3:24

   Hebrews

   [185]3:7   [186]4:1-2   [187]5:9   [188]13:20-21

   1 Peter

   [189]3:7

   1 John

   [190]5:8   [191]5:10

   Revelation

   [192]3:14-21
     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

References

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   4. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Exod&scrCh=21&scrV=6#xxv-p6.2
   5. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Exod&scrCh=29&scrV=1#liv-p6.1
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  10. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=1Kgs&scrCh=20&scrV=11#xliv-p6.1
  11. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=2Kgs&scrCh=5&scrV=11#xxiv-p6.1
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  15. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Neh&scrCh=4&scrV=10#vii-p6.1
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  19. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Ps&scrCh=59&scrV=10#xxxiii-p6.1
  20. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Ps&scrCh=78&scrV=58#xxix-p14.1
  21. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Ps&scrCh=78&scrV=59#xxix-p14.2
  22. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Ps&scrCh=95&scrV=0#xi-p77.1
  23. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Ps&scrCh=100&scrV=3#xlviii-p6.1
  24. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Ps&scrCh=100&scrV=4#xlviii-p6.2
  25. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Ps&scrCh=100&scrV=5#xlviii-p6.3
  26. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Ps&scrCh=103&scrV=9#xxii-p6.1
  27. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Ps&scrCh=119&scrV=59#xxxii-p6.1
  28. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Song&scrCh=2&scrV=16#vii_1-p13.1
  29. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Isa&scrCh=8&scrV=18#xlv-p6.1
  30. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Isa&scrCh=33&scrV=14#xxii-p17.1
  31. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Isa&scrCh=44&scrV=3#ii-p6.1
  32. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Isa&scrCh=53&scrV=11#lvii-p68.1
  33. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Isa&scrCh=55&scrV=1#xii-p6.1
  34. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Isa&scrCh=55&scrV=7#xlvi-p6.1
  35. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Isa&scrCh=60&scrV=20#xxvii-p6.1
  36. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Jer&scrCh=7&scrV=12#ii_1-p24.1
  37. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Jer&scrCh=24&scrV=6#lv-p32.1
  38. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Jer&scrCh=24&scrV=7#lvii-p6.1
  39. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Jer&scrCh=31&scrV=33#xxxiv-p33.2
  40. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Jer&scrCh=31&scrV=33#lvii-p65.1
  41. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Ezek&scrCh=12&scrV=27#xv-p6.1
  42. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Ezek&scrCh=36&scrV=26#xxxiv-p34.1
  43. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Ezek&scrCh=36&scrV=27#xxxiv-p34.2
  44. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Dan&scrCh=6&scrV=10#v-p6.1
  45. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Hos&scrCh=2&scrV=19#lvii-p64.1
  46. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Matt&scrCh=4&scrV=4#lix-p6.1
  47. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Matt&scrCh=7&scrV=21#ix-p6.1
  48. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Matt&scrCh=26&scrV=37#l-p36.1
  49. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Matt&scrCh=26&scrV=37#l-p38.1
  50. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Matt&scrCh=27&scrV=29#xix-p6.1
  51. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Matt&scrCh=28&scrV=18#li-p6.1
  52. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Luke&scrCh=7&scrV=50#i_1-p13.1
  53. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Luke&scrCh=8&scrV=48#i_1-p14.1
  54. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Luke&scrCh=14&scrV=25#x-p69.1
  55. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Luke&scrCh=14&scrV=28#x-p6.1
  56. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Luke&scrCh=15&scrV=20#vi_1-p13.1
  57. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Luke&scrCh=15&scrV=22#lv-p6.1
  58. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Luke&scrCh=15&scrV=23#lv-p6.2
  59. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Luke&scrCh=17&scrV=19#i_1-p14.2
  60. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Luke&scrCh=18&scrV=42#i_1-p13.1
  61. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Luke&scrCh=22&scrV=44#l-p6.1
  62. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Luke&scrCh=24&scrV=16#xxxi-p6.1
  63. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=1&scrV=12#xxxiv-p23.1
  64. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=1&scrV=13#xxxiv-p23.2
  65. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=4&scrV=14#liii-p6.1
  66. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=5&scrV=0#iv_1-p55.1
  67. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=5&scrV=0#lviii-p74.1
  68. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=5&scrV=24#xxxiv-p27.1
  69. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=8&scrV=29#xvi-p6.1
  70. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=8&scrV=45#lviii-p27.1
  71. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=10&scrV=10#i-p6.1
  72. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=11&scrV=28#xlix-p6.1
  73. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=12&scrV=27#l-p35.1
  74. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=14&scrV=21#xvi-p10.1
  75. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=15&scrV=7#xliii-p47.1
  76. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=116&scrV=0#xx-p8.1
  77. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Acts&scrCh=2&scrV=22#lviii-p41.1
  78. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Acts&scrCh=2&scrV=29#xvii-p12.1
  79. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Acts&scrCh=7&scrV=59#xxvi-p6.1
  80. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Acts&scrCh=7&scrV=60#xxvi-p6.2
  81. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=5&scrV=1#viii_1-p51.1
  82. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=5&scrV=6#xxxv-p6.1
  83. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=5&scrV=6#viii_1-p13.1
  84. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=6&scrV=17#xxxiv-p30.1
  85. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=1Cor&scrCh=1&scrV=31#xxix-p6.1
  86. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=1Cor&scrCh=3&scrV=0#xiv-p12.1
  87. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=1Cor&scrCh=6&scrV=20#xiv-p6.1
  88. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=1Cor&scrCh=7&scrV=23#xiv-p6.2
  89. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=1Cor&scrCh=9&scrV=22#xxi-p6.1
  90. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=2Cor&scrCh=2&scrV=14#lvii-p59.1
  91. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=2Cor&scrCh=3&scrV=18#lvii-p53.1
  92. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=2Cor&scrCh=5&scrV=17#xxxiv-p6.1
  93. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Gal&scrCh=3&scrV=24#xlvii-p6.1
  94. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Gal&scrCh=5&scrV=24#xxxiv-p31.1
  95. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Gal&scrCh=6&scrV=15#xxxiv-p26.1
  96. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Eph&scrCh=1&scrV=19#xxxiv-p25.2
  97. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Eph&scrCh=2&scrV=1#xxxiv-p25.1
  98. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Eph&scrCh=2&scrV=10#xxxiv-p26.2
  99. file:///ccel/s/spurgeon/sermons20/cache/sermons20.html3?scrBook=Eph&scrCh=3&scrV=8#lx-p6.1
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